Wright Wripped Off; Tarsem Takes War To ‘Dawn’; Jeanne-Claude Passes Away; Macca Goes ‘Home’

The TimesOnline hit a new low for journalistic standards this week, when they cut, paste and edited Edgar Wright’s touching tribute to the late Edward Woodward from his blog without his permission and then tried to play it off as he penned the tribute for them. The director hit Twitter to express his outrage and we don’t blame him. News reporting has taken a disappointing slide of late as even the most ephemeral bits of information are spun into “stories.” But to hit a prominent director’s blog, take his work and publish it as if it was written for your own paper is not only lazy but unethical. The TimesOnline has since issued a pithy apology — We have been asked to make clear that this article appeared in the newspaper in an abridged version on Tuesday November 17 — but it’s far too little, far too late.

And speaking of Twitter, Production Weekly has twittered that “The Cell” and “The Fall” director Tarsem Singh has set up offices at La Cité du Cinéma in Montreal and is preparing to shoot “Dawn Of War” (working title: “War Of Gods”). The place is sort of a Quebecois Cinecitta and if we recall, has been home to films like “300.” The film will mark the first big, meaty lead film role for Henry Cavill while the visually creative director has described the look of the film as “Caravaggio” meets ‘Fight Club'” which actually sounds pretty cool. The film will go in front of cameras in March.

With “Precious” expanding to 1000 screens this weekend (because nothing says Thanksgiving like a ghetto porn drama), Lionsgate has released a new poster that puts Oscar contender Gabby Sidibe front and center, and then plasters her face with critical plaudits. With all the talk of soaring spirits and stolen hearts on the poster, there are going to be a lot of Oprah and Tyler Perry fans walking out of the cinema feeling more emotionally abused than they were expecting. “Precious” is about as uplifting as a soggy cheeseburger.

The “retired” Sir James Bond Sean Connery has been quietly executive producing “Sir Billi,” an CGI animated film that has been in the works for the past five years. The actor will lend his distinctive brogue to the film about “a retired, skateboarding veterinarian who lives in a remote Scottish village and who spearheads the rescue of an illegal fugitive who also happens to be a beaver.” The film’s central song, “Guardian of the Highlands” will be sung by Connery’s “Goldfinger” cohort, Shirley Bassey. The independent production is deep in post-production and is set to be completed sometime next year.

The art world lost one of its greatest and most celebrated artists, Jeanne-Claude who passed away on Wednesday after complications from brain aneurysm. She was 74. Along with her husband Christo, they erected massive, visually arresting public installations that often involved altering the look of prominent public spaces. Whether you feel their work — which sometimes involved wrapping buildings in plastic or peppering landscapes with beach umbrellas — is “art,” it can’t be denied they were a popular, powerful force that made abstract concepts at least accessible (if not entirely understood) to the general public. Their last major work was “The Gates” in which they put 7,503 rectangular orange rectangular structures draped with fabric throughout Central Park in 2005 and it was captured in all it’s glory in a 2008 HBO doc simply called, “The Gates” by Antonio Ferrera, Albert Maysles, David Maysles and Matthew Prinzing. For a still post-9/11 rattled New York City, the work was a major force for bringing travellers from around the world back into the city.

Werner Herzog, who has more energy that directors half his age, is wrapping up on busy year and quickly starting another. In Janauary, the director’s Rogue Film School will have its first seminar in Los Angeles and then a couple of weeks later, the filmmaker will be off to Germany to head the jury of the Berlin Film Festival which runs from Feb. 11-21. The director completed two lengthily titled films this year festival year, “Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans” and “My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done.” The former opens in limited release today, while the latter will hit screens sometime in December.

It seems to be a week for Oscar songs leaking to the web. The latest is Paul McCartney’s “(I Want To) Come Home” for the forthcoming Robert DeNiro dramedy “Everybody’s Fine.” If that film gets any nominations, it will probably just be for the song which you can hear below. It’s fairly standard, easy on the ears, later years Macca. Meh.