Darabont and King, together again

With one certified classic ("Shawshank Redemption") and one sure miss ("The Green Mile") springing from their partnership so far, here's hoping the third pairing of Frank Darabont and Stephen King churns out a real winner.

Signs are high that it will. Darabont is set to direct for Dimension "The Mist," which he has written from the King novella of the same name. Published in 1985 as part of King's short story collection "Skeleton Crew," "The Mist" takes place in a small town where a thick mist engulfs the area, killing those caught in its darkness. Terrified survivors seek refuge in a supermarket, while a swarm of murderous critters tries to get in.

Sounds like fun to me. One sure thing a King horror tale should deliver, which the current crop of slashmeisters seem to have forgotten, is actual characters we care about before they're in peril.

Of all the King novellas turned into movies, and there are too many now for me to keep track of, Bryan Singer's "Apt Pupil" remains my favorite. I just can't get creepy Ian McKellen out of my mind.

Dimension now has three films based on King fiction. Dimension has wrapped "1408," based on King's short story, with Samuel L. Jackson and John Cusack starring. "Hostel" helmer Eli Roth is working on an adaptation of "Cell," King's bestseller about a cell phone signal that makes zombies of everyone gabbing on mobiles at a particular cataclysmic moment in time.

As much as that last idea just makes me smile, my money's still on Darabont's flick to be by far the best of the three.

Terminator 4 tidbits

Although we can't seem to get rid of Ahnold the politician, it seems his days with The Terminator really are finished.

" 'Terminator 3' kind of closed the book on Schwarzenegger, as did his gubernatorial career," Michael Ferris, who wrote the fourth film with John Brancato, told Entertainment Weekly.

Am I alone in thinking its just time to put The Terminator to rest? T3 was an average film at best, funny at times but hardly worthy of following its predecessors. Now T3 director Jonathan Mostow, who was supposed to be on board for this project, has yet to take the reins and is rather solidly attached to write and direct Marvel's "Sub-Mariner."

But for anyone still interested, and by the time this finally comes around in 2008 I just might be again, Ferris offered this plot tease: "You will learn about Skynet and what that postapolyptic future is like."

Good luck with that

While I'm all for political protest, and am certainly no fan of W's war in Iraq, this move just seems like a boner to me.

Producer-director Aki Kaurismaki has withdrawn his "Lights in the Dusk" from contention for the foreign-language film Oscar, reportedly because his permission wasn't sought to submit it.

In 2003, when Kaurismaki's great "Man Without a Past" was nominated for the foreign-language kudos, Kaurismaki did not attend, telling then-Acad president Frank Pierson that his boycott was part of his protest against the U.S. war in Iraq. "The argument from 2003 still stands accurate," Ilkka Mertsola, a producer in Kaurismaki's Sputnik shingle, added.

Now, I readily concede that a movie can be great without any kudos from the academy, but this is just plain silly. If I'm missing the connection between the Academy Awards and W, and that is entirely possible, please let me know what it is.

In the meantime, Mr. Kaurismaki, get over yourself. With "Pan's Labyrinth," "Volver," "Curse of the Broken Flower" and many other great films already in contention, somehow I think we'll be just fine without you.