Here's why the movie is nationalist:

The involvement of the Chinese government allowed Zhang to raise the unprecedented sum of $30 million US he needed to make the movie.

And in other news, the hell?

The next installment of the Terminator series will hit cinema screens in 2005 - but reportedly without Arnold Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger recently ditched acting for politics by becoming governor of California and, according to sources, his part in Terminator 4 will be reduced to a cameo role, while a new robot takes the limelight. A draft of the screenplay has just been completed by Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines writers John Brancato and Michael Ferris. Sources say it is about what happens when the world's computer systems are infected by viruses.

Because T3 was such a success?

Because, when your movie ends with a devastating nuclear war, sequel is the first word in your mind.

On the down side, we've known since 1984 pretty much what happens at the end of this story. On the up side, time travel! The ultimate retcon opportunity.

Maybe in T4 someone will finally have the idea we all had a long time ago--send the damn robot back to the factory right after Sarah Conner killed the first Terminator and is lying wounded on the floor. Shortest Terminator film ever, and it'd be the first one to make actual time-travel sense.

Maybe in T4 someone will finally have the idea we all had a long time ago--send the damn robot back to the factory right after Sarah Conner killed the first Terminator and is lying wounded on the floor. Shortest Terminator film ever, and it'd be the first one to make actual time-travel sense.

Actually, the best thing to do--and probably the most fun--would be to send a terminator back to the Sixties to wipe out Sarah Conner's parents before she's born. A hippie terminator!

I saw two movies tonight, Primer and p.s.

Primer was a kickass mindfuck that would have made a much better novella than a movie, but hey, the writer wanted to make a movie. And for $7,000, no less.

p.s. has some very strong performances by Laura Linney and Topher Grace, but is otherwise an incoherent mess.

Going back to the video-game-to-movie discussion. Just found out Roger Avary and Christophe Gans are writing the Silent Hill adaption. Should be interesting to see what they come up with.

eta: and to see if Mark Dacascos gets a role.

About Ocean's Twelve - I think Soderbergh and Clooney try to mix up their big commercial hits with smaller, more personal and more "indie" features, because the one allows them to do the other. From a Guardian interview with both of them:

Q6: You were talking about focus groups, and I heard a rumour that Solaris had one of the worst ratings despite it being brilliant. How are your relations with the studio? Is there a relationship in the sequence of films that you work on, for example doing Ocean's Twelve after Solaris?

SS: There's a very direct relation for me. There were three projects that I wanted to do after my sabbatical. Ocean's was one of them. I had the idea when we were actually in Europe promoting the first one.... The Informant and The Good German are seriously strange movies, really weird but, I hope, interesting. When Solaris tanked in the States on the heels of Full Frontal tanking, I immediately called George and said, "We're going to do Ocean's first."

I can't get Warners to pay for The Informant and The Good German on the heels of these two films. I wouldn't pay for them.

GC: Warners were really happy - we sat them down and said, "Okay, we've got good news: we're going to do Ocean's Twelve," and they said, "Oh, Jesus, thank God." Then we said, "And you have to pick up the tab for The Good German and The Informant," and they went, "Okay, fine, whatever."

SS: And that's the reality of the film business - all three of them are movies that I'm excited about. There's a commercial and practical issue that you can't pretend doesn't exist.

GC: It goes back to what we're trying to do, which is do the films that we think are interesting and that people should see, within the structure of the studio system. And part of that means that we have to find some compromises that will help get it done. I don't think you can look at Solaris and think, "That's a compromise film." If the compromise is Ocean's Eleven, that's a good film and we're proud of it, so we'll do this, and happily, because entertainment's a good thing and I don't think it's something to be ashamed of. It's a balancing act, though.

Link here.

You were talking about focus groups, and I heard a rumour that Solaris had one of the worst ratings despite it being brilliant.

Way to go with the hardhitting questions, Graun!