Karina on SpoutBlog

Under discussion:

Titanic  (1997)

April 1 proves that there are essentially two types of people on the internet––nay, in the world!––those who think rickrolling is funny, and those who really, really don’t. I’m the latter, somebody at YouTube is the former, and the philosophical gulf keeping us apart is not easily reckoned with. Oh, internet…I love you, but you’re getting me down.

But because the last thing I want is for you to forget what day it is only be taken in by nefarious pranksters, here’s a round-up of fake movie stories I’ve come across on this agonizing day of digital torture. Hey let’s make this interactive––you can vote for where each one falls on the Painfully Unamusing Scale in the comments!

• Peter Jackson will follow up The Lovely Bones by directing both The Hobbit and The Hobbit 2. [If It’s Movies]
• Benicio DelToro drops out of the remake of The Wolfman, to be replaced by “[Snarl] Busey, fathered by Gary Busey during an affair with a coyote six years ago during a trip to New Mexico.” [FilmDrunk]
• Harrison Ford will star in Han Solo. Written by Carrie Fisher, the belated Star Wars sequel “will tell of the Space Pirate’s post-Return of the Jedi life – his rocky relationship with Leia, their mischievous Jedi-training twins, and principally, Solo’s ongoing battle with The Hutt’s.” Sic. [Moviehole]
• Leonardo DiCaprio, whose character––spoiler alert!––ostensibly died at the end of Titanic, will nonetheless be back for Titanic 2: A New Voyage. Reports Fandango: “One version that has been slowly leaking onto the Internet finds DiCaprio’s character, Jack Dawson, last seen submerged and turning blue, being picked up by a Portuguese trawler and miraculously thawed out.”
• IGN has a trailer for a movie based on The Legend of Zelda. It’s really elaborate and totally humorless, so who knows––based on the game-to-movie track record, it would not be outside the realm of possibility if this were real.
• David Edelstein apologizes for suggesting that Harvey Weinstein might have limited the late Anthony Minghella’s potential. Oh, wait––this might be a real story. I don’t even know anymore!!! They shoot film bloggers, don’t they?
  

We knew Oliver Stone wasn’t making W to make George W. Bush look good, but we didn’t know it was going to be an absurdist comedy. That’s the impression given by this report from ABC News, which contains several pages of details about an early draft of the script (and also misidentifies the actor cast as Bush as James Brolin instead of Josh Brolin, in the screencapped photo caption to the right). There are so many easy, cartoonish “Bush is dumb” jokes in this thing that’s it’s hard to cite a single one as being the most over the top. In flashback, George drinks vodka and orange juice out of a trash can at a frat party! Later, he threatens to shove “freedom fries” down Jacques Chirac’s throat! But I do think my favorite excerpt comes from the script’s alleged final scene:
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• Are real celebrities now taking self-parody cues from an unusually trite episode of Entourage? The same morning that Paramount announces a major acquisition for producer Brad Pitt and the production company Pitt started with former wife Jennifer Aniston, Aniston announces that she’s starting her own production company! Through which she’s going to make movies  “about distinct characters that embody something relatable and relevant about human nature’s double-sided coin of vulnerability and mettle.” Anything you can do, I can do better! Even if you maybe married the homewrecker you knocked up whilst trying to rebuild New Orleans with your multi-culti band of orphans!
• Richard Brenner, described as Toby Emmerich’s “right-hand man,” will stay on at the new New Line as president of production.
• Variety has a raft of release dates for fall Oscar hopefuls, including Sam Mendes’ Revolutionary Road, David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Ron Howard’s adaptation of Frost/Nixon.