Movie Make-out

Screen Gems brings us another entry in the from dusk til dawn teen flick genre that includes American Graffiti, Dazed & Confused, and Superbad: Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist, starring Michael Cera (Superbad, Arrested Development, Juno) and the super-cute Kat Dennings (40 Year-Old Virgin).

Sez MySpace, “Two teenagers, nursing broken hearts, fall in love during one sleepless night in New York while searching for their favorite band’s unannounced show.” Fun stuff, even if Michael Cera continues to demonstrate absolutely zero range. Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist opens on October 3rd.

A new article with a stupid title at The Hollywood Reporter updates us on three high-profile indie projects (is that a contradiction in terms?) that went unsold at this years Cannes Film Festival: Steven Soderbergh’s two-part Che, a biopic of Che Guevara starring Benicio del Toro; the Joaquin Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow drama Two Lovers; and Charlie Kauffman’s directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York, starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Catherine Keener.

The skinny:

It took two months for the $20 million-plus Synecdoche to land a U.S. distribution deal with Sony Pictures Classics. 2929 Prods. gave up on finding an outside buyer for its $12 million Lovers, deciding to release it through sister company Magnolia Pictures. And Soderbergh’s $65 million Che is still searching for a home.

…and if Soderbergh insists on releasing “the two-part, four-hour-plus film as one movie in limited December openings (and) then… the first part in January and the second in February,” it’s likely to continue searching for a while.

Synechdoche, New York, is about “a theater director named Caden Cotard, whose life in Schenectady, New York is looking bleak. His wife Adele has left him to pursue her painting in Berlin, taking their young daughter Olive with her. A new relationship with the alluringly candid Hazel has prematurely run aground. And a mysterious condition is systematically shutting down each of his body’s autonomic functions. Worried about the transience of his life, he moves his theater company to a warehouse in New York City. He directs them in a celebration of the mundane, instructing each to live out their constructed lives in a growing mockup of the city outside.” Sony Classics plans to release it “in the fall.”

We Own the Night director James Gray’s Two Lovers is about a man (Joaquin Phoenix) “torn between the family friend his parents wish he would marry and his beautiful but volatile new neighbor”… played by Gwyneth Paltrow and Vinessa Shaw (The Hills Have Eyes), although I’m not sure who plays which role. Still, no sympathy for you, buddy. The film will get a limited release “early next year with New York and Los Angeles openings.”

Insert tired rant about Hollywood’s lack of originality that completely ignores the existence of independent film here.

Darren Aronofsky’s RoboCop film is “definitely not a sequel,” according to co-producer Mike Medavoy, adding that he preferred the term “reimagining.” (Source: MTV)

After Mike Myers bombed with The Love Guru, he’s predictably going back to the well for Austin Powers 4, which is centering around the relationship between Dr. Evil and his son, Scott Evil (Seth Green). It will be very touching, I’m sure. (Coming Soon)

DJ-turned-producer Howard Stern has landed Alex Winter (a.k.a. Bill from Bill & Ted movies) to pen his remake of Rock ‘n Roll High School. And, while this is old news, if you didn’t know (I didn’t), Stern is also planning a Porky’s remake, which will undoubtely be spanktastic. (Source: Variety)

Sony is “moving forward” with a Venom spin-off from the Spider-Man franchise, but has no screenwriter or director attached. Fans of the character are probably a little unsure what to think, because it’s spinning off of the widely reviled Spider-Man 3, but it’s also a chance to do justice to the character that his first screen appearance arguably did not… and, as a Spidey spin-off about a character Sam Raimi dislikes, Sam Raimi will almost undoubtedly have little to do with the project. Sony is still aiming for releasing Spider-Man 4 in 2011, but also has no writers or a director signed. (Source: The Hollywood Reporter)

The rumored live-action Cowboy Bebop movie has not even been announced yet, so the idea that Keanu Reeves has supposedly been attached to it for eight months just seems a bit silly to me. Give me a break; the film’s PR people would be all over that shit. (Source: rumor-mongering dumbasses)

Related posts: Darren Aronofsky’s RoboCop — it’s official

Director and co-writer Sean Anders’s Sex Drive (based, apparently, on Andy Behrens’ All the Way) might be one of those infantile teen sex comedies where all the decent laughs are in the trailer, but I’ll be damned if I wasn’t giggling my ass off. The premise off a sex-starved teen (Josh Zuckerman) from Chicago who steals his brother’s muscle car to go meet his internet girlfriend from Tennessee is less interesting to me than the MPAA’s description of it as having “strong, crude and sexual content, nudity, language, some drug and alcohol use — all involving teens.” (Yep, it’s rated R.)

The presence of James Marsden as the douchebag older brother is pretty reassuring, to me; after stealing scene after scene in both Enchanted and 27 Dresses, Marsden has been busy enough that a movie like this should be beneath him — unless the script were good. But we’ll see. Come on, Summit! Bring on the red band trailer!

Seth Green and Katrina Bowden round out the cast. Sex Drive will rev up the multiplex on October 10.

Holy wow, this looks like a lot of fun. Brick director Rian Johnson does something completely different with The Brothers Bloom, a caper/adventure/comedy genre-bender starring Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo as the greatest con men in the world. Fantastic cast, goofy-fun premise, and ’splosions! What more do you need? The Brothers Bloom opens on October 24th, opposite Saw fucking V. Guess which theater I’ll be in?

For a little more about the film, you can check out this interview with Rian Johnson over at ComingSoon. He also mentions his next project, another original screenplay called Looper, a dark, violent character-based sci-fi flick in the vein of Terminator (in that it involves time travel… and violence).