I Am Link

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--- War Boy - The best part of Mr. Robot - a show I like but don't think quite lives up to the hype - is Martin Wallström, the sexy psycho Scandinavian schemer, so the news that he's lining up a movie with the also-awesome Bel Powley, young star of The Diary of a Teenage Girl, is welcome indeed! It's a WWII movie about a girl escaping Stalin and a kind Soviet officer who helps her. I wonder if it will be difficult not reading him as a crazy person? I do like reading him as a crazy person. And between him and Alexander Skarsgard Bel certainly has quite the dance card!
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--- Equal Wages - After Ben Wheatley's terribly anticipated around these parts High-Rise comes out he's got that crime thriller Free Fire lined up, but after that he's apparently going to remake Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1953 film The Wages of Fear. I haven't ever seen that movie, nor have I see William Friedkin's 1977 remake called Sorcerer. (So should I see either of them?) Anyway the story is about a bunch of truckers hauling nitroglycerin over some mountains, and Wheatley's spin is the truckers are going to be female. Female! How crazy! I am being slightly sarcastic, but I am also interested in seeing Wheatley do a female-centric movie at this point since his most recent films are more like sausage fests, give or take a Sienna Miller.
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--- So Much For Steven - Looks like the opportunity to train his camera on Channing Tatum's sweet-cheeks once again was just to great a carrot to dangle in front of Steven Soderbergh, and he's coming out of his retirement says Variety to direct Lucky Logan (I wonder if he is he related to Magic Mike?). Soderbergh tweeted that their story was "wrong" but it seems that was just that they had the wrong title and the wrong co-star (they'd originally said it was going to co-star Matt Damon). Anyway I hope it's true, as good as The Knick is Soderbergh is too talented to not direct big-screen anymore.
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--- Goth Goddess - I did a random post about Winona Ryder earlier this week because she just sort of floated onto my brain from nowhere, but it turns out she was floating around everywhere because like half an hour after I did this ginormous post talking about Winona and her place in the pantheon started making the rounds. I meant to link to it earlier this week but I actually haven't had a chance to sit down and read it yet! Oh well that's never stopped me before.
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--- Run Jake Run - I'd totally forgotten that Jake Gyllenhaal was planning on starring in a movie about a survivor of the Boston Marathon Bombing that lost both of his legs, and I am not even sure if I ever knew that David Gordon green was going to direct it, but Variety's reporting that the movie, titled Stronger, has found financing so I guess they'll probably shoot it this year. My first thought is worry about Jake's Boston accent, and my second thought is "Dear lord make a good movie, David Gordon Green -- Our Brand is Crisis was such garbage, I am worried about you." (thanks Mac)

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--- Blonde Ambitions - I've been sitting on several of these links all week (don't worry, I've sat on plenty of big things in my life, I'm fine) so by now they are a wee bit stale but whatever, I wanna mention them dammit! Like how could I not mention the news that Naomi Watts has signed up to be in the new Twin Peaks episodes? Please please please let her somehow be playing Betty or Diane Selwyn from Mulholland Drive - it doesn't have to make sense how, it's Lynch.
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--- Mad Dash - Spoilers have come out about the role that Scoot McNairy is playing in Batman V Superman and it's apparently not who we thought it was -- I am over giving a shit about spoilers with this movie because they have so so much convincing to do to make me think it's not going to be a great big steaming pile of diarrhea, but if you don't want to know some, you know, shit, don't click that link. There are a couple things in the movie I'm not worried about, and Scott is one of them. (As is Holly Hunter.)
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--- Big Organs Ahead - There's lots and lots of news from my favorite directors this week - Oldboy helmer Park Chan-wook announced his maybe next film, an adaptation of the 2007 Japanese sci-fi book Genocidal Organs (now there's a title). Here's how they describe it:

"Set in a time when Sarajevo was obliterated by a homemade nuclear device, the story reflects a world inundated with genocide. An American man by the name of John Paul seems to be responsible for all of this and intelligence agent Clavis Shepherd treks across the wasteland of the world to find him and the eponymous "genocidal organ."

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He's currently working on that Fingersmith adaptation so who knows when we'll see this; anyway it's good if he takes awhile because the book has been translated into English and I have too much else to read right now, I need some time.
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--- Joe, My God - I was and still am so angry at myself for messing up my chance to see Joe Dallesandro in the (wait for it) flesh last week when he did a Q&A alongside Jane Birkin at a screening here in NYC, but I guess ya can't win 'em all. It's not as if he would've morphed into 20 year old Joe and swept me off my feet or anything. (SIGH.) Anyway here's a nice interview with him at Queerty (thanks Mac) telling how he came to work with the Warhol gang and a bunch of other interesting stories. What a life.
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--- Be Silence - Nicolas Winding Refn is working on a great big spy movie called The Avenging Silence, or maybe he is, he is being vague because he always is. Anyway he is definitely teaming up with two James Bond writers to write something of the sort; apparently he worked with them previously on the aborted Barbarella movie he tried to make a few years back. He will say he wants it to be a great big monied studio thing, maybe set in Japan. Yeah, we'll see, dude. He just talks to talk sometimes.
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--- And Finally two bits of news regarding Stephen King movies to come -- director Josh Boone (The Fault in Our Stars) is still trying to get The Stand off the ground (good luck, dude) but in the meantime he's going to go forward with a different King adaptation, a take on his 2014 book Revival, about a faith healer gone nutso. (Anybody read it? I've fallen behind on new King.) And the second bit -- BD has some pictures from Cell, which has been so delayed I'd forgotten all about it; it stars Samuel L. Jackson, John Cusack, Isabelle Fuhrman (hooray) and Stacy Keach. No word on when this thing will be out still, but here's one of the pictures:
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