Random Movie Stuff - 4/21/12

- Guy Pearce (Memento, Lockout) is set to join the cast of Iron Man 3.  He'd play geneticist Aldrich Killian, who sells nanotechnology to terrorists to help them spread a virus.  Ben Kingsley's also on board, and returning are Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow and Don Cheadle.  It's scheduled to open May 3, 2013.  Pearce can be seen in this summer's Prometheus.

- Paul Feig (Bridesmaids) is in talks to direct Wish List, about a girl who makes ten wishes on a coin and throws it into a magical fountain.  Unbeknownst to her, the coin got tstuck and didn't make it to the bottom, but twenty years later it gets unstuck and hits the bottom, causing all ten wishes to suddenly come true and disrupt her life. It stars Reese Witherspoon.

- Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is finally moving forward, and the first two confirmed returnees are Mickey Rourke and Rosario Dawson.

- Jonathan Frid, who played vampire barnabas Collins on the original Dark Shadows sopa opera, has died at age 87.  He did film a cameo in Tim Burton's Dark Shadows, which opens next month.

Passion Play - DVD Review

l 1/2

Starring Mickey Rourke, Megan Fox, Bill Murray, Kelly Lynch, Rhys Ifans, Rory Cochrane and Robert Wisdom. Directed by Mitch Glazer.

The writer of Scrooged and The Recruit makes his directorial debut with this arthouse oddity that aspires to be David Lynchian but misses the mark by a wide, wide mile.

Mickey Rourke plays Nate Pool, a trumpet player on the run from a mobster named Happy (Bill Murray) that wants to kill him. One of Happy's henchmen takes Nate into the middle of the desert to kill him, but the henchman is gunned down by some Indians wearing all-white who say nothing and run off. And that's the last we see of them.

Nate wanders through the desert for hours and happens upon a carnival. Love those carnivals in the middle of nowhere. Alas it is not led by a dwarf named Samson; it's run by a mustache-twirling barker played by Rhys Ifans. As he wanders the grounds, he finds Lily (Megan Fox), a woman on display because she has angel wings, literally.

Nate rescues her, but Happy is hot on his trail, and once he learns of Lily's wings, he wants her for himself.

Glazer has some obvious talent, and the quirky cast does what they can, but what the freak is this movie trying to do? How can you have a plot like this and try to play it as straight as The Wrestler? It held my interest for a while, but it meanders halfway through until it sputters and dies with a laughable climax.