Articles

Favreau Talks the Future of Iron Man by Devin Faraci
(from CHUD.com)
Faraci boasts (several times) about his very long interview with Iron Man director Jon Favreau. Handily for those of us only interested in the highlights, he hasn't got round to typing it all up yet, so summarises the best bits. They include:

"Favreau said that he very much wants War Machine in the second film. He said that Rhodey had a smaller than anticipated role in the first movie and that he would like to rectify that."

"The Mandarin is the overarching, behind the scenes villain of Favreau's planned trilogy, but he's very aware of how hard it is to keep a character like that cool. [He] is also 'surrounded by minefields,' specifically the racial aspects and the fact that his powers are arcane in nature."

"Favreau wants to complicate the personal stories in the sequels, not the plot lines. He sort of pointed at The Dark Knight as a movie that had a very complicated plot... To him it's about the characters first and the stories should be simple and fun." (No bad thing -- complex plot-driven stories suit Batman, not so much Downey Jr.'s very light take on Iron Man.)

"Favreau sees his trilogy as almost one long story, comparing it less to the Spider-Man films, which are modular, and more to The Lord of the Rings or even a season of a TV show."

Aiming high indeed!

Ray Winstone Joins Edge Of Darkness by Chris Hewitt
(from Empire Online)
Ray Winstone replacing Robert De Niro? Well that's just odd.

Viva Che (Just When It Seemed Dead)
(from Studio Briefing)
"Nearly four months after it was screened at the Cannes Festival to widespread critical acclaim and a best-actor award for its star, Steven Soderbergh's Che has finally landed a distributor... Soderbergh indicated that it was still uncertain whether the film will be released in two parts or as one four-and-a-half hour feature. (At Cannes, it was shown both ways, and Soderbergh had indicated he would like it to be shown that way upon its release, allowing ticket buyers to decide for themselves whether they wish to see it in two installments or in one.)" That'll be fun for IMDb to list, then -- though they must've made a similar decision for Grindhouse at some point, so I guess there's a precedent. That said, in Grindhouse's case the double-feature versions are notably different to the individual releases; if Che is just The Argentine and Guerrilla stuck together, it might be a different matter. Currently they just list them both separately, so what would they do if it was only released as a single feature, eh? Ah the things I think about...