The Secret Life of Bees, adapted and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood from the best-selling book by Sue Monk Kidd, weaves racism and the civil rights movement around the story of Lily (Dakota Fanning), a young white girl taken in by three African-American sisters when she runs away from her controlling, emotionless father. It's a role that's in some ways reminiscent of the character Fanning played in Hounddog, a film that was critically panned and rather controversial for having a scene in which Fanning's character was raped.

This time around, there's no such awkward controversy; The Secret Life of Bees is a sweet, mostly charming coming-of-age tale that, while it doesn't particularly break any new ground with regards to the filmmaking, does an able enough job of adapting a bestselling book of the "women's bookclub" variety for the screen. Here's the basic story: Lily is haunted by the death of her mother; now, on the eve of her fourteenth birthday, she's had enough of her father, T-Ray (Paul Bettany), and starts to fight back against him.

When their maid, Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson), is accosted by a pack of angry white men on the way to registering to vote -- and ends up arrested herself for her trouble -- Lily decides that it's time for both her and Rosaleen to escape. She has a vague idea about where to go -- Tiburon, South Carolina -- based only on the name of a town written on one of the few possessions she has of her mother's, and a label from a honey jar.

Continue reading TIFF Review: The Secret Life of Bees

As if he didn't have too many comic book adaptations to write, Zak Penn (X-Men: The Last Stand) has been named as the new screenwriter of Joel Silver's remake of The Dirty Dozen, which we unfortunately heard about early last year. Originally it was reported that the movie was being scripted by three high-profile writers, André Nemec, Josh Appelbaum and Scott Rosenberg, but apparently their work isn't good enough and a rewrite is now necessary. Of course, one has to wonder why Silver needs to go through so many writers when there's already a perfectly good screenplay by Nunnally Johnson and Lukas Heller. It isn't like too much needs to be updated; the movie is set in World War II. I'm not familiar with E.M. Nathanson's original novel, though, and I guess the first movie may have omitted some things that the new adaptation could include. Anyway, I guess it just isn't common practice to reuse an old script when remaking an old movie.

For those who haven't seen The Dirty Dozen, it's about a group of military criminals sent on a suicide mission to assassinate Nazi officers. It features an iconic ensemble of actors, most of whom were reunited to voice characters in Small Soldiers as a sort of homage. To the faithful, it will be very, very difficult to see a new version without Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, Ernest Borgnine, Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland, George Kennedy and the rest. I don't know what the time frame is for the production of the remake, but we may get to see it as early as next year. And if Silver can get the project going soon, maybe it can even go head to head with Penn's buddy Bryan Singer's Hitler assassination movie, Valkyrie. They might even make a good double feature -- or you can rent the original Dirty Dozen and then go see Valkyrie and more possibly experience a great double feature.

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Why mess up a good thing? The trio that made Casino Royale work so well is now in place for the sequel. We already brought you news that the script for Bond 22 has been turned in by original scripters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, but now comes word that, just like last time, Paul Haggis is being brought on board to inject his own voice and do some re-working. The LA Times speculates that with all of the projects he has going on, including editing In the Valley of Elah, Haggis might have asked for a hefty raise to do this again, but I personally can't imagine that it's really a chore -- who wouldn't want to take a more or less finished Bond script and add their own changes to it? The Times goes pretty far in giving Haggis credit for the success of the last Bond film, saying that his writing "helped to revitalize the aging franchise and give it the edgier credibility it needed to hook a new generation of fans." Wow -- sounds like someone is a fan.

Further down in the article, the Times goes the Variety and HR route of re-hashing what has been reported on the online movie sites, when they tell us that four directors are now in contention to helm Bond 22. The "whisperings" --as they call them -- have Tony Scott, Jonathan Mostow, Marc Forster, and Alex Proyas being in talks for the chair, although what LatinoReview actually said is that an offer is already out to Forster, and that makes a lot of sense to me. There's no way Barbara Broccoli is going to go toe to toe with Tony Scott every day on the set -- she wants someone she can keep a lid on. Jonathan Mostow? It's possible, but Forster sounds so right that I'm digging around right now to see if I can confirm it. Stay tuned to Cinematical for updates.