Miscellaneous Miscellany

My Close Encounters Of The Third Kind 30th Anniversary Ultimate Edition box-set finally arrived from YesAsia yesterday, so now it's a truly happy Chinese New Year. The box-set is simply delicious, and everything is so glossy. The DVD case is a little difficult to remove from the box though. But I'm not complaining!

First off, all that happy news for Guillermo Del Toro recently may not last, if the lawsuit by the Tolkien estate against New Line Cinema is successful. The late novelist's estate is claiming that New Line failed to pay out a contractual share of the gross profits from all three LOTR films. I don't really give a fart about the boring LOTR films, but New Line sure is giving itself some kind of a reputation. First there was all that trouble with Peter Jackson, and now this. What's it got to do with Del Toro? Well, apart from the monetary damages, the estate is also seeking "the right to terminate any rights New Line may have to make films based on other works by the author, including The Hobbit."

Then, there's that train-wreck of a director, McG, who's going to direct Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins, which will star Christian Bale as John Connor. Earlier on, McG had already terrified us with the news that he might be directing the remake of Spaced. Now, say bye-bye to the Terminator franchise, that is if you haven't already done so with the awful Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines. The twist here is that James Cameron recently implied his endorsement of the fourth film when he recommended Sam Worthington, who is in Cameron's upcoming Avatar, to McG.

Talking about remakes, there's the remake of Wes Craven's Last House On The Left, which will start filming in South Africa in April. Last House was originally inspired by, of all things, Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring. Then, there's the Pang brothers remaking their own Bangkok Dangerous with the awful Nicolas Cage in the lead. Here's the trailer, which is strangely in Spanish.

And while we're on the subject of trailers, here's one for the Thai gorefest Long Khong 2 aka Art Of The Devil 3. If you're wondering why the English title's number precedes the Thai title's, Wisekwai's Thai Film Journal informs us that it's because the first film was Khon Len Khong aka Art Of The Devil (1), and Long Khong aka Art Of The Devil 2 was only a sequel in (English) name only. But be warned, these films are extremely disgusting and gory.

Lastly CJ7 has broken records in both Malaysia and Singapore. Over here, although Buena Vista declined to give the exact numbers yet, it did confirm that CJ7 had the biggest ever opening weekend. In Singapore, it grossed S$2 million on its opening weekend, beating out Jack Neo's Ah Long Pte Ltd and Jay Chou's Kung Fu Dunk.