Fellini wanted >>> Humphrey Bogart or Frank Sinatra for Il bidone Marlon Brando, Peter O’Toole: Toby Dammit. Brando, Michael Caine, Al Pacino, Robert Redford: Casanova. Henry Fonda, Silvana Mangano, Gérard Philipe, Peter Ustinov: La Dolce Vita. Dustin Hoffman: City of Women. Groucho Marx, Mae West: Satyricon. “I always direct the same film. I can't distinguish one from another.” <<< |
GET HIM TO THE KIRK ON TIME |
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New Skipper. Paul Wesley following in the space-steps of Captains Shatner, Pine and Mignogna. |
Our heroes, they are a-changin’… Warner Bros switched their Batwoman (not, their Batgirl) from Ruby Rose to Javicia Leslie. Aunty Beeb is hunting a new Doctor Who (who won’t be Doctor Hugh Grant). And Paramount has found a new actor to boldly go where only three other guys have gone before, as the third new James T Kirk in the second season of the Star Trek spin-off, Strange New Worlds. (The T is for Tiberius. Middle names were important to Starfleet creator Gene Roddenberry). Following the years - centuries! - of William Shatner, then Chris Pine heading three movies (a fourth is due) and Vic Mignogna making sure Star Trek Continues, quirky Kirky is now Paul Wesley. A most Trekian name that… It’s Roddenberry’s middle monicker (told you!) and how he named his son - now among the producers as Rod Roddenberry. And, of course, poor Wil Wheaton was Wesley Crusher, the most disliked characters during 85 chapters of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Paul’s series took off without him – having a new Pike and Spock nipping around the galaxy. Now Kirk arrives to command the USS. Enterprise. Paul hails from The Vampire Diaries, Tell Me A Story and History of Evil. Among those behind the cameras is Jenny Lumet, daughter of the great director Sidney Lumet. Jenny and Rod praise Paul as “an astonishing presence.” We shall see. In May. Yes, yes, there was a fourth Kirk but Jimmy Bennett was just the11-year-old version in the 2007 movie reboot. You could even say a fifth… as Sandra Smith was body-swapped Kirk in the Turnabout Intruder rubbish that was the third season closer in June 1969. |
LOST AND FOUND |
ONE EYED JACKS |
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JLaw, as she would become known, lost Twilight’s Bella Swan!"I didn't really know what it was,” Jennifer Lawrence told radio shock-jock Howard Stern. “When you audition when you're, like, a run-of-the-mill actor, you know, we're all auditioning for all sorts of things, you just get like five pages and they're like, 'Act, monkey!' When it came out, I was like, 'Hot damn! Whoa!'" And so she made sure she won theX-Men and Hunger Games franchises (she almost refused to be Katniss) plus her first Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook on February 24, 2013. First? Oh, there should be more. | Imagine making a sequel to John Wayne’s Oscar-winning True Grit role – without John Wayne! Almost happened in 1974… Now while we’re used to different 007s, ole Rooster is ole Duke. No two ways about it. But Duke wasn’t well and Universal put the one-eyed US Marshall on offer (suitably or not) to… Marlon Brando, Charles Bronson, Richard Burton, Kirk Douglas, Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Charlton Heston, Rock Hudson, Burt Lancaster, Steve McQueen, Robert Mitchum, Paul Newman, Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn George C Scott. So who would you choose? | |||||||||||||||||||||
HOME SIDE STORY |
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After licking his West Slide Story wounds, Steven Spielberg’s 66th movie opens on November 23. It tells more than about his childhood than he usually reveals in interviews: storyboarding his own scripts as a kid, shooting them with his dad’s 8mm camera with his “three terrifying sisters” and schoolmates as his actors (the sisters always had to die!). We’ve been here before. “The house in ET is very much like the house I was raised in - that is my bedroom!” This time we meet his clan - called The Fabelmans. An ex-Marilyn, Michelle Williams, and Paul Dano, are the parents who only let him see Disney movies (Fantasia still gave him nightmares!). Steven, now Sammy, is Gabriel LaBelle… well, Eddie Deezen is too old. Plus a top secret role for... David Lynch. From the boy cometh the box-office king. Spielberg says he will never direct (just produce) another musical. And indeed another re-make... of Steve McQueen’s 1968 iconic San Francisco cop, Frank Bullitt. But why, I ask. But then Robert Downey Jr is recreating Lee Marvin’s Parker from 1967s Point Blank for Amazon. Oh dear. |
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TUXEDO JUNCTION |
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Looks like movies have run out of singers to bio-pic. Buddy, Bobby, Edith, Elton, Freddie, Judy and Elvis, Ronnie Spector (and Robbie Williams!!) to come?). Which is why something bizarre is, literally, afoot. Two films are planned about the movies’’ top dancers. You know them - Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. But do you see them being played by Spiderman and Captain America…? Tom Holland will be Fred in a bio. Chris Evans is Kelly in his own idea for a story with Kelly as one of the characters while making an MGMusical in 1952. (Except he never made a film in ‘52). Spidey Tom is going to work harder. "I'm quite a good tap dancer - something I've done for a very, very long time. I'm sure I'll be able to pick it up” - by working out at London’s Pineapple Dance Studios. But… 1. Fred didn’t just tap-dance. 2, He wasn’t a star until being a decade older than Tom’s 25. (Kelly was 40 in ’52; Evans is 41). And no word yet on who’s going to be Astaire’s ten-times co-star Ginger Rogers… the guy who summed up Fred’s screentest as: “Can’t act. Slightly bald. Can dance a little.” | ||||||||||||||||||||||
SELLERS: IMPOSSIBLE |
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ARE WE CLEAR? |
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1. I hear Colin Firth is headlining Operation Mincemeat... nothing to do with a 1990 French film called Operation Corned Beef. Although both are about spying... Firth is recycling 1955’s The Man Who Never Was… a cunning WWII op dreamt up by Ian Fleming (played by Johnny Flynn). 2. Then, I started my work of the day and ran into the glorious Sophia Loren in Heller in Pink Tights (not so glorious) - which is nothing ('cos I checked again) to do with the Fox musical refused by Marilyn in 1954, The Girl in Pink Tights. |
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Look who missed musicals >>> Jennifer Aniston: Chicago. Tom Cruise Grease 2. Peter Sellers: Fagin in Oliver! Olivia Newton-John: Mama Mia! Elvis: West Side Story. Bruce Springsteen: Hair. Barbra Streisand: Summer Holiday (yes, with Cliff Richard!), and Cary Grant: My Fair Lady - “Not only will I not play it, but if you don’t put Rex Harrison in it, I won’t go see it.”<<< | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Roll ©redits:All The President's Men montage: Reg Oliver,1976; Ursula Andress, Eon Productions, 1962; Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly: MGM, 1975; Lloyd Battista, Paramount, 1969; James Garner: NBC/Universal, 1979; Rebecca Hall: Lionsgate, 2015; John Hurt: Alacran Pictures-Tornasol Films-Entre Chien et Loup, etc, 2016; James T Kirks: Paramount, 1966-2020; Jennifer Lawrence: Dior, 2018; Marilyn Monroe: 20th Century Fox, 1962; Jack Nicholson: Paramount, 1989; Tom Selleck: Belisarius Productions/Glenn A Larson Productions/Universal TV,1988; Steven Spielberg: Screenrant,com, 2022; John Wayne: Universal, 1974; TC sketch: Graham Marsh, 1976. Plus enormous thanks to The Man: Daniel Bouteiller. |