Wouldn't Quadrophenia 2 just be Octophenia?

It's not often you find yourself agreeing wholeheartedly with The Who, but their reaction to the plans for a sequel to Quadrophenia are pretty much spot-on:

Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey have denied involvement, calling the project "a blatant attempt to cash in".

In a strongly-worded statement, they said: "For the avoidance of doubt, this project isn't endorsed by The Who, Who Films, Universal or any of the other rights owners of the original."
Bill Curbishley, the band's manager who produced the original film, added: "Quadrophenia is a significant and influential film based on The Who's music, not some Carry On franchise.

"Any follow-up could only be made by the authors of the original and would need to be worthy of the name. This karaoke sequel announced recently would be totally ridiculous."

The filmmakers, though, think they've got this covered:

the follow-up would be set in the present day and based around events in the book To Be Someone, by Peter Meadows, which was inspired by the original movie.

His book picks up where the narrative of The Who's album (rather than the film) ends, following the hero, Jimmy, through the punk era as he becomes a drug dealing gangster.

Director Ray Burdis - who previously produced The Krays, starring Gary and Martin Kemp - claimed Townshend had given Meadows' book the seal of approval, suggesting this counted as an endorsement for his film.

Yes. That's exactly how that works.

Do you know the way to Knotty Ash?

The Dionne Warwick biopic sounds like it might be, erm, singular:

[It was] announced at a Cannes Film Festival press conference this morning; with Warwick herself confirming the project. The soul icon also revealed to the crowd that [Cilla] Black – who died last August – “stole” her music, and was her “nemesis”.

Yeah. Cilla Black as the evil genius in a movie. I suppose at least she has a name that sounds like a half-arsed scriptwriter would give to such a character.

Can this project sound any more like something which will never see the light of day?

Lady Gaga has been cast as Cilla Black

Yes. Yes, it can.

Suede: Filmstars

Four-fifths of me is very excited about this:

One-fifth of me is thinking 'Broadchurch: The Concept Album".

Left out of Compton

There's showbiz for you. One moment, you're a threat to the status quo, with the President worrying over your lyrics. The next, you've been assimilated into a Hollywood biopic.

So it is that NWA, who once threatened revolution in the streets find themselves atop the multiplexes. It shouldn't be much of a surprise - after all, we're several years past the time Eazy-E took lunch with President Bush at a Republican fundraiser:

The good people of Compton, though, won't be able to see their neighbourhood's moment in the sun - Compton doesn't have a cinema.

Although that's not quite as isolating as Digital Spy tries to make it sound. Because...

Dr Dre and Ice Cube fans will have to journey 4 miles east to Paramount's Bianchi Stadium theatre to witness their city depicted on-screen.

A four mile trip to the cinema isn't exactly onerous, is it? People in the suburbs of Brighton have to travel further than that to get to the pictures, and nobody's suggesting Straight Outta Withdean is going to get green lit soon.

More worryingly is the excising of Dre's treatment of women. Dre beat Dee Barnes, and she wonders why this isn't mentioned in the biopic:

That event isn’t depicted in Straight Outta Compton, but I don’t think it should have been, either. The truth is too ugly for a general audience. I didn’t want to see a depiction of me getting beat up, just like I didn’t want to see a depiction of Dre beating up Michel’le, his one-time girlfriend who recently summed up their relationship this way: “I was just a quiet girlfriend who got beat on and told to sit down and shut up.”

But what should have been addressed is that it occurred. When I was sitting there in the theater, and the movie’s timeline skipped by my attack without a glance, I was like, “Uhhh, what happened?” Like many of the women that knew and worked with N.W.A., I found myself a casualty of Straight Outta Compton’s revisionist history.

Hollywood likes its gritty stories. But just not with too much reality. After all, you don't want your heroes to be unrelatable, right?

It turns out Jar Jar Binks could have been even worse

According to Ahmed Best, who played the most universally despised figure ever to appear on film (and, yes, that's including Triumph Of The Will), his part in Star Wars nearly went to Michael Jackson:

"Me, Natalie Portman, and George's kids - we were at Wembley Arena at Michael Jackson's concert. We were taken backstage and we met Michael.

"There was Michael and Lisa Marie [Presley]. George introduced me as 'Jar Jar' and I was like, 'That's kind of weird.' Michael was like, 'Oh. OK.' I thought, 'What is going on?'

"After Michael had driven off, we all go back up to a big afterparty. I'm having a drink with George and I said, 'Why did you introduce me as Jar Jar?"

"He said, 'Well, Michael wanted to do the part but he wanted to do it in prosthetics and make-up like Thriller.' George wanted to do it in CGI."

Best's theory is that Lucas didn't want to have Jacko in the film because his presence would have overwhelmed the movie. Which is a bit like someone taking a poo in the kitchen sink but moving the dishcloths first so it doesn't get too unhygienic.

Kathleen Hanna is a monster

Well, she's actually pretending to be a monster - she's voicing the lead character in the Myrna The Monster cartoon about an alien coming to terms with growing into adulthood:

“I think just that [Myrna]’s so awkward and she seems kind of like, you know she really wants to be a part of things but doesn’t really know how,” Hanna says. She also says she can relate deeply to Myrna on that level. “I’ve always been a person who like, I make friends by doing projects. If I need friends, I start a basketball team or a band, some kind of project that involves other people. I don’t really know how to just straight-up make a friend, you know what I mean? I’ve always felt socially awkward.”

Not entirely sure how successful you could be at forming a basketball team while being socially awkward, but you get the point.

You ain't no Shirley Bassey

Is there anything more likely to turn your whole body in on itself than the sight of those adverts movie companies place trying to get votes from Oscars judges?

Oh, hang on, there is. A new level of cringe:

Dear @007 Ive been waiting patiently to be able to sing the next theme.I was BORN to do it.Please don't give it to someone else again!

— Paloma Faith (@Palomafaith) February 6, 2015

I don't think they choose the Bond theme that way, Paloma.

Rule of thumb: If a medium won't work when you post 'OMG HARRY STYLES MARRY ME', it probably isn't the best place to audition for a high profile job. Except that time Mark Carney did '@georgeosborne I could so be Bank Boss have got new calculater ;)'

When life gives you lemons, you just push back the deadline

A general lack of interest in giving insurance salesperson Iggy Pop money to make a film in which Iggy played The Sandman looked set to keep the movie unmade.

Trouble is, rather than shrugging off the failure to raise the crowdfunding target, they just pushed the deadline back by a month.

For the time being, though, you'll just have to make do with this:

The horror: if you say 'Iggy' three times, you lose your no-claims bonus and have to pay a £500 excess.

Mercury falling

That Freddie Mercury film? The one with Sacha Baron Cohen/hold on no it's Ben Whishaw as Fred?
Starting to look increasingly like it's never going to happen. The Telegraph's Mandrake column brings the news:

So when will Whishaw actually set about the business of rocking us? “Actually, I don’t know what’s happening, it seems to be on the back-burner,” the Paddington star now admits in an interview with Time Out London. “It was going, then there were problems getting the script working.”

I'm taking this to mean the studio are going "he's being gay on too many pages", but it could simply be they're asking if Brian May wouldn't mind if his character became a wisecracking CGI badger. (I suspect Brian May wouldn't mind.)

Greg Allman wants his life back

They're making a film about Greg Allman. Or maybe they're not.

Things are going grimly - during a first shoot, the crew were hit by a train, killing camera assistant Sarah Jones and injuring six others. Making it worse, the railroad claim the movie company, Unclaimed Freight, hadn't sought permission to film on its property.

Shortly after this, William Hurt - who had signed on to play Allman - quit the project.

Greg Allman now wants to stop the film altogether. He's suing to get the rights back. ABC explains:

Allman's attorneys say "Midnight Rider" producers lost their rights to the singer's life story when they failed to start principal photography by Feb. 28 and came up $9,000 short of an unspecified sum they had agreed to pay Allman for those film rights. The lawsuit says both those conditions were spelled out in Allman's contract with Unclaimed Freight.

The producers are keeping quite, but apparently believe the footage they got before people died counts as principal photography, and intend to plough on with the film.

Because there's nothing like a film based on an autobiography where the subject doesn't want you to make it, is there?

Jordan Catalano as Ringo Starr

Apparently Liam Gallagher is still grimly pressing on with his joyless Beatle film project and, oh, is he setting his sights high:

Gallagher is preparing to hold castings in Los Angeles in April (14), and Leto, as well as Before Midnight's Ethan Hawke, are on the shortlist to star in the movie, according to the U.K.'s The Sun newspaper.

An insider tells the publication, "He knows he's not going to manage to entice someone like Brad Pitt but he wants high-calibre people who are more on the indie scene of Hollywood. He thinks actors such as Jared and Ethan would be perfect."

Bless him. "I might not quite get Brad Pitt, but hey, Jared Leto is probably sitting around waiting for the chance to get a meaty role."

Shane Ritchie and the bloke who played Fred Elliott are holding slots in their diaries, Liam.

Hanna movie gets UK distribution

The Punk Singer, the movie about Kathleen Hanna, is getting a proper UK distribution.

Dogwoof have picked up UK rights:

"We’re very much looking forward to releasing The Punk Singer alongside Kathleen Hanna’s return to the U.K. with the Julie Ruin tour in late May – the film’s documenting of this remarkable woman and the Riot Grrrl scene will no doubt go on to inspire a whole new audience in addition to the existing fanbase,” said [head of distribution Oli] Harbottle.

I suspect that unless there's also a 3D version you might still have to travel a little further than the nearest multiplex to see it, but good news for people who have the sort of cinemas which would show this sort of film.

How Hollywood works

- Should we really consider Bieber for Robin in the new Superman movie?
- Can the kid act?
- Maybe he won't even be interested
- Perhaps we should send him a script
- No way; the kid's a loose canon. We can't be sure that he won't leak details.
- I've got a solution; if we plaster his name across the script, he won't be able to leak it, as it'll be obvious where the leak's from
- Genius. Make it so.

Twenty four hours later...

- Uh... boss...?

Filmobit: Gilbert Taylor

Gilbert Taylor has died.

Amongst the many, many other credits in his long career, Taylor was cinematographer on A Hard Day's Night.

Beyond that, though, he did the cinematography for the slightly less-celebrated Ferry Cross The Mersey:

Rather optimistically described as Gerry And The Pacemaker's "first full length picture".

Somewhere between the two extremes was It's Trad Dad, perhaps the greatest film David Jacobs ever made:

But the greatest contribution to the rock/movie crossover genre Taylor made was the splendid Tommy The Toredaor. Together, preserved for all time, Sid James and Tommy Steele:

Nick Cave wrote a sequel to Gladiator

If you were going to come up with a sequel to a popular Hollywood hit movie, would you put in a call to Nick Cave?

No, we wouldn't, either. But Russell Crowe is not like us, and thought Cave would be the man for the job. Despite it being Nick Cave, and his character being dead.

Cave came up with a plot. Or possibly lost one. Hard to say:

"So, he goes down to purgatory and is sent down by the gods, who are dying in heaven because there's this one god, there's this Christ character, down on Earth who is gaining popularity and so the many gods are dying so they send Gladiator back to kill Christ and his followers.

I wanted to call it Christ Killer," Cave continues. "And in the end you find out that the main guy was his son, so he has to kill his son and he was tricked by the gods. He becomes this eternal warrior and it ends with this 20 minute war scene which follows all the wars in history, right up to Vietnam and all that sort of stuff and it was wild."

It's hard to believe this movie was never made, isn't it?

It's a pity they didn't give the new Star Wars trilogy to Nick.

Star Wars: You weren't expecting that, eh? Eh? Eh?

Apparently, there's going to be some surprise casting for the disappointing third Star Wars trilogy:

"Almost every actress in Hollywood wants a role in the new movies but we are keen to cast people who are unexpected."

This, a source, talking to The Sun, supposedly, quoted in the NME.

Did I say surprise casting? I meant stunt casting:

"Florence is being considered for a major part that would turn her into an A-list actress overnight."

The idea that dumping a fairly successful pop singer in a large movie role is "unexpected" is almost sweet.

Just a point, though: being handed a large role in a big Disney film doesn't actually make you an actress. It could just make you over-promoted.

I genuinely don't know if Welch has the acting talent to carry such a role; if she has, it'd be nice to think she got it because of that talent, rather than because someone at Disney wanted to cast "surprises".

Gordon in the morning: Kelly Jones dreams of a fold-up chair with Jones written on it

Excitement this morning, as the Bizarre homepage teases us with news:

'PHONICS star wants to direct films after success writing movie script

I hadn't heard about a Kelly Jones script being made into a successful movie. That really is big news.

Lets see what's happened:

First up on the movie front is a screenplay he’s written in conjunction with Stereophonics’ new album Graffiti On The Train.

Aside from plugging the band’s latest effort, Kelly is busy attending meetings with the likes of BAFTA and Film Agency Wales to get his script off the ground.

He’s hoping the film will go into production within the next year.

Ah. So when Gordon is lauding "success writing music script", the success has come in the form of successfully typing one out.

(I suspect it should be the BFI rather than BAFTA, too; although why public money should support a film that sounds like a promo for a Stereophonics album is something of a mystery.)

Bookmarks: Pete Doherty

Peter Bradshaw has gone to see Pete Doherty's Confession Of A Child Of The Century for The Guardian. You need to read the whole thing, but here's a taste:

It's not exactly like seeing a dog walk on its hind legs. It's more like seeing one of those dogs on the TV show That's Life! that could say "sausages". Only instead of saying "sausages", it's saying, "You understand, madam, that I am the greatest libertine in all Paris!" while wearing a top hat.

Gordon in the morning: Kravitz to be Gaye for pay

Lenny Kravitz is being lined up for the role of Marvin Gaye in Julien Temple's biopic.

I guess he could lip-sync to the songs.

If the casting wasn't bad enough, the focus of the film doesn't sound that great, the way Gordon describes it:

Lenny will portray Marvin in the early 1980s when he had moved to London while struggling with booze and tax bills.

Part of me really wants to see Lenny Kravitz pretending to be a drunk man struggling to balance his deductibles column for an hour and a half. Most of me doesn't.

Gordon in the morning: Rolling closing credits in the deep

Gordon pulls together a bunch of creepy-stalkery details on Adele's movements that he thinks links her to the next Bond movie:

She first hinted that she’d been offered the 007 spot in a chat with Jonathan Ross last year.

Soon after that Adele started preliminary sessions with producer Paul Epworth.

Her visit to the historic Abbey Road facilities suggests she’s been recording with Thomas Newman, the man director Sam Mendes has hired to take charge of the Bond music.

"Also, I found a dog-eared copy of the novelisation of Moonraker lying on her bedside cabinet, and I collected some hair from her hairbrush which I used to make a locket which... uh... no, forget the hair bit."

But hang on a moment, is Smart really piecing this together?

BOND bosses are being more secretive than MI6 over who will sing over the closing credits of the latest 007 flick Skyfall.

The appearance of the word "closing" there is curious - wouldn't the normal assumption be that you'd be hiding in the bins watching Adele record the opening theme? Unless, of course, you weren't really using deductive skills and were just trying to disguise some sort of leak.