Cutaways, Take 8

As of this writing, I can't judge the artistry of The Jacket's director, John Maybury, but based on a recent interview with IGN FilmForce, I can safely judge his personality.

The word, I think, is dick.

Some nuggets of wisdom from Mr. Maybury:

"When there are big narrative failings in a piece of storytelling, writers can just shuffle it all up and dump it on someone like me, the director, to try and sort it out. I think Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Memento, there's been a whole raft of these kind of films.

"So I think if I've made a much more interesting, a much more demanding film than the general kind of ... No, I don't have contempt for Charlie Kaufman. He's a brilliant screenwriter as was proved last night (the Academy Awards ceremony) at that corporate event.

"It was really depressing to watch ... that corporate program ... to see how much crap won. Especially, you know, when the director who made Play Misty for Me, one of my favorite films of all time, won for such a piece of shit. But can you believe that the man who made Play Misty for Me made Million Dollar Baby?"

Sounds like The Jacket straitjacketed the wrong guy. Adrien Brody wasn't the delusional guy on that set.

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David Cronenberg's The Fly as an opera?!? Yes, pardner, it's true. Composer Howard Shore -- who has scored many Cronenberg movies as well as more commercial fare like the Lord of the Rings trilogy -- is working on it. We only hope and pray that the soundtrack will have room for that great old Cramps punk classic, "Human Fly."

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Gunner Palace looks to be an amazing vantage point to the latest Iraq War. Click here for the trailer. Directed by Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker, the documentary chronicles nine months in the lives of American GIs camped out in the one-time Baghdad palace of Uday Hussein.

In The Village Voice, Tucker muses on what motivated the film: "I'm kind of beyond rights and wrongs, at this point. I'm really more like, we're two years into a war, and it's a very painful thing. And that people need to pay attention to what's happening to these soldiers and their families. I think people have seen the war so politically, when they should see it emotionally, because emotions are good for action. Politics are a very dry thing."

Ella Taylor provides a meaty review of the film in L.A.Weekly.

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Speaking of documentaries, here's the trailer for Inside Deep Throat, which has been getting mixed notices (mainly positive, though) for its mosaic of the controversy surrounding the 1972 hardcore porn phenomenon. Don't look for this one to play in the so-called Heartland.

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McSweeney's offers up Abbott & Costello vs. Blockbuster. Check it out. It's what we Oklahomans like to call "a hoot."

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USA Today examines the travails of transferring Marvel's Fantastic Four to the big screen.

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We're on a trailer kick today. So here's the trailer for Richard Linklater's remake of (we're still coming to grips with this one) The Bad News Bears, which finds Billy Bob Thornton in the role of Walter Matthau's Buttermaker. I have to say, I've been skeptical. After all, I was a devotee of the original; for an awkward misfit boy who loved baseball growing up in 1976, Bears was the cinematic equivalent of a grilled cheese sandwich and Campbells tomato soup.

That said, the upcoming version, which will hit theaters in June, has a first-rate pedigree: Billy Bob, director Linklater (who gave us Dazed and Confused and The School of Rock) and screenwriters Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, who scribed Bad Santa. So, yeah, I'm optimistic.

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Oh, and the latest trailer for Frank Miller's Sin City is here. How amazing does it look? Waaayyy amazing.