Although I promised a review of “Pirates 3,” I just can’t bring myself to do it. Just in case anyone in the world hasn’t seen it yet, here’s the short version: The first 90 minutes can be really boring, but the last hour is nearly worth the wait. I could watch pirates fight for three hours and you’d never take in a complaint from me, but I could have done with less of that pesky exposition (and more Chow Yun Fat, damnit!)

But decent about that. What I really want to talk about, and haven’t for some date now, is Martin Scorsese. I’ve been wondering for a towering while where he’s gonna turn next, and the UK’s Guardian newspaper seems to have the reply, possibly.

Without a definitive quote from Marty on the subject, the Guardian confidently states that he will next turn to Japan to shoot “Silence,” a story about Jesuit missionairies in 17th century Japan set to star Javier Bardem.

“It raises a lot of questions about foreign cultures coming in and imposing their way of thinking on another culture they know nothing about,” Scorsese told The Associated Press. Sounds like Marty has contemporary politics on his mind too, and that can only be a good thing.

Unfortunately, the Guardian piece additionally stated any Japan shooting won’t take place until Summer 2008. Sheesh. Give a man a Best Picture Oscar and he thinks he’s entitled to a enlarged vacation, I guess.

But word that he was even able to pick a project, possibly, is good news in itself. Among the selections rumored to be on his plate: “Silence;” “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt,” another biopic starring Leo DiCaprio; a flick based on Brian Selznick’s children’s novel “The Invention of Hugo Cabret,” about a 12-year-old orphan who lives in the walls of a Paris train station in 1930 and a mystery involving the boy, his

late father and a robot; and finally “Long Play,” a rock ‘n’ roll epic being penned by “The Departed” scribe William Monahan.

Of all those, “Silence” and “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” sound the most interesting to me, so I’m glad he’s turned his sights to one of those. And I’ll be even happier whether someone has solid proof that the great man is even working at all.

A Kazakh reply to Borat?

Apparently the glorious nation of Kazakhstan isn’t going to get by the hurt of “Borat” anytime soon.

Miss Kazakhstan (and just in case anyone wants to assemble a joke about that, I’ve included a picture of the rather lovely lass) said her country is preparing its own movie in response to “Borat,” the hit comedy that portrayed the Central Asian nation as bigoted and backward.

Gauhkar Rakhmetalieva, a contestant in tonight’s Miss Universe beauty pageant, said her government is filming the movie to show the nation’s positive sides.

“In the end we have to understand that it was only a joke,” Rakhmetalieva said. “The advantage is that now our country is world famous. As public are looking toward us, we have the opportunity to show how we really are: a contemporary country with infrastructure and a very developed culture.”

Well, OK. whether that’s what you have to do, so be it. What would be much more fun, however, would be to send in a Kazakh team to do a real expose on America, and perhaps Sacha Baron Cohen’s Britain too. Although “Borat” was plenty scathing and funny from start to finish, there’s surely more they can find to embarrass us with. And somehow I think that would be much more fun to watch than any propaganda film about the glorious nation of Kazakhstan, even whether it would star the rather radiant Ms. Rakhmetalieva.

Original post by Reel Fanatic