The Coen Bros. Go Folksy, Meloni Joins 'Man of Steel' and a Still Examination of 'Transformers 3'

Plus a release date for 'R.I.P.D.' and Cole joins 'Snow White'

By: Brad Brevet
Published: Saturday, June 25th 2011 at 11:06 AM

There were just enough stories left over for a weekend edition of the Movie Morsels column and come to think of it, ending with news of a new Coen brothers film makes it even better than most editions.

Additional Snow White and the Huntsman casting reveals Lily Cole (The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus) will play a girl by the name of Greta, and Sam Spruell (The Hurt Locker) will play Finn, the Queen's henchman sent to kill the Huntsman (Thor's Chris Hemsworth) and Snow White (Twilight star Kristen Stewart). Chalize Theron plays the queen. The film is expected to go into production this fall with a release date set for June 1, 2012. [Variety]

Christopher Meloni ("Law & Order: SVU") is in negotiations for a major role in Zack Snyder's Superman reboot Man of Steel. Of course, the "major role" is unknown at this moment, but the likeliest character left in my estimation would be Daily Planet Editor-in-Chief Perry White, who was played by Frank Langella in Bryan Singer's Superman Returns and by Jackie Cooper in the four Christopher Reeve films. [Deadline]

Universal Pictures has scheduled the Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges action-comedy R.I.P.D. for June 28, 2013. The film is based on the Peter Lenkov comic and centers on Nick Cruz (Reynolds), a recently slain cop who joins a team of undead police officers working for the Rest in Peace Department and tries to find the man who murdered him. Red helmer Robert Schwentke directs. [Deadline]

Photo: Paramount Pictures // New York Times

The above image comes from the "New York Times" where Mekado Murphy and Paul Jean have broken down a film still from the upcoming Transformers: Dark of the Moon thanks to the help of Scott Farrar, the film's visual effects supervisor and second-unit director, who sets out to explain what went into the shot. Unfortunately it's a bit too small to read all the fine detail here, but if you click the following link it's actually a pretty interesting graphic. [New York Times]

Joel and Ethan Coen are moving back into O' Brother, Where Art Thou? territory as their next film will be based on the life of black blues and folk singer Dave van Ronk, a legendary musician who presided over New York city's iconoclastic coffeehouse period of the mid-20th century. In a recent conversation moderated by Noah Baumbach the brothers referred to the film saying it was kind of like Baumbach's Margot at the Wedding, which is to say that, like that film, their new work will offer natural dialogue and a feeling of being dropped into the middle of a world. They also said they expected the film to contain musical performances. "We're working on a movie now that has music in it [that's] pretty much all performed live, single instrument," Joel Coen said.

Van Ronk passed away in 2002. His work helped give birth to the likes of Phil Ochs, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. His nickname was "The Mayor of MacDougal Street" which it wouldn't surprise me if that became the title of this next film, the Coens are said to be drawing in part from Van Ronk's posthumous memoir of the same name for the script, which they are penning themselves. [Los Angeles Times]

Links from Other Sites You May Like