Monday, January 11th, 2010

The past year, this blog has been littered with casting rumors for Spider-Man 4. I woke up this morning to an AICN post where John Malkovich had supposedly confirmed that he would be playing the role of the villainous Vulture in the upcoming installment of Sam Raimi's Marvel franchise, a story I was sure would head the blog. That is until Sony's official Twitter feed announced that when the web slinger returns to the silver screen in 2012, he would be going back to high school, signaling a reboot. Then, later, Harry Knowles posted the official Sony press release announcing that Spider-Man 4 is officially dead and that Raimi, Tobey Maguire and all the old players are out. I can see canning the fourth installment of the series, but making a reboot of a fairly new, pretty well received series? I know that Spider-Man 3 has its enemies, but are we to say that this was so cataclysmically bad, like Batman and Robin bad, that it deserves to reboot the entire franchise, throwing the brilliant Raimi and the fitting Maguire to the wayside? Ridiculous.

Some better comic book news coming from the DC side of things as The Hollywood Reporter announced that Blake Lively has been cast as Carol Ferris/Star Sapphire in The Green Lantern film. I've not heard, but I doubt that Lively will take on the transformation into the Star Sapphire role that Ferris eventually plays in the comics. Still, I've not really watched Lively in anything other than her Saturday Night Live appearance, so this could be as terrible of an announcement as the above Spider-Man disaster.

The Writers Guild of America announced the nominees for their two major awards. There was really no surprise, especially with Inglourious Basterds and Up being disqualified for the writers not being part of the WGA, that (500) Days of Summer, A Serious Man and the much lauded The Hurt Locker would gain a nod for original screenplays, but two shocking picks popped up. First, James Cameron's screenplay for Avatar, which has its fair share of detractors. Even more shocking however, is the raunchy Todd Phillips comedy, The Hangover, to the delight of myself, but the chagrin of Erik Childress of Cinematical, whom broke the story for me. The category of adapted screenplay wasn't nearly as exciting, except keeping the fanboys happy with a nod for Star Trek, with Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci's script competing against Up in the Air, Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire, Julie and Julia and Crazy Heart.

For a small note, I am going to try my damndest to expand my convention-going this year to visit Dragon*Con in Atlanta if my school schedule allows, but AdventureCon in Tennessee is an almost confirmed event, so I am happy to say that the tiny convention announced today that Billy Dee Williams, Lando fucking Calrissian, the black Harvey Dent and some memorable spots on Robot Chicken, will be a guest for the event.

On a final note, I saw this gallery of Star Wars burlesque featured in L.A. Weekly all over the Interwebs from a place called the Bordello Bar. Enjoy, some decently bizarre pictures.

Tuesday, December 29th, 2009

Usually I attempt to stray from pictures and videos of Star Trek fandom, as I feel pretty confident that most of our hardcore Trekkies were born out of the television incarnations of Gene Roddenberry's brainchild, making them feel quite unrelated to this cinema blog. However, this image of a few Trek fans donning nothing but body paint for some sort of bicycle ride that popped up on two of my daily reads, Geekologie and NerdBastards, beckoned my eye whilst posting.

On to something that fortunately, or unfortunately, doesn't contain graphic nudity, Hollyscoop reports that Sam Worthington could be up for another major blockbuster role. The actor was relatively unknown until he picked up a starring role in this summer's Terminator Salvation, followed by the hugely successful Avatar, and will star as Perseus in next summer's remake of Clash of the Titans. Now, apparently he is up for the titular role in a Flash Gordon reboot. I sincerely think that Worthington did a good job in Avatar, but I'm still unsure of pumping this guy to be a big box office draw. I mean, we don't want to see Jake Sully or Marcus Wright playing Flash Gordon. Then again, I personally don't think we will ever have anything comparable to the 1980 campy classic Flash Gordon, with Max von Sydow as Ming the Merciless and the bitching Queen theme song.

Finally, the entire short film within the feature film Nation's Pride, the flick that plays during Inglourious Basterds, has been released to the Interwebs. The short is directed by Eli Roth, and despite not being a fan of his Hostel series, his performance as Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz, as well as this little piece is quite admirable. The clip stars Daniel Bruhl as Fredrick Zoller, the star of this psuedo Nazi propaganda film. The Cinematical article I originally seen this on points out that the DVD version of this informs us that there are cameos from Basterds director Quentin Tarantino, as well as Bo Svenson, the star of Enzo G. Castellari's The Inglorious Bastards, the "macaroni combat" flick in which Tarantino's film got its name.

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

It seems that every time I notice The Hobbit in the news, it is always something disappointing. This time, in a German interview transcribed by TheOneRing with Peter Jackson, to promote his upcoming, critically appraised film The Lovely Bones, announced that filming would be pushed back to July-ish 2010. The producer of J.R.R. Tolkien's predecessor to the epic The Lord of the Rings did not elaborate on if it would affect the projected release dates of December 2011 and 2012, but we have to assume it will. This just adds to the turmoil that is MGM's financial troubles swirling just over the head of the films' pre-production. For something to perk you up after reading that, here is a link that I've been stuck on since reading the article on TheOneRing... New Zealand's Red Carpet Tours, taking us to the filming locations around the beautiful country. The 12 night tour is actually only $180 U.S. dollars, while the one night tour from Auckland to Hobbiton is $140. After blogging, I will probably spend the rest of the night, wishingly searching Orbitz for cheap flights.

I was going to make a joke about the economy to segue into this Variety article on how the box office this year will probably break the record for raking in some $10 billion, topping last year by 8%, but I find most of the economy talk rather insipid. Anyhow, those estimates come before the releases of Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel, which despite the horrendousness that will surely be contained within the hour and a half run time, will bring in the bucks from the kiddies out there, as well as potential blockbusters Sherlock Holmes and James Cameron's Avatar, not to mention a box office sleeper, the Oscar hopeful Invictus.

Invictus' Oscar dreams is another decent segue as the National Board of Review named their film of the year today, via Cinematical. The winner of the honor is Jason Reitman's latest, Up in the Air, starring George Clooney, whom also took home the NBR honor of Best Actor, tied with Morgan Freeman's Invictus performance. Taking home honors in the NBR's Ten Best Films were also good movie nerd fare such as (500) Days of Summer, Inglourious Basterds, A Serious Man, Up, Star Trek and Where the Wild Things Are.

Pajiba reported today that a rumored remake of Alfred Hitchcock's classic The Birds is back up and running with a new director attached, Dennis Iliades, the man behind the remake of Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left. I think somewhere in there I saw Michael Bay's name as producer, which almost assures that this already bad idea of trying to recreate the genius of Hitchcock by "modernizing" it, will be a total disaster.

Check out the new site MovieClips.com. The site boasts some 12,000 movie clips, with some good categorizations (I appreciate that at least) and even a bit of trivia. Anyhow, I'm not really sure why I chose the "Snap Out of It!" scene of Moonstruck as a demonstration, but I hope you enjoy nonetheless.

Monday, November 30th, 2009

The accompanying image for today's blog comes from Racked New York and is pictures of Bergdorf Goodman Men's Store's holiday window in New York City. A nice tie-in to Wes Anderson's The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Kind of sad to realize that a claymation fox is more exquisitely dressed than I ever will be.

The Satellite Awards nominees were announced today, with Rob Marshall's upcoming musical Nine picking up the most nominations. You can check out the entire nominee list at the International Press' official statement here.

The Satellite Awards are, for all purposes, just a preliminary match for the Golden Globe Awards, itself just a stepping stone to the Academy Awards. The nominee list led me to the Oscar prediction site, In Contention. The big category to look for is Best Picture, as it will contain ten nominees this year. The top nine contenders the site lists includes Nine, the Coens' latest A Serious Man, Pixar's Up and James Cameron's highly anticipated Avatar. Then, if that wasn't good enough for most film nerds, the dark horses and rest of the field mentioned for contention include J.J. Abrams' chapter in the Star Trek franchise, Neill Blomkamp's District 9 and Quentin Tarantino's brilliant Inglourious Basterds. I do have to admit that I'm a bit upset that Watchmen didn't even make the cut for consideration, but all the same, I can't be all that upset about the picks the site has thus far. Also worth a mention is the incredibly low key success Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire, which shockingly is also boasting Best Supporting Actress nod at the Satellite Awards, as well as being top contender for the Oscar in comedienne Mo'Nique. We also have Clint Eastwood's sports biopic that will probably be the most overrated flick this award season, Invictus.

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

This picture has been floating around all over the nerdy side of the Interwebs this week to coincide with the release of J.J. Abrams' Star Trek on DVD. The picture is Abrams updated version of the salt vampire that was made for a deleted scene that also contained a new version of Gorn, which you can see on io9.

Us Magazine, a periodical that I usually would refuse to read articles from, broke a story today that Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo will reprise their roles as Clark and Ellen Griswold for a new HomeAway commercial for this year's Super Bowl, paying homage to the 1983 comedy classic National Lampoon's Vacation that will also feature the Wagon Queen Family Truckster.

It is a slow news day, and I am currently watching The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas on CMT, and I made a decision that the performance of "The Aggie Song" is the most unintentionally homoerotic piece of cinema in the history of the medium. Agreed?... Whatever the case, enjoy the clip.

Monday, November 16th, 2009 (100th Post!)

My 100th post here on the Blogger account, and a decently busy day for interesting movie tidbits, so off we go. First off, The Mirror was one of the many blogs posting the accompanying screen capture of R2-D2's cameo in J.J. Abrams' new Star Trek film coming courtesy of the special effects crew from Industrial Light and Magic as a calling card that the article also claims popped up in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The article goes on for a few videos that will make your day in the cameo department, including Orson Welles in The Muppet Movie, Tom Cruise's bizarre appearance in Tropic Thunder and a compilation of Alfred Hitchcock cameos.

Variety has reported today that the rumors of MGM's financial troubles are all too true, as the iconic film company has put its assets up for sale today, which among many other important things includes half the ownership to the upcoming The Hobbit films. This is possibly panic-worthy news for any cinema fan as the entire library of films tallies in above 4,000. The article also names Time Warner, News Corp. and Lionsgate as interested buyers. In short, I'm sure this will pop up in plenty of future blogs.

2012 easily brought in the top spot at the box office this weekend with a little over $65 million. However, the biggest story may have been the success and 213% increase of the indie drama Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire that landed in the third spot this weekend, tailing the heels of Oren Peli's amazing showing of the ultra low budget horror flick Paranormal Activity as two of the more financially successful indie films to come out of Hollywood in some time. In further box office news, Deadline Hollywood has reported that The Twilight Saga: New Moon has already broke the record for advanced ticket sales, beating out The Dark Knight, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, the previous owner of the record.

Mail Online has an interesting story up about some controversy stirring up in Britain, due to the promotional poster to the comedy Couples Retreat, as the UK poster erases Faizon Love and Kali Hawk, the black couple, from the poster. Yeah, probably not the best idea.

Cinematical has a story posted on a new casting call for Spider-Man 4, referred to only as "Toddler Boy", in which among all the speculations, Cinematical even includes Cletus Kasady, better known in the comic world as Carnage. An odd estimation, but intriguing all the same as the rumored and speculated villain list continues to grow.

Edward Woodward passed away yesterday. I didn't know the British actor from a lot, other than his appearance in Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz, so therefore I will direct you to Wright's personal site and his little tribute to the actor to find out more.

Finally, in honor of my 100th post, here is Liquid Generation's 100 Best Movie Quotes in 200 Seconds. I know that the second is Rob Schneider from The Waterboy, but trust me, 95 to 97 of the ones that follow are pretty fucking fantastic.