Tobey Maguire – recently confirmed to produce a new ‘gritty’ version of The Little Mermaid ha ha ha ha ha ha ha – is playing dumb at the moment after being accused of having an illegal gambling ring which also featured Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio and Ben Affleck.

Imagine the conversations they have around the table. It must be like putting your ear to a sea-shell and listening to a hermit crab fall asleep mid-wank.

Anyway, the man who ruined Spiderman for everyone was named in an illegal gambling suit in which he was sued for taking part in a game with jailed criminal Bradley Ruderman.

So. Ruderman (Ruderman, does whatever a Ruder can) is currently in the clink for running a ponzi scheme that swindled people out of approximately $25 million and he’s currently being sued by people over money which they claim was used by Ruderman in the poker games.

Maguire ‘fessed-up to having earned $187,000 in winnings from the gambling ring, but denies any intentional wrongdoing. Apart from his acting career which he knows damn well is criminal.

“[Maguire] unconditionally denies having engaged in any conduct whatsoever in violation of law and further categorically denies having knowingly or intentionally participated in any fraudulent scheme,” read the statement released by the star’s lawyer according to E Online.

Basically, Maguire believes that he was simply having a nice time playing an innocent game of poker. With any luck, he’ll end up in prison, just for a laugh.

Are you disappointed we didn’t make any puns on the word ‘ring’?

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Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal look pretty similar, don’t they? That doe-eyed bulging apathy that seeps from their indistinct puff-gobs make them near gloomy twins.

Gylenhaal even nearly replaced Maguire as Spiderman when producers thought that Peter Parker needed to mope around a bit more in the sequel. It’s little surprise that someone eventually paired the two together as siblings.

Brothers has Maguire as the straight-up soldier serving duty in Afghanistan while his drunk brother falls over a lot and takes fancy to Maguire’s misses. Hilarity doesn’t quite insure, so much as gets tied to a breezeblock and tossed in a river.

Director Jim Sheridan decides to take a break from making films about 50 Cent being an awful turd and focuses on harrowing Danish drama remakes. The type that’ll put thought in your head and regret in your heart for watching it with you girlfriend in the vein attempt to get lucky.

It’s also pretty pedestrian stuff: after Sam (Maguire) goes missing in Afghanistan, his wife, Grace (Natalie Portman), has to deal with the aftermath and put her life back together. In walks rugged Tommy (Gyleenhaal), a rough-neck recently incarcerated loser, who decides to change both their lives for the better. Sparks fly, people cry, competent drama is on the menu. Things take a turn for the worst when Sam turns up again, only to find that his wife and brother are a bit too cosy.

If all of this sounds familiar, then you have probably seen Pearl Harbour. Or at least the second act of Pearl Harbour, after all that needless exposition and before all the carelessly exploitative action. You know, that horrible love triangle that sank the film into the bottom of the ocean of Hollywood?

Then again, when you replace Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett – a joint charisma level of a tin of sardines – with the pedigree of the bloke who rode Seabiscuit and that guy from the film that made no sense, it becomes an affecting drama.

Maguire particularly stands out. His turmoil in Afghanistan, while grimly predictable, punctuates a desperate situation with subtlety. His return to his family gradually shows a man beginning to uncoil, at any moment about to snap.

Portman doesn’t quite convince as much – especially being a young mother of two with zero waistline. She doesn’t have as much to do, though. Most of the time competing with Gylenhaal in a contest of ‘Who Can Make The Most Vacant Expression’.

It’s Maguire’s show and when it comes down to the climatic confrontation he delivers a riveting destructive outburst that suitably shocks and surprises. It’s a shame, then, that the film is destined to be overlooked much like every other outstanding Maguire movie that isn’t Spiderman; Pleasentville, The Ice Storm, Cats & Dogs. God dammit we love Cats & Dogs. Oh look, a sequel is out soon – yay!

‘Spray Rating: 3/5

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Watching the evolution between Spider-Man and Spider-Man 3, it was pretty clear what Spider-Man 4 would include.

There’d be about 400 baddies, for starters. And it’d be up to 17 hours long. And it’d be a musical. And all of Spider-Man’s emotions would be signposted by a change of haircut. And Kirsten Dunst would have completed her transformation from busty pin-up to Otzi The Iceman in a ginger wig. And, needless to say, it’d be worse than terrible. Yes, Spider-Man 4 was more or less a done deal.

But not any more. Sony has just decided to bin Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst and start Spider-Man 4 from scratch as a gritty teenage drama in a move rumoured to have the codename ‘Project Let’s Try And Make Something Even Worse Than Spider-Man 3‘.

You don’t need to be a professor of cinema to realise that Spider-Man 3 wasn’t very good. But, that said, we were still looking forward to seeing Spider-Man 4 next year.

Mostly, we were interested in seeing how Sam Raimi would solve all the seemingly insurmountable problems – like the bloat of the last film, the way that he’d have to balance the artistic integrity of the story with the commercial pressures of a $2.5 million studio franchise, the fact that Spider-Man is now close to 40 years old and Mary Jane is starting to look a little bit like Sam The World’s Ugliest Dog and the way that, since The Dark Knight, nobody likes their superheroes to have any fun any more.

But now we won’t get that chance. After a few weeks of frantic rumour-milling about budget and script problems, it’s been announced that Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst have all been ditched from Spider-Man 4. That’s the bad news. The good news is that Spider-Man 4 will be rebooted to be more about teenagers and emotions and… hang on, that’s bad news too. Oh, this is no good at all. The LA Times reports:

Sony on Monday pulled the plug on the project as it was being conceived with director Sam Raimi after he told the studio he wasn’t comfortable moving forward with the sequel… The studio said it would hire a new star and director and re-boot the movie as a story about Parker’s early life as a “teenager grappling with contemporary human problems and amazing super-human crises.”

It isn’t all bad news, of course – Drag Me To Hell showed that Sam Raimi is much better when he’s allowed to muck about on his own, for instance, and if Tobey Maguire had carried on as Spider-Man for much longer then it would have meant eventually sitting through a tacked-on subplot about the creeping onset of osteoporosis. Plus, if the new Spider-Man 4 is going to be aimed at teenagers then it’ll be all about ringtones and impenetrable slang and Dappy out of N-Dubz and it’ll pass us by anyway.

So that’s something. Plus, don’t forget that if the new teenage Spider-Man 4 is going to be a reboot, then we’ll get to watch the series develop all over again. That means that Spider-Man 6 is going to be just as uniformly dreadful as Spider-Man 3 was. Oh, now you’re excited.

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Another day, another decision to remake/sequelise/spin-off an existing movie. This time it’s Venom’s turn.

Yes, for those that saw Spider-Man 3 – he’s the one played by Topher Grace off That 70s Show. He’s the one that should have been one of the best villains in comic movie history, but instead ended up being a complete rush job, thus making one of Spider-Man’s greatest foes actually a big pile of crud.

|Plus he appared to die in the film, so how Sony are going to play this we don’t really know. Time machine? A ‘he’s dead or is he OR IS HE’ angle? Ignoring the film, thus rendering his appearance in the Spider-Man movie worthless? Which it was.

It’ll probably be the third. And we bet Sam Raimi will be happy about that, after being forced to incorporate Venom into his movie in the first place.

Ah, Hollywood.

While it’s not new news that a Venom film is in the pipeline, it has just come about that Sony are pushing for the picture to be released quicksmart. Obviously wanting to ride the wave of popularity created by the successes of both Iron Man and The Dark Knight and seeing that there is, maybe, a place in the mass market for the darker side of comic books, the company have been more or less forced to play their hand.

While a script was already written for the movie, the execs have apparently decided it isn’t up to par and have sent out the word that they’re looking for a new one. The hecklerspray script is on its way, guys! Though we’re sure they’ll pick some no-talent arseclown to pen the bloody thing and it will all go wrong, leaving comic book geeks around the world frothing at the eyeballs.

It’s just that… well… they’ll get it wrong, won’t they? They’ll make Venom into some kind of pansy, or will hamfistedly force in some relatability to the character to try and make the audience sympathise with his plight.

Or they’ll probably make him pink and shoot flower-coated puppies out of his anus as he travels the galaxy bringing happiness and free rainbows to everyone.

Not that we’re cynical or anything – we just can’t see how Sony expect to work it.

Certainly, the popular character’s co-creator, Todd McFarlane thinks they can make it work.

“You don’t want to scare the kids, because the kids love the character,” he said.

“But I think you could add a little bit of a creep factor. I mean, it never bugged me to watch Frankenstein as a kid, so you could have a little bit of it, as long as you have a good story backing it up.”

The Dark Knight is a very dark, depressing film with one of the finest portrayals of a truly twisted mentalist ever seen – but Batman is still a good guy. Iron Man isn’t that dark, and he’s a good guy too. The announced X-Men Origins: Wolverine is sure to tread this same gritty, dark path but – again – Wolverine is a good guy. Conflicted, capable of being a bit maniacal yes – but still a good guy.

Sony will not be able to make major blockbuster work if it’s about a bad guy. The mass-market they so crave just won’t buy into it – they seem to forget that people are idiots. And if the most recent Spider-Man movie was anything to go by, not only will it be a flop, it’ll be shit too.

We’re just saying.