It looks like James Cameron is going for the tight-lipped PR approach for Avatar, and the Todd Solondz school of misanthropy might be supplying one of its finest graduates for the next Spider-Man villain

I’m a sucker for getting caught up in the hype for big blockbuster sci-fi movies that know exactly how to market themselves in order to look like the coolest thing since Ripley took out the xenomorph queen in Aliens. But so far the online publicity for Avatar, James Cameron’s forthcoming 3D megalith, hasn’t quite got under my skin. Far more exciting was the 15 minutes or so of actual footage that I saw earlier this year at the IMAX Waterloo in London. OK, so Cameron’s creation, the planet Pandora, did have a certain new-age whiff to it, with all those elfin, blue Thundercat types running around, but it was lurid, visceral and vivid enough to make you want to reach for the Peter Gabriel albums (and I’m a Peter Gabriel fan).

So far Avatar’s online hype machine has been limited to an OK teaser trailer and a pretty crappy website for supposed human recruits to travel to Pandora (which has admittedly improved somewhat since I first wrote about it last month).

The first full-length trailer is due to hit the web tomorrow, but an “international” version with unidentifiable subtitles is already available online, and reports are that it’s virtually indistinguishable from the English-language equivalent that’s about to drop. In the film, Jake (Sam Worthington), a disabled former marine given the chance to walk again via an alien body, or Avatar, which he can control with his mind, is charged with infiltrating the indigenous population of Pandora, the Na’avi, in order to help some evil military-industrial complex types plunder the priceless local mineral deposits. This new version appears to confirm a rather obvious story twist: it looks like Jake goes a little native and turns on his former employers.

There’s also a new featurette, which is mostly just Cameron waxing lyrical about what a genius Cameron is, while various other members of the cast and crew also make with the vapid hero worship, though it does contain a few shots we’ve not yet seen of Pandora.

For all the admittedly impressive motion capture involved, the technology, the ambition and the excellent cast, which includes the likes of Sigourney Weaver, Giovanni Ribisi and Zoe Saldana, Avatar’s success will ultimately be predicated on its storyline, which right now looks like a pretty generic one that we’ve seen before in countless movies. Let’s hope Cameron includes a few further twists in the tale to shake things up a little.

Elsewhere this week, more rumours are leaking out about Spider-Man 4, Sam Raimi’s forthcoming return to the world of everyone’s favourite wall-crawling superhero type. This time the Evil Dead director is up against it after the critics turned on the series’ last outing, Spider-Man 3, due to its confused plot and multiple villains. The suggestion is that only one bad guy will feature this time, with Dylan Baker, always good value in unusual roles in movies such as Todd Solondz’s Happiness, looking likely to get the nod in the form of Spidey’s old enemy, The Lizard.

Baker already appears in the series as Peter Parker’s sometime tutor and mentor Dr Curt Connors, who in the original comic books is transformed into the reptilian supervillain, so the move makes plenty of sense. And while the New York-born actor doesn’t immediately come across as having the charisma of a Willem Dafoe or an Alfred Molina, who played the villains in the series’ celebrated first two instalments, he’s a class act who more than deserves the shot at a headline role.

What are your thoughts on this week’s stories? Are you getting excited about Avatar yet? And can Raimi turn round Spider-Man, which incidentally also looks set to be shot in 3D? Is Baker the right man to play the series’ next villain, or should a better-known actor be brought on board?

Stage makeover planned for 1988 Tom Cruise vehicle about a bartender who dreams of shaking things up with his own cocktail bar

The mania for turning movies into musicals continues apace with the news that boozy Tom Cruise classic Cocktail is to get a stage makeover.

The film’s screenwriter, Heywood Gould, told the New York Post that he was at work on a script during a 20th anniversary party for the movie.

The 1988 original starred Cruise as a talented stick-swizzler who relocates to Jamaica with Bryan Brown’s grizzled mentor to try and raise the money to fund a classy new bar called Cocktails and Dreams.

“I am writing it as we speak,” said Heywood. “[Producer] Marty Richards is on board and he’s working on the score. It’s far too early to talk about casting. We haven’t approached anybody yet. But I do like Katie Holmes.”

Holmes, now married to Cruise, would presumably be earmarked for the girlfriend role played by Elisabeth Shue in the original. But Gould may face competition from another movie-turned-musical: producers of the Broadway version of Finding Neverland are reported to have set their sights on Holmes for the Kate Winslet role.

Ten movies made into musicals in the past decade

The Producers: Ran and ran and ran until the only thing left to do was turn it into another film.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels: John Lithgow and Norbert Leo Butz helped to rake in 11 Tony award nominations in 2005.

The Wedding Singer: Toured the UK in 2008, but never made it to the West End.

When Harry Met Sally: Luke Perry and Alyson Hannigan failed to reignite the magic in 2004.

Dirty Dancing: Currently playing in the UK, US and Germany.

Lord of the Rings: On an endless world tour.

Sweet Smell of Success: Short-lived but acclaimed hack-filled toe-tapper.

Spider-Man: Bono and the Edge have written the music. Julie Taymor directs. Alan Cumming stars as the Green Goblin. The limber hero has still to be announced.

High Fidelity: The all-singing, all-dancing stage show about a grumpy, list-obsessed record store owner closed after 14 performances in New York in 2006.

Grumpy Old Men: The musical of the 1993 film starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau hits Broadway this winter, starring F Murray Abraham and George Hearn. A new character, Punky, sexes up the story.

The feature film No One Knows About Persian Cats, showing at the festival tonight, shows an aspect of Tehran rarely seen by the west: its underground live music scene

In the first two weeks of June 2009, before the presidential election in Iran, TV audiences in the west were shown something different: young Iranians, mostly in Tehran, pushing strict rules on dress and behaviour to their limit as the authorities temporarily allowed a little more freedom. These people would be at the receiving end of the crackdown when it came after the vote.

Two months earlier, in April, Iran-American journalist Roxana Saberi had been sentenced to eight years on charges of spying for the United States. No One Knows About Persian Cats (Kasi Az Gorbehayeh Irani Khabar Nadareh), which shows at the London film festival tonight, brings the two strands together.

Co-written by Saberi (who was released in May) it is a film about the underground (ie illegal) live music scene in Tehran. These are bands with more to worry about than what haircut will work best in Camden. The story begins shortly after Ashkan, a member of an indie rock band, is released from jail and follows him and female singer Negar as they attempt to obtain, via forgers and bootleggers, the passports and visas that will allow them to leave Iran to play a gig in London.

Stylistically, it feels as stifling as their lives must surely be. The threat of the police and authorities is all around. Bands soundproof secret rehearsal spaces and venues; one heavy metal band avoids arrest by playing in a stinking cowshed on a farm far out of town; members of another band talk about having their instruments confiscated. The police are often out of shot, however – perhaps adding to the omnipresent menace and what feels like an arbitrary exercise of power. When Negar’s car is stopped and her pet dog taken from her, we never see the police officer who does the snatching.

The action, if that’s the word for it, takes place in below-stairs recording studios only reached via alleyways and through hidden doors. The feature – directed by Saberi’s fiance, Bahman Ghobadi – was shot discreetly in Tehran and has enough of a documentary feel to it (the titles announce it is based on “real events, people and locations”) that you can assume this is what Tehran’s indie rock scene does actually look like. In fact, a Canadian TV report from just before the election goes to what looks to be the same places and talks to musicians bravely recording and performing in them.

The TV report, however, shows up one of No One Knows About Persian Cats’ major flaws – that the music just isn’t very good (the Canadian TV crew find more musically interesting artists). In the latter stages of the film we hear Tehran bands playing – one purveying indie rock, another heavy metal, others blues and rap. All are derivative of western styles (which is kind of the point, it is such “decadence” that gets them banned) but don’t inject much more into it. The rap band depict Tehran as a “jungle” where someone else, usually with a car, always gets the girl: all very well – and probably true – but also true of Skee Lo’s pop rap portrait of Los Angeles in 1995′s I Wish.

While that is harsh, and I’m not making music in such difficult conditions, it begins to impact on the quality of the film. The documentary camera work of the film switches to a cut-to-the-beat music video-style montage whenever opening chords strike up, putting shots of everyday life in Tehran to song. Done once, it is fine. But by the third or fourth time, monotony sets in. What just saves it is the poignancy of the lyrics, such as “dreaming is my reality”.

Where Persian Cats works best is when it combines the dreams of being in a successful band and playing in London – the sort western audiences may be used to – with aspirations of personal and artistic freedom that those audiences would take for granted. It captures the absurdities of such a life – the prices of Iranian v Afghan forged passports ($4,000 v $500), or the bootlegger who promises the band that his access to the black market means “the whole of Tehran will hear”. It can sometimes feel as if Ghobadi is filming his friends, but while not a documentary (only “based on real people and events” after all) it does capture a moment and a feeling. And that is quite an achievement.

Negar and Ashkan, however, do not get their passports. In the closing scenes, their final Tehran gig is raided by police, and the sound rings in your ears long after the music fades away.

Nick Hornby tells Michael Hann why scripting the film based on Lynn Barber’s memoir of 60s London was a gift and why he can never adapt his own novels again

Somen ‘Steve’ Banerjee went from working at a petrol station to managing a multimillion dollar business based on muscular male strippers

British director Tony Scott is set to shoot the turbulent life and times of Chippendales founder Somen “Steve” Banerjee, a millionaire entrepreneur who fell spectacularly from grace. Variety reports that the as-yet-untitled biopic is based on a script by Lisa Schrager and will be bankrolled by a private equity fund based in India.

Banerjee was the Bengali immigrant to the US who devised and managed the Chippendales, a troupe of muscular male strippers. His life took him from a job at a California petrol station to running a multimillion dollar business during the 1980s. But Banerjee’s mounting paranoia and criminal tactics would eventually trip him up. He attempted to burn down two rival nightclubs and was later arrested for hiring a hit-man to assassinate his former business partner along with two onetime Chippendale dancers. Banerjee hanged himself in his prison cell in October 1994, just hours before he was due to be sentenced.

Scott’s last film was the action blockbuster The Taking of Pelham 123. He is currently directing Denzel Washington in Unstoppable, a drama about a runaway freight train. A start date for the Banerjee biopic has yet to be announced.

Jacques Audiard’s prison drama hailed as ‘a masterpiece’ as it takes the festival’s inaugural best film prize

Jacques Audiard’s prison saga Un Prophète (A Prophet) was last night named as the inaugural winner of the London film festival’s award for best feature film. The picture was first unveiled at the Cannes film festival back in May, where it took the jury prize but was beaten to the crowning Palme d’Or award by Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon.

Un Prophète tells the tale of an illiterate Arab convict who endures a harsh rite of passage when he is recruited by the Corsican mob. Announcing the award, jury chair Anjelica Huston hailed the film as “a masterpiece”. She added: “Un Prophète has the ambition, purity of vision and clarity of purpose to make it an instant classic. With seamless and imaginative storytelling, superb performances and universal themes, Jacques Audiard has made the perfect film.”

Last night’s awards ceremony, held at London’s Inner Temple, also spelled good news for screenwriter Jack Thorne, who was named best British newcomer for his work on the forthcoming coming-of-age drama The Scouting Book for Boys. Defamation, a study of antisemitism, won the prize for best documentary, while the Jaffa-set crime thriller Ajami – directed by Scandar Copti, a Palestinian, and Yaron Shani, an Israeli – was named as best first feature. Elsewhere, there were BFI fellowships for British actor John Hurt and the Malian film-maker Souleyman Cissé.

The 53rd London film festival wraps up tonight with the world premiere of Nowhere Boy, artist Sam Taylor-Wood’s big-screen salute to the young John Lennon.

Come time travelling with Film Weekly as this week’s edition ranges over the state of the British film industry in the noughties to the funny side of life under a dictator in Romania in the 80s, also taking in a review of a coming-of-age tale set in 60s London.

First up, Jason Solomons goes behind the scenes at the unveiling of the nominees for the British Independent Film awards and discusses the strength of this year’s shortlist with actor Jason Isaacs (aka Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films), who introduced the nominations and is on the advisory committee for the prizes. The awards are announced on 6 December and frontrunners include Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank with eight nods, Duncan Jones’s Moon, Jane Campion’s Bright Star and Armando Iannucci’s In the Loop.

Peter Bradshaw makes a rare appearance in the pod to help review this week’s key releases: An Education, based on Lynn Barber’s memoir of being 16 in swinging 60s London, with a screenplay by Nick Hornby and a breakthrough performance from Carey Mulligan; Dead Man Running, a fast-moving underworld caper which stars the unlikely combination of 50 Cent, Brenda Blethyn and Danny Dyer; and Starsuckers, a documentary that lifts the lid on our obsession with fame.

Finally, Xan Brooks meets Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, whose last film 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days won the Palme d’Or in 2007, to talk about his new portmanteau film Tales of the Golden Age, which casts a darkly humorous eye over the Ceauşescu regime of the 1980s. Mungiu tells Xan about growing up amidst power outages and absurd regulations, why so many of his peers are now looking back, and being an ambassador for the Romanian new wave.

The second world war supreme allied commander was a fascinating character. This 1977 biopic signally fails to live up to his reputation

Director: Joseph Sargent
Entertainment grade: D+
History grade: C+

American five-star general Douglas MacArthur served in the Pacific during the second world war and went on to command US forces in Korea. He was wildly popular with the public.

In military and political circles, though, he was criticised for his self-promotion, arrogance and alleged recklessness.

War

The film’s first action scenes are set in Corregidor in the Philippines, scene of a rout at the hands of the Japanese. Ordered to leave for Australia by President Roosevelt, MacArthur (played anaemically by Gregory Peck) bids an emotional farewell to his adoring men. They’re a little too adoring. In reality, many of MacArthur’s officers were fed up with him by the time he left the Philippines. Of 142 communiques he issued during his first period of war service there, 109 failed to mention the bravery of any soldiers apart from himself. There was also a fuss over $500,000 he accepted as a personal reward from the Philippine president, which, while technically legal, was ethically dubious. To be fair on the film-makers, that story was not made public until 1979 – but MacArthur’s patchy reputation was no secret.

Geography

In Australia, MacArthur plans to return to the Philippines and force the Japanese out. Gesturing at a gigantic wall map, he proposes the attack: “Land at Leyte beach on Luzon, and then carry the fight to Manila.” Fine, except he is pointing – in extreme closeup – at Lingayen Gulf, over 400 miles from Leyte. Also, Leyte is not a beach on Luzon: it’s another island, and the two are separated by a substantial archipelago. MacArthur may be accused of many things, but an ignorance of Philippine geography is not one of them. In real life, he fought to retake the Philippines on both Leyte and Luzon; but not at the same time, because that would have been physically impossible unless he was 500 miles wide and could float.

Politics

After the war, MacArthur oversees the democratisation of Japan. He seems to have some rad ideas. “I want these privileged landowners stripped of their holdings!” he barks. “And the rightwing industrialists … I want them expunged! The workers must have a strong voice in the means of production.” “General,” stutters an aide, “this reminds me somewhat of … well, it’s like …” Marxism, thinks the viewer. “… the New Deal.” Oh, OK. Clearly this film is aimed exclusively at an American audience. Pointing out that General MacArthur was not a Marxist is not unlike pointing out the Pope’s religion or the lavatorial habits of bears. Still, since the question has come up: no, he was not. It’s also a myth that MacArthur personally directed Japanese development. Multiple documents prove that Washington set the goals and policy of occupation.

Dialogue

In the final scenes, set during the Korean war, the film’s MacArthur regains his political footing. “It’s my destiny to defeat communism, and only God or those Washington politicians will keep me from doing it,” he growls. That is almost a direct quote from the man himself. It’s a pity it wasn’t left in its original, more lyrical form (“Only God or the government of the United States can keep me from the fulfilment of my mission”). This is one of several occasions on which the writer has presumed to tweak MacArthur’s words (or, as he called words, “those immortal heralds of thought which at the touch of genius become radiant”), to make him sound more down-to-earth and folksy, and less like the ostentatious intellectual he really was. The real MacArthur once barged in on a subordinate, catching him in a clinch with a lady. The general’s immortal heralds of thought: “Eject that strumpet forthwith.” Folksy he was not.

Verdict

Controversy aside, the real MacArthur was a coruscating personality. Had he written and directed this film himself, it might have been even less accurate, but a lot more entertaining.

Liz Taylor loves it, the critics don’t mind it – looks like the boycotting fans are the only ones not convinced by Michael Jackson’s This Is It. Have you seen it yet? Was it … bad?

A group of fans decried it as an airbrushed facade which fails to tell the true story of Michael Jackson in his final days. But the critics, for the most part, have been quietly impressed by this strange confection, a hotchpotch of concert footage spliced together from rehearsals for the late singer’s abandoned dates in London.

As a glimpse of Jackson honing his moves for what look likely to have been spectacularly extravagant, hugely polished gigs, This Is It nears perfection, they say. But there are those who wonder if the movie truly hangs together as a piece of film-making, despite the glowing platitudes of the singer’s friend, Liz Taylor, on her Twitter page.

For those who have been living off-planet for the past few months, This Is It is directed by Kenny Ortega, the High School Musical guy who was overseeing Jackson’s rehearsals for 50 dates at the O2 arena in London this past summer. As well as footage from the Forum and the Staples Center in LA of Jackson creating, developing and ultimately staging his first live performances in more than a decade, it includes interviews with awestruck dancers and others who were working with him on the project.

“So, to the burning question: is there any intimation of Jackson’s impending demise?” asks our own Andrew Pulver. “I can’t honestly say there is. In the footage we are permitted to see, Jackson appears in pretty good shape for a 50-year-old – even if his general spindliness makes him occasionally look a bit like Skeletor in a lamé tuxedo.

“As for the film itself, I can simply report that it isn’t too bad at all. It’s pretty much unadorned rehearsal footage, artfully stitched together to create complete song sequences; and since the O2 gigs were intended to present his crowdpleasing hits, they’re all here in their toe-tapping glory.”

“We now know that the London shows would have been hugely ambitious and spectacular,” writes the Telegraph’s David Gritten. “A new film of Thriller in 3-D had been shot, along with a not quite convincing sequence in which Jackson (dressed as a gangster) is spliced into classic Hollywood movies, including Gilda, starring Rita Hayworth.

“This Is it sags in the middle: one tires of his sycophantic troupe (nobody argues with ‘MJ’) and much of the material becomes repetitive. Still, Ortega has applied himself studiously to his task, and the film is some recompense for those deprived by his death of seeing Jackson live.”

“By the second half, the lag begins to set in,” writes The Times’ Kevin Maher. “In these scenes, unprotected by fast cutaways or the dizzying whirl of a dance routine, Jackson is often exposed. Painfully thin and seemingly fragile, like a skeletal marionette, he speaks in strange rambling sentences – about love (“L, o, v, e” he repeatedly spells) and environmentalism – which could be the sacred voice of his inner child or the results of heavy-duty doses of propofol. Either way, it’s a strange and ultimately underwhelming way to say goodbye to a troubled, talented performer.”

“The frustration, beyond the greater one – that a tragedy prevented this concert from happening – is not knowing what you’re looking at,” writes Billboard’s Kirk Honeycutt. “Where are Jackson and his conspirators at any given moment in the creative process? The film tries to be a concert film without having the actual footage. So when everything comes to a halt, audiences get thrown.

“No one should expect a concert film. Jackson clearly is conserving his energy, holding back on dance moves and vocal intensity. He is searching for his concert, the way a sculpture chisels away at marble to discover a statute. This Is It is not a ‘sacred document,’ as Ortega has asserted. But it is a fascinating one.”

For me, the major problem with This Is It as a movie is that it is not really a movie at all. Had the footage featured a performer who was not quite possibly the most remarkable pop artist of the 20th century, and had that artist not died fewer than two days after some of these scenes were filmed, in tragic circumstances, we would never have seen any of it on the big screen. In fact, these recordings were destined for Jackson’s own personal collection, which only makes the scenes in which wide-eyed dancers and choreographers talk about how excited they are to be working with their hero all the more creepy. This Is It really should have been released on DVD, and surely would have been if it were not for Jackson’s huge notoriety, despite Ortega’s valiant and admittedly slick attempt to meld the available footage into something cohesive.

Yet in those moments when Jackson performs his greatest songs there is no way that any amount of cynicism about the singer as a human being can stop hearts from pumping just that little bit faster at the sheer brilliance of the music. And in the absence of any possibility of seeing him perform live again, it must be admitted that there’s something fitting about these performances getting their showcase on larger screens, where fans can watch them in the company of other acolytes.

Have you had the chance to catch This Is It yet? The first screenings for members of the public took place at 4am this morning, so perhaps you’ve just rolled out of bed and are peering bleary-eyed at the first reviews. Do let us know what you thought by posting a comment below.

The Funny People star has signed to play both siblings in a ‘romantic comedy’

Humpty Dumpty is already on his way to the big screen, in the form of a 3D horror movie planned for release next year. Now it looks like Jack and Jill are set to follow him into multiplexes, with Adam Sandler signing up to play both characters – now twin siblings – in a new romantic comedy.

Variety reports that Jack and Jill will be penned by Steve Koren, an erstwhile Saturday Night Live performer who worked with Sandler during the comic’s own time on the US TV institution.

It’s not known whether the film will have any connection to the traditional nursery rhyme, whose roots arguably lie in 18th-century French history: “Jack” can be read as code for King Louis XVI, who was guillotined (lost his crown), and was followed by his queen, Marie Antoinette, “who came tumbling after”.

Sandler will next be seen in cinemas in Dennis Dugan’s high-school reunion comedy Grown Ups, alongside Salma Hayek and Steve Buscemi, which opens in the US next June. Jack and Jill is planned for release in early 2011.