Ouija Board Movie? To Be Directed by Pierre Morel?

Yes that was on purpose, the title has two question marks because the phrase "Ouija Board Movie" deserves one by itself.  And although you might not be familiar with Pierre Morel, you are probably familiar with the movie he directed two years ago called Taken which I consider to be one of the most entertaining vengeance action films I've seen in a while.  LA Times reports that the Taken director is the lead candidate for a Ouija Board movie.

Yup, you heard me right.  A movie about a board game.  You see, it used to be that filmmakers would have to come up with an unique idea and then the studios would need to put a ton of marketing behind it to drive awareness.

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Movie Review - 'From Paris With Love'

From Paris With Love Starring John Travolta and Jonathan Rhys Meyers Directed by Pierre Morel Rated R

What a shame that From Paris with Love decides halfway through that it wants you to take it seriously. Because you can't. Not at all. And if director Pierre Morel took a cue from his star, John Travolta, and went strictly for the ridiculous, this could have been fun. Look at it this way: The title is tongue-in-cheek, Travolta is as unbridled as he's ever been (which usually doesn't serve him well), and there's not much of a story going on. So why not play to the limited strengths the film has? Better to be a good bad movie than a bad bad movie, after all. There are simply too many regrettable habits in From Paris with Love that the film shouldn't have even bothered trying to fix them. It begins with the dialogue and extends to what little character development that shows up, and when those two things are afflicted, there's pretty much no hope for anything else. So Travolta does the smart thing: Distract the audience with such a laughable character that the crowd doesn't notice what's really going on. It's like very loud, irritating sleight of hand. Why the film takes a turn for the consequential is just beyond me. Travolta plays a CIA agent named Wax. Naturally, he's the best at his job. How absurd is that? I wouldn't let a guy like that wash my windows, much less work intel for our government overseas. Wax punctuates his conversations with pop culture references, though I suspect that's mostly unconscious as far as the character's concerned. I do wish Travolta had overruled the filmmakers to exclude a tip of the hat to his "Royale with Cheese" speech from Pulp Fiction, but otherwise, it's not a bad affection.

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Pierre Morel Looking at a 3-D 'Dune'

Pierre Morel has From Paris with Love in theaters next week, but the Taken director is probably making bigger headlines because he's been chosen to guide the new adaptation of Frank Herbert's sci-fi classic, Dune. The filmmaker tells IGN he'd love to see the movie go The Full Avatar as a stereoscopic 3-D adventure.

Whether or not that happens (I would suspect Paramount is dying to get more invested in that realm, though), it's one of the few 3-D suggestions I actually think makes a whole lot of sense. We learned that the last two Harry Potter movies are being up-converted, but so what? That's just tacking on the gimmick to raise ticket prices because none of the visuals were intended to be in 3-D. But this, which like Avatar is a whole other world, could once again raise the game for 3-D technology. Mostly, though, Morel says he just has to do something to keep people from thinking about the other Dune, released in the 1980s:

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Video - 'From Paris With Love' Red Band Clip

You know the clip probably isn't safe for work when you can't even print its title without very likely offending people. Welcome, then, to this restricted clip from the new Travolta flick, From Paris With Love.

It's the new film by Taken director Pierre Morel, and I don't mind telling you it doesn't look nearly as good as last year's Liam Neeson flick. Part of that is a rather familiar combination of sources - good cop/bad cap, lots of explosions, and all set in a European world capital - and part of it, frankly, is Travolta. I just don't know who keeps whispering in his ear that he can play these laughing tough guy roles. He's usually OK in other stuff and embarrassing in movies like Swordfish and Face/Off. But they keep hiring him to do it, so maybe that's where the blame should lie. His co-star, Jonathan Rhys Myers, appears to be playing a deer caught in Travolta's headlights, which really isn't a good counter balance to a scene-chewing Vinny Barbarino. So we'll see if it plays out better than the pieces seem to be fitting together. Here's a brief glimpse:

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Pierre Morel To Be "Respectful" Of Herbert's 'Dune'

Director Pierre Morel (Taken) has a new movie in theaters next month. But most people aren't as interested in From Paris with Love as they are his remake of Dune. He was recently announced as the man to lead the new version of the sci-fi classic, and Morel tells MTV you shouldn't expect anything like David Lynch's interpretation from the 1980s.

“As a David Lynch movie, I loved it,” Morel quipped. “As a Dune fan, I was not such a big fan.” And that about sums it up, I think. Been a long time since I've seen Dune, but I remember it being a bit odd. Morel is not as strange a director as Lynch, of course, but he's not really the first guy you'd think of, either. However, Morel puts his money where his mouth is when it comes to Dune, so his knowledge of the material might give him an edge we wouldn't see just from watching the more simplistic Taken.

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