You can't accuse this movie of false advertising. Tokyo Gore Police, which screened this weekend as part of the seventh annual Asian Film Festival of Dallas (AFFD), bursts at the seams with severed limbs, oceans of bodily fluids, and enough intestines to choke a horse. More sensitive souls will run screaming from the room during the first scene, in which a man's head explodes in a cloudburst of blood, but that sets the tone of the movie as a live-action adult cartoon. Just keep repeating to yourself: "It's only latex and corn syrup, it's only latex and corn syrup ..."

Structured very much like a sick and twisted variety show, Tokyo Gore Police is all about the set pieces, which are mighty impressive indeed for fans of "hardcore mega-splatter," as our own Scott Weinberg described a clip he saw a few months ago. In the future, the Tokyo police force has become privatized for the protection of its citizens. That gives them license to execute all criminals with, let us say, extreme prejudice. One strain of bad guys remain a problem, however. Whenever so-called "engineers" lose a body part, the missing limb mutates into a bizarre weapon.

I thought Noburu Iguchi's The Machine Girl was insanely over-the-top, but Tokyo Gore Police ups the ante by mixing in generous nods to Paul Verhoeven, especially RoboCop and Starship Troopers.

When two movies with similar plots hit theaters around the same time, it usually just reveals the vapidity of Hollywood formula (as was the case when Deep Impact and Armageddon came out a few months apart). The situation changes, however, when the subject matter has far more thematic weight. Defamer's S.T. VanAirsdale points out the potential conflict brewing now that The Weinstein Company has picked up U.S. theatrical, DVD and television rights to the 2004 German film Operation Valykrie, a dramatization of the failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hilter during World War II. Sound familiar? That's because Bryan Singer's upcoming 2009 release, Valkyrie, tells precisely the same story, with Tom Cruise in the role of would-be assassin Col. Claus Von Stauffenberg. In the German movie, the character is played by Sebastian Koch, the debonair star of The Lives of Others and Paul Verhoeven's Black Book.

In addition to the overlapping content, VanAirsdale points out another potential conflict: Koch's female co-star in Black Book, the alluring Carice van Houten, stars opposite Cruise in Valkyrie, creating the sort of meaty overlap that money can buy. Harvey Weinstein's no slouch when it comes to instigating controversy, but his company hasn't exactly had the best of luck with its recent daring titles (few turned out for Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?). Personal drama has impacted Cruise's films before, but this might be the rare case where he would have nothing to do with it.

Well, uh, here's something I wasn't expecting to read today, though I might have been less blindsided had I seen this Cinematical post from a year ago. Paul Verhoeven -- he of Robocop, Showgirls, Basic Instinct and Starship Troopers (and Black Book, yes, but the contrast's not as much fun) -- is... publishing a biography of Jesus! Co-written by Rob Van Scheers (who also wrote... a biography of Paul Verhoeven!), the book is reportedly based on 20 years of research by the director, and looks to be a historical rather than a Biblical account of Jesus's life. The book will make some controversial claims, such as that Jesus was the son of Mary and a Roman soldier who raped her, and that he was not in fact betrayed by Judas Iscariot.

Awesome. With all deference to Verhoeven, I'm not sure how much he can possibly have to contribute to such a well-trodden subject. A note at the end of the Hollywood Reporter story may go a long way toward explaining the existence of the book: Verhoeven has long aspired to make a historically-grounded movie about Jesus, and hopes this book will generate interest in such a project. The book comes out in September, and I, uh... can't wait to read it? Maybe I can write a review, at least if it's released in English as well as Dutch.

As far as we know, when he's not researching Jesus, Verhoeven is still in pre-production for The Thomas Crown Affair 2.

To be honest, when word went out that the sequel to The Thomas Crown Affair was on the hunt for a director, I could never have predicted this. The master of sex and violence Paul Verhoeven told the Dutch radio program Met Het Oog Op Morgen, that he will be directing the Crown sequel for MGM. Titled The Topkapi Affair, the story will be a combination of Eric Ambler's novel The Light of Day, about a small time heist man who gets roped into an international jewel heist, and the 1964 adaptation of that novel starring Peter Ustinov. Considering the glamor of '99's Crown, the script might have to make some minor adjustments. Unless this time they are going for Thomas Crown on the skids.

Back in August, Patrick reported that Brosnan would be reprising his role as Thomas Crown, the dashing thief. Unfortunately, Renee Russo would not be returning, but previous reports have Angelina Jolie slated to star -- although there is still the chance that Jolie deal could fall through since there hasn't been any official confirmation. The script was completed back in January, and the project was given the green-light in March; (and I don't mean to be cynical, but the strike might have had something to do with MGM's enthusiasm in getting the film into production). Filming is set to take place on location in Istanbul, which might make use of the famed Topkapi Palace. Although it is unknown whether the production has permission to film in the palace -- Verhoeven just better make sure the nobody at the Istanbul Archeology Museum gets a hold of a copy of Showgirls. The Topkapi Affair is set for release in 2008.

[via ComingSoon.net]

Right across the street from my apartment sits a nice, fat, corporate-owned video rental store that I rarely visit. It's conveniently located and if I rent older releases I can keep them for a week, but I've simply fallen out of the habit of renting in person. Online rentals are even more convenient, and if I'm patient, most US releases come to video on demand and eventually premium cable. I could admit that I'm just too lazy to schlep across the street to return my rentals, but I'd rather imagine that I'm trying to stay on the cutting edge.

Recently, though, I ventured into the store. Based solely on its premise, I was predisposed to like Yo-Yo Girl Cop: Japanese schoolgirl recruited as a secret agent for a government organization armed only with a yo-yo. It sounds an entertaining action flick; sadly, director Kenta Fukasaku, son of the late, great Kinji Fukasaku, sucks all the joy out of the concept. The action is shot in the fashionable, quick cut, crazy angle, handheld style, but without any grace or distinguishing rhythm. That's typical of the entire picture, which stitches sequences together without any style, wit, or originality, to diminishing and wearisome effect. The DVD includes a 40-minute "making of" feature that is informative and makes me curious to see the original films and TV show.

Paul Verhoeven's Black Book was just as good as everyone has been saying, including our own Ryan Stewart and Christopher Campbell: a rollicking, humanistic Nazi adventure thriller that sizzles right up until it goes off the rails to deliver a heavy-handed message about man's inhumanity to man (as if the preceding two hours hadn't already made that apparent). I'm sorry I missed it on the big screen, though. Carice VanHouten is stunning.

William Friedkin's Bug was even better than I expected from reading Jette Kernion's review; a mesmerizing descent into madness that I resisted initially. It's so powerfully cohesive, though, and features such amazing, award-caliber performances from Michael Shannon and Ashley Judd that my objections melted away. Friedkin is especially forthcoming about his strengths and weaknesses as a filmmaker in an interview on the DVD, which helped make my trip across the street surprisingly worthwhile.

What did you do on Saturday night? The Weinstein Co. was busy, closing three deals at the American Film Market (AFM), according to ScreenDaily.com. They picked up US distribution rights to films represented by French company Wild Bunch.

• Dorothy Mills stars Carice Van Houten, who gave an incredible performance in Paul Verhoeven's Black Book and has since been rumored as a Bond Girl and signed for biopic Smoke and Ochre, Bryan Singer's Valkyrie, Body of Lies with Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe, and Repossesion Mambo with Jude Law. (Whew!) Dorothy Mills was directed by Agnès Merlet (Artemisia) and is described as a mystery thriller. Van Houten plays a grieving psychiatrist assigned to help a teenage girl accused of strangling a baby.
  

• Dante 01 represents the solo directing debut of Marc Caro, who previously made Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children with Jean-Pierre Jeunet. The film is set in a "space prison," where dangerous criminals become unwilling participants in medical experiments. The prisoners begin resisting; the arrival of a mysterious convict brings everything to a head. It's due for release in France on January 2, 2008.
  

• Martyrs is a horror flick from writer/director Pascal Laugier. It starts in the 1970s with the discovery of Lucie, a young girl who'd gone missing the year before and has no memory of what happened. Hospitalized, she suffers from nightmares of torture, but slowly recuperates with the help of another young patient. Fifteen years pass and she turns up at a house in a forest with shotgun in hand. (Cineuropa has the details.)
  

No word yet on whether the Weinsteins plan theatrical releases, though Dorothy Mills is the most likely to get one. AFM continues through November 7 in lovely, seaside Santa Monica, California.

Get your ass to Mars ... again. According to Moviehole, there's a new Total Recall movie in the works, but it is hard to really tell if it's to be a sequel or a remake. Apparently The Weinsteins have owned the rights to the original TR for years and they had plans to do a follow up. Then Spielberg's Minority Report happened. Huh? Aside from also being adapted from a Philip K. Dick story, MR has nothing to do with TR. Except that it was originally scripted by Ronald Schusett and Gary Goldman as Total Recall 2. Of course, the end result bears no resemblance to that draft, in which Tom Cruise's character was actually Arnold Schwarzenegger's Doug Quaid, the Precogs were mutated humans (from the Martian atmosphere) and all the action took place on Mars. Still, Moviehole claims Minority Report beat The Weinsteins to the punch and so this new Total Recall project will in fact be a remake.

Personally, I don't see how Minority Report keeps The Weinsteins from doing a sequel. Dick's story had no relation to his "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale", which was the inspiration for Total Recall, and really the movie makes no reference. Sure, Schusett and Goldman's idea for a sequel is no longer possible, but there is certainly other ways to do one. However, the fact that Schwarzenegger isn't exactly an actor these days also contributes to the problems with producing a sequel. Doing a follow up without him, though, would not be that surprising. In fact, it is particularly common with Paul Verhoeven movies to do a sequel without the stars of the first film (Hollow Man II; Robocop 3; Starship Troopers 2). At least Sharon Stone is interested in a Total Recall sequel. Certainly it would be more ridiculous to go the remake route, considering how popular Verhoeven's original was -- and still is.

Switching things up from the recent European period pieces that Paul Verhoeven has attached his name to (the already-released Black Book and the upcoming Azazel), the director is heading stateside again. Filmstaker has word that the director of hits like RoboCop and Basic Instinct (and somehow-beloved flops like Showgirls) is going to helm a new project called The Paperboy. (They got the news from Teletext.co.uk, but the source report is "no longer available.") The project will be an adaptation of Pete Dexter's book from the '90s.

The story focuses on a young man named Jack who is a college dropout working for his dad's Moat County Tribune paper in Florida. His older brother Ward, who reports for the Miami Times, comes to town with partner Yardley Acheman to look into the 4-year-old murder of the town sheriff, and Jack helps them out. After Ward gets badly beaten by a few sailors, his partner fabricates evidence to finish the story and brings further trouble to the brothers. According to Publishers Weekly, it's a "story line so complicated that it loses focus and then almost peters out." That being said, it's got some potential -- Dexter wrote Deadwood, the book that the popular television series was based on. (Not to mention Paris Trout, which was helmed by Gyllenhaal papa Stephen.) And the writer has some screenplays under his belt -- from the ick-angelic Michael to The Devil and Daniel Webster -- so there's a chance he'll pen this adaptation. Yeah ... just about anything is possible for this project.

He has somewhat redeemed himself with Black Book, but Paul Verhoeven still has to live with the fact that he made Hollow Man. The 2000 sci-fi thriller was a spot on his resume, which, yes, also includes Showgirls. Unlike Showgirls, however, there is no guilty pleasure, no appreciable campiness with Hollow Man. It's just bad. Verhoeven knows this, and he's been very public about how miserable it was to work with Sony on the movie. We have to look at his failure with Hollow Man as a good thing, though. At least it made him return to Holland to make Black Book.

Hollow Man wasn't a complete disaster for the studio. It made some money, it earned an Oscar nomination for special effects and it was successful enough for Sony to produce a direct-to-video sequel. If the movie had failed in all regards, Sony might not have been interested in releasing a Director's Cut of the movie on DVD, arriving in stores October 16, according to dvdactive.com. According to the specs, the new cut features an extra 8 minutes not seen in the original version. It is likely that this is the only difference, though. I'm sure Verhoeven didn't spend a lot of time re-editing the movie or reworking it in any other way. After all, it seems most of his unhappiness with the project was in its filming, not its editing. Hopefully the 8 minutes of footage doesn't simply consist of the three deleted scenes included on the Hollow Man Special Edition DVD. It still has yet to be revealed whether or not this new version will have any other bonus features, such as a new commentary or some other explanatory guide to the cut.

Hollow Man stars Kevin Bacon as a guy who becomes a modern-day Invisible Man. It has some neat ideas, including the usual themes of man abusing his abilities and going mad with power, as well as the idea that an invisible man would go crazy from sleeplessness because of invisible eyelids. It was too bad the movie ended up coming off as a creepy, disturbing thriller about a guy who spies on girls in the bathroom and who eventually becomes a deranged killer. It is also too bad that the director's cut will likely not change this about it.

What's been going on over at Cinematical Indie the past few days? Let's take a peek ...

• In film distribution news, the provocatively titled Your Mommy Kills Animals (yeesh), which takes its name from a PETA brochure, scored distrib this week. The film played at HotDocs earlier this year to positive reviews from the likes of Variety and eFilmCritic, and sold out screenings at Montreal's Fantasia Film Festival. Congrats to director Curt Johnson.
• This week's Indie Film Blog Group Hug tossed some love around to lots of blogs writing about interesting things in the world of film. Highlights: Christopher John Stack's film An Exercise in Vigilance is screening at the Action on Film International Film Festival in Long Beach, Movie City Indie's Ray Pride interviews filmmaker Usama Alshaibi, Lost in Negative Space blogger Peet Gelderblom has seen Famke Jenssen's sister in her underwear, and guess who's dating indie-film darling Miranda July ... ?
• Been wondering what the members of The Fugees are up to? Even if you haven't, you might be interested to know that former Fugee Pras Michel is starring in a documentary about homelessness. In the film Skid Row, Pras lived as a homeless person for nine days, recording the results on video. The film has been picked up for distrib by Screen Media Films, and will open August 24 in a limited NYC-LA-Washington DC run. If it plays well in those cities, maybe it will get a wider open down the road and the rest of us might get to see it.
• The Guardian posits the question: What great filmmakers haven't had real bios?
• Jette tells us about Paul Verhoeven's Soldier of Orange being made into a musical in the Netherlands -- but she's holding out hope for Showgirls!
• Ryan Stewart reviews Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox.