The Slate: Another Sucker, McConaughey Innuendo

• Recently the New York Observer wondered out loud why Warner Bros. was giving Zack Snyder another $100 mill to burn on his Watchmen follow-up. Now it looks like his budget for Sucker Punch might have been shaved a few nickels. The departing Amanda Seyfried (schedule conflicts!) is being replaced by Emily Browning as the lead in what’s been described as “Through the Looking Glass with child soldiers.” Let’s pause for the collective cry of “Who?” to stop echoing. She was in The Uninvited, where Roger Ebert described her as “ready for a Jane Austen role.” Whoops. (Entertainment Weekly)
• Squally’s favorite collection of animated muscles, Matthew McConaughey, is getting back into briefs. He’s set to play Mickey Haller, a penny-ante criminal defense attorney in legal thriller based on Michael Connelly’s The Lincoln Lawyer. Haller gets desperate when his wealthy “franchise client” may not be as innocent of murder as he appears. How far will he go? Will it be another Time to Kill? Answers on a postcard. (Variety)
• Tony Scott used to be your go-to guy for lesbian vampires. Then he became your go-to guy for gay flyboys. Then he became the go-to guy for lesbian bounty hunters. In-between he made movies with Denzel Washington. Now he’s keeping up the phallic symbolism and jumping trains. Scott will follow The Taking of Pelham 123 remake with Unstoppable, about an toxin-laden express headed for a CBD and Speed-like situations. If anyone can bring out the latent inversion to this tale, Scott can. (Hollywood Reporter)
• Queen Latifah is headed back into the plus-size rom-com zone, and as fans of Last Holiday, we couldn’t be happier. In Just Wright, she’ll play a physical therapist who falls in love love with an incapacitated basketball star. (We just typed that in as “psychic-al therapist,” which would make an even more interesting pitch.) The thought of Latifah’s hands stroking someone else’s abs is a little too much for our tiny brain to handle. Particularly if the basketball player is played by Sanaa Lathan. (MTV Blog)
• The Scarlet Letter hasn’t had the best luck at the pictures … please don’t click this. Can Emma Stone top Demi Moore? [That’s enough innuendo – Ed.] Easy A will, as the title implies, take Hawthorne’s tale and place it in a loose high school setting. The Superbad squeeze plays a girl whose alleged promiscuity leads to her being branded a slut. The big question: what teen actor could possibly essay Chillingworth? (Variety)

Star Trek: Boldly Going Into Familiar Territory

With their emphasis on boot-knocking and bra-waving, previous trailers for J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot suggested that the Enterprise crew would be going where The O.C.had boldly gone before. Those fanboys who fell for the original series’ plasterboard sci-fi or for The Next Generation‘s Shakespearean chops were going to have to get used to the fact that Kirk, Spock, and Uhura’s original four-year mission was getting sexed up. This is a Star Trek of the Darren Star variety. (Or more daringly, a Star Trek which acknowledges the series’ slash fiction spin-offs.)

The latest trailer adds a few more elements in the mix. The emphasis is more on action and special effects, although the space combat fights look a bit like Return of the Jedi, where George Lucas in his mad genius reasoned that if three tie-fighters were very cool, than three HUNDRED tie-fighters would be even cooler. He was right, but that was back in 1983. Now the space visuals just look cluttered. There’s meant to be a certain majesty in Mutt Jones–I mean, James Kirk–looking up at the nascent Enterprise, but it’s obscured by that network of scaffolding. Any general would throw up their hands at the chaos of the space battles, which are closer to Welles’ Chimes at Midnight than Kubrick’s Spartacus.