Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

It seems like the news front of Guillermo del Toro and Peter Jackson's upcoming The Hobbit film adaptation keeps getting slower and slower, and slightly worrisome with the news of MGM's possible bankruptcy in the horizon. Still, Empire has given us a tiny morsel to quench our thirst for the time being with an interview popping up with Gandalf himself, one of the great actors of our time, Sir Ian McKellen. Among the things McKellen indulges us is his expected timeline of what is to come, that filming is expected to go 383 days, that he has serious doubts about the rumors of Viggo Mortensen and Orlando Bloom making cameos and almost a confirmation that Andy Serkis will be back to play Gollum. He also talks about the similarities between del Toro and Jackson, and defines both of their styles as "artistic autism". The article continues along to inquire about the long rumored X-Men Origins: Magneto, in which McKellen says he has yet to read a script.

In other news, the drama between Michael Bay and Megan Fox continues ever on, as PopCrunch covers a story that has been circulating around more on the celebrity gossip circuit than the blogs of cinephiles like myself, as many reports are saying that Bay wants to kill off Fox's character in the third Transformers in the first few minutes, via a gory death scene to get back at the actress for comparing him to Hitler. Why is this bogus? Fox will be paid millions, so regardless how much killing her character off in a floundering movie franchise, in what would surely be the best scene of the flick, would hurt emotionally, Fox would probably reap more benefits than the director, known largely to everyone as a douchebag, could.

A bizarre article on Cinematical that jumps in on the argument of children's films of the past few years carrying too left-wing of a message was posted today. One of the films covered is WALL-E (I suppose for the environmentalist mentality?). The article's author, Jette Kernion, sums up pretty much all of my thoughts, albeit a little cleaner, of how ridiculous it is to insinuate that WALL-E is pumping out the wrong message. Is it just me, or is Republicans getting crazier than ever lately? Then again, free health care, and family friendly cartoon-endorsed anti-littering and anti-laziness is how the Third Reich began also.

Every three days, I make it a point to read Cracked's top Internet picks, I would suggest everyone else that would find themselves bored enough to read my ramblings on cinematic happenings to do the same. Anyhow, pertaining to my blog, a great countdown from AskMen on the top 10 legendary movie guns is up, including Cherry Darling's prosthetic in Planet Terror, Ash's Boomstick from Army of Darkness and the .44 magnums toted by Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry.

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

The ongoing modern battle of wits between Hollywood's biggest douchebag, Michael Bay, and the attractive psychopath, Megan Fox, will apparently continue as, via Bay's personal blog, there will be a Transformers 3, in which Bay, Fox and Shia LaBeouf has been confirmed. Bay's blog also confirms that the screenplay is finished, mentions that he is currently meeting with ILM and Hasbro and also leaves a predictably douchey Bay message towards Fox. Of course, the bickering between the two has been way more entertaining than either of the first two Transformers, so here's hoping for a full on meltdown for the filming of the third.


Yesterday, I linked to a picture of Seth Rogen's stuntman on the set of The Green Hornet. Today, Splash News has a picture of Rogen in costume for the role, as well as the first look of Jay Chou as Kato.

I am quite dreading to see what the American version of Let the Right One In (the title will be changed to Let Me In for the remake) will be like. I have been preaching the graces of Tomas Alfredson's near-perfect flick to everyone since I watched it earlier this year, and I know that despite having Matt Reeves on as director (the guy that helmed Cloverfield), I just imagine of all the things that would be changed. For one, the names of Oskar and Eli has been changed to Owen and Abby. That is enough to make me want to boycott this thing. Still, Cinematical announced that some casting news for the feature, including Richard Jenkins as Hakan and Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloe Moretz taking the roles of the children. I don't know anything about the two younger actors, so I can't bitch too much about it yet. Still, I'll keep my eyes peeled. On a side note, after a quick visit to Wikipedia, I found out that Moretz will also be a co-star in the much anticipated 2010 big screen comic adaptation Kick-Ass.

BadTaste, an Italian movie site has an interview with Quentin Tarantino. I tried to watch it, but save me, with no subtitles I just couldn't do it. Still, reports on ComingSoon, Cinematical and MovieWeb indicate that Tarantino teases us with a brief mention of the possibility of a third Kill Bill film. A much more hopeful story than the bastardization of Let the Right One In.

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009: The 50th Post

Wow, fifty posts. I would be proud if anybody read this, but now it stands as one of the many monuments of my lowly stature in society, an insomnia-ridden cinephile blogger. I still quite enjoy the blog, so let's just dive right in. Mike Judge's latest film Extract premieres on Friday, and in honor of the occasion, Judge has released a new clip from the upcoming flick to the Interwebs, with an introduction courtesy of the characters that made Judge a household name for slacker, perverted children that enjoyed Metallica and AC/DC, Beavis and Butt-head. The clip makes the movie actually look funny, but watch it mainly to have an excuse to pull out your Beavis and Butt-head DVDs.

'Extract' Film Forum with Beavis and Butthead @ Yahoo! Video

So, who's ready for today's dose of 3-D overkill? First, AICN reports that Iron Man 2 could possibly be 3-D next summer. Harry Knowles tells us that there is currently a one minute snippet of film that Marvel and Fox are looking over to decide if they want to turn the entire thing into 3-D. (Note: if you choose to click the link, Knowles uses the frightening analogy of Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger's 9 1/2 Weeks sex scene to describe this entire ordeal). The article also ends with the factoid that the original Iron Man film could possibly be up for a 3-D transfer to be re-released before the sequel. Don't get me wrong, Iron Man in flight, Scarlett Johansson and the cockatoo that was casted to keep Rourke company all have wonderful possibilities when put into the 3-D medium, but if we keep this up, (I'm talking to you Jon Favreau) there will eventually be weird films in the third dimension, like a new modernization of The Three Musketeers by somebody a few steps below Uwe Boll... like say Paul W.S. Anderson.

Damnit... via The Hollywood Reporter, that is exactly what will happen. I'm not saying it can't succeed, as The Three Musketeers is a tried and true formula, and if the adaptation is mindless, at least it could be swashbuckling fun. But does everything have to be in 3-D for Christ's sake? I just hope that Avatar is ground-breaking, and we don't look back years from now and take the academic stance that My Bloody Valentine was the big game changer in this new age of 3-D.

DreadCentral has some stills up from a new horror flick called Human Centipede: First Sequence, which looks terrible. However, the pics are to a level of disturbing that requires checking out.

Courtesy of TheSuperficial, Megan Fox is the cover girl for the latest edition of Wonderland magazine, and among other topics discussed, compared her two-time collaborator, Transformers director Michael Bay to Adolph Hitler. Not trying to shine a forgiving light on Hitler or anything, but I'm pretty sure the Fuhrer could have made a better film... just saying. Oh, and he wouldn't even consider making a Bad Boys 3, even he would have known that is just too much.

Cinematical linked to the best guessing game on the web, based on entertainment characters in movies, television, comics and videogames (at least that I've attempted so far). The site, Akinator, has guessed almost everything I've thought of correctly, except things I've pulled out of my hat so far into my childhood subconscious that I couldn't remember enough about it to properly answer the questions.

Finally, a pretty awesome featurette from The Fantastic Mr. Fox, narrated by Jason Schwartzman. Unfortunately it won't embed, but here is the link, via Apple. Enjoy.

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.

Friday, July 24th, 2009

Another day that I should be sleeping due to my work schedule, yet like yesterday, a plethora of geeky wonderdom has come out of the San Diego Comic Con for all of us cinephiles to gawk at, complain about and rejoice over. First, the picture there is the first poster for 2010's Jimmy Hayward directed Jonah Hex.

Maybe the biggest story to come out of the convention today comes via the panel promoting The Book of Eli, the Hughes Brothers' upcoming film set in a post apocalyptic dystopian society, starring Denzel Washington as the protagonist and Gary Oldman taking on the villainous role. Mila Kunis, Michael Gambon and a few others star in a film that we are yet to find much out about the plot. However, via I Watch Stuff, we get to see the initial trailer, and during the interview itself, Oldman dropped a bomb that took a little of the focus away from The Book of Eli for a moment. Cinematical reports that Oldman, who plays Commissioner James Gordon in Christopher Nolan's reboot of the Batman franchise, claims that a sequel to The Dark Knight will begin filming next year with a potential theatrical release as early as 2011. This announcement brings up a lot more questions than it answers. Of course, the most worrisome of those questions, that the Cinematical staff promptly points out, is with Nolan busying himself finishing his anticipated film Inception, as well as touring for press junkets and whatnot up until at least the middle of 2010, then how quick could a blockbuster of Dark Knight stature be shot and ready to be in theaters by 2011? Does this mean Nolan is out?

Cinematical's affiliate SciFiSquad also has a very interesting review of the Peter Jackson-produced science fiction film District 9, that seems to be continually overlooked. I was hoping for more information of the plot, as well as maybe some questions directed towards Jackson about his film The Lovely Bones, or of course, a little something about The Hobbit; however, after already being a little stoked for Niell Blomkamp's tale of alien life in Johannesburg, South Africa, the ecstatic review from Kevin Kelly is one of the first detailed pieces I've read on this movie and increases my level of excitement quite a bit.

Stepping away from the Comic Con bubble for a moment, Variety has announced that there will be a Saw VII, with David Hackl returning to direct. Does this inevitable story make the entire advertising campaign for Saw VI being the "final chapter" even more annoying to anyone else?

It's also Friday, so for those of us unfortunate enough to be outside of San Diego, we can go see a few flicks this weekend. Orphan is probably the highest profile release this week. The film seems like one that is either hit or miss, no in between feelings. It holds a 50% on Rotten Tomatoes, was slammed by Variety and The New York Times, and given a three and a half star rating from Roger Ebert. It advertises a twist that could make or break the film, and has the star power of the incredibly talented Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard. The other two movies that will be wide release this week might not be so good. First, G-Force, despite having Zach Galifianakis and the voices of Tracy Morgan, Penelope Cruz, Sam Rockwell and Nicolas Cage, I just don't think anything could save this Disney film. Also, The Ugly Truth, a romantic comedy starring Katherine Heigl. Despite her likability, I can't see it being worth seeing. Some overlooked films for the week that will almost certainly go under the radar is the raunchy indy bromance comedy Humpday, Kevin Spacey as a quirky psychiatrist in Shrink, with appearances by Gore Vidal, Robin Williams and many others, and finally The Answer Man, which I want to find more out about, stars Jeff Daniels, nabbing supporting roles from two up and coming actresses Kat Dennings and Olivia Thirlby.

And finally, from TrailerAddict, Where the Wild Things Are author Maurice Sendak speaks about Spike Jonze and his upcoming, highly anticipated adaptation. Enjoy.

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

I was looking about the John Waters Fan Page on MySpace a minute ago after they added new pictures, and ran across this gem, and decided that there is no possible way I could actually get on here and talk about movies without sharing it with whomever happens upon this page.

Now, on to some of the tidbits I've uncovered today. First off, the most mind boggling thing, MovieWeb posted that Chris Casamassa, better known to the public as Scorpion from Mortal Kombat, has stated that he will return to the role of the hell-spawned ninja revenant in a third film for the franchise. I have to admit, that as horrible of a film as the first one was, I hold it as a guilty pleasure. But, even after admitting that, I've yet to see the 1997 sequel, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, and will be happy one day when I die without doing so. I seriously wonder if anybody will read this and be excited.

TheSuperficial reports that Michael Bay had Megan Fox wash his car to gain her breakthrough role in Transformers, and actually filmed it. This isn't quite news yet, but I've been calling Transformers the most exploitative film since Boss Nigger (a blaxploitation film, I've dubbed Transformers a cashploitation film for the constant effects with no substance), and if it comes to fruition that Bay actually played out the whole casting couch porn scenario, how much easier would it be for me to assert my classification up there.

Cinematical has an interesting article, taken from the New York Times, reporting that the pornographic film industry is losing plot and dialogue, and focusing on adding more sex scenes. So, porn used to have a plot?

Finally, District 9 released the full international trailer today. Up until now, the spots for the Peter Jackson produced film haven't gave us much insight to the story or the feel of the film. This trailer doesn't really make us understand anything more clearly, but does make it a slightly higher priority on the must-see list. Enjoy.



P.S.... Work sucks, and because some jack ass injured himself, I have to fill in for the late shift, and I may be going on a little spontaneous trip tomorrow night, so the next few days I may not be able to post. If not, I'll try to find something special to post for the weekend.

Monday, July 6th, 2009

I suppose before I get into any kind of movie news, rants or raves, I should say welcome to my blog, Cinemarant, where I will divulge to you, dear readers, what I think of what's going on in the world of cinema, as well as news in brief as much as I can. So without further ado, let's jump right in.

How can you speak of anything in the entertainment industry without mentioning the death of the King of Pop Michael Jackson. Ever since the popular culture icon passed away last week CNN has been covering the legal battles and the upcoming funeral services more so than the civil unrest in Iran, President Barack Obama's new energy or healthcare plans, or the deaths of the seemingly endless line of celebrities that have passed along side the tabloid sensation in the days surrounding the fall of pop. So, you may be asking yourself, why would I be blogging about a musical genius/eccentric headline hopper in a movie blog? Well, there is no time to be wasted to cash in on the money train of Jackson's death, as Randy Phillips, the president and CEO of AEG Live, the company behind Jackson's British tour that was to begin next month has already told the Associated Press that he's looking to turn the 100+ hours of rehearsal footage into live albums, a pay-per-view special, and you guessed it... a documentary film. Don't get me wrong, I've been riding a non-stop news loop of the Jackson death circus since it began, and I would welcome a well-done documentary on Jackson's highs in music and lows in his eccentricities and odd behaviors, but is this just a little too soon to be talking a documentary when we don't even know the fate of his children, his estate or even the exact circumstances surrounding his death? And what kind of voice is the documentary to have? If it is to look at anything in a comical light, it is way too soon for the public to digest, and if it is to be serious, it will either be a repackaging of Martin Bashir's Living with Michael Jackson, or as bizarre and unmarketable as Wacko Jacko's personal life became in his later career. Discuss in the comments, if I get any readers if the entire Jackson thing has reached overkill yet, and your pissed off that nobody is buying the rights for an OxiClean docudrama, or if the entire thing is to be expected, he's the fucking king of pop, right!?

Also, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen took the top spot at the box office again this week, although reports have shifted between Michael Bay's cashploitation flick and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, so it is a virtual tie. Public Enemies came in third, and surprisingly The Hangover continues to keep in the top five, raking in another $11 million this weekend.

Sci-Fi Squad has a story on the development of the upcoming live-action Star Wars television series, but just cites "sources" without ever naming them. So, take the news with a grain of salt.

And finally, the red band trailer for Jennifer's Body went online today. Most of the coverage has been centered on the fact that you get to see a lot of Megan Fox in this, but the trailer looks awesome. Actually, I can't remember the last time I saw a trailer to a horror film, and became that stoked about it. Enjoy.


P.S. Speaking of Michael Jackson up there, I'm trying to spread the word of the Thrill the World event in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The event coordinator Hannah Bailey contacted me to say that Guinness World Records have been contacted to show up there for the largest simultaneous dance to Jackson's hit "Thriller". You can click here for more information on the Oak Ridge event, or just go to ThrilltheWorld.com for information on an event closer to your area. Also, it is the same night as The Grand AdventureCon in Pigeon Forge, a short drive from Oak Ridge, which among other guests will be featuring Jason Mewes from Kevin Smith's View Askewniverse. I'll promote the hell out of these two events in the upcoming months, so an apology in advance.