We said goodbye to Patrick Swayze this week. I'm one of the five people worlwide who've still never seen Dirty Dancing, but his work in action bromance Point Break and box office monster Ghost will remain timeless.

I also read that Inglourious Basterds villain Christoph Waltz has signed on as the villain of the upcoming Green Lantern movie. I hope he's not going to just be another actor who blazed with a bright star in a quirky or indie role only to slum it in a stream of lazy roles riffing on his iconic first character. Just look at the subsequent CV of Lambert Wilson, who played The Merovingian in the Matrix sequels.

District 9 nerd/hero Sharlto Copley and Jessica Beil have joined Liam Neeson in the big screen A-Team, but all those rumours about Ice Cube as BA Baracus came to nothing, with some guy called Quinton Jackson in the role.

I've more or less given up commenting on the flood of horror remakes, but the only thing that makes an announcement that someone's reduxing George A Romero's Night of the Living Dead interesting is because it's the granddaddy of modern horror movies and it's a wonder nobody did it earlier. And no sooner had I read about than I saw someone's also redoing Nineteen Eighty Four. As a story worth endlessly retelling, I more excited about it than I've been about a remake in a long time.

Over six months ago, I saw an intriguing trailer that dropped off the radar just as quickly, and I figured I'd have to get it on DVD when it finally slunk into release (or worse, get it on Bittorrent...which of course I never do). It proclaimed itself as the scariest movie ever made and featured infrared footage of a couple in bed being menaced by a disembodied spirit in the middle of the night. Not only has Paramornal Activity now arrived, it's getting a theatrical release here in Australia. Now I just have to work up the courage to go and see it.

Spider-Man 4 has been confirmed for a 4 May, 2011 release with most of the former principals attached, and I recently read an interview with Peter Berg talking up the Battleship film. it's the one based on the boardgame that I've talked about before, and apparently it's going to just be a straight up marine battle action movie.

And with Michael Jackson barely cold in his grave, Sony is releasing footage of the rehearsals and preparations of his last concert tour as a movie, This Is It. It's stuff that probably would have ended up on DVD extras nobody would ever watch owing to Jackson's waning popularity over recent years, and to make it a big flashy event movie is the first in what will probably be a long period of sad, shameless cash-ins (actually it's the second – there's already a book out). My prediction is that Jackson will be the new Elvis, soon worth much more money than he ever was alive.