Monday, September 28th, 2009

Whenever I heard about a remake of Friday the 13th, I cringed. I hung my head both times it was announced that Rob Zombie would be taking on John Carpenter's classic Halloween franchise. Yet for some unknown reason, I've attached myself to Samuel Bayer's new take on Wes Craven's 1984 slasher A Nightmare on Elm Street. Is there any reasoning behind it? Well, I do love Bayer's music video work, but this is also his feature film directorial debut, and it is alongside a production credit with Michael Bay, one of the silver screen's leading douchebags. Also, Jackie Earle Haley is taking over the iconic role of Freddy Krueger. Sure, Haley definitely did the character of Rorschach justice in the adaptation of Alan Moore's Watchmen, but the actor is still relatively new to me, and despite his acting chops, will take nostalgia points away by simply not being Robert Englund. And finally, I haven't even heard of the lead actress, Rooney Mara, before. So, after this trailer, am I still wrongly and uncharacteristically stoked for this film? Probably, but here's hoping the odd intuition is right. Enjoy the trailer.
A Nightmare on Elm Street in HD


So, what does everybody think about Roman Polanski, a director constantly mentioned among the greats, getting arrested in Switzerland for a crime he committed in 1977? Of course, the crime was statutory rape. Still, on Polanski's side, the victim, the now 45-year-old Samantha Geiner doesn't want prosecution to be brought down upon the director. Another interesting thing to think about is that if Polanski would have been arrested back in 1978, when the United States issued warrants for his arrest for fleeing the country, we would have never had gotten his masterful 2002 film The Pianist. One last note on the Polanski scandal, I saw on Wikipedia, without a source, that his latest directorial effort, The Ghost was still in production and thus, has been put on hold. This definitely sounds like something that probably should be true, but I've yet to find an actual news site/blog to verify it.

Cinematical posted an article today announcing that, via Rian Johnson's Twitter account, The Brothers Bloom will get an earlier DVD release than planned, and will be on shelves tomorrow for rental only, not for purchase. I was actually shocked the film didn't get superb ratings, only scoring a 48% on RottenTomatoes from the top critics (vs. an 85% from the RT community), but I still have faith in the film and now have something planned for tomorrow.

Finally, another story that has been kicking around that I've yet to really grab onto is that CineVegas, the annual Los Vegas, Nevada film festival will be cancelled for 2010, presumably due to the "economic climate" according to the official site. I'm not all that broken up, because unfortunately living in southeastern Kentucky, film festivals are as imaginary and fantastical to me as the plot line to Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Still, CineVegas was the original venue for Visioneers last year, and any time an outlet for quality stuff that could fly completely under the radar leaves, it is a bit saddening.

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

Yesterday, I blogged a bit about DC Comics' upcoming film adaptation news, and after reading through that story, I think a collective fear of fans of the superhero subgenre of films is that, especially after the massive success of last year's incredible The Dark Knight, that most of these films will just be attempts to copy and collect the reward, instead of bringing the beloved characters to life. Enter The Green Hornet, a comic film that will most certainly break the mode that has been set. The history of a Green Hornet film has always been interesting, as a 1990 re-edited group of episodes of the television series showed up as a feature film, via GoodTimes Home Video, to cash in on a resurgence of Bruce Lee fandom. Then, we saw the huge comic fanboy Kevin Smith jump aboard the wagon writing a script that was eventually abandoned. A real Hollywood movie eventually began to be realized though, when Seth Rogen, of all people, jumped on board to fill the spot of The Green Hornet role and write a script with screenplay partner Evan Goldberg, and attaching Stephen Chow as director, and star in the role of Kato. Recently, Chow dropped out of both roles, but the director slot was filled by Michel Gondry. A comic book film by Gondry? Starring Rogen? Written by the team behind Superbad? Definitely sounds like a good, original direction to be headed, even in light of the comic, that likes of which has transformed well into different genres and styles since its conception as a radio serial in 1936. The latest news however, is that Variety reports that Nicolas Cage is in negotiations to play the villain in the film. Now, some may recall the tragedy that was Cage in Ghost Rider, but we have saw what Cage can do while under a quirky director in Spike Jonze's Adaptation., which was a performance that actually doesn't deserve the "terrible actor" moniker that has befell him recently. There is also rumors about Cameron Diaz joining the cast as a love interest. Good or bad? As long as it is under Gondry and Rogen's tutelage, I can't really say anything bad about it, Diaz has actually been quite great in a few select films, such as one of my all time favorites Being John Malkovich, as well as Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York.

More pictures are up for The Fantastic Mr. Fox, via The Rushmore Academy. It looks brilliant.

Although it pops up on every other blog on the Internet, I have been trying to avoid covering anything related to The Twilight Saga: New Moon. However, in a recent interview with RottenTomatoes, Chris Weitz takes the conversation towards music and the possibility of Radiohead's Thom Yorke working on the soundtrack. Anything to pull in a normal person, eh Twihards? I think I'll just watch "Paranoid Android" on YouTube to get my fix, and Chris Weitz can go to hell!

One of the better days for DVD releases I can ever remember. The Watchmen director's cut is out today, including Amazon's exclusive Nite Owl ship and digital bundle that I may put in a few extra hours of work and/or prostitution to get enough money to buy. Also, my long wait for a theatrical release of Jared Drake's Visioneers, starring Zach Galifianakis, was never realized, but after a short festival run, it is finally available for purchase today. To add to my list of things I didn't get to see theatrically, despite getting a limited release, The Great Buck Howard came nowhere near a local theater, so today is the first official day I will get to see the quirky looking Sean McGinly film that features the talents of John Malkovich, Tom Hanks, Colin Hanks and Emily Blunt among others. And finally, Coraline, a great piece of animation from the hands of Henry Selick that is already on a short list of the year's greatest rounds out a list that will take most of my paycheck.

I will leave you today with a video from Cinematical, which combines my love for Japanese television that I don't fully understand with a bit of a shot of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The video doesn't tell us much about the upcoming film, yet the scene where Daniel Radcliffe peeping around the door framing in the first few seconds is worth watching. After all these years of women having creepy pedophilic magic filled dreams, Harry Potter finally nails the look of the rapist himself.

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

Last year, when I first saw the trailer to the Zach Galifianakis-starring film Visioneers, I got way overexcited, and proclaimed to all two people that would ever listen to me, that he could be the movie geek's frontrunner for Oscar contention. Because, let's face it, as great as Sean Penn, Richard Jenkins, Frank Langella, Brad Pitt and Mickey Rourke was in all five respective nominated performances of last year, none has the everyman appeal that Galifianakis does. But did I go a little too far with that statement? Well, seeing that theatrical distribution fell through, I won't know for sure until July 21st, when the film goes direct-to-DVD. However, I have faith, after watching the new trailer for Robert D. Siegel's Big Fan, that Patton Oswalt will take up the mantel for the unexpected contender that we will all be cheering for come this Academy Awards. The trailer is incredible, and seeing that director/writer Siegel also wrote last year's hit The Wrestler, as well as being the former senior editor of the satirical newspaper/web site The Onion, we know he understands drama and humor, and seems capable of mixing the two perfectly. In fact, the first film I thought of when watching the trailer, mixing kind of a gritty, serious storyline with what will surely have its fair share of humor, was Todd Solondz' excellent 1998 film Happiness. To top such a film, in my personal opinion, is a tall order, but watch and see what you think.

Other things in brief... MSN Cinemash has featured an entertaining video from 500 Days of Summer, based on a snippet of dialogue from the film, where Joseph Gordon-Levitt portrays Nancy Spungen, and Zooey Deschanel takes the role of Sid Vicious in a nice parody of Sid and Nancy. Definitely worth a view if you're bored.

Cinematical has an interesting story up, stemming from an interview Francis Ford Coppola did with Esquire, where he said that he originally didn't want to do a sequel to The Godfather, and when finally convinced, he just wanted to take a role to help with the screenplay, and had considered passing off the directorial job to then young Martin Scorsese.

Not shockingly, but sadly, it was announced that Rob Zombie's inaugural animation film, The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, will be released straight-to-DVD. This adds on to the previously mentioned Visioneers as two kind of anticipated straight-to-DVD efforts this year. Maybe one day, we could look forward to the medium not being dominated by rejected Lifetime films and Steven Seagal.

Speaking of Galifianakis, MovieWeb reports he is considering a new film directed by The Hangover's Todd Phillips called Man-Witch, where the bearded comedian will be the only male in a school for witchcraft. Sounds like solid comedy, let's just hope this one gets made.

Stephen Dorff mentioned somewhere that Blade could get a reboot. Don't get me wrong, I'm actually a fan of the first film, but does anybody really want this?

I'll close with another discussion of Michael Jackson. In honor of the media insanity of his funeral today, added with the fact that Bruno debuts this coming Friday, do you think that it was the right choice to completely cut Sacha Baron Cohen's interview with LaToya Jackson out of the film? Sure, the premiere night right after he died, I get that. But, let's face it, the people most likely to be offended at a tactless joke about a recently deceased person would be Christians, homosexuals, and seeing the role Michael Jackson played in breaking down walls, African Americans. And can't we already be sure that the theater will be emptied of these groups? I can't wait to see how many people Baron Cohen offends, why not add a few more?