Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

Yesterday, Deadline Hollywood supplied the movie blogsphere with the rumor that David S. Goyer and Jonathan Nolan, brother of The Dark Knight's visionary director Christopher Nolan, is currently working on a script for the third in Nolan's franchise. Today, DH's story followed up by announcing that Chris Nolan could very well be DC Comic's silver screen savior. Not only will the director be responsible for turning the Batman franchise around from Joel Schumacher's Batman and Robin to his 2005 release, Batman Begins, but now the linked article is reporting that Warner Brothers has hired Nolan to mentor or "godfather" (an interesting term to be used in the Superman film universe, seeing that the first two films were written by The Godfather novelist Mario Puzo) a reboot of the Superman franchise, after the company decided to go another route than continuing with Bryan Singer's Superman Returns story arc. Still, Nolan will not be in the director's chair, the reason cited in the article, for working on Batman 3. There will surely be more rumors on this as the week continues, especially if anyone can actually get a statement from Nolan.

The other big news of the day comes from The Daily Mail's interview with Bill Murray. In it, the comedian discusses The Fantastic Mr. Fox, his thoughts on the underrated Groundhog Day script and his favorite performance, Broken Flowers. However, it is when the topic of Ghostbusters 3 comes up that the story sets the rumor mills running. Murray claims he will only return to the franchise if he gets to come back as a ghost, all but actually confirming Sigourney Weaver's slip-up in an interview during Avatar's press tour. Although I would prefer to not know that Dr. Peter Venkman will die within the first few minutes of the first movie, I can see this working, and don't really see it as a spoiler seeing that it is on every blog site, and if it happens in the manner that is being rumored, will probably be featured in the trailer of the possible film.

/Film posted an article featuring Stan Lee announcing via his Twitter that Marvel is prepping an Ant-Man movie. After the rumors of Edgar Wright taking the director's chair for the film and Pixar eyeing the project were both dispelled, the cinematic future of the Marvel character has been left unspoken about lately. I'm sure this little promise from Stan the Man will get the fans interested again.

In some actual confirmed news, The Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision Blog has announced that Tim Robbins has joined the cast of The Green Lantern as Senator Hammond, the father of the film's main villain, Dr. Hector Hammond (as played by Peter Sarsgaard). I know absolutely nothing on Robbins' character-to-be, but just looking at his acting ability, it's not a bad choice.

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

The accompanying picture today is the five child stars that will forever be fondly remembered as the golden ticket holders in the 1971 trippy family film classic, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. What is sad is that the only one of the five that Cinematical lists as still being in the entertainment industry is Julie Dawn Cole, the girl who played Veruca Salt, which points to the British series that is unknown to myself, Tales of the Unexpected. It should also be noted that Charlie Buckett, or Peter Ostrum, takes a shocking dive towards Mustache of the Year honors.

Following the coverage of The Green Lantern's casting process this week, with the announcement of Blake Lively and Peter Sarsgaard joining the cast, HitFix has announced that Watchmen's Jackie Earle Haley is still being heavily considered for the role of Sinestro, meaning that he would share the villainous limelight with Sarsgaard's Dr. Hector Hammond.

Finally, I have to admit I didn't really dig through as much movie blogs as I would normally do, as it is about time for The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, and here at my little site, News from a Cinephile, I'm for Coco. Send hate mail to NBC, and keep watching Conan for the little bit of time he has left. Here is a link to /Film's rumor mill on the late night debacle.

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

There was a time (1985's Back to the Future - 1994's Forrest Gump) when Robert Zemeckis was a respected director. Now he takes another step at desecrating the beloved Beatles love song to hallucinogens, Yellow Submarine. The Hollywood Reporter announced the voice cast lineup for the motion capture animated film today, with the closest thing to excitement for me being the Dread Pirate Roberts himself, Cary Elwes, will take on the role of George Harrison. Joining Elwes is Peter Serafinowicz, best known as Pete in Shaun of the Dead, the popular Beatles cover band The Fab Four will provide the singing voices and from the BBC's Robin Hood series, Dean Lennox Kelly, will portray John Lennon. The most negative part of this bit of casting, other than the entire premise of remaking the movie in the first place, is that Adam Campbell will be playing Ringo Starr, whose prior credits include Epic Movie and Date Movie.

I think I let it slide a while back when it was announced that James Vanderbilt, scribe of Zodiac and the upcoming The Losers, was signed on to pen the screenplays for Spider-Man 5 and 6, which after yesterday's announcement of the cancellation of Sam Raimi's franchise of the Marvel hero in favor of a reboot, it would all but confirm that Vanderbilt would be out of a job for writing the web-slinger to the big screen. Yet, /Film reports today that Vanderbilt has already written a script for the reboot, described as a "gritty, contemporary" styling. I hate to be the one to have to say this, as Spider-Man 3's detractors surely outnumber the ones who found it tolerable, but the complete cheesiness of the entire thing is more on par with Stan Lee's writing style than a "let's make a Dark Knight Spider-Man". Bottom line, Spider-Man 2 is as dark as the character goes and stays relevant. Batman and the characters inhabiting Alan Moore's world of Watchmen are gritty enough to warrant films of such tone, but that doesn't mean that every heroic tale of a man in costume has to make us feel uncomfortable.

For the second day in a role, bad news from Marvel's Spider-Man camp is followed with some decent news from DC's The Green Lantern. After Blake Lively was casted yesterday, THR reports that Peter Sarsgaard has joined Martin Campbell's comic-to-screen adaptation as the main villain, Dr. Hector Hammond. I just wish Hammond had a beard so that Sarsgaard could keep the child molester look.

I hadn't heard much of Atom Egoyan's latest film Chloe until the French trailer leaked today and made waves due to Amanda Seyfried's nudity. Away from the spectacle of the Momma Mia! star becoming Internet fap material for the youngsters, it's the first Egoyan film that looks good to me since The Sweet Hereafter. Liam Neeson and Julianne Moore sharing Seyfried's spotlight isn't too shabby either. Here's the trailer.

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, October 20th, 2009

During the Halloween season, there is always a plethora of places I want to go, including and not limited to, Halloween film festivals, corn maizes and supposedly haunted places to do a ghost investigation. One thing that I never really think of, especially seeing that I'm in the part of the world that cinema usually overlooks, is filming locations to classic horror fare. Turns out that in Morristown, Tennessee, roughly an hour and half away, was the site of Sam Raimi's classic 1981 The Evil Dead. Sadly, the site has a no trespassing sign up, but you can visit this web page to see pictures of the remnants of the burnt cabin if you would rather set online and look over risking jail time. They're also selling vials of earth and burnt cabin remnants. Anyways, this may warrant a stop on the next trip through the area.

Cinematical has a great countdown today of the seven best horror themes. A fitting countdown for the month that includes The Exorcist, Halloween and Psycho, among others.

Collider recently interviewed Jackie Earle Haley to debunk rumors that the actor will return to the DC Universe, this time to play Sinestro in the feature film adaptation of The Green Lantern. The good thing though, Haley didn't say he was uninterested, just was without invitation. So, we know Haley is a great actor, but with Haley being known to comic fans as Rorschach, would this be seen negatively? I mean, sure the man playing Hal Jordan, Ryan Reynolds, is also known as Deadpool, but that was in the horrific and very forgettable X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Still, I think Haley may be the best name I've heard thrown around for the role, so hopefully if casting hasn't already gotten underway, the folks over at Warner Brothers/DC will take a look at the positive buzz and consider this.

Speaking of superhero casting, until a sequel to The Dark Knight is either in theaters or completely confirmed to be dead, rumors will run rampant on who will be casted as the new villains. Well, this has been on my mind today as I had an off day from work and school and spent the entire day not moving from playing Batman: Arkham Asylum. Sure, I may have jumped aboard a bit late on this, but I can't get over how brilliant the character of Harley Quinn is. There is a overabundance of message boards you can go to in order to find who the public wants to play the villainess if she were to ever hit the big screen, such as this one from Newsarama, showing how truly terrible casting directors the general public would be. Anyhow, who do you think would make a good Harley? Of course, there is the veterans to the role, Arleen Sorkin, who voices The Joker's stalker-esque female companion in the aforementioned game as well as Harley's most widely known incarnation in Batman: The Animated Series. I also didn't think Marielle Guerber was a slouch in her version of the role in the dark French short Ashes to Ashes. The perfect voice, and possibly the perfect look if it had been shot right after the Wachowskis' Bound would have been Jennifer Tilly. Still, I can't really think outside the box on this one as reading down any list, they all seem absurd. Conversely though, I originally thought the same when I heard Heath Ledger's name mentioned, and that is now the reason that the future of Christopher Nolan's incredible reboot of the franchise is now in question... because he could never be duplicated. Anyhow, I'm going to get back to the game.

Friday, September 18th, 2009

I just got done voting for the Scream Awards, which is set to air October 27th on Spike TV. As much as the countless Twilight nominations made me want to boycott an award show about science fiction and comic books that is being broadcast on a channel devoted to appeasing the male demographic, I was very much pleased to see that Let the Right One In garnered several nods, including the show's equivalent to Best Picture in genre films, the Ultimate Scream Award. Despite the success the Swedish romantic/vampire flick had in the foreign film awards, as well as critic circles, to my knowledge the Scream Awards will be the first televised show to honor the truly outstanding Tomas Alfredson film. The show is also saturated with plenty of good stuff like J.J. Abrams' Star Trek, Watchmen and my next reading entry, Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr.'s Kick-Ass getting noticed in all the comic book categories. Definitely worth your time to visit their site.


It has become a regular thing on my blog to talk about the latest happenings of The Walt Disney Company, and their conglomerate bastardry in the medium of motion pictures. Today though, via The Hollywood Reporter, we get some nerd-friendly news that Tron Legacy will be released in IMAX. Also, the article cites that 2011's Spider-Man 4 will be shown in IMAX as well, although despite Disney owning Marvel, the movie will be released by Columbia Pictures, whom already had the rights. Still, you got to think that Disney will be happy as it can only make the Marvel stock go up.

Empire has released the character posters for The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Nice.

SpoilerTV has posted the casting call sheet for The Green Lantern. If it is to be believed, Sinestro and Dr. Hector Hammond will be the villains in the big screen adaptation. Let the rumor mill begin.

Variety has a troubling article today. With the recent boom in the 3-D market, Gucci is rushing to release some designer Real D glasses, hoping to get them available before the release of James Cameron's Avatar. I have to admit, Avatar is a high priority in my upcoming movies list, but this whole 3-D craze has got to stop soon.

And it is Friday, so to cover a bit of our options for the weekend, we have two movies that look pretty good. First, Jennifer's Body intrigues me, looking reminiscent of John Landis' Innocent Blood, fused with Diablo Cody's own unique hipster linguistic style as seen in Juno, and Megan Fox in probably the only role that truly suits her wacky public persona. I mean, if she does decent in this, after pretty much denouncing the Transformers movies, comparing Michael Bay to Hitler, and starring in next year's Jonah Hex, I may actually become a fan. Also, there is The Informant!. I still haven't seen anything that makes me know this will be really awesome. Being that it is a Steven Soderbergh movie starring Matt Damon is enough to get me in the seats, and with all the reviews, I hope that I will be pleasantly surprised. The only problem is the limited release means I won't get to see it until it goes wide, or until its DVD birth. I actually don't mind the lackluster trailers, as it gives it a chance to exceed expectations, I just hope it lives up to reviews. Finally, among a few other movies that don't really stand out to me is Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. There is better children's movies coming. Note The Fantastic Mr. Fox above.

P.S. Tomorrow is International Talk-Like-a-Pirate Day. Hope all you Pastafarians spread the message of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and his swashbuckling chosen people. Tomorrow, if my Internet withstands, I'll be back with some piratey goodness to celebrate.

Monday, July 20th, 2009

It was no big shock when Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince took the top spot at this weekend's box office, raking in nearly $78 million, approximately $60 million more than the second spot Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. However, the big news in the box office report today wasn't the sixth Potter film, but in the number five spot, Todd Phillips' raunchy comedy The Hangover. Coming in at around $8 million, the film hangs on to the top five, beating out high profile films Public Enemies and The Taking of Pelham 123, despite being released later. Not only does the film hang on for some extra glory, it surpassed Beverly Hills Cop as the top grossing R rated comedy of all time, and behind only The Passion of the Christ and The Matrix Reloaded as top grossing R rated film of any genre. The film deserves it, and let's hope this catapults Zach Galifiankis' career past ever doing a film like the upcoming G-Force ever again.

The Hollywood Reporter has taken a look at DC Comics' upcoming films. The list is very impressive, although it doesn't elaborate on really anything. It announces that The Losers has started principal photography in Puerto Rico, and stars among others Watchmen's Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Star Trek's Zoe Saldana. I don't know much about Losers, so I can't comment too much about the casting news, but seeing that both of them did justice to geek relics thus far, I imagine the fans can't be that upset. The article also mentions The Green Lantern news of Ryan Reynolds' casting, as well as name dropping Jonah Hex. Possibly the biggest news was all as brief as possible, David Howard and Robert Gordon are writing a version of Bizarro Superman, a sequel to the film Constantine is in the works, and two concurrent screenplays for a solo shot of The Green Arrow are being worked on. Charles Roven is already looking into producing a big screen adaptation of The Flash, and Akiva Goldsman will be behind a version of the Teen Titans. Yeah, that last one worries me a little, but all in all, a bundle of possible great news from DC, and I'm going to go look up The Losers as soon as I'm done blogging.

More really awesome news for the day. TheOneRing has posted pictures of the re-building of Hobbiton, getting us all way too psyched up for The Hobbit to more than two years away.

Saw VI has a motion poster. I am going to throw a prediction out, that this poster will be more intriguing and entertaining than the actual film.

In real world news, today is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. If you haven't already been today, Google is themed for the event, giving a link to an Apollo 11 search, which while looking through it, came upon a story on how sad it is that Stanley Kubrick will go uncredited for the famous video of the landing. I like that this conspiracy theory will never die. In other news of the occasion, Cinematical has a poll up requesting our favorite moon movie. Out of the choices is the 1902 Georges Melies classic A Trip to the Moon, the wonderful Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey and the recently released Moon. Sadly, The Adventures of Pluto Nash is also a choice and holds 5% of the vote. Here's hoping that those five percent were either joking, and will be weeded out via natural selection in the next few days or so. Oh, by the way, despite loving 2001, Melies' monumental milestone of a film was my pick. The current leader is Ron Howard's Apollo 13, which isn't too shabby either.

Saturday, July 11th, 2009

Over the past few days while I've been away from the computer, the blogsphere has been buzzing about the three finalists for the role of Hal Jordan in the upcoming Green Lantern movie. None of the three seemed to give off the vibe that they would be safe from thousands of rants and petitions from fanboys of the Bill Finger/Martin Nodell created DC hero. First, is the guy that is too known for his comedy to allow fanboys to hope for a serious adaptation in Bradley Cooper. Secondly, we have the complete surprise in Justin Timberlake, whose previous mass popularity would almost make it impossible to watch the film without imagining that the real Justin Timberlake happened by a power ring, and causing all moviegoers to lose sight of the actual character of Jordan. And finally, the best of the three, and today announced as the winner of the race, Ryan Reynolds. Although Reynolds has still had his fair share of cinematic misfortunes (i.e. the currently playing The Proposal), and is already submersed in the comic-to-film world as the character Deadpool in the horrific X-Men Origins: Wolverine and the rumored solo film for the 90's Marvel hero, as well as Hannibal King in Blade: Trinity (Should we just hope that Marvel really hated Reynolds?) . So, are we happy over this? Well, keep in mind that the film is to be directed by Martin Campbell, who made James Bond watchable again in Casino Royale. So, at least there is hope, and maybe Reynolds could actually come out of this thing a nice surprise; however, I'm mostly seeing bitching fuel for cinephiles like myself in his future.

Other things in brief, as there is a lot to talk about. Bruno came out yesterday. Although, since I live in a small town, I don't get to see it yet, even though the aforementioned Proposal is in its third week. I'll talk more about Bruno next week if it becomes available. Also, it got a great review by Roger Ebert saying that John Waters should pass the torch of trash cinema to Sacha Baron Cohen. Maybe a bit of an overstatement, but one of the highest praises I have heard in the cinema world for some time. Also missing my small Kentucky town this weekend... I Love You, Beth Cooper and Blood: The Last Vampire.

In an interview to promote Inglorious Basterds with Cinematical, Eli Roth said that an extension of the faux trailer Thanksgiving from Grindhouse, a la Robert Rodriguez' Machete is in the works.

Variety reports that Raja Gosnell (the man behind Beverly Hills Chihuahua) will be behind a live-action version of The Smurfs. So it is official... God hates Hanna-Barbera.

So, on Thursday I went to Comedy Off Broadway in Lexington, Kentucky to see Hal Sparks do stand-up. I do quite enjoy Sparks, being an alum of Talk Soup, but despite the extreme lustful giddiness and quality reassurance of the friend that put the idea on the table, I was still shocked over how funny he actually was, so I was going to share a stand-up YouTube video as an apologetic offering for not blogging (isn't it weird that I pretend I have readers?), but none could be found that wasn't obviously shot with a camera phone, so instead, here is a more appropriate video for a movie blog, Hal Sparks' cameo in Spider-Man 2, over-dubbed with Japanese.

And finally, one more surprise! Cinematical, via Vimeo, has a great video from David Berry, a rotoscope and animation artist from Star Wars has released some home videos to us collective movie nerds on the Interwebs. Enjoy.