Apparently Peter Jackson can’t face another four years of filming to bring the proposed two film version of The Hobbit to movie screens, can’t say I blame him, that is a huge undertaking. He has decided to produce only, which would seem to be just as arduous a four year task as directing but what do I know I’ve never made a film in my life. Anyway, he as chosen Hellboy director Guillermo del Toro to direct. I’m pretty sure Pan’s Labyrinth had a lot to do with the decision.
Archive for April, 2008
Wesley Snipes was just sentenced to three years for tax evasion. The government is really cracking down, gone are the days when they just take everything you have, like with Red Foxx, or where they just take all of your income from future projects, like with Willie Nelson. Now you go to jail, and pay the bill. I never thought I would be so glad to be working a low paying, dead end job in Ohio. The only things I have of any value are a ten year old car and the ten year old computer I’m typing this post on. Hooray for poverty! Seriously though, the thing that bothers me about all this is that the accountants who got him into this mess in the first place seem to be getting off with the proverbial slap on the wrist. If I came up with an idea on how to rob a bank, told someone how to do it, and then they go and get caught following my detailed instructions, I would be arrested for conspiring to commit a crime. So why is it an accountant can detail a way for a client to not pay taxes, yet when the client ends up getting caught and sent to jail, the accountant is only guilty of giving bad advice? John Grisham needs to write a thriller around this conundrum.
TMC was showing The Big Sleep the other week (the 1944 original cut instead of the superior 1946 release version) and I was again struck by how there is a misconception about the film that has been fostered by most critics, even the usually savvy Roger Ebert. Everyone always says there is an unsolved murder in the film, quoting the Faulkner anecdote of while working on the script he asks Chandler who killed the Sternwood chauffeur and Chandler replying he didn’t know. The thing is the chauffeur’s killer is revealed it’s just not declared. When Marlowe is talking with Joe Brody it becomes obvious he killed the man, he just never admits it, much like we know at the end of the film that Carmen killed Sean Regan for rejecting her advances even though Marlowe never comes right out and says that’s what happened.
