It won't be long before we get Tim Burton's unique look at Lewis Carroll's classic tale of Alice in Wonderland. Of course, Burton follows in the footsteps of Jan Svankmajer, and even Walt Disney's own animation department with trippy versions of the most famous of all the "literary nonsense" genre. Still, the Disney train is looking at Burton to helm a new live action version of one of their classic animated princess stories, Sleeping Beauty. The film, entitled Malificent, will retell the story focusing on the titular evil antagonist. The /Film article this is reported on does not confirm Burton's participation with the project, but with a 2011 release of the Philip K. Dick adaptation The King of the Elves for Disney animation, whatever Pixar is doing, Tron Legacy and this, it looks like Disney may actually be something more than being the conglomerate ass of Hollywood in the coming years.
The daily dip of news from the world of Pandora comes way of ABC News today. It has been reported that while watching Avatar, a 42-year-old Taiwanese man suffering from hypertension got over-excited, took a stroke and passed away. This almost makes me want to stick a toe back on the James Cameron bandwagon for a bit.
Cinematical posted the story today that Paramount Pictures has announced the release date for the Coen Brothers' remake of the western classic True Grit to Christmas. How much does the recent buzz for Jeff Bridges' part in Crazy Heart psych everybody up for his ability to outdo John Wayne tenfold in this flick?
CineMusic has reported after not being able to complete the score due to scheduling differences, the portion of the score already recorded by Danny Elfman will be seeing the light of day when The Wolfman is released, replacing his replacement Paul Haslinger. Conrad Pope has been signed on to round out the unfinished score.
A huge movie news day to be so late in the week. First, the cinema blogsphere has been in utter turmoil since the trailer for James Cameron's upcoming sci-fi opus Avatar debuted this morning. The high quality Apple trailer has had problems all day, and now, the version I seen before work courtesy of TrailerAddict is no longer working. So, in the coming days, as soon as I find a trailer that I can embed, I'll put it on my blog. Anyhow, the big question of the day is, did the trailer hold the impact that the buzz had made all of us anticipate? Cinematical's Erik Davis has a nice article about that topic. I feel that it keeps the buzz. It looked incredible and kept most of the story elements from us. We're still left in the dark, with just a smidgeon of visuals. I hope it stays that way, leaving us completely shocked with whatever Cameron gives us on the big screen in December.
Aside from not being able to access the Avatar trailer, the day was by no means short on movie previews, with CNN Video posting this premiere of the trailer for Michael Moore's latest documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story.
The Hollywood Reporternamed the future scribes for the feature film Shazam! adaptation. Most blogs I went to today talked more of actor-turned-writer Billy Birch being part of the project, but I am more satisfied with the fact that his co-writer on the script will be Geoff Johns, a famed comic book writer that has worked with both DC and Marvel Comics. He is most famous for the work done with characters such as The Green Lantern, The Flash, Booster Gold, Hawkman, the Teen Titans, Batman and The Avengers. Oddly missing from that list is Captain Marvel, the hero of the Shazam! series. I'm not sure if Johns ever covered Billy Batson's alter ego in his work on the JLA comics or in his Infinite Crisis work, but it is always comforting to have an actual comics guy working on the screenplay.
ScriptShadow, a Blogspot account that reviews Hollywood scripts has come across Darren Aronofsky's upcoming effort Black Swan. I didn't read the entire review, as anybody that is even a casual fan of Aronofsky knows, you want to be left in the dark on the first viewing. With that said, you can't really go anywhere online today without finding out something on the script, and that is an included sex scene between Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis' characters. Not just any sex scene at that, but an "angry aggressive" sex scene. I just hope not to be hit by any masturbation juices from the surrounding seats whilst watching the movie in theaters.
Yesterday, I touched on a bit of anger stemming from a potential Dirty Dancing remake. Today, via Variety, there is talk of a reimagining of the trippy animated Beatles cartoon Yellow Submarine. The film is to be put in the capable hands of Robert Zemeckis, through Walt Disney Studios, using his motion capture technology employed in the upcoming A Christmas Carol. The fact that Zemeckis is behind this still doesn't make me hate the idea any less. The movie works because it is trippy. If the Blue Meanies look like actual blue monsters, I refuse to watch it. I'm all for a reason to get The Beatles music back into the mainstream, a la the new Rock Band game, but is ruining a classic, that as far as I'm concerned isn't dated, the answer?
I won't be able to blog tomorrow as I have to work the graveyard shift. I'll be back on Saturday, but since I will not get to talk about it tomorrow, do not forget to go see Inglourious Basterds if you have the chance. I will more than likely have to wait until Saturday. Quentin Tarantino's film is really the only good thing coming to theaters this week. Robert Rodriguez has a film, in the same week as Tarantino. That would usually be reason to celebrate, but Rodriguez' flick is for kids, a film called Shorts that seem sub-par and as insufferably bad as his Spy Kids stuff. There is also about six other films that look watchable at first glance, but will all probably go unseen by me that I will not get into.
A rather long post, so I will end with the new trailer for Joe Johnston's The Wolfman. Quite good, enjoy.
Most of what I do on this blog is complain or rejoice orgasmically over casting rumors. Most of the time, it is the big name stars that draw us in to watch a film, case in point being last year's Coen Brothers film Burn After Reading. The film's amazing cast included George Clooney, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt and Tilda Swinton, and they all delivered as to be expected in a dark comedy that was brilliantly written and beautifully directed. As refreshing as such a success is, a more fulfilling viewing experience is when a film with virtually no star power, other than the aforementioned directorial talents of the Coens, gives off the same vibe of excellence. The Coens' new film, A Serious Man, debuted its trailer today, with the only "star" that I noticed was Richard Kind of Spin City fame. The main star is Michael Stuhlbarg, an owner of a rather abysmal IMDb filmography page. The film doesn't appear that it will suffer from the lack of Clooneys or Pitts however, as after watching this trailer, it has shot to the top of a short list of must-sees for late 2009. Also, the best trailer I've seen this year. Even if the film disappoints in every aspect, I was thoroughly entertained for the two minutes afforded to me. Enjoy the trailer.
Yahoo! Movies released another high profile trailer today for the upcoming re-release of the two original Toy Story films in 3-D.
Universal Pictures, via Variety, has announced that the Joe Johnston horror flick The Wolfman has been pushed back to 2010, to be released on Valentine's Day weekend.
Ilene Chaiken, creator of the Showtime series The L Word, has mentioned, via AfterEllen, that there may be a feature film to carry over the series' cliffhanger storyline in the works. Now, I have to admit that The L Word was a guilty pleasure of mine for a bit after a friend forced me to watch it a while back. Maybe it was due to a childhood crush on Jennifer Beals after watching Flashdance. Who knows? But a feature? Am I the only one thinking this is bordering on unnecessary?
It was a great day for trailers. I'll end tonight with a continuation from yesterday's post when I featured a new photo gallery from the official site of Wes Anderson's upcoming stop motion animated The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Today, the trailer debuted, and as great as the stills have been, and as, excuse me for saying, fantastic, that this looks like on paper with the likes of Clooney, Bill Murray, Meryl Streep, etc., etc. behind an Anderson-directed stop motion adaptation of a highly imaginative Roald Dahl children's book, the trailer actually furthers the anticipation for this thing. Has there ever been a year, with this and Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are and Henry Selick's wonderful Coraline earlier this year, so great for children's film? Not since The Dark Crystal has children actually had something that doesn't insult their intelligence. And of course, something that adults will very much enjoy. Enjoy the trailer.
It won't be long before we get Tim Burton's unique look at Lewis Carroll's classic tale of Alice in Wonderland. Of course, Burton follows in the footsteps of Jan Svankmajer, and even Walt Disney's own animation department with trippy versions of the most famous of all the "literary nonsense" genre. Still, the Disney train is looking at Burton to helm a new live action version of one of their classic animated princess stories, Sleeping Beauty. The film, entitled Malificent, will retell the story focusing on the titular evil antagonist. The /Film article this is reported on does not confirm Burton's participation with the project, but with a 2011 release of the Philip K. Dick adaptation The King of the Elves for Disney animation, whatever Pixar is doing, Tron Legacy and this, it looks like Disney may actually be something more than being the conglomerate ass of Hollywood in the coming years.
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