After his blockbusting stint as Iron Man, Robert Downey Jnr. is back in Drama as a schizophrenic, homeless musician from Skid Row, Los Angeles dreaming of playing at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

The Soloist is still in Production (post) and is scheduled to launch on 21 November 2008.  Other famous cast members include Jamie Foxx and  Catherine Keener (Hamlet 2).

The movie will be directed by Joe Wright (Atonement, Pride and Prejudice) with a screenplay by Susannah Grant.

Hope the movie has some emotional appeal and not another dull, dreary off-to-the-side type movie, otherwise the next time I hope to see Robert Downey Jnr. is with the sequel to Iron Man.

After kicking serious ass at the box office with the 2nd-highest box office earnings ever for a 3-day opening, and getting near-perfect reviews all round (if you haven’t seen it yet, why the hell not?), Iron Man has blown Marvel Executives expectations out of the ice-layering stratosphere.

Marvel has confirmed release dates for a string of upcoming movies, beginning with an Iron Man sequel. Iron Man 2 is set to debut on April 30, 2010, with Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow and Terrence Howard intact, followed by the feature film debut of Thor about 5 weeks later. For Thor, Marvel are looking at professional wrestler Triple H or Scottish actor Kevin McKidd, who made an impression in the HBO series Rome, to carry the hammer.

In 2011, Marvel are planning to release The First Avenger: Captain America. No speculation yet about who might play the square-jawed lead. The final release announced today is The Avengers, which will bring together Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and, conceivably, the characters of Ant Man and Wasp for a July 4, 2010, spectacular. I assume this will be far better than the flop a while back with Sean Connery.

The only trouble on the water for Marvel is the upcoming The Incredible Hulk which opens next month, since Ang Lee’s version had only received a luke-warm reception on opening. Let’s hope the star power of Edward Norton and Liv Tyler will change that.

“You either die a hero or…”

Wow! I saw this trailer before Jon Favreau’s Iron Man (it rocked!) this weekend and I felt an exhilaration that removed me from all planes of reality and into a dimension that can only be described as heaven. I hope that Christopher Nolan not only has made The Dark Knight the best Batman movie ever (even better than Bruce W. Timm’s Mask of the Phantasm), but the best film of the year. I want this film to be so compelling that no drama or foreign film will compete for me. I can only dream.

Everyone here looks in top form: Christian Bale (American Psycho), Michael Caine (The Quiet American), Maggie Gyllenhaal (SherryBaby) - Thank Nolan they replaced Holmes!, Gary Oldman (Nil by Mouth), dual role-playing Spoiler! Click here to see Two-Face! Limited Time Offer! Aaron Eckhart (In the Company of Men) and the brilliant Heath Ledger (Monster’s Ball).

Quick Tidbit: When the Joker whips open his blade as he walks down the urban street with his back to us, you can spot a Starbucks shop on the right part of the frame. I know, I have to go on a trailer diet.

The release date is July 18th. “And here we…GO!”

Squeamish be on guard: THANKSGIVING

What is the deal with not listing John Harrison as the composer of Grindhouse (2007) contributor Eli Roth’s faux trailer entitled Thanksgiving in the end credits of the said exploitive three-hour double-feature? The majority of the music is lifted right off the soundtrack of George A. Romero’s immortal five-part Creepshow (1982), which was based on a Tales From the Crypt-like graphic novel written by Stephen King as the film’s screenplay.

In the short film Thanksgiving you’ll hear excerpts from “Father’s Day”, a Creepshow episode where Aunt Bedelia (Viveca Lindfors, A Wedding) is strangled to death by her cake-obsessed zombie-dad (John Amplas, Martin), which stands in as the Evil Pilgrim’s murderous theme song. Then the trampoline scene (Holy-NC-17-MPAA!) is accompanied by the music used for “Something to Tide You Over” when a jealous husband (Leslie Neilsen, The Naked Gun Series) watches, from the comfort of his living room, his wife and her lover drowning (Eat you heart out Peter Greenaway). Lastly, the sickly build-up to the near-thirty-year-old-depicting-a-teen (Eli Roth) head scene is from the “They’re Creeping Up On You” segment staring E.G. Marshall (Double Indemnity) as a corrupt, cockroach-phobic CEO. All are compositions by John Harrison.

The only original pieces of music by Nathan Barr, who was credited, are what follow: First, that menacing music at the beginning of trailer — following the knife-wielding maniac Halloween-style behind the buck-toothed screaming Grandma. And last, that perfectly drippy, romantic, synthesized 80s-like score playing over “Cool it, Judy! You’re safe. Bobby’s here…”

It seems strange, but this is the way credits work most of the time where original music versus licensed music is concerned. It’s not a matter of giving credit to the composer with the most music in the trailer, but rather giving credit for the most-recent music written specifically for that fake trailer.

Thanksgiving was one of the highlights of Grindhouse, the Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino collaboration. Those two-and-a-half minutes are the best of one-note Eli Roth’s resume. It is both a loving homage to John Carpenter’s definitive Halloween (1978) and an inspired parody of those awful 80s slasher-rip-off-flicks (and bad taste, in general) that is far elevated from Roth’s turgid Hostel films. A.O. Scott of The New York Times wrote, “In any case be sure not to miss the trailer for “Thanksgiving” — not for the squeamish or the humor impaired, and not that you’d necessarily want to see the movie, if it existed.”

I remember the first time seeing it in theaters, the last act of abomination by the Evil Pilgrim on the roasted turkey had me laughing so hard throughout the main title sequence of Tarantino’s Death Proof, the best of both feature films.