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.

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.