Day: June 10, 2010

Hollywood Round-up, 6/10

Would you want this woman as your queen?

By Jason Apuzzo. • More celebrities are starting to weigh-in on the BP oil spill. Consensus is: Kevin Costner coming out on top right now over James Cameron in the race to be the MOST HELPFUL CELEBRITY IN THE GULF.  Costner apparently spent $20 million of his own money to invent a technology to separate oil from water.  [I have that problem all the time whenever I’m eating a salad.]  On a related note, I’ve just started work on special glasses that can separate Alec Baldwin’s image from my Turner Classic Movies cable signal.

• Rumors flying (see here and here) about Angelina Jolie being approached to play Cleopatra, in a forthcoming adaptation of Stacy Schiff’s book, Cleopatra: A Life. Word to the wise, Jolie-Cleopatra rumors have actually been around so long I covered them on the old version of Libertas.  So we’ll see.  One thing’s for sure: Jolie’s juggled enough men that playing Cleopatra shouldn’t be much trouble.

• Green Lantern 2 is apparently already a ‘go,’ even before the first film is out. In other superhero news, Flash also looks like it’s going forward, and now there’s word coming about a Fantastic Four ‘reboot‘.  A ‘reboot’?  Coming so soon off the last Fantastic Four film, what they really need is a ‘mind-wipe.’

Rosie arrives.

• John McCain tweeted Jersey Shore‘s Snooki the other day, assuring her that in a McCain Administration she wouldn’t be taxed for her tanning sessions. As I write that last sentence, it occurs to me that our civilization must be reaching a terminal stage.

• Sony will soon be releasing a huge range of 3D products for the home theater market. I wasn’t aware that I was going to need a special 3D Blu-ray player, to go along with the new 3D flat screen.  This is getting expensive, guys.  I’m starting to re-think my Blu-ray pre-order of Piranha.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Rosie Huntington-Whiteley has shown up on the Transformers 3 set to start filming.  See photos of that here.

In more Transformers news, Michael Bay confirms that Transformers 3 will, indeed, be shot in 3-D … but he’s apparently having some difficulty getting city officials in Washington, D.C. to let him blow half the city up.  It’s OK to blow up the budget in D.C., just not the city parks.

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

Posted on June 10, 2010 at 8:16pm.

Sony Agrees to Chinese Censorship of Karate Kid

From Sony's new "Karate Kid" remake.

By Jason Apuzzo. Yesterday LFM was the first site (so far as we’re aware) to make a fuss over the fact that Sony agreed to let the Chinese government have some editorial oversight over the new Karate Kid remake.

I wrote about this issue in the context of the forthcoming Red Dawn remake from MGM, which certain Western critics are already deriding (see here and here) as being unduly harsh on the Chinese government.

Again, here’s the money quote from the LA Times article about the decision:

“If Sony made Karate Kid with a Chinese partner, it could be a part of that Asian gold rush, but the deal would come with some foreseeable obstacles, including possible government censorship.

[Doug Belgrad, president of Sony’s Columbia Pictures] didn’t think long before giving his answer. “That was enough to say yes,” says Belgrad.”

The LA Times article goes further and reports the following:

The “Karate Kid” decision not only launched the biggest modern movie co-production between an American studio and China, but also opened up the film to government-mandated creative controls that ultimately yielded two slightly different movies, as Chinese censors asked that several scenes, including sequences of bullying and a kiss between two young characters, be trimmed.

Now, based on my reading of the full LA Times article, my sense is that the changes required by the Chinese censors were relatively minor.  Additionally, it’s not as if this is the first time American filmmakers have bowed to Chinese censors (some recent cases include Mission Impossible 3 and The Painted Veil).

With that said, what strikes me about this decision by Sony are two things:

  1. If the editorial demands from the Chinese were indeed minor, why give in to them – since the film otherwise seems to depict Chinese society so favorably?
  2. Why did a simple Karate Kid remake have to pass through the hands of Chinese government censors in the first place?  Wasn’t there some other way to do this film? Continue reading Sony Agrees to Chinese Censorship of Karate Kid

Red Dawn Update + LA Times’ Goldstein Praises Libertas

"We all read Libertas ... so should you!"

By Jason Apuzzo. Our recent post about MGM’s forthcoming remake of Red Dawn (see here) has gotten quite a bit of attention around the internet.

First of all, we want to thank Patrick Goldstein of The LA Times who just did an entire piece today on our reaction to Red Dawn.  We especially want to thank Patrick for his kind words about LFM:

“… Libertas Film Magazine, a newly revived version of the blog that set the standard for smart conservative film writing and in its first weeks of new life has already easily surpassed Andrew Breitbart’s Big Hollywood, if for no other reason than that Apuzzo and his film-loving cohorts (including the always provocative Govindini Murty, who recently weighed in with a stirring defense of “Sex & the City 2″) don’t spend all their waking hours simply bashing all the usual lefty Hollywood suspects.”

That’s very kind of Patrick, and we want to thank him for stating, in just a few words, what we feel makes us unique.

Also, since our initial post, we’ve spoken to an executive at MGM about the new Red Dawn, and he provided us with some exciting details about the film.  Additionally, he confirmed a few basic points about the film: 1) the negative cost for the film is actually around $42 million; 2) Red Dawn as yet has no release date due to the complex situation at MGM; 3) Connor Cruise appears in the film, but is not actually the film’s main star.  However, the great news is that the film is apparently going to be as hardcore as it seems, and based on what we’ve already been told conservatives will be electrified by this film.

We’ll have a lot more to report about Red Dawn down the line.

Posted on June 10, 2010 at 11:32am.