Sherlock the third

Guy Ritchie is to make a third Sherlock Holmes movie but this time the story will be set in America - Guy is keen to shoot in the US – which will suit leading man Robert Downey Jr, who's based in the States.
A source said: "Guy has loved making the movies and he gets on really well with all the cast.
"But Robert's had to spend large parts of the year in the UK filming so will probably welcome the move back home.
"He loves the UK, and London in particular but having home comforts close by is such a big bonus."

Drew Pearce is  to write Sherlock Holmes 3. The deal will soon be sealed with Pearce, who is currently writing Iron Man 3, which will also star Downey.

Will it be a battle of The Saints?

It's seems that 2012 is the year of the battles over classic heroes. Not only do we have the BBC V CBS over the rights to a modern Sherlock Holmes bout in full swing, but now The Saint has thrown down his halo and clenched his fists

Variety are reporting that .RKO Pictures is reviving Simon Templar and "The Saint," signing Travis Wright ("Eagle Eye") to pen a script based on the debonair hero with an eye to developing a trilogy with producer Rick Porras. Projects will be based on remake rights to three of the nine "Saint" films in RKO's library, but will this cause conflict with the ongoing project by Geoffrey Moore (son of Roger) to bring the character back to the small screen?

The franchise features Simon Templar, a Robin Hood-like figure who punishes corrupt politicians and businessmen as well as mashing mobsters and bashing bruisers.

The character first debuted in Leslie Charteris's novel Meet the Tiger, which spawned a long-running series of books. RKO owns the rights to several films based on The Saint, including 1938's The Saint in New York and its follow-ups. It will be interesting to see how the films develop as Ian Dickerson, president of The Saint Fan Club pointed out on his Facebook page that -  "RKO have the rights to remake their films as long as they don't change the dialogue or the length of the pictures. They must be remade as films for the cinema, they do not have any TV rights. So if they remake The Saint Meets the Tiger it'll be 79 min long, Saint in New York 69 mins. Hardly feature film length nowadays.."

And what of the new TV series? Will we ever see it? In recent years we've heard that James Purefoy had been cast as The Saint, then it was Dougray Scott. Ahh well, only time will tell...just as long as they don't cast Daniel Craig.

Pets of the rich and famous

World War II Timeline in movies - 4 The Propaganda War

When war broke out in 1939 Britain's cinemas were closed, however the value of films in keeping up morale was soon realized and the cinemas were reopened. They had been closed for only ten days before an Parliament decided to reopen them and they became the main source of entertainment and recreation during the troubled times.

The earliest British war film, The Lion has wings which produced at a breakneck speed by Alexandra Korda was a curious mix of documentary and drama and whilst it may not have worked as a film, copies were laughed t in Berlin it did lead to more effective propaganda being worked into dramatic presentations.

The movies were effective in saying that the old class system should be put aside and that this was was the people's war, and the Ealing war films represented these new ideas. The same studio made The Foreman went to France in 1942) which showed how an ordinary man, a working stiff, retrieved a vital piece of machinery from from France. And 1943's The Bells go Down showed the work of the fire service in London and placed stress on the ideals of comradeship and bravery. The movies showed that it was ordinary people who would win this war and the studio went so far as to completely destroy the image of the old style officer and gentleman in 1943's, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.

Comradeship, cooperation, dedication to duty and self sacrifice typified the early British World War II movies.  In Which we Serve (1942) was perhaps one of the first of the truly classic war movies. The three main characters are the captain, a petty officer and an ordinary seaman but they are all equal in their devotion to the ship and their duty to country. And The Way Ahead (1944) showed how a group of conscripts from all walks of life were turned into an elite fighting unit.

And it wasn't only the men who were fighting the war and 1943's The Gentle Sex showed how a group of women were turned into defenders of the nation in the territorial army. Britain was at war and the cinema had no time to question what was going on, or stand back and consider the morality of war, there were battles to be won and on screen as in life we were going to get on with it.

It was a case of, keep a stiff upper lip old boy.

The Children of the night

As I’ve said in previous posts, horror movies are as old as cinema itself – versions of Frankenstein and Dr Jekyll were made in American as far back as 1908 and vampires first appeared in American movies in 1910 and a few years later the works of Edgar Allan Poe provided the backbone to D W Griffith’s The Avenging Conscience, and if we look at Europe we can find the birth of the modern horror movie with Germany’s Der Student Von Prag in 1913 and Der Golem in 1914. In fact German cinema had a lot to do with the early horror film and in 1919 The Cabinet of Dr Caligari set the blueprint for what was to become the modern horror film. In Dr Caligari a mad doctor invokes and controls a somnambulist, sending him to murder those who have sneered at his work.
These characters – the mad doctor and the monster he has created became the key elements of Hollywood horror.
There were many horror movies made during the silent period but it wasn’t until the coming of sound that the genre really took off.
Universal became the home of horror after a string of horror hits that started with Todd Browning’s Dracula and James Whale’s Frankenstein. Bela Lugosi recreated the role he had first played on the stage for Dracula and for a period he became the studio’s biggest money maker, but when Frankenstein which was originally to be directed by Robert Florey fell into the hands of James Whale the first true horror classic was born. And like Dr Caligari both films featured maidens terrorized by monsters before our square jawed hero comes to the rescue….ahh, simpler times! Before anyone knew it mad geniuses were everywhere, even Bela Lugosi’s Dracula can been seen as a mad genius of sorts – Doctor X (1932), Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) and Island of  Lost Souls (1933) are just three of many movies that expanded upon the formula that had not yet been set in stone.

‘Listen to them, children of the night. What music they make.’
It was during this period that the first horror superstars were born, actors who would forever be associated with the genre. Lon Chaney was originally to have played Dracula in 1931 but the when the actor died the role fell into the hands of Bela Lugosi and the actor also inherited Chaney’s crown as the king of horror. Boris Karloff was excellent as the monster in James Whale’s Frankenstein. John Carradine made a far less effective Dracula than Lugosi but after he played the character he too was forever a horror actor. As was Lon Chaney Jr who carried the Chaney name forward while Vincent Price put the ham back into horror. It was not until the Hammer cycle of movies that actors would be so associated with the genre when Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing became the new icons. And since that period perhaps only Robert Englund and Bruce Campbell have attained the same level of genre identification.

So the next time you sit down to watch a horror movie, just remember that it’s roots stretch back to the dawn of cinema itself.

Sherlock Holmes: The plot thickens

The problems between the BBC and CBS over the American network's planned modern day version of Sherlock Holmes has escalated with the BBC now issuing CBS with a legal warning.

The facts in the case are -  For the past few years, BBC, along with Hartswood Films, has been imagining Holmes in modern times in the popular series Sherlock. A third season has just been announced.

From the Hollywood Reporter:
Last week, CBS announced a pilot for its own modern retelling of the Holmes story with the detective solving obscure cases in New York.
CBS' announcement set off alarm bells for producers of Sherlock, which has been showing in the U.S. on BBC America and on various PBS stations. According to The Independent, Sue Vertue, an executive producer on the series at Hartswood, had this to say about the development:

"We understand that CBS are doing their own version of an updated Sherlock Holmes. It's interesting, as they approached us a while back about remaking our show. At the time, they made great assurances about their integrity, so we have to assume that their modernised Sherlock Holmes doesn't resemble ours in any way, as that would be extremely worrying...We are very proud of our show and like any proud parent, will protect the interest and well being of our offspring."

The British press has interpreted this statement to signal a lawsuit ahead. Might CBS get in trouble for using the famous detective character?

"Our project is a contemporary take on Sherlock Homes that will be based on Holmes, Watson and other characters in the public domain, as well as original characters," CBS tells THR in a statement. "We are, of course, respectful of all copyright laws and will not infringe on any stories or works that may still be protected."

When it comes to the public domain, not everything is elementary. One decision last July at the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals might hold some clues about the types of claims that producers of Sherlock might make against CBS.

In the case, Warner Bros. sued a company that specialized in nostaligia merchandise for using movie posters and lobby cards for Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind and several Tom & Jerry short films. The 8th Circuit took up the question of whether the defendant had appropriated “original elements” of the film or merely elements that were already in the public domain. The appeals circuit handed Warners a win.
"There is no evidence that one would be able to visualize the distinctive details of, for example, Clark Gable’s performance before watching the movie Gone with the Wind, even if one had read the book beforehand," the justices wrote. "At the very least, the scope of the film copyrights covers all visual depictions of the film characters at issue."

In other words, the Eighth Circuit ruled that the features of on-screen characters can be copyrighted even if these characters were based on prior work. It potentially means that Sherlock producers can protect their own modern version of Sherlock Holmes, even though it is based on work from the 19th Century. 

The lonesome cowboy

He rides alone, entering the screen while the main titles play and exiting, if alive, in the same way at The End. He is the movie and the landscapes and characters that make up the story would not exist if not for him. He is alone and will remain alone, never able to form a relationship, forever haunted by things he has seen or things he has done.

The lonesome cowboy, the drifter, has been a part of the western for as long as western movies have existed - from the early silents when Harry Carey and William S. Hart defined the character to the modern day with actors like Clint Eastwood carrying on the tradition. In the silents the drifter was usually a amiable fellow, a good bad guy if you like and it wasnt't until the 1950's when Hollywood began to tinker with the stereotype and create the derivative of the character that we know and love today, that the template was set.

He became the anti-hero.

 Alan Ladd's Shane (1953) is a perfect example of the mysterious drifter. He seems a good guy, a gentle soul but there is something about him that suggests he could become meanness personified at the turn of a coin. And with the coming of this hero the western landscape changed too as  the film noir style began to make its way into the western  - previously the landscapes had been clear, bright,  representing the spirit of the hero but with the later westerns the landscape became dark, twisted, crippled almost. There was now a surreal feel about the plains and deserts that had previously seemed so pristine. The lighting styles became more dramatic, moody and with this the drifter became a twisted mass of considerable complexity.

James Stewart played a great lonely avenger as Will Lockhart in The Man from Laramie and John Wayne gave us an even darker version of the same man as Ethan Edwards in The Searchers - both men have violent pasts, the precise details of which remain a mystery to the viewer.

Ethan Edwards though can not sit comfortably alongside the mythic drifter, for he is driven by a hatred, not of an individual or gang, but of an entire race. The characters played by James Stewart may have been driven by the lust for revenge also but that revenge is usually directed at those that have wronged the character, though Ethan Edwards hates the Indians simply because they are there. Ethan Edwards is not a nice character but The Searchers may be the finest western ever made.

Though he may have become a figure of darkness, the lonesome drifter is still a heroic character - a man who is self reliant and can survive any hardship thrown at him, and at his core he has strongly defined ideas of what is right and what is wrong.

Maybe the actor who has best personified this drifter is Clint Eastwood who played the character taken to the extreme in the dollar westerns, and  played variations of that character several times since in movies like, High Plains Drifter, Pale Rider and The Unforgiven. Eastwood's character could murder without remorse though still maintain a basic goodness at his core. The character was a result of the anti-hero being filtered through the ambiguous morality of the Sixties.

The character is still out there now, waiting to ride across the  screen again one day, reinvented for an all new generation.

For one things is certain - the lonesome cowboy will drift our way again.