Random ramblings about the Jonah Hex movie

Bleah. Allergies have got me town (tree pollen must be through the roof) and we ended up postponing a weekend getaway to Dallas to see the King Tut exhibit. We left the house this morning and after about 30 minutes I told my lovely wife that I needed to go home. Went to bed & just got up.

I got nothing scanned but several things in the works, but nothing ready. Might as well talk about the Jonah Hex movie.

Jonah Hex - targeted release date August 6 2010. Not a promising release date, but at least it ain't February. (Feb is the time they dump the worst of the worst).

Josh Brolin as Hex. Having only seen No Country for Old Men, I think this is a good pick. Brolin can play the steely-eyed non-talker with ease. I'm looking forward to this.

John Malkovich as Turnbull. When I first heard of this, I wasn't too thrilled. After watching Rounders, I'm stoked. Having a big (ger) name as the villain usually helps but not always. We'll have to see how he plays our favorite Soutern master manipulator.

Megan Fox as Leila. Erg. Don't know much about her other than I've never knowingly seen her in a movie. "Leila". Hmmm, no Mei Ling that's for sure.

Michael Shannon as Doc Cross Williams. I know nothing about him & this is a new character. We'll have to see how this plays out.

Will Arnett. This man did the announcer in the "Don't" trailer in Grindhouse. That & playing Vlad in Horton Hears a Who brings thumbs up from me.

Speaking of Horton, that brings up Jimmy Hayward, the director. His only prior directing credit is Horton, but he has worked in the animation of Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc., Toy Story 2, Bug's Life, & Toy Story. It looks like he has worked on films that know how to have a good compelling story with a nice rhythm and flow. I'm giving this a thumbs up as well. A good director doesn't guarantee a good film (cough Hulk cough).

Now, what about the plot. Everyone thinks they know what is going down, from a rewrite of a plot from years ago to Turnbull being a voodoo daddy raising the Confedrate dead. A lot of noise is pointing towards the Vertigo Jonah Hex (that I haven't reviewed here yet, but might jump ahead prior to the movie being released) but I still hear conflicting stories about the range of the weirdness that is going to be on the screen.

This casting call shows that we are going to get some startling visuals, including amputees, 'unique features', and Carnys.

Here are a few pictures of one of the sets.

One thing does bother me and that is the IMDB page lists John Albano & Tony DeZuniga with writing credits for the characters. This is true for Jonah Hex, but Michael Fleisher first wrote Quentin Turnbull. I'll have to see what I need to do to fix that.