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.

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

So, the big things in the news today, finally overshadowing the reboot of Marvel's Spider-Man series or Avatar's financial success was the National Board of Review awards gala last night. First off, Ivan Reitman was in attendance in support of his son, Jason Reitman, and the honoring of his latest directorial effort Up in the Air receiving the distinction of the year's best film. While there, MTV caught up with Ivan to question him on the status of Ghostusters 3, and while the director wouldn't confirm nor deny Signourney Weaver's slip-up spoilers from a few weeks back, he did announce that he would be stepping behind the director's chair one more time in the series and that Harold Ramis' projected 2011 release could be happening as the script is finished and he has hopes of filming beginning within the year.

Secondly from the event, a special achievement award went to Wes Anderson for his stop motion film, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, in which he accepted via a nice stop motion animated skit. Forgive me for not being able to find an embeddable version of the clip, but here is the link to /Film's coverage.

Cinematical's Monika Bartyzel has an excellent article up on her elated feelings on the Los Angeles Film Critics Society's choice for the greatest film of the decade... David Lynch's typically bizarre homage to Hollywood life, Mulholland Drive. Well worth the read.

The New York Times announced today that the Nintendo Wii will join the ranks of the fellow new generation video game consoles and will begin streaming Netflix over the Internet. The only downside is Wii's inability to play high definition, although the linked article speculates on the release of a Wii HD, already an inevitability.

Sunday, December 13th, 2009 (Short Film Sunday: Steamboat Willie)

A few days ago, The Walt Disney Company returned to their traditional animation roots with The Princess and the Frog, the new film by Ron Clements and John Musker (the directorial duo is best known for two Disney classics, The Little Mermaid and Aladdin). In honor of the release, I figure I will take the high road and not blog on the normal Disney criticism of racist undertones, and celebrate 2-D animation. I mean, Pixar has yet to make a bad movie, but we all long for some more traditional animation to come our way, so I decided to embed the Ub Iwerks directed, Walt Disney written and produced short Steamboat Willie. It is the film that brought the iconic Mickey Mouse character to prominence, and was the third to feature Disney's mischievous rodent lead, the first being the less popular Plane Crazy, released earlier in the same year, 1928.

As always with Disney animation, an aura of controversy seems to follow this film, although the renown and changing times seems to downplay the one time censored parts. During the big musical number, many of the scenes are considered to display cruelty to animals, including a bizarre scene where Mickey plays sow nipples as an instrument. What happened to Disney, Iwerks and their animation properties after the success of this film needs not be explained, as the Disney corporate name is one of the biggest in the world, let alone the entertainment industry itself. However, it is to be noted that the film is part of the Library of Congress' National Film Registry, as well as being one of the top 50 cartoons, as voted by members of the animation medium.

As for owning the film, it has been released on DVD uncut twice in the Walt Disney Treasures collection. The first is a compendium of old Mickey Mouse cartoons in Mickey Mouse in Black and White, as well as being a special feature on The Adventures of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, due to it being one of Iwerks' seminal works. Even easier though, unlike other popular Disney works, this film is available all over the Interwebs without Disney issuing out copyright lawsuits all over the place due to the fact that as it has fallen into the public domain. So without further adieu, here is a legal showing of Steamboat Willie.

Usually, I do not blog about anything else on my Short Film Sunday posts, but I have been seeing a lot of blogs featuring a recent interview with Sigourney Weaver. I would post a source, but basically every movie site online has posted it, despite the fact that I can no longer find the video of the session. Anyhow, Weaver was being interviewed for her role in Avatar, when the topic changes to her thoughts on the possibility of Ghostbusters 3, where she drops some huge spoilers. She mentions that her character, Dana Barrett's, son will become ghost buster for this installment, and that Bill Murray will be playing a larger role than she would, but this time as a ghost, thus meaning that Dr. Peter Venkman dies in the movie, or in the space between Ghostbusters II and the upcoming sequel, if it ever comes to fruition.

Also, in about an hour from the time this is posted, Adult Swim is going to air a new Space Ghost interview with Zoe Saldana on her role in Avatar. The advertising blitz has began, and the return of Space Ghost to my late night lineup is a damn good start to it.

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

I have to admit, I enjoy the first Saw movie. This whole new subgenre of "gore porn" was in its infancy, and James Wan and Leigh Whannell actually seemed to care as much about plot, as they did the imaginative ways to implement a modern day Herschell Gordon Lewis gorefest. Now, we are almost at the release date of the sixth installment, with a seventh announced, due out next year, and to say that the franchise has gone stale, catering more to teenage boys with mental complexes, with complete abandonment of story, or horror for that matter, is an understatement. I mean, the movies even spawned a show in VH-1's Celebreality line-up to find a star for Saw VI for Christ's sake. Let's just say, as much as we all may tire of Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees, we haven't seen their likenesses alongside Flavor Flav, that douchebag that killed Jasmine Fiore and New York in the same television line-up. Terrible. With that said, I also generally like 3-D. As a gimmick, take for instance this very NSFW trailer to Tom DeSimone's raunchy exploitation 3-D Prison Girls, it works great. For big budget events, it at least gets us excited, case in point James Cameron's upcoming Avatar. It also isn't that bad of an idea for a traditional showing, a la Disney's annual release of the 3-D treatment of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas. However, this overkill of everything 3-D is killing me. With both of these generally good things, turned this cinephile's biggest maddening movie peeves, it is no surprise that ShockTillYouDrop has announced that Saw VII will indeed be shot in 3-D format. Is anybody honestly going to be excited for this?

Further destroying any hopes for me to write anything but some bitches and moans today, IWatchStuff posted an interview with Bill Murray, in which he states that Harold Ramis may have overstated Murray's possible return to the character of Peter Venkman in the possible Ghostbusters 3. It's not that Murray is completely against doing another film, but thinks the script should at least be better than Ghostbusters II. Really though, wouldn't we all be mad if Murray would return to something cheap. This is actually good news, masquerading as disappointment.

MovieWeb has the official list of the submissions for the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 82nd Annual Academy Awards. I really know nothing about any of the possible nominees. In fact, I've only heard of a few like Joon-ho Bong's Mother, Havana Marking's Afghan Star and Miguel Littin's Dawson, Isla 10. Of course, this award, more than any other at the Oscars, is the most political and usually many good films get left out. For instance, Tomas Alfredson's brilliant Let the Right One In got snubbed at last year's Oscars and Guillermo del Toro's beautiful Pan's Labyrinth didn't get the nod in 2007. One movie I have heard a lot about this year not present in the list is the South Korean horror flick Thirst. Anyhow, this is always just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Oscar displeasure, so stay tuned for those rants.