— We’ve been a little ho-hum on the Bruce Willis/Morgan Freeman spy thriller “Red,” an adaptation of Warren Ellis’ comic book directed by Robert Schwentke (“The Time Traveller’s Wife”), but the recent news that Helen Mirren was stepping on-board was intriguing. Now John C. Reilly and Mary-Louise Parker, fine actors both, have joined the cast, the former playing a paranoid CIA agent, the latter playing the love interest, a federal pension worker, and we’re more than a little intrigued, it’s an unusually high-calibre cast for an action-thriller.
It’s particularly good to see Reilly taking on something more dramatic, we’ve been a little disappointed by the comic turn his career’s taken — while we enjoyed “Step Brothers,” we’re not sure the Adam McKay style is his natural home.
— For some inexplicable reason, board games, or as Demetri Martin calls them, “Which one of my friends is a competitive asshole?,” are proving fertile ground for movie adaptation, with the likes of Ridley Scott’s “Monopoly” and Peter Berg’s “Battleships” on the horizon. Now Sony Pictures have picked up the rights to the popular Napoleonic war game “Risk,” and quite frankly, we have no clue why, or how they’ll turn it into a narrative. If it’s anything like the way we used to play it as a kid, the plot will involve someone taking over Australia and New Zealand, are sitting there for the rest of the running time, with reinforcements arriving every ten minutes. The picture will also conclude unfinished and have an eight hour running time.
A poster of Robert Rodriguez’s “Machete” spotted at the American Film Market has been snapped and it stars Jessica Alba, who is basically the second-lead in the picture after Danny Trejo. The film also stars Michelle Rodriguez, Lindsay Lohan, Rober DeNiro, Steven Seagal, Don Johnson, Rose McGowan, “Spy Kids” star Daryl Sabara, and Don Johnson. While it’s been bought by Sony internationally, the picture is still looking for American distribution. Dimension Films has been circling it, but nothing is set in stone yet.
— Sally Hawkins and William H. Macy have joined the ’80s-set coming-of-age comedy, “Dirty Girl,” which also already stars Lisa Kudrow, Juno Temple and Jeremy Dozier. According to Variety the story, centers on a “high school tramp who pairs up with a shy and overweight gay teen. Together, they set off to find her real father in California.”
More geek posters. Nine new posters from “Clash Of The Titans,” have surfaced at AICN. Of course they’ve been pulled down but AceShowbiz — who ripped them off of AICN without credit, still has them. Here’s one.
Bonehead Roland Emmerich is planning a sort of sequel to his disaster porn pic, “2012.” It’s creatively titled “2o13,” and it’ll be relegated to TV. Pass.
Wanna hear Sean Lennon’s score to the indie-film, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead” which possibly already came and went? It’s here.
Gorgeous Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi (known for her work in “2046,” “House of Flying Daggers” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”) has joined the English-Language film, “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan,” as a producer. According to THR, the film is “set in 19th century remote China, the film revolves around the lifelong friendship of Lily and Snow Flower and their imprisonment by rigid cultural codes of conduct for women.”
Yeah, marketing it the exact same as the huge box office failure "Grindhouse" probably isnt the best way to go.