Friday free-for-all

Top of the Friday to ya, faithful bloggites! I hope that your weekend is just sitting there waiting for you, ready to be awesome. Before we get to the debauchery and (gasp) soccer-laden Saturday-Sunday span, we have some business to attend to. From last night into this morning, eleventy billion (the precise number) stories broke, most of which were just boring confirmations of one sort or another. So my choices were (A) only give you the ones that I personally care about (sorry Twilight fans), (B) give you absolutely everything in individual blog posts (but, hellooooo, I'm waaaay too lazy for such things, or (C) make you a nice one-stop-shopping post filled with all the things you may care about in easily digestible portions. Never let it be said that I don't always consider your needs. Oh, a quick programming note: I'm hoping to hit you with this and the box office predictions before returning later today with a Karate Kid review.

Okay, so let's peek into the smorgasbord of newsie-type things that just hit:

1.) How the mighty have fallen - Until 2 weeks ago, Guillermo Del Toro's name was often followed by a parentheses that read "director of the upcoming Hobbit." Now, Pajiba reports that it should read "Van Helsing resurrection specialist." Yeah, you read that right, the rumor is that Del Toro has ditched The Hobbit and his next project may be a new version of Van Helsing. Supposedly the film will deny all existence of the Hugh Jackman abomination (permitted to exist only for it's rampant use of Kate Beckinsale in tight pants). I'm officially worried about Del Toro's career. The director of the first Van Helsing was exiled from earth and now orbits the planet in a spaceship made entirely of bad CGI.

2.) Hotness arrives! - The Russell Brand remake of Arthur just got a whole lot more sexy.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Kill it with fire! His hair wants to strangle my eyeballs! Every flower has an individual murderous personality! OH GOD, MAKE IT STOP.

Much better. Happy place. So soft. So pretty. Nice. Calm. Love.
YOU SON OF A BITCH! I thought you were dead?! Go away forever, you are bad for my life! Bring back the pretty!

Ladies and gentlemen, this is how I tell the world that Jennifer Garner and Nick Nolte have joined the Arthur remake. Thanks for playing.

3.) Yeah, but will it have a really icky sex scene? - Vincenzo Natali, who directed The Cube and Splice, is about to tackle William Gibson's "Neuromancer," a book that very much inspired The Matrix. This could be compelling and brilliant, given both the source material and the artist who clearly is off the beaten path. Then again, it could feel redundant (given said Matrix) and could feature disgusting, bizarre, interspecies, semi-incestuous feeling sex. Not to pigeon-hole Natali, but I fear such behaviors may be his calling card, like Hitchcock's cameo or Shyamalan's surprise ending. God, wouldn't that be great/awful?!

4.) More to hate - As has been rumored about and then confirmed but not really confirmed but kind of confirmed and then not really denied but sort of denied: Twilight: Breaking Dawn is going to be 2 movies. Now, it's going to be very important that someone sees these before I do and tells me which one I have to see for the batshit insane bullshit that I've heard happens in the final novel. Clearly, I'm not sitting through both of them, but if someone tells me which one brings the best crazy, I'd love to watch people watch it. I'd love nothing more than to watch Twi-hards drooling over what I personally believe to be the craziest thing I've ever heard about in a work of fiction, and I just referenced disgusting, bizarre, interspecies, semi-incestuous feeling sex above.

5.) Rush is back! - No, not the Canadian rockers whose music makes you sterile, Geoffrey Rush is officially returning to the Pirates series again! This is good, as he is neither Orlando Bloom nor Keira Knightley. Rush's character was a good foil/counterpart to Depp's legendary figure, so I'm hoping they'll revive the magic once more. There's something truly great about movie pirates that has only been captured that first time in this series. If piracy is ever really going to catch on, this series HAS to do better.

Okay, that's all of the important (and semi-important/unimportant) movie news to care about on this Friday. Back atcha with Box Office Predictions shortly and Karate Kid review later!

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