De Niro and Norton Together Again

When brilliant actors are paired together it’s always a cause for celebration. Robert De Niro and Edward Norton are going to do another movie together. Screw the movie, just seeing these two great actors on screen together is enough to get my admission.

The last time they played opposite each other was 2001’s The Score directed by Frank Oz (Death at a Funeral, Bowfinger). It was a heist film, and when I look back on it I don’t remember being that crazy about it, but I remember really digging the scenes they had together. Marlon Brando was in that film, too; talk about a cast!

There’s nothing worse in my opinion than the pairing of two great actors in an average movie. The pairing of De Niro and Al Pacino is what dreams are made of, but I wasn’t crazy about the script for Righteous Kill. I got what they were trying to do, but I felt like the pairing of those two actors deserved an incredible super screenplay.

The new movie Norton and De Niro are going to do is called Stone, to be directed by John Curran (The Painted Veil, We Don’t Live Here Anymore) from a script by Angus MacLachlan (Junebug). I really liked Junebug, so I’m confident this one will turn out awesome.



Cowabunga! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Return

So evidently the powers that be behind the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise don’t think we’ve had enough of it and are planning to give us more. If I’m understanding correctly from the press release, the creators of the characters and one of the producers from the animated television series want to make another live-action turtles film. I guess TMNT didn’t do the kind of business they had hoped for given that they’re not doing a sequel to that.

Here’s my thing; after almost 30 years of ninja turtles, these guys don’t want to put some new original stuff out? Hasn’t every ninja turtle adventure been done?

Personally, I don’t think they can top the original movie made in 1990. I was eight when that film came out, and that was before CGI, so the turtles were real. They were literally real.

It was the definition of a cartoon coming to life. The actors wore body suits, and the faces were animatronic, which made the characters incredibly life-like. Nowadays things just aren’t like that. Everything is computer generated and lacks the realism.

On the flipside, if they go in a darker direction and do an edgier version of the turtles, I think this could be awesome. The original comic of the turtles before it became G-rated for kids was really dark and way cooler than the watered down corny direction it went in.

Whatever they do, I think they should hire Yuen Woo-ping (The Matrix, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) to do the martial arts choreography. How cool would that be?



State of Play Director Tries Sci-Fi

One of director Kevin Macdonald’s (The Last King of Scotland, State of Play) next projects has me excited for a specific reason. I love it when quality directors who do more realistic stuff venture into science fiction. We always get the best sci-fi when that happens.

Macdonald intends to do a film based on an Isaac Asimov book titled The End of Eternity. The story has to do with a future time where there is a ruling class of people who can manipulate time and alter history to solve problems and avert disasters.

Ridley Scott’s Alien, Danny Boyle’s Sunshine and Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element are just a few examples of great science fiction from directors who mainly do modern stuff. A lot of the time we get sci-fi from directors who are just biting off everything they’ve seen. Here’s hoping this project happens.