The retrospective Aleksandr Sokurov: A Spiritual Voice opens on Thursday at BFI Southbank in London and runs through December 30. For Steve Rose, who meets Sokurov for the Guardian, "overshadowing his entire career is his 'tetralogy of power,' a magnum opus conceived in 1980 and only completed this year. The first three films focused on 20th-century leaders — Hitler in 1999's Moloch, Lenin in 2001's Taurus, and Emperor Hirohito in 2005's The Sun — pinning them down in isolated, almost abstract domestic situations. The final movie, a loose adaptation of Goethe's Faust, is almost a complete departure…. Why make three movies on historical subjects and one on a fictional one? 'Why do you think?' I suggest Faust is a sort of prequel to the other three. 'Maybe,' he nods. Or is it that the first three deal with the death of power, whereas Faust addresses its acquisition? 'But he never gets this power,' Sokurov says. 'It's impossible to have this power, because it doesn't really exist. It only exists to the extent to which people are ready to submit to it. Power is not material.'"
In the works. "Disney's adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs's John Carter of Mars books is such a preposterous proposition — the opener to a mega-budget franchise, directed by a first-time live-action filmmaker, set on a Mars that doesn't remotely resemble the real red planet and based on a series of books from a weird outdated genre which hardly anyone has read — that I can't help rooting for it," admits the Guardian's Ben Child. "One gets the impression that director Andrew Stanton, the Pixar dude who helped create Wall-E and Finding Nemo, has the same feeling about the film."
"Doctor Who fans," calls out Twitch's Todd Brown, "your universe has just gotten larger with word that David Yates — director of the last four Harry Potter films — will be bringing the Time Lord to the big screen."
David Gordon Green may direct an adaptation of Evan Mandery's novel Q, reports Kevin Jagernauth at the Playlist.
"After a long search, Warren Beatty has chosen Like Crazy star Felicity Jones to play the female lead in the untitled film about reclusive industrialist Howard Hughes," reports Deadline's Mike Fleming.
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