Sad, sad news: The AP is reporting that David Carradine, best known for his role on TV’s Kung Fu and in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies, was found dead in a hotel room in Bangkok early this morning. Carradine was in Thailand to work on an unspecified movie that had begun production this week; while nothing has been confirmed, police have suggested that he took his own life. He was 72. We’ll miss him.
Like a Gallic Energizer bunny, Jean-Luc Godard seems damned near indefatigable. The Hollywood Reporter leads with news that the septuagenarian filmmaker has his sights set on adapting The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, Daniel Mendelsohn’s Holocaust tale. We eagerly await biographer Richard “Godard is a big ol’ anti-Semite” Brody’s response.
Oh, awesome: a remake of Short Circuit. Just what we’ve always wanted.
It was inevitable, but we didn’t think it would happen this quickly: Sacha Baron Cohen is already being sued by someone over their inclusion in his new gonzo comedy, Brüno. And it hasn’t even opened yet!
With Angels & Demons flapping into view today, Dave and Josh were of a mind to chat summer movies. What’s on their radar for the warm months—besides Megan Fox? (Okay, she’s really just on Josh’s radar.) Before getting all previewy, though, Team Film discussed this week’s best offering, Summer Hours, and its director, Olivier Assayas.
Josh: So Dave, you chatted with French director and critic Olivier Assayas last October. Did you get totally schooled?
Dave: And then some. He dropped mad Gallic science on me.
J: And yet, his new film, Summer Hours, is so quiet and lovely.
D: It may be my favorite of his movies—or at least tied with Cold Water.
J: Summer Hours really is that special. I never thought a movie about asset appraisal could be so full of feeling.
D: Right! The early word out of Cannes last year, where it played, was that it was essentially “yuppies moaning about materialistic goods.”
J: Yeah. People said “minor,” but maybe they meant miner and were actually referring to My Bloody Valentine 3-D.
D: I’ve heard in the director’s cut, Juliette Binoche discusses the history of 16th-century French poetry and then kills someone with a pickax.
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Tags:
Angels & Demons,
Bruno,
It Might Get Loud,
Johnny Depp,
Michael Bay,
Michael Mann,
Olivier Assayas,
Public Enemies,
Quentin Tarantino,
Sacha Baron Cohen,
Summer Hours,
The Da Vinci Code,
Transformers
Apparently more unsafe than Jigsaw or Leatherface: Seriously, an NC-17? Sacha Baron Cohen’s summer flick, in case you’re wondering, has just been slapped with the MPAA’s harshest rating. (Cohen’s post-Borat mockumentary is seen through the eyes of a flamingly gay, Austrian fashionista.) According to The Wrap, Universal won’t release it until significant cuts have been made. Perhaps we’ll be denied scenes that played like gangbusters at SXSW: Bruno having sex with a cameraman; two guys making out over a baby. Our movie rating system is notoriously vague and more than a little corrupt, guaranteeing that a gazillion American adults can’t see a film that isn’t suitable, on some level, for kids. But really, people, I’m a grown-up. Waaaaaah!