I’ve been reading a lot about Coen Brother’s projects recently. They have No Country For Old Men opening soon and have announced four other projects to be completed over 2008 and 2009. Looking at the quality of work they have produced so far this is great news. The project that excites me the most though is their second next film, Burn After Reading.

I’ve heard critics go on about an amazing cast before but this is the first time I’ve been wowed by a cast list in my life. John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, George Clooney and Brad Pitt. I mean what a cast for such talented film-makers to have. This has got to be good right? Right?

I had the misfortune of seeing Spider-Man 3 last night. Before I go any further I’d like to point out that I really liked Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2. I was looking forward to seeing this film as with Raimi, Maguire and Dunst still involved I believed they had one more good film in them. How wrong I was.

I just don’t know where to begin with my complaints about this film. While watching it I was reminded over and over again of the Joel Schumacher Batman films. Maybe it was because Christopher Young’s score reminded me of the music Elliot Goldenthal gave us in Batman Forever and Batman & Robin? Why anyone would decide to replace the excellent Danny Elfman I don’t know but that was the least of their mistakes.

Just like Schumacher’s massacres, Spider-Man 3 had too many characters and the story was fragmented. The film was also far too long. Raimi is a very good director and showed his skills with the first two films, so where did it all go wrong? The fragmentation and overly long running time must be down to either the director or the editor, but Raimi and Bob Murowski worked on all three films. I found the answer after further investigation of the credits. The first two films were written by David Koepp and Alvin Sargent both professional scriptwriters. For Spider-Man 3, Sargent was joined by Raimi and his brother, Ivan Raimi.

Ivan is a doctor by trade, although does have a few writing credits, and Sam has several writing credits - the most notable being The Hudsucker Proxy, although it must be hard to go wrong working with the excellent Coen brothers. It’s not that I think the Raimi brothers are incapable of writing a decent screenplay, I merely feel that Sam Raimi had things too much his own way on this film and it didn’t work. It is a real shame and watching the film I got the impression that Raimi’s attention was elsewhere. Maybe he was thinking about The Hobbit or maybe there were too many family members around?

His other brother Ted played Hoffman (J. Jonah Jameson’s suck up assistant) and his children Lorne, and Henry had small parts in the film. There’s also a Emma Raimi in the cast list but I couldn’t find any confirmation that she was Sam’s daughter.

The news that Spider-Man 4, 5 and 6 have been confirmed doesn’t make me happy, but I don’t expect Raimi, Maguire or Dunst to be involved. It’ll be interesting to see who they get. At least David Koepp looks to be back on writing duties.

Edward Norton is to play the Incredible Hulk in Louis Leterrier’s new version, The Incredible Hulk.

I’m not a big Hulk fan but still there’s something about this casting that doesn’t sit right with me. Norton doesn’t seem like the right choice and The Incredible Hulk doesn’t seem like the right project for Norton. I have a feeling it’ll go the same way as Nicholas Cage’s Superman project a few years back.

Leterrier’s previous directorial outings were both Transporter movies and Unleashed. While I didn’t hate The Transporter and I haven’t seen his other work, his track record doesn’t fill me with hope that this will be better than Ang Lee’s effort.

Everybody is talking about the CGI effects in ‘300‘, and meanwhile the incredible feat of producing ‘Shooter‘ is passing practically under the radar.

The producers of Shooter located a film originally shot in 1982, which had the misfortune to languish in post production for three years when ‘Rambo: First Blood Part II’ came out and made the 1982 film obsolete before it had ever been released.

Having sourced their base stock, the producers of Shooter then went about the extremely difficult task of using CGI to transpose Mark Wahlberg’s face over that of the original, unknown, eighties actor and electronically modifying the voice to sound like that of Wahlberg’s

Some extra footage was shot, mostly in the FBI offices to include current actors, and further CGI was used to age original actors in the eighties film, Danny Glover and Ned Beatty.

I mean, that’s the only possible explanation for this film.

As a follow up to my previous post Cate Blanchet and Ray Winston are to star in the new Indiana Jones movie.

Having recently seen Sexy Beast, and knowing for some time that Cate Blanchet is an excellent actress, I am now feeling a bit more positive about this project. Of course, George Lucas saying that Harrison Ford would play his age was good news too.

Title and plot details will be kept under raps until the first Trailer appears some time in November.

Indy 4 opens Worldwide on the 22nd of May, 2008.