Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

'Tis a rare moment on this blog to be speaking of George Lucas and the central focus not be on the Star Wars franchise. But today is a rare day in such tradition, as The Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision Blog has announced that the man behind the greatest science fiction franchise in the history of cinema is going to be taking a seat as producer on a new CGI children's film about fairies. The movie is set to be directed by Kevin Munroe, the guy whom I only know from the CGI TMNT and written by David Berenbaum of Elf fame. So, without any information on this thing whatsoever other than the aforementioned limited specs, what does everybody think of this?

I haven't read much on Edward Norton's dispute with Marvel Studios on the final edit of The Incredible Hulk, but, according to SciFiSquad, it does apparently exist. That's why it is even more a piece of news than it would be otherwise that Kevin Feige confirmed today that the character of Dr. Bruce Banner and his alter ego will officially be a member of the titular superhero team in 2012's The Avengers, and is hoped to be played by Norton. It also mentions that after The Avengers, a sequel to the Hulk film could be in the works.

Of all the bloggers on Cinematical, it is usually Monika Bartyzel that catches my attention the most. So, without even trying to summarize her entertaining article today, here is the link to a story that somehow involves the former Malaysian prime minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, Avatar, Zoolander and the assumption that 9/11 was staged by America via the wit of James Cameron.

Remember the trailer for Repo Chick the other night and how terrible it was? Well, get ready to polish Alex Cox's Oscar, because in comparison to the Insane Clown Posse's latest film (this is actually a sequel, please do not let your brain explode), Big Money Rustlas, it appears to be excellent. So, if you feel like ending your day on a depressing note, watch this trailer. Who wishes that the ICP was Haitian based?

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

This isn't a promotional poster for Inglourious Basterds, featuring Brad Pitt's Aldo Raine character. It is Hot Toys newest figure due out sometime within the coming year. I found this on Topless Robot, where the article said a quote that sums up the work Hot Toys does perfectly in my head, "there are actual people who look less real than Hot Toys' action figures".


Yesterday I mentioned the rumors of Tobey Maguire being casted as Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, after the story ran in The Sun. Luckily, Harry Knowles of AICN e-mailed both Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro to dispel the casting. Not that I'm terribly anti-Maguire, or even think that he couldn't actually pull it off, but that still doesn't make him right for the role, so I am happy for the moment.

A day cannot go by without James Cameron's Avatar making some sort of ripples within the cinema blogsphere. Today, an Access Hollywood story has been making the rounds, focusing on an interview with George Lucas in which the iconic director cites Cameron's latest success as inspiration to go further with the transfer of the Star Wars films to the 3-D medium. Is this a good thing? Sure, we all salivate at the original trilogy returning to the big screen and making waves at the box office again, but I still just really detest this entire 3-D explosion.

Vulture announced today that Marc Webb, the director behind the hugely successful indie comedy (500) Days of Summer, has been officially signed on by Sony to direct the reboot of the Spider-Man films. Although still being unhappy about the franchise being taken away from Sam Raimi (by his choice or the studios has not been clarified at the moment), but this is a decent step in the right direction to making this film watchable.

In the most bizarre origin story of a rumor for the day, the folks at /Film has decided that either Iron Man 2 will be taking up reshoots in the future, or that Robert Downey, Jr. will reprise his role of Tony Stark in a cameo for the upcoming Thor film, due to the fact that Downey sported the Stark-ish beard-mustache combo at the Golden Globes. Does this actually mean anything? Probably not at all, but if a crazy rumor has to be started up, might as well be from some movie geeks with at least semi-logical basis.

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

When did the 3-D fad go too far? Well, I think it came with the release of The Final Destination. However, there is still some good things to be done with 3-D. I'm looking forward to James Cameron's Avatar, the annual Halloween release of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas in Disney Digital 3-D is nice, and whenever I visited the Blogger account MarketSaw, and thought that I read a headline that the original Star Wars trilogy would be re-released in 3-D, I was halfway excited. Yet, the complaints and raves that was swirling around in the ol' noggin was soon abolished by wondering who the hell runs the MarketSaw site, and how reliable are they, seeing that the rumor I'm about to repeat has made its way around the blogsphere, as I first saw it on MovieWeb. Anyhow, after scanning down from the title, I realized the article actually states that George Lucas and company is contemplating a third trilogy in the Star Wars canon, all to be filmed in stereoscopic 3-D. The article goes on to say that Lucas would just have a production credit with the new films, and that Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola are being considered as directors of installments in the trilogy. Excited? Well, the article seems to doubt itself at the end, so don't get too bent out of shape. Oh, the accompanying picture to today's blog is just about as great as you can get, so if its apparently kosher to throw out crazy bits of info, I'll go ahead and drop Martin Scorsese's name in the hat to create the trifecta of new directors.

A story that to me is almost as absurd, but awkwardly true is that, via IWatchStuff, The Weather Channel has decided to start showing weather-related films, beginning with The Perfect Storm, and including Deep Blue Sea(?!). I mean, at least it makes sense for VH-1 to air Purple Rain, but Deep Blue Sea!? How does that work? And even if it came be considered a "weather movie", has it even got an audience? Is this for ratings? Ridiculous.

SlashControl was showing The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas for free today. Seeing that I'm writing this quite close to midnight, the link was broken. Still, it may be worth checking the site out, who knows what the free movie of the day will be tomorrow. And if you're really bored, the top five most watched movies includes the late Patrick Swayze in Black Dog, what looks to be a few softcore porn flicks and an old Sherlock Holmes movie.

An interview with David Duchovny over at The Daily Beast hints at a third X-Files film, but it is basically just Duchovny speaking on how much he would enjoy returning to the character of Special Agent Fox Mulder one more time. This is at least something to make my fiance's day a little happier if she reads this before work.

Finally, a good Cinematical article by Jessica Barnes is up on movies you feel that only you enjoy, her pick being About Last Night. I have two. The first being Howard the Duck, as the movie is pretty much considered one of the worst ever made on several review sites. I don't know if it's the nostalgia behind enjoying this as a kid or what. I do know a few people that like this, but according to Internet reviews, we are a rare breed. Also, we have Spider-Man 3. Sure, Venom was in the movie for only fifteen seconds, and was met with a demise that didn't even tip the iceberg of what the David Michelinie-created villain deserved. On the flip side, the transformation of Eddie Brock to Venom in the bell tower was a decent scene, Flint Marko was a pretty decent villain, and as much as everybody hated the cheesiness of it, all of the corny extras oozed Stan Lee's personality and wasn't so farfetched from any of the other stuff we had seen from the film's predecessors. So, anyways, join in on that discussion.