Twitching Powder

Ari turned me on to Twitch Film, a really cool movie website that focuses on Asian films, but not exclusively. The great thing about Twitch is that they update all the same movie news you'd get on the big websites, like Ain't It Cool or Dark Horizons, without all the endless fanboy blather. You don't have to hear the guys at Twitch go on and on and on about how they went white-water rafting with Stephen Sommers or played a really satisfying four-hour game of hackeysack with some of the Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl animators.

And now, a couple of cool recent updates...

First, and most importantly, news on a whole slew of upcoming projects from one of my favorite working directors, Terry Gilliam. Not a lot has worked out for Gilliam thus far this decade - in addition to last year's financially and artistically disappointing Brothers Grimm, Gilliam's long-awaited Don Quixote movie fell apart a few weeks into production, and he has since lost the rights.

But things are looking up! In addition to Tideland, due out some time in 2006, Gilliam has a bunch of other films planned that might actually make it to theaters eventually.

Up first is word that Gilliam has signed on to direct Anything For Billy, a western based on Larry McMurtry's Billy the Kid novel of the same title and scripted by McMurty himself.

Sounds pretty sweet. McMurtry, of course, is the favorite to win an Oscar this year for his work adapting the short story Brokeback Mountain. So another Western-themed script of his would easily find financing. Hopefully, Gilliam will be attached at that time, as I'd be fascinated to see what he'd do with a more traditional genre film like a Western.

And as exciting as new Gilliam is, Screendaily also updates the status of three Gilliam projects thought dead. They confirm the longstanding rumors that the man is in the process of reacquiring all rights to The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, so that will be coming somewhere down the line. Even bigger news is that Good Omens aint dead yet, and Gilliam has apparently even revived The Defective Detective, on which he'll apparently be collaborating with Dave McKean!

This is just awesome news. Gilliam's been trying to get Defective Detective going for years now. We talked about it briefly when I interviewed him for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, way back in the late 90's. Good Omens would also be a fun film, an adaptation of a very silly novel by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. (Pratchett is, of course, responsible for the "Discworld" books while comic book writer/novelist Gaiman wrote 2005's Mirrormask).

And anyone who has seen the documentary Lost in La Mancha, about the tragic, failed Gilliam production of Man Who Killed Don Quixote will be excited to see that film finally coming together. The few scenes that had been completed looked creepy and odd and visionary in that usual Gilliam way.

Next up, it seems that Laser Blazer customer and Devil's Backbone director Guillermo del Toro is planning to film a script called "Killing on Carnival Row," a serial killer mystery set in a fantasy world populated by fairies.

"Set in a mystical and dark city filled with humans, fairies and other creatures, the story centers on a police detective investigating a series of murders unleashed against the fairies. The detective becomes the prime suspect and must find the real killer to clear his name."

Don't get me wrong...It sounds kind of cool, and I'm sure GDT will make the thing look great. But I'd much rather see him work on Hellboy 2 or his long-discussed Lovecraft adaptation "In the Mountains of Madness" or even that "Wind in the Willows" project that was rumored forever ago. I'm glad the guy will move on to something else after the release of Pan's Labyrinth later this year, but this is the least exciting of all the prospects I've heard thus far.

Unless, you know, the script is awesome. I haven't read it, and know nothing about it other than that paragraph.

In our final item today, Twitch hosts the trailer for Terry Zwigoff's Art School Confidential, opening in April of this year and surely one of my most eagerly anticipated 2006 films. It's a reunion of writer Daniel Clowes, who wrote the graphic novel that became Ghost World, and that film's director, Zwigoff, who made a big splash in the intervening time with Bad Santa.

The new film features a large ensemble of unknown young actors, as well as John Malkovich, Jim Broadbent, Angelica Huston and Steve Buscemi. If you don't really want to see this film, I kind of don't want to know you.