Movie Make-out

As many of my fellow Chicagoans are aware, Michael Mann’s John Dillinger pic Public Enemies (starring Johnny Depp and Christian Bale) has been filming in the city and some nearby towns for the past couple of months. Recently, work as begun on dressing up the Biograph Theater and the surrounding buildings to look as they did (or close enough to how they did) on July 22, 1934, the day he was shot and killed as he came out of a screening of Manhattan Melodrama, a gangster pic starring Clark Gable, William Powell, and Myrna Loy.

I paid a visit to the neighborhood and snapped these photos of the Biograph (over at my Flickr page). If you’re interested in John Dillinger, the film, or even just old signs, you might enjoy them. Note: There are no cast members in these photos, as filming on the scenes in the movie will take place on Tuesday through Thursday (and possibly Friday) this week; these are literally photos of the set.

Update (5/30): I’ve created a Flickr group called “Public Enemies” for set photos from the film. Hopefully more will be added soon from the Wisconsin and Indiana shoots — including some with, you know, actual actors! Please feel free to join and add your own if you have any photos!

Related posts: Two more for Dillinger’s gang in Public Enemies

Brian K. Vaughan created Y: The Last Man (which is in production at New Line), and he’s a co-producer and writer on Lost. But, to me, he’ll always be the guy who co-created (with artist Adrian Alphona) and wrote one of the best new comics in years: Runaways. Now, according to an article at The Hollywood Reporter with the worst headline of all time, that property is set to be made into a live-action film, with Vaughan writing the script for the adaptation.

Runaways centers on a group of teenagers who discover that their parents are supervillains, members of a cabal known as The Pride. They run away from home, searching for clues about their parents and trying to undo the evil The Pride has done. But the most interesting aspect of the book is its treatment of the teenage experience. The personalities in Runaways are nuanced and incredibly well-developed, and the characters, aside from the fantastical premise, have real problems that are handled with empathy and without melodrama.

Similar to Ant-man, Runaways remains in preproduction for the moment while the spotlight is on Marvel Studios’ four upcoming, interlinked titles.

It is worth noting the importance of this property getting the big screen treatment. Runaways debuted in 2002. Compare that to the lion’s share of other big-budget comics book films, all with debuts 30-40+ years ago and built in fan bases that cross generation lines. Even Hellboy debuted in the early nineties. If Runaways (and Y: The Last Man, as well) is a success, it could usher in a wave of big-budget comic book films, despite their current fan base. And if, as would be logical, the film covers the first arc of the series, it would have all the markers for a successful film. For those new to the series, the first arc has everything from relationship drama and jaw-grinding suspense to large scale action and more than a hint of the supernatural. (AND A DINOSAUR! — gm)

In all seriousness, Runaways is one of the best comics either of the Big Two have released in years, and I couldn’t be happier to see it hitting theaters (no matter how long we have to wait).

Related posts: As if Iron Man wasn’t awesome enough (updated)

Featuring some terrific cinematography, an interesting yet not-too-quirky premise, the always-lovely Zooey Deschanel and a pair of great songs (one by the Black Keys and M. Ward’s “Vincent O’Brien,” available here at the Matador Records site), this trailer for the Sundance Film Festival hit, George Lucas in Love star Martin Hymes’s The Go-Getter, has shot up pretty high on my must-see list for the year, in spite of some mixed reviews.

Starring Lou Taylor Pucci (Thumbsucker), Jena Malone, Maura Tierney, and of course the aforementioned Ms. Deschanel (All the Real Girls), The Go-Getter centers on (according to Wikipedia) “a teenager named Mercer (Pucci) [who] steals a car in order to travel the Western United States and… deal with personal, emotional problems. While driving, he makes contact with the girl who owns the car (Deschanel). They bond over the phone, never quite meeting but talking many times while he travels.”

The Go-Getter opens in New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto on June 6th. I’m crossing my fingers for a wider release shortly after that. An M. Ward-heavy soundtrack is planned, although no release date is set yet.

(Also, thanks to FirstShowing.net’s Alex Billington for bringing this film to my attention.)

Two weeks ago, you couldn’t convince me I’d ever voluntarily walk into a Baz Luhrmann movie, after the wretched piece of shit that was Romeo + Juliet and the five excruciating minutes I saw of Moulin Rouge before escaping. Yet, somehow, Australia looks pretty good — despite the apparent (and tired) framing device of telling the main story in flashback to a child as if it were a Magical Fairy Tale. Luhrmann seems to have got a brand new bag of tricks with this one, but it remains to be seen how good this new bag is.…

Nicole Kidman and Young Clint Eastwood Huge Ackman star in the Aussie Gone with the Wind-style epic, about “an English aristocrat in the 1930s (Nicole Kidman), who comes to northern Australia to sell a cattle property the size of Belgium. After an epic journey across the country with a rough-hewn drover (Hugh Jackman), they are caught in the bombing of Darwin during World War II.” Australia opens in the US on November 14.

Totally unrelated note: When I was a kid, I loved The Man from Snowy River.

After John Woo’s upcoming Red Cliff hits theaters this summer, the director will attack 1949, a big budget romance film, according to Variety. 1949 is budgeted at $40 million dollars, with production being handled by Woo and Lion Rock, with worldwide rights handled by Fortissimo Films.

The film is “based on true events” which occurred at the end of both World War II and the Chinese Civil War, with a screenply by Wang Hui-ling (Lust, Caution; Courching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and starring Chang Chen (Red Cliff) and former figure skater Song Hye-kyo. 1949 begins shooting in December in China, with a release the following December, to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

On a related note, Woo recently screened 8 minutes of Red Cliff at a press junket, saying, “People in China have the ability to make Gladiator or Troy.” Variety Asia has Woo speaking about the large scale of the film, noting, “It is my dream come true to make (Red Cliff). I wanted to make the biggest ever action sequences.” Woo also mentioned that “the Chinese government was very helpful. It wants us to make better movies.”

Red Cliff opens in China on July 10, so we’ll know if those wishes are to be fulfilled soon.

Related posts: Trailer Watch: Love Songs, Diary of the Dead, Red Cliff; Trailer Watch: Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon; Painted Skin to come with sequels, TV spinoffs

Comingsoon.net has an interview with Tyrese Gibson in which he spills the beans on a few upcoming projects of interest (not including his currently filming Legion, which sounds like a bad version of The Prophecy).

Aside from his cameo in the unnecessary Fast and The Furious 4, Gibson is in consideration for the upcoming A-Team remake. Though he has yet to sign on, Gibson reveals that the character (BA Baracus, originally played by the indomitable Mr. T) will be updated. “He’s going to be a little different. We might keep the Mohawk, but we’re not going into no forty thousand chains. We’re going to 2009 Mr. BA,” Gibson said.

Gibson also commented on the rumor that he will play Marvel Comics’ Luke Cage, saying ” if that slot eventually opens up I’ll probably be that guy to come in there and bring that man to life and have a little fun. I have to do a lot of bench pressing. Luke Cage is a lot to live up to, but like I said I’m not officially signed on yet, but they definitely have me in mind. Mr. Avi Arad – love him.”

But, most importantly, Gibson spoke on Transformers 2. He has been in touch with the first film’s other actors - namely Jon (not John) Voight and Shia Lebouf - and that Michael Bay is going to “up the ante on round two and take it to a whole other level. I can’t go into any detail, but it’s going to be some real one-of-a-kind things going on in this movie that no one has ever visually seen in their life.”

On that note, IGN has an interview with Transformers scribe, Robert Orci, where they talk about, among other things, Transformers 2. According to Orci, the film will take place a few years down the line and will focus far more on the Transformers themselves. He addresses the conflicting levels of satisfaction with the first film among the series’ fans, noting,

“I think if you didn’t know Transformers at all and you came in and you liked the first movie, you’ll like the second one. However, some of the die hard fans, which we were a member of that group, felt, well, maybe it’s a little light. Maybe it wasn’t science fictiony enough. And I think the second one will deliver on a true Transformers story. You know, the first one, we had a limited budget for what it was. Every second of Transformer time is a million dollars or whatever the heck it is, so this time, because we were able to prove through the whole thing that it’s a viable live-action movie, we have a little more freedom this time to actually learn about the Transformers, see them, hear them. It’s a better balance between the humans and the Transformers.

The film begins shooting in three weeks, and this time around will feature fan favorite Soundwave, and possibly Ravage. I’m still holding out for Rodimus Prime.

Also, Jonah Hill will not be in Transformers 2. Thank God.

Related posts: Universal and Hasbro sign a six-year pact (updated), Special effects articles round-up.

Well, it’s no Syriana or even Three Kings, but Variety brings us word that George Clooney has signed onto another politically themed film, this time an adaptation of Jonathan Ronson’s Men Who Stare at Goats, a non-fiction book about the “U.S. Army’s First Earth Battalion, a unit that was to use paranormal powers. Title refers to the notion that one can kill a goat by staring at it.”

The synposis at the author’s official site provides a bit more information:

In 1979 a secret unit was established by the most gifted minds within the US Army. Defying all known accepted military practice — and indeed, the laws of physics — they believed that a soldier could adopt the cloak of invisibility, pass cleanly through walls and, perhaps most chillingly, kill goats just by staring at them. Entrusted with defending America from all known adversaries, they were the First Earth Battalion. And they really weren’t joking. What’s more, they’re back and fighting the War on Terror. ‘The men who stare at goats’ reveals extraordinary — and very nutty — national secrets at the core of George W Bush’s War on Terror.

These are your tax dollars at work, people.

Peter Straughan (the upcoming Simon Pegg starrer How to Lose Friends and Alienate People — which looks terrific, by the way) penned the adapated screenplay, which topped the 2007 Brit List of best unproduced screenplays.

Here is a three part video, Crazy Rulers of the World, the first of which is also titled The Men Who Stare at Goats, in which Jonathan Ronson covers some of the material found in the book.

(Incidentally, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People will open in the US on October 3.)