LaBeouf: No Beef

Good news and bad news for Alan Glynn, people. The bad news is that Shia LaBeouf has had to pull out of the movie version of THE DARK FIELDS. The good news is that Glynn is on the Fox News radar. To wit:

LaBeouf was supposed to star in director Neal Burger’s new feature, “Dark Fields”. Burger, the man behind “The Illusionist” and “The Lucky Ones”, was supposed to start shooting this fall.
  But the shoot was postponed because LaBeouf had smashed his hand in a car accident last July. He had hand surgery, according to reports, and the injury was worked into “Transformers 2”, which was held up for a month while LaBeouf recuperated.
  Burger had signed him for “Dark Fields”, in which the 21-year-old star of “Indiana Jones and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” was supposed to play a man who stumbles on a one of a kind smart pill. The screenplay, by Leslie Dixon, is based on a novel by Alan Glynn.
  But now I’m told that LaBeouf has withdrawn completely, and the search is on for a new leading man. “Shia’s hand is totally shattered, it’s much worse than anyone thought,” says a source, indicating the area around the thumb needs more surgery.
  So stay tuned, as all the young actors in Hollywood line up to take Shia’s place.

  Meanwhile, and staying with Alan Glynn-related malarkey, I’m about halfway through his second novel, WINTERLAND, and it’s living up to all the hup-yas so far …

Now Is The WINTERLAND Of Our Discontent

Don’t be fooled by his boyish good looks and cherubic charm – Alan Glynn (right) is something of a criminal mastermind. Yours truly was well impressed with his debut, THE DARK FIELDS, and there’s a rather impressive buzz building around his second, WINTERLAND, which is due early next year and appears to have nailed the second-rate circus that is contemporary Ireland. To wit:

“This is the colossus of Irish crime fiction – what MYSTIC RIVER did for Dennis Lehane, WINTERLAND should do for Alan Glynn. It is a noir masterpiece, the bar against which all future works will be judged … It’s as if Flann O’Brien wrote a mystery novel and laced it with speed, smarts and stupendous assurance.” – Ken Bruen

“Both a crime novel and a portrait of contemporary Ireland caught at a moment of profound change, WINTERLAND seems set to mark Alan Glynn as the first literary chronicler of post-Celtic Tiger Ireland. Timely, topical, and thrilling, this is Ireland as it truly is.” – John Connolly

“A thrilling novel of suspense from a new prose master.” – Adrian McKinty

“WINTERLAND is crime fiction of the highest order – smart, vivid, meticulously crafted, and highly entertaining. Alan Glynn has written a flat-out classic.” – Jason Starr

“WINTERLAND is a powerhouse of a novel whose pacy, character-driven narrative scrutinises Ireland’s underbelly, offering new meaning to the notion of corruption in high places. Glynn’s grasp of the big picture is as immaculate as his attention to detail. This is an exceptional and original crime novel, convincing at every level.” – Allan Guthrie

  Mmmm, nice. So what’s it all about then?

The worlds of business, politics and crime collide when two men with the same name, from the same family, die on the same night – one death is a gangland murder, the other, apparently, a road accident. Was it a coincidence? That’s the official version of events. But when a family member, Gina Rafferty, starts asking questions, this notion quickly unravels. Although she’s devastated, especially by the death of her older brother, Gina’s grief is tempered, and increasingly fuelled, by anger – because the more she’s told that it was all a coincidence, that gangland violence is commonplace, that people die on our roads every day of the week, the less she’s prepared to accept it. Alan Glynn is a Dublin-based writer whose first novel, THE DARK FIELDS, is soon to be filmed, starring Shia LaBeouf.

  All that, and depressingly zeitgeist-y too …

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Crystal Skull

It’s 1957, the Cold War is freezing over, but an aging Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is still capable of cracking his whip at those damn Russkies, led by the ice-cool Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett), when they arrive in Nevada at a Roswell-style complex to steal what appears to be the body of an alien life-form. A terrific opening sequence ensues, with a tongue-in-cheek finale courtesy of an exploding A-bomb, and then the movie settles down to its real quest, that of Indy’s search for a mythical crystal skull which will lead him and his sidekick, the Brando-lite rebel Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf), to the equally mythical El Dorado deep in the Amazon’s impenetrable jungles. Every cent of the reputed $200 million budget is up on the screen, and for the most part this is a rollicking homage to the often shambolic B-movie matinee adventures of the ’30s and ’40s. It’s not supposed to be taken seriously (the ‘CCCP’ emblazoned on the back of Spalko’s jumpsuit is a wink in the direction of cartoonish style), but even so there’s a lack of rigorousness about the storytelling that is disappointing. The adrenaline-charged pursuit through the Amazon jungle is a case in point. Yes, it’s a terrifically entertaining and even hilarious set-piece as Indy, Spalko, Mutt, Marion (Karen Allen), Mac (Ray Winstone), Ox (John Hurt) and a veritable battalion of (uniformed!) Russian soldiers jump back and forth between trucks, jeeps and amphibious vehicles, using a variety of weapons to thrash one another senseless as the convoy careers through the jungle – but wait a minute, wasn’t that jungle supposed to be ‘impenetrable’? Where did the parallel roads come from? Are they the work of the aliens who arrived on earth 7,000 years ago to kick-start human civilisation as we know it, or was it just George Lucas and Steven Spielberg not really caring about simple things like continuity? Much as we’d like to believe it’s the former, it’s very probably the latter – The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a series of great set-pieces, one segueing into the other, but there’s no cohesion to what happens, and how, or why. In a nutshell, there’s no story to give us a reason as to why we should care if Indy and his crew succeed in their quest. The finale, which trades very heavily on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, is visually impressive but emotionally sterile – there’s a perfunctory feel to it that suggests the makers simply couldn’t wait to get it all over with so they could begin a whole new franchise with Shia LaBeouf wielding the whip. *** - Declan Burke

Walking In A Wonder WINTERLAND

It’s a good time to be Alan Glynn, people. THE DARK FIELDS’ author has a new novel on the way, WINTERLAND, with the blurb elves over at Antony Harwood ponying up thusly:

WINTERLAND is a fast-paced, complex thriller set in contemporary Dublin. The worlds of business, politics and crime collide when two men with the same name, from the same family, die on the same night - one death is a gangland murder, the other, apparently, a road accident. Was it a coincidence? That’s the official version of events. But when a family member, Gina Rafferty, starts asking questions, this notion quickly unravels. Although she’s devastated, especially by the death of her older brother, Gina’s grief is tempered, and increasingly fuelled, by anger, because the more she’s told that it was all a coincidence, that gangland violence is commonplace, that people die on our roads every day of the week, the less she’s prepared to accept it …

Meanwhile, Anthony Covino over at Pop Culture reports that the movie of THE DARK FIELDS, starring Shia LaBeouf and directed by Neil Burger, is ‘said to be in the vein of Fight Club and The Game’. Colour us intrigued, particularly as LaBeouf is hotter than snot on a griddle right now – his next outing is in - oh yes! - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull …

The Popcorn Interlude # 174: Disturbia

Is the world ready for a teen take on Rear Window? Placed under house arrest for decking his teacher, Kale (Shia LaBeouf, right, with Carrie-Ann Moss) spends his summer spying on his neighbours – first the gorgeous newcomer to his neighbourhood, Ashley (Sarah Roemer), then the creepy guy next door (David Morse), who may or may not be a serial killer. An inventive remake, Disturbia owes a huge debt to LaBeouf’s sparky performance – fresh-faced he may be, but LaBeouf (Transformers, A Guide To Recognising Your Saints) has a natural style free of affectations that suggests he’s a serious prospect for the future. Director DJ Caruso (a veteran helmer of TV’s The Shield) ratchets up the tension gradually, leaving plenty of time for the romance between Kale and Ashley to blossom, and even if the final third recycles overly familiar slasher-horror tropes, this is still a cut above the usual teen fare. ****- Michael McGowan