The other day Vince and I were making S’mores and chatting about life, when he pointed out that 2011 was the 20th anniversary of the end of the Cold War, that era in world history when everyone lived in pants-crapping fear that the U.S. and Russia were going to destroy us all. More importantly than global genocide and the threat of a nuclear holocaust, the Cold War had an undeniable impact on the movie industry, most notably in creating one of the easiest and most overused plot devices of the last 50 years.

Obviously, the Cold War gave us classics like Dr. Strangelove, The Manchurian Candidate, and the entire James Bond franchise. It also gave us The Hunt for Red October and Tom Clancy’s career, as well as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and wherever else Shia LeBeouf and his grandfather Harrison Ford take us. It gave us The Manhattan Project, The Good Shepherd, Thirteen Days, Top Gun, Good Night, and Good Luck, and even Salt, which was a modern reminder of just how hilariously off-the-wall – and flat out terrible – some Cold War films were.

In fact, those are the films that I want to celebrate – the movies that both embraced the terrifying nightmare of global war and laughed in the face of four decades of silent terror. Because without them, we’d probably all be living in mountain bunkers or adapting to our tentacles.

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A lot of people say Robert DeNiro outlived his integrity and started making crappy paycheck movies a few years ago, but I bet those haters will change their tune once they hear that he’s teaming up with John Travolta and the director of Ghost Rider and Daredevil to do a film written by the guy who did Snow White and the Huntsman, that movie where Kristen Stewart plays a version of Snow White who wears armor and sword fights people. I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, but this sounds like it has the potential to be the next Raging Bull, or Heat.

Millennium Films, Corsan Pictures and FilmEngine will begin production January 16 on “Killing Season,” starring Robert De Niro and John Travolta. Mark Steven Johnson (“Ghost Rider,” “Daredevil”) will direct from a script by Evan Daugherty (“Snow White and the Huntsman”).
“Killing Season” is an action movie set in the Appalachian Mountains about an American military veteran (De Niro) who has retreated to a remote cabin in the woods. When a rare visitor, a European tourist (Travolta), appears on the scene, the two men strike up an unlikely friendship. But in fact the visitor is a former Serbian soldier bent on revenge. What follows is a tense, action packed battle across some of America’s most forbidding landscape that proves the old adage: the purest form of war is one-on-one. [Deadline]

They also say “Juan on Juan” is the purest form of Mexican basketball. My father taught me that. Anyway, a military veteran, a remote cabin in the woods, an old enemy bent on revenge… is it just me, or does this sound a lot like a Seagal movie plot? Just change the title to “Season for Killing,” and have Seagal play Colonel Frank Season.

Jeez, you two, get a log flume!

Gotti: In the Shadow of My Father was a doomed-from-the-start comedy of errors almost from the start, as would be true of any production that stunt-cast Lindsay Lohan for publicity. This story had so many moving parts that I don’t think I could properly sum them up, so I’ll farm out that duty to Brendon at WWTDD:

I used to think the producers of the John Gotti movie (including Stuttering John) were poser retards who had no idea what the f*ck they were doing. But it turns out their website plays the Madonna song ‘Hollywood’, which is where many movies are made. You can’t get much more professional than that.
And then they cast big names like John Travolta (who will act in literally anything and hasn’t made a good movie since 1998) and Lindsay Lohan (in a role so prestigious they first offered it to Kim Kardashian) and, amazingly enough, Joe Pesci.

Then they somehow managed to get Joe Pesci, a legendary actor who’s been in two movies since 1998, to put on 30 pounds to play a mob enforcer, but for some reason then tried to get him to agree to a smaller role and promptly got sued for $3 million. Nick Cassavetes was onboard to direct, then Barry Levinson. Now, it may shock you to learn, this brilliantly-conceived movie project may never see the light of day:

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This John Gotti biopic project, which always sounded more like some slimey producer’s wishful thinking passed off as reality over starlets and cocaine than an actual movie that was getting made, is really happening, at least if Variety is to be believed.  And Variety uses insidery slang like “thesps” and “helmer”, so I have no reason to doubt them.

Al Pacino has joined the cast of indie mob drama Gotti: Three Generations opposite John Travolta, Kelly Preston, Joe Pesci, and Lindsay Lohan.  Pacino will portray Gotti associate neil Dellacroce.  The film will be directed and rewritten by Barry Levinson — who replaced Nick Cassavetes last month — with additional writing by James Toback. Levinson and Toback teamed more than two decades ago on Bugsy.

Toback last directed the documentary Tyson, and is one of the great Hollywood blowhards, in the style of Robert Evans.

Preston will play Victoria DiGiorgio, the wife of John Gotti Sr. The couple’s daughter, Ella Bleu Travolta, will play the role of their daughter, Angel Gotti. Joe Pesci is on board as Gotti deputy Angelo Ruggiero and Lindsay Lohan will play Kim Gotti, the wife of John Gotti Jr. [Variety]

It was mostly the lack of any well-known directors or writers that caused everyone’s skepticism about this project, along with the fact that producers who use Lindsay Lohan for publicity don’t have a great track record. Toback and Levinson are certainly known, but Levinson’s recent track record… ain’t great. His last couple projects were the HBO movie starring Pacino as Jack Kevorkian and a 30 for 30 documentary, but in terms of features that actually opened in theaters, you have to go all the way back to What Just Happened in 2008,which was panned and largely unseen, as were his films Man of the Year, Envy, Bandits (it got 65% on RT, but trust me, it sucks)…  pretty much everything he’s directed since Wag the Dog, in 1997.  Long story short, this movie probably isn’t going to be good, but I get the feeling the making-of, with its intersection of opportunistic mob families, sleazy producers, washed-up Hollywood types, coke-addled starlets, and closeted homosexual Scientologists, would make for an awesome Elmore Leonard story.

In the surprise story of the century, it seems the story Dina Lohan has been feeding TMZ about Lindsay being in talks to join the John Travolta-starring John Gotti biopic might actually be true (as opposed to, say, the time she was supposed to play Linda Lovelace in that film the director didn’t even have the rights to). There was a press conference today with the producer of the Gotti biopic (Marc Fiore, pictured), and aside from confirming that Lohan was indeed “in talks” to play John’s daughter Victoria (IT IS DEFINITELY MAYBE A POSSIBILITY!), they announced that Joe Pesci would play Gotti’s friend Angelo Ruggiero.  Then John Travolta got on the mic and spewed some typical Hollywood PR bullsh*t from his farting mouth-butt.

During the press conference at The Sheraton Hotel in midtown, the filmmakers said Joe Pesci will play Angelo Ruggiero. Travolta’s daughter will also have a role.

“This is probably the most interesting untold story in this country,” Travolta said, adding that a recent five-hour long meeting with Gotti Jr. put him over the top.

He cited the “beautiful love I feel from the family” and the dichotomy of Gotti Sr. as appealing, plus he said he is a fan of Growing up Gotti. [THR]

My favorite thing about covering entertainment are the statements celebrities make that are so preposterous that they make you wonder whether the teller is openly disdainful of his audience, believes the audience is so stupid that it doesn’t matter what they tell them, or just live such a charmed and utterly bullsh*t-soaked existence that they can’t even tell the difference between truth and bullsh*t anymore.  “The story of the Gotti family is probably the most interesting untold story in this country.  Also, I really loved that 41-episode reality show they made about them.”