The Screengrab : ron shelton

Morning Deal Report: Anne Hathaway in Wonderland

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:30:00 GMT

You probably already know that Tim Burton is directing Alice in Wonderland for Disney, and you most likely wouldn’t be terribly surprised to learn that Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter are attached (as the Mad Hatter and Red Queen, respectively). Now Burton has found his White Queen, and it’s Rachel Getting Married star Anne Hathaway. “The White Queen needs Alice to slay a creature known as the Bandersnatch,” The Hollywood Reporter reminds us. Ah, but who is frumious enough to play the Bandersnatch? We’re putting our money on Christopher Walken.

It turns out that October brings not only baseball’s playoffs, but really bad ideas for baseball movies. (I’m still haunted by the image of Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore dancing on the field when the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series.) Now we learn that Kevin Costner and Ron Shelton are cooking up a sequel to Bull Durham. Our first thought is that Costner and Tim Robbins are a little old to pass for baseball players (even older than some of the current Yankees), but according to this UPI report (via the New York Post), a solution has been found. “Real-life couple and Durham co-stars Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, who played a pitcher and a baseball groupie respectively in the first installment, are also expected to return for the second film. This time around, they will play the married owners of a Major League Baseball team Costner's character manages, the Post said.”

Tennis, anyone? Frank DeFord’s novel Big Bill is coming to the big screen. It’s based on the true story of tennis legend Bill Tilden, who “dominated tennis in the 1920s, winning six straight U.S. Open singles titles and becoming the first American to win Wimbledon. He was also a contract bridge champ, musicologist, novelist, playwright and actor. On the other side of the ledger, Tilden was famously self-destructive, going to jail twice for sexual misbehavior with teenage boys and dying penniless,” says Variety. Sounds like the feel-good sports story of the year.

Related:
When Good Directors Go Bad: Planet of the Apes (Tim Burton)
Hathaway Hotness, Rourke Smackdowns Head Venice Comp Lineup

Unfilmable: James Ellroy’s Hollywood Odyssey

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:30:00 GMT

Dwight Garner once equated reading James Ellroy’s prose to “deciphering Morse code tapped out by a pair of barely sentient testicles.” Call me crazy, but that line has always stuck with me. The context of this vivid description was a review of the then-new movie adaptation of Ellroy’s novel L.A. Confidential. Ellroy and his publisher shared a good laugh when they sold those movie rights; they agreed that the book was essentially unfilmable.

“They were right, of course. And they were also wrong,” Scott Timberg writes in an L.A. Times profile of the hard-boiled crime writer and his filmography. “Only the most die-hard Ellroy fan resented that the film resembled his labyrinthine novel -- with its dozens of characters, thick historical context and overlapping subplots -- only slightly. It's considered one of the finest films of the '90s and one of the greatest film noirs since the genre's 1950s heyday. But since then, when it comes to movies, it's been more crying than laughing for Ellroy fans.”

Brian De Palma’s sodden take on The Black Dahlia was cause for much of that weeping, but there was also a little-known 1998 version of Brown’s Requiem starring Michael Rooker, and Ron Shelton’s so-so Dark Blue, based on an Ellroy story about police corruption in Los Angeles. Now Ellroy has taken his first shot at an original screenplay –Street Kings, another tale of L.A. cops gone bad. Opening this Friday, Kings stars Keanu Reeves and Forest Whitaker (recently seen treading this ground on The Shield), and according to Timberg, “its language, characters, sardonic morality and fast-reversing plot feel like an Ellroy novel.”

Ellroy isn’t talking, at least not to Timberg. (He’s been seen rubbing elbows with Robert Osborne on Turner Classic Movies of late, talking up some golden oldies of L.A. noir.) Meanwhile, Joe Carnahan is still trying to get his adaptation of White Jazz off the ground, but finding it an uphill battle. Given the unholy mess that was Smokin’ Aces, that may not be a bad thing.

Morning Deal Report: This Film Is Not Approved By Barry Bonds

Peter Smith — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 16:00:00 GMT

Frequent sports-movie screenwriter Ron Shelton (Bull Durham, White Men Can't Jump, Tin Cup) is adapting the Barry Bonds expose Game of Shadows for HBO. Possible title: Don't Get a Big Head.

New Line signs a deal with Samuel L. Jackson and what do they do with it? They put him in a movie called Man Who Rocks the Cradle, as a "kid whisperer."

The Wayans brothers are back! Aren't you happy? And they're. . . adapting The Munsters?

— Peter Smith