You heard me – I’m dumping practically everything I can think of at you, and no doubt I’ll still miss a few. In fact, there’s one I am intentionally leaving out just so I can watch the angry comments and laugh like a Disney villain. Honestly, though – after having my memory jarred by all the comments on my first installment of 14 of the Most Impressive Monologues in Movie History, I couldn’t not make another one of these. So here are, once more, some movie monologues out there that really stick out from the rest.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly collection of things that serious movie lovers will find interesting, useful, or both. We begin this evening with an image from the website of the LA Times, who are featuring great reader photos chronicling Southern California moments. This one, by a gentleman named Chris Jackson, is of a street performer dressed as Spock on Hollywood Boulevard. Awesome costume. No, I don’t want a photo. No, I will not tip you. No, stop touching my girlfriend’s thigh. Live long and prosper, now get away from me.

“It is absolutely patently false that there has been any discussion about Harrison Ford being in Blade Runner. To be clear, what we are trying to do with Ridley now is go through the painstaking process of trying to break the back of the story, figure out the direction we’re going to take the movie and find a writer to work on it. The casting of the movie could not be further from our minds at this moment.” That’s Alcon producer Andrew Kosove busting a vein to deny the previous rumor about Ford jumping aboard the forthcoming sci-fi project from Ridley Scott. So, yes, the headline is a joke, but isn’t it a bit incredible how Scott has captured our attention with Prometheus and promises of more replicants? The internet movie nerd world hasn’t seen this level of passionate/absurd argument since nipples were put on the Bat Suit. And it’s all over the distinction of whether Scott’s stories will be continuations or prequels or have the same DNA. It’s downright bizarre, because the movies will be what they are, and the only thing that will matter is if they excite us and transport us. Hopefully after they hit theaters, no one will care anymore what their label is. As for Ford, it’s a harsh rejection from Alcon. They seem more than a bit defensive about the rumor – perhaps because it would injure their ability to craft the story, perhaps because they’re trying to avoid Ford and the credibility/baggage he [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

The holidays are over now, so it’s back to business as usual in the movie blogging world. You know what that means: freaking out about prequels and remakes. Thankfully for us, some new reasons for worry have come down the pike via a chat The Playlist had with Alcon Entertainment producer Andrew Kosove. After talking a bit about the progress he’s having bringing the Black List script Prisoners to the big screen, he also had some stuff to say about Ridley Scott’s new Blade Runner project and the proposed Point Break remake that has been floating around. Is it looking like they’re really going to happen? About Scott’s enthusiasm for the new Blade Runner, Kosove said, “Here’s the thing about Ridley. Ridley is a special guy. He’s a force of nature. He’s got a lot of stuff that he’s working on. I believe it’s an extremely high priority for Ridley, that’s what he’s said to me. This project is moving forward aggressively in development.” Look at those words he’s using, high priority, aggressive, sounds like this thing is developing pretty fast. Or is it? The next few words out of his mouth don’t sound so confident. He went on to say, “Sometime in the first two months of the new year we’ll announce who the screenwriter will be and whether or not it’s a prequel or sequel. And then we’ll be off to the races.” They don’t even have a screenwriter or know if it’s going to be a sequel [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Have fun noting all the parsed, non-committal words in that headline, but at least it’s vague instead of full of lies. In a talk with the Wall Street Journal, Ridley Scott gave everyone an update on his forthcoming new Blade Runner film that was announced back in August. Apparently the movie is “liable to be a sequel” (my emphasis), but the real news is that Scott believes he’s “close to finding a writer that might be able to help me deliver. We’re quite a long way in, actually.” Hallelujah. After just finishing his Alien-DNA-swapper Prometheus, he may be ready to roll soon on another project. Some may scoff at the man returning to his previous work to find inspiration, but all it really signals is that a master filmmaker isn’t done with the universes that he created. That’s reason to get excited. At this rate, we could see a new Alien film one year and a new Blade Runner the next – not from some young music video director (no offense guys), but from the man himself. How can that possibly be bad news?

Updated: First Alien, now Blade Runner. Deadline NeoTokyo is reporting that Ridley Scott has signed on to direct and produce a new Blade Runner film, although it remains unclear whether it will be a remake, a sequel, a prequel, or a wacky romantic comedy that happens to have the same name as is being called a “follow-up” to his sci-fi stunner. With so little information, except the big bombshell, speculation is easy to come by, but there are certainly a host of pros and cons here. The cons are the usual obvious complaints, and as for the pros, the clearest one is that it’s another opportunity for Scott to head back into that world that’s so loved. In a smaller way, it’s also a chance (like with Total Recall) to do a clearer, more direct take on Phillip K. Dick‘s work (even though that probably won’t happen). Here’s the full press release from Alcon Entertainment, and even more speculation:

Every week, Landon Palmer and Cole Abaius log on to their favorite chat client of 1996 as OutofFoucault23 and RockRockRockRocknRollHS in order to discuss some topical topic of interest. This week, the pair digs deeper into a question plaguing all of mankind: can a studio interfering with the artistic process actually create positive results? What happens when a director’s cut is worse than the initial release? They put their heads together to come up with just about every single example (take “single” literally) of a movie saved by studio intervention.

Over the past 24 hours my Twitter feed has been abuzz with reactions to the announcement that Alcon Entertainment was close to signing a deal to make more Blade Runner movies. Capitalizing on the wave on controversy, i09 sat down with Alcon executives Andrew Kosove, Broderick Johnson, and Bud Yorkin to ask them more about their plans for turning this cult classic into a modern franchise. When asked why they wanted to go after the rights to Blade Runner Johnson said, “We’re intellectually fascinated and ready to explore the themes that the movie invokes and the underlying material. At the end of the day those are the things that make great movies. Those and characters, it’s an opportunity of a life time to try and explore this further.” Kosove added, “I think that there’s a unique aspect of Blade Runner, and it is absolutely right to be re-address now at this time in human history. That is the concept of what it means to be a human being. What does it mean to be human, to have empathy, to have feelings?”

Whether you’re trying to avoid the releases this week or augment them with even more movie, Your Alternate Box Office offers some options for movies that would play perfectly alongside of (or instead of) the stuff studios are shoving into the megaplex this weekend. This week features a cursed trust fund baby, Matt Damon in a killer fedora, a gawky video rental store employee trying to get the girl, and Hunter S. Thompson in lizard form.

What is Movie News After Dark? This is a question that I am almost never asked, but I will answer it for you anyway. Movie News After Dark is FSR’s newest late-night secretion, a column dedicated to all of the news stories that slip past our daytime editorial staff and make it into my curiously chubby RSS ‘flagged’ box. It will (but is not guaranteed to) include relevant movie news, links to insightful commentary and other film-related shenanigans. I may also throw in a link to something TV-related here or there. It will also serve as my place of record for being both charming and sharp-witted, but most likely I will be neither of the two. I write this stuff late at night, what do you expect?

Alcon Entertainment has announced that they are in final negotiations to acquire the rights to the world of Blade Runner and elements from the short story that inspired the film, Phillip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” With these rights they could make any number of sequels, prequels, or spinoffs of the 1982 classic. I can hear groans in the back of the room already, but one thing that Alcon producers would not be allowed to do is the dreaded straight remake, and as a matter of fact company co-founder Broderick Johnson says, “we never would want to remake it”. I’m not sure if he can be trusted though, if I were ever to write a screenplay for some sort of college comedy I would probably name the jerk head of the jock fraternity Broderick Johnson. He may be setting us all up for one big cinematic wedgie. But taken at face value, all of the quotes coming out of the Alcon camp are saying all of the right things. They seem to be focusing less on the marketing potential of a potential franchise and more on the storytelling potential of Blade Runner’s rich mythology. Co-founder Andrew Kosove explained to 24 Frames, “The risk is not just getting a movie made but coming up with a story that really justifies coming back to one of the great science-fiction stories.”

You’ve stumbled upon Circle of Jerks, our sporadically published, weekly feature in which we ask the questions that really matter to our writers and readers. It’s a time to take a break from our busy lives and revel in the one thing that we all share: a deep, passionate love of movies. If you have a question you’d like answered by the FSR readers and staff, send us an email at editors@filmschoolrejects.com. What movie universe would actually want to live in? Susan C.

After spending all that time isolated on the dark side of the moon (mere miles away from Michael Bay and never knowing it), and then re-living the same explosive scenario over and over, Duncan Jones is ready to move to the city. Moon was great, Source Code is highly anticipated, and Jones is already looking to the future. Far into the future. According to We Got This Covered, the director wants to homage Blade Runner by setting his next film in a city of the future. The man gets to do an intimate psychological drama with Sam Rockwell, tap into time travel, and now he paves his own way to filmically celebrate an iconic sci-fi favorite? It’s official. Duncan Jones is a replicant.

There have already been a surprising number of modern sequels and remakes made from the movies of 1982. Films like The Thing and Conan The Barbarian have remakes coming down the pipe while the Rocky franchise has been continued, and The Dark Crystal and Mad Max franchises have both been promised a latter-day continuation. There’s a lot of rich material there, and this weekend sees Tron: Legacy come out almost three decades after the film it’s following. Of course TRON deserves a sequel because of its large cult appeal and the potential expansiveness that the universe always held. However, there are several other films from 1982 that may even be more worthy to get the way-too-late-in-the-game sequel treatment. Here’s six of ‘em.

Just as film noir isn’t one single definable thing, noir itself contains many offshoots and categories. And every Noirvember, it’s important to not only examine good ol’ film noir, but its corresponding variants as well. One aspect of noir that complicates its designation as a genre or a style is the persistence of neo-noir, a cinematic form that arose in direct reaction to noir. In the US, canonical neo-noirs include films like Roman Polanski’s Chinatown or Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye. These were films made by filmmakers who knew cinema’s history, who have seen and studied noir’s origins and staples. These were filmmakers who worshiped film history and used classic cinema as a prototype for their own creation, embedding references to the old while departing from it in creating the new.

This is the kind of modern art the people can get behind. No squiggly lines over a solid yellow triangle. No toilets on walls. No six-year-old children pushing their political agendas. Artist François Vautier has taken every single frame from Blade Runner, turned a virtual camera on the images, and created something dream-like and haunting. In that sense, it’s a great companion for the film. Check it out after the jump.

If there’s one thing I love more than seeing a great movie for the first time, it’s sharing a movie that I find great with someone whom has never seen it before. It might be part of something essential in human nature: a desire to share an experience that one finds profound with those whose opinion you trust and value. Whether it be something intensely moving, shockingly original, incredibly interesting, intellectually challenging, or unprecedentedly hilarious, introducing a valuable cinematic experience to a friend can induce the most rewarding of feelings for the cinephile.

Since Peter Berg might possibly, maybe, could not be directing Dune, we’ve decided to throw a few hats into the ring. Who do you think could helm one of the hardest science fiction adaptations of all time?

Kevin Carr sits in the interrogation room with William Sanderson, aka Sheriff Bud Dearborne from HBO’s monster hit True Blood

Keanu Reeves’ The Day The Earth Stood Still remake got us thinking about other impending re-imaginings of science fiction classics. That in turn got us thinking about “classic” sci-fi films that should never get remade. Which in turn got us thinking about a few that probably should.