Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

I had imagined with "going green" being the bees knees in Hollywood recently, that Dr. Seuss' fantastic 1971 environmentally friendly fable The Lorax would have already been put on the big screen. The wonderful tale is my favorite children's book of all time, and through the years I have had fears of Mike Myers in a skin tight orange catsuit and a mustache that would make a proverbial lovechild of Nietzsche and Rollie Fingers blush. Yet, although I have always fancied a brilliant stop motion adaptation, Variety has announced that the inevitable has happened, and at the very least, it will take the road of the Horton Hears a Who film, and join the ranks of CGI-mania, directed by Chris Renaud, Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio. I'm sure until the release in 2012, I will rant and rejoice about this beloved gem of my childhood, but the one good thing I can say so far, is that I enjoy the tentative release date is what would have been Theodor Geisel's 105th birthday.

I mentioned stop motion animation up there, and when talking about the medium one can't help but mention Wes Anderson's upcoming The Fantastic Mr. Fox. I posted pictures a while back showing off the titular Mr. Fox, but now the official site of the film has a gallery up with some of the better pictures featuring Bill Murray having some fun with the figures being used.

The Green Hornet casting news has been littered all about my blog, and a new piece of news, courtesy of LatinoReview, states that there is a new replacement for Stephen Chow's abandoned Kato role. Famous South Korean actor Kwon Sang-woo has been confirmed by several unnamed "Chinese news outlets" to be taking the role of Seth Rogen's sidekick. The actor has yet to breakthrough stateside, so I have no clue if I should be excited or repulsed, but I'm still generally stoked about what Michel Gondry could do with a superhero flick written by Rogen and Evan Goldberg, so I seriously doubt this guy's previous credits would really matter in my overall excitement for this.

In more casting news, via IWatchStuff, Bryce Dallas Howard has joined the cast of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, taking over for Rachelle Lefevre in the role of Victoria after some scheduling squabbles. Now, I try my best not to speak of anything pertaining to the Twilight universe, but this bit of casting intrigues me. I may be alone here, but I think Howard is a good actress, and using the little bit of knowledge I know of the Twilight books, Eclipse is when Victoria becomes a decent villain, which would seem to turn to the side of luck, albeit a slight continuity snag, for the vampire romance. This may stifle a bit of the initial complaints when I accompany the lady to the theater for this, especially added to the fact that the third installment will be directed by David Slade (of 30 Days of Night fame), who has publically criticized the original film, and the hightened chance he brings that may change this into a watchable film for anybody who isn't masturbating nightly to a cucumber with "Team Cullen" painted on it with nail polish while simultaneously using Dad's barbeque fork to simulate a vampire's bite.

Finally, Cinematical gave a link to a great blog called Reelizer today, which features cinema-based art. Some interesting stuff on there. I could picture some of these on a larger scale adorning my living room walls. Enjoy.