Odds: Tuesday - Keys to the city.

By Alison Willmore on 08/29/2006

Via CRI — Wong Kar Wai, who was down in Memphis shooting more of "My Blueberry Nights," was given the key to the city on Thursday. "Wong Kai-Wai showed his thankfulness to the mayor of Memphis. He added he hoped his new film would leave a sweet memory to the city." Painfully charming.

Two from indieWIRE — Eugene Hernandez reports that Philip Haas' "The Situation" will open the 14th annual Hamptons International Film Festival, and goes on to list the full line-up. Brian Brooks writes from the closing of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, where Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe's "Brothers of the Head" won the Michael Powell Award for Best New British Film, Kevin Smith's "Clerks II" won the Standard Life Audience Award, and Jake Clennell's "The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief" won Best Documentary.

Via Empire,  David Ondaatje, who's already shot of a documentary about Hitchcock ("Undressing Hitchcock") and a short labeled as a "tribute to the technical innovations" of the director, will remake Hitchcock's 1927 silent film "The Lodger."

Via Mark Aitken at the Daily Mail, "newly unearthed documents" that belonged to James Bond creator Ian Fleming reveal the writer's interesting casting preferences.

Fleming wrote: "Both Dehn [a Hollywood screenwriter] and I think that Richard Burton would be by far the best James Bond!"

Fleming also decided to ask Hitchcock to direct.

He cabled a mutual friend, the crime novelist Eric Ambler, asking: "Would Hitchcock be interested in directing first Bond film? Plentiful finance available. Think we might have a winner particularly if you were interested in scripting."

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Garry Maddox notes that three films arriving or already in Australian theaters (Ana Kokkinos' "$4.5 million rape film" "The Book of Revelation," Geoffrey Wright's neo-"Macbeth," which aspires to be "the most violent movie Australia has ever made," and Murali Thalluri's suicide film "2:37") show a bit more edge than is usual for the country's homegrown cinema.

Whether consciously or not, filmmakers are recognising that sweet little films, such as this year's Caterpillar Wish and Footy Legends, don't seem to attract audiences to art house cinemas any more. Outside multiplexes, viewers want distinctive, new experiences from filmmakers who take risks.

Rosalie Higson at The Australian talks to Hong Kong's Peter Ho-Sun Chan about his musical "Perhaps Love" and the Chinese film industry:

"Movies have become a very luxurious entertainment, so audiences choose to go once or twice a year to mega-budget movies like Hero and House of Flying Daggers, and watch other movies at home on $US1 pirated DVDs. If you want audiences to go back to the theatre, you have to rack your brains to think of something to get them there. Maybe the musical is not foolproof for all the audience, but I think it will draw a few back."

Leon Lai, the star of Chan's "Comrades: Almost a Love Story," is currently shooting his directorial debut, at least part of which is set in New York (via CRI).

New York has it's fall movie preview; we like David Edelstein's early review of "Infamous":

The problem with [Douglas] McGrath’s writing is that there’s no subtext. People blurt things out as fast as the words pop into their heads—great for cocktail-party repartee, not so good for feeling out murderers on Kansas’s death row. Daniel Craig brings a restlessness to Perry Smith that’s frightening and convincing, but I kept wanting to insert longer pauses in between his and Capote’s lines, maybe to bring it halfway back to Capote.

Hey, there’s a thought: If someone could edit the two movies together—a bit from one, a bit from the other, call it The Infamous Capote—we’d have the definitive story of the writing of In Cold Blood.

+ Wong Kar-Wai Garners Award in US (CRI)
+ "The Situation" to Open '06 Hamptons Fest; Competition Lineups Unveiled (indieWIRE)
+ "Brothers of the Head" and "Clerks II" Among Winners at 60th Edinburgh Int'l Film Fest (indieWIRE)
+ The Lodger Takes Up Residence (Empire)
+ The day Connery's 007 career nearly went for a Burton (Daily Mail)
+ A violent change of direction (Sydney Morning Herald)
+ Hong Kong studios pitching for China (The Australian)
+ Leon Lai Directorial Debut (CRI)
+ Fall 2006: Movies Preview (New York)