/ 24 December 2009

Coming up in 2010

At the Christmas party thrown this year by one of the movie distributors, we critics and other guests were regaled with clips and news of some films coming up in the year ahead — and all those mentioned were sequels. There was Iron Man II, of course, but also Wanted II, the fourth Bourne movie, the fourth Shrek and, rather surprisingly, the fifth Fast and Furious.

I joked that perhaps the best thing for film companies to do in these depressed economic times would be to combine all these sequels into one movie. Wouldn’t it be fun to have Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne racing around in souped-up cars with Paul Walker and/or Vin Diesel while being shot at by James MacAvoy and Angelina Jolie? (Jolie’s character would have to be brought back from the dead, I suppose, but that has never been an insurmountable obstacle in the movies.)

I’m not sure how they’d integrate Shrek Goes Fourth into that scenario, but I feel confident that a small committee of Hollywood scriptwriters could come up with something no more absurd than most of what we see on our screens.

More sequels are arriving towards the end of 2010, with a new episode of The Twilight Saga and the first part of the last instalment of the Harry Potter series, yet another Resident Evil and the third of the Narnia Chronicles, in the form of Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

And then there are the remakes: The A-Team returns as a movie, for those who remember the silly old TV show, and the delightfully campy romp through Greek myth, Clash of the Titans, has been redone with Sam Worthington as Perseus — probably muscling it up bit, too. And there is Tim Burton’s version of Alice in Wonderland (with Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter) to look forward to.

Re-releases also feature in the year ahead, with the two Toy Story movies coming in 3D in January and a restored Tron, one of the earliest attempts at computer-generated imagery, appearing late in the year as Tron: Legacy.

More originally, January sees the release of An Education, based on Lynne Barber’s memoir of growing up in 1960s London (it’s an excellent piece of work), Mira Nair’s biopic of the aviator Amelia Earhart,

Amelia, with Hilary Swank and Richard Gere, as well as The Road, based on Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel (also excellent), and Bright Star, Jane Campion’s take on the short life of Romantic poet John Keats.

Also in the early part of the year, two new South African films will be released: Skin, Anthony Fabian’s true-story drama about Sandra Laing, a girl born ‘coloured” to a white family, and Jozi, a comedy about a comedian who loses his ability to make people laugh, from the team that created Gums and Noses.

Also early in the year we will see the film Heath Ledger died in the middle of making: Terry Gilliam’s fantasy The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus. Somehow, miraculously, and with the last-minute help of Colin Farrell, Jude Law and Depp, it got finished. Gilliam has survived disaster before to bring us some weirdly wonderful movies, so one has hopes for this one.

Coco and Igor tells the (speculative) story of couturière Coco Chanel’s affair with composer Igor Stravinsky, and Shutter Island reunites director Martin Scorsese and actor Leonardo DiCaprio for a thriller set in the 1950s.

Not to be confused with A Serious Man (the Coen brothers’ new black comedy), A Single Man is adapted from Christopher Isherwood’s great novel (and both land in February). A Single Man stars Colin Firth as a lonely British academic in California, and also features the divine Julianne Moore.

I’m beginning to wonder if books should be adapted to film at all, especially if they are good books, but perhaps this one will do right by its source. The fact that it’s directed by former fashion designer Tom Ford does, though, rather give one the willies.

for our review of the year and the decade in lists and multimedia. Books, movies, photos and politics — it’s all here.