Cinematical

After heaps of buzz and praise, and our own Eric Snider saying: "it's compelling and artistic, punctuated with warm humor and masterful performances, and ultimately triumphant and hopeful," Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire is finally hitting theaters today. It's a harrowing look at one girl's traumatic young life of being pregnant with her second baby (by her father), abused by her mother, and struggling with illiteracy and obesity. In other words, a movie that demands you to think and feel -- to be touched beyond the 110 minute span of the film.

Naturally, that made me think about movies that haunt us. It can be for any number of reasons -- because of a film's thought-provoking power, how it's filmed and presented, the way it latches on to pain in our own experience, unsettles our own belief systems, angers us, or challenges us. Whether it ends sadly, or with hope. Whatever the reason, certain films seep into us and refuse to leave, whether it be for a few fleeting post-credits moments, or a week, month, year, or lifetime.

Upon leaving Requiem for a Dream the first time, my friend and I couldn't get the music out of our heads. We couldn't stop repeating the same thoughts as our brains tried to process them. Even if I don't see the film before my eyes, the music brings back every feeling, every moment of tenseness. As the credits started moving in Dogville, I couldn't shake the last powerful moments out of my head. It took a while to shake the gooseflesh from my arms, and every time I let my mind slip back, there's a brief jolt of shocked memory.

Having dipped into the seductive waters of sexy courtesans, Stephen Frears is now looking towards the future, and the future's got lots of gambling. The trades are reporting that Frears is set to direct Lay the Favorite, a dramedy that will rejoin him with High Fidelity scribe D.V. De Vincentis. The project stems from an upcoming memoir by Beth Raymer called Lay the Favorite, Take the Dog, which will be published this Spring.

Now, why did I say trades and not pick one? That's because it's time to play Pick the Plot.

In one corner, we've got The Hollywood Reporter, who says that this is a world of "geeky gamblers" who "figure out how to work the sportsbook system in Las Vegas for their own profit. It centers on a woman in her early thirties who has made a series of bad choices but achieves a redemption of sorts when she meets and then becomes involved with the gamblers." De Vincentis says: "This is the version of 50-year-old math geeks from Queens in basketball shorts who have pet guinea pigs."

In the other corner, we've got Variety describing the story as a "young woman's journey into the world of sports gambling. She starts out as a cocktail waitress but gets caught up in gambling until falling in love," calling it a cross between High Fidelity and The Grifters.

So, geek fest with gambling and a little romance thrown in for good measure, or a romantic world where a cocktail waitress can gamble her way to money ... and love. Which do you choose?

Ashley Greene's cinematic path hasn't been gradual. It all started with a couple one-ep stints on a few shows, a gig on a quickly vaporized show called Desire, time as a McDonald's customer in King of California, an uncredited moment on Shark, and playing Kim #4 in Otis. Then everything changed. She put on the superstylish clothes, added a pixie hop to her step, and starting divining the future on the Twilight series. Now she's got a handful of movies under her belt, and is circling her next starring gig.

Risky Biz Blog reports that Greene is looking into the ghostly side of supernatural life. The actress is in talks to star in The Apparition, Dark Castle's latest supernatural horror that will, most likely, wrench her out of sparkles and overprotective families. Written and to be directed by Todd Lincoln, the story focuses on a couple in college who are haunted by a "supernatural presence" they let out during a college experiment.

Supposedly, this is inspired by true events. Methinks true events in the same world where Blair Witch flies free, unless it isn't incantations that unleashes ghosts, but rather beakers of creepy substances. Or, they mean college experiment as in guy and girl make a witchy circle on their dorm floor and start doing spells all willy nilly. Whatever the case, the film hits production in February of next year.

One day, a man named Morace Park is surfing around eBay, looking for antiques, when he's intrigued by an item listed as an "old film." Housed in a funky antique tin, the man bids and wins it for the super-reasonable price of £3.20. He buys and sells antiques, so when the package arrives, it sits around for a bit. When he finally gets around to opening it, he unfurls some of the film to see what it is. The title reads: Charlie Chaplin in Zepped.

Yes, folks, as a story in the Guardian attests, this is a forgotten film that there's no record of. Almost seven minutes long, the short "is a mixture of footage of Chaplin and exuberant animation that reminded Park of Monty Python sequences." Park's neighbor John Dyer says: "It starts with live shots of Chaplin. It then turns into a dreamscape. We see a Zeppelin bombing attack. And then we see Chaplin taking the mickey out of the Zeppelin, at the time a powerful instrument of terror." They deduce that the film is a propaganda piece from the first World War. Park and Dyer have traveled to Los Angeles to learn more about the short, with filmmaker Hammad Khan recording their journey for a documentary.

One has got to assume that whoever sold it never bothered to open the film and see what this "old film" was. Just goes to show you -- old cinematic junk on eBay can lead to stunning discoveries, and never be so lazy as to not see what a film is before selling it.

It's time to go back into the memory banks a little bit. Remember when Richard Kelly started Darko Entertainment back in September of 2007? The first movie slated to hit production was Dirty Girl, with this psychological thriller called The Box slated to be movie numero dos. Now we're about to see what Kelly has in store for us with his third film, and Dirty Girl vanished into the ether ... until now.

The Hollywood Reporter posts that the movie is still in the works -- now in the hands Ideal Partners, Killer Films, and Paris Film -- and has got its cast: Juno Temple, Sally Hawkins, William H. Macy, and Lisa Kudrow. Marking Abe Sylvia's feature directorial debut, the film focuses on "a high school tramp who runs away with the school's gay, fat kid in his homophobic dad's stolen car." Got all that? Variety chose to lighten the impact a bit by describing it as a film revolving around "a high school tramp who pairs up with a shy and overweight gay teen. Together, they set off to find her real father in California."

Temple is the lead as "dirty girl" Danielle, Hawkins is playing her "reformed slut" mother Sue-Ann, Macy is Sue-Ann's Mormon fiance, and Kudrow will play "Clarke's mousy repressed mother." Let's assume Clarke is the gay teen, and I'll go out on a limb and saying Jeremy Dozier is playing him. THR doesn't mention him at all, and Variety doesn't list his role, choosing to focus on the parental units.

Keep reading -- this ain't all of it, folks.

Watch a lot of movies, and you'll get conditioned to look for that special moment when it all comes together and someone utters the words that also happen to make up the title of the movie. Sometimes it's inevitable -- if the film is titled after a character's name, or the flick's main theme, then it's going to make its way into the film. A lot. Other times, writers cleverly slip it in as that tongue-in-cheek addition for the audience's amusement.

Having a little fun with movie clips, Videogum has whipped up a mosaic of scenes where characters say the film of the movie in the film. From Katharine Hepburn's distinct voice stating: "Guess who's coming to dinner?" to Dances with Wolves, to things being "gone, baby ... gone" and Sharon Stone writing about "basic instincts," there's a good range of those little pithy and inevitable moments. Most of them are all-too-brief, although there's a good blip of time granted for the build-up of The Breakfast Club.

Check out the video after the jump and weigh in below: Which title-in-dialogue moments do you remember most?

In the '90s, I adored exactly three parts of Hollywood: alternative music flicks like Pump Up the Volume and Empire Records, Gregg Araki, and David Lynch. The first always bled into the other two, Araki partaking in the musical joys of bands like The Jesus & Mary Chain and New Order, and Badalamenti creating his own unique world of music. But now the other two are combining. Sort of.

Remember how I posted a month ago about Araki's new film, Kaboom? Well, some images have finally popped up over at Quiet Earth, including the confused-faced Thomas Dekker above. There are also shots of Dekker in bed, and some looks of exasperation, but that's not the kicker -- it's the synopsis, which kicks off with "A hyper-stylized TWIN PEAKS for the Coachella Generation..." Yes, Araki's getting into a little small-town quirk.

Building on that whole all-too-brief sexual awakening description from last month, the movie is "a wild and sex-drenched horror-comedy thriller" about an ambisexual college freshman who trips on "some hallucinogenic cookies" and is "convinced he's witnessed the gruesome murder of an enigmatic Red Haired Girl who has been haunting his dreams." Is the girl in a room with a black and white floor and thick, red curtains?

What do you think about the idea of Araki getting a little Lynchian?

Know what this trio of names has in common -- Tom Waits, Crystal Gayle, and Francis Ford Coppola? They collaborated on the music for Coppola's 1982 film One from the Heart. Waits was the creative mind behind the film's music, he performed a number of duets with the country singer, and he also earned an Academy Award nomination for his efforts.

However, that was about all the notoriety the film got. As Roger Ebert wrote in his review some 27 years ago: "This must be the first movie in history to arrive with more publicity about its production techniques than about its stars," describing the film as "a major disappointment." Heart focused on two people in love (Teri Garr and Frederic Forrest) who get swept away by the throes of passion with Raul Julia and Nastassja Kinski. But rather than simply tell the story, it was an art piece for Coppola, using creative filming techniques and a carefully plotted score that interacted with the characters.

After the jump you can see a behind-the-scenes look at the music from the film, mainly focused on Waits, but also revealing footage from initial discussions about the project, and how the music came together. It might sound old-hat in a world where we are saturated by DVDs with special features, but I love seeing the old process -- minds coming together in the back yard for a "musical summit," how each piece of a film can be so carefully plotted, and the utter strangeness of seeing someone like Gayle collaborating with Waits.

Battleship. Monopoly, Candy Land, and Ouija. A Clue re-do. If it's a board game, chances are it's going to get put into development sometime in the near future. If Hollywood wasn't such a wacky world of insane ideas, I'd be surprised that we hadn't gotten this one earlier. Nikki Finke is reporting that Sony Pictures has bought the rights to Risk, piling more cinematic coin into Hasbro's coffers. The project will be developed by Hasbro in conjunction with James Lassiter and Overbrook Entertainment.

Columbia Pictures pres. Doug Belgrad says audiences have "shown a great desire for films that bring to life everything that has made these franchise properties stand the test of time," and mentioned the likes of Transformers and G.I. Joe. Unsurprisingly then, he says the film will be an exciting movie with "an action-packed, thrilling story." It makes sense -- a game where you roll the dice to world domination is just asking for a big blow-out action flick. That being said...

First of all, there's been no "great desire" to see board game movies get adapted. Nice try. Second, in the piece, Finke talks about Belgrad mentioning the two old cartoon redo's before noting that he did not mention "the dismal movie from the board game Clue." While I understand some people dislike the film, dismal is quite a strong statement -- especially in a world where we're getting Battleship. Finally, with the ever-rising popularity of all things geek, I'm kinda disappointed that this won't be a tongue-in-cheek comedy about a bunch of geeks playing Risk. But who knows? Maybe that will come when someone gets around to buying Magic: The Gathering.

Yesterday was absolutely buzzing with Oscar buzz. First, the rumor that Ben Stiller and Robert Downey Jr. said no to the gig. Just a few hours later, the official announcement came: Next year's Oscars will be hosted by Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin. Entertainment Weekly then talked with Adam Shankman about the picking process. Some highlights:

• Steve Martin was shocked that he was picked again. Shankman's response: "Yes, because I want the show to feel that we are continuing to build on the Oscars and I'm not trying to make the MTV Movie Awards."
• He was teamed with Baldwin because: "I know that they really adore and respect each other. Plus, I know that they'll be hilarious. I wanted there to be extra comedy in the show. It will keep it high entertainment."
• There was a plan to have two hosts right from the get-go.
• On not picking Tina Fey, a rumored choice: "It wasn't that she turned us down but her work schedule right in that time, she's writing the last of her shows, and we realized then that it wouldn't work."