Amazon Blogs: Armchair Commentary Daily Digest

Check out these Updates from Armchair Commentary for July 21, 2010.

"Salt": A Kick-Ass Cast Change? July 21, 2010   According to Alien director Ridley Scott, Ripley, the iconic character embodied (and how!) by Sigourney Weaver, was originally a man. "During casting," he told an interviewer, "we thought, 'Why don''t we make it a woman?'" Why not indeed? So when Tom Cruise passed on playing Edwin Salt, a CIA agent on the run after being accused of being a Russian spy, cooler heads prevailed in casting a kick-ass Angelina Jolie. We'll never know what the Cruise version would have been like, but probably different as, well, Knight and Day. Cast changes are nothing new. Harrison Ford replaced Tom Selleck as Indiana Jones and Michael J. Fox replaced Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly, to name two famous instances. But as in the case of Salt, some cast changes are more dramatic (or comedic) than others. Take The Beaver, which last year was named Hollywood's best unproduced script. The odd progression of A-list names attached to star befits this black comedy about a man whose life is gradually taken over by a beaver hand puppet. The most prominent names reported were Steve Carrell, then Jim Carrey, and finally, lethal phoner Mel Gibson. Whatever The Beaver's marketing and PR team are being paid to try and salvage the film's fortunes in the wake of Mel's anvil parachute-like plummet from grace, it can't be nearly enough. In the immortal words of June Cleaver, I'm worried about The Beaver. While one can picture Steve, Jim, or especially Mel losing it to a puppet, can you imagine anyone but Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop? How about Sly Stallone? He got the script first, but as he told the fanboy Ain't It Cool News website, even he thought it had been sent to the wrong house. "I re-wrote the script to suit what I do best and by the time I was done, it looked like the opening scene from Saving Private Ryan," he said. "Believe it or not, the finale was me in a stolen Lamborghini playing chicken with an oncoming freight train being driven by the ultra-slimy bad guy." Actually, that sounds kinda cool. Or how about Cheech and Chong in Stripes? That's the fact, Jack. Ivan Reitman originally pitched the classic '80s comedy as a vehicle for the iconic comedy team. Reportedly, they demanded complete creative control (sounds like a wasted opportunity), and so Bill Murray and Harold Ramis were enlisted. And speaking of classic comedy teams, did you know that The Road to Singapore, the first of the classic Road comedies, was originally a vehicle for Jack Oakie and...Fred MacMurray? They turned it down, paving the way for the inspired casting of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.  Does Angelina's name above the title instead of Tom's make you more or less excited to see Salt? What are your favorite movies that benefited from fortuitous casting changes? --Donald Liebenson    The Doctor is in: Matt Smith is the eleventh Doctor Who July 21, 2010 The fifth season of Doctor Who , starring Matt Smith as the new Doctor and Karen Gillan as his companion, is coming out on DVD and Blu-ray on November 9. Bonus features are: - "Meanwhile in the Tardis": Newly filmed scenes written by Steven Moffat, exclusive to... read more

We hope you enjoyed receiving this message. However, if you'd rather not receive future e-mails of this sort from Amazon.com, please visit the opt-out link here.