Rama's Screen

For those of you who still think the title QUANTUM OF SOLACE doesn’t sound like a Bond movie title, and those of you who are still scratching your head, wondering what the hell it means, can now rest assured in knowing that it doesn’t mean anything at all. At least that’s how it is according to the man who plays the famous spy agent, Daniel Craig. Via showbiz, he told Britain’s GQ magazine that he had a hand in choosing the title and it means jacksquad…

“I was involved in making the decision. Names were coming out, some ludicrous stuff was going back and forth – I can’t remember exactly, but you know the sort of thing: ‘The Blood On Your Face’.
“I knew I didn’t want ‘death’, ‘die’, ‘bleed’ or any of those things in the title.”
“As soon as it came out, people were saying, ‘Ooh, it sounds like Harry Potter’. No, it’s Quantum of Solace. I was saying, ‘It’s a Bond title!’
“The name of a Bond film is not about anything. Live And Let Die? Octopussy? What does it mean? It means very little.”

I don’t get! Daniel Craig just contradicted himself because back in January, he did explain what the title meant in a brief video interview.
Just FYI, there have been 3 Bond movies in the past that have used the word “Die”.. Live and Let Die, Tomorrow Never Dies, Die Another Day.

Check out the hardcore trailer

QUANTUM OF SOLACE opens November 14th, 2008

The guy who could be Tony Blair’s long lost brother, British thesp actor Michael Sheen (The Deal, The Queen, Underworld movies) has signed on for two projects. The term “scheduling conflict” is not in his dictionary.

He’s set to star with Samuel mothaF*in’ Jackson in the thriller movie UNTHINKABLE which looks at the ethics of torture after a terrorist threatening to detonate nuclear devices in the U.S. is questioned by a black-ops interrogator and an FBI agent played by Carrie Ann Moss.

Michael Sheen also will have a role in Tim Burton’s Disney movie ALICE IN WONDERLAND. No word yet on which character he’s going to play.. I’m vouching for him to play either The Cheshire Cat or The King of Hearts… Sheen playing The Cheshire Cat would be a pretty amusing thing to see though especially with the format of the movie which will combine performance-capture imagery, currently seen in “Beowulf,” with live-action footage.

Recently the movie cast Matt Lucas as both Tweedledee and Tweedledum, while the world is still stoked about Johnny Depp playing The Mad Hatter.

I only remember vaguely about the 1987 suspense/supernatural thriller ANGEL HEART starring Robert De Niro and Mickey Rourke… I only saw it once, it was… one of those movies that was tough to watch but at the same time, you’re either hypnotized or scared to sh*t, you can’t help but keep watching it til the very end. De Niro’s character’s name Louis Cyphre was a play on the word Lucifer. It was based on the novel Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg and adapted to the big screen by writer/director Alan Parker. The movie was filled with disturbing sex scenes, violence and voodoo rituals…
Now where am I going with this?
According Variety, Producers Michael De Luca, Alison Rosenzweig and Michael Gaeta have joined forces to develop the remake of ANGEL HEART

Those three ambitious Producers also optioned remake rights from a private U.K. firm, which owns the rights to the original film and they also optioned the underlying book rights to the novel from which original film was adapted.
Sounds like these three musketeers wanna make sure this project are theirs, as if the first installment never existed.
It’s going to be tough finding someone to play the role De Niro so cunningly performed in the original film.
That said, why is it that remakes nowadays don’t have the decency to wait and give the original version some time?
There should be a rule as to how many years you should wait before you can remake any movie from the past.

ANGEL HEART is about a private investigator named Harry Angel who is hired by a man who calls himself Louis Cyphre to track down a singer called Johnny Favorite. But the investigation takes a mysterious turn.

* In celebration of this info, here’s the trailer for the original ANGEL HEART

This is a sign that Hollywood is losing talent,.. when Madonna herself makes a freakin’ movie. This is the trailer for her directorial debut gig: FILTH AND WISDOM. Frankly, judging from this trailer, all I see is lots of Filth and No Wisdom. Well,,,… at least she didn’t come up with a sex video.

tale of three roommates who must delve into mischievous and naughty behavior in pursuit of bigger and brighter futures. A Ukrainian immigrant, A.K. (Eugene Hutz), finances his dreams of ‘trans-continental superstardom’ with his band, Gogol Bordello, by turning tricks as a role-playing cross dresser. As A.K. literally whips the privileged of London into shape, he also secretly pines for the object of his affection, Holly (Holly Weston), an aspiring ballerina looking for her big break while moonlighting as a slippery stripper. Meanwhile, Juliette (Vicky Mclure) steals medicine from her pharmaceutical job in hopes of quenching her dreams of helping Africa’s youth. FILTH AND WISDOM is every bit as erotic and playful as it is poignant and touching, revealing the universal struggles we all face in our pursuits of happiness

FILTH AND WISDOM opens limited October 17th, 2008

Via IMpawards.com, here is the movie poster

I’m looking forward to the wide release of Steven Soderbergh’s biopic movie about Che Guevara starring Benicio Del Toro as the legendary revolutionary fighter, that comes in two interconnecting parts: GUERILLA and THE ARGENTINE mainly because history is one of my favorite subjects back in high school. So far the 4 hour movie has only been making rounds from one film festival to another, I’m startin’ to get frustrated, will it ever be distributed fairly to general audience? But the waiting continues.
Chud, however, got to hear director Steven Soderbergh talk about the movie during the Q&A session at the recent New York Film Festival and Soderbergh actually wanted to make a third installment but there was not enough dough… I hear you, man!

“Even though we’ve made two parts we still haven’t shown everything. There’s actually another movie, I think, to be made about what happens between these two parts but we didn’t have enough money.”
“We (writer Peter Buchman and I) talked about [the third film]. The story of Che in the Congo was absolutely fascinating. We actually sort of sketched an idea for a small film, that would take place in the Congo and Prague, where he went after fighting in the Congo to sort of lick his wounds and write a very self-critical book on what happened [there].”
“The [real] answer is that we didn’t have enough money to do that. Also, it’s a fascinating chapter, but it didn’t really fall into the bookend idea we ended up with.”

And with this economy, I doubt that Hollywood powerful, influential studios or producers would even lend Soderbergh a dime to make CHE 3 or whatever the title maybe… unless of course, the story took a rapid change and by some miracle, the character Che Guevara got bit by a radioactive spider and he became a Latin web crawler..
I’m saying that because it’s ridiculous how Sony/Columbia Pictures decide to continue with SPIDERMAN 4 and SPIDERMAN 5 after how horrible Spiderman 3 was.
Anyways, I haven’t seen either GUERILLA or THE ARGENTINE but I’m keeping my hopes up. Let me fill you in on something… when I become a filmmaker someday, one of the ambitious projects I’m going to undertake is to make a biopic movie based on the life of Bung Karno, who was Indonesia’s First President. A ladies man, a great Orator, a charismatic leader, a ladies man, his supposed connection with Communist Party, his defiance against United States, and how CIA and Suharto screwed him over in the end. If you don’t know who he was, just google him up.

The teaser poster for Sony’s upcoming sequel movie THE PINK PANTHER 2 has hit the web and it still doesn’t give you any good reason to be anticipating this movie whatsoever.
The only reason I’d watch it is because Bollywood beauty Aishwarya Rai is one of the stars. Now they should come up with THE PINK PANTHER 2 character poster where she gets to have the whole space instead of Steve Martin.

Steve Martin will reprise his role as the bumbling Inspector Jacques Clouseau in the modern-day farce. John Cleese will play chief inspector Dreyfus in the film. Garcia, Molina and Rai have signed on as detectives and experts who join forces with Clouseau to catch the thief who has been stealing artifacts around the world.

Check out the first promo teaser

THE PINK PANTHER 2 opens February 6th, 2008

Earlier this year I was a bit disappointed that the French got to see Iron Man first before we did because it opened there a few days before it got released nationwide here in the U.S.

Now James Bond is taking similar method but through different detour.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, QUANTUM OF SOLACE will open in theaters in England first on October 31st, 2008 and then will open in India on November 7th, 2008 and then finally… the film will open in U.S. theaters on Nov. 14th, 2008.
The move by Sony marks the first time that a major U.S. film has opened in India before hitting theaters Stateside.

As you probably remember, the change of the release date of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince from this November to next summer caused many movies to change their release dates too including QUANTUM SOLACE from Nov. 7th to Nov. 14th
I never thought India would grab the previous date though.
Would you fly to England and India to catch an early screening of QUANTUM OF SOLACE?
Which movie would you be willing to do that for? That probably would make you the craziest American movie fan ever.

Hearing it was cool and all but it’s no comparison to seeing Alica Keys‘ beautiful face singing her heart out in a video clip. Via yahoo, here is the music video for the original Soundtrack theme song of the upcoming Bond movie, QUANTUM OF SOLACE. The song is titled ANOTHER WAY TO DIE performed by beautifully talented Alicia Keys and the rocknrolla Jack White of The White Stripes.

How’d you like the song?

QUANTUM OF SOLACE opens November 14th, 2008

Usually after a long day of hard’s work in very hot sunny Southern California, I’d just like some ice cold water and some nice cool breeze but apparently the gods of cinema have a painful sense of humor because today it’s confirmed a.k.a official a.k.a why o why o why.. that, via UGO, Brett Ratner, the so-so director of Rush Hours movies IS indeed going to direct the movie version of GOD OF WAR based on the popular video game. The possibility came out back in May.

There were rumors that Djimon Hounsou might play the main character Kratos but no confirmation on that yet.

Universal Pictures secured the movie rights to the popular video game created by Sony Computer Entertainment back in the summer of 2005. Set in ancient Greece, the game follows the battles of the warrior Kratos, who tackles mythological beasts including Medusa, Cyclops and the Hydra. Players navigate Kratos on his quest to find Pandora’s Box and destroy Ares, the god of war.

By the way, Brett Ratner also said that PLAYBOY movie based on the life of Hugh Heffner and the movie BEVERLY HILLS COP 4 are definitely in development.
After all this time, surrounding himself with lots of project options, he’s finally made some of them happen for reals. whether that’s a Good thing or bad thing, it’s up to you to judge.

I have to be in LA for a short while this morning, but I don’t wanna you to go empty handed. The folks at The Quentin Tarantino Archives have some spy photos of the Germany set of INGLORIOUS BASTARDS which is currently called Inglourious Basterds for the time being. Enjoy!
* Click on the image below to see more