Wouldn't You Know it, My Tivo Is Broken And...
...I notice a huge viewing quandry tonight. On Syfy (yechh!) at 9 PM we have Knights of Bloodsteel (a magic metal) starring Christopher Lloyd, whereas at 10 o'clock, overlapping the second half of Bloodsteel, we have Zombie Strippers starring Robert Englund and Jenna Jameson...an embarrassment of riches. It isn't fair! What to do, what to do?
I inadvertently rewatched Body Of Lies the other nght, the Leo DiCaprio-Russell Crowe thriller. I acidentally ordered it on On Demand, started to cancel, and then said what the hell, sometmes re-watching bad movies is instructive. Body of Lies isn't a terrible movie, it's just a lie for most of its length. There are no CIA field ops with a heart of gold such as Leo played, at least none to my knowledge. In Central America, they tended to be your run of the mill psychotics--I knew one guy who macheted an innocent's head in half, was about to be prosecuted by OUR congress for various misdeamors, then vanished and turned up COsta Rica a few months later doing unspeakable things in the name of truth, justice, and you know. I'm not ruling out the possibility that being stationed in the Middle East brings out a man's better nature, but somehow I doubt it. Russell Crowe was supposed to be the realpolitik guy in the movie, doing sort of an affable W impression. Anyway, I didn't get much out of it, and afterward I called my friend Randy who works for Paramount and was intending to ask if he'd seen it, but he was all excited by a couple of other things, firstly, by the new Star Trek, which he says is great, unbelievable, wow, etc. What's so great, I asked, and he went on about the acting, the characters, the action, the action, the action. Oh, I said. No, really , he said. He told me some about it and I have to admit it doesn't sound as bad as I thought. I had no idea Winona Ryder was in it. Maybe she'll steal a scene or two. Rimshot. Apparently Simon Pegg is pretty awesome, which was a hope of mine, So what else is new, I asked. Well, he said, since the studio is convinced that Star Trek is going to be vast, they're looking into making Deep Space Nine into a franchise. They've commissioned a script. No shit, I said, my interest piqued, because I always had hopes for DS9, it purportedly being a darker take on the Trek universe (which never really materialized,..though Randy said that's going to be the thrust of the movie, if it gets made). I asked if they'd thought about a cast and he said they'd talked to Samuel L Jackson for Sisko, who seemed interested and that they're hoping to land a heavyweight actress as Major Kira, the Bajoran ex-revolutionary. My immediate reaction, given Jackson's recent work, was to make a retching noise, but then I thought, Why the hell not? The man can act if he's given a part. So we started casting it. I balked at casting the role of Quark--the Semites in space thing has been done to death, in my view. The only way I'd go for it is if they cast Mel Gibson as Quark. The one person we kept from the original cast is Colm Meany, with Michelle Yeoh as his wife. Naveen Andrews from Lost as Dr Bashir. Etc. It was kinda fun geeking out on the cast. Randy says he puts the odds on this getting done at about 80/20...
Here's the trailer for Von Trier's AntiChrist. Apparently it's basically a two character movie.
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