Saturday, August 22nd, 2009

One of the few things I do involving social networking on the daily basis is check on the John Waters MySpace Fan Page to make sure the iconic cult filmmaker isn't doing something I'm missing. Since I've been blogging, I've yet to record any actual news regarding Waters working on a new project, but occasionally, I do get a self-portrait or some artwork that he is doing, the featured picture being from the Albert Merola Gallery in Provincetown, Massachusetts. If you're bored, check out the site, see some of Waters' non-cinematic artwork, and also check out a new CD of live recordings from one of his most infamous leading ladies, the late Edith Massey.

Into actual news, I was shocked to hear today, via Deadline Hollywood Daily, that Martin Scorsese's upcoming, highly anticipated thriller Shutter Island, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio, has been pushed back to a February 19th release date. Really, just the pairing of Scorsese and DiCaprio (other pairings being Gangs of New York, The Aviator and The Departed) has gained attention as being an early contender for Oscar gold. Paramount Pictures gave the reasoning that they just didn't have the money to spend to push and promote the movie as an award contender in the late part of the year, giving it just a general release with hope for award contention in 2010. One promising note the article leaves us with, is that the release date the film now has set, is the exact date another popular thriller, the Academy Award winning The Silence of the Lambs was released in 1991. I personally hate the politics involved in securing the Oscar nomination anyhow, and award season or no, I'm still pretty stoked for this movie, and it gives me a reason to look forward to what would probably be a rather bland February in a cinephile's life.

On the topic of Leonardo DiCaprio, his production company Appian Way has announced, via Variety, who will helm the new feature film adaptation of the Little Red Riding Hood folktale, Catherine Hardwicke of Twilight fame. The brief article also gives us an official title of the movie, The Girl with the Red Riding Hood.

Variety also reports that Bryan Singer and Warner Brothers are set to remake John Boorman's 1981 version of the Excalibur story. Some of the special effects may be dated, but this is actually a fantasy film that I feel stands the test of time. I don't really see a need to reboot this thing, but with this past week's news of possible remakes of Dirty Dancing and Yellow Submarine, this would be a mild argument to take up.

Finally, all the web troubles with the trailer for James Cameron's Avatar seems to be resolved, so here it is. 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.