ROAD OF THE DEAD:
According to various sources, this will most likely be the next film in the Romero's Living Dead series. The film will pick up directly after the events of Land of the Dead with the crew of Dead Reckoning headed for Canada. Oh, that great liberal land. George Romero stated in an interview that many of the characters would return - including Simon Baker's. This would be the first character continuity of the series, as all of the other films have picked up with entirely new characters. Noted exception: Tom Savini's biker character became a zombie in Dawn of the Dead, then is seen as a zombie in Land of the Dead. Romero has plans to shoot the film in Australia, though nothing is official. He has two other projects to work on, both adaptations of Stephen King material.
THE HILLS HAVE EYES:I rather enjoyed Wes Craven's original. I thought Alexandre Aja's High Tension (or Switchblade Romance as it is called in the following article) was okay overall, but started out pretty damn great before losing most of its tension then spiralling into a cliched ending. Now, combine the two and I'm very interested. See, the seminal Eyes had a great concept that wasn't exactly as great as it could have been, so I'm all for this remake. If you were to combine what Aja did in the first act of High Tension with the entire original, it sounds like it could be one hell of a movie.
From EmpireOnline:
"If you thought that Wes Craven’s 1977 horror classic The Hills Have Eyes, in which a suburban family are terrorised in the desert by a family of inbred mutants, was too intense and disturbing, then prepare yourself for the forthcoming remake – because you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Says who? Well, Craven himself, who’s producing the new movie, directed this time by Switchblade Romance helmer, Alexandre Aja. At the moment, the new Hills – starring Aaron Stanford, Kathleen Quinlan and Ted Levine – is so intense and gory that the American ratings board, the MPAA, have given it the dreaded NC-17, aka commercial suicide.
“It’s a very strong picture and we’re trying to figure out what to do with that, without ruining it,” says a perplexed Craven, speaking to Empire yesterday. “We have to deliver an R rating. We looked at it last night in the screening room and before we started, we said to Alex ‘what do you think?’ And he said ‘this is a PG-13 now’. And one of our producers said ‘Alex, can we commit you to an insane asylum if this isn’t an R?’ and then he showed it to us and ohmigod, there’s no way you would get an R for that.”
If you’re wondering why, just bear in mind that the first film featured a gruelling sequence where the mutants attack the family in their trailer, and kill nearly everyone. That sequence remains in the 2006 version, but considerably amped up. “It's intense. Very intense. The attack on the trailer in my film was horrible, but it was over fairly fast,” adds Craven. “This one goes on almost ten full minutes. It’s fairly faithful to the original, but Alex added other things that also make it worse, what’s happening to these people. It’s protracted. It’s a long, slow process rather than being a chaotic, relatively fast process. It’s just too much for people that have to rate it, by a mile.”
Craven confirmed that Aja is still cutting the movie, and with a March 10 release date (both here and in the States), there’s plenty of time to meet the MPAA’s strict demands. But don’t worry, gore fans – “We can put it all full strength on the DVD, though,” laughs Craven. “We’ll be able to do that.”
Best Feature:
I'm really loving the Thelma and Louise comparison. If Brokeback Mountain becomes a phenomenon, it would be one closer in tone to that film or The Crying Game. I'll explain this later in the week. 
Screenplay by
Superior to last year's Ray and on par with 1980's Coal Miner's Daughter, Walk the Line begins in the buildup to an electric performance at Folsom Prison, then flashes back decades earlier. Not once during the next hours does the film ever lose the energy the first scene provides, ultimately building like a great Cash tune. Having an intense on screen chemistry in breathtaking performances, Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon bring Johnny Cash and the love of his life June Carter to vivid life. These aren't just the legends you see on screen. These are fully rounded characters instead of just bangup impressions - the area Ray most faltered in. Witherspoon, more so than Phoenix, could cut a country album and have it go all the way to number one in a moment's notice. The actress looks fabulous in the great costume design, among the best in a fairly dry costume film year. Phoenix is deeply moving in his best performance thus far. When you watch him on screen, you forget the trouble Phoenix had in his own life and how it could be very comparable to his character. River would be proud. The film is completely standard, a classic tune you've heard many times before. But that at all doesn't mean the lead actors and director James Mangold don't bring their own verve and talent to it. The concert scenes feel alive thanks to the film's topnotch tech credits, but retain an intimacy making the crowd second hand to stage performer. You'll definately want the soundtrack, too. Among the many small turns by the supporting cast, Waylon Payne - as Jerry Lee Lewis - is the standout. Ginnifer Goodwin as Vivian Cash is the movie's most notable flaw, more because of miscasting and a bit too cliched but forgettable role. Nevertheless, this is a Hollywood crowdpleaser and one of the year's best. 
The lovely, soon to be Oscar nominated (at long last!) star of Walk the Line has over the last decade carved out one of the best resumes among young Hollywood. At the age of 29, Laura Jean Reese Witherspoon has had her own franchise, 2 children, a much speculated about Hollywood marriage, the distinction of having starred in a romantic comedy that holds the record for biggest opening weekend EVER, and her own production company: Type A Film, named after her personality type. So why the fuck don't you like her?
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Venture out to see Jake Gyllenhaal this weekend in Jarhead and you'll most likely get to see both of these great trailers. Both look rather....well, for lack of a better word...WOW. 
I've seen probably around 550 films released since the millenium began. A film that is in the top 10, if not the top 5, is Traffic. Soderbergh's brilliant exploration of the war on drugs was covered from all angles. It wasn't a morality film, nor a standard "shoot-em-up" drug film, rather a complete study of 3 varying sides of a subject you probably witness on the news every night. The film didn't judge and didn't try to cram a message down your throat. It explored. It entertained. It involved. Featuring a top notch ensemble with standout performances by Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Erika Christensen and, in his Oscar winning performance, Benecio Delo Toro, the film was adapted from the British miniseries Traffik by Stephen Gaghan. 5 years after the drug war unraveled in a very intimate manner in this epig saga, Gaghan similarly explores oil with Syriana. The timely trailer, released just as sky high gas prices were slightly leveling off, talked about gas costing $20 a gallon, supplies running out and 90% of what's left being in the Middle East. This uneasy topic may not have cash registers in theatre box offices ca-chinging, but it will provide another in depth, but fully human account of a hot button issue. Gaghan, previously directing Katie Holmes in the very underrated Abandon, directs his screenplay, a loose adaptation of the memoirs of Robert Baer, a CIA agent who spent years in the trenches. His onscreen incarnate is played by George Clooney, who gained almost 30lbs for the role. Matt Damon, Jeffrey Wright, Chris Cooper, Christopher Plummer and Amanda Peet round out the cast. The film is from a new production company under Warner Bros. called Participant. They've released two other acclaimed movies over the past month with equally compelling subject matter: North Country and Good Night and Good Luck. 
Everyone loves Johnny Cash, right? He was a relatively late discovery for me. I bought my first Cash CD just over a year ago. I dug the hell out of the song "The Man Comes Around," but it was the cover of "Hurt" that really stuck with me. At my grandparents house one day, they had just been given a CD player. To go with it, they were given a Cash CD. It was a bunch of his classics rerecorded later in his career. I played "I Walk the Line" and "Ring of Fire" several times over. My grandfather asked if I liked Johnny Cash. Before I could reply, my grandmother said "Well, everyone likes Johnny Cash." She was right. I was first exposed to Joaquin Phoenix in the movie that features my favorite Nicole Kidman performance: To Die For. He was rail thin, with that classic early 90's daze that so many alterna-college set rocker wannabees had at the time. It wasn't until doing some research that I discovered he was River Phoenix's younger brother. Not more than 6 months after I saw To Die For, I saw Fear. Who could forget the scene where Marky Mark gropes that cute young blonde with the jutting chin on a roller coaster to The Sunday's cover of "Wild Horses"? Now, almost a decade later, these are two actors that I always enjoy seeing on screen. If it's Witherspoon talking about disturbing fashion trends in Legally Blonde or Phoenix drawing on fake sideburns in Inventing the Abbotts, they are the rarest of rare in Hollywood: movie stars who are great movie stars because they are great actors. Whenever actors I love are given roles that will make people stand up and take notice finally, it should be a film worth seeing. It just so happens that this film is a biopic about Johnny Cash and the love of his life, June Carter. Both actors were given the casting thumbs up by their real life characters before their deaths. What many didn't expect was that Reese and Joaquin would be performing the classic tunes by the Cash's using their own voices, as opposed to lip syncing to the classics - what Jamie Foxx did with last year's Ray. Johnny and June were the first two to see that they would make the perfect on-screen team. Now, after showings in Toronto and Telluride, critics and audiences have been equally impressed. It won't be too long before Oscar takes notice.
