Incoming: A pavane for the dead princess.

By Alison Willmore on 08/28/2006

Trailers:

A trailer for Stephen Frears' "The Queen" is here; the film, which will open the New York Film Festival, stars Helen Mirren in her second incarnation as a Queen Elizabeth and her 7,000th as a member of the monarchy. Looks rather good, though it is strange to see actors playing active public figures.

A trailer for "Aurora Borealis" is here; nothing distinguishing except that it features a romance between Joshua Jackson and Juliette Lewis — weird ("I see angels, Pacey. They're comin' down for us from heaven...").

A trailer for Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's doc-of-minor-festival-controversy "Jesus Camp," is here.

And a trailer for "Le Petit Lieutenant," a crime drama from Xavier Beauvois (of "Selon Matthieu") is here.

Elsewhere, because one true crime tale at a time is not enough, New Line has bought the rights to former detective Steve Hodel’s book "Black Dahlia Avenger," which purports to solve the 60-year-old mystery. The murder was...the author's father!

"I found out that George Hodel was the prime suspect all along," Hodel told Variety. "The D.A. was days away from arresting him, but the police department was very corrupt. The files were sanitized, the physical evidence disappeared." [via Empire]

Via Coming Soon, Woody Allen is so over London. His next film will be set in Barcelona, after which he will doubtless leap from metropolis to metropolis like a haggard cultural vampire desperately jonesing for another jolt of career revival.

Via the Guardian, George A. Romero is set to write and direct a fifth "of the Dead" movie — "Diary of the Dead" follows "college students who are filming their own horror movie in the woods when they happen upon a real zombie uprising."

"It has my sensibility, my sense of socioeconomic satire," Romero told the Hollywood Reporter. "And it has my zombies! They're not rushing around - they're gonna be moving slow." Plenty of howling is also promised.

Via WENN, Richard Kelly's "Southland Tales" may be chopped down as much as an hour:

He tells Hotdog magazine, "What's disappointing, frustrating is that now I don't know that Southland Tales will be seen in the United States. Maybe it will, but potentially it could be shown with almost an hour of it missing. I don't quite know what that film is. It was intended to be this epic LA story. I just don't know if I have the energy anymore. I tried. I tried. And hopefully they'll (the fans) get a chance to see it at some point."

Elisabeth O'Leary at Reuters look into Menno Meyjes' bullfighter biopic "Manolete," which star Adrien Brody as the titular bullfighter and Penélope Cruz as his lover, actress Lupe Sino, an apparent source of controversy:

As Manolete bled to death after his fatal goring on August 28, 1947, Sino was barred from seeing him on "doctor's orders" in case the matador tried to marry her in his final moments.

Even then matadors earned a fortune, and a deathbed marriage would have snatched the juicy inheritance from his family.

Despite efforts to blacken her character, it is widely accepted that Manolete and Sino were besotted with one another.

And two set visits in the Sunday New York Times — Whitney Joiner stops by Marfa, TX, the setting of "Giant" and, more recently, "No Country for Old Men," the new Coen brothers film; John Anderson goes to Tulsa, OK, where director Sterlin Harjo is shooting "Four Sheets to the Wind":

Almost the entire cast and many of the crew members are American Indians. “Among ourselves,” said [producer Chad] Burris, an Oklahoma native and Chickasaw, “it’s more like ‘Induns.’ ” Not coincidentally, interpretations and definitions become knotty factors in an Indian movie, something rare enough that unfair expectations and obligations naturally attach themselves to it.

+ Trailer: The Queen (Apple)
+ Trailer: Aurora Borealis (Yahoo)
+ Trailer: Jesus Camp (AOL)
+ Trailer: Le Petit Lieutenant (Cinema Guild)
+ Another Black Dahlia film planned (Empire)
+ Details on Woody Allen's Spanish Project (ComingSoon.net)
+ Return of the zombie master (Guardian)
+ Kelly Upset with Planned Movie Edits (WENN)
+ Film to show doomed love of Spanish matador (Reuters)
+ Hollywood Stampedes a Texas Town, and Tranquillity Rides Into the Sunset (NY Times)
+ This Time, the Indians Tell Their Own Story (NY Times)