The phenomenal success of the Twilight and Harry Potter franchises prove there is great fortunate to be found in the arena of high school and adolescent coming of age stories, provided tales of classroom dramas, puberty blues and extra curriculum shenanigans can be mingled with more risqué supplements. Harry Potter brought magic, wizards and witches to the play ground; Twilight brings vampires. Other (better) movies have combined high school settings with concepts like thriller noir (Brick) and politics (Election). Mark my word, it’s just a matter of time until the western genre is revamped with a book/movie series set in cowboy freakin academy, where pubescent six-shooting wannabes go to school to learn the ways of the pistol and, stuffed to the gills with innuendo, the show follows their exploits as they learn how to ride a horse, throw a lasso, refrain from firing their gun too quickly…

And, if a hybrid series comes along, how to kill these pesky new age Twilight-brand vampires who play by their own rules and brazenly dishonour long-held traditions maintained by their vampiric predecessors. They are somewhat revisionist blood-suckers – sunlight doesn’t kill them but it does make them sparkle (sigh) and there is nary a mention of garlic or silver in New Moon – but, if you believe the hype, they are vampires nevertheless.

However, Twilight is not a series about vampires or werewolves (though it features both) – it’s a cheesy soap opera about an angsty chick with a crush. Her name Bella (Kristen Stewart) whose blood (correct me if I’m wrong Twi-hards – I know you will anyway) smells particularly potent, or fruity, or something, so naturally her boyfriend is the town’s sexiest vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson) who lusts for her but won’t bite or have sex with her. At least not until installment #3 or #4. He is 109 years old but has the bod of 19-year-old Kmart model.

After a sticky incident at a social gathering Edward decides that being around Bella is bad for her health – no duh – so he moves away and spends most of the movie periodically returning as a half-rendered hologram. In Edward’s absence a new boy muscles in on the scene; his name is Jake (Taylor Lautner) and he’s a werewolf, and werewolves, you see, are perpetually at war with vampires. You might call it a fire and brimstone love triangle but that would imply there was palpable passion or excitement involved. Jake spends much of the story trying to get to first and second base while Bella longs for Edward’s return. Nuf said.

What really surprises about Twilight: New Moon is not that it’s dopey, dumb or low-brow – it’s the startling lack of conviction that lethargically weeps from every inch of the frame, when it can be bothered. The visual structure is bare and vacuous and the special effects are lacklustre. More alarmingly, the actors can’t be assed putting effort into what they’re saying, listlessly enunciating the dialogue as if they’re suffering from sleep deprivation or have downed a few too many valiums. Makeup on the pasty-faced vampires is so off-putting it makes you wanna walk up to the actors and wipe the white gunk off their faces.

Robert Pattinson appears to have been directed simply to “look cool” on every occasion. Instruction from director Chris Weitz (About a Boy, The Golden Compass) went something like this: “walk across the street…looking cool! Open the door…looking cool! Look at her longingly…looking cool!” But cool this movie is not and neither is he. In fact, if Twlight is your idea of cool, you need some kinda masochistic self-help package: may I suggest inserting a clove of garlic or two where the sun don’t shine, sitting on the pointy end of a silver blade, frying on a banana lounge in the sun and – while grapping with your much deserved self-afflicted agony – taking a long hard look at yourself.

The profligacy of naked, immaculately toned male upper torsos in this movie is staggering; one could be excused for thinking that the town of Forks (where the series is set) enforces some kind of weird arcane rule law stipulating that every young man must be buff, polished-teethed Fabio appreciators and must, must, must, be showcasing their flat chests and six packs at all times. This is taken to ridiculously excessive extremes, so much so that Twilight: New Moon deserves to be pegged as soft, soft, soft porn – a pubescent Mills and Boon stomach-turner jazzed up by a half-assed supernatural twist.

Lame.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon’s Australian theatrical release date: November 19, 2009.

Just when it seemed certain that the surprise success encountered by The Blair Witch Project was a fluke and a once-off – it’s been ten years, after all, since that creepy shoestring spook fest emerged from nowhere to become an international box office behemoth – another American film financed on a similarly miniscule budget has been greeted with similarly phenomenal success.

Paranormal Activity is a bogus home movie about a young couple who try to capture on film a malevolent ghost who haunts them at night. It’s a no frills camcorder-shot thriller that cost around US$11,000 to make, a figure not too far off the cost of sandwich catering for your average Hollywood studio flick. So far it’s pocketed more than US$100 million, with much more business to come.

Like Blair Witch, the film is contrived to appear as if it were shot by the participants themselves, their footage later “discovered” and released worldwide in feature film format – for posterity and public awareness, of course, not anything to do with collecting dosh at the box office. But the most interesting similarity to Blair Witch is the manner with which Paranormal Activity was promoted and distributed, particularly the use of innovative online strategies that have proved remarkably effective in demonstrating the virtues of that timeless marketing adage: sell the sizzle and not the sausage.

Katie (Katie Featherston) is convinced that an evil spirit is following her and Micah (Micah Sloat) is the obligatory nonbeliever who laughs in the face of all this oogie boogie nonsense, the audience silently assured that he will later suffer for his nay saying. The foolhardy youngsters endeavour to make the mother of all home movies, egging the ghost on to visit them and keeping their camcorder recording while they sleep. Sooner or later ol’ cranky pants decides to freak them out good and proper.

The script, penned by Oren Peli (who also directed) conveniently sidesteps the obvious hole in the premise – that the characters could simply pack up shop and go somewhere else – by having an occult expert announce, deeply spooked by the house’s gnarly vibes, that their ain’t no point moving because the spirit will follow Katie like a docile puppy wherever she goes.

Peli takes the audience back to ghost story basics: doors slam, floorboards creak, the stairs go pitter patter, inexplicable groans and gusts of wind enter in the dead of the night. For a long time nothing much happens – in fact, nothing much happens throughout, especially in lieu of today’s chintzy seat-of-yer-pants standards – but the one thing Paranormal Activity gets absolutely right is an eerie atmosphere. It is indefinably tense and disquieting, though in strictly aesthetic terms there is virtually no meat on the bone: no frills, precious few SFX. In some ways that makes the achievement more impressive. In other ways it accentuates what the film really is: slabs of not-much-happens moments which achieve a high degree of realism because of their point blank refusal to embrace the most basic of cinematic conventions, like carefully written dialogue, well framed compositions etcetera etcetera.

Peli understands that real cinematic fear comes from what’s not on the screen, the sensation that the real terror is lingering just off frame. Peli hones in on the character’s reactions, which is what causes most of the trepidation, thus the strength of the performances is paramount because without them everything else would fall down. Featherston and Sloat do a great job feigning white hot horror and to them the film owes much of its success. But at the end of the day the dialogue is irritatingly prosaic, the characterisations are thin, the visual structure practically nonexistent, the pace slow, the plotline clunky. Atmosphere can only count for so much. The Blair Witch Project’s ballsy sense of innovation was enthralling, and more than enough to carry it across the line. Paranormal Activity lacks that spark of skinflint genius.

Still, it’s creepy.

Paranormal Activity’s Australian theatrical release date: December 3, 2009.

The Brothers Bloom is a meandering and limply told con artist drama-comedy with a squidgy instead of a sting in its tail. It runs out of steam before it hits a brisk walk; the proverbial fat man at a fun run.

Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) and Bloom (Adrien Brody) sham people out of money by creating elaborate stories – Stephen as the writer and Bloom the star – then acting them out and collecting money from the unfortunate saps who take them seriously. Bloom quits the game but, three months later, is easily convinced to rejoin and the bullshit-spinning brothers target a rich lonely young woman, Penelope (Rachel Weisz), who is improbably lured to join them on an overseas jaunt which evolves into a phoney smuggling caper of which she is the unknowing star (and victim).

Scene by scene the story plays out with barely a modicum of plausibility and the plotline, drifting and episodic, lacks detail and colour – a skeleton outline like a join the dots with just the dots. Johnson gives the impression he’s making things up as he goes along and just as full of empty bluster as his eponymous brothers. Like Brick, The Brothers Bloom feels heavily contrived, but this time not in a good way. Savvy viewers tend to approach con artist movies suspiciously, understanding that fooling the audience is almost always part of the process. But to enjoy The Brothers Bloom and its aloof, almost melodic atmosphere, at times vaguely reminiscent of a Wes Anderson pic, one needs to be especially generous in lieu of the film’s casual pace and crater-sized plot holes, but even then it’s a tough sell. Adrian Brody’s performance is a stellar example of cinematic sleep walking; his listless eyes and ssllooowww demeanour seem to the dictate the film’s tone and pace.

The Brothers Bloom’s Australian theatrical release date: November 12, 2009

Invictus’s U.S. release date (December 11) has been timed to coincide with the annual end of year awards ceremony frenzy, when a smattering of prestigious Oscar hopefuls inevitably cram into cinemas before the year ticks over. Considering it’s directed by Eastwood, ever an Academy favourite, the film will more or less arrive with the expectation of at least getting nominated for something. If it’s particularly impressive, as most Eastwood films have been in recent years  (i.e. Gran Torino, Flags of Our Fathers, Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River) this could mean good news for the stars, particularly Freeman, because it’s well known that the Academy likes recognising actors who play political leaders. And everything about Freeman seems to scream good taste; here is a man whose dignity remained intact even when hamming it up as God in the Bruce/Evan Almighty movies. That’s an achievement deserving of an award itself. Maybe not an Oscar, though.

Invictus will arrive on Australian screens January 21. Check out the trailer below.

“I always wanted to do a biblical flood movie, but I never felt I had the hook. I first read about the Earth’s Crust Displacement Theory in Graham Hancock’s “Fingerprints of the Gods”. When I discussed it with (co-writer) Harald (Kloser), I said we need a “plausible” reason, not a scientific one. Show this film to a scientist and they would probably laugh.” – Roland Emmerich talking about 2012.

It’s impossible to pinpoint exactly when it happened – or even if it was there from the beginning, lurking, beckoning, hungry for oxygen, whispering gently for attention in the dead of the night – but at some point in his career German-born director Roland Emmerich’s affection for obliterating famous international locations moved beyond desire, beyond lust, beyond a signature or a trademark to something approaching the fetishistic. No filmmaker has torn apart the modern world with such insatiable aplomb. He zapped the White House to smithereens in Independence Day, trampled Manhattan in Godzilla and tormented the globe with hailstones, floods and tornadoes in The Day After Tomorrow – trashing the Hollywood Sign, the Stature of Liberty, the Capital Records building and plenty of others.

Unsatisfied and clearly craving another round of die hard disaster porn, this time with a more international flavour, Emmerich returns to swing the CGI wrecking ball once again in 2012, his loudest and angriest movie yet, the big momma of disaster pics stuffed so full of money shots it’s probably easier to count the moments in which something isn’t destroyed. Targets include The White House (again), the Eiffel Tower, Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer statue, the Sistine Chapel, the Vatican and more. Many more. Like, the whole world more.

Emmerich licks his chops, strums his fingers, strokes the proverbial cat and serves up a screen-buckling cranked-to-11 guilty pleasure sprinkled with rubbishy dramatic moments and drenched in narrative implausibility. No surprises there, but it also happens to be rip snortin’ hoot-n-holler stuff: fast-moving, audacious and bursting with visual detail. Watching 2012 is like sitting window-side on a plane and watching with wide stunned eyes the world go to hell in a SFX-stitched hand basket.

Rest assured this is full-blown cinematic sadism: enjoyment that comes from plonking your caboose on a comfortable seat in an air conditioned cinema and witnessing the spectacularly horrible demise of eons of helpless lemmings doomed to spend eternity rotting in the recycle bins of CGI expenditure. As far as stoopid disaster movies go 2012 takes the cake, stuffs it with C4, lights the fuse and zooms in on every flake of icing as it splatters into oblivion.

The plot that ties together Emmerich’s innumerable moments of unfettered carnage is clunky in structure but surprisingly quick to its feet. There is an obligatory period in which the “science” is breezed over and the players on the board briskly moved into place but the cheese factor is minimal and the storyline is sporadically dotted with moments that endeavour in Emmerich’s loud and screwy way to explore the human condition, or if not to explore it then certainly to blow it to pieces. Take 2012 too seriously you cannot – but, crucially, Emmerich sustains a brisk pace throughout most of his 158 minutes running time. It is slow only in small, forgettable splotches; it’s the human dramas that distract us from Mother Nature’s indomitable wrath.

The premise is simply that the Mayans were right and the world goes to buggery in 2012, the year the Mayan calendar ends. Adrian (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is the American scientist who convinces the powers that be that the end is nigh; a stickler might note that the admirable swiftness with which he achieves this is tough to believe, though, cuz in our two party preferred politically hampered reality the Opposition would no doubt refute every slither of evidence of an impending apocalypse – no matter how peer-reviewed or scientifically legitimised – to the point at which the earth’s surface would be vomiting water and belching lava and the ground crumbling into sawdust while the sceptics fold their arms and say “nup, we’re not doing anything until after Copenhagen.”

Jackson Curtis (John Cusack) is for no particular reason an author who becomes entwined in the whole sordid end of the world process. He’s got a couple of kids and a divorced wife to reconnect with and, of course, he will. Within minutes Jackson is driving his family through LA like a wild-eyed amphetamine powered Stig, careening down streets as the ground and buildings collapse, bedlam a-plenty, hundreds of close shaves stuffed into every shot, howls of laughter and hoots of deranged pleasure emanating from this reviewer’s seat. Jackson learns of ships being made to store humans who can afford a ticket (RRP: one billion Euros) and endeavours to find them and get his fam on board.

At the time of writing, and in strictly visual terms, 2012 is simply the most spectacular disaster picture ever made – find another that can match it in terms of eye candy, cutting edge detail, glorious long range SFX shots etcetera and I’ll chop up my hat and snort it. That might sound like a big call, but special effects technology is linked to the disaster picture like no other genre, because the importance of visualising ambitious concepts is paramount. Though the trophy currently sits on Emmerich’s shelf it won’t stay there for long. 2012 simply could not have been made a couple of decades ago and would have looked supremely dodgy if it had been created in the 90s.

There are lots of irresistable tongue in cheek small touches: deliciously, “the circle is unbroken” plays on a car stereo moments before apocalyptic furore hits; when the Sistine Chapel gets totalled Michelangelo’s God and Adam are split apart just where their fingers touch; Danny Glover is the last President of the USA; Woody Harrelson is the scruffy lookin’ basket case who was right all along, hollering a last minute sermon from the mount while the earth implodes around him; the South Pole relocates to Wisconsin; Cusack delivers the Jaws-saluting quip “we’re gonna need a bigger plane” and the dialogue has an uncanny ability to get away with lines like “do you want to be responsible for the extinction of the human race? Can you handle that Adrian?”

For the record, yes he can. And so can Roland Emmerich. In terms of blowing up the world and bringing about the end of civilisation, his bona fides are second to none.

2012’s Australian theatrical release date: November 12, 2009.

It is unlikely that Gyllenhaal will fit into the same quasi alternative niche after the arrival of the stupendously dumb-looking Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, a Bruckheimer-produced big screen version of the video game that was originally released in 1989 and has since spawned a number of sequels and revamps. The trailer (watch it below) makes it clear that, pending a miracle, it will represent the creative nadir of Gyllenhaal’s career just as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) represented the worst of Angela Jolie. Included in the package are cringe-worthy costumes; Gyllenhaal looks laughable as a dopey long-haired ragamuffin one part Shaggy from Scooby Doo and two parts The Scorpion King.

I remember back in the day playing the original Prince of Persia, a side scrolling platform game with sword fights and rickety tiles that collapse to send the player spiralling downwards onto body mutilating booby traps. I’m guessing that won’t happen to Jake. That’s a shame, especially considering the proliferation of bare chest shots of him strewn across the net, cuz those pecs look just beckoning to be punctured. The trailer culminates with a hellzapoppin action montage spangled with explosions, giant leaps, sword banging, furious glares, operatic music, crumbling buildings and dodging arrows.

Just to get you in the mood, here’s a snippet from the voice-over:

“Only the dagger can unlock the sands of time and there are those who would use this power to destroy the world. The only way to stop this Armageddon is for us to take the dagger to the secret guardian temple…”

In the mood yet?

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time has been slated for a May 2010 Australian theatrical release.

Before I had seen the film I had already engaged with it — and inadvertently helped to promote it — on two social networking websites. Two weeks ago one of my Twitter film colleagues ‘re-tweeted’ a link advertising free screenings across the country. I followed the link to Facebook, where I was essentially bribed to ‘become a fan’ of Paranormal Activity in order to collect my tickets. I followed the instructions, a willing accomplice to the film’s marketing strategies (the more people become a fan of something on Facebook, the more it is exposed to others).

If that wasn’t enough on the social networking front, at the free screening everybody in attendance was given a slip of cardboard encouraging them to “tweet your scream” to go in the running to win Paranormal Activity prize packs.

The fact that an invitation to a media screening for Paranormal Activity arrived in my inbox almost a full week after I had already confirmed (along with all the other freeloaders) to attend a preview screening via Facebook says something about the importance Paramount Pictures are placing on online marketing and pre-release word of mouth.

While Paramount’s viral-heavy marketing tactics have been remarkably effective in generating interest in Paranormal Activities, they point to an aggravating future for users of social networking sites, who will be increasingly forced to interact with proliferating amounts of non-traditional movie advertising.

Paranormal Activity will be released in Australia December 3. Expect a review in the next couple of weeks.

My father has always been a parsimonious hoarder, the kind of niggard who happily reuses Christmas cards, stalks the postman in the hope of collecting discarded rubber bands and brews two cups of tea with the one bag. But even he looks like a spendthrift compared to ol’ Scrooge. “Tuppence is tuppence,” Ebenezer grumbles after pilfering coins from the eyes of a corpse. This is before three ghosts – Past, Present and Future – visit and scare the bejesus out of him by delivering a hallucinatory space/time skewing presentation showcasing the unrepentant a-hole he has become.

A Christmas Carol was originally published in 1843. If you’re not familiar with Dickens’s dense description-heavy writing you’ll certainly recognise some of the text’s cultural by-products: Disney’s character Uncle Scrooge, the Bill Murray comedy Scrooged, or, lowering the bar beneath waterline, Matthew Mcconaughey’s Ghosts of Girlfriend’s Past. Directed by prolific studio old hand Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Forrest Gump etc) this revamped 3D version resists drastically altering or re-contextualising the story and follows it to a surprisingly faithful degree, finding innovation not in narrative reinvention but in the slick performance capture visual style Zemeckis finessed in The Polar Express (2004) and Beowulf (2007) albeit to far less impressive ends.

Moody, chilly and unexpectedly dour, this newfangled A Christmas Carol is patiently unravelled with slow moving shots that soak up Zemeckis’s dark, glossily veneered surfaces like a sponge. The opening tracking shot over the rooftops of ye old London is particularly impressive.

Much of the story resonates just as it should: as an intense no-holds-barred presentation of one man’s unremitting bastardry. It will of course have a happy ending, but Ebenezer damn well has to earn it. Though the film is not without its faults, critic David Stratton was right to suggest that this is perhaps the best screen version of the source material yet, but because of the story’s profligacy – there have been more than 60 film and TV adaptations – virtually nobody can credibly make that call.

To balance the film’s many heavy “look what you’ve done!” moments that highlight the consequences of Ebenezer’s misanthropy – such as glimpses of the financial destitution of his loyal employee Bob Cratchit (Gary Oldman) and hardships linked to Bob’s son Tiny Tim, gawd luv ‘im – Zemeckis uses spectacular high octane magic carpet style footage of Ebenezer flying between multiple locations and time frames. It’s a good trick, because the film is able to implement dizzying effects-based kicks without sacrificing the seriousness of the source material, but Zemeckis oversteps the mark, particularly in a protected chase scene towards the end during which Ebenezer is reduced to the size of a Honey-I-Shrunk-the-Kid and works his little legs and new-found chipmunk voice into a frenzy.

Marrying genuine Dickensian style with bursts of flighty amusement park SFX is an approach that feels a little gimmicky, like those Christmas cards that play melodies when you open them, but by and large it works well and the film nevertheless conveys deep respect for Dickens’s writing. It is also eye bogglingly handsome, easily one of the best looking features of the year. Up also looked glorious but the level of detail here is stunning – particularly the marks, crevices and blemishes on Ebenezer’s splotchy well-weathered face. See it in 3D. Preferably at IMAX.

A Christmas Carol’s Australian theatrical release date: November 5, 2009

Rachel McAdams plays his eponymous wife Clare, the ultra tolerant lovesick type who clearly sees in him something nobody else can. Well into this saccharine pseudo tissue box drama from director Robert Schwentke their relationship is seriously tested by Henry’s peculiar affliction, but the viewer’s patience is tested, tried and obliterated long before Clare tussles with the concept that marrying a time travelling ignoramus perhaps wasn’t such a great idea.

Adapted from author Audrey Niffenegger’s bestselling novel – which from the evidence here suggests was bound by a thick spine of hardened cheese – this mawkishly sentimental and hopelessly inept romance-drama, stuffed with bad performances, stilted dialogue and preposterous contrivances, is a sickeningly schmaltzy cinema experience with all the depth and emotional gravity of a deep-fried hallmark greeting card.

Eric Bana, whose career so far in Hollywood has with few exceptions amounted to one of the greatest let downs of any exported Australian actor, gives his most embarrassing performance yet, a display of unabashed cheesiness deserving of its own cholesterol warning. There is however one thing the floundering Melbourne lad gets exactly right: the vacuous glare of a man who isn’t quite there; the empty look of a person whose soul has been left behind in another time or place. There is a scene in The Time Traveler’s Wife during which Henry returns from the future with winning lottery numbers; he and wifey then pocket the cash, buy a fabulous new home and a chunk of their integrity vanishes forever. It doesn’t take a genius to spot the parallels between this moment and Bana’s real life decision to sign on the dotted line.

Speaking of integrity, there is something unlikeable and deeply suspect about Henry as a character – and it isn’t just Bana’s dodgy American accent. In one scene Henry visits his wife when she is a wee six years old. The reason for this visit is at best unclear, at worst non-existent but he hides in a bush and, when she asks why he is naked, responds by explaining that “I’m a time traveller. I travel from the future. And when I do, I don’t get to bring my clothes.” Uh-huh. This is the point at which I refrain myself from saying something regrettable, something like suggesting that this is a move right out of Dennis Ferguson’s playbook.

Virtually everything about The Time Traveller’s Wife is transparently contrived to the point of borderline-outrageous implausibility: the premise, the characters, the relationship between Henry and Clare. As sheer tissue box fantasy it feels sloppy and uninspiring, its emotional resonance mushie and grotesque and faux charming, like snot and boogers on a fancily embroidered hanky.

Henry sporadically drifts away to alternate moments in time, but these are limited to those spanning his life so don’t expect any scenes in which Bana does something interesting – like sharing a pint with Napoleon or contributing a half decent performance to Ang Lee’s Hulk. Much like Adam Sandler’s character in Click, Henry has no control over the time travelling process. The plot structure is spread higgledy piggledy, with traditional narrative cause and effect hung out to dry – Henry, for example, meets his child, then Clare gets pregnant and so forth – but instead of doing something interesting with the time-warped format events in the storyline feel prosaic and incidental. There is a preposterous wedding scene in which Henry keeps disappearing and returning from various undefined pasts and futures. This could have been handled playfully but is treated with po-faced sincerity, and it exemplifies the gimmicky tone of the narrative, a commonplace array of events strung together with a pseudo Twilight Zone twist that adds precious little in the way of excitement or intrigue.

The only way I can envision The Time Traveller’s Wife being acceptable for viewing by the general public is if each member of the audience were handed a time travelling device with every ticket purchase. After screenings distressed viewers could then zap back in time and convince themselves not to watch it, in turn creating a fracture in the space/time continuum that could – I am assured by some very reliable sources – ultimately lead to the end of the world as you know it, as I know it and as the punks who produced this dross know it. And if The Time Traveler’s Wife is any indication of the kind of cinema we can expect for future generations, Armageddon begins to look not so unappealing after all.

The Time Traveler’s Wife’s Australian theatrical release date: November 5, 2009.

Rumours of a Ridley Scott directed live action adaptation of Hasbro’s classic board game Monopoly continue to sporadically surface on the net while reports of other big screen adaptations similarly based on outrageously un-cinematic source materials continue to boggle the mind.

News has recently surfaced – last week in fact – of a deal Hasbro has made with Sony Pictures for the rights to a big screen version of (wait for it) Risk. Those who haven’t vied for world domination using the Risk board and in the process savored the buzz one gets from turning their best friends into mortal enemies (especially if you’ve been drinking) may find this news very “meh” but for fans of the game it is very much a WTF? affair.

Here’s what Doug Belgrad, president of Columbia Pictures, had to say:

“The strategic thinking and the tactical gambles that players must take in the game are what make Risk a classic, thoroughly engaging game. Those elements translated into an action-packed, thrilling story are what will make this a uniquely exciting movie.”

Bizarre. The premise of Risk is simple: it’s all about taking over the world by rolling the dice to ‘attack’ different countries and territories and, depending on success or defeat, moving small plastic figurines to occupy the spaces.  No back story exists so a narrative for the movie will have to be built from the ground up.

It will be produced and developed by Hasbro’s Brian Goldner and Bennett Schneir and Overbrook Entertainment’s James Lassiter. Incidentally, the Risk board game was invented by a filmmaker - Frenchman Albert Lamorisse in 1957.

In July I blogged about tinsel town’s tendency to raid the closets of nostalgia in the context of Universal’s upcoming movie of Atari’s vintage video game Asteroids, which similarly has zilch in the way of storylines. What these titles share is simple: brand recognition. Other wacky projects currently commissioned by Hollywood studios in addition to Monopoly, Risk and Asteroids include World of Warcraft, Candyland, Battleship and Barbie. This current slew of noodle scratching adaptations makes it pretty clear that it’s all about marketing presence, and everything else be damned.

What’s next – Guess Who: The Movie? How about Hungry Hungry Hippos?