Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

It won't be long before we get Tim Burton's unique look at Lewis Carroll's classic tale of Alice in Wonderland. Of course, Burton follows in the footsteps of Jan Svankmajer, and even Walt Disney's own animation department with trippy versions of the most famous of all the "literary nonsense" genre. Still, the Disney train is looking at Burton to helm a new live action version of one of their classic animated princess stories, Sleeping Beauty. The film, entitled Malificent, will retell the story focusing on the titular evil antagonist. The /Film article this is reported on does not confirm Burton's participation with the project, but with a 2011 release of the Philip K. Dick adaptation The King of the Elves for Disney animation, whatever Pixar is doing, Tron Legacy and this, it looks like Disney may actually be something more than being the conglomerate ass of Hollywood in the coming years.

The daily dip of news from the world of Pandora comes way of ABC News today. It has been reported that while watching Avatar, a 42-year-old Taiwanese man suffering from hypertension got over-excited, took a stroke and passed away. This almost makes me want to stick a toe back on the James Cameron bandwagon for a bit.

Cinematical posted the story today that Paramount Pictures has announced the release date for the Coen Brothers' remake of the western classic True Grit to Christmas. How much does the recent buzz for Jeff Bridges' part in Crazy Heart psych everybody up for his ability to outdo John Wayne tenfold in this flick?

CineMusic has reported after not being able to complete the score due to scheduling differences, the portion of the score already recorded by Danny Elfman will be seeing the light of day when The Wolfman is released, replacing his replacement Paul Haslinger. Conrad Pope has been signed on to round out the unfinished score.

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

Most of what I do on this blog is complain or rejoice orgasmically over casting rumors. Most of the time, it is the big name stars that draw us in to watch a film, case in point being last year's Coen Brothers film Burn After Reading. The film's amazing cast included George Clooney, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt and Tilda Swinton, and they all delivered as to be expected in a dark comedy that was brilliantly written and beautifully directed. As refreshing as such a success is, a more fulfilling viewing experience is when a film with virtually no star power, other than the aforementioned directorial talents of the Coens, gives off the same vibe of excellence. The Coens' new film, A Serious Man, debuted its trailer today, with the only "star" that I noticed was Richard Kind of Spin City fame. The main star is Michael Stuhlbarg, an owner of a rather abysmal IMDb filmography page. The film doesn't appear that it will suffer from the lack of Clooneys or Pitts however, as after watching this trailer, it has shot to the top of a short list of must-sees for late 2009. Also, the best trailer I've seen this year. Even if the film disappoints in every aspect, I was thoroughly entertained for the two minutes afforded to me. Enjoy the trailer.


Yahoo! Movies released another high profile trailer today for the upcoming re-release of the two original Toy Story films in 3-D.

Universal Pictures, via Variety, has announced that the Joe Johnston horror flick The Wolfman has been pushed back to 2010, to be released on Valentine's Day weekend.

Ilene Chaiken, creator of the Showtime series The L Word, has mentioned, via AfterEllen, that there may be a feature film to carry over the series' cliffhanger storyline in the works. Now, I have to admit that The L Word was a guilty pleasure of mine for a bit after a friend forced me to watch it a while back. Maybe it was due to a childhood crush on Jennifer Beals after watching Flashdance. Who knows? But a feature? Am I the only one thinking this is bordering on unnecessary?

It was a great day for trailers. I'll end tonight with a continuation from yesterday's post when I featured a new photo gallery from the official site of Wes Anderson's upcoming stop motion animated The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Today, the trailer debuted, and as great as the stills have been, and as, excuse me for saying, fantastic, that this looks like on paper with the likes of Clooney, Bill Murray, Meryl Streep, etc., etc. behind an Anderson-directed stop motion adaptation of a highly imaginative Roald Dahl children's book, the trailer actually furthers the anticipation for this thing. Has there ever been a year, with this and Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are and Henry Selick's wonderful Coraline earlier this year, so great for children's film? Not since The Dark Crystal has children actually had something that doesn't insult their intelligence. And of course, something that adults will very much enjoy. Enjoy the trailer.