News Week in Review 2nd July – 8th July 2007.

Maybe its just because its the summer and the time when things traditionally slow down but it feels really quiet on the news front at the moment. Its like being stuck with BBC 1 and endless repeats of Last of the Summer Wine, hopefully things will pick up after silly season ends.

* Following the success of 1408 stateside, a director for Stephen King's Insomnia has now been announced. Rob Schmidt who directed the short but effective Wrong Turn back in 2003 has been sat in the director's chair for this one. Anyone who is a big follower of King's Dark Tower series knows how heavily Insomnia links with that series and is probably scratching their heads as to how they are going to do it. Or will it have anything to do with the proposed Dark Tower adaptation by JJ Abrams?? hmmmmmm

* Even though it makes it cinematic bow on August 31st, apparently heavy re-shoots are taking place on Rob Zombie's Halloween remake. The new material consists of six new murders and a ton of gore. What?? Rob Zombie adding additional violence??? This from the man who made House of 1000 corpses and Devils Rejects?? This isn't necessarily a sign that the film is in trouble. Re-shoots took place on The Bourne Identity films and they turned out to be perfect. Internet word of mouth has been luke warm on Halloween 2007 so far so watch this space!

* Shaft himself, Richard Roundtree has joined the cast of Speed Racer as Ben Burns a racing commentator and ex-racer. He joins a cast that so far includes Emile Hirsch, Matthew Fox, Susan Sarandon, John Goodman and Christina Ricci. The Waschowski Brothers first film since the end of the Matrix trilogy makes it debut next summer. We hope and pray that this will be a crowd pleasing action movie and not an existential meditation on speed with Roundtree sitting in a chair droning on about anomalies and quintessential flaws in programs.

* Another week another Jim Carrey movie announcement. This time he is teaming up with Robert Zemeckis and Bob Hoskins for an adaptation of Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol. The film will be shot motion capture style a la Polar Express and the forthcoming Beowulf.

* Spike Lee the socially conscious director of last years brilliant Inside Man and the classic Do The Right Thing announced he would be making a World War 2 movie next. The film will focus of African-American soldiers who played a part in the Italian campaign of 1944-45. The film will be based on the book Miracle at St Anna by James McBride which concerns the 92nd Buffalo Division.

* Zak Penn, the writer of Elektra and er Kangaroo Jack has been hired to re-write Scott Rosenberg's script for a Dirty Dozen re-make. Does the world really need this?? Do we even care??

* By far the most interesting news story to come out this week were the further details concerning the JJ Abrams produced Cloverfield project, the giant monster movie filmed with video camera's. A trailer was placed in front of Transformers which recently debuted stateside and got people talking about its hand held realistic style. Then it was announced that the director was Matt Reeves who directed The Pallbearer and several TV show episodes. Then the marketing campaign kicked in with a website related to some mad prophet by the name of Ethan Haas. www.ethanhaaswasright.com Also linked to this site is www.theparasitemovie.com which has something counting down for 23 days at the moment (Probably when the trailer will appear on line) and some random pictures from a party. There is also a date of 18th January 2008 which could be the release date. So far I like this campaign, its mysterious and intriguing. Lets hope the final project lives up to the mystery.