Apes, Aslan, & Aliens.

Courtesy of Coming Soon, Adrien and Naomi brave Skull Island in this new still from PJ’s King Kong, WETA Workshop shows off its Narnia designs in this catalog of sculpture, and Steven Spielberg unleashes the GOP’s worst nightmare — an ornery Tim Robbins brandishing a shotgun — in some recently-released images from War of the Worlds.

Darren to Fail.

The trailer for Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell’s Bewitched materializes online, and, while I wasn’t expecting War and Peace, this looks even worse than last year’s botched update of The Stepford Wives. Meta probably wasn’t the right way to go.

Ghostbusters.

[B]y writing his autobiography himself, the madcap Central European actor Klaus Kinski produced the most brutally honest book about the motion picture industry ever. Here is a typical passage: ‘No outsider can imagine the stupidity, blustering, hysteria, authoritarianism and paralyzing boredom of shooting a flick for Billy Wilder.’ No ghostwriter would ever have written a passage like that, because ghostwriters are by nature timid, diplomatic, gun-shy.” Um, really? In the Sunday NYT Book Review, author Joe Queenan complains about the burgeoning ghostwriting industry. I think he needs to meet more ghostwriters.

Fanboy Cornucopia.

Thanks to ShoWest and otherwise, there’s been quite a bit of fanboy news to come down the pike in the past few days…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Among the recent new trailers is our first look at Michael Bay’s The Island, with Ewan MacGregor, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi, and Michael Clarke Duncan. I generally can’t stand Michael Bay films, but it is sci-fi and the cast isn’t bad.

 

 

  • The new Hitchhiker’s Guide site goes live, which includes this splendid shot of Arthur and Marvin enjoying (as much possible, given the terrible pain in all his diodes down his left side) an intergalactic sunset.

 

 

 

Everybody’s a Comedian.

It’s interesting the kind of issues that first raise their head, really. How do you deliver the Citizen Kane of comic books to screen? That is basically the problem. It’s a bit intimidating to be honest.” Director Paul Greengrass talks with CHUD on preproduction of — and transformations to — The Watchmen. Update: Here’s Parts 2 and 3.

Have your cake and eat it too.

Big doings for the cast and crew of Layer Cake, a Guy Ritchie-like London crime film coming out this summer. Its director, Matthew Vaughn, will take Bryan Singer’s place in the X3 director’s chair, and its star, Daniel Craig, is apparently on the short list for the new Bond (along with Nip/Tuck‘s Julian McMahon.) Of those two, I’d go with Craig.