Jan de Bont Directing Zhang Ziyi's Live-Action 'Mulan'

I'm not certain this is a marked improvement, but it could be. Chuck Russell was the guy brought in to direct a live-action Mulan starring Zhang Ziyi. Embarrassingly, even though this is financed by a consortium of production companies from around the world, this adaptation of the national legend will be made...in English. Stupid.

Anyway, Russell is out, and that was not the smartest move, either, when we reported it a few weeks back. Now the film will fall to Jan de Bont, who made Speed, Twister, and nothing else I can recommend. His last movie, officially, was the Tomb Raider sequel, although there was some French action thing with John Cusack de Bont was working on for a couple years but the money dried up. The Hollywood Reporter quotes producer Jeffrey Chan as saying, "“We’re absolutely thrilled to be able to work with Jan and Ziyi to turn the Chinese legend of Mulan into a top-notch live-action movie for a worldwide audience,” and while that may be what it becomes, why in the hell do they have to make it in English?

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Zhang Ziyi, Disney Making Live-Action 3-D 'Mulan'

Disney is revisiting Mulan, this time as a live-action 3-D film starring and co-produced by Zhang Ziyi. Chinese news reports suggest she has been working on the film for a while, but it was temporarily idled while she was involved in "a string of high-profile scandals." OK, so those might be more interesting to me than the movie, but it's still a pretty cool prospect on the surface.

Disney, of course, made the animated Mulan, but the story dates back hundreds of years in China, and I'm a tad surprised that this will reportedly be an English-language version. It seems there'd be a bigger audience in China, anyway, and Zhang's foreign language output in the states beats anyone else's; she starred in two of the three biggest foreign films in US history, Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the only one to top $100 million, and Zhang Yimou's Hero.

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Zhang Ziyi Picks a 'Snow Flower'

It's not a great big news day and she's really hot, so naturally, we'll tell you about the latest Zhang Ziyi project. Can you believe it's almost been a full decade since Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? It's the biggest foreign language film ever, the only one to ever top $100 million in the US. That's Zhang's introduction to most western audiences, although you have to see her in Zhang Yimou's The Road Home from one year earlier. Heartbreaking.

She has not been a major American star, even though she did get her chance with Memoirs of a Geisha, but some of her other foreign language films - Hero and House of Flying Daggers - have also made an impression on audiences here in the states. Hero, in fact, is the third-highest-grossing foreign language film ever. For her next trick, The Hollywood Reporter says Zhang will produce and star in the Wayne Wang period drama Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, a story of two young women and their "imprisonment by rigid cultural codes of conduct for women." Although set (and filmed) in China, the film will be in English. Buyers and financiers are being sought at the American Film Market this week and next. Curiously, Wang has never shot a film in his native country until now.

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New Poster for the Thrilla 'The Horsemen'

The coolest thing about the posters for The Horsemen is that, so far, they've all been in Italian. It just gives the whole Revelations reference a more Vatican-do attitude or something. Delayed for months and months and months and months, The Horsemen will finally be in theaters this March, although Lionsgate just moved it from March 13th to March 6th, where Dennis Quaid and Ziyi Zhang will promptly get slaughtered by Watchmen. That's not a great sign, is it? Moving your flick into the line of fire? Be that as it may, this new poster (kudos to IMP Awards) accomplishes a lot by doing very little, I think. It's easier to make sense out of than the last one, in any case, and I think I'd be more curious about the film represented here than the one in that poster, too. And the Italian doesn't hurt...

Trailer - Dennis Quaid Mystery 'The Horsemen'

War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. Those are your Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Not surprisingly, the new mystery thrilla The Horsemen references Revelations quite a bit, and my, isn't that a tired old movie cliche.

The one thing I like about this new trailer is that Zhang Ziyi is the villain. She was so good when she turned spiteful in Crouching Tiger and Hero. That might not be enough to salvage it, even when you add Dennis Quaid, because this looks really stiff. It might not surprise you to learn that the film has been delayed for a couple of years... I'd say I was somewhere around 40/60 on this trailer (we saw an Italian version a few weeks ago), but whatever it is at the end is odd. I like that last little "What the hell is that?" reaction it forced. So maybe I'm closer to 50/50 now.

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