News for May 30 to June 2, 2000

2 June, 2000

Minority Report

Here is a movie that has had more than its fair share of trouble long before it has started filming. It was originally scheduled to be Tom Cruise's next movie after M:I2 but the length of shooting that movie pushed it back. Steven Spielberg, who was going to direct, shuffled his schedule and it got pushed back again, allowing him time to make A.I. instead. Now it is scheduled to start production sometime next year. With all this difficulty you have to wonder if the movie is really worth it.

Stax got a hold of the script and tries to answer that very question. The movie's idea is that in the future an organization exists that can predict a murder before it happens, thus allowing the police to arrest the murderer in advance. The script is by Scott Frank, based on a short story by Philip K. Dick.

I am surprised that Spielberg and Cruise wanted to team-up for such a generic B-movie. I hope that these two showbiz titans collaborate on a film with more weight and resonance to it than Minority Report. Besides, it just didn't read like a Spielberg film. It's better suited for the likes of Mimi Leder, Tony Scott, or Andrew Davis. (Minority Report could very easily be an average made-for-cable movie.) Surely, Scott Frank's considerable writing talents (and a year of his life) could have been better spent on a different project for Cruise and Spielberg than this. After the lackluster M:I-2, Tom Cruise should make his next action film a more original tale than this pedestrian fare. In my gut, I think Spielberg may have held similar reservations after reading this draft and that's why he opted to make A.I. instead. Minority Report is the kind of film he's likely to produce but not to direct. Now we'll have to wait and see if he even does that. -- STAX

To read the entire review, head to Stax's home at FilmForce.

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May 31, 2000

Shaolin

Disney has snapped up an idea from writer John Fasano and Adam Polina. The idea is that an Italian boy is orphaned. He is found and raised by Shaolin monks. Eventually he unites with them in their fight against an army of superhuman Mongols. I'm not making this stuff up folks.

Stan Winston Studios will produce the movie. Fasano will be writing the script from Polina's idea.

Scream 4

Raise your hand if you really believed that Miramax would stop making Scream movies. Anybody? Smart thinking. According to Dark Horizons, Wes Craven, director of the first three movies, has sent out a message to various websites saying:

"Hello! Wes Craven here-- with some news I thought you might want to know! Dimension Films contacted me and asked if I would be interested in directing Scream 4. I declined. They have a screenwriter attached to the project and they're trying for a 2002 release".

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The Hitchhiker's Guide the the Galaxy

Oh bitter disappointment. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy of five books are among my all time favorites so naturally I hoped that someday someone would be able to make a good movie out of them. At the same time I've held no illusions that this would be an easy task. Much of the best humor comes simply from Douglas Adams' writing style. One of my favorite lines came from the fourth book. "All eyes were on Ford, some of them were on stalks." There is absolutely no way that a line like that can be translated to film. It just won't work.

Pardon the rant but I needed to say something after reading Stax's review of a draft of the screenplay for a potential movie based on the first book. If you consider my theory on making a movie based on this material you won't be surprised to hear that Stax didn't think too highly of the script.

By the SECOND PARAGRAPH (!) of the FIRST PAGE, I was having trouble "getting" this story or even staying interested in it. I immediately had to go back and re-read the first page. Trying to follow or care about this story was nearly impossible the more I read. I was interested in the story until the end of Act One but once Zaphod and Trillian pick up Arthur and Ford the script lost me for good. At that point, whatever interest I had in it withered away. Characters did and said things that seemed to have little or no reason; events transpired that were pointless and forced; the humor became more transparent and, well, unfunny; the story simply lost momentum. If I didn't have to finish this script for my review, I would have tossed Guide aside. "But it's not supposed to make sense." Okay but is that still supposed to make me care what's happening?

To read the entire review head over to Stax's home at FilmForce.

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Godzilla 2000

American poster revealed