_{Ladies always look like this when I have sex with them. “Why me?” they shout.}

Old Boy director Chan-Wook Park has a movie about a vampire priest coming out in May called Thirst.  You can watch the trailer below. I can’t understand it because it’s all in Korean, but I think it’s safe to say Park’s vampires won’t be abstinent pussies like Twilight‘s been trying to sell us.  Oh hi, Bella. I already owe my soul to Satan, so it makes complete sense that I’d never kill people or have sex or use any of my awesome superpowers.  The only thing that would make this better is if at the end Wesley Snipes burst in and killed everyone with a samurai sword. 
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Even though I hate some of these peoples’ movies (Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, for instance – puke) by pretty much any objective assessment, the lineup for the Cannes Film Festival in May is a film dork’s wet dream. This list isn’t finalized or complete, but here are some of the films officially rumored to be playing:

Pedro Almodovar’s Broken Embraces, (opens in Spain on March 18 so seems a fair bet)
Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant and The Girlfriend Experience (a friend tells me the latter film will probably hit at Tribeca first)
Lars von Trier’s Antichrist
Cristian Mungiu’s Tales From the Golden Age
The Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man
Gaspar Noe’s Enter the Void
Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock
The new Michael Moore documentary (possibly titled, “Bailout”)
Fatih Akin’s Soul Kitchen (“The Edge Of Heaven” was in our Top 20 of 2008, he’s amazing)
Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon
Ron Howard’s Angels and Demons
Jane Campion’s Bright Star
Todd Solondz’s [Editor’s note: director of Happiness, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s most underrated performance.] Forgiveness (btw, we were right about the title)
Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control (opens in the U.S. in late May, so seems perfect for the early-mid May Cannes festival)
Ken Loach’s Looking For Eric
Neil Jordan’s Ondine
Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium Of Dr Parnassus [Ledger's last role]
Park Chan-wook’s vampire drama Thirst
and of course Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourius Basterds if he can finish on time. [via ThePlaylist & HollywoodElsewhere]

So Steven Soderbergh did two Che movies last year and he’s already finishing two more by May?  Does that guy ever sleep?  I think maybe he’s been dipping into Tarantino’s coke stash. In any case, I wish I wasn’t too poor to go to France, both because of the movies and because it’s been rumored that there’s a place there where the ladies wear no pants.  I think I read that somewhere.

Filmschoolrejects recently caught up with Will Smith while he was out promoting Seven Pounds, and Smith wanted to clarify that his Oldboy remake with Steven Spielberg is not a direct remake of Chan Wook-Park’s film, as was reported this week.

“We’re looking at that right now. Not the film though, it’s the original source material. There’s the original comics of ‘Oldboy’ that they made the first film from. And that’s what we’re working from, not an adaptation of the film…,”

So not only is this an ill-advised remake, it’s yet another comic-book movie.  Thanks, now I feel much better.  And with Will Smith in the lead, I’m sure it’ll be edgy as hell.  Let’s face it, the guy can’t walk five feet without doing something controvertial, like screamin “Kill whitey!” or “Dogs f-ck the pope!” or “Gayness should be taught in Kindergarten!”    He’s pretty much the black Lenny Bruce.

If you haven’t seen Chan Wook-Park’s Old Boy, you need to rent it right away because it’s pretty legit.  Unless you can’t read subtitles, in which case it’d probably just be depressing.  Anyway, as you may have guessed from the headline, Spielberg is trying to get the rights and wants to do a remake for Universal starring Will Smith.

In the 2003 Korean original, a man gets kidnapped and held in a shabby cell for 15 years without explanation. Suddenly, he’s released and given money, a cell phone and clothes and is set on a path to discover who destroyed his life so he can take revenge. [Variety]

Spielberg isn’t nearly as shitty a filmmaker as George Lucas, and I’m even willing to concede he’s made some pretty good movies (Jurassic Park, Minority Report, Saving Private Ryan…), but one thing the dude most certainly does not have a talent for is dark and edgy.  And if he remakes Old Boy, with Will “I only play good guys” Smith of all people, it’s going to be the most dickless watered-down hero story ever.  If you want to know what Spielberg does with edgy material, just watch the last 30 minutes of AI.  It’s a good thing that kid from Virginia Tech already killed a bunch of people, because this probably would’ve put him over the edge.  Okay, so on second thought, I guess that’s probably not a good thing, but I think we all know what I meant.  Shut up, you were thinking it too.