Monday, January 18th, 2010

The Avatar mania will not subside. Last night, despite facing a few more deserving films, James Cameron's blue cat people love story toppled the award show, pulling away with Best Picture - Drama, as well as Best Director for Cameron's part. Of course, this leads to the buzz that nobody really wants to hear, that Avatar now pretty much pulls out in front in the race for the top honor at the Oscars. The silver lining in the show, other than the Martin Scorsese tribute which I just watched online, was that Todd Phillips' raunchy comedy The Hangover pulled out the win in the Best Picture - Musical or Comedy category. Could this mean that the comedy could be a shocking entry into the contention for the Academy's ten nominees for Best Picture?

Building off the topic of Avatar, the film took the box office again this weekend, for the fifth straight time. Of course, as normal, it would also break a few records within the process, setting the record for the best fifth week showing of all time, beating out The Dark Knight and Titanic, as well as taking in the best long weekend for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, beating out Cloverfield's opening. Maybe even more impressive, the feat was accomplished with actual competition, toppling the opening weekend of The Book of Eli and the expansion of The Lovely Bones (which had a 53,000% increase). Next week, Legion and The Tooth Fairy will take on the blockbuster, but it is quite possible that we are looking at a sixth weekend at the top.

After it was announced that Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire was out of Sony's plans for a new Spider-Man flick, I didn't read any stories about it, but I thought back on the rumor that Maguire would be taking on the role of Bilbo Baggins. Well, the most concrete of all news sources, The Sun, has put Maguire's role in Guillermo del Toro's adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's classic The Hobbit as confirmed.

Variety announced today that Clark Gregg will reprise his role as Agent Coulson not only in Iron Man 2, but in Thor as well, presumably also leading to a role in The Avengers sometime in the future.

On a final thought, I spent the day not celebrating Dr. King's infamous speech, or sadly even the fate of our favorite late night host Conan O'Brien, but by celebrating the anniversary of my trip through the womb some 25 years back. It is a bit depressing, added with the workload of school bearing down on my procrastinating conscience awful heavily, but I also got motivated to start road-tripping as much as possible before the ability to do so enjoyably exits. One of the contemplated areas to go soon before the bigger trips begin is Philadelphia, so to give me a bit of hope, here is a low quality video of Sylvester Stallone running up the Philadelphia Museum of Art's steps in Rocky. Now, I bid you adieu to watch Scorsese on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien.

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 15th, 2009

Well, the Golden Globe Award nominees were announced today, and is pretty much what has been keeping the cinematic blogsphere buzzing for the past fourteen hours or so. The biggest, and most welcome, surprise to me was that Todd Phillips' raunchy comedy win, The Hangover took a nod for Best Motion Picture- Musical or Comedy. The flick basically doesn't stand a chance against the upcoming musical Nine, directed by Chicago's Rob Marshall, starring Daniel Day-Lewis and a host of other Oscar darlings, along with Black Eyed Peas' Fergie oddly enough, and is loosely based upon Federico Fellini's 8 1/2. The quirky (500) Days of Summer, It's Complicated and Julie and Julia round out the category.

On the drama side of the major award, James Cameron's mega-blockbuster to release this Friday, Avatar, takes a nod that many are speculating will be in contention for the win, facing off against the one time Oscar favorite, Jason Reitman's Up in the Air, Quentin Tarantino's ingenious, and my pick, Inglourious Basterds, the sleeper success Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire and a film that most sites have been raving about for most of the year, Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker.

Sandra Bullock got a nod for The Blind Side, and from what I can tell of the trailer, may be the most overrated performance of the year. Hopefully she will fall to what looks like a powerful performance from the almost unknown Gabourey Sadibe in Precious. I would say Morgan Freeman's turn as Nelson Mandela in Invictus is all but locked for the award for Best Actor. I will also stretch out and predict that Marion Cotillard is a lock for Best Comedy Actress for her showing in Nine despite Meryl Streep's double appearance in the category, or Bullock showing up again for The Proposal (Note: If you have taste, you probably just said something along the lines of "Say whaaaaaat?" or "Fucking Hell!", and that is why the Golden Globes' validity is slipping dramatically). Comedy Actor is a solid category however, harnessing the likes of Matt Damon, Daniel Day-Lewis, Robert Downey, Jr., Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Michael Stuhlberg, and I can't say I'd be shocked by any of the five walking away with the award. Director is the only other category I could really see going all five ways. Bigelow gets a rare female nod in the directorial category for The Hurt Locker, being accompanied by James Cameron, Clint Eastwood, Jason Reitman and Quentin Tarantino.

Further predictions from my behalf. Keep in mind that since I live in a small area, I have yet to see many of the films that I would like to, so I am merely predicting who I think will take home the award, via buzz, awards favorites and so and so forth...:
Supporting Actress: Mo'Nique for Precious
Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds
Animated Feature: Up
Foreign Language Film: Broken Embraces
Screenplay: Jason Reitman for Up in the Air
Score: James Horner for Avatar, although my heart lies with Karen O and Carter Burwell's work on Where the Wild Things Are full throttle.
Original Song: "Cinema Italiano" from Nine

Finally, to get out of the pre-Oscar garbage that must be talked about by cineastes the world over, to much chagrin usually, here is a very bitchin' clip from Kick-Ass. I posted this sometime back when a grainy, bootlegged version made its way to the Interwebs during the San Diego Comic Con. All the same, enjoy one of the few great clips of Nicolas Cage floating around the world wide web.

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.

Monday, July 6th, 2009

I suppose before I get into any kind of movie news, rants or raves, I should say welcome to my blog, Cinemarant, where I will divulge to you, dear readers, what I think of what's going on in the world of cinema, as well as news in brief as much as I can. So without further ado, let's jump right in.

How can you speak of anything in the entertainment industry without mentioning the death of the King of Pop Michael Jackson. Ever since the popular culture icon passed away last week CNN has been covering the legal battles and the upcoming funeral services more so than the civil unrest in Iran, President Barack Obama's new energy or healthcare plans, or the deaths of the seemingly endless line of celebrities that have passed along side the tabloid sensation in the days surrounding the fall of pop. So, you may be asking yourself, why would I be blogging about a musical genius/eccentric headline hopper in a movie blog? Well, there is no time to be wasted to cash in on the money train of Jackson's death, as Randy Phillips, the president and CEO of AEG Live, the company behind Jackson's British tour that was to begin next month has already told the Associated Press that he's looking to turn the 100+ hours of rehearsal footage into live albums, a pay-per-view special, and you guessed it... a documentary film. Don't get me wrong, I've been riding a non-stop news loop of the Jackson death circus since it began, and I would welcome a well-done documentary on Jackson's highs in music and lows in his eccentricities and odd behaviors, but is this just a little too soon to be talking a documentary when we don't even know the fate of his children, his estate or even the exact circumstances surrounding his death? And what kind of voice is the documentary to have? If it is to look at anything in a comical light, it is way too soon for the public to digest, and if it is to be serious, it will either be a repackaging of Martin Bashir's Living with Michael Jackson, or as bizarre and unmarketable as Wacko Jacko's personal life became in his later career. Discuss in the comments, if I get any readers if the entire Jackson thing has reached overkill yet, and your pissed off that nobody is buying the rights for an OxiClean docudrama, or if the entire thing is to be expected, he's the fucking king of pop, right!?

Also, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen took the top spot at the box office again this week, although reports have shifted between Michael Bay's cashploitation flick and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, so it is a virtual tie. Public Enemies came in third, and surprisingly The Hangover continues to keep in the top five, raking in another $11 million this weekend.

Sci-Fi Squad has a story on the development of the upcoming live-action Star Wars television series, but just cites "sources" without ever naming them. So, take the news with a grain of salt.

And finally, the red band trailer for Jennifer's Body went online today. Most of the coverage has been centered on the fact that you get to see a lot of Megan Fox in this, but the trailer looks awesome. Actually, I can't remember the last time I saw a trailer to a horror film, and became that stoked about it. Enjoy.


P.S. Speaking of Michael Jackson up there, I'm trying to spread the word of the Thrill the World event in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The event coordinator Hannah Bailey contacted me to say that Guinness World Records have been contacted to show up there for the largest simultaneous dance to Jackson's hit "Thriller". You can click here for more information on the Oak Ridge event, or just go to ThrilltheWorld.com for information on an event closer to your area. Also, it is the same night as The Grand AdventureCon in Pigeon Forge, a short drive from Oak Ridge, which among other guests will be featuring Jason Mewes from Kevin Smith's View Askewniverse. I'll promote the hell out of these two events in the upcoming months, so an apology in advance.