Monday, January 25th, 2010

A trip to Florida is weighing pretty hardily on my travel-lusting spirit as these new images of Hogwarts from Universal Studios Islands of Adventure's new The Wizarding World of Harry Potter section of the park were released today. I'm sure more will come from this closer to the opening of the attractions.

The big news today comes once again from the wallet of James Cameron. Legion and The Tooth Fairy failed to take down Avatar in the box office charts again, with the critically lauded science fiction flick taking the top spot for a sixth weekend in a role, dropping only 18% from last week. And, as we're becoming accustomed to, the movie broke more records, overtaking The Dark Knight's spot as the second highest grossing movie of all time earlier in the week, and breaking Titanic's record for the highest grossing sixth weekend of all time. And at roughly $558 million, analysts expect Cameron's latest to replace his Titanic on the all time list sometime in the coming week. Next week, we're posed for the possibility of a seventh week of Avatar's reign as the biggest competition will be Martin Campbell's Edge of Darkness, the adaptation of the BBC series starring Mel Gibson and Ray Winstone, which hasn't had the media build up that one would expect from Gibson, and could pass easily under the radar.

Variety ran a story a few days back on New Line Cinema gearing up for The Hobbit films, and in the midst announcing that the release date has been pushed back to late 2012. I have read several blogs on this, and despite Guillermo del Toro and Peter Jackson not yet admitting to the delay in the release, many are taking the pessimistic view and are beginning to question if the classic J.R.R. Tolkien novel will even ever make it to the big screen. I'm going to leave this one alone until del Toro or Jackson make a public statement on it however.

I have yet to read a story on MarketSaw that has later been proven as a truthful statement, yet the blogging world seems to be up in arms about a recent story the site published a story stating that a third installment of the Gremlins franchise is being developed for a 3-D film. I say rubbish. Even in the event the article turns out to be based on fact, unless the right director gets behind the chair, I'm looking at this as just another bastardization of the 80's.

Speaking of bastardizations of the 80's, Alex Cox released the new trailer for Repo Chick, a "spiritual sequel" to his 1984 cult classic Repo Man. The Emilio Estevez-starring flick contained its share of camp and kitsch fare, but the unashamed use of bad green screen in the sequel takes it over the edge of entertainment. I mean, I've read a decent amount of buzz from this thing from Cox fans on message boards, and maybe I'm judging it wrong, but regardless of how good it is, I think from viewing this trailer we can all assume that it will, even at its very best, not live up to Repo Man.

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

So, for the past week, I've been keeping the passing of John Hughes as a major topic on the blog, and for more fuel for this ongoing topic, I find that it has been swept under the table on most news outlets, and I'm a bit perturbed that The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles hasn't been in heavy rotation on cable. I'm also shocked at how little coverage the documentary Don't You Forget About Me, which I spoke of yesterday, is getting. The film, which chronicles the journey of four young filmmakers attempting to find out what has become of the reclusive director, and possibly get an interview with him seemed like a great idea already, catching my interest when I read about it in Geek Monthly before the tragedy of Hughes' death. There's just something about a road trip to satisfy a passion of cinema that plucks at the ole cinephile's heartstrings. I've been reading further about the film today, and I've still not been able to spoil the ending and find out if they ever did actually get the interview with Hughes or not, but that will be a selling point of the film, however it is distributed. One of the interesting tidbits in the movie that I can't wait to see is the interview with Roger Ebert, as he retracts many of the disparaging comments he made during the initial reviews of some of Hughes' teenage fare of the 80's. I will be keeping an eye on the film as it progresses through trying to find a distributor, as well as the talents behind it, who will most certainly be taking to the media circuits to discuss the untimely death of Hughes. In fact, I found that they also share a blog on Blogspot, which I now follow, so any news, trailers, release dates or anything further I'll pass along.

For a bit more on Hughes, the picture accompanying my blog today is from an article out of the New York Times, written by Molly Ringwald, recounting her days as the iconic director's muse, very appropriately titled The Neverland Club. A good read.

Also, speaking of the Brat Pack, Cinematical uncovered a story that loosely deals with Emilio Estevez. One of the true cult classics of the 80's that starred the Breakfast Club alum, Repo Man may be getting a sequel. Actually, the director of the film, Alex Cox, claims it will be a "freestanding film", called Repo Chick, that shares the same mind as the original. Interesting, but is this really a good idea? At the very least, it gets Repo Man into the public spectrum again.

Variety reports that Universal Studios has partnered with 20th Century Fox for their annual Halloween Horror Nights event at the Hollywood theme park, meaning that they now have the rights to stage a short tribute version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. To me, there is no better way to spend Halloween than seeing The Rocky Horror Show live; however, when Universal does this festival, I hear they go all out, so I am a bit envious of those who will get to see their live version. Let's hope it will be among the adult only attractions during the festival, as the raunchiness is what the live show is all about.

Variety also has a story announcing that David Mamet will take on the directorial job of a new adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank from Walt Disney Pictures. I'm not huge on Mamet like the rest of the blogsphere out there, so we'll wait to see what comes of this. With Disney behind it, I'm sadly picturing the Robot Chicken spoof of Hilary Duff in a modern day teen dramedy re-telling of this, actually happening.

Finally, I will end with more pirated footage of Kick-Ass from the San Diego Comic Con. IWatchStuff has four videos up, but the following excerpt, featuring Nicolas Cage shooting a little girl in the chest, may be the most entertained I've been in ages.