Monday, January 4th, 2010

2010 is upon us. I was looking through my tags from the last year of posting and wasn't really surprised to see that James Cameron's Avatar took the top spot. As I've said before, I actually enjoyed Avatar, but there is probably about 20-30 films from 2009 that should be getting more praise than the effects laden cat people drama. Anyhow, it is undeniable that the science fiction 3-D tour de force has been dominating the cinematic news as of late, and should come as no surprise that it is the major topic on my first blog in the new year. First off, Cinematical has an article quoting Zoe Saldana and Cameron from an Interview with The Reelz Channel about the deleted additional footage of Jake Sully and Neytiri's sex scene, with Saldana even adding that the pony tails would plug in and play a part. Cameron also all but confirms that it will be part of the DVD release.

Also, Avatar continues to dominate the box office. Of course, this week provided virtually no new films, but Avatar maintained its momentum, having a very small percentage of a drop from last week with $68 million. This breaks the record for the highest third week of all time, previously set by The Dark Knight, as well as New Year's holiday gross, formerly held by Meet the Fockers. Despite this success, it is not the domestic U.S. numbers that are the amazing story, it is that the worldwide gross has topped a billion dollars and has already passed The Dark Knight for the fourth highest on the all-time release list, just below Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, in which it is estimated it will pass within the next week. Still off a little ways, but reachable is the number one spot, another Cameron film, Titanic.

Finally, on a note not related to blue cat people, CoolToyReview has put up a lot of the toys used for their online gallery for auction on eBay. Here is the link. The movie related auction contains mostly James Bond and classic Universal horror figures, with three Hot Toys figures, Don Vito Corleone from The Godfather, the Mark III from Iron Man and James Dean.

Monday, December 28th, 2009

2009's final weekend box office returns may have been the most interesting this year, which says a lot coming from a year that contained Paranormal Activity's surprise success, as well as the tween domination with The Twilight Saga: New Moon, and the raunchy Todd Phillips' comedy The Hangover raking in enough money to make many critics question it being the final nail in the coffin of the Hollywood star system. Yet, we come to James Cameron's Avatar's second week, garnering $75 million, only dropping a measly 2% from last week, taking in the second highest second week of all time, just behind The Dark Knight, not to mention breaking the record for 3-D sales, as $57 million of the intake was for the 3-D showings. Of course, this may still seem a bit far from the estimated $500 million budget on the 3-D blockbuster, even considering it took in an additional $60 million over the weekdays. Yet, the worldwide success of the film has already hit the $623 million mark abroad, when added with the stateside totals. What is even more impressive about the feat is that it contended with the debut of the much anticipated Guy Ritchie reboot, Sherlock Holmes, which took in $65 million, and despite landing second place, broke the record for highest Christmas Day opening of all time. Also in contention was the family friendly Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel, topping out a little over $50 million, and despite not being confirmed, I cannot find any other film to debut that high in third place. Even more impressive, the weekend as a whole earned roughly $270 million. This makes it the biggest earning weekend of the year, and topping last year's top weekend by 34%, being the weekend in which The Dark Knight and Momma Mia! debuted. It is also worth mentioning that Oscar contenders Up in the Air and Nine both extended to wide release, with the Rob Marshall musical even receiving a 2,000+% change in sales.

Of course, quality isn't always, and quite conversely usually opposite, on par with profit. Avatar is good, but it is overrated, while we have the debut of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus land in 26th place and in limited release, and despite over a year of following Terry Gilliam's latest flick, I have to let the critically acclaimed jewel float by unnoticed for the more mainstream flicks, at least until the DVD is released since I live in the middle of nowhere. In the same category of being looked over as Imaginarium earlier this year, was a British film called Bronson. Since Nicolas Winding Refn's bizarre biopic of famed prisoner/bare-knuckle boxer Charles Bronson didn't make a splash at the box office, or didn't stop the presses with any earth-shattering reviews, it floated underneath my radar quite easily. However, lucky to a few bloggers really pushing for Tom Hardy to receive some recognition for his titular performance, I did a good amount of reading and watched this fabulous trailer. Not only will the much quoted review comparing it favorably to Stanley Kubrick's masterful A Clockwork Orange catch your eye, but the trailer looks absolutely flawless and is definitely a must see once it is available. As a note, a higher quality version is available on YouTube, but embedding has been disabled.

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

Strolling around the Interwebs and found this gem of a picture. Hope it brightened your day as it did mine.

The big news of the day comes courtesy of an MTV interview with Natalie Portman, in which the actress spilled the news that Kat Dennings was cast in Thor. Kenneth Branaugh's adaptation of the iconic Marvel character is already shaping up a nice cast and Dennings is just the latest name to be thrown into the pot, along with Portman, Anthony Hopkins and Chris Hemsworth thus far. The big question this arises is what character Dennings will play. The article ends with the speculation that she could step into the shoes of The Enchantress.

Finally, it should be no surprise to anyone how this weekend's box office returned. The Twilight Saga: New Moon easily took the number one spot garnering nearly $143 million. The teen vampire flick broke the midnight showing record set by Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince set earlier this year, and the opening day record set by last year's The Dark Knight. However, fortunately for all of us movie nerds, Chris Weitz' installment in the Twilight franchise fell short of breaking The Dark Knight's weekend record.

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

To say that Gavin Hood's X-Men Origins: Wolverine was a disappointment, even compared to the lackluster X-Men: The Last Stand, would be a vast understatement. It was nonetheless, met with a decent box office return, and right after the release, star Hugh Jackman talked openly on how he wanted a sequel that would cover Chris Claremont and Frank Miller's classic Wolverine story arc. With Jackman claiming that the plot was being actively pursued, it comes as a great surprise for all us comic-to-movie fans that Christopher McQuarrie has been signed on to direct the yet untitled sequel, via The Hollywood Reporter. McQuarrie is best known as the Academy Award winning writer of Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects. I mean, how could the man who created the brilliance of Keyser Soze go on to make something on the level of the last two films in the X-Men franchise? Also, it is to be noted that McQuarrie done some work on the original X-Men, directed by Singer in 2000, until David Hayter took over. With Hayter doing a decent amount of re-writes, he gained sole credit from the Writers Guild of America, with Singer and Tom DeSanto gaining credit for "story". So, he was associated with the franchise when it was still very much enjoyable.

One upcoming film that has yet to grab me, Legion, debuted a red band trailer today. The Paul Bettany-starring "Christian-themed fantasy-thriller" as Wikipedia puts it seems rather creepy. I love the old woman saying that the unborn child will "fucking burn" in a sweet voice. Anyhow, the loading for this thing was miserable, so I'm just going to link to IWatchStuff's page with the trailer. See what you think.

Neatorama has posted a video of a man who created the Batmobile tumbler from Batman Begins and The Dark Knight out of a go-kart.

Avatar's official site has updated to give information on what it is calling "Avatar Day", when the preview that supposedly wowed all the critics and spectators at the San Diego Comic Con will be available for the general public via a few select 3-D IMAX Theaters. Of course, this means for people like myself that live in a town that is getting Funny People as a new attraction tomorrow, seeing this is a little out of question unless I want to drive the distance of a short vacation.

Finally, I will end with promoting the John Hughes documentary Don't You Forget About Me... again. I recently found the trailer for the flick, and for the first time realized that Kevin Smith is in this thing. So, take a look and see if you are as impressed as I am with the story of a few fans going on a road trip to satisfy a cinephiliac urge. Enjoy.

Saturday, July 18th, 2009

After Righteous Kill, is it still okay to get excited when Robert De Niro gets casted into something? Well, the film in which he starred opposite Al Pacino was a rare miss for the actor, but when the film is a violent exploitation throwback from the hands of Robert Rodriguez, stemming from Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's brilliant Grindhouse, it is more than okay to get excited. Bloody-Disgusting is reporting a rumor that the Taxi Driver star will take a role in the film Machete, alongside the already announced Danny Trejo, reprising the role from the faux trailer the film comes from, as well as rumoring the casting of Michelle Rodriguez (whom despite starring in Fast and Furious, she is set to be in James Cameron's Avatar, which if the film lives up to my expectations, will redeem the aforementioned atrocity, and make this a good thing.), and an as shocking addition as De Niro, Judd Apatow regular Jonah Hill. What a motley crew. Will it work? I have hope on this one.

Empire interviews Peter Jackson in the new issue and verifies that there will be no casting news for The Hobbit at the San Diego Comic Con. The article goes on to mention that Jackson may keep the possibility open to direct the adaptation of Temeraire, a 2006 fantasy novel by Naomi Novik as his next project following The Lovely Bones. So, the article gives us a bit of news, although not the piece we were wanting.

Check this out, via Geekologie, I found this replica of Batman's leather motorcycle get-up from The Dark Knight. Quite impressive.

MovieWeb posted the Italian dubbed trailer to Walt Disney's upcoming motion capture, Robert Zemeckis directed, A Christmas Carol. I, myself, can wait for the English trailer, but it is Saturday, and not really much to blog about, so have it.

Sunday, July 12th, 2009 (Short Film Sunday: Ashes to Ashes)

Since there is no news on Sundays to speak of, I'm going to start a feature I employed on my last blog, Short Film Sundays. If you're curious, you can check out my old blog on Weebly and scroll through the days to find the first two entries of my featured short films, being the Quay Brothers' creepy Street of Crocodiles and Francesco Vezzoli's star-studded sexually charged Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal's Caligula. My latest and inaugural Blogger entry will be a slight departure from these art pieces, and is instead a fan film of Bob Kane's beloved comic figure, the Caped Crusader, Batman.

Directed by French first-timers Julien Mokrani and Samuel Bodin, Ashes to Ashes is by far the darkest, most grisly, disturbed version of the DC vigilante we have ever seen. I have always been a fan of the grittier versions of the character, including takes by Frank Miller, Kevin Smith and Alan Moore among others, not to mention the immensely popular film The Dark Knight. However, if the most unsettling thoughts from what all the aforementioned comic writers have brought to the character, and the darkly psychotic feel Christopher Nolan's film brought us, added with a pinch of the trippy sexuality that I've always imagined to had been included in Andy Warhol's lost fan film Batman Dracula, throw up a high quality Sin City-esque background and just a dab of Eli Roth's nightmares, and the proverbial demented iceberg of this darkly twisted short might be tipped.

Is it good? Ah, a question that I have pondered since I first saw it a few days ago. The colors and backgrounds are so rich, it is hard to follow the subtitles, and easy to lose yourself in the storyline, especially seeing that the main character is a petty criminal named Eddy, and not a Gotham regular. However, after a second viewing, once you let the text register, the storyline is actually quite good. I love the looks of The Penguin and Harley Quinn, and in a pre-Heath Ledger as Joker world, unknown Matthieu Lemeunier would have been the closest to the savage Joker we've come to love in comics such as The Killing Joke. Yet, it also goes too far. Is that hard to digest coming from a blogger that praises John Waters as a true visionary and an all-time great? Well, it could never make a main audience, and some of the filth seems to be there strictly for the purpose of being filthy. One the same token, Batman being pushed too far and breaking, and striking the extremely evil cord with The Joker could be done if a proper balance was found, and is by far the greatest fan film I have ever seen. And if for nothing else, let's hope that Nolan (Please God, I understand why he wouldn't, but don't allow us to suffer another Joel Schumacher takeover), or whomever Warner Brothers hires in his place will see this and consider a big screen version of Harley Quinn. Enjoy, and form your thoughts on this very interesting short, and visit the official site, or the film's MySpace page, whether you like what they did with Gotham's Dark Knight or not, and praise them for making such a visually stunning fan film, they deserve it.

Batman : Ashes to Ashes HD
by JULMOK