Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

James Cameron has now officially caused the RMS Titanic to sink twice. That's one more time than God. Today, The Hollywood Reporter announced that Cameron's latest film Avatar succeeded what many analysts and critics had expected, it surpassed his 1997 critically acclaimed classic Titanic. This may seem like a huge day for the world of science fiction; however, I feel distraught. I still stand by my original review of Avatar as a good movie. Good. That's all. Today, I watched a great film within the science fiction genre, Duncan Jones' mostly overlooked Moon. The Sam Rockwell-starring picture is more than just a Kubrickian homage, it actually ascends the pool of normal sci-fi, and hovers around with that of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Is that a bit of an overstatement? Pure blasphemy to some? Quite possibly, but agree or disagree, I would find it hard to look somebody favorably in the eye if they chose Avatar as a better film than Moon. Building on that same thought, I can't help but imagine if Cameron, instead of Jones, had his name attached to the low budget Moon, that it would be at the top contention for most of the cinematic awards currently going on.

The aforementioned argument still doesn't really touch on Avatar's popularity to the general public. But that does bring up yet another argument as the film may lead in ticket sales, but has barely crested the U.S. domestic top fifty in attendance, in part due to the inflated 3-D ticket price attached to the film. So not only does this mean a superficial win over not only Cameron's Titanic, but actual perennial genre favorites The Dark Knight, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and many more of the big money makers in the past decade. It also pretty much solidifies that this entire 3-D thing is not going to go away. No longer is this a fun exploitation gimmick, but a distraction for possible good films to make an extra buck. THR's Heat Vision Blog has already reported that Warner Brothers is looking in to transferring the two films based on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows into 3-D. So in summation, Avatar was worth its ticket, it was an good movie, but somehow has contributed to the eventual ruin of the medium as a whole.

From one box office sensation to another. Paramount Pictures' shocking underdog horror hit Paranormal Activity's sequel has been rumored to have Kevin Greutert, formerly of the Saw franchise. Deadline Hollywood is instead reporting that Lionsgate has exercised an option in Greutert's contract, forcing him to make Saw 3D (see the above argument on Avatar's adverse effect on the movie business), and taking him away from Paranormal Activity 2. Kind of an interesting story, that will at least give Lionsgate a scapegoat when Saw 3D gets the horrid reviews that has come to be expected of the five films between it and the original Saw film.

Oh, and as a note, the picture up there is of Felicia Day, of Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog fame, for her video "Do You Want to Date My Avatar". After all the headlines Avatar has been producing, it was really the only unused picture on Google Image's "Avatar" search.

Monday, January 25th, 2010

A trip to Florida is weighing pretty hardily on my travel-lusting spirit as these new images of Hogwarts from Universal Studios Islands of Adventure's new The Wizarding World of Harry Potter section of the park were released today. I'm sure more will come from this closer to the opening of the attractions.

The big news today comes once again from the wallet of James Cameron. Legion and The Tooth Fairy failed to take down Avatar in the box office charts again, with the critically lauded science fiction flick taking the top spot for a sixth weekend in a role, dropping only 18% from last week. And, as we're becoming accustomed to, the movie broke more records, overtaking The Dark Knight's spot as the second highest grossing movie of all time earlier in the week, and breaking Titanic's record for the highest grossing sixth weekend of all time. And at roughly $558 million, analysts expect Cameron's latest to replace his Titanic on the all time list sometime in the coming week. Next week, we're posed for the possibility of a seventh week of Avatar's reign as the biggest competition will be Martin Campbell's Edge of Darkness, the adaptation of the BBC series starring Mel Gibson and Ray Winstone, which hasn't had the media build up that one would expect from Gibson, and could pass easily under the radar.

Variety ran a story a few days back on New Line Cinema gearing up for The Hobbit films, and in the midst announcing that the release date has been pushed back to late 2012. I have read several blogs on this, and despite Guillermo del Toro and Peter Jackson not yet admitting to the delay in the release, many are taking the pessimistic view and are beginning to question if the classic J.R.R. Tolkien novel will even ever make it to the big screen. I'm going to leave this one alone until del Toro or Jackson make a public statement on it however.

I have yet to read a story on MarketSaw that has later been proven as a truthful statement, yet the blogging world seems to be up in arms about a recent story the site published a story stating that a third installment of the Gremlins franchise is being developed for a 3-D film. I say rubbish. Even in the event the article turns out to be based on fact, unless the right director gets behind the chair, I'm looking at this as just another bastardization of the 80's.

Speaking of bastardizations of the 80's, Alex Cox released the new trailer for Repo Chick, a "spiritual sequel" to his 1984 cult classic Repo Man. The Emilio Estevez-starring flick contained its share of camp and kitsch fare, but the unashamed use of bad green screen in the sequel takes it over the edge of entertainment. I mean, I've read a decent amount of buzz from this thing from Cox fans on message boards, and maybe I'm judging it wrong, but regardless of how good it is, I think from viewing this trailer we can all assume that it will, even at its very best, not live up to Repo Man.

Friday, January 8th, 2010

It seems as if there is nothing that can be done to get James Cameron out of the news. The man behind Avatar recently reached the milestone of becoming the first director to have two films reach the $1 billion mark (the other, of course, being Titanic). Still, while doing promotional appearances for Avatar in Japan, Cameron met with Tsutomu Yamaguchi, one of the last living survivors of both the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This led to much speculation that Cameron's visit wasn't just for mere curiosity, but on a future film reference. Today, Variety confirms all of the speculations with the news that Cameron has optioned Charles Pellegrino's as-of-yet unreleased book The Last Train from Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back into a feature film. With Cameron's latest film, as silly and effects laden as it actually is, gathering a huge amount of Oscar contention buzz, a serious docudrama in the vein of Titanic of the tragedies in Hiroshima is already screaming for gold. I'm sure this will pop up a lot along the line.

Whilst on the topic of Cameron, Avatar will finally have some competition at the box office in the form of Daybreakers and Youth in Revolt. Will either of the films that look unusually good for early January releases be able to dethrone the giant blockbuster? Also out today on a lesser scale is the Amy Adams starring Leap Year and the exploitation throwback that will be way overlooked, Bitch Slap. All in all, a decent week for new releases considering the time of year.

Finally, here is a weird video that popped up on I Watch Stuff from a French show doing a dance number in homage to Star Wars. Enjoy the bizarre spectacle.

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.

Saturday, July 25th, 2009

'Tis Saturday, which on a normal week would mean I would scrape through twenty some odd blogs and news sites trying to find some kind of movie news I had yet to say something about earlier in the week, maybe find something awesome on ToyRocket.com that was new to me, or possibly even giving up, laying down, and watching Saturday Night Live, hoping for some better blog fuel on Monday morning. Yet, today, I am home alone, no stress of work, and have been reading coverage from the big day at the San Diego Comic Con for a few hours. There is so much that I will try to go as brief as possible, but this may be a long one. Oh, and the picture is of some random fangirl in Return of the Jedi's infamous slave girl Leia costume. Of course, one might find some sexual appeal, but if you notice, the girl is mostly plain, and her legs definitely shouldn't be considered kosher in lieu of such scandalous attire. But I thought the pic, from Cinematical's gallery of hottest cosplay this year, embodies why I want to go to the convention. Sure, the news is huge, but it would be quite hard to get into the panels and discussions, but the fans, no matter how terrible or awesome the costume, is why it would be an amazing experience. I can remember I used to be quite intimidated over extreme fandom, but now I feel like I could never delve deep enough, and San Diego's annual event is the abyss I would like to find myself in on an annual basis. So yeah, until I get a decent job, in short, damn you people for being accessible to San Diego... damn you to hell!

First up, James Cameron and Peter Jackson took part in a visionaries panel today, discussing 3-D transfers of their films, with Titanic being in the process of conversion with a tentative release date in 2011, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy being suggested by Jackson, but turned down by Warner Brothers, due to the lack of accessibility of the 3-D market. Here's the video for more.


Also coming from Jackson, he discussed that casting for Bilbo Baggins is very far off, and that the rough draft of The Hobbit hasn't even officially been turned in yet. And technically speaking, the film has even yet to get a green light, though there is no doubt that it will. Nevertheless, this means that we will be at least a few more months before we find out who will be taking on the roles of the beloved characters, at least.

Whilst promoting Sherlock Holmes, star Robert Downey, Jr. described the relationship between the characters of Sherlock Holmes and Jude Law's Dr. John Watson as "circumstantial homosexuality".

Disney's panel featured a sneak preview of the 3-D renderings of the original two Toy Story films, as well as the announcement that Michael Keaton will voice Ken, of Barbie fame in the upcoming Toy Story 3.

I will break away from Comic Con for just a few seconds before I end today. First it is the 25th anniversary of the PG-13 rating. After a bit of controversy following Gremlins and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the John Milius directed, Patrick Swayze starring war film Red Dawn became the first film to hold the rating 25 years ago today.

Also, The Hollywood Reporter broke the news that the Irish government is cutting funding for the Irish Film Board. I do quite like a bit of Irish cinema, such as The Commitments, but looking through some of the films pumped out by the IFB, I can't say that I am familiar with a lot of them; however, John Carney's beautiful low-budget Once was funded by the organization, so it does sadden me that some gems like that film may miss us stateside due to this.

Ok, I'll end today with one more piece from the SDCC, a new teaser trailer for Tron Legacy. What do you think? A good enough mesh up of kitsch and bad ass to compare to the original? Also, how can Jeff Bridges mess this up? I am officially stoked.