I haven’t read it yet, but everyone who has seems to be sporting major nerd wood that Max Brooks’ zombie war oral history World War Z is coming to the big screen (I just have regular wood because Brad Pitt’s in it). Directed by Marc Forster and scheduled for a 2012 release, some pictures from the set in Falmouth, Cornwall, UK (hee hee! foul mouth cornhole!) hit over the weekend, along with the news that Breaking Bad‘s Bryan Cranston would have a “small but flashy” role in the film. I hope that means his dong falls out while he runs through the background

Feeling the pinch of a cold British summer morning, Brad appeared wrapped up on board the yellow SD Salmoor where most of the filming is taking place. The admiralty salvage vessel was covered in wax and fake icicles plus a hoard of locals that were signed up as extras. The crew set sail to a nearby location and returned banging weapons and hollering for the camera. [SplashNews]

I don’t know what’s going on in these, except that they seem to be carrying weapons and wearing elbow pads. The pads are probably wise, I’ve heard it gets slippery up there on the poop deck. Oh what, now you’re going to tell me I’m immature? Just because I crammed three wiener jokes and two poop jokes into this post? Whatever, man. I don’t respond to name calling. Seems like you’ve got a lot of growing up to do.

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Brad Pitt and Max Brooks - Separated at birth?

Back in 2007, Brad Pitt’s Plan B production company outbid Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way for the rights to Victoria’s Secret orgies, er, I mean the film rights to World War Z, Max Brooks’ tale of the zombie apocalypse. WWZ seemed like a dream that would never come true for us nerds who love the book and ridiculously anticipate a film adaptation, but it’s on like Sardar Kahn, as production is currently under way. Directed by Marc Forster (nice bandeezy, bro), WWZ stars Pitt as a United Nations researcher traveling the world documenting stories of the battles against the zombie hoards. What kind of stories? Cool stories, bro.

The rest of the cast is still a question mark, as Ed Harris and Matthew Fox have been rumored but are now detached, and it doesn’t really matter because we have the first pictures from the set of World War Z and that’s all we need to get super excited and squeal like schoolgirls. Of course, if this movie sucks we’ll all cry for weeks, but we’ll climb that wall of zombie bodies when we come to it.

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Two years ago, Sony pulled the plug on a Brad Pitt-starring, Steven Soderbergh adaptation of Michael Lewis’ statisticky baseball book, Moneyball, just a few days before it was to begin shooting. Soderbergh had planned to shoot it in an “informal, documentary” style, which kind of makes sense, seeing as how the book is non-fiction.  But studios tend to be terrified of anything unconventional, so they brought in Capote director Bennett Miller and got a rewrite of the script from Aaron Sorkin, who’s brilliant at writing slick Hollywood stuff that’s just entertaining enough that you forgive it for not being very realistic (“How do I know you weren’t studying? Because you go to B.U.!“).  So that’s why now, instead of people talking about statistics like in the book, we see some old guy asking Brad Pitt “Who’s Fabio?” to illustrate how out of touch old baseball scouts are.  Oh well.  At least Sandra Bullock’s not teaching inner city blacks to play football.

"Pie?! There's no pieing in baseball!"

[hat tip: WithLeather]

Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life plays Cannes in just a few days, and opens in limited release in the US May 27th. Although I was already sold when I found out there’d be velociraptors in it, the studio still saw fit to release this latest clip, which you can watch below. In this scene, Brad Pitt’s character teaches his son to box, which he of course learned to do while researching his award-winning roles in Snatch, Fight Club, Meet Joe Black, and The Pacifier.  Try as Brad might to toughen the kid up, he still grows up to be Sean Penn.
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COOOOOGAAAAAAAN!

I don’t usually get too excited by promotional stills from upcoming movies, but in case you’re interested, here’s a first look Brad Pitt in Cogan’s Trade. OMG, he’s wearing a necklace! Cogan’s Trade is the third film from director Andrew Dominik, who previously did Chopper and the Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Casey Affleck. Cogan just wrapped shooting in New Orleans, with Pitt, James Gandolfini, and Sam Shepard. The film is based on a 1974 novel by George V. Higgins, which sounds like a Bawston stawry about cawps and rawbbahs.  New Orleans doesn’t seem like a very good stand-in for Boston, but I guess that’s the magic of… uh… Hollywood.  Are we still calling it that?  When’s the last time someone actually shot a movie there?

Cogan’s Trade is the top-notch crime novel rated by the New Yorker as the “best” from “the Balzac of the Boston underworld.” Crackling dialogue, mordant humor, and unremitting tension drive the suspenseful stakes of the game higher in Boston’s precarious underworld of small-time mobsters, crooked lawyers, and political gofers as George V. Higgins, the writer who boiled crime fiction harder, tracks Jackie Cogan’s career in a gangland version of law and order. For Cogan is an enforcer; and when the Mob’s rules get broken, he gets hired to ply his trade—murder. In the gritty, tough-talking pages of Higgins’s 1974 national best-seller, Cogan is called in when a high-stake card game under the protection of the Mob is heisted. [Amazon, picture via SlashFilm]

HEY, TAWMMY, AH YOU GONNA READ MY FACKIN’ NAWVEL?  It gawt rated “best” by the New Yawkah.

The New Yawkah?  Sounds queah.