Opening Shots - motion picture news

Film Comment, May, 2000

Gone, but not forgotten ...

A.I., Stanley Kubrick's long-nurtured sci-fi project, now the property of his favorite phone buddy Steven Spielberg, is currently slated for a July start with Jude Law and The Sixth Sense's Haley Joel Osment. Spielberg has cleared the decks to make room for this one, dropping out of his Harry Potter project (now in the capable hands of Chris Columbus), and postponing both Minority Report with Tom Cruise and Memoirs of a Geisha. Question: is Spielberg planning to avail himself of the vast research done by video maven Chris Cunningham now at work on his own feature debut, an adaptation of William Gibson's long-simmering Neuromancer?

It had to be done ...

Steven Soderbergh is now adding another item to his resume: a remake of the 1960 Rat Pack "classic" Ocean's 11 in the form of a George Clooney vehicle, set for a January 2001 start. Multiple drafts of the supposedly "hot" script have been floating around Hollywood, attracting a motley list of potential co-stars, including (with varying degrees of believability) Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, Jet Li, Bill Murray, Mark Wahlberg, Michael Douglas and Don Cheadle. When Cheadle was button-holed at a Mission To Mars junket about his possible involvement, his answer wasn't promising: "I don't want to play a singing garbageman." Reportedly, the Sammy role has been updated.

Where are they now?

Two mid-90s icons who've dropped out of sight: Abel Ferrara and Quentin Tarantino. Ferrara, who's been lying low since his non-thriller New Rose Hotel, is trying to set up R Xmas, an original about a drug dealer trying to rescue his wife from kidnappers. No start date, and it's questionable if Forest Whitaker is still attached. As for Tarantino, he recently resurfaced on the L.A. party circuit just in time for the Oscars[C], in the wake of a Variety "Lost and Found" piece, and is reportedly putting the finishing touches on his new Dirty Dozen-ish, Navarone-esque WWII script (possibly including a part for Adam Sandler). Maybe that story about QT cancelling his phone, boarding up his house and staying in transient hotels across America isn't tree after all. But we still like it.

Nouvelles francaises ... et ailleurs

After the box-office disappointment of Alice et Martin (and by the way -- when is USA Films going to release it in America?), the fastidious king of CinemaScope, Andre Techine, is going digital. Techine's first DV project is set to start shooting any minute in Morocco, a crime spree/road movie featuring his Wild Reeds star Gael Morel. Also taking the digital plunge: Eric Rohmer and Arturo Ripstein ... The director of our Movie of the Moment, Claire Denis, recently wrapped her first "horror movie," Trouble Everyday, starring her old pal Vincent Gallo, Beatrice Dalle and Ghost Dog's Tricia Vessey ... Hou Hsiaohsien has postponed the shooting of his disco project (no -- really!) ... Bruno Dumont (The Life of Jesus, L'Humanite) has just embarked on a journey undertaken by many European auteurs, and dragged a crew into the American desert to shoot The End: here's hoping he makes it out alive ... Lynne Ramsay (Ratcatcher) will begin her new movie Morvern Callar, based on the novel by Alan Warner, in October. Co-written with Liana Dognini, film will be lensing in Scotland and Spain ... the always-prolific Benoit Jacquot, who will probably have three more films under his belt by the time this goes into print, is still looking to set up his adaptation of Edith Wharton's A Mother's Recompense, which will star Catherine Deneuve ... the only slightly less prolific Claude Chabrol is currently editing a new film with Isabelle Huppert, which should be ready this summer ... Jean-Luc Godard has postponed editing his new Juliette Binoche movie, Eloge de l'amour, to continue his budding career as an actor with the new film by his lifelong companion Anne-Marie Mieville ... just about to start shooting, with (surprise!) Sabine Azema: Alain Resnais ... currently shooting: Ermanno Olmi.

Off the shelf

Notable upcoming book releases.

FILM COMMENT contributor Amy Taubin publishes her long-awaited book on Taxi Driver. Illustrated with a series of amazingly detailed frames from the film, it's the last word on Scorsese's powerhouse. The book is the 50th edition in the BFI Film Classics series (to which our own Kent Jones recently contributed an appreciation of

Rober Bresson's L'Argent).

An Unspeakable Betrayal: Selected Writings of Luis Bunuel (University of California Press, 275 pp., $27.50) A collection of writings by the master of the abnormal, dating from his youth in Spain to shortly before his death.

Alex Cox: Film Anarchist (by Steven Paul Davies, Batsford, 176 pp., $21.95) Nothing if not Bunuelian, Alex Cox, one of the few filmmakers truly inspired by punk rock, travels in an orbit all his own. Davies' book takes a lovingly sympathetic look at this idiosyncratic maverick's maverick.

Lukewarm list

1. The Digital Revolution

2. dot.coms/movies on the web

3. Sexual Repression in the Suburbs (American Beauty)