Movie Nation

Amy Fine Collins’ book “The God of Driving,” about her fear of taking the wheel and the “mysterious” driving instructor who gets her past that and captivates her in other ways, will be a Sue Kramer film, Variety reports.

Variety incorrectly calls  the 2011 book, “The God of Driving: How I Overcame Fear and Put Myself in the Driver’s Seat (with the Help of a Good and Mysterious Man)” a “novel.”

It’s a memoir, non-fiction.

Kramer did the indie comedy “Gray Matters,” which I saw but couldn’t tell you much about.

Bad movies are rarely as much fun as these “Fast and the Furious” pictures. And make no mistake about it — they’re bad.

They stick to a rigid formula of hot cars, street races where skinny supermodels make up the audience and impossible and impossibly expensive road heists.

Fan know that every character will have his or her moments to show off and that no beloved character will be killed off and stay dead. Fans know the cast keeps growing, just like the lineup of vintage and modern day hopped-up rides that power slide, drift and burn rubber through the digitally assisted chases and crash-ups. Bystanders vehicles may be crushed and squashed as collateral damage, but you never see the blood of innocents.

And fans know to stay through the credits, where the movies’ gift to cinema car culture just keeps on giving.

“Fast & Furious 6″ pulls our boys Dom and Brian (Vin Diesel and Paul Walker) out of retirement one more time to help the Feds (Dwayne Johnson and Gina “Haywire” Carano) nail a British villain (Luke Evans, well cast) bent on world domination. He’s stealing parts for a “Nightshade” device that will knock out a nation’s communications, and he’s doing it with wedge-shaped ramp cars and such.

Dom and Brian leave their lovely ladies and Brian’s newborn baby and their Canary Islands retirement for London. And they get the team — played by Tyrese Gibson, Sung Kang, Ludacris and Gal Gadot — back together. The added incentive? Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) is still alive and apparently one of the bad guy’s minions.

These movies are largely a collection of epic chases, epic brawls, dialogue zingers and guilty pleasures. Yeah, Diesel’s still a stiff, something that adding the colorful ex-wrestler Mr. Johnson to the mix only underlines. You can be muscle-bound and expressive, at ease in your skin. Not that Roman (Gibson) notices that. Given most of the funny lines, Gibson announces Johnson’s entrance with, “Why do I smell baby oil?”

The gang they’re battling is the spitting image of their own. “It’s like we’re hunting our evil twins!”

When this comes out on video, you can make “I got this,” “We got your back” and “Get in the car” into a drinking game, thanks to how many times those weary cliches are repeated in the script.

The cars? Cooler than ever, with Dom’s passion for Chrysler/Plymouth/Dodge products extending to a big-winged Plymouth Road Runner Superbird of 1970s vintage. He’s chasing Letty, who drives a souped-up 1970s British Jensen Interceptor. And those are just for starters.

Every law in the book will be broken, from traffic infractions to laws of physics. But the easy bonhomie of the cast, the jokey tone of the script and in-your-face slam-bang action (a girlfight for the ages) make this junk food that go down easily, no matter how little nutritional value it has.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action and mayhem throughout, some sexuality and language

Cast: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, Luke Evans, Tyrese Gibson, Gina Carano, Sung Kang, Gal Gadot

Credits: Directed by Justin Lin, scripted by Chris Morgan. A Universal release.

Running time: 2:10

“Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and “In a Better World” producers are hoping to cash in on international Viking Fever by bringing “The Long Ships” to the big screen.

It’s based on the Frans Bengtsson best selling adventure novel about 10th century barbarian Red Orm, a Dane kidnapped by Vikings and dragged along on their exploits until he becomes famed in his own right.

It’s been filmed before, something the Hollywood Reporter story neglects to mention. The novel was a hit half a century ago, and director Jack Cardiff put Richard Widmark, Sidney Poitier and Russ Tamblyn (“West Side Story”) in the Red Orm role.

All those years since “Ice Age” and “Robots,” you’d figure Chris Wedge had retired on the “Scrat” bucks he and Blue Sky Animation pulled in from that saber toothed squirrel.
“I’d have starved, like Scrat,” he jokes. Like Scrat, there was this one hard nut to crack. Wedge, 56, has spent years trying to get his latest film, “Epic,” based on the writings of children’s author William Joyce, on the screen.
“To be honest, I’ve been in development hell. Not every day was like that, but it took four years just to get a green light to do it.”
You’d think a guy with his track record could write his own animation ticket. “Ice Age” earned over $380 million, and spawned an animation franchise. “Robots” pulled in another $260 million. But “Epic” was a hard sell, and Wedge’s own Sisyphisan burden.
“It’s different from what people expect an animated film to be. I wanted to move beyond a character comedy with wisecracks. Studios say that comedy is what it takes for animation to cross over to the adult audience. I wanted something more akin to an adventure tale than some jokey yuk-it-up comedy.”
“The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs,” the  novel the film is based on, has warrior fairies protecting a forest. Wedge say something “Avatar” like in it, concocting a film with leaf men battling bog creatures who long for a world of rot and decay.
“It took me a long while to get a handle on it,” he said.
In those intervening years, Joyce’s novel “A Day With Wilbur Robinson” became Disney’s “Meet the Robinsons,” and opened in theaters where it underperformed. Joyce’s series of novels “The Guardians of Childhood” became “Rise of the Guardians,” and a low water mark for Dreamworks Animation.
“You have to trust your idea,” Wedge says. “You work for years, in a vacuum, with no idea what environment your film is going to be released in. You don’t know what other animators are doing, sealed off from their work. I’ve been been making animation since I was 12. I trust my instincts that we’re on to something special.”
And as he shepherds his film across the opening weekend finish line, Wedge can be excused forfeeling a little relief. Early reviews are good, if not ecstatic — “Epic” is “not a crossover classic, this has enough wit and charm to entertain both big and little people,” said Britain’s Empire Magazine. And the box office from overseas, where it opened last weekend, has been very good.
“Our films live in theaters, and have a second and third life on home video,” he says. “We create this world that is not culturally specific. The worlds of “Ice Age” or “Epic” don’t have American haircuts, American slang, so they show overseas quite well.
“So they’re timeless.”
But are they worth eight years of your life?
“All’s well that ends well.”