Sam’s Top 42 Films of the Decade
Just for the sake of my own sanity and desperate need to have these written somewhere, I give you my favourite forty-two films of the past decade. There are at least fifty-six other films I would like to put onto a list, but I think I need to forcefully prevent any more decade-based listmaking as quickly as possible. So beneath is the top ten list, along with a sentence or two on each film and then thirty-two, out-of-list-order, films which I had to include.
News Morsels
Jake Kasdan has signed on to direct 2008 Blacklist screenplay Bad Teacher, about a cuss-heavy teacher and her rivalry with her sugar-sweet colleague. /Film is suggesting Rashida Jones may be up for the lead, but I’ve got to disagree with any suggestion Scarlett Johannson could to this kind of comedy as her rival.
Prison Break’s Wentworth Miller may be joining the cast of Bioshock.
Tom Cruise has signed on alongside Cameron Diaz for Wichita, an action comedy being directed by James Mangold.
Jonah Hill says the remake of 21 Jump Street will be ‘Bad Boys meets John Hughes’.
Fox may be planning to reboot Alien.
Seann William Scott and Adam Brody have joined the cast of Kevin Smith’s A Couple of Dicks.
Here’s a guide to when to go to the toilet during a movie.
Clifton Collins Jr, from Star Trek and previously great in Capote, is in talks to join the cast of Thor.
Some viral marketing here for Funny People.
Cinematical has an interview with Sam Raimi ahead of the full release for Drag Me to Hell.
The first collaborative horror novel from Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan is on the way.
Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman says Paramount will benefit from its franchise properties and greater control of its release slate.
The board of Time Warner has formally announced plans to spin-off its AOL business.
Please check out the trailer below, for the truly insane looking Werner Herzog reimagining of Bad Lieutenant.
Ferrara Taking on Jekyll and Hyde Too
Abel Ferrara, possibly still stinging from Werner Herzog putting him down after taking on Bad Lieutenant, has decided to launch his own version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Ferrara’s version will be called Jekyll and Hyde.
His reading will also feature Forest Whitaker and Curtis ’50 Cent’ Jackson at the lead characters.
I can’t quite imagine why he would want to do this but, given his interesting if not wholly-successful take on the Invasion of the Body Snatchers story in the past, he could at least bring something different to the table.
Separate to this, two other Jekyll and Hyde projects are in the works.
There is the terrible-sounding version with Keanu Reeves playing both lead roles, although possibly with Bronson’s Nicolas Winding Refn directing. That one would presently fall into the interesting category alongside the potential Ferrara version.
Alongside those is the most promising but, unfortunately, most unlikely to come in the short-term, from Guillermo del Toro. That one is only in the embryonic stages so little is known other than the character design will be amazing.
Katie Holmes in for Del Toro Produced Dark
Katie Holmes has been signed on to star in Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, a thriller written by Matthew Robbins and Guillermo del Toro. The latter will also co-produce with the film directed by Troy Nixey, a comic book artist and reportedly a protege of del Toro.
The film is based on an ABC television movie from 1973 and follows a young girls who moves in with her father and his girlfriend in a house they find they are sharing with a host of ghoulish beings.
According to the report on Variety, Nixey got the job after del Toro enjoyed the tone of his short film Latchkey’s Lament.
It also notes that del Toro will also team with co-producer Mark Johson on Hater, an adaptation of a novel by David Moody which will be directed by The Ophanage’s Juan Antonio Bayona.
Sounds like an interesting project with a lot of the concerns that del Toro likes to explore. It’s likely therefore to have some wonderful costume and art design and should, being based on a previous source, provide an opportunity for the director Nixey to take some chances and prove his worth.
Del Toro it seems is really starting to build himself a stable of personnel to be associated with, primarily horror-focused directors with talent on building atmosphere and tone. Don’t be surprised to see more emerge as his power begins to grow following The Hobbit in a few year’s time.
The Hobbit Trilogy?
Reports have emerged through a fan site (courtesy of Cinematical) that Guillermo Del Toro’s already epic two-part adaptation of The Hobbit could be expanding into trilogy form. The reports suggest the only issue behind his becoming a reality are the contracts held by Del Toro and Peter Jackson, as both would need extending and, subsequently, would impact on future scheduling.
I’m absolutely a massive fan of Del Toro, so anything which indicates he will be making more films is entirely welcome to me. But it worries me a little that so much of his precious time will be taken up making yet more Tolkien-related projects.
Personally, I’m a much bigger fan of The Hobbit than the original books, so this film generally gives me a significantly larger amount of excitement that those original three did. But he has so many projects left to do yet. Among them, and most exciting to me, would be 3993, the final part of his Spanish trilogy alongside Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth.
I realise what a brilliant filmmaker he is, but the majority of his truly incredible work has been Spanish language, topped off by his masterwork in Pan’s Labyrinth. The Hobbit is very likely to change that, but I would really like to see him take on his own worlds again.
Alternatives to the EW Twenty-Five Directors
Entertainment Weekly recently posted a list of the top twenty-five active film directors. These lists will forever cause disagreement and controversy but some of the inclusions, and subsequent exclusions, on this list are pretty unforgivable. Even if you don’t find it too irratating, as a film fan and blogger I feel it only necessary to present some arguments both against the inclusion of some and against the exclusion of others while I would also like to take some time to argue for the inclusion of a few that I think may brook argument elsewhere.
The Movie Overdose 
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