By Jason Apuzzo. • I recently saw the trailer for the new Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck/Angelina Jolie/Johnny Depp thriller-romance The Tourist, which also features Timothy Dalton and Paul Bettany – and I thought it looked great. Frankly, I didn’t think anybody out there made movies like this any longer (i.e., charming, Hitchcockian espionage capers with a light touch), and I’m very much looking forward to seeing it. I’m a bit concerned that the trailer gives away too much … but nonetheless I’m excited by what I see. The film looks to be what the Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz Knight and Day was supposed to be but wasn’t. Jolie is obviously on a roll these days, making up for months of tabloid magazine gossip with some very solid projects. As for Depp, he still apparently feels the need to hide himself behind a bizarre exterior in order to convey whatever idiosyncratic humor he’s trying to put across. Still, I can’t fault his performances even if he’s never been my cup of tea. This looks like a film to rescue an otherwise dull fall.
• Reviews are starting to come out of Toronto on Werner Herzog’s new 3D documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams, and the film just got picked up for distribution by IFC. John Carpenter is also back in the saddle directing, and his thriller The Ward also just unspooled in Toronto to mixed reviews. Poor John can’t be there, though, because he’s apparently still stuck here in LA doing jury duty – an odd fate for the director of Escape from LA.
• There’s a lot happening, as usual, on the sci-fi front. First let’s begin with James Cameron, who is apparently producing a new TV-series adaptation of his film True Lies. This was reported recently with great fanfare, but I’m allowed to be a little skeptical here because there are about 2,000 other Cameron-related projects that have been announced lately … so who knows? Since the original film was about fighting terrorists, I’m wondering how the storyline will be changed to fit Cameron’s new passion for indigenous resistance fighters. Anyway, Cameron has also apparently commissioned some new deep-sea explorations to the bottom of the seven-mile deep Challenger Deep (part of the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific), from which he will shoot 3D footage that may be incorporated into Avatar’s sequel. [Or at least, that’s his excuse – probably so he can charge the expedition to Fox.] Cameron’s career is becoming increasingly intriguing, as he veers between Michael Moore and Jacques Cousteau. The question is: when he’s 20,000 fathoms down, will he find any beasts down there? [Inside joke.]
• In other sci-fi news, the Moscow-based alien invasion thriller The Darkest Hour has resumed shooting after a long delay precipitated by Moscow’s forest fires; more new pictures are out of Mad Men hottie January Jones in X-Men: First Class; and the director of the forthcoming indie alien invasion thriller Monsters has announced his next feature, which will apparently be “an epic human story, set in a futuristic world without humanity.” One hopes he intends that description ironically. Also: Lucasfilm has just put out a wonderful trailer for the forthcoming book by J.W. Rinzler on the making of The Empire Strikes Back. Be sure to check that out. I’m looking forward to that book more than any film this fall.
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … we thought we’d take a look at Amber Heard (above), who stars in John Carpenter’s new film, The Ward, which just debuted in Toronto. The Ward is set in the 1960s, and deals with a group of five comely young women in a mental institution who attempt to outlast a lecherous ghoul who haunts the hallways. It sounds a bit like working for Letterman. Anyway, I hope she makes it!
And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood.
Posted on September 16th, 2010 at 3:11pm.
The trailer for “The Tourist” looks great — very “Charade.”
I’ve already preordered the “Making of Empire Strikes Back” book, but that trailer really got me excited. I also noticed that one frame that showed the Ralph McQuarrie concept of the Imperial Walker (about the 1:45 mark), and it hit me … it’s almost the same exact shot in the beginning of “Avatar”. The vehicle is almost the same, the scale is identical, and even the shot similar.
I knew something about that looked familiar the one time I made it through “Avatar”.
Cameron is nothing if not compulsive in his referencing. Avatar is, among other things, a very rich ‘text’ of references to other films, including his own; I almost felt like certain scenes should’ve been hyperlinked.
I was about to ask if John Carpenter had been possessed by the ghost of Jess Franco. But I just checked, and Jess Franco is still alive, and apparently still working. So, uh, good for him!
It’s odd that you mention this because I’ve been going through my own mini-Jess Franco film fest lately. Plus I just bought The Girl From Rio.
Jolie has a very strange back and forth in her career … ultra-violent action movies followed by dramas and charming whimsical films … then back to the ultra-violent action movies. Also, can Depp please just get a haircut?
“The Tourist” looks reasonably entertaining. You’re right, it looks like a reverse “Knight and Day,” with Depp the innocent caught up with Jolie’s super-spy/criminal/secret agent? The only thing that makes me wonder is that there appears to be a quick shot where Depp is in some sort of CIA-looking headquarters with an agent pointing at gun at the back of his neck. This isn’t going to have some anti-CIA subtext, is it?