"You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore ..."
-- Richard Nixon, on his 1962 loss to Pat Brown for the Governorship of California

That statement turned out, of course, not to be true; we would have Nixon to kick around for decades more. That statement also concealed a different truth, which is that Nixon -- the hunched, scowling, puritan-satyr of American politics -- could not only take a beating, but also dish one out. Frost/Nixon, Ron Howard's film adaptation of Peter Morgan's stage play, kicks Nixon around, but it also lets him kick back, as TV personality (not journalist or reporter, but personality) David Frost faces Nixon in a series of 1977 interviews for an ambitious, expensive and poorly-planned multi-night TV broadcast. Why would Nixon agree to an on-camera inquisition? Because Frost paid him -- $600,000 -- for the chance to do so, and because Nixon thought it might be a chance to re-emerge from his exile after resigning the presidency in 1974. Two men, their careers in decline, circling each other for a shot at redemption: Frost (Michael Sheen) is wagering his fortune on the chance to re-make his reputation; Nixon (Frank Langella), with neither reputation or fortune, is desperate for a chance to escape infamy.

But Frost/Nixon is not simply the equivalent of Thunderdome for readers of The Nation, where two men enter and one man leaves. Morgan's script is smart enough to make sure there are things hidden under that clash, a quieter film about character and communication, modern media and ancient principles. And we also get the interview field of combat, which drapes the slick surface of modern manners over the kind of brute, bloody battle you normally see only in nature documentaries. The film, like Frost's interviews, is not merely about Watergate -- which is good, because we have, I should think, drained that well of venality fairly dry -- but instead about bigger issues of accountability and process and principle. Frost, stripped of all pretense, was asking Nixon a good question: Who the hell do you think you are? Nixon, stripped of all pretense, was asking an equally good question: Who the hell are you to ask?

When we last heard from Sherwood Forest, there was a bit of confusion as to who exactly Russell Crowe was playing in Nottingham. Was he Robin Hood? Was he the Sheriff of Nottingham? Were they the same guy? Did they change it up, halfway through? Those who had read the initial script reported they were two different characters -- something that was suggested by hints of a "love triangle" between Robin, Nottingham, and Maid Marian.

Well, MTV caught up with Brian Grazer, who set the record straight on all the character confusion ... well, kind of. "The two role confusion is that what Robin Hood does is he sees Nottingham in battle very early in the movie and Nottingham dies. And Robin Hood takes over the identity of Nottingham. That's how it plays out." Grazer also described the film as an "origin story" of the characters.

I'm really curious if "origin story" means the film is setting itself up as the "real story" behind the legends, or if this is an origin reinvention / franchise in the vein of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes? If it's the former (and it probably is), meh. I'm throughly sick of that trend, especially as the "true" stories end up even more inaccurate than the fantasy versions. But if it's the latter, and it meant a few medieval outings with Russell Crowe, well, that's would be pretty exciting. Dreamy, even.

All reports of "endlessly delayed" may also have been exaggerated -- Grazer also reports that they're waiting on a final rewrite from Brian Helgeland, and that he fully expects that the film will start shooting in March 2009. Huzzah!

Reuniting after 2004's Closer, it appears that stars Julia Roberts and Clive Owen, along with Bourne writer Tony Gilroy, are all out to have a bit more fun with Duplicity; the trailer just went up over at Apple.

If anything, it comes off as more of a zippy heist film of sorts than the thriller I took it to be from the earliest synopsis on, even though corporate espionage remains the name of the game. Then again, maybe we're overdue for another Thomas Crown Affair-like outing, and between the cast (which also includes Tom Wilkinson, who was in Gilroy's Michael Clayton, and Paul Giamatti, who shared the screen with Clive in Shoot 'Em Up) and the crew, I'm pretty much sold.

(If Billy Bob Thornton is still in this, though, as Monika reported last January, he sure isn't showing up here, and IMDb remains mum.)

Duplicity opens on March 20th of next year -- about a month after Clive's bang-ier espionage efforts in The International.

Now that we've all had a chance to see some of the video footage that has been leaking from the set of Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds (footage that has since disappeared), you might have noticed that the man himself was nowhere to be found in most of the clips. But, according to The Quentin Tarantino Archives, one man who has been behind the camera lately is Mr. 'Torture Porn' himself, Eli Roth. Rumor has it Roth is directing a Nazi propaganda film to be included in the story of "...a group of prisoners-turned-soldiers whose mission is to take down a group of Nazis, and the other follows a young Jewish woman who seeks to avenge the death of her parents by this Nazi group."

The horror director first signed on to the project back in August to play Sgt. Donnie Donowitz, "a baseball bat swinging Nazi hunter". But, I guess Roth wasn't content with just being in front of the camera this time around. QT Archives reports that Roth is directing the story of "Daniel Brühl as a Nazi sniper and GIs on a suicide mission." -- presumably while Tarantino was off teaching Til Schweiger how to do a spit take.

You almost have to feel sorry for Tarantino with the amount of scrutiny surrounding his WWII epic -- think about it, when was the last time a headline about an orchestral score got this much attention? So far, Tarantino and company have managed to keep a few details from spilling with the help of the odd water cannon. So, you may be wondering: why all the mania? Well, maybe it's because Tarantino has been talking about making Basterds for so long -- or maybe it's just because for a lot fans, Grindhouse wasn't the comeback they had been hoping for. Either way you cut it, we may not like what the guy has come up with, but at least it will be like nothing else we've seen before.

Inglorious Basterds is expected to arrive in theaters in 2009.

By William Goss (reprinted from 10/06/2008 -- Fantastic Fest)

Remember Broken Lizard's Beerfest? Whatever you thought of that 2006 comedy, it's difficult to dispute how incredibly astute the filmmakers were with rattling genre expectations in just a single scene. See, the American team's greatest beer guzzler, "Landfill", has passed away under shady circumstances, and right when everyone's ready to throw in the towel, in walks Landfill's identical twin brother, who they knew nothing about but who happens to have been told everything about each of them. Better yet, he's more than willing to even adopt Landfill's name, in an effort to bypass that whole awkward 'getting-to-know-you' stage.

It's every end-of-second-act "what do we do now, coach?" dilemma from an inspirational sports movie mercifully condensed to a couple of rapid-fire beats, and even if the rest of the film otherwise adheres to said sports movie formula, it's nice knowing that audience and actors alike were not going through the paces entirely unaware of how clichéd the entire narrative was.

OK, I highly doubt that anyone has ever sat down to read Dante's Divine Comedy and thought, "Hey! This would make a great video game!" -- But I guess there have been worse places to get an idea. Variety reports that Universal has snapped up the film rights to an upcoming console game with the working title of Dante's Inferno.

Universal was the lucky winner after a bidding war erupted between major studios (including Warner Brothers, MGM, and Paramount) for the netherworld adventure. The project went to Universal for the low, low price of a seven-figure deal, and this is the first title Electronic Arts has sold this year that was not based on an popular existing game. This brings EA's total to three film deals this year, with the possibility of a Sims feature (which some of us might have tried to block out), and then the announcement of an Army of Two feature film with Bourne scribe, Scott Z. Burns.

Since it's still early days for Inferno, not much is known about the game other than it will take players on a journey through hell. The games creator's will be taking a hands-on approach to the adaptation, and according to Variety , "Making a movie deal well before the game's release will give EA a shot at seeing a movie released closer to the beginning of the game's life cycle." I don't know about that, but I do know that it can't be any worse than most movie tie-in games.

It wasn't long ago that we were debating whether supervillains could be front and center in their own movie. And now we might get to find out! According to The Hollywood Reporter, Universal has optioned Villains, a four-issue series penned by Adam Cogan and Ryan Cody.

Villains follows Nick Corrigan, an aimless young man who discovers that his elderly neighbor, Charlie Cobb, used to be the notorious supervillan, Hardliner. He's now living the quiet and anonymous life -- and Corrigan offers to help keep it that way if only Hardliner will teach him the ways of the supervillain. Hardliner would rather, in the words of Issue 2, "rip the kid's throat out," but he grudgingly complies, and even lends Corrigan his armor. But if there's one man you shouldn't trust to be straight with you, it's a retired supervillain, and things go sour pretty quickly. You can get a peek at the series on Viper Comics' official site. It looks like the series has been around since 2006, but hasn't quite made it to the finish line.

Matt Jennison and Brent Strickland have been hired to pen the adaptation -- they're the two guys rewriting Wonder Woman, so they certainly know their way around a comic book. No director has been attached yet, but here's hoping this doesn't just get shoved into pre-production limbo. It sounds like Apt Pupil and Gran Torino by way of The Incredibles -- and that would be a movie worth seeing.

That's it, I officially give up. Why does it seem like nobody really likes video game flicks, but Hollywood is determined to keep on making them? Well, I guess it's just another day in the movie business, and another game property has been snatched up for the big screen. Gaming giant Electronic Arts have just announced that Universal has purchased the film rights to their latest shooter hit, Army of Two.

The third person shooter centers on two mercenaries who, after earning their stripes, become embroiled in your run-of-the-mill global conspiracy. The game was a huge hit upon release back in March, and gamers loved that the story relied on the cooperation of our two heroes (good news if you normally get left behind and trapped in a corner while your partner sweeps out bad guys) and customizable weapons for maximum carnage.

Bourne Ultimatum scribe Scott Z. Burns has already been hired to adapt the game for Scott Stuber, and EA will also co-produce. EA has been pretty eager to get into the film game lately (and you can't blame them now that Hollywood has come knocking into the gaming business for themselves) and Army is their second feature project that the company has set in motion this year. Army definitely seems like the obvious choice for an easy transition to the big screen since it comes with a ready made story of political intrigue (first up for EA will be a film version of The Sims for Fox and producer John Davis). But let's not forget what is really important: Army of Two might just be Universal's shot at a brand new franchise.

Army of Two is expected to begin production in 2009. So who plays this game? Will it make a good film?