Movie Make-out

A trailer for the Martin Gero’s acclaimed sex comedy/drama Young People Fucking has hit the interwebs, thanks to YouTube. The film involves five separate, interrelated but not intertwined sexual encounters (four couples and a threesome), yet the trailer and the reviews I’ve seen all indicate a smarter, more intelligent, and more mature film than the title or the premise might lead you to assume. YPF shoots its load all over Canada on June 13th; there is no US release date yet.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall’s $17.7 million take this past weekend may not have bested the pairing of Jet Li and Jackie Chan at the box office, but it was enough to keep director Nick Stoller under producer Judd Apatow’s employ. Variety tells us that Stoller has just signed to write and direct Get Him to the Greek for Apatow, with Jonah Hill starring as “a fresh-out-of-college insurance adjuster who is hired to accompany an out-of-control rock star (Forgetting Sarah Marshall’s Russell Brand) from London to a gig at L.A.’s Greek Theater.” Stoller describes the film as “a very dirty take on Almost Famous.”

It’s a little odd that Brand is playing a rocker again, after playing Sarah Marshall’s new boyfriend Aldous Snow, but he was terrific in Marshall and it’s great to see him being adopted into the Apatow stable. Hopefully the rock-star repeat will be used as an excuse to show Brand performing a new batch of hilariously wrong-headed songs; his musical bits in Sarah Marshall, at least one of which was co-written by Brand, were hilarious.

For his part, Jonah Hill starred in the Apatow’s Superbad and had a minor role in Sarah Marshall, as a not-very-vaguely lovestruck fan of Snow.

Nick Stoller, who honed his writing chops on Apatow’s short-lived TV series, Undeclared, is set to co-write and direct two other projects with Jason Segel, Five Year Engagement (for Apatow) and the next Muppet movie, and wrote December’s Jim Carrey starrer, Yes Man.

Related posts: Quick Cuts: Brad Bird’s 1906, Segel and Stoller take on the Muppets, Fame; Trailer Watch: Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Taken, Iron Man Super Bowl spot, Defiance

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Moon Bloodgood (of the underrated Journeyman) is going to play the female lead in McG’s upcoming Terminator sequel, previously known as Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins. (Contrary to the HR report, the film is currently without a title.) She will star alongside Christian Bale in the film as a “no-nonsense and battle-hardened member of the resistance.” The film is set for release on May 22, 2009, with principal photography beginning May 5. Bloodgood also stars in the upcoming Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li.

Matrix and V for Vendetta producer Joel Silver gave Collider the scoop on his upcoming collaborations with the Wachowski brothers, Ninja Assassin and Speed Racer: the Wachowskis apparently have sequel ideas for both movies lined up (and Ninja Assassin hasn’t even begun shooting yet!). Ninja Assassin will feature Rain (Speed Racer) and Naome Harris (Street Kings), and will be directed by James McTeigue (V for Vendetta).

It was originally slated to be directed by David Fincher and star Nicolas Cage (like just about every other comic book movie). It’s been called “one of the most violent comic books ever created.” And it’s not a remake of the 1992 John Woo movie. Frank Miller’s three-issue miniseries Hard Boiled may be hitting the big screen, under the auspices of Deborah Del Prete (The Spirit) and directed by Miller himself. The comic “follows Carl Seitz, an insurance investigator who unexpectedly discovers that he’s actually a cyborg named Nixon, a psychotic assassin/tax collector who’s also heralded as the future savior of the robot race.” “I’ve got a really unusual way I want to do it,” Millers told MTV. Let’s hope that “original way” isn’t just making it look like Sin City, like he seems to have done with The Spirit.

Related posts: Trailer Watch: The Spirit teaser

Over at YouTube, we have the release of the long-anticipated teaser trailer for Frank Miller’s upcoming adaptation of Will Eisner’s legendary comic, The Spirit. The film will see release on January 16, 2009 by Lionsgate.

Comingsoon.net describes the plot as “the story of a former rookie cop who returns mysteriously from the dead as the Spirit (Gabriel Macht) to fight crime from the shadows of Central City.”

His arch-enemy, the Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson) has a different mission: he’s going to wipe out Spirit’s beloved city as he pursues his own version of immortality. The Spirit tracks this cold-hearted killer from Central City’s rundown warehouses, to the damp catacombs, to the windswept waterfront… all the while facing a bevy of beautiful women who either want to seduce, love or kill our masked crusader. Surrounding him at every turn are Ellen Dolan (Sarah Paulson), the whip-smart girl-next-door; Silken Floss (Scarlett Johansson), a punk secretary and frigid vixen; Plaster of Paris (Paz Vega), a murderous French nightclub dancer; Lorelei (Jaime King), a phantom siren; and Morgenstern (Stana Katic), a sexy young cop. Then of course, there’s Sand Saref (Eva Mendes), the jewel thief with dangerous curves. She’s the love of his life turned bad. Will he save her or will she kill him?

As a life-long comic book geek, I’m psyched for this film, but it is disconcerting just how much of the Sin City style Miller has used in this movie. Either way, count me in for the midnight showing.

A trailer for Three and Out, an upcoming British comedy starring Mackenzie Crook (Gareth Keenan from the British Office), Colm Meaney, Gemma Arterton and Imelda Staunton (Vera Drake and Dolores Umbridge in the Potter movies), is online courtesy IGN Movies. The film centers on a railway conductor who has accidentally killed two people in a month. Upon learning that his company will “buy him out” if he accidentally kills a third, he’s coaxed by his friends to enlist someone to fill the role.

The fucked up premise and a terrific cast lifts up this low-budget comedy; it looks like it could be a good time. Three and Out is out in England next weekend (after a London premiere on the 21st); there is no US release date yet. Small UK comedies like these usually only cross the Atlantic if they’re huge hits back in the mother country, though, so more likely we’ll have to wait for DVD.

Moviefone brings us a red band trailer for the Sundance Film Festival prom queen, Hamlet 2. (The film sold to Focus Features for $10 million, making it the biggest acquisition of the festival.)

In the film, a failed actor turned high school drama teacher “looks to motivate his students and save his department by writing a sequel to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The trailer is very funny in spots, it has a strong cast, and the early reviews from Sundance seem are (generally) rather positive, but you’ll have to wait until August 27 to judge for yourself.

Andrew Fleming (Dick and Nancy Drew…?) directed and co-wrote with Pam Brady, who worked on Team America, South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, and… uh… Hot Rod (you can’t win ‘em all). Steve Coogan (24 Hour Party People), Steve Coogan’s hilariously bad American accent, Catherine Keener, David Arquette and Elisabeth Shue star. Here’s a Q&A with the cast of the film from Sundance over at EW.

P.S. That totally looks like my cat.

Ronald D. Moore, best known as the co-creator and showrunner of the Sci Fi Channel’s Battlestar Galactica TV series, is making the jump to… no, not hyperspace, but the silver screen, says Variety. United Artists has signed Moore to create and write a brand new science fiction motion picture trilogy.

Moore’s non-BSG credits include runs as a writer and producer on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Roswell, and penning the screenplays for Star Trek: Generations, Star Trek: First Contact, a sequel to I, Robot, and a new take on The Thing (from Another World). He also had a “story” credit for Mission: Impossible II, although Robert Towne is credited with the screenplay for that mess.

UA is keeping all the juicy details about this new project to themselves, but considering how many Hollywood projects are remakes and (often bastardized) adaptations, the idea of an original sci-fi property is very promising news, and the fact that it’s being conceived as a trilogy may help dodge the Shit Sequel Syndrome that destroyed the Matrix trilogy. At the same time, I can’t shake the idea that if it follows BSG’s example, the first one will be brilliant, the second one will be really good, and the third one will start off strong but turn into utter crap by the end. Ahem.