Guillermo del Toro announced during a Comic-Con Tron Legacy panel this morning that his next gig will be to co-write and possibly direct a 3D Haunted Mansion reboot. “We are not returning Eddie Murphy‘s calls… and we are not making it a comedy,” del Toro said. “We are making it scary and fun, but the scary will be scary.” The story, he said, will be built around the Hatbox Ghost. Jesus God!

Yesterday a Variety story speculated in a kind of half-predicting way that Anton Corbijn‘s The American would play the 2010 Venice Film Festival. Well, it won’t. I have this straight from the horse’s mouth. From one of the horses, I mean.

A video essay about unpaid interns by Huffington Post college page contributor Jett Wells went up a short while ago. Lotsa tweets. “I’m an unpaid intern who made a short documentary about unpaid internships,” the intro reads. “For someone who’s worked for free since I was 17 (besides a few short stints as a bus boy), this project hit close to home.

“Not only did it open my eyes to what constitutes an illegal internship, but it brought to light how touchy the issue is — the amount of interns and companies that employ interns who turned down the opportunity to talk to me because they were afraid was remarkable.

“When did unpaid internships become the norm, and why? That’s what I wanted to get to the bottom of.”

Watch this 55-second clip from John Irvin‘s The Dogs of War (1981). Fast, savage, high-octane, rip-roarin’… right? As battle sequences went in the early Reagan era, this was a little fiercer than most. But by today’s standards, it doesn’t deliver enough. Not nearly. It might even be considered boring.

And yet Irvin uses all kinds of visual exaggeration. An actual assault on a Central American compound would be darker, less noisy, and generate very few fireballs.

But the hard fact is that a 2010 film using these same chops in an action sequence (one that, let’s say, is about a team of mercenaries attacking a Central American compound) would almost be laughed off the screen. It’s not cut fast enough, the pyrotechnics aren’t big or loud enough, there isn’t any hand-to-hand chop-socky, no limbs are severed, no windpipes are ripped out, nobody jumps out of a hovering chopper or is blown skyward, and the action choreography is too easy to follow.

This is because (and this is an even harder fact) action films are caught in a trap. They all have to top each other and the only way to do that is to go more cartoon X-treme, and credibility be damned. Because action fans don’t care that much about approximating reality. All they want are action sequences that are wilder, more CG-ish or acrobatic in a Cirque de Soleil or Pang brothers fashion, more crazy-ass.

Very few action thrillers have operated beyond these constrictions and delivered by their own style and criteria. The Matrix, the only honorable film in the Wachowski brothers‘ misbegotten trilogy, did this. So did Alfonso Cuaron‘s Children of Men. Ditto the Bourne films by Doug Liman and Paul Greengrass. Phillip Noyce‘s Salt, plot issues aside, traffics in first-rate chops. But for the most part the action genre has become a kind of entrapment — a minimum security prison patrolled by armed guards (i.e., studio executives) in which certain rules have to be followed…or else.

But who are the real jailers? Here’s a list of the forces that have caused action films to become caged beasts, prowling ’round and ’round, snapping at their own tails and never going anywhere.

1. Asian martial-arts films. An argument doesn’t have to be made that Hong Kong, Chinese and Southeast Asian fare (violent ballet, foot-fist, wire flying, two guns blam-blam) introduced a kind of fantasy cartoon virus into action films. This is an accepted fact. But much of the blame has to fall on the shoulders of Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez and (yes) the Wachowski brothers for Americanizing the influenza.

2. The Comic-Con Mentality, surely the most pernicious and ruthless present-day carrier of said virus.

3. The increasing rapidity of cyber communications. The pace and intensity of action fare today is a reflection of high-speed downloading, the option of high-grade CGI, the multitude of offerings on cable, and an increasing ADD syndrome among younger viewers. Action movies can’t hide inside a ’70s and ’80s time warp. They have to embrace and expand upon current CG vistas. The bar is the bar is the bar.

4. The increasing dominance of kneejerk, follow-the-leader tendencies among souless studio executives who believe that movies must never outsmart the Eloi. And who tend to make it tough for innovators, who always go for the easy dough, and who believe in always serving the lowest common denominator.

5. The failure of nerve among filmmakers and studios to follow the lead of Children of Men. Alfonso Cuaron’s 2006 film was a startling groundbreaker — a realistic, pulse-pounding action film with three long single-take sequences that felt so fresh and immediate that jaded action fans were left gasping in its wake. And then something weird happened. Nobody followed its example. Action films went right back to the same old cut-cut-cut, boom-boom-boom, orange-fireball crap. Why? Doing it the Cuaron way is too hard, too fraught with potential peril, too costly.

I really do need to know which ten 2010 films are going to be nominated for Best Picture. It’s not too early to figure this out. All the Oscar-campaign publicists have been hired, they all know what’s going on, and we at least need to take a reading. Obviously things will evolve and develop over the next four or five months, but anyone who says it’s too early to get a fix on things now just isn’t being candid.

Definitely Inception and Toy Story 3 — both pretty much locked as we speak. I’m told that The Kids Are All Right has burrowed right in among the liberal Academy set. Almost certainly The Social Network, even though director David Fincher, I’m hearing, doesn’t want to formally “campaign.” And possibly The Conspirator, which is going into Toronto guns blazing and is looking at a serious fall-winter campaign. (It seems odd to hear that Robin Wright Penn is going for Best Supporting Actress, considering that she has the female lead role.) So that’s two solids, one likely and two semi-probables.

In a fair and just world Biutiful (which Sony Classics will distribute, I’m told) ought to be among the ten. So should Fair Game, which I creamed over in Cannes. (I’m aware that other critics aren’t as enthusiastic, but this is a smart and solid piece of work with top-grade performances.) If they both land a nomination that’ll make seven.

The remaining three will come from a pack composed of True Grit, Hereafter, Conviction, Everything You’ve Got, London Boulevard, Love and Other Drugs, Your Highness. Maybe this list should also include Aaron Schneider‘s Get Low, Mark Romanek‘s Never Let Me Go and/or Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech (which has a shot at a Best Actor or Best Supporting Actor nomination for Colin Firth).

The fact that The Tree of Life by the Endlessly Dilly-Dallying Terrence Malick isn’t doing Telluride/Toronto/Venice doesn’t mean it’s folding its tent altogether, but the fact that folks close to the action are saying “who knows?” and “all bets are off” doesn’t exactly imply strength and confidence.

Greenberg and The Ghost Writer are still among the year’s best so far. I don’t care what anyone else says about this. Anyone who disagrees, I mean.

Mike Leigh‘s Another Year will open and be well reviewed and go away.

All I want from Sylvester Stallone‘s The Expendables is some integrated Dirty Dozen action. I want a solid ensemble piece, and not three or four of them (Stallone, Jason Staham, a couple of others) getting most of the screen time while the rest parachute in for quickie cameos. I will not be happy if either Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke or Arnold Schwarzenegger do walk-ons a la Frank Sinatra in The Cannonball Run II.

Movieline‘s Stu Van Airsdale is reporting that All Good Things, “that Andrew Jarecki/Ryan Gosling/Kirsten Dunst shelf-dweller,” has moved from the Weinstein Co. to Magnolia.

Plus “according to info buried on the website for [Laemmle’s Encino plex], the film could make its first appearance as early as next week,” he reports. What — no similar showing in NYC?

Stu recounts the basics: (a) the film “is based on the tabloid-ready life of New York real-estate scion Robert Durst“; (b) “Furst’s wife disappeared in 1982”; and (c) Durst “was later acquitted of murdering his neighbor in Texas — he claimed self-defense, despite having dismembered the body and dumped the parts in Galveston Bay.” On top of which Durst was probably schizophrenic.

Now, why wouldn’t anyone want to see a movie about this? Especially with Ryan Gosling, one of the most gifted but self-absorbed actors in the business, playing him, albeit as a stand-in called David Marks? Kirsten Dunst plays his doomed wife, and Frank Langella plays Durst’s overbearing/controlling father.

Here are three ten-minute mp4s from last Sunday’s chat with Salt director Phillip Noyce. I delayed posting because I’d asked Jett to prune them into a single piece with three or four Salt clips integrated into the whole. But after a day or so Jett decided that Noyce’s comments, no offense, were “too short or too long” and that he didn’t have time to make it right. So I’m just running them raw.

Here’s chapter 2 and chapter 3.

A certain chatty informality always creeps in whenever you’re interviewing someone you personally know. I may have also erred in sitting too far away; camera sound is always cleaner and fuller if the subject is within two or three feet.

I don’t know many specifics about Darren Aronofsky‘s Black Swan, which will reportedly debut at the Venice Film Festival six weeks hence, but the term “supernatural thriller” obviously sounds cooler and classier than “horror film,” which is how a certain fellow described it to me several weeks ago.

“Supernatural thriller” means films like The Orphanage and Don’t Look Now; “horror film” means allegedly scary Eloi gruel.

A Variety report says that Aronofsky’s Swan “is likely to be the Venice opener, providing plenty of star power, with Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Winona Ryder and Vincent Cassel potentially in tow.” It also says that test screenings for this Fox Searchlight release have reportedly been generating plenty of buzz. (If anyone has attended one of these screenings I’d love to hear a reaction or two.)

The Variety story doesn’t mention The Tree of Life or The Dithering Fraidy Cat Known As Terrence Malick.

Other likely Venice attractions include Ben Affleck‘s The Town (Warner Bros., 9.17), Anton Corbijn‘s The American, Sofia Coppola‘s Somewhere, Tom Hooper‘s The King’s Speech, Julian Schnabel‘s Miral, Monte Hellman‘s Road to Nowhere, Richard J. Lewis‘s Barney’s Version, Al Pacino‘s Wilde Salome, Tom Tykwer‘s Three, Anthony Cordier‘s Happy Few, Takashi Miike‘s Thirteen Assassins and Danny and Oxide Pang‘s The Child’s Eye, “the first Hong Kong 3D horror pic.”

For me, the two Mesrine movies feel like the most intriguing adrenaline rides of the late summer. A total of 245 minutes (112 + 133) = a French Scarface by way of Carlos minus the politics with more sex and shouting. The usual self-destructive violent arc, life as a roman candle, this way madness lies, ’70s sideburns, etc. The name is pronounced “Mayreen.”

The problem for Music Box Films, of course, is that however you want to pronounce it, “Mesrine” means nothing to Joe Popcorn.

The wiser way to go for the U.S. market would have been to forego the name altogether and called the films Frog Blaster 1 and Frog Blaster 2. It’s genius if I do say so myself — the kind of name that Hip-Hop Homeys (i.e., the natural fans of this sort of film, having embraced Al Pacino‘s Tony Montana as their patron saint) would relate to. On top of which Frog Blaster sounds like a video game.

The first installment — Mesrine: Killer Instinct — opens on 8.13 on a gradual roll-out basis, and the second — Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1 — opens on 9.10.

No one can do blood-vessel-popping madness like Vincent Cassel.

You know how two-part crime movies go. They’re all The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond. The first part is about the upswing — fighting through and creating the legend; the second is about the action intensifying, various gathering complications and the inevitable death or downfall.

The director is Jean-Francois Richet; the screenwriter is Abdel Raouf Dafri. The Mesrine films are two years old (of course, naturally), having played in France in ’08 and in England the following year.

Jacques Mesrine (1936-1979) was a French John Dillinger who had a couple of straight jobs for brief periods, wore outrageous mutton-chop sideburns in the ’70s, and was finally cut down in a hailstorm of bullets in a cop ambush.

I love the following portion from Mesrine’s Wikipedia bio: “Mesrine escaped again on the 21st August 1972 with five others from Canada’s famous Saint-Vincent-de-Paul prison. With accomplice Jean-Paul Mercier, a wanted French-Canadian murderer, Mesrine robbed a series of banks in Montreal, sometimes two in the same day.

“On 3 September, they failed in an attempt to help three others escape from the same prison (Saint-Vincent-de-Paul) but remained at large. A week later they murdered two forest rangers. They continued robbing banks in Montreal, and even sneaked into the USA again for a brief stay at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. By the end of the year they moved to Caracas, Venezuela with two mistresses in tow.”

Two mistresses in Caracas? Stopovers at the Waldorf Astoria? Mesrine’s life was a Warren Zevon song.