Woody Allen continues his grand tour of Europe. Having already set recent films in London, Barcelona and Paris, with varying degrees of success, it has been announced that Woody Allen’s latest project will be filmed in Rome. Allen described his previous films as “love letters” to the cities in question and hopes to be able to do the same for Rome. Having already written uptight, tennis-mad Brits and passionate, bohemian Spaniards, we wait to see which tired cultural stereotypes he will press into action for Italy. Expect immaculately tailored mummy’s boys and capaciously bosomed mammas bearing vats of pasta.
Variety reports that plans are afoot to bring the recent BP oil-rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico to the big screen. Summit Entertainment and Participant Media are currently developing a project based on the Deepwater Horizon tragedy. Participant has previously been involved in serious, issue-led cinema such as Good Night and Good Luck and An Inconvenient Truth so we can expect a sober, fairly factual account. However since the Transformers producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura is in talks to come on board, there’s still a possibility of a spot of Hollywood revisionism and a team of giant robots from space coming in to save the day.
Are kids’ films killing grown-up viewing? The five biggest grossing American movies last year were all for children, which has made the studios most unwilling to back any film without a cast of cute creatures. The latest victim of this madness is director Guillermo del Toro of Pan’s Labyrinth. Universal pulled the plug on his project to make H.P. Lovecraft’s The Mountain of Madness in 3-D because he refused to make it family-friendly, by aiming for a PG-13 (12A) rating. “Madness has gone dark,” del Toro said, as he headed off to find a more adult project.
The veteran Star Trek actor William Shatner, aka Captain Kirk, has boldly gone where no man has gone before and sold his kidney stone for charity. With the £14,000 that a gambling website paid for his stone, plus donations from fellow actors on Boston Legal, Shatner donated £56,000 to Habitat for Humanity to help the homeless. The money was used to build a new house for a family who lost everything in Hurricane Katrina.