news:blended

Too lazy to read all the wonderful news our insightful crew scours the globe to bring you every day? Too outmoded to have an MP3 player for the podcast? Shame on you all! However, being the generous lot we are, welcome to news:blended, your weekly guide to the most interesting stories reported on Cinema Blend over the last seven days.

Hey there! How are you? I feel unimportant. My family and I have yet to receive the personal fury of Don Murphy for being critical of Transformers. I'm not worried, it's a matter of time. Anyway, enough of that, here's what's been happening in the world of Cinema Blend this week:

Remaking Couldn't Go Without A Hitch

Accepting that remakes (of both the nasty rehash or buying a cheap third-party script and sticking a known name on it varieties) are here to stay is hard enough. Accepting that some of the world's greatest directors' projects are targetted for greasy-pawed remakes by MTV directors makes the job 1000 times harder. Fair enough it is one of Hitchcock's early silent movies, we reported on Monday, which is in the firing line, but it all begs the question where does it stop? Expect a hard-edged political thriller named Citizen Kane to be released before 2010.

Elizabeth II: Annus Terriblus

There's an urban myth that they had to rename The Madness of George III to The Madness of King George to avoid foreign audiences thinking it was a sequel. So on Monday when we revealed Helen Mirren would play Queen Elizabeth II in a movie hardly a year after starring as Queen Elizabeth I in a TV mini-series, it's understandable that Stephen Frears would opt simply for the title, The Queen, for his movie. Helen Mirren is one of the greatest actresses around and ranks up their with Judi Dench as those women sticking the bird to under-30s obssessed Hollywood. The movie itself, following The Queen's life around the time of Diana's death sounds like the worst kind of sunday afternoon melodrama, but you can gurantee the delivery will be top notch if nothing else.

Richard Kelly's Career Goes South(land)

It's fair to say that when a studio demands you cut an hour from your movie and you're not Peter Jackson, Steven Spielberg or George Lucas, you gotta realise something's up. Especially when it comes on the heels of your original three hour cut getting absolutely savaged by the usually lenient Cannes critics. Well that's what's happened to Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly, on Tuesday he claimed that the studio has demanded cuts to Southland Tales or the movie will never see the light of day, then changed his mind and decided the cuts were great and all is rosy a few days later of course, probably when the distributors threatened to revoke his paycheck. Could it be that Kelly, the supposed next-big-thing, is actually a one-hit-wonder? Just because your first movie is an eventual worldwide cult hit doesn't mean you should get free reign on your next project, all good directors had to make their bones in TV or crappy DTV before they hit the big time. Kelly's already shown that being brought over-night success impairs his judgement with his totally unnecessary "Director's Cut" of the excellent-as-it-was Donnie Darko. Add to that the critical thrashing of Domino, which he wrote, and it makes me wonder if just maybe he's another M Night in the making; a man who's self-belief far outweighs his actual ability or longevity.

Another 9/11 Movie? Call 911!

There's one thing the next year could do without is another 9/11 movie. Between the emotionally draining United 93 and the just plain draining World Trade Center, haven't we covered it? No, not when there's other studios and other people all wanting a slice of the (so far rather poor) box office pie. We discovered on Wednesday, one of the survivors wants his story told, the difference being that this guy's a conspiracy theorist who thinks the US government crashed those planes to justify the war in the middle east. So you've got that idea, who ya gonna call? Charlie Sheen of course! Sheen's been outspoken in his doubts over 9/11 and so would likely be all over this like a rash. After all, when your movie career's all but dead anyway, what's the risk in tackling such a biased no-shock-value story?

Eragon Trailer Was Here. Now Gone.

A couple of weeks ago the poster for new movie Eragon was leaked and it reeked of a poor man's Dungeons & Dragons (Is that possible?) while also stylistically looking like a cheap rip-off of the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire posters. Then on Wednesday we revealed the real trailer for the movie, not the cheap fan-made ones plaguing YouTube now that any old schoolkid can download Adobe Premier from Bit Torrent and which many other sites fell for. The book was written by a 15 year old and to be honest from the trailer we showed it looks and sounds like a story written by a 15 year old who had a creative writing project straight after a Star Wars and Dragonheart DVD marathon. Maybe teenage boys will get a kick out of this one, but to me it just looks tired and derivative. Sadly the evil henchmen of Fox have pulled all genuine copies of the trailer, so you'll just have to take my word for it for now.

Peter Jackson is too Dam busy

Peter Jackson is swiftly turning in to the new James Cameron. He's made his few big movies and despite having that one other movie he wants to make, has decided to take up the Producer chair for a while and let others do the hard work. First it was Halo, now on Thursday, Peter announced he's going back to remakes of black and white classics for a new version of the iconic british WWII movie Dambusters. But he'll not be making it, just producing. One of his King Kong cohorts, Christian Rivers will be directing. In usual Jackson style they're not doing anything by halves, planning to employ twelve full scale replica Lancaster bombers. My grandad used to fly theose big bastards during the war, so this combined with the project under the safe reigns of PJ means a rare remake that gets a green light from me.

Hop on The Hobbit

Speaking of Peter Jackson, remember that legal problem with Sony that stopped New Line greenlighting The Hobbit hot on the heels of LOTR's success? Well an unconfirmed rumor from inside the studio on Friday suggested that they are in fact going ahead with the project and that July 2007 could be significant. Peter Jackson has always been pretty insistant that he'd like to return for the job, but given his producer's schedule and his determination to make Lovely Bones, his plate's full for at least another two years and change. Is a Tolkien movie without Jackson at the helm such a great idea? Could anyone else capture the magic he brought?

Knight Rider Not Pirated

David Hasselhoff, when not dodging possessed chandeliers of murderous intent, or entertaining the German pop music market, still lives in a little Hollywood fantasy world. He's in good company. It's the same fantasy world as George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford. It's the one where you have this idea for a movie even though there's almost no chance of it ever being made, but yet you insist on annoying fans by just refusing to flat out admit defeat and letting the thing go. On Friday, Orlando Bloom said that he turned down an offer from The Hoff to play his son in the Knight Rider movie. And while I think Bloom's acting ability is vastly over-rated, it's such a dead fish project that I don't blame him from not wanting anything to do with it while there's absolutely no credibility in the idea. Hoff, get a good script, get a decent director, get another bout of freaky cosmetic surgery, and stop stalking actors for a project that's never going to get made. I love Knight Rider but even I'm getting bored.

Well, that's your lot for this week. Remember to visit our News section daily for the smartest and wittiest take on the latest happenings in Hollywood. And remember, through our comments sections you can leave your own thoughts on each and every story and review, even this one. Enjoy putting your opinion forward even more? Why not join the forum. We want to hear from you. See you in seven days.