I Am Link

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--- Maniac Mania - This might be the coolest sentence I'll write all month - Drive director Nicholas Winding Refn is teaming up with writer-producer Larry fucking Cohen and director William fucking Lustig to produce a prequel to Maniac Cop. I could replace every word in that sentence with a slap across the face and it would be less dramatic. Holy shit, you guys! I doubt there's any way to cram Bruce Campbell into this but if they could figure that out I might just turn into a pile of ecstatic goo. I mean, not that Bruce looks like he did in Maniac Cop anymore, but still...

--- Rubble Ripper - The AV Club got to chat with Mr. Busy, Joss Whedon, and there's a whole lot of talk about horror what with The Cabin in the Woods being the major topic of conversation, and therefore I pronounce this interview golden. I could listen to Joss talk about horror all my forever. They also get him to kind of say that his one-time-rumored BBC series with Anthony Stewart Head called Ripper, based on his Buffy character, is sort of dead, but Joss doesn't really commit to that - he says he never knows when an idea's really dead and when it's just gestating, waiting for the right moment.

--- Spook Chatter - Talking about the state of horror today in the wake of Cabin in the Woods is a big thing right now; over at The Film Experience Michael brings up the role of irony, and ironic detachment, and humor, in where we stand on the spooky things these days.

--- And speaking of, BD points out that there are a couple of Cabin related books that came out this week - there's a novelization of the story here, and then there's this Official Visual Companion, which I need on my shelf like yesterday.

--- Rough 'Rents - The writers of The Descendants (including Community dean and Angie-leg-aper Jim Rash) are already making an action-comedy with Kristen Wiig, and now they've sold a second script - it's called The Way Way Back and it's about a teenage kid on Summer vacation who goes through some shit. Said shit will now involve a boozing stepdad played by Steve Carell and a mother played by Toni Collette. I'm so happy Toni keeps getting work, y'all.

--- Alien Invasion - Slash has word that Nacho Vigalondo's second film Extraterrestrial is getting a release here in the US in June. They really liked the movie, a lot of people did - I wasn't all that crazy about it myself, to my disappointment. But hey the lead guy Julián Villagrán spends the first ten minutes in very tiny underpants so it's not all a wash.

--- And speaking of underwhelming movies getting a release, Amy Heckerling's laugh-free scare-free horror comedy Vamps got picked up by Anchor Bay and will be out around Halloween. Boo.

--- Fire Balls - Add two more names to that list of possible Catching Fire directors - Moneyball's Bennett Miller and Francis Lawrence, who gave us Constantine and I Am Legend. I'm not really a fan of either so I'm still on Team Impossible Cuarón.

--- Prez Accounted For - Darren Aronofsky's getting ready to direct Noah but his next project's already being talked up - he wants to do something called The General, about George Washington. They say it will be "deconstructionist," like Unforgiven. Seeing as how we're talking about Darren Aronofsky I doubt anybody was thinking it was gonna be a straightforward anything.

--- The Hitchcock Kid - I was just watching some of The Karate Kid on TV the other day and wondering why Ralph Macchio had just up and vanished and here we are, today he gets cast in the Hitchcock movie about Psycho (the one with ScarJo and Anthony Hopkins) as the film's screen-writer Joey Stefano. Too cool.

--- Tina, Bring Me - Park Chan-wook has opened up about a couple of things via here, sharing some details on his English-language debut Stoker, which stars Nicole Kidman and Mia Wasikowska and Matthew Goode, which is filming now. And he's planning on making The Ax next, which he almost did before - it's a remake of a French film about a murderous chemist. That might be in English as well.
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