Blog Posts by Danny Bowes

Photo: Warner Bros

The DGA has announced its five nominees for Best Director, the winner of which will be announced February 2^nd. The nominees are:

Photo: Everett CollectionThanks to crowd-sourced financing, there will be a sequel to the 2003 cult hit “The Hebrew Hammer.” Adam Goldberg will return as the titular Shaft-like private eye, with Judy Greer reprising her role as now-wife Esther Bloomenbergensteinenthal. The plot of the sequel involves their traveling back in time, teaming up with Jesus, and fighting Hitler. Thus, “The Hebrew Hammer vs. Hitler.”

Liberace and Michael Douglas (Photo: David Ashdown/ImageWire)

Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh's upcoming film, “Behind The Candelabra,” a biopic of entertainer Liberace, will be airing on HBO this February, but it almost wasn't even made. According to Soderbergh, when looking for financing, “We went to everyone in town....they said it was too gay.”

Photo: Sony Picture Classics

Yesterday was a very exciting day for action movie fans: director Gareth Huw Evans tweeted that he'll be starting filming on January 19^th for the sequel to “The Raid: Redemption,” which will be titled “The Raid: Retaliation” in the US. He also announced that the story will pick up a mere two hours after the first movie ends, giving protagonist Rama (Iko Uwais) almost no time to unwind after the hundreds of men he killed.

Photo: Tri=StarThe Writer's Guild of America has announced its nominees for Best Original, Adapted, and Documentary screenplays of 2012.

The notable omissions of the ineligible “Django Unchained” and “Les Miserables” aside made way for some less-touted scripts, such as John Gatins' for “Flight” and Paul Thomas Anderson's for the surprising awards underdog “The Master.”

The nominations for Rian Johnson's “Looper” and Steven Chbosky's “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” can only help those films' chances at Oscar nominations in their respective categories. In Original, longtime locks “Moonrise Kingdom” and “Zero Dark Thirty” unsurprisingly received nods from the guild, as did prohibitive Oscar favorite “Lincoln” and almost certain nominees “Argo” and “Silver Linings Playbook” in Adapted.

With the Oscars' wider pool of eligibility, expect to see “Django Unchained” bump one of the five nominees for Original Screenplay, though the field in Adapted Screenplay may be tougher for “Les Miserables” to break in.

Photo: GettyAshton Kutcher's typographically unique Steve Jobs biopic “jOBS” will be the closing screening of this year's Sundance Film Festival, in advance of an April theatrical release, per The Hollywood Reporter. Directed by relative newcomer Joshua Michael Stern, “jOBS” tells the story of Steve Jobs' journey from college dropout to revered entrepreneurial icon.

This marks Kutcher's first foray into dramatic roles, unless one counts his turn in “The Butterfly Effect,” so there's little basis on which to speculate on his effectiveness at playing the Apple co-founder, chairman, and CEO, especially considering it's not yet known what artistic approach will be taken; Kutcher's casting could be a stretch, or the approach may be tailored to his more-familiar light comedy talents. The fact that “jOBS” is being released in April rather than November or December, while not an indicator of the film's prospects in itself, does speak to a desire by its producers to not have “jOBS” compared too immediately

Photo: Screengems

Sony's remake of “Carrie,” originally scheduled for release in March, has been pushed back to October, Variety reports, where the studio feels the second screen adaptation of Stephen King's classic horror novel will be better positioned to find an audience two wees before Halloween.

This “Carrie” sees director Kimberly Peirce (“Boys Don't Cry,” “Stop-Loss”) take over for Brian De Palma and Chloe Moretz and Julianne Moore for Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie. “Carrie”'s new release date is one week in advance of “Paranormal Activity 5,” the previous four installments of which have dominated the box office in traditionally horror-friendly October. A competition between Sony and Paramount (“Paranormal Activity”'s studio) thus looms: “Carrie,” as a new take by a woman director on a female-centric story previously told by men, seems to be positioned as the thinking moviegoer's October horror movie, in opposition to the fifth installment in an ongoing series. The commercial juggernaut that is

Photo: Columbia Pictures

The Producers Guild has announced its list of ten nominations for Best Picture this year, which are:

“Argo”
“Beasts of the Southern Wild”
“Django Unchained”
“Les Miserables”
“Life of Pi”
“Lincoln”
“Moonrise Kingdom”
“Silver Linings Playbook”
“Skyfall”
“Zero Dark Thirty”

The biggest surprise here is the inclusion of “Skyfall,” the wildly successful latest entry in the James Bond franchise, which, while critically well-received, is a less typical nominee for awards of this sort than, for example, Paul Thomas Anderson's historical drama “The Master,” the highest-profile notable omission.

Guild nominations do tend to prefigure Oscar voting more than critics awards, so while the PGA nominees are in no way a direct prediction, the general shape of these nominations—and especially the omission of “The Master”—can give an idea of how the Oscar nominations, coming later this month, will look.