Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Slow News Day: Eli Roth Fakes It, Berkley Breathed Makes New Opuses, Gary Cole Takes a Road Trip, and Bruce Plays the Piano

ITEM: Eli Roth is talking about following Grindhouse with a full movie of fake trailers, which he would call Trailer Trash. He tells Collider magazine that he wants to make something as ridiculous and over-the-top as Borat, and he wants to bring along Grindhouse buddies Robert Rodriguez and Edgar Wright. But he can say all he wants, and it will still be hard to get a studio to sign on after Grindhouse's sad, unfortunate B.O. numbers.

ITEM: Bloom County and Opus creator Berkley Breathed has had an Opus film gestating in animation development hell for many years now, but Gore Verbinski and Robert Zemeckis aren't waiting any longer. This website claims the directors are interested in bringing, respectively, his misfit animal tribute picture book Flawed Dogs and his sci-fi parenthood epic Mars Needs Moms to the big screen as CGI kiddie blockbusters. That sounds great and all, but whatever happened with that rumor about Bill Watterson hand-animating his own independent Calvin and Hobbes feature?

ITEM: The great Gary Cole and Jennifer Coolidge have signed on to join indie scream queen Agnes Bruckner playing a broken family trio in David Moreton's game show slash road trip comedy Say Hello to Stan Talmadge. Moreton worked with Coolidge before on an obscure gay-interest comedy called Testosterone, but pairing her with a cult character actor like Cole should easily open this up to a bigger audience.

ITEM: Speaking of cult actors, surely you haven't forgotten Bruce Campbell's recent stint as the suave new spokesman for Old Spice, and you'll be glad to know that the manly fragrance is airing a second chapter, which is even better than the first. Enjoy...

No comments: