Category: Movies

Madonna to Make ‘Bond Girl’ Cameo
Madonna will make a cameo appearance in the latest James Bond movie, her spokeswoman said Tuesday.
Liz Rosenberg said the singer, 43, who has already recorded the title track for “Die Another Day,” the 20th Bond film, was on the set in London to film her brief scenes this week.
London’s Evening Standard newspaper said Madonna will wield a foil in the movie as a fencing instructor. The newspaper said she had shot a sequence that will be edited into a swashbuckling scene in which Pierce Brosnan, as Bond, duels with villain Gustav Graves, played by Toby Stephens, at a London gentlemen’s club.
Rosenberg said Madonna was flying to Los Angeles next month to film a video for the movie’s title song.

Tom Hanks would be willing to saddle up for a Toy Story 3.
Hanks says voicing Woody the cowboy doll is one of his favourite assignments.
“Though I haven’t heard of any yet, if there are plans for a Toy Story 3, I’d be more than willing to talk to the folks at Pixar and Disney about being part of it,” says Hanks, whose gangster film “Road to Perdition” opens Friday.

No Wonder Woman for Bullock
Sandra Bullock talks about her lack of involvement in the adaption of WONDER WOMAN, plus some talk on some odd choices to replace her.
There’s one feminine enigma Sandra Bullock doesn’t solve in Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood: Who will play the Amazonian adventuress in that long-in-the-works Wonder Woman movie? Bullock’s name has long been attached to the project, but she tells TV Guide Online, “I just don’t have the time or the capability to think that I can pull that off.”
Indeed, it takes Herculean chutzpah to play bullets and bracelets! So who’s woman enough to fill Lynda Carter’s magic girdle? “Somebody who is really athletically inclined and can kick ass,” Bullock muses. “She’s agile. She’s like a cat. That’s what it deserves ó it deserves someone who can enjoy the camp, but also play the serious or the dark side. Because Wonder Woman has such a dark core to it, if [producers] embrace that, there’s a couple of women that could do a good job.” Here’s a list of ladies we could see piloting an invisible jet.
Pamela Anderson: With V.I.P.’s recent cancellation ó she played a busty, baddie-bashin’ bodyguard ó this supervixen is out of work! But can the ex-Baywatcher convey Wonder Woman’s sharp intellect? More importantly, would she make a convincing brunette?
Yancy Butler: Using Wonder-gear like an enchanted lasso ó and a tiara that doubles as a boomerang ó shouldn’t daunt Butler. She currently wields a mean magic glove on TNT’s Witchblade. Let’s just hope the recently-rehabbed starlet stays off the sauce ó otherwise she’ll be Woozy Woman!
Jennifer Garner: On Alias, this TV spy has brains, beauty and brawn. Too bad she’s already doing the comic book thing as Ben Affleck’s super-sidekick, Electra, in Daredevil (due out Feb. 14).
Sarah Michelle Gellar: This fierce beauty can so save the world from vampy villains ó she does it weekly on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Plus, she even paid homage to Wonder Woman by turning into her at this year’s MTV Movie Awards. Holy hint-dropping, Batman!
Lucy Lawless: A long-rumored contender for the role, the Xena: Warrior Princess star already has played an Amazon royal who consorts with Greek gods. And since her Xena character always displayed lesbian leanings, Lawless shouldn’t have any trouble fitting in on the females-only Paradise Island!
Jennifer Lopez: Voluptuous and curvy, J.Lo can fill out Wonder Woman’s one-piece well enough to do Lynda Carter proud. Moviegoers who saw Enough also know she’ll gladly open up a can of whupass on trifling male dogs! (Poor Billy Campbell.)
Kelly Osbourne: This reality TV brat’s already an unlikely model and pop star, so why not a big-screen superhero? Actually, she’d be better off filling Debra Winger’s old boots as WW’s frumpy little sister, Wonder Girl.
Michelle Yeoh: Who cares if the comic-book icon isn’t Asian? In Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Yeoh showed the menacing moves (and compassionate heart) needed to do Diana Prince justice. And you just know she’d pull off that classic “transformation twirl” with style and grace.

Colin Farrell Cops ‘S.W.A.T.’ Shot
Colin Farrell, currently co-starring in “Minority Report,” has inked to play Officer Jim Street in the big-screen adaptation of the 1970s cop show “S.W.A.T.”
Farrell’s payday, knowledgeable insiders say, approaches $8 million for the Columbia Pictures picture. Samuel L. Jackson signed to head the cast in May.
The film will be directed by Clark Johnson, who played Det. Meldrick Lewis in NBC’s “Homicide: Life on the Street,” and just helmed the pilot for HBO cop series “The Wire.” Commercials veteran Zack Snyder had been poised to make his feature debut on the picture, but that deal did not come to pass.
The script for “S.W.A.T.” comes from David Ayer, who penned both “The Fast and the Furious” and “Training Day.”
“S.W.A.T.,” based on the 1975-1976 ABC series, was originally set up as a feature at TriStar Pictures in the late 1990s with Arnold Schwarzenegger eying the lead.
Dublin-born Farrell’s credits include “Tigerland” and “Hart’s War,” as well as the upcoming “Phone Booth,” a thriller about a man pinned down in a sniper’s line of fire.

Can ‘Black’ Buddies Beat One-Week Jinx?
Hollywood will be watching to see if “Men in Black II” can erase all memory of last summer’s one-week-wonder dilemma.
But with the Tom Hanks starrer “Road to Perdition” among four wide openers set for next weekend, Sony’s futuristic G-men face perhaps their toughest challenge yet in trying to repeat atop the box office heap in consecutive frames.
Yes, here we go again.
For 10 straight weekends last summer, no film finished No. 1 two weeks in a row after the Memorial Day opener “Pearl Harbor” managed that feat. Similarly this year, “The Sum of All Fears” finished first over the holiday frame and the next session, but no picture’s put together repeat winning performances since then.
The super-sized $90 million five-day opening for “MIB II” poses the tantalizing possibility that it won’t take until mid-August this year to find a movie strong enough to withstand the swelter of summer competition. After all, even a 50% fall-off from this weekend’s Friday-Sunday gross would yield “MIB II” a $27 million sophomore session.
On the other hand, Tom Hanks is, well, Tom Hanks.
“I would assume Tom Hanks will hold his own,” Sony marketing and distribution president Jeff Blake demurred when asked about the chances that “MIB II” will repeat at No. 1.
And in addition to the “Perdition” topliner’s unsurpassed marquee appeal, which also includes Paul Newman, there’s the added draw of Sam Mendes’ helming his first feature since his Oscar-winning feature debut “American Beauty” in 1999.
“Certainly (‘Perdition’) will be significant competition,” Blake said.
And the competition doesn’t stop there. Also bowing in wide release Friday are Disney’s video game spinoff “Reign of Fire,” MGM’s adaptation of cable TV’s wild animal show, “The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course;” and Dimension’s installment No. 8 in the “Halloween” horror franchise, “Halloween: Resurrection.”
Potentially working against a good second-week hold for “MIB II” would be its developing a case of “sequel-itis.” It’s a malady marking the offspring of an established movie franchise with a shorter life expectancy than the progenitor.
But some recent sequels have managed to shake the sequel-itis curse, including the picture that finally managed to break the one-week-wonder curse last summer. Universal’s “American Pie 2” bowed last Aug. 10 with a bigger opening weekend than the original comedy — at $45.1 million vs. $18.7 million. Its domestic run was longer-legged, too, at $143.8 million vs. $102.6 million.
Still, the same factors shaping last summer’s bout of box office one-week-wonders are once again in place this season.
Distributors are releasing pictures with print runs of unprecedented breadth. “MIB II” is playing on some 6,000 screens, meaning just about anybody who wanted to see the movie over its opening weekend was able to do so.
Also, summer 2002 is chockablock with major releases — perhaps even fuller than last summer’s crowded schedule.
So, as Nielsen EDI executive VP Dan Marks observed, “The new movies each week make it difficult to sustain a position at the top.”
Next weekend, Sony and the shades-wearing topliners from “MIB II” get to try.

Think Of Them As Timbits
Here are some breaking news headlines:
– Gwyneth Paltrow will star in a Sylvia Plath biopic
– A sequel to SCOOBY-DOO is expected to open in 2004
– SHREK 2 will open on June 18th 2004
– Bruce Willis will return for a WHOLE NINE YARDS sequel
– JERRY BRUCKHEIMER Films are developing a COYOTE UGLY sequel
– A sequel to DIRTY DANCING enters pre-production this fall
– David Goyer will direct an adaptation of JRLansdale’s MUCHO MOJO
– Ken Nolan (Black Hawk Down) will adapt Greg Bear’s FORGE OF GOD

Weekend Box Office Results
“Men in Black II” grabbed fistfuls of little green dollars at the box office as the alien-busting sequel debuted with $54.1 million in its first weekend, slightly more than the original took in, setting a new Box Office record for the July 4th Holiday Weekend.
Here are the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at North American theaters, according to Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc. Final figures will be released Monday.
1. “Men in Black II,” $54.1 million.
2. “Mr. Deeds,” $18.8 million.
3. “Like Mike,” $13.1 million.
4. “Lilo & Stitch,” $12.7 million.
5. “Minority Report,” $12.4 million.
6. “The Bourne Identity,” $9.1 million.
7. “Scooby-Doo,” $7 million.
8. “The Sum of All Fears,” $3.8 million.
9. “The Powerpuff Girls Movie,” $3.6 million.
10. “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood,” $2.9 million.

Toronto’s Opener Has 9/11 Insight
“Ararat,” the controversial new film by Atom Egoyan, will kick off the opening-night gala at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival, which runs Sept. 5-14.
“Ararat,” Egoyan’s third festival opener, recounts the 1915-17 mass killing of 1.3 million Armenians under the Ottoman Empire.
In a statement read by actor David Alpay, one of the film’s stars, Egoyan, who has Armenian heritage, said “Ararat” is a meditation on a new reality since the last festival ó a reference to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
“I am convinced … that the film will provide the opening-night audience with an emotionally loaded event,” said the 41-year-old-director, whose movie credits include “The Sweet Hereafter” and “Felicia’s Journey.”
“Ararat” has been the subject of criticism and even threats of protests from Turkish groups that insist an Armenian genocide never happened or that its extent has been exaggerated.
David Cronenberg’s “Spider,” which stars Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson and Gabriel Byrne, will have its North American premiere and a gala presentation.
Other films on the festival’s lineup, announced Tuesday, include the world premiere of Peter Kosminsky’s “White Oleander,” starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Renee Zellweger; “Moonlight Mile,” a world premiere from writer-director Brad Silberling, with Dustin Hoffman, Susan Sarandon and Holly Hunter; and “Chihwaseon,” a South Korean film about the life of a famous and passionate 19-century Korean artist.

I Only Have 10 Words For You
Here’s “The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers” trailer.

Nope. There Are No New Releases Today.
Sorry, all of this week’s new films opened up on Wednesday. So click on the date in the above right hand corner for JULY 3 and you will be able to read all about this week’s new films.
Enjoy the link, and the popcorn, and I’ll see you at the movies!