Just yesterday I was inspired to write "Everyone should watch District B13" on my Facebook page, and then I watched the dang movie AGAIN! Basically I think it's one of the most entertaining action flicks of the past ten years, so when I came across THIS PIECE during my regular Twitch-surfing, I got very excited indeed. Looks like District B13: Ultimatum will reunite the amazing ass-kickers known as David Belle and Cyril Raffaelli; Luc Besson is on solo screenwriting duty; and the director is a Frenchman namd Patrick Alessandrin.

No solid word yet on when D-B13:U will be completed (or even who'll be distributing in this part of the globe, athough Magnolia did a fine job with the first flick), but if you spend a few minutes at Twitch then you'll find four behind-the-scenes clips to flicker through. (The most recent one is the coolest, and it's the one I've embedded below.) And then after the jump, a bonus that just never gets old. (Previous reports on this movie can be found here and here.)

Toss this one right into the "unproven" files, but it's amusing enough to warrant some exploration: According to this tabloid (along with The Guardian and our pals at Spout), it seems that spouses Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes may be gearing up to remake Bernardo Bertolucci's controversially sexy romance drama Last Tango in Paris. The last time we saw Tom Cruise nail a spouse on camera was in 1999's Eyes Wide Shut, and I'm sure he probably groped Mimi Rogers in a movie once or twice. (Say what you like, but the guy does have good taste in women.)

"They need to have sex on screen, to prove their love" is what The Guardian's Xan Brooks had to say, which only serves to make the whole thing sound more like an April Fool's gag. The paragon of journalism that is Now Magazine indicates that the couple simply wants to star together in something sexy. I believe the title Basic Instinct was tossed out as an example. Yikes. In Mr. Brooks' tongue-in-cheek piece, he proposes a remake of Betty Blue. Double yikes. But if this entirely goofball story turns out to be 100% true, and Cruise / Holmes are intent on making a "sek-say" remake together ... Lolita makes a little more sense. Or maybe The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Seriously, that I'd go see.

But the question of the day is now this: Does it creep you out to see married couples "doin' it" in a movie? Hmmm, I think I smell a new Cinematical Seven topic.

Could you see Paul Scrader in Bollywood? See, this is much more than merely Hollywood delighting in all things Bollywood. The Hollywood Reporter posts that Paul Schrader, the pen behind Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, is heading to Mumbai to helm a Bollywood action flick called Extreme City.

What's convinced him to head overseas? He says: "I've been getting indie movies made for 20 years. But I take a good look around and what I see is a barren, barren place -- in terms of the financial community, in terms of audiences, in terms of distribution. It's cold out there." So in this non-barren Bollywood, what will he direct? It's the story of an American man who goes to India to aid in the resolution of a kidnapping case for his father-in-law, and gets stuck in a gangster plot. Schrader admits that there will be a mix of dialogue and musical numbers, but it's "not a Masala movie."

I wonder... Will this continue to be a trend? If indie filmmakers can't get love here, will they take it elsewhere? And if they do, imagine the headaches the Oscar committee will get with an influx of overseas projects with mixed dialog by Americans!

Trailers? Oh yeah, we got your trailers here.

Star Trek
Like a lot of people, I got my first glimpse of this one when it played with Quantam of Solace last weekend. While this will obviously play hell with Star Trek continuity, I am one Trek geek who is looking forward to the J.J. Abrams take on the franchise. It opens on May 8.

Astro Boy
Here's a teaser for the CGI animated adaptation of the classic anime about a robot boy built by a scientist to replace the son he lost. The trailer doesn't give us much to go on, but the impressive voice cast includes Freddie Highmore, Nicolas Cage, Kristen Bell, Donald Sutherland, Eugene Levy, and Nathan Lane. Things get cosmic on October 23.

Coraline
I find it odd that Neil Gaiman's name isn't mentioned in the trailer, since the film is based on his novella. Gaiman isn't a household name but I would have figured he was well enough known to catch a few people's attention. Nevertheless, this stop-motion animated feature from Henry Selick, the director of A Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, deals with a young girl who finds a pathway to a parallel world in which duplicates of her parents sport buttons for eyes. This deliciously creepy looking film will be in theaters on February 6.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
All of our favorite characters return for this third installment of the series, and this time it's in 3-D. The only one we see in this new trailer is Scrat, on the trail of not just another acorn but apparently romance as well. The one hits on July 1.

There have been murmurs of a sequel, but what about an English language remake for the insanely awesome Korean horror flick, The Host (Gwoemul)? (Come on, you know it was inevitable.) Variety reports that Universal is teaming up with Gore Verbinski to bring Bong Joon-ho's horror insanity stateside. But don't worry about this turning into Pirates of the Caribbean. Commercial director Fredrik Bond is making the jump to the big screen to helm the remake, with Smart People scribe Mark Poirier penning the script.

It sounds like they're going for the same scenario -- toxins from a military base flow into a river and create "a giant mutant squidlike creature" (or tadpole!). The creature hits land, steals a little girl, and her "dysfunctional family" must team up to save her.

Do we need it? No. The original cast and crew did an amazing job and made one of the funniest horror movies that I've seen in years. But we're going to get it. So now we have to decide: Would we want it to be as similar to the original as possible, or should Poirier go wild with the script so that it doesn't look anything like Gwoemul? I'm leaning towards the latter -- there's no way he can top the original, and a lot of the strangeness and jokes just won't translate.

With the news that the musical score from The Dark Knight has been disqualified from Academy Awards consideration on the grounds that too many people were credited with composing it, outrage against the Academy's stringent, complicated rules has erupted afresh. In the interest of fueling this indignation and making the world an angrier place, let's take a belligerent march down memory lane and look at seven other controversial disqualifications.

The Jazz Singer disqualified for being a talkie. When the very first Academy Awards were held in May 1929, honoring films released between August 1927 and July 1928, everyone was talking about The Jazz Singer -- the first feature-length movie to use recorded sound in some of its talking and singing scenes. So great was the attention that the Academy disqualified the film from the inaugural Best Picture category, reasoning that its use of sound put it on an uneven playing field against the films still stuck in silence. Instead, the Academy gave Warner Bros. a special award "for producing The Jazz Singer, the pioneer outstanding talking picture, which has revolutionized the industry." It's true, too! I don't know if you've noticed, but pretty much all movies nowadays have talking in them.

Young Americans disqualified from Best Documentary category ... after it already won. Whoops. This is a sad case, and a unique one. The documentary, about the peppy Young Americans show choir, won the Oscar at the 1969 ceremony for being the best feature-length documentary of 1968. But a few weeks later, the Academy discovered that the film had screened at a theater in October 1967, making it eligible for that year's awards and not for 1968. The Academy actually took back the Oscar statues from the filmmakers, Alex Grasshoff and Robert Cohn, and gave the award to the film that had been first runner-up. When Grasshoff died earlier this year, his widow told the Los Angeles Times how heartbroken he'd been. Can you imagine?

By Kim Voynar (reprinted from 05/16/2008 -- Cannes Film Festival)

Arnaud Desplechin's film Un Conte de Noel (A Christmas Tale), playing in competition here at Cannes, is a tragically comic tale of love, death, and familial strife and forgiveness. The film centers around Junon (Catherine Deneuve) and her husband Abel (Jean-Paul Roussillon), whose oldest child, Joseph, is diagnosed at a young age with Burkitt's lymphoma.

The boy's disease is curable only with a bone marrow transplant, and neither the parents nor his younger sister, Elizabeth, are compatible. The couple conceives another child in the hopes of making a match to cure their son, but the third child, Henri, is also incompatible, and Joseph dies at the age of six. Eventually the grieving parents have a fourth child, Ivan, and in time the family's wounds over the death of the eldest son heal ... but not really.

It's a light weekend at the multiplexes, with just one new wide release to take in. The good news there is that once you're done watching James Bond kill and/or sleep with people, you'll have plenty of time to head to the art houses and see what the independent scene has to offer. The Indie Spotlight is here to round 'em up for you, and there are nine diverse choices opening today: Bohica, A Christmas Tale, Dostana, The Dukes, Faded Memories, House of the Sleeping Beauties, How About You, Slumdog Millionaire, and We Are Wizards.

Here's the lowdown on each of them:

Slumdog Millionaire
What it is: It's the feel-good sensation of the year that has critics raving, that's what! It's about a kid from the streets of Mumbai who somehow makes it to the final round of India's "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" -- and in particular about the events of his life that brought him there.
What they're saying: Cinematical's Kim Voynar called it Danny Boyle's best film to date when she reviewed it at Telluride. It's rocking a 92% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes, with an average score of 8.2 out of 10, making it one of the best-reviewed movies of the year. If this movie doesn't make you feel good it must be because your heart is gnarly and cankered.
Where it's playing: New York City (Angelika, Lincoln Plaza), Los Angeles (The Landmark), Chicago (Landmark Century Centre, Century Evanston 18), San Francsico (Embarcadero).
More info: The official site has a list of when it opens in other cities. Expansion starts next week.

Opening today in select markets is a film I'm sure will carve out a spot on a host of top ten lists at the end of the year (including mine): Slumdog Millionaire. Directed by the spirited and always-versatile Danny Boyle, Slumdog shoots its way into the city of Mumbai (aka the Maximum City) like liquid from a syringe, as it tells the life story of one poor boy from the slums and the girl who always seems to escape his reach.

Directing a film that's both chaotic and beautiful at the same time is not easy, and shooting on location in one of the busiest cities of the world was a task Boyle welcomed with open arms. Cinematical sat down with the director of such films as The Beach, 28 Days Later, Trainspotting and Sunshine to find out what it was like filming with a cast that barely spoke his language, how big a part the real Who Wants to Be a Millionaire actually played, and, among other things, which genre he's itching to take on next ... in America.

(As always, we do have to warn you that this interview might contain movie spoilers.)

Cinematical: Because your last film was this big, expensive sci-fi flick, did you intend to follow it up with something smaller ... which sounds quite silly seeing as Slumdog Millionaire is set in one of the busiest cities in the world?

Danny Boyle: Yeah, it's very funny those words 'big' and 'small', because obviously Sunshine is a big movie in some sense, but then in other ways it's a very tiny movie. You're working in a small studio with just eight actors, and you're there for months and months and it's just so tiny. With India, you've got about a billion people, and they all seem to be in the shot most of the time. It's weird, the biggest thing I thought was the contrast -- the change it was to go from outer space to the heat of this city; what they call the Maximum City. It was just such a refreshing change for me, and I'm so happy I got the opportunity to do it.

When Red Cliff (Part 1) rolled out across most of Asia in July, John Woo's historical action epic generated very good box office returns, and its recent release in Japan continues the trend. Topping the charts for the second week in a row, according to Variety, Red Cliff has earned more than $18 million so far.

Part 2 of the four-hour plus Red Cliff is due for January release in Asia, and an international (i.e. short) version is also being prepped for the beginning of the year. Theatrical distribution deals are set in Europe (France, Finland, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, and Norway), with Summit Entertainment (distributor of Twilight and Sex Drive) handling international sales.

Still, no US distribution deal has been announced. What's holding things up? Will Summit take it on? Will North American audiences ever get to set Red Cliff on the big screen, where it clearly belongs? Or are distributors spooked by the prospect of marketing one more foreign-language action epic?

Red Cliff is based on the classic novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms; the title refers to the location of a battle involving more than a million soldiers that brought an end to the Han Dynasty in 208 AD, resulting in the division of China into three kingdoms. Tony Leung Chiu-Wai (Lust, Caution), Takeshi Kaneshiro (House of Flying Daggers), Zhang Fengyi (The Emperor and the Assassin), Chang Chen (Blood Brothers), and Lin Chiling (gorgeous Taiwanese model in her acting debut) star.

It's been two months since we heard anything about the Leonardo DiCaprio-produced Akira. This is a remake that has caused a bit of upset in our comments, as initial reports suggested DiCaprio was set to star alongside Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

However, Gordon-Levitt denied having any connection to the film, and now DiCaprio has clarified his involvement. In an interview with MTV's Splash Page, he denied that he was going to be starring in Akira, nor will he be playing any part in Ninja Scroll (which he just optioned a few weeks ago). He made it clear that his only involvement is as producer, via his Appian Way banner.

So, where does Akira stand in pre-production? Remember, this was once being fast-tracked for a summer 2009 release, which it's obviously not going to make. But that's because DiCaprio is making sure this is handled right: "We're waiting for the final draft of the script. I'm a big fan of Japanese anime ... I know there a lot of loyal fans out there of the project and die-hard fans, so we're going to try to do the best job we possibly can and we're not going to make the movie until the script is in the right shape."

If only big fans could be the producers on every beloved property, no fans would ever lose sleep. Are you slightly reassured, now? And hey, post your Akira dream cast. DiCaprio knows you're out there, and he might just listen.

The Italian films Il Divo and Gomorra hogged the spotlight at Saturday's announcement of the European Film Award nominations, with five nods apiece, including best picture. "But wait," you might be saying if you're not European. "Why do the European Film Awards matter to me? I'm not European!"

They matter because you love foreign films, that's why. OK, and also because the EFAs often presage the Academy Awards. Recent EFA best picture winners have included such Oscar-scented titles as The Lives of Others, Talk to Her, Amelie, and Dancer in the Dark. Gomorra -- which is apparently about skinny underwear models who shoot guns at the beach -- has been submitted as Italy's Oscar hopeful and now seems like a surefire nominee, thanks to its EFA attention. The other EFA best picture nominees are The Class (France's Oscar submission), Waltz with Bashir (Israel's submission), Happy-Go-Lucky (whose star, Sally Hawkins, has generated Oscar buzz), and The Orphanage (which was eligible for Oscar consideration last year).

In the director category, the EFA nominees are Laurent Cantet (The Class), Andreas Dresen (Cloud 9), Ari Folman (Waltz with Bashir), Matteo Garrone (Gomorra), Steve McQueen (Hunger), and Paolo Sorrentino (Il Divo). Also of note: Toni Servillo is named in the best actor category for two performances -- Il Divo and Gomorra. You'd think those were the only two films Italy made this year.

Most of the EFA-nominated films either have U.S. distribution lined up or are already playing here. Success at the awards, to be handed out in Copenhagen on Dec. 8, will increase their visibility in American theaters and may also help their chances at the Oscars. The complete list of nominations is here.

This weekend's success stories:
1. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (Miramax)
2. JCVD (Peace Arch)
3. I've Loved You So Long (Sony Classics)

The critical consensus on Mark Herman's concentration camp children's tale The Boy in the Striped Pajamas dropped a bit over the weekend (from 71% positive to 62% at Rotten Tomatoes), which didn't keep it from scoring a big win at the box office. Opening at 17 theaters, Striped Pajamas earned an estimated $15,000 per screen, according to Box Office Mojo. If you saw Striped Pajamas this weekend, are you recommending it to your friends? Is the holiday season the right time for a sober drama with (reportedly) a devastating climax?

Gotham moviegoers ignored minority sniping from several major publications and gave the reinvigorated Jean-Claude Van Damme a chance, rewarding Mabrouk El Mechri's action / comedy / drama JCVD with $23,300 in total estimated returns at the two theaters where it opened. JCVD is too self-satisfied and drenched in style for my taste, but Van Damme is great fun to watch and the film itself overcomes its limitations to deliver an entertaining experience. Are you planning to see it when it opens near you, or will you wait for the DVD?

Kristen Scott Thomas reportedly gives an award-worthy performance in Philippe Claudel's French-language family drama I've Loved You So Long. In its third week of release, the film saw an increase of 54.6% in earnings, despite adding just two theaters (still not in my area). That indicates very positive word-of-mouth recommendations. If you've seen it and encouraged others to see it, what in particular moved you or touched you? Was it because Thomas is good in it? Or is it just a strong movie overall?

I'm constantly grumbling about Americans remaking Asian films -- the idea of Steven Spielberg trying to redo Park Chan-wook's Oldboy with Will Smith is potentially the most cringe-worthy of them all -- so, to be fair, I suppose I should be complaining that a Japanese remake of Alexander Payne's Sideways recently started filming in Napa Valley, California, according to Variety. But an unrelated comic book may hold the key to the remake's appeal.

Payne's superb tale of romantic yearning and mid-life anxiety famously centers on wine snob Paul Giamatti (he praised pinot noir and derided merlot) and his much coarser buddy Thomas Haden Church as they wine, dine, and romance Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh. The movie's success caused a strong surge in sales of pinor noir in the US.

Japan doesn't seem to have an equivalent wine culture; owing to weather, soil, and scarcity of land, the country is not well-suited to viticulture, and, historically, wine consumpton has been low. Recently, though, California wine imports have signficantly increased. And the comic Kami no Shizuku (translated as The Drops of God; pictured) has become a phenomenon over the last couple of years, read by 500,00 Japanese weekly, according to Telegraph (UK), and sending wine sales skyrocketing across Asia. The series details a young man's quest to identify the 12 wines described in his father's will.

Whatever the original impetus for the live-action remake, it could prove to be equally influential whenever it's released in Japan next fall. Rinko Kikuchi (Babel, The Brothers Bloom) plays the wildcat role originally played by Oh, while the other main parts are filled by Fumiyo Kohinata (wine snob), Katsuhisa Namase (his buddy), and Kyoka Suzuki (object of wine snob's romantic attentions).