Doc News: Brad Pitt; “The King of Kong” Remake; Wim Wenders; Divine

– Brad Pitt has allegedly been confirmed as narrator for Terrence Malick’s upcoming IMAX documentary “Voyage of Time,” which will apparently be like “Tree of Life” without all the pesky human drama stuff. (Hopefully Malick can also one day give us a version of “Tree of Life” that’s just the human drama stuff without the ineffectual space-time context. Or Sean Penn, who is hardly part of the human drama stuff because he’s so lacking in anything resembling a human being. Anyway, that’s a discussion for another place.) Up to now, Pitt’s involvement in documentary has surprisingly been fairly slim. He has an executive producer credit on “God Grew Tired of Us,” appears in Spike Lee’s “If God is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise,” and can currently be heard supplying part of the voice-over narration in Harry Shearer’s “The Big Uneasy.” I actually don’t see any certainty in the claims that Pitt will be attached to this film, since the L.A. Times’ 24 Frames blog only references an old outline that gave us the initial notion in the first place. But it’s probably going to happen anyway.

– Annoying but true: the “King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters” dramatic remake is still very much in the works at New Line, where the obstacle appears to be finalizing a good script. This confirmation comes from “Make Believe” director J. Clay Tweel via an interview at Collider. Tweel worked as a camera operator and associate producer and also contributed to the soundtrack for the original “King of Kong.” On an unrelated note that I would like to make relative, through a recent interview with Will Forte at Movieline I learned that the “MacGruber” star has a Donkey Kong ranking at Twin Galaxies from a couple years ago. So I think if there must be a remake, Forte would make a perfect Steve Wiebe.

– A new documentary about Divine titled “I Am Divine” is currently in pre-production, according to a Facebook page set up for the film. The doc, which the page says will be out in a year, is being directed by Jeffrey Schwarz, a prolific maker of “making of” materials such as “The Roots of Hairspray” and “You Can’t Stop the Beat: The Long Journey of Hairspray.” As long as it features a lot of interview material with John Waters (one of the best testimonial-ists ever), I will be happy. [via Bad Lit, which has a relevant poll on Divine’s best roles]

– Wim Wenders’ acclaimed new 3D dance film “Pina” won the German documentary film prize at the annual Dokville tradeshow yesterday. It also recently won the Lola for Best Documentary at Germany’s equivalent of the Academy Awards. I really, really can’t wait for this to come to the U.S.

– The Guardian is reporting the death of exhibitor/distributor/filmmaker David Stone, who co-directed (with wife Barbara and Adolpho Mekas) the 1970 doc “Compañeras y Compañeros” for the Cuban film organization ICAIC, which apparently got him FBI notice. He also produced Jonas Mekas’ doc/filmed play “The Brig,” which won at Venice in 1964, and the docs “Film Portrait” and “Scenes from the Class Struggle in Portugal.”

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