Fans of Neil LaBute may be pleased to learn that filmmaker Mike Figgis will be breaking his eight year absence from the big screen with Seconds of Pleasure, an adaptation of LaBute’s book of short stories which the playwright/director has penned for the long AWOL British director.

What’s more, the Leaving Las Vegas helmer has assembled an interesting line up, with the likes of Matt Dillon, Julia Stiles, Brendan Fraser, Kristin Scott Thomas and Christina Hendricks signing up for the tale of six different couples whose separate stories are intertwined in one drama.

It’s a welcome return for the director, and it’s interesting to note that both Figgis and Labute have a previous connection of sorts, as in the past, they’ve managed to bring out the very best and very worse of actor Nicolas Cage (in the aforementioned Oscar-winning tale of an alcoholic’s descent in that titular US city and the remake of The Wicker Man, respectively).

Via The Hollywood Reporter.

Based on Graeme Greene’s novel that uses the backdrop of Saigon in the Vietnamese war of liberation, The Quiet American uses its setting and personal relationships to explore a number of shifts of power that would shape the country for years to come.

You have a country struggling to break free of its French colonial powers and assert its own identity and the shift of power between the British and American influence as a London Times reporter Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine) befriends an American aid worker Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser). Pyle turns out to be a different man from the image he presents as he sets out to woo Fowler’s lover and has ulterior motives for being in Saigon. Told as a flashback following the murder of Pyle we slowly discover the key events that lead his death.

Michael Caine’s performance as Thomas Fowler really elevates the film as he injects the usual amount of class and gravitas into the role that he has become known for. It’s certainly the type of performance that was deserving of his nomination for best actor in a leading role at the 2003 Academy Awards.

Sadly the same can’t be said for Brendan Fraser who has the enviable job of trying to match Caine’s performance, which proves to be an impossibility. There’s never a moment in the film where you’re in doubt of Caine or his character whereas Fraser is less than convincing throughout. One of the key plot strands is his attraction to Fowler’s lover Phuong and this is never believable.

Fraser fails to live the role and coasts through the film merely reading the lines as written which is at odds with Caine’s magnificent central performance. Of course Pyle is a character that has secrets and is never revealing himself fully but it isn’t really an excuse for playing him with such a lack of personality.

Given the disparity between the quality of the performances the film never really gels or achieves what it sets out to. There are some spectacular moments such as a key sequence in the middle and the reveal of Pyle’s demise but given the fact that Caine fully embodies his character and makes him believable and relatable and Fraser doesn’t there’s only ever one character who you’re going to root for.

The film has a strong sense of time and place and whilst I would have liked the aspects that commented on America’s foreign policy to be more prominent there’s enough there to make this an interesting film and it’s certainly possible to draw modern day comparisons to this aspect of the film, which is as much down to the quality of Greene’s source novel as it is the film itself.

Film – ***~~ (3/5)

You could understand Optimum going to the effort of releasing this on Blu-Ray had the visual transfer been something to celebrate, unfortunately that’s far from the case. I can safely say that The Quiet American is by some distance the worst visual transfer I’ve seen on Blu-Ray. There’s barely a scene in the film that doesn’t suffer from a considerable amount of grain and blurring. You can forget about things like clarity and being able to distinguish anything obscured by shadows.

The closest experience I can liken watching this Blu-Ray to is staring at a magic eye picture for an hour and a half; check shirts constantly flicker as does the wallpaper. This headache inducing stuff is far from what you expect from a Blu-Ray release. In fairness to the disc there are some external shots that are passable and the film’s key set piece seems to have had some time and attention spent on it but overall this is an incredibly poor transfer.

Which is a great shame as the menu screen boasts crystal clear clarity and the snippets of the film we’re treated to there are of a vastly superior quality to what’s presented in the actual feature.

The sound is passable but nothing particularly special; dialogue at times can be a little unclear which isn’t great in such a dialogue heavy film such as this. The key set piece is incredibly immersive and had a huge impact on me but that aside there’s little to recommend here.

Ultimately this is an incredibly poor release for an average film  and as such won’t be one that’s flying off the shelves. For fans of the film that do pick this up I can imagine them being hugely disappointed as this is in all honesty one of the worst Blu-Ray transfers I have seen. Just because a film can be released on the format doesn’t mean that it should and this is one release that would justify there being some kind of minimum standard of quality that needs to be reached before a film is allowed to be released on the format.

The Disc – *~~~~ (1/5)

The first time Brendan Fraser and director Eric Brevig worked together, they made Journey to the Centre of the Earth 3D, and it turned a $60m. budget into $240m. at the box office.

The pair are now going to be re-teaming for William Tell: 3D, Deadline report, the tale of the classic Swiss folk hero with incredible aim who shot an apple sitting atop his son’s head with a crossbow.

Now a few years into the 3D technology revival/regeneration/however you’d like to describe it, you could arguably say that there’s less of a need to question why a film’s going to be shot in 3D. But nonetheless, I can’t see a very big need for this to be in 3D. Of course, there’s going to be the arrow shot, but that’s about it.

Still, even though he’s not been in many films lately that I’ve loved, I maintain that Fraser is a great actor, and would point you towards his roles in things like The Mummy, The Air I Breathe, and his few episodes in Scrubs. And Brevig has a lot of potential going for him too. Though his own directing efforts, Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Yogi Bear, haven’t been quite to my taste, he’s earned himself two Oscar nominations to date for his visual effects work on Hook and Pearl Harbor, and he was also second assistant director on Men in Black and The Island.

So for me, this project, written by brothers Chad and Evan Law, has a bit of a question mark over it at the moment. It’s being pitched as a family action film, which isn’t necessarily my cup of tea, but it could definitely be something the kids will enjoy, and could quite possibly be a bit of a guilty pleasure for us older types, a bit of harmless fun. We’ll see how the project shapes up, with shooting expected to begin in Romania and Switzerland in mid-March next year.

Vanessa Hudgens (Sucker Punch) and Brendan Fraser (The Mummy) are in advanced talks to star in indie drama Gimme Shelter.

Gimme Shelter centers on a pregnant, homeless teen (Hudgens) who flees her abusive mother and seeks out her biological father (Fraser). He first takes her in but then throws her out when she refuses to abort her child.

Ron Krauss (Rave) is writing and directing the film, which is expected to start production next month in Connecticut.

Krauss, Jeff Rice (The Watcher) and Dama Claire (Conviction) will produce.

Hudgens can currently be seen in Beastly, while Fraser’s next film, Whole Lotta Sole, will be released later this year.

Source: THR

Variety are reporting that Brendan Fraser has taken the lead role in upcoming comedy heist Whole Lotta Sole. The film will be directed by Terry George, who directed and co-wrote Hotel Rwanda and Reservation Road, and produced by Jay Russell, who produced and directed The Water Horse and family-film My Dog Skip (starring a very young Frankie Muniz).

The film currently has an approximate budget of $5.5 million, and will be filmed in Northern Ireland, where George is from. The plot revolves around:

“A young man robbing a fish shop in order to pay off a gambling debt; the heist goes terribly – and humorously – awry when it turns into a hostage situation.”

Fraser will be playing the role of the shopkeeper, who is on the run from his gangster father-in-law. Fraser’s career in the past few years seems not to have demonstrated his true potential, which we have seen in the likes of Crash, The Mummy, and The Air I Breathe – not a particularly well-known film, but an excellent film nonetheless, in which Fraser is at his best.

The plot, itself, may not sound exceptional, but I think a George-Fraser combination, if both are working at their best, could certainly raise it beyond initial expectations. George’s past films have had a tendency to be much more serious than Whole Lotta Sole sounds, so it will be interesting to see if this is a complete tangent from his past work, or if the comedic elements will be part of a bigger picture.

Also cast so far in the film is Academy Award-nominee Sophie Okonedo, who starred in George’s Hotel Rwanda, and fellow North Ireland actor Martin McCann, who had a recurring role in recent TV mini-series The Pacific and will star in the upcoming film Killing Bono, which is to be the late Pete Postlethwaite’s final film.

No firm release date has yet been announced. More when we get it.

Cast your mind back to the Brendan Fraser of yesteryear who did the odd goofy role, while balancing this with winning turns in more serious, high-brow character work (including a powerful performance alongside Ian McKellen in 1998’s Gods and Monsters).

Over the last few years, the actor seems to have largely chosen the fluff over roles which would showcase his talents (last year’s Extraordinary Measures didn’t really do the trick). I mean, how many run-ins with CG mummies and rebellious animals can one man take?!

Thankfully, this may change with news from Empire that he’ll be co-starring alongside such gifted performers as Kristin Scott Thomas (and possibly Colin Firth and Ed Harris) in Neil LaBute’s next feature, Seconds of Pleasure.

He’s hoping LeBute (who is in need of a little career rehabilitation himself following his woeful remake of The Wicker Man) can provide Fraser with a role and performance which is worthy of his skills as an actor.

Michael Caine appears to be showing no signs of slowing down, with reports coming through that he’s close to signing on for the sequel to 2008’s Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D – Journey 2: The Mysterious Island.

The Hollywood Reporter brings news that the production is due to start around October, and that Caine will be involved in many of the film’s action sequences, as he takes on the role of grandfather to Josh Hutcherson’s character (who appeared in the first film). Brendan Fraser (the other big cast member from the previous one) is absent here, but Dwayne Johnson is onboard, playing the character of Hutcherson’s mum’s boyfriend.

It’s encouraging to see a veteran like Caine is still enthusiastic to take on something like this, and with another Batman film in the pipeline, it doesn’t look like he’s making any immediate plans to wind down yet.

Brendan Fraser’s got a new movie coming out with Harrison Ford in February called Extraordinay Measures but this new move, Furry Vengeance is of the more comedic nature!

Furry Vengeance stars Brendan Fraser and Brooke Shields and is directed by Roger Kumble. It’s scheduled for release 7th May and from the trailer which you can view below or in HD on Apple, Fraser continues to do what he does best, making us (some of us!) laugh.

Synopsis: A live action family comedy in which an ambitious young real estate developer, Dan Sanders, faces off with a band of angry animals when his new housing subdivision pushes too far into a pristine part of the wilderness. Led by an incredibly clever raccoon, the animals stymie the development and teach our hero about the environmental consequences of man’s encroachment on nature.

To accompany the theatrical trailer for Extraordinary Measures which was released last week, here’s the new International version of the trailer. We’ve also got some new images which I’ve embedded below and you can click to enlarge. Extraordinary Measures is directed by Tom Vaughn and stars Harrison Ford, Brendan Fraser and Keri Russell. It’s set for release 26th February 2010.

Extraordinary Measures is inspired by a Wall Street Journal article recounting one man’s remarkable efforts to save his children from a life threatening disease. Harrison Ford and Brendan Fraser star as the brilliant but unconventional scientist and the passionate father who form an unlikely alliance in pursuit of a medical miracle. Keri Russell portrays Aileen Crowley. Harrison Ford is executive producer and in fact brought the story to producers Michael Shamberg and Stacy Sher after reading Pulitzer prize-winning writer Geeta Anand’s Wall St Journal article on the Crowley’s.

Yesterday I posted the new posters from Harrison Ford and Brendan Fraser’s new movie, Extraordinary Measures. Today, Yahoo (HD here) have released the new theatrical trailer for the movie. It’s directed by Tom Vaughan and also stars Keri Russell, Courtney B. Vance, Jared Harris and Meredith Droeger. It’s set for release 26th February 2010.

Synopsis: From his working class roots, John Crowley has finally begun to taste success in corporate America. Supported by his beautiful wife Aileen and their three children, John is on the fast track. But just as his career is taking off, Crowley walks away from it all when his two youngest children, Megan and Patrick, are diagnosed with a fatal disease. With Aileen by his side, harnessing all of his skill and determination, Crowley teams up with a brilliant, but unappreciated and unconventional scientist, Dr. Robert Stonehill. Together they form a bio-tech company focused on developing a life-saving drug. One driven to prove himself and his theories, the other by a chance to save his children, this unlikely alliance eventually develops into mutual respect as they battle the medical and business establishments in a fight against the system ¿ and time.But, at the last minute, when it appears that a solution has been found, the relationship between the two men faces a final test – the outcome of which will affect the fate of John’s children.

Anyone else think that this is the most bizarre casting since we saw….. I can’t even think of anything this strange! Harrison Ford has teamed up with comedy kids actor, Brendan Fraser in a movie called ‘Extraordinary Measures’. Not only do I think the casting is weird but are those posters the most Photoshopped movie posters you’ve ever seen or is it just me?! They both certainly look determined! Click the images below to enlarge or visit Cinematical to view in super high res.

The movie is directed by Tom Vaughan and Cinematical, who debuted these new posters, give us the storyline:

Fraser stars as Crowley, a man working his way up in corporate America. He’s got a loving family (Keri Russell plays his wife), and everything seems to be working out splendidly. But then his two children are diagnosed with a fatal disease. He quits his job, and devotes his time and efforts into saving his children by teaming up with “a brilliant, but unappreciated and unconventional scientist” (Ford). Together they start a bio-tech company to develop a life-saving drug and “this unlikely alliance eventually develops into mutual respect as they battle the medical and business establishments in a fight against the system ““ and time.”

Extraordinary Measures is out 26th February in the UK. More info as we get it.