Movie Make-out

It’s been four years since his last film (Paparazzi) and six since his last starring roles (Signs, We Were Soldiers), but Mel Gibson is officially stepping out of the director’s chair and back onto the screen. Variety has announced that Gibson is signed on to star in a remake of the 1985 television miniseries Edge of Darkness.

Martin Campbell (Casino Royale), who directed the six hour BBC miniseries, will direct. The film will be written and produced by William Monohan and Graham King, respectively. The two last worked together on The Departed.

Gibson is reportedly a great fan of the miniseries, and will play “a straitlaced police investigator whose activist daughter is killed. He plunges into the case and uncovers systemic corruption that led to his daughter’s death.”

Gibson’s choice of the role is especially noteworthy, given the length of time he has remained, by choice, off screen. Between his obsessive directorial activities and his DUI (and subsequent comments), one wonders if there isn’t some possible significance to his decision return to acting with this film, as opposed to the Sam and George or Under and Alone, which Gibson has had next-at-bat for years. But what? Could it be the chance to not only work on a remake of a miniseries he loved, but underneath the Oscar-winning producers of one of the best films of the past few years? Could be. And if Gibson comes to the film with his A-game, it should be worth it.

The full Incredible Hulk is finally online, in glorious Quicktime, with just a few days left ’til Iron Man (which has been getting almost uniformly, enthusiastically positive reviews) strikes theaters. Fanboy shit-talkers have been saying that the lack of promotion for the Hulk reboot was proof it was a sure-fire dud, and while you might disagree, I think the new trailer is evidence to the contrary. (They also bitched and moaned about the obviously early special effects in the teaser, too, so whatever.)

It might actually show too much, though, since you can form a pretty linear outline of how things need to break down in the film from the scenes you see. If this rocks as much as I’m hoping, director Louis Leterrier wil be forgiven for the god-awful crap that was Transporter 2.

The Incredible Hulk stars Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth, and William Hurt and hits theaters on June 13.

Related posts: Trailer Watch: The Incredible Hulk teaser (updated)

The full second teaser trailer for The Wackness is up at MySpace, and it’s a big improvement on the earlier (first) teaser trailer, which just looked kind of odd and hard to pin down. Director Jonathan Levine’s Sundance hit stars Josh Peck as a high school grad in the ’90s whose eccentric psychiatrist (Ben Kingsley) has… unorthodox ideas about how to “fix” his young patient. The Wackness co-stars Olivia Thirlby (Snow Angels, Juno), Mary-Kate Olsen, and Method Man, and hits theaters on July 3rd.

Variety has more info about the upcoming Coen Bros. flick, Burn After Reading. The film, with a script by the Coens, will open the 65th Venice Film Festival this summer. It will open in the states via Focus Features on September 12th, a few weeks after its August 27th debute at the Venice Lido. It’s interesting that Burn After Reading is seeing release less than a year after the Coen’s previous, multiple-award-winning work, No Country For Old Men, since the lion’s share of their previous work has been released at least two years apart.

The film, a Working Title production, has a huge cast, including the Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich and the previously mentioned Brad Pitt and George Clooney. According to an article at New York Magazine, who have gotten their hands on a copy of the script, “Malkovich plays Osbourne Cox, an alcoholic fired CIA agent whose memoir manuscript accidentally leaks. Pitt plays Chad Feldheimer, a dim-bulb personal trainer who finds the CD-ROM containing the manuscript and launches a plan to profit from the discovery. And Clooney plays Harry Pfarrer, a gone-slightly-to-seed Treasury agent whose philandering lands him in the middle of the ensuing mess.”

It has yet to be decided if Burn After Reading will be in the competition or not. Interesting enough, the last Coen film to run on the Lido was Intolerable Cruelty, which was yet another comedy the Coens made following an incredible drama (The Man Who Wasn’t There).

Aside from The Serious Man and their adaptation of Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, the Coens have three more films on the horizon – Gambit (not what you’re hoping, I promise), Hail Ceasar and Suburbicon. Four of them are slated for 2009, so its anyone’s guess which will see release next.

Related posts: Coens to adapt Chabon’s Yiddish Policemen’s Union

American Beauty screenwriter and Six Feet Under creator Alan Ball makes his feature directorial debut with the upcoming adaptation of Alicia Erian’s novel, Towelhead. The film had previously been retitled Nothing Is Private, but apparently the producers decided to stick with the book’s title anyway.

The coming-of-age story revolves around Jasira (Summer Bishil), a 13-year old half-Lebanese girl sent to live with her strict father (Peter Macdissi) in Houston. Aaron Eckhart returns to his In the Company of Men roots as a contemptible mother fucker (or in this case would-be child fucker), as a neighbor who takes a rather unsettling interest in the girl.

The trailer demonstrates a similar sensibility to Ball’s previous work, a pensive sort of malaise that should unfold in a less sensationalistic manner than the events seen in the trailer may lead you to expect. Towelhead premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last September, but finally makes its proper release on August 8, 2008.