Will There Be Hood Rats?: The Hold Steady’s next project will be A Positive Rage, a live album and documentary DVD out April 7 on Vagrant Records. The release is a recording of a 2007 Halloween show in Chicago, while the doc is culled from the 2006 Boys and Girls in America tour; most notably, the disc will feature two unreleased tracks (“Spectres†and “40 Bucksâ€). Hopefully the behind-the-scenes footage will feature the long-rumored Hold Steady tour-bus beer cellar, surely stocked with only the finest in Bud tall boys. [Billboard]
Treme Circumstances: David Simon’s long gestating HBO series, Treme, about New Orleans post-Katrina, appears to be picking up steam: Steve Zahn may come on board as a wise, street-dancing D.J. with anger issues (seriously) and Kim Dickens as a chef and his some-time love interest. No need to go back and scour the DVDs of The Wire for Zahn as a crackhead in the towers or Dickens as a finger-breaking cop because, yes, Simon has actually decided to cast some non-Wire actors this time around. [HR]
Rudin Never Forgets: Henry Molaison’s story — a man with an inability to form new memories after a 1953 lobotomy — made him the most famous neuroscience case ever (and pretty much the inspiration for Memento, right?). Now, the story is coming to the big screen courtesy of Scott Rudin and Columbia Pictures. The movie will tell the tale through the point of view of Dr. Suzanne Corkin, who studied H.M. — as he was known before his death at 82 this December — at MIT for 45 years. When asked why not tell the story through H.M’.s eyes, Rudin reportedly answered, “Whoooah, that’d be sooo trippy!†[Variety]
Harvey Does Judy: Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland, the 2000 biography penned by Gerald Clarke, has been optioned by the Weinstein Co. It was a Clarke biography that also served as the source material for 2005’s Capote and created the platform for Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Oscar-winning chameleon-like turn. The even odder tale of Garland deserves an equally talented performer in the title role, and we think we know exactly the right person for the job: the ever capable Philip Seymour Hoffman. [Variety]
Pacino Gets Crowned: Al Pacino will take on the role of King Lear for the first time ever in a film directed by Michael Radford. Good news for Lear obsessives, who surely have long waited for an actor of his caliber to take on the title role. Expect them to yell every other line. [Variety]
Moon Landing: Paramount is reworking its untitled Jake Gyllenhaal moon project yet again, this time with Black Hawk Down screenwriter Ken Nolan. Several other writers, including director Doug Liman and Mark Bowden, have already taken a crack at the project, supposedly about lunar colonization. The report gives up very few details about the movie, which in turn gives us just the tiniest sliver of hope that this is not at all a film project but an actual plan to colonize the moon by a handful of Hollywood screenwriters. [HR]