TeleChimp | TV Journalism

George Lucas is supposedly scheming future Star Wars movies at his top-secret Skywalker Ranch, reports IESB, who claims this could be more than just a rumor.

IESB is reporting that fans can expect the new trilogy after the entire saga is released in 3D which is expected to be complete around 2015 or 2016. Their source also claims the movies will not be prequels, but sequels. It’s not for certain if they will be the long awaited Episodes 7, 8 and 9 but could instead be Episodes 10, 11 and 12.

Wired chimed in with a quote from Lucasfilm spokesman Josh Kushins:

“This is, of course, is completely false,” Lucasfilm spokesman Josh Kushins wrote to Wired. “George Lucas has plenty of projects to keep him busy right now – including plenty of Star Wars projects – but there are no new Star Wars feature films planned.”
New films or not, the live action Star Wars television series is currently in development, already has over 50 scripts ready to go and plenty of pre-production time and money spent on artwork and storyboards. Once that show goes into production, Lucasfilm hopes to be able to produce at least 100 episodes since that is the threshold for syndication in the United States.

Only time will tell about the reality of a new trilogy, but we got to ask, does the idea of a new Star Wars trilogy get you excited?

Popularity: 93% [?]

Al Pacino, it’s not relatively a monster movie, but it has some of the same elements of monster movies like: an outsize character, plenty of metaphor for mankind’s destruction, a mysterious death and lots of excessively teased hair.

HBO Films has decided to begin Phil Spector, the bewigged record producer who created the “wall of sound” in the 1960s but is now serving a prison sentence of 19 years to life for murder. Starring will be Al Pacino.

David Mamet will write and direct the film, which HBO cautioned is in the very early stages of development (it’s still untitled). Barry Levinson, who won an Oscar for directing “Rain Man,” will serve as executive producer.

Mr. Spector, 70, was convicted of second-degree murder last year; prosecutors successfully argued that the record producer shot Lana Clarkson, a struggling actress, in the foyer of his mansion in 2003. Mr. Spector’s lawyers as recently as March were still arguing in court for his release.

It was an ugly end to a celebrated career. Starting in the late 1950s, Mr. Spector produced a stream of pop megahits, including “Be My Baby,” “Da Doo Ron Ron” and “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling.” He completed and mixed the unfinished tapes for the final Beatles album, “Let It Be.”

Mr. Pacino, also 70, has an imposing stare that bears more than a passing similarity to Mr. Spector’s favorite facial expression. But what exactly interested the Oscar-winning actor in the role?

John L. Burnham, an agent at International Creative Management who represents Mr. Al Pacino, Mr. Mamet and Mr. Levinson, said that “He just saw a very interesting character to play, and he likes the sensibility of David and Barry,”

Popularity: 4% [?]

Look, I don’t want to be difficult here, but at no point in the newKarate Kid does anyone learn karate. It’s kung fu. The characters call it kung fu. The film is set in China, which is where kung fu is practiced. Except for a brief instance of the kid watching some karate instruction on television, The Karate Kid contains no karate whatsoever.

I don’t ask for a lot in life. The idea of remaking a beloved film doesn’t offend me. I’m not one of those geeks who insist that remakes somehow retroactively destroy the originals. But if you’re going to remake The Karate Kid, it had DAMN WELL BETTER HAVE KARATE IN IT.

You would think this would be non-negotiable. You would think that if the screenplay replaced karate with kung fu, someone would say, “Oh, we’d better change the title to The Kung Fu Kid.” And everyone would say, “Right, right, obviously.” There wouldn’t even be a discussion.

Yet somehow it went like this:

FIRST STUDIO EXECUTIVE: It’s a remake of The Karate Kid, but instead of a high school student learning karate from an old Japanese man in Southern California, it’s a 12-year-old boy learning kung fu from an old Chinese man in Beijing!

SECOND STUDIO EXECUTIVE: Brilliant! What’s it called?

FIRST STUDIO EXECUTIVE: The Karate Kid!

SECOND STUDIO EXECUTIVE: I see no flaws in this!

(Remove clothes; roll around naked in money; end scene.)

Apart from THAT, it’s a pretty faithful remake of the 1984 favorite. The original writer, Robert Mark Kamen, gets story credit, and the screenplay (by newcomer Christopher Murphey) hits most of the same plot points and even approximates some of the dialogue. I guess if they’d called it The Kung Fu Kid, people would have thought it was a rip-off of The Karate Kid, rather than an authorized remake of it. Plus there’s the name recognition. People are predisposed to liking a movie called The Karate Kid. The fact that it DOESN’T HAVE ANY KARATE IN IT is beside the point.

Sorry. I’m trying to hold it together. Never mind the backstory. Let’s pretend you never heard of the original Karate Kid and went into this one cold. How is the movie itself? Eh, fine. Its greatest asset is Jaden Smith, son of Will Smith, who seems to have inherited his dad’s effortless charm and likability. He plays Dre Parker, a 12-year-old Detroit boy who’s uprooted when his mother (Taraji P. Henson) is transferred by her company to Beijing. Dre is soon set upon by a bully his age, Cheng (Zhenwei Wang), whose kung fu instructor preaches the “no mercy” method of fighting. Moving to another country is bad enough. Now he has to get beaten up by a jerk whose language he doesn’t even speak?

Along comes Mr. Han (Jackie Chan), the maintenance man at Dre’s apartment building. He is reclusive and taciturn and not at all Jackie Chan-like. He knows kung fu, though, and he offers to train Dre so that he can face off against Cheng in an official venue, a junior tournament being held some weeks hence.

There are no surprises from that point forward if you’ve seen the original Karate Kid, and probably even if you haven’t. Dre learns lessons about life and kung fu, bonds with Mr. Han (no mention is ever made of Dre’s absent father), and we all go home happy, if not exactly overwhelmed.

The film, directed by Harald Zwart (The Pink Panther 2, Agent Cody Banks), was shot in China and makes some genuine effort to make the location part of the story, rather than just a Generic Exotic Backdrop. Most of the Chinese characters speak Mandarin, not English, adding to Dre’s sense of alienation. Meiying (Wenwen Han), a sweet girl Dre’s age, is driven by her austere parents to practice the violin constantly, suggesting the high expectations placed upon modern Chinese youth.

The only real problem with the film, other than its utter lack of karate, is its length: almost two and a half hours! Meiying, pleasant though she is, adds nothing to the main story, and a scene explaining Mr. Han’s tragic past is maudlin and unconvincing. All of that should have been cut, and the whole movie tightened up, to prevent the rambling, lackadaisical tone it wound up with. If you must remake The Karate Kid and if you must do it without including any karate, the least you can do is get us in and out of there in two hours.

Popularity: 14% [?]