Monday, January 11th, 2010

The past year, this blog has been littered with casting rumors for Spider-Man 4. I woke up this morning to an AICN post where John Malkovich had supposedly confirmed that he would be playing the role of the villainous Vulture in the upcoming installment of Sam Raimi's Marvel franchise, a story I was sure would head the blog. That is until Sony's official Twitter feed announced that when the web slinger returns to the silver screen in 2012, he would be going back to high school, signaling a reboot. Then, later, Harry Knowles posted the official Sony press release announcing that Spider-Man 4 is officially dead and that Raimi, Tobey Maguire and all the old players are out. I can see canning the fourth installment of the series, but making a reboot of a fairly new, pretty well received series? I know that Spider-Man 3 has its enemies, but are we to say that this was so cataclysmically bad, like Batman and Robin bad, that it deserves to reboot the entire franchise, throwing the brilliant Raimi and the fitting Maguire to the wayside? Ridiculous.

Some better comic book news coming from the DC side of things as The Hollywood Reporter announced that Blake Lively has been cast as Carol Ferris/Star Sapphire in The Green Lantern film. I've not heard, but I doubt that Lively will take on the transformation into the Star Sapphire role that Ferris eventually plays in the comics. Still, I've not really watched Lively in anything other than her Saturday Night Live appearance, so this could be as terrible of an announcement as the above Spider-Man disaster.

The Writers Guild of America announced the nominees for their two major awards. There was really no surprise, especially with Inglourious Basterds and Up being disqualified for the writers not being part of the WGA, that (500) Days of Summer, A Serious Man and the much lauded The Hurt Locker would gain a nod for original screenplays, but two shocking picks popped up. First, James Cameron's screenplay for Avatar, which has its fair share of detractors. Even more shocking however, is the raunchy Todd Phillips comedy, The Hangover, to the delight of myself, but the chagrin of Erik Childress of Cinematical, whom broke the story for me. The category of adapted screenplay wasn't nearly as exciting, except keeping the fanboys happy with a nod for Star Trek, with Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci's script competing against Up in the Air, Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire, Julie and Julia and Crazy Heart.

For a small note, I am going to try my damndest to expand my convention-going this year to visit Dragon*Con in Atlanta if my school schedule allows, but AdventureCon in Tennessee is an almost confirmed event, so I am happy to say that the tiny convention announced today that Billy Dee Williams, Lando fucking Calrissian, the black Harvey Dent and some memorable spots on Robot Chicken, will be a guest for the event.

On a final note, I saw this gallery of Star Wars burlesque featured in L.A. Weekly all over the Interwebs from a place called the Bordello Bar. Enjoy, some decently bizarre pictures.

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

Well, the Golden Globe Award nominees were announced today, and is pretty much what has been keeping the cinematic blogsphere buzzing for the past fourteen hours or so. The biggest, and most welcome, surprise to me was that Todd Phillips' raunchy comedy win, The Hangover took a nod for Best Motion Picture- Musical or Comedy. The flick basically doesn't stand a chance against the upcoming musical Nine, directed by Chicago's Rob Marshall, starring Daniel Day-Lewis and a host of other Oscar darlings, along with Black Eyed Peas' Fergie oddly enough, and is loosely based upon Federico Fellini's 8 1/2. The quirky (500) Days of Summer, It's Complicated and Julie and Julia round out the category.

On the drama side of the major award, James Cameron's mega-blockbuster to release this Friday, Avatar, takes a nod that many are speculating will be in contention for the win, facing off against the one time Oscar favorite, Jason Reitman's Up in the Air, Quentin Tarantino's ingenious, and my pick, Inglourious Basterds, the sleeper success Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire and a film that most sites have been raving about for most of the year, Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker.

Sandra Bullock got a nod for The Blind Side, and from what I can tell of the trailer, may be the most overrated performance of the year. Hopefully she will fall to what looks like a powerful performance from the almost unknown Gabourey Sadibe in Precious. I would say Morgan Freeman's turn as Nelson Mandela in Invictus is all but locked for the award for Best Actor. I will also stretch out and predict that Marion Cotillard is a lock for Best Comedy Actress for her showing in Nine despite Meryl Streep's double appearance in the category, or Bullock showing up again for The Proposal (Note: If you have taste, you probably just said something along the lines of "Say whaaaaaat?" or "Fucking Hell!", and that is why the Golden Globes' validity is slipping dramatically). Comedy Actor is a solid category however, harnessing the likes of Matt Damon, Daniel Day-Lewis, Robert Downey, Jr., Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Michael Stuhlberg, and I can't say I'd be shocked by any of the five walking away with the award. Director is the only other category I could really see going all five ways. Bigelow gets a rare female nod in the directorial category for The Hurt Locker, being accompanied by James Cameron, Clint Eastwood, Jason Reitman and Quentin Tarantino.

Further predictions from my behalf. Keep in mind that since I live in a small area, I have yet to see many of the films that I would like to, so I am merely predicting who I think will take home the award, via buzz, awards favorites and so and so forth...:
Supporting Actress: Mo'Nique for Precious
Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds
Animated Feature: Up
Foreign Language Film: Broken Embraces
Screenplay: Jason Reitman for Up in the Air
Score: James Horner for Avatar, although my heart lies with Karen O and Carter Burwell's work on Where the Wild Things Are full throttle.
Original Song: "Cinema Italiano" from Nine

Finally, to get out of the pre-Oscar garbage that must be talked about by cineastes the world over, to much chagrin usually, here is a very bitchin' clip from Kick-Ass. I posted this sometime back when a grainy, bootlegged version made its way to the Interwebs during the San Diego Comic Con. All the same, enjoy one of the few great clips of Nicolas Cage floating around the world wide web.

Sunday, July 19th, 2009 (Short Film Sunday: Treevenge)

Jason Eisener is a name most people does not yet know, but I predict will eventually be in the ranks of Sam Raimi, Edgar Wright, Rob Zombie, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino when it comes to being able to direct quirky exploitative horror/comedy meshes, and a huge figure among the cult film scene. So far, the Canadian-born director has only put his name on three shorts, the most famous Hobo with a Shotgun, appearing as a faux trailer in Rodriguez and Tarantino's brilliant double feature, Grindhouse. His first short was Discrimination of the Dead, a mockumentary PSA-styled film warning of zombie discrimination.

His latest short however, may put him on the map. It aired as a precursor to the Tommy Wirkola Nazi horror film Dead Snow at the Sundance Film Festival and gained widespread acclaim when all 15+ minutes was released to the Internet, circulating around most movie blogs. The film is called Treevenge, a gory, comedy/splatter film where Christmas trees strike back against the cruelties they were suffered. It may also be noticed that Sarah Dunsworth (who served as a producer in Grindhouse) and Jonathan Torrens, both of Trailer Park Boys fame, appears in the film.

So it is my pleasure to present to you, Treevenge. Enjoy. You can also familiarize yourself with Eisener's work here and here.


P.S. A few briefs before we go. An awkward story on Cinematical where Joel Silver, at a press junket to promote the upcoming Orphan, talked about what his version of Watchmen would have been like. Funny if you read the story, looks like complete shit.

I forgot to say anything about (500) Days of Summer on Friday, as it seems Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has completely overshadowed all other releases this week. From what I can tell, the film looks incredible, has had nothing but great reviews, and stars the wonderfully charming Zooey Deschanel. If you have a chance, and don't want to visit Hogwarts for the seventh time this week, it definitely looks to be a great alternative. Myself, probably have to wait for the DVD release.

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

Last year, when I first saw the trailer to the Zach Galifianakis-starring film Visioneers, I got way overexcited, and proclaimed to all two people that would ever listen to me, that he could be the movie geek's frontrunner for Oscar contention. Because, let's face it, as great as Sean Penn, Richard Jenkins, Frank Langella, Brad Pitt and Mickey Rourke was in all five respective nominated performances of last year, none has the everyman appeal that Galifianakis does. But did I go a little too far with that statement? Well, seeing that theatrical distribution fell through, I won't know for sure until July 21st, when the film goes direct-to-DVD. However, I have faith, after watching the new trailer for Robert D. Siegel's Big Fan, that Patton Oswalt will take up the mantel for the unexpected contender that we will all be cheering for come this Academy Awards. The trailer is incredible, and seeing that director/writer Siegel also wrote last year's hit The Wrestler, as well as being the former senior editor of the satirical newspaper/web site The Onion, we know he understands drama and humor, and seems capable of mixing the two perfectly. In fact, the first film I thought of when watching the trailer, mixing kind of a gritty, serious storyline with what will surely have its fair share of humor, was Todd Solondz' excellent 1998 film Happiness. To top such a film, in my personal opinion, is a tall order, but watch and see what you think.

Other things in brief... MSN Cinemash has featured an entertaining video from 500 Days of Summer, based on a snippet of dialogue from the film, where Joseph Gordon-Levitt portrays Nancy Spungen, and Zooey Deschanel takes the role of Sid Vicious in a nice parody of Sid and Nancy. Definitely worth a view if you're bored.

Cinematical has an interesting story up, stemming from an interview Francis Ford Coppola did with Esquire, where he said that he originally didn't want to do a sequel to The Godfather, and when finally convinced, he just wanted to take a role to help with the screenplay, and had considered passing off the directorial job to then young Martin Scorsese.

Not shockingly, but sadly, it was announced that Rob Zombie's inaugural animation film, The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, will be released straight-to-DVD. This adds on to the previously mentioned Visioneers as two kind of anticipated straight-to-DVD efforts this year. Maybe one day, we could look forward to the medium not being dominated by rejected Lifetime films and Steven Seagal.

Speaking of Galifianakis, MovieWeb reports he is considering a new film directed by The Hangover's Todd Phillips called Man-Witch, where the bearded comedian will be the only male in a school for witchcraft. Sounds like solid comedy, let's just hope this one gets made.

Stephen Dorff mentioned somewhere that Blade could get a reboot. Don't get me wrong, I'm actually a fan of the first film, but does anybody really want this?

I'll close with another discussion of Michael Jackson. In honor of the media insanity of his funeral today, added with the fact that Bruno debuts this coming Friday, do you think that it was the right choice to completely cut Sacha Baron Cohen's interview with LaToya Jackson out of the film? Sure, the premiere night right after he died, I get that. But, let's face it, the people most likely to be offended at a tactless joke about a recently deceased person would be Christians, homosexuals, and seeing the role Michael Jackson played in breaking down walls, African Americans. And can't we already be sure that the theater will be emptied of these groups? I can't wait to see how many people Baron Cohen offends, why not add a few more?