It’s official – Martin Campbell is to direct the next Bond film. It is to be Casino Royale. Brosnan is almost certainly out as Bond.
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How good does the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie sound?
This is a book beloved by geeks everywhere: Hitchhikers is one of those franchises like Monty Python, Star Trek, and Star Wars, that attracted the nerdy and friendless like moths to the flame. The first two novels (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Restaurant at the End of the Universe) also happen to be amongst the great comic novels of the last half-century. While Restaurant is a little disheveled, narratively speaking, the first novel has a perfectly rounded story that would be perfect for a film. The only obvious difficulty would seem to be one of selection: what to put in, and what to leave out. Because it originated as a radio play, the whole script is sitting there right before you as you read (in contrast to the way that Adams’ later books became increasingly internalised, and therefore all but unfilmable).
Mike Moore winning the Palme D’Or? It seems so bizarre that it is hardly surprising that in all the stories about Fahrenheit 9/11 preceding the festival, nobody had really suggested this as a possibility, despite the film being in competition. I can’t wait to see the film: I loved Bowling for Columbine, and am sympathetic to all but the most outrageous of Moore’s politics. Yet I also fear it may be terrible. Columbine I thought stood head and shoulders above Moore’s other work because he successfully reigned in many of his worst impulses. Moore has a weakness for hyperbole and half-truths that has brought down many of his other films and books, but despite the best attempts of the right to discredit Columbine, nobody really poked any serious holes in it. There is plenty of scope for a really devastating attack on George W. Bush without bending the truth, but I fear Moore’s anger and the praise heaped on him post-Columbine may have gone to his head. I can see Fahrenheit 9/11 descending into hysteria, conspiracy theories and factual error. Let’s hope I’m wrong: for all his faults, Moore popularises the left and has the kind of cross-cultural reach that usually only the right can achieve.