Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Being a man and an inspiring cineaste, it is hard to draw me into a theater on pure cuteness. However, if anybody could do it, Pixar would be responsible. The company, via Coming Soon, has unveiled a few of the new fourteen toys that will be in the upcoming Toy Story 3, including an extremely douchey Ken of Barbie fame, and these Japanesque peas in a pod. Of course, the cuteness of this toy will not be the only draw, as the movie's two predecessors are excellent films, and following the consecutive summer releases of Ratatouille, WALL-E and Up, it will be a disappointment if Lee Unkrich's film doesn't score a near perfect on Rotten Tomatoes.

My big rant of the night comes along with the debut of the full trailer for M. Night Shyamalan's big screen adaptation of The Last Airbender. /Film has an article on some of the fan rantings that are going on, eclipsing the decent looking trailer for the film. There seems to be some kind of controversy over the fact that playing the lead character Aang is a Caucasian, Noah Ringer. I just don't see how this is a controversy. First of all, in most films drawn in the style of Avatar: The Last Airbender, modeled after Japanese anime, the characters have general or mixed features, not really appearing as stereotypical Asians, Americans or whatever. Second point, this is Ringer's first film, and with limited amount of trailer time, we can't judge his acting skills, but the kid looks dead on. It just seems silly to me to blast this for being racist, while fanboys allowed the two blackfaced robots in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen jive talk for a good percentage of the film without giving it such an unfortunate title (although other demeaning titles such as shit, directed by Michael Bay and worst film of the year were all more applicable). Still, I think a lot of the rants are coming from tried and true anime fans that doesn't like Nickelodeon's original spin on the fantasy genre and Japanese influenced stylization. I still think the film looks like one of the more promising of this year's blockbuster season, and has at least subsided my fears of being the next Dragonball: Evolution.

The Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision Blog has announced that Penelope Cruz is in talks to take a co-starring role, as "Johnny Depp's equal" in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. This rumor seems quite likely, seeing that the article drives home the point that it will reunite Cruz with director Rob Marshall, whom is taking over the Pirates franchise, and directed her in her Academy Award nominated performance in Nine.

Cinematical has an posted an article today confirming that Sony Pictures plans on releasing the latest Spider-Man film in 3-D. I share the same sentiments as author Scott Weinberg, as any potential the film had built up by signing on (500) Days of Summer's director Marc Webb and Zodiac's screenwriter James Vanderbilt, all is lost with the addition of the gimmick, or Avatar-induced cinematic plague.

Shock Till You Drop, in an interview with David Self, screenwriter of a reboot of Robocop, has claimed that Darren Aronofsky is still attached to the property, that will hopefully come to fruition after Aronofsky finishes up filming on Black Swan. Self cites MGM's financial problems as to why the exact future of the film is currently in limbo.

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

Yesterday, Deadline Hollywood supplied the movie blogsphere with the rumor that David S. Goyer and Jonathan Nolan, brother of The Dark Knight's visionary director Christopher Nolan, is currently working on a script for the third in Nolan's franchise. Today, DH's story followed up by announcing that Chris Nolan could very well be DC Comic's silver screen savior. Not only will the director be responsible for turning the Batman franchise around from Joel Schumacher's Batman and Robin to his 2005 release, Batman Begins, but now the linked article is reporting that Warner Brothers has hired Nolan to mentor or "godfather" (an interesting term to be used in the Superman film universe, seeing that the first two films were written by The Godfather novelist Mario Puzo) a reboot of the Superman franchise, after the company decided to go another route than continuing with Bryan Singer's Superman Returns story arc. Still, Nolan will not be in the director's chair, the reason cited in the article, for working on Batman 3. There will surely be more rumors on this as the week continues, especially if anyone can actually get a statement from Nolan.

The other big news of the day comes from The Daily Mail's interview with Bill Murray. In it, the comedian discusses The Fantastic Mr. Fox, his thoughts on the underrated Groundhog Day script and his favorite performance, Broken Flowers. However, it is when the topic of Ghostbusters 3 comes up that the story sets the rumor mills running. Murray claims he will only return to the franchise if he gets to come back as a ghost, all but actually confirming Sigourney Weaver's slip-up in an interview during Avatar's press tour. Although I would prefer to not know that Dr. Peter Venkman will die within the first few minutes of the first movie, I can see this working, and don't really see it as a spoiler seeing that it is on every blog site, and if it happens in the manner that is being rumored, will probably be featured in the trailer of the possible film.

/Film posted an article featuring Stan Lee announcing via his Twitter that Marvel is prepping an Ant-Man movie. After the rumors of Edgar Wright taking the director's chair for the film and Pixar eyeing the project were both dispelled, the cinematic future of the Marvel character has been left unspoken about lately. I'm sure this little promise from Stan the Man will get the fans interested again.

In some actual confirmed news, The Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision Blog has announced that Tim Robbins has joined the cast of The Green Lantern as Senator Hammond, the father of the film's main villain, Dr. Hector Hammond (as played by Peter Sarsgaard). I know absolutely nothing on Robbins' character-to-be, but just looking at his acting ability, it's not a bad choice.

Monday, February 8th, 2010

The release of Cop Out in three weeks marks the first time I have not been genuinely stoked about a Kevin Smith film being released. I'm sure many critics, and Smith fans alike will trash Jersey Girl, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and even Mallrats, yet I have always been a diehard of the Red Bank, New Jersey native. So, in response to thinking that the Bruce Willis/Tracy Morgan buddy comedy will be one of his worst flicks, I have been putting a lot of stock and anticipation into Smith's upcoming efforts, including the much blogged about Hit Somebody, as well as Smith's shot at horror filmmaking, Red State. The horror flick has been a fan favorite idea for some time, and after a few requests for Smith to take fan donations to fund the film, a sort of backlash of cinema bloggers questioning the Clerks. director's douchebagginess over such a move has flooded in. /Film has an article covering Smith's response to the negative commenters. I personally wouldn't donate money, but Smith was going to match the fan donations and go without a salary, so I don't really see why he would be playing the villain here, especially if a few well-to-do fans could garner a production credit out of the ordeal. Still, with this tinge of controversy, I'm sure it puts Red State in the same column as Ranger Danger and the Danger Rangers as shelved Smith features I was heavily anticipating.

Deadline Hollywood has an article up on David S. Goyer's involvement and departure in the ABC series FlashForward, yet the story spirals into speculation on the sequel to The Dark Knight. The story claims that Goyer's exit of the show is due to writing the screenplay to the third Batman film with Jonathan Nolan. His screenwriting cohort is of especial note as well, as that would point all indication that director Christopher Nolan would return. Still, I've read several overviews of this on several blogs today, and they all call bullshit, so I suppose we will see.

Super Hero Hype has confirmed through an interview with director Joe Johnston, that Red Skull will be the official villain in the upcoming The First Avenger: Captain America. Let's just hope that whomever is casted in the role, sets their goal slightly higher than Scott Paulin from the 1990 film version.

Avatar's reign has finally come to an end after seven weeks, as James Cameron's mega-blockbuster film came in second place on the box office charts this weekend, falling to the Nicholas Sparks adapted romance flick Dear John. The Amanda Seyfried starring film, directed by Lasse Hallstrom had the second highest showing of all time during Super Bowl weekend, coming close to breaking the record held by the Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert film. Even more shockingly, Avatar failed to break any new records this weekend, some crediting this to contending against the New Orleans Saints big win last night, which broke M*A*S*H's long standing television viewing audience record for its finale. Cameron's film came in second on the all time list during the eighth weekend of release to his other film, Titanic. Next weekend sees three big releases in The Wolfman, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief and Valentine's Day, so it will be interesting to see what kind of decrease the film will face in sales.

Finally, as I've been writing this, I've been watching the lackluster reunion of Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo as Clark and Ellen Griswold from John Hughes' beloved Vacation series of films, in the form of several Super Bowl ads, entitled Hotel Hell Vacation for Home Away, Inc. (As a note, the collected commercials are being officially referred to as a short film and sequel within the official Vacation canon). For the rest of cinema news from last night, Cinematical has compiled all the debut TV spots for Alice in Wonderland, Prince of Persia, Shutter Island, The Last Airbender, The Wolfman, Robin Hood and The Crazies.

Friday, February 5th, 2010

Not blogged in a few days, and my starred items on Google Reader are building up like crazy, so lots of links in brief.

Bleeding Cool reports that DC Comics is looking for somebody to write a sequel or prequel to Alan Moore's Watchmen. The print bastardization of the seminal comic will surely make the maddening big screen jump in time.

The Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision Blog reports that Taylor Lautner has been cast in the big screen adaptation of the Stretch Armstrong toy. Also, while reading the article I learned that Lautner was Sharkboy in The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D. This could possibly make him the worst actor of all time.

I just recently found out that there is a musical with Jim Carrey and Jake Gyllenhaal attached called Damn Yankees in pre-production about a man who sells his soul to the devil so his team can make the World Series.

20th Century Fox, via Deadline Hollywood, has announced they want to reboot the Daredevil franchise. After getting into Frank Miller's comics of the hero this past year, I actually hope this fleshes out well.

CINSSU, a free film site, reports that Kevin Smith will be attempting to fund his stab at horror (no pun intended), Red State, by donations.

There has been such talk about ex-spouses James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow and their fight for the Oscar race. Cinematical has a great post featuring a music video Cameron directed of Bill Paxton's band Martini Ranch that starred Bigelow.

Check out the Super Bowl trailer for The Last Airbender on The Daily What.

Bloomberg reports that some of Sony's old films could be getting a 3-D Blu-ray conversion next year, including Spider-Man, Ghostbusters and District 9.

/Film has the teaser for the new fan documentary The People Vs. George Lucas up.

Access Hollywood reported that the young star in Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, Logan Lerman, will star as Peter Parker in Marc Webb's reboot of Marvel's Spider-Man franchise, actually being a teen Parker, rather than Tobey Maguire who was 27 when he first played the teenage hero.

Film 24, a British movie channel, interviewed Daryl Hannah recently, in which she claimed that she would eventually reprise her role as Elle Driver in at least another Kill Bill film in the future.

Cinematical announced that Avatar officially beat Titanic in the U.S. domestic box office earnings, surprising nobody. Also, not shockingly, Fox mentioning it its conference call a few days ago that they were perusing director James Cameron for a sequel.

Topless Robot has video proof that Nick Manning will be the next person to don the Dark Knight's cowl for a film... in Batman XXX: A Porn Parody. The link includes the safe for work trailer!

Empire readers named Batman and Robin as the worst film of all time in a poll.

/Film has the first official picture of Jeff Bridges in Tron Legacy.

Deadline Hollywood is covering the huge buzz and Paramount's rumored dealings with the J.J. Abrams-produced documentary that is making big waves at the Sundance Film Festival, Catfish.

The Los Angeles Times has a story up on how Universal Studios Hollywood's rebuilding of the burned down King Kong ride will be based on Peter Jackson's telling of the classic cinematic tale.

Geekologie reports that Tinto Brass intends to create a 3-D porn film.

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

The initial happiness of District 9 and Inglourious Basterds making the cut of the 82nd Annual Academy Awards Best Picture nominees almost makes it easy to overlook the fact that the mediocre-at-best film The Blind Side also ranked among the other nine films. Accompanying the aforementioned films include An Education, Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire, A Serious Man, Up and Up in the Air. Of course, James Cameron's widely praised and crazy popular Avatar also took home a nom, and from the reviews and buzz I've read, what I project as the winner of the major category, Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker grabbed the tenth spot. Most of the nominees were to be expected, but I feel the big story is how many great films were passed up for The Blind Side. 2009 saw such great flicks as Coraline, Moon, Observe and Report, Star Trek, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Brothers Bloom, The Hangover, Watchmen, Ponyo, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Zombieland, Where the Wild Things Are, Invictus, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, (500) Days of Summer, Paranormal Activity, Bronson, Crazy Heart, The Road and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Given, the Academy wouldn't even consider half of the films I just listed, but all are way more deserving than the ode to forgettable Baltimore Ravens offensive lineman Michael Oher, not to mention the alleged racism of John Lee Hancock's drama. There was many other overlooked performances in this past year of film, some of which are covered in a decent article by Cinematical's Erik Childress.

I would list my predictions of who I think should win, but I am still playing catch up with a few films I have yet to see, including the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man, Jason Reitman's Up in the Air and a few more. However, reading so much over this past award season, I will relinquish who I think doesn't necessarily deserve the award, but will take it home.

Best Picture: The Hurt Locker

Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker

Best Actor: Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart

Best Actress: Gabourey Sidibe for Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire (I know I am going out on a limb here, as most sites will pick either Sandra Bullock or Meryl Streep, but I stand by the choice as a lock.)

Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds

Best Supporting Actress: Anna Kendrick for Up in the Air (this may be the most difficult category to predict, as all five has their supporters, and have won awards thus far into the season.)

Best Original Screenplay: Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds

Best Adapted Screenplay: Nick Hornby for An Education

Best Animated Feature: Up

Best Art Direction: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Best Cinematography: The Hurt Locker

Best Costume Design: The Young Victoria

Best Documentary: The Cove

Best Editing: The Hurt Locker

Best Foreign Film: The White Ribbon

Best Makeup: Star Trek

Best Original Score: James Horner for Avatar

Best Original Song: "The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)" for Crazy Heart

Best Sound: Avatar

Best Sound Effects Editing: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Best Visual Effects: Avatar

Finally, if you do crave something other than this entire Oscar business, Kevin Smith gave a great interview on Bizarre Magazine's web site on the topics of golden showers, his first sex with his wife, and providing the tidbit that the much-talked about Hit Somebody, Smith's newest project that he hopes to start next year, is actually based on a Warren Zevon song.

Monday, February 1st, 2010

That is one of the more priceless frightened faces on a child that I have ever seen. It is also completely unrelated to anything we're about to discuss. First off, in all of the award-season chaos, many people tend to leave the Golden Raspberry Awards off of their lists. Like always, the Razzies tend to be the worst of extreme mainstream cinema, instead of being the worst of cinema, period... as advertised. Case in point, Land of the Lost lands a nomination for Worst Picture, even though it had some supporters, one being Roger Ebert. Also, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen had a terrible script, but has kept a decent fan base, and despite not being a Fellini, the movie was entertaining enough at least, to keep it off this list. Other notables pointed out in /Film's coverage include four nods for The Twilight Saga: New Moon, Sandra Bullock's nomination for All About Steve, which could couple with a possible Academy Award nomination announced tomorrow for her role in The Blind Side (which for my consideration, would fit in more on this list than any other). There is also three decade awards that is worth checking out.

Other than Bullock, not a lot of Oscar speculation coming out of the nominations for the Razzies, but another award show went down over the weekend, the Directors Guild of America Awards, in which Kathryn Bigelow took home the trophy for Best Director for her film The Hurt Locker. Cinematical's Girls on Film column focuses on Bigelow's big win, trumping her ex-husband James Cameron among others. The article also notes that Bigelow's chances on Academy gold just shot up considerably, seeing that the winner of the highest honor the DGA presents has won the Oscar 90% of the time in the last 61 years. On top of all this, Bigelow also holds the distinction of being the first female winner of the DGA Award, and is looking as a nearly positive groundbreaker as the first female to gain the Oscar in the same category.

Finally stepping away from the award stuff for a bit, /Film has an article up focusing on Kevin Smith's Twitter account, where the Clerks. director has announced he is shopping Hit Somebody, a dramedy set in the world of hockey, to Warner Brothers. They also quote Smith as referring to Hit Somebody as an equal to 1993's Chasing Amy, the quality of which he has been, for lack of a better word, chasing ever since.

Well, with all attempts of not mentioning Avatar, the fact that the Oscars are announced this week, and the aforementioned news of Bigelow's triumph over the film makes it almost impossible. Also continuing to block me from ignoring the blockbuster is the fact that the film took the top spot at the box office again this week, for the seventh time, in the process breaking the record for the highest grossing seventh weekend of all time. Box Office Mojo's weekend report also estimates that the current record holder for worldwide box office will overtake the U.S. domestic record sometime this week, beating out Titanic. Cameron's film also was the first to cross the worldwide $2 billion mark over the past week. Many may wonder exactly why all the praise for the flick, including the comically monotoned guy that posted a 70 minute review of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace on YouTube. He now has an 18 minute review of Avatar posted. Here is the first part, enjoy.