DEPARTED Takes Top Oscar Honors

Martin Scorcese's crime thriller THE DEPARTED walked away from the 79th Academy Awards with 4 Oscars including BEST PICTURE, BEST DIRECTOR, BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY, and BEST EDITING. The win for Scorcese was his first ever, after a career 6 nominations to date (RAGING BULL - 1980, THE LAST TEMPATION OF THE CHRIST - 1988, GOODFELLAS - 1990, GANGS OF NEW YORK - 2002, AVIATOR - 2004, THE DEPARTED - 2006). In 2002, he lost the award to Roman Polanski's direction in THE PIANIST, and in 2004 he lost to Clint Eastwood's direction in MILLION DOLLAR BABY. Coming into this years awards season, and with 5 losses under his belt, there was no doubt in any ones mind that this would finally be the year that the Academy honored one of its finest. Scorcese, recognized as one of the most prominent directors working in Hollywood today, has been nominated in the area of BEST DIRECTOR and BEST PICTURE on his last 3 films (GANGS OF NEW YORK - 2002, AVIATOR - 2004, THE DEPARTED - 2006), and he is not showing any signs of slowing down. His next film SILENCE is already in the pipeline, and will arive in 2008; I have included the plot summing from IMDB below (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0490215/)...

"Two Jesuit priests, Sebastião Rodrigues and Francis Garrpe, travel to seventeenth century Japan under the Shogunate regime (which has isolated itself from all foreign contact) to see how the evangelical mission is going. There they witness the persecution of Japanese Christians at the hands of their own government, which wishes to purge Japan of all western influence. Eventually the priests separate and Rodrigues travels the countryside, wondering why God remains silent while His children suffer."

It definately seems like an intriguing story, especially being directed from a man that once considered a calling to the Catholic priesthood.

ABRAMS Does Next TREK!

The Hollywood Reporter has just annouced that JJ Abrams, director of last years Mission Impossible 3 and the producer of ABC's LOST and ALIAS will officially helm the next film in the STAR TREK franchise. The film will be a sequel to the orginal Star Trek T.V. show, and will center around the meeting of James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock at Star Fleet Academy. The film will begin pre-production in the coming months!

Cast of PRINCE CASPIAN Revealed!

Narnia Web has posted a list of all the cast members that have been officially released. Principal photography on the film is already underway in NEW ZEALAND (shooting location for such films as... Lord of the Rings, Last Samari, etc...).

You can view the cast list at the following website:

http://www.narniaweb.com/cast.asp

It seems that the only cast member yet to be announced is that of King Miraz, the tyrranical leader of the Telemarines, a nation from the North who has invaded the land of Narnia and taken it from its rightfull ruler, Prince Caspian, the nephew if Miraz.

Bristol Bay to do SCREWTAPE LETTERS

Bristol Bay Productions (the counterpart of Walden Media) announced today that they would be persuing a film adaptation of C.S. Lewis' SCREWTAPE LETTERS. Screwtape is told through a series of letters written from the perspective of a demon who is given an apprentice to train in the ways of tempting humanity to sin against God. Screwtape is considered one of Lewis' most famous non-Narnia works. The film is being produced by Ralph Winter (X-Men 3, Fantastic Four), but the other major players have not been made known. It was rumored that Randall Wallace, the screenwriter of Braveheart and We Were Soldiers would be writing the script, but this news has not been confirmed. The film should be released sometime in 2008!

You can read the full story here:

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117958443.html?categoryid=13&cs=1