Fox Searchlight has announced the start of principal photography in Los Angeles on The Night Watchman, starring Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker and a sprawling ensemble cast. Reeves stars as Tom Ludlow, a veteran LAPD cop who finds
life difficult to navigate after the death of his wife. When evidence
implicates him in the execution of a fellow officer, he’s forced to go against the cop culture he’s been a part of his entire life, ultimately
leading him to question the loyalties of everyone around him. One surmises more rules of conduct, written or unspoken, are then broken.
The movie represents the continued mining of a seam for Training Day and Harsh Times scribe David Ayer, who jumps back behind the camera after helping polish an original script by James Ellroy. Hugh Laurie, Chris Evans, Jay Mohr, Terry Crews, Cedric the Entertainer, Common, The Game, John Corbett, Kirstin Pierce and Amaury Nolasco round out the cast, among others.
The innovative “Masters of Horror” anthology series gets unleashed in collected form on August 28, from Anchor Bay Entertainment. Housed in a specially designed “mausoleum” (above), the box
set contains all 13 DVDs from the series’ first season — each disc boasting two
to three hours of bonus features — as well as a special 14th disc of all-new, never-before-seen
footage. Winner of numerous accolades, including an Emmy and two Saturn awards,
the “Masters of Horror” season one box set will be limited to 20,000 units, so
once the mausoleums are gone, there will be no resurrection.
“We really wanted to give the fans something special for the
season one box set, as a thank you for their unwavering support,” explains Mick
Garris, the series’ creator and executive producer. “We’ve always strived to
make ‘Masters of Horror’ something truly unique within the genre, far from the
remakes and sequels synonymous with modern horror, and now fans can enjoy season
one in its entirety, and as a single experience.”
The “Masters of Horror” set presents each episode complete
and in its entirety, in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen and riveting Dolby digital
5.1 surround sound. Housed on separate discs, the 13 episodes include John Landis’ fantastic Deer Woman, William Malone’s Fair Haired Child, Stuart Gordon’s Dreams in the Witch House, Lucky McKee’s Sick Girl, Joe Dante’s superb Homecoming and eight more hour-long films. Each disc features up
to three hours’ worth of value-added supplements, including audio commentaries from
the filmmakers, behind-the-scenes featurettes, career retrospectives, festival
interviews, picture and storyboard galleries,
trailers, DVD-ROM versions of the scripts and more. The set’s bonus disc
contains a “Masters of Horror” dinner, with Garris and the season one directors
gathered at Hollywood’s legendary Magic Castle; a “Masters of Horror” DGA panel
discussion; and special interviews, conducted by Garris, with filmmakers Steven
Spielberg and John Boorman.
It’s a happy birthday to Tom Cruise, I reckon, who, despite what Oliver Stone might have you believe, was born on the 3rd of July. My gift to Cruise, who turns 45 today, is that I’ll not mention more than once his DVD review of Dawson’s Creek, and also change the site’s banner for a few days, to commemorate his upholstery dancing on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Glancing forward at Cruise’s filmography, the teaser trailer for Lions for Lambs is up, a bunch of war-on-terror speechifying driven by bizarre music (one feels like a rave might break out at any moment). And Bryan Singer’s Valkyrie — a rooted-in-truth drama about an assassination plot against Adolf Hitler during World War II — is in the news, all because German officials won’t let production use a key historical site, owing to Cruise’s beliefs as a Scientologist.
Of more dire consequence, though, is the threatened 2009 pairing of Cruise and Ben Stiller in 20th Century Fox’s comedy The Hardy Men, about grown-up versions of the Stratemeyer Syndicate’s intrepid Bayport boy investigators. Long a pet project of sorts for Stiller, this used to be a vehicle for he and Jim Carrey, and I read an awful, awful draft of it more than a half dozen years ago. That Simon Kinberg (Mr. & Mrs. Smith, the last X-Men installment, the forthcoming Jumper) is apparently the latest to tackle a full-commission rewrite gives the project a flickering chance, but the choice of Shawn Levy (Cheaper by the Dozen, Night at the Museum) to direct tells me that even if Cruise eventually does commit to it (giving birth to all the stories about how he “really wanted to do a comedy for [his] kids,” blah, blah, blah), this will be a clamorous, one-note pairing, full of cheap physical mimicry and a creaky mystery plot likely driven by smuggling, land-use, corporate takeover or the like. Instead of just being intense, Cruise will try to be mock mock-intense, and Stiller will ape Cruise’s trademark laugh ad nauseam.
It’s July 3, and you know what that means. No, not the release of Transformers, silly!
That means it’s only one month and one week away from the release of Bratz, the live-action movie based on the big-eyed, slutty little play-dolls of the same name! For the past several months I’d been trying to convince myself that this movie didn’t actually exist, that my previous posting on it was merely the result of a publicist somehow lacing my email with peyote. (Don’t laugh, I think the CIA’s been working on that…) The above production picture seems to confirm its existence, though, and now I can’t wait to see and review it.* Hey, at the very least we’ll be able to see if your roommate’s band made the soundtrack…
