Gerard Butler will star in a Ridley Scott directed film about ex-British Army officer Simon Mann, who in 2004 tried to overthrow the president of Equatorial Guinea with a group of mercenaries. Mann was arrested in Zimbabwe, spent five years in prison there, and then taken to Guinea, where he was sentenced to 34 more years – until a presidential pardon set him free. Well, this certainly will not be the president of Equatorial Guinea’s favorite movie. Everyone knows the president of Equatorial Guine’s favorite movie is Flubber. Grade: B- [Deadline]
There are two ways to approach the trailer for Twixt, Francis Ford Coppola’s Comic-Con-baiting, self-financed descent into indie-horror insanity. One is through rose-colored glasses, telling yourself repeatedly that this tale of a bloated, ponytailed Val Kilmer as a hack horror writer investigating a small-town murder with the help of Elle Fanning as a My Chemical Romance fan and Bruce Dern as a HoneyBaked ham isn’t a note-for-ridiculous-note mash-up of Barton Fink and this trailer for a video game made in 1998.
Comic-Con, San Diego’s annual orgy of geek revelations and Hollywood hype, came to an end over the weekend and the general consensus seemed to be that of a 14-year-old Farscape obsessive after his first messageboard posting: meh. Many of the big guns either chose to sit out this year’s fete entirely or coast on the good-will of enthiastic nerdom by dangling posters or concept art as if they were the One Ring. Such reticence was probably a good call. Recent box-office returns have demonstrating the capriciousness of the Comic-Con audience — as the disconnect between the rapturous response in the room and subsequent commercial failures of one-time Hall H attractions Kick-Ass and Green Lantern proves.
