Wendesday, August 26th, 2009

Ever since the trailer for James Cameron's Avatar dropped last week, the Internet has been abuzz with claims of disappointment, or if possible, even more unbridled giddy anticipation. For me, it is a bit of the latter, and now MarketSaw continues to build this eagerness by posting magazine scans from Empire's feature on the science fiction flick due out in December. In it, we finally see Sigourney Weaver's avatar. We also get the high definition picture of Zoe Saldana's Neytiri character. Since the San Diego Comic Con, we've been seeing the one still of Neytiri over and over, but the scan on MarketSaw is fantastically realistic. Let's hope that we don't get a huge media onslaught on this in the coming months, as I would prefer to go into the theaters knowing as little as I do now.

The Sun has a story up today claiming that Megan Fox has been signed on to play Catwoman in the inevitable sequel to The Dark Knight. One reason we know that this is bogus, is that it casually mentions that she will be working with the returning Christopher Nolan, whom we all know is nowhere close to making a decision about his involvement in continuing the latest Batman film franchise. Oh, and it is also The Sun. Cinematical has an entertaining poll up on what our favorite Batman 3 rumor has been thus far, which after reading over it, you realize they were probably all at one time a story in The Sun. What I think was the most entertaining of the rumors... Eddie Murphy as the Riddler. However, after Joel Schumacher's appalling cinematic abortions from the mid-90's I fear that there is a few ounces to truth to each of these claims.

Scoping out all the regular movie blogs this evening and I ran across a story from The Hollywood Reporter, that stated "Invincible director helm next XXX", or something to the effect. Of course, the story is speaking of the film XXX: The Return of Xander Cage, the third in the painfully terrible action trilogy, being directed by Ericson Core, the man behind the 2006 film Invincible, a true story about the Philadelphia Eagles' Vince Papale, as portrayed by Mark Wahlberg. I was shocked and hurt a little inside though when I originally read the catch of the article, as when I hear the title Invincible, I instantly picture the very underrated 2001 flick, a fable of a Jewish strongman that co-starred Tim Roth, directed by the brilliant Werner Herzog. Luckily, I was way off, and I will not have to care about the new XXX.

Taking Woodstock comes out today for the unusual Wednesday release. The film is directed by Ang Lee based on Elliot Tiber's autobiography on his involvement in 1969's Woodstock Festival. The film looks intriguing, yet I've only read bad reviews. Seeing that it is getting a limited release, I'll probably wait until DVD time to make my consensus.

I watched Pearl Jam's new video "The Fixer" tonight. Quite good, especially considering it was only their second music video in seventeen years, the other being the astounding Todd McFarlane animated "Do the Evolution". I wasn't going to put it on this blog however, until I ran across the video on Cinematical, as they informed me that filmmaker Cameron Crowe was the director of the video. Enjoy.