Thursday, September 17th, 2009

Occasionally, I'll feel the need to stop watching or reading about movies online long enough to bitch at the ol' telly during an episode of Glen Beck's Fox News program. I've often wondered exactly how the entire "death panel" thing he harps about all the time would work. The accompanying picture there, via Geekologie, says it all. On a side note, I'm sure most African Americans have to be disappointed after Barack Obama came out as a fan of The Amazing Spider-Man comics, and now wielding a light saber, he's way whiter than even Jimmy Carter.

I just read an article on Yahoo! News Canada, while covering the Toronto International Film Festival, that Nicolas Cage gave an interview and claimed to had dropped out of The Green Hornet's villainous role due to the character not having enough humanity in the script, even having the audacity to point out that Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's treatment had a different take on Chudnofsky. Before I join the ranks of bloggers that are building a tower of bitch around Cage for taking basically any role given to him, be it something genius like Charlie and Donald Kaufman in Spike Jonze's Adaptation., or ill fated attempts at a Ghost Rider movie, a remake of The Wicker Man and so on and on, I do have to admit that I enjoy Cage a little and despite his inability to choose a good role, do not necessarily agree with the majority that casting the former Academy Award winner (for Leaving Las Vegas) to be the cinematic equivalent of drinking poison. Still, how much do you think Cage was kicking himself to find out that Christoph Waltz, fresh off of the huge success of Inglourious Basterds, is rumored to be filling his shoes.

Of course, Cage was at TIFF promoting Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Werner Herzog's remake of Abel Ferrara's 1992 cult classic. I have attempted not to blog much about this flick as I love Herzog and hate to talk about what is sure to be a huge failure (Cage is joined by Eva Mendes and Xzibit, need I say more). Anyhow, I ran across this older article from Vulture, indicating how much Ferrara hates Herzog for the film, and how little Herzog knows about his fellow director or the film that he is remaking. Interesting read, and despite how terrible the film looks, as always, Herzog is more of a story than the film itself.

Before we can even get over the passing of Patrick Swayze as a nation, Henry Gibson has now passed along. Among other things, Gibson starred in The Nutty Professor (Jerry Lewis, not Eddie Murphy), Nashville, The Kentucky Fried Movie, The Blues Brothers, Innerspace, Magnolia and Wedding Crashers. IWatchStuff has a decent little article about him, including a clip from Magnolia.

Variety reports that the University of Southern California will now be offering a stereoscopic 3-D course. I hate that 3-D is taking over, and want to believe that it is a fad, but most of all, I still just hope that My Bloody Valentine doesn't go down in history as the movie that changed everything.

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

I thought I would start out the blog today by posting this awesome cover of the upcoming Filter, which prominently features the art and music of Spike Jonze's brilliant-looking upcoming children's flick, Where the Wild Things Are. Among other interviews, I'm informed by WeLoveYouSo that the magazine will conversate with Jonze, Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, whom will be contributing some original music to the film as well as two of my favorite actresses Catherine Kenner and Catherine O'Hara, among others.

Away from that piece of eye candy however, the big news for me today was a small trailer posted on Cinematical for a movie I've not heard very much at all about, Defendor, set to make its premiere showing at the Toronto International Film Festival. The original and quirky superhero dramedy looks absolutely perfect to me. The film stars the intriguing combination of Woody Harrelson and Kat Dennings and is written and directed by Peter Stebbings. Personally, I've never heard of Stebbings and after looking over his IMDb page, I am not familiar with anything he's directed, although he has got some starring credentials in a few bit parts of good television series including 21 Jump Street, The X-Files, The Outer Limits and Stargate SG-1. Also, where the hell has Harrelson came from all of a sudden? The sometimes estranged actor I have always felt was a bit underrated, but after this Canadian gem and the upcoming horror/comedy Zombieland, not only is Harrelson bordering on having a respectable career again, but may actually become "hip", as the kids would say, amongst young cineastes, going on eighteen years after the last episode of Cheers. That is actually quite impressive. But all of my raving aside, see if you enjoy this trailer as much as I do.


I always have to follow good news with something that brings all of our cinematic hopes and dreams crashing to the ground. Variety announced today that 20th Century Fox has hired Randi Mayem Singer to write a third installment to the Big Momma's House series. Not that I would enjoy or look forward to the film if Martin Lawrence came back to the series, but who sees Ice Cube doing this and it being straight-to-DVD?

I've always been amazed at the cult success of The Boondock Saints, the off-beat, critically based action movie from director/writer Troy Duffy. Despite bad reviews, the flick continues to have a massive fanbase that goes outside of the normal action movie crowd, that's what I'm surprised that this trailer came up to surprise me. I've heard rumors of a sequel for some time now, but I had no clue it had ever actually gotten off the ground, so here is the new trailer for The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, with Duffy returning as well as the original main cast, sans Willem Dafoe. Sure, Dafoe is a huge loss, but the trailer looks decent enough. Yet, I still don't think I'm going out on a limb by saying that this will not equal up to its predecessor's status at all. (Note: The damn IGN player isn't cooperating, so here is the link, via IWatchStuff. Still, enjoy.)

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

One of my friends is currently in the hospital with his wife awaiting for the arrival of their first child. I was out there for a spell, and I work at six in the morning, so I wasn't going to blog tonight, but then I got online and two wonderful trailers was up, so in brief... The first will not embed, but here is the trailer for Peter Jackson's very beautiful upcoming film The Lovely Bones.

Before we get to the other trailer, a few brief things... Cinematical announced that Guy Maddin's latest short, Night Mayor, will debut at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Variety reports that Leonardo DiCaprio's production company Appian Way is going to begin development on a modern gothic big screen version of Little Red Riding Hood. It will be written by David Leslie Johnson, the writer of the currently playing Orphan.

IWatchStuff broke the story that 2007's The Orphanage is already going to be remade. The Spanish horror film directed by Juan Antonio Bayona and produced by Guillermo del Toro will be adapted for an English speaking audience. Probably not a great idea, as the movie is still relatively new, and probably underseen. The director, handpicked by del Toro, will be Larry Fessenden, which I don't really know much about, but at least it is reassuring that del Toro has faith in the guy. I still just can't shake the idea though, is this remake necessary? Is it that difficult to read subtitles? Will we eventually have to suffer an English Pan's Labyrinth for an American audience that doesn't want to read a few subtitles?

Finally, the redband (NSFW) trailer for Zombieland. You may remember one of my first posts here on the Blogspot site when I posted the trailer for Jennifer's Body and talked about how it has been a while since I've been quite that stoked for a horror film. Maybe it was because of the horror comedy mix, but Zombieland is right up there with that film, making it quite a good year for the very overlooked subgenre of horror-comedy. Enjoy.


P.S. My hurried blog is more than likely a grammatical mess, so please overlook it this one time. Also, I may not blog tomorrow night, according to how the happenings mentioned before plays out. If not, I will be back on Friday.