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.

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

Right now, I should probably be doing something other than blogging. I counted up of my next 72 hours, I have roughly 13 to sleep, study and blog, so I'm probably making the wrong choice right now, but I'm bored, can't sleep and cannot seem to will myself to study. Regardless, it will be a quick one. First, here is the new poster for Lars von Trier's Antichrist, which is shockingly the least disturbing thus far. You can check out IMPAwards to see the others.

BlackFilm has put Sharlto Copley's name up for the rumor mill considerations of the role of Howling Mad Murdock in the big screen adaptation of The A-Team. Earlier this week it was announced that former UFC fighter Quintin "Rampage" Jackson was joining the cast to play the role Mr. T made famous, B.A. Baracus. At least Copley, who is relatively new to American audiences after a pretty great performance in District 9 would set this thing back to potentially watchable.

I also read somewhere that Edgar Wright did an interview yesterday, that I can't find a link for, debunking the rumor of Pixar holding interest in his script of Ant Man. He does however confirm that he is still actively pursuing the project in live action style, as a second draft of the screenplay is being worked on at the moment and had taken a back seat to production of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. He also states that he wouldn't mind working with Pixar, which will surely be the source for a few rumors in the future.

Finally, Cinematical has a very disturbing post on the release of This Isn't Twilight: The XXX Parody, the inevitable porn movie based on the popular vampire romance flick Twilight. The movie stars Jenna Haze, which is probably a big deal in the porn world because the link provided in the article states Haze was the winner of the AVN Award. Trying to squash the idea of this outselling movies like Big Fan becomes more tragic when you realize Jenni Miller's article states that sadly enough, it isn't the first, as a less popular movie, Twilight of Virginity, was released a few months ago.

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

There is just some characters that can never be re-casted. One of those is B.A. Baracus of the 80's television series The A-Team, as performed by the one and only Mr. T. I'm not saying the bizarre popular culture icon deserves to be in the same category as Charlie Chaplin and his timeless little tramp bit or Robert De Niro's turn as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, but his eccentricities did make him a national treasure during that beloved decade. So, who is to step into the role in the upcoming big screen adaptation of the series? The Vancouver Sun reports that former UFC fighter Quintin "Rampage" Jackson will be taking the part, despite not having much of an acting career to speak of, excluding a few bit parts and cameos to promote his badassedness in the ring. Not only is the fact that the UFC ring probably isn't the best bet for a casting pool, but the little bit I know of Jackson is that he was arrested in a truck clad with a huge douchebaggish picture of his painted face on the side after driving on sidewalks, nearly killing several people, causing a victim to have a stillbirth and blamed it all on a binge of energy drinks after becoming depressed due to a loss against fellow fighter Forrest Griffin. It's not that I've ever expected the creators of this film to even attempt to make it good, probably setting the goal of "Starsky and Hutch quality". Still, after casting Bradley Cooper and Liam Neeson, there was a brief moment where it looked promising, but I always knew the nail in the coffin would be the B.A. casting.

Cinematical alerted me to a very sad story today. A few days ago two film critics, partners in life, love and career, were killed in Manila. Alexis Tioseco and Nika Bohinc focused on reviewing little known Southeast Asian films to English audiences that would not normally have heard of them. I never had read a piece by either of the writers, or heard much of any of the flicks they championed in their careers, but after reading the article linked from the jump up there, that Tioseco wrote for Rogue magazine, I had to repost it. It is a heartbreaking letter from Tioseco to convince his Nika to move from her native Slovenia with him in Manila, encompassing the publicized note with love for cinema, love for the Philippines and most importantly love for Bohinc. The article ends, and the next one I read regarding the couple, via The Hollywood Reporter, makes it clear that Nika took him up on the offer, as the two were shot dead for the theft of a laptop computer in Tioseco's adored home of Manila. Tragic.

An article on BleedingCool claims that Pixar Animation is already looking at the script treatment that Edgar Wright has given the Marvel property Ant Man with possible intentions for a film. The story claims to be from Entertainment Weekly although I could not find the source writing to back it up. However, we have been expecting Pixar to make a move, as it is obviously the only way a Disney/Marvel film can happen without the negative stigma that came after the announcement of Disney's acquisition of the comic giant last week. I am sure we will have more of this later on whenever it is debunked or confirmed.

The Final Destination continued to top the box office this past week. Does this make anyone else lose hope in humanity? I suppose 9 will at least dominate next week.

Collider has an article up stating that Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, made famous by Children of Men and Iron Man among other things, have been brought on board for the live action Leonardo DiCaprio-produced Akira remake. I can see reason to get excited about this eventually.

I'm a huge corn maze fan, but I think I just lost hope in the wonderful autumn event after Geekologie posted pictures of this Team Jacob/Team Edward mazes in Utah. Terrible.