Hollywood + Indie Round-up, 5/25

Rosie Huntington to replace Megan Fox in 'Transformers 3.'

By Jason Apuzzo. I was kidding the other day when I said that “I’m sure [Michael] Bay’s people have a million Victoria’s Secret models on speed-dial that they can call on for the next  [Transformers] film” in the wake of the Megan Fox firing.  And it turns out … Bay has hired a Victoria’s Secret model.  She’s a lustrous Brit named Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.  THIS IS WHY YOU NEED TO READ LIBERTAS … WE PREDICTED IT HERE FIRST AND WE’RE ON TOP OF THIS STORY.  No word on whether Ms. Huntington-Whiteley has a personality.  We’ll see.  Fox News is also doing some speculation on the future of Megan Fox’s career.  She’ll do fine, but perhaps she should hold off on calling her directors ‘Hitler,’ and for safety’s sake confine her comparisons strictly to ‘Idi Amin.’

• The long, sad decline of 24 into left-wing drivel is now over as the show mercifully ends.  What this show has needed the past few seasons is not so much Jack Bauer as Jack Kevorkian.

• New Sex and the City 2 rumored to present “puritanical and misogynistic culture of the Middle East.” Glad to here they’re brave enough to go there; still not enough to get me to watch Sarah Jessica Parker.  [Aside: I'm having flashbacks of Jewel of the Nile here.  Didn't that just hit Blu-Ray?]  Also: a Middle-Eastern guy who was an on-set extra in Sex and the City 2 gripes about the experience in the New York Times today.  He doesn’t mention whether he still cashed his paycheck.

• Orlando Bloom cast as the ‘villain’ in new Three Musketeers remake.  Wow – what could be more frightening?

• Dominic Cooper to play Iron Man’s father in Captain America – which will be shot in London.  Maybe Tony Stark’s dad could stop in on Sherlock Holmes while he’s in town.

• New, ‘modern’ take on the Nativity story coming down the pike.  (See here and here).  It’s set in the 70’s and apparently stars Bette Midler.  Rumor mill has Sally Field cast as Pontius Pilate.

"Actually, pre-modern Christians ALWAYS wore acid-washed jeans."

• Mindless historical revisionism fuels pot shots against Christianity in new film Agora starring Rachel Weisz. Film twists history and depicts angry, murderous Christian mobs destroying Library of Alexandria (?); peddles bogus analogy between radical Islam and contemporary Christianity.  I think Govindini will be posting on this later.  The only upside here is that the film is getting bad reviews (see here and here), and that no one will see it because Rachel Weisz isn’t a real star.

• In the wake of the Shrek disappointment, blogger Vadim Rizov asks ‘Are children’s movies made by people who hate kids?’ Good question.

And in more pleasant news …

"I'm out!"

• Filmmaker Jafar Panahi has been freed on probation.  Thank God.  (See here and here.)  He’s out on something like $20,000 bail, and there’s still going to be some farce of a trial.  Somebody please send him Dershowitz.

• A new documentary on the murderous communist thug Nicolae Ceausescu, called The Autobiography of  Nicolae Ceausescu, recently played at Cannes.  I’ve seen the trailer, and it looks interesting in a kind of arch/satiric way.  There’s a round-up of generally positive reviews of the film here today.  We’ll try to review it down the line.

• Our friend and LFM Contributor Joe Bendel has a nice review up today of a new Turkish film called The Breath that deals with terrorism along the Turkish-Iraqi border, so check that out.

And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood …