The 23rd installment of the James Bond franchise, which most likely not be title Carte Blanche, will be heading to India when it goes into production this November.

The Times Of India is reporting that the film has been given permission from Indian authorities to shoot the follow up to 2008’s Quantum Of Solace at several locations throughout the country. Locations specifically mentioned in the story include -

• The town of Navagam near Ahmedabad
• The beaches of Goa
• North Goa with the exception of the tunnel at Dudhsagar (south-eastern railway) and the Zuari rail bridge over the Zuari River (Konkan railways) due to security concerns.
• Delhi, specifically the streets of streets of Daryaganj, Sarojini Nagar market and Ansari Road
• Mumbai

Given that locations can be dressed to look like someplace else, I don’t think that we can deduce too much of the upcoming film’s storyline from this news. Previous Bond films have managed to make areas in and around England’s Pinewoods Studios, where the films do all of their non-location shooting, look like everything from Fort Knox to the border between North and South Korea. Though I have to wonder if the inclusion of shooting in a business center such as Mumbai may indicate that there is some element of international business to the plot.

The film will mark Daniel Craig’s third outing as the suave secret agent, following his premier in 2006’s Casino Royale and Quantum Of Solace.

Paul Dano is attached to play a young Karl Rove in Richard Linklater’s College Republicans.

The script by Wes Jones placed high on the 2010 Black List of outstanding but unproduced screenplays currently circulating Hollywood and details the early careers of Rove and Lee Atwater, two Republican operatives who would pioneer the field of “dirty tricks” in political campaigns. The screenplay covers their meeting in 1973 when Rove was making a run for national president of the College Republicans.

The film is being produced by Maya Browne and Ginger Sledge through Browne’s Bratt Entertainment.

Atwater and Rove have carved themselves a legacy for having engineered political campaigns that used tactics that could be considered legally and ethically questionable. Atwater ultimately rose to become chairman of the Republican National Committee and campaign manager for President George Herbert Walker Bush. Rove would manage George W. Bush’s presidential campaign. By becoming a key advisor to the president during his eight years in office, he earned the nickname “Bush’s Brain.”

In 1990, after being diagnosed with brain cancer, Atwater converted to Catholicism and sent apologizes to many of the politicians he felt he wronged with his tactics over the years.

Rove has previously been depicted on film by Toby Jones in Oliver Stone’s W.

College Republicans is currently set for a November start date in Austin, Texas and with a little bit of hustle could be ready to premier by the time the 2012 Presidential Election reaches its zenith a year later. This is, of course, providing that the film can find a distribution deal.

Interestingly, Rove has made news recently by stating that some in the current field of Republican Presidential candidates might be playing too much to the fringe elements of the GOP.

Via The Wrap.

As the release of George Lucas’ Star Wars franchise draws nearer, we are starting to learn more about the inevitable changes that Lucas has put the films through this time around. Last week, we found out about a few of the visual tweaks that have been given to the films. Now we have news of two changes to the audio in films from the original trilogy.

The first is a seemingly minor one, but it is a bit jarring. The Kryat Dragon call that Obi-Wan Kenobi makes to scare the Sand People away from Luke in the original Star Wars film has been changed. The new version lasts a bit longer but sounds a bit more synthesized towards the end. Listen for yourself in the following clip -

The second is far more jarring and outright stupid. During the climactoce scene in Return Of The Jedi between Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine on board the under construction second Death Star, Lucas has added some additional dialogue for Vader. Specifically, one word- “No!” As this is the moment where it could be argued that Vader forsook the Dark Side of the Force and became once again Anakin Skywalker, I suppose that Lucas is trying to draw some parallel to the end of Revenge Of The Sith where ANakin awakes to find himself in the Vader armor, his journey to the Dark Side complete. And if that is the case, then Lucas is perhaps even more deaf to the voice of his fans than I previously suspected as that scene in Sith is one of the most derided moments of the prequel trilogy. And let’s face it, there are a lot of moments in the prequel trilogy that are pretty bad.

Unfortunately, these changes have been confirmed by Badass Digest, so we can’t wave them away as a possible prank. I’m sure that as the release date of September 16 approaches, we’ll be getting word of more changes.

The Debt (Focus Features, 1,786 Theaters, 113 Minutes, Rated R): A remake of the 2007 Israeli film, The Debt is positioning itself to get an early jump on the Labor Day weekend. Although August has traditionally been the month that studios dump films that they have little to no confidence in, Focus has been pimping the film pretty heavily with television advertising the past few weeks, so there has to be some faith there.

Helen Mirren stars as a member of a team of Israeli Nazi-hunters who have a secret they kept since the 1960s come back to haunt them.

Now the idea of Helen Mirren in a thriller certainly has some appeal. It might have been a contributing factor to 2008′s RED pulling in nearly $200 million at the worldwide box office, so maybe that magic will be replicated here. After the last couple of weekends, the box office could certainly use the extra help.

I try to be accepting of remakes, I really do. But some days it is just so hard to do. And today is one of those days.

Writer David Koepp has been hired to pen Johnny Depp and director Rob Marshall’s planned remake of the 1934 classic The Thin Man. Back in March, Jerry Stahl had been hired to write the film. there is no word if he handed in a draft or dropped out of the project.

Deadline broke the story, along with the word that Marshall intends to “work in a musical number or two” and “take elements of the first two [Thin Man] films and work them into one film, putting it into a period setting and giving it a Sherlock Holmes-like stylized treatment.”

First off, I’m not much of a fan of Koepp as a script writer. Although he worked on the screenplays for Jurassic Park and the first of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films, his name is on a number of stinkers including Toy Soldiers, Death Becomes Her, Snake Eyes, Steven Spielberg’s War Of The Worlds, Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull and Angels & Demons.

Meanwhile, I think Marshall’s ideas for the film are entirely wrong-headed. Why does a breezy mystery need “a musical number or two”? Especially from the director of the rather messy cinematic version of Chicago?

As for giving it a “Sherlock Holmes-like stylized treatment,” it sounds like Marshall has entirely missed the point of the Guy Ritchie-directed take on the classic detective character. The stylized look of that film was the result of the style that Ritchie had been developing ever since his first film Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels and in the case of Sherlock Holmes, helped to visually illustrate the speed and precision of Holmes’s thought process. I really can’t see what aping Ritchie’s style would do to help tell the story of Dashiell Hammet’s original novel better than the original film starring William Powell and Myrna Loy did.

And good luck to Koepp with the script assignment. Since the first two films of the franchise that sprung out of the surprise popularity of the 1934 film have entirely separate and independent storylines, I fail to see how elements of each can be synthesized into one screenplay.

If this thing ever gets made, I will probably be compelled to be in theaters on opening day, but only in the same way that I am compelled to slow down and stare when driving by a pretty horrific-looking car accident.

Last week we told you that Criterion was working on a new blu-ray release for Ishiro Honda’s classic 1954 giant monster film Gojira, which would also include the 1956 Americanized version of the film, Godzilla, King Of The Monsters. Criterion had hinted that this release would include a newly restored version of Gojira made from from interpositive elements supplied by Toho Studios.

Gojira isn’t the only part of the release getting a restoration. Criterion will also be presenting a new restoration for Godzilla as well.

If you’re wondering what the difference between the two movies, it’s this- When Jewell Enterprises picked up the US distribution rights to Gojira from Japan’s Toho Studios, they hired director Terry O. Morse to shoot several scenes with actor Raymond Burr to cut into the film with the presumed intent of giving American audiences an American character to identify with.

Fast forward to the early 1980s when United Productions of America prepared a telecine transfer of Godzilla, they altered some of the opening and closing credits. It has been this version that has been available on home video and in syndicated television packages ever since.

While restoring some opening and closing credits cards seems like a small thing, Criterion was determined to get the Godzilla back to its original form. In doing so, right after last week’s announcement they reached out to collectors who might have some original 35mm elements to help in the reconstruction of the film. While film collectors can be a notoriously cagey bunch as they don’t want their prints confiscated by a studio which may have a legitimate claim of ownership, Criterion was able to locate a 35mm Fine-Grain Print of Godzilla.

So what is a Fine-Grain print? Technically, it is a print struck from either the camera negative or a duplicate negative using a film that has a low-contrast, extremely fine-grained emulsion. They are not meant for exhibition so much as they are for creating duplicate negatives.

Practically, it means that a transfer from this print will be markedly better than anything that has been available for decades. And that will be before it goes through Criterion’s restoration process.

Although criterion has a reputation as being a home video label that caters to the cineaste, its catalog is actually fairly democratic when it comes to the range of films. At times the label has offered such treats as Shorty Yeaworth’s The Blob, Michael Bay’s The Rock and Armageddon, Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop, Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits and Brazil and Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap. Certainly, all titles that aren’t necessarily associated with high art, although they all have various important aspects that make them noteworthy enough for inclusion in Criterion’s catalog.

And let’s face it. The original Gojira is an import film, even outside of its giant monster genre. And it is certainly exciting to see that Criterion is giving it the same meticulous attention it gives to the works of Jean-Luc Goddard or Akira Kurosawa.

Via The Good, The Bad And Godzilla

Japanese director Takashi Miike’s live-action adaption of the popular manga and anime series Nintama Rantaro (Ninja Kids!!) is being targeted for a English-language, Hollywood remake.

The Hollywood Reporter states that an unnamed production company has entered into negotiations to secure the US remake rights. Apparently interest in the project began after a successful screening of the movie at the New York Asian Film festival in July.

The film is based on the long-running manga and anime series about a group of young ninja trainees.

Having a children’s film on his resume may seem strange for those who only know Miike for his more extreme films like Audition, Ichi The Killer and Dead Or Alive and more commercial horror fare like One Missed Call. But the director has also family movies like Zebraman and The Great Yokai War. I suppose in this respect his career is similar to Robert Rodriguez’s, as he has had success with both genre films like his Mariachi films or Sin City and family fare like his Spy Kids series. Perhaps Rodriguez would be a good choice to direct this English-language adaption?

The North American distribution rights for Japanese horror director Takashi Shimizu’s latest film Tormented, have been purchased by the Texas-based Well Go USA. The 3D film is set to premier at the upcoming Venice Film Festival and will be screened in competition at the Sitges Film Festival in October.

Additionally, Well Go also picked up rights to the director’s 2010 horror film The Shock Labyrinth.

Shimizu is probably best known for his films Juon (The Grudge, 2002) and its sequel Juon 2 (The Grudge 2, 2003), two of the better entries in the recent J-horror wave of films. He also directed the 2004 English-language remake of Juon, The Grudge, as well as its 2006 sequel, which followed a different storyline from Juon 2.

There’s no word yet as to what type of release that the two films will receive, though I doubt a theatrical one would be very wide. Most likely they’ll show up on various streaming and video-on-demand outlets as well as on DVD and blu-ray.

Via Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision Blog.

Until they are ready are to announce it, the title of an upcoming James Bond film is guarded by its producers more securely than some of the secrets being held by the real British Secret Service. So let us proceed with more than just a note or two of skepticism.

Blic (via BleedingCool) is reporting that Serbian cellist Jelena Mihailovic has been asked to perform the

At one of the many concerts the musician held in France during the Cannes Film Festival, the producers and the director of the next Bond film were in the audience, who were staggered by what they had heard and on the spot offered Jelena a chance to write the opening score for the new James Bond film, entitled Carte Blanche.

So the question here is where did the news outlet get the title Carte Blanche?

The first possibility is that they got the title from Mihailovic herself, who heard it from these unnamed producers and didn’t know that she shouldn’t be repeating it. That seems unlikely, though, as I think that the title wouldn’t be dropped into a conversation with someone they were discussing working on the film. I would think that one wouldn’t get that knowledge until they are under contract with written-in obligations to not divulge said information.

It seems more likely that Blic pulled the name from the latest Bond novel to hit the shelves written by Jeffery Deaver. Bleeding Cool points out that there is an action sequence involving a train in the new book and a rumored train sequence in the upcoming film and suggests that it is possible that the new book and film might be sharing the same.

Personally, I doubt this. The same secrecy that surrounds the title to upcoming Bond film is extended to its plot as well. I highly doubt that Eon Productions, the folks behind the films, would agree to a plan that would put that story out in detail a year and a half before the film is scheduled to hit theaters.

And this isn’t even the first time a rumored title has been reported for Bond 23. In January, the British tabloid The Sun stated that the film would be titled Red Skis At Night. (Though given recent revelations about The Sun’s corporate sibling News Of The World, I would give more creadence to The Sun‘s reporting as they could have hacked someone’s phonemessages for the title.)

The twenty-third James Bond film goes into production later this year and that’s when I’ll expect we’ll get the announcement of the official title. And I would place money that it won’t be Carte Blanche.

Josh Brolin has been signed to star in director Spike Lee’s upcoming Oldboy. A remake of Korean director Park Chan-Wook‘s modern classic revenge tale, Brolin will star as a man mysteriously imprisoned for 15 years and once freed, seeks revenge on those responsible.

Mark Protosevich has adapted the original film for this English-language remake, but it is unknown how much of the original story may have been changed. Hopefully he’ll be keeping the original’s third act twist as I really can’t wait to be sitting in a movie theater and watching people react to it.

Brolin has just wrapped his work on the seemingly eternally in production Men In Black III and will start on director Ruben Fleischer’s crime drama Gangster Squad next month. He’ll have a few months free between that and the start of Jason Reitman’s Labor Day with Kate Winslet in June which is presumably when Oldboy will shoot.

Well this is certainly better sounding than a remake starring Will Smith and being directed  by Steven Spielberg. That version got scotched due to a problem with securing the remake rights. But this version sounds much more interesting.

Via Deadline.