Fry pondering the age-old question, "Should I headbutt Nick Lachey*?"

I won’t sit here and pretend I’m one of those super-hip anglophiles that knows who Stephen Fry is (I assumed he was Glenn’s brother and rocked a double-neck guitar in an Eagles tribute band), but for those of you who are, hold onto your scarves, because that dude is playing Sherlock Holmes’ brother Mycroft in the sequel to the Robert Downey vehicle, Sherlock Holmes.  Fry broke the news recently as a guest on Danny Baker’s BBC 5 Live show, where he had this to say:

“I’m playing Mycroft in the sequel to the Sherlock Holmes film Guy Ritchie directed with Robert Downey Jr., and that sort of part is fun, but just once in a while to play a genuine all round sort of lead figure with complexity and tragedy and wit and all the sort of things that Oscar [Wilde] had was a once-in-a-lifeftime thrill.”

Weh-he-hell, nice to see you’re on a first-name-only basis with dead literary figures, your majesty.  “Just da ovva day Oy wiz ‘avin’ a nosh wiff me mate, Biw Shakespeah, an’ ‘e reckons oy should play da Professah in Da Fast and Da Furious paht six, ‘e does.”   Anyway, I still haven’t seen Sherlock Holmes yet so I’m sort of indifferent to this news, but I think as long as we’re making exxxtreme adaptations of English literature, we should consider changing the name to Sherlock, Holmes! (*double suck it thrust*).

*As noted, it’s David Boreanaz (bore-my-anus?), not Nick Lachey.  But tell me that dude doesn’t look like Nick Lachey from the side.

A U.K. studio is planning a Treasure Island movie, but don’t get the wrong idea, it won’t be like those crusty old things your grandpa used to look at — what were those called?  Books?  Yeah, screw that.  This is gonna be more like if Roxxxy the Sexbot got fisted by an iPad.  I hope they call it Treasure Pterodactyl Planet.

Ecosse films wants to update the 19th century tale of pirates and buried gold for contemporary auds, playing up the relationship between Long John Silver and narrator Jim Hawkins.  Silver’s character will be hipper, in the style of Robert Downey Jr’s interpretation of Sherlock Holmes. [Variety]

Okay, so when I wrote that opening paragraph I was expecting this to sound a lot dumber.  Damned British people and their restraint.  I’m just thanking God no one used the word “bromance.”  But to be fair, if a gay subplot was ever in order, it’d be in a story about pirates.  All that sailing around on a boat full of muscular outlaws, no women in sight.  Look, I’m not sayin I’d bang a dude if I were aboard ship, but I’d sure as hell watch.

(“Open up, little man, I know you’re hiding a pot of gold in your belly.”)

Terry Gilliam recently did an interview with the Onion A/V Club, and you should read the whole thing, because he’s awesome, and what else are you going to read, Michael Phelps’ autobiography?  Anyway, he mentions that he’s still trying to get money for his Don Quixote movie, which now has Robert Duvall attached.  But it was also interesting to hear what he had to say about Avatar.

“Technically, it’s extraordinary work. And that’s where it sort of ends. We’ve seen the story before. We’ve seen so much of what’s been done there before, but I think he’s obviously moved the technology way ahead, to a point that who’s going to get the benefit from it is the real question. I think his system that he’s developed is obviously extraordinary, but you need these vast sums of money to create something like that. The thing that always amazes me about Cameron is how he uses the camera. I’ve always been amazed by that, ever since I first saw his films. And he continues to do it. It’s a dynamic that’s quite extraordinary, but as far as the ideas and everything else, nothing surprised me.”

“What he’s done is so difficult. And that deserves praise for something. I don’t know if it’s necessary, is my problem. I occasionally would pull the glasses off and say, “Did the depth mean that much to me?” And it didn’t. But it’s very lush work.” [source]

That’s right, he agrees with me, eat it.  He also had some thoughts on the new Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes:
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(I’m sorry.)

Almost from the beginning of production, there’s been talk of a gay subtext between Holmes and Watson in the new Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes remake (often including the dreaded hybrid word ‘Bromance’  *shudder*).  Holmes star Robert Downey even played coy about it during a Letterman appearance (but keep in mind, coy is Robert Downey’s natural state).  Nonetheless, the chick who holds the US rights to Sherlock Holmes seems unamused.  From TotalFilm:

“I hope this is just an example of Mr Downey’s black sense of humour,” Andrea Plunket says. ”It would be drastic, but I would withdraw permission for more films to be made if they feel that is a theme they wish to bring out in the future.  “I am not hostile to homosexuals, but I am to anyone who is not true to the spirit of the books,” [...she said before loudly shushing the other library patrons. -Ed.]

What I want to know is, where the hell was Andrea Plunket’s Tolkien equivalent when Frodo and Sam were practically gargling each other’s balls in the Lord of the Rings movies?

Too busy having rough hobbit sex, I guess.   Mmm, yeah baby, my sword glows when your “orc” is around.  Now, call me “Mr.” and my first name.

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(“They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom, because this, this is our independence day, meow meow I’m king of the cat-monkeys, coo coo ka choo.”)

Over the weekend, Avatar passed Dark Knight to become the fifth movie in history to earn more than $1 billion worldwide (domestically, Dark Knight still leads by about $180m).  Number one all-time is Titanic, and now that Avatar stands at number four, James Cameron has directed two of the five (see the top five after the jump).  Sources say that upon hearing the news, he barbecued a unicorn over a slow-burning pit of $100 dollar bills, and after his personal chef finished it with a fine truffle and komodo-dragon sauce, a high-priced call girl spit it into his mouth while she pleasured herself with a gold bar.  And then the block quotes came:

“Avatar” has an advantage over those other billion-dollar movies: About 75 percent of its domestic business has come from theaters showing it in 3-D [which costs more].
[Overall] the year was strong but not a modern record-breaker for number of tickets sold. According to Hollywood.com, domestic admissions came in at 1.42 billion in 2009, the most in the last five years, though well below the modern record of 1.6 billion in 2002.
In Hollywood’s glory years of the 1930s and ’40s, before television eroded the movie audience, estimated movie attendance ran as high as 4 billion some years.
“Leave it to James Cameron to do this. To not only set the technical world on fire, the visual world on fire, but also the box-office world on fire 12 years after `Titanic,’” said Paul Dergarabedian, box-office analyst for Hollywood.com. [ABCNews]

Gee, Paul, that is some brilliant analysis.  “So you’re saying he did it by setting things on fire…” Michael Bay muttered to himself while quietly petting his cheetah.

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