Now, i consider myself a bit of a musical connoisseur, and in being such a pretentious know-it-all, I tend to trawl obscure forums for interesting bits of information that I can lord over people. It was in this way that I found myself in a Slipknot forum yesterday following a thread about this docutmentry.

I, for one, find today’s modern “music” industry a little bit…how do you say…”repulsive”…yes, that is the word, completely repulsive. Call me rotten, but I would love nothing more then to see the majority of the industry’s major players staring down the business end of a .45 magnum with a very pissed off Clint Eastwood at the other end. Suffice to say, I was immediatly intrigued by this behind the scenes look at bands of high level talent, middling popluarily and no big label support trying to make it.

Now, this is about as indie as films get, but I thought it was so interesting it was well worth a mention.

check out the official site here the trailer is under the “Media” heading.

And for good measure, the production company behind it all can be found here.

Look for this in mid 2005, most likely July.

In a press release called earlier today by one Mr. John Campea, it was revealed that one the World’s Greatest Lover, one Mr. Miles Kinnee has consented to join the prestegious Movie Blog writing team.

When asked what influenced this descision, Mr. Campea cited Mr. Kinnee’s “keen intellect”, “diabolic witiscims” and “devilish charm” as reasons for extending the much coveted invatation to him. He also went on to add, “All women want him, and all men want to be him, truly the world’s formemost man.”

Mr. Kinnee Himself was much more modest about the appointment. When queried as to the nature of his duties, he took a long leisurly drag of his cigarette, a light sip from his snifter of brandy, flipped his perfectly coifed locks and replied, “Oh, this and that”, much to the delight to the crowd of reporters and fans that had gathered for the event.

Mr. Kinnee then proceeded to rakishly wink at a group of schoolgirls nearby who promtly swooned and fell to the floor, made weak from the honor bestowed upon them.

Look for Miles Kinnee’s forthcoming posts on www.judymoodymovie.com, as he seeks to enlighten and enrich the lives of it’s faithful readers.

I think it’s safe for me to say that Dodgeball was in my top 3 favorite comedies of 2004. Not in terms of being that great of a movie, but more because it got more hard laughs out of me that any other films this year. Granted, it’s more of a gender specific movie I think. I watched it again on DVD the other night with my girlfriend (who had never seen it before) and she just kept looking at me with a confused look on her face that sort of said “what are you laughing at? You actually find this funny?!?!”. Yes, yes I did find it funny.

Now, the good folks over at Coming Soon have posted a story that suggests a sequel could be in the works. Here’s what they had to say:

I met ED’s Justin Long at the Rio Ranch and Conference Centre here in New Mexico last week. He’s filming a movie in the area called Dreamland with John Corbett. Long story Short: We gushed about Dodgeball and he had some good news for fellow fans - the film was a huge hit at cinemas, and the director has been contacted by the studio about doing a sequel sometime this year. Justin said he’s yet to be contacted about it, but he’s heard third-hand that it’ll be ‘everyone’ back.

This kind of rumour gives me mixed feelings. One the one hand I loved Dodgeball and would like to see more… but on the other hand a part of me feels like it doesn’t need a sequel. And besides, a Dodgeball 2 wouldn’t have Rip Torn in it, who in my opinion was hands down the funniest character in the film. Oh well… I guess we’ll wait and see.

It seems that Matt Stone is tired, very tired. In an interview with the Sun Online (a bastian of modern journalism) picked up by The Guardian, he talks of the pressures of working on Team America: World Police and the negative affect on his life.

Team America faired not so well in the US and grossed a mere $32m (√Ǭ£16.6m) after being much hyped by many as destined to be the comedy hit of the year. Not so in fact, and it is destined for it’s European rounds this January, albeit with the Germany release on the 30th of December.

…the 33-year-old Stone has pledged to stay away from making any further pictures with puppets or Parker after describing Team America, which opens here in January, as the lowest point in his life.

Harsh words…and they get even stronger.
(more…)

First Oliver Stone travels to Turkey and apologises to the people for some of the overly brutal scenes in Midnight Express that showed the Turkish prison system and those who ran it in a very bad light, now he’s openly discussing what he should have done differently with Alexander.

Now, I haven’t seen it yet but the press and controversy about it has been quite strong, as we’ve shown here. Still, I can’t help but feel if I had gone so far and made such a film, and even defended it at great length in the open press, I wouldn’t now suddenly go back on that and talk about what was perceived to have been wrong with the movie and what I should have done differently. Stone has though, in an article from Variety for subscribers, copied in Rope of Silicon.

He opens with a statement which is very resigned and almost, if you’ll pardoned the expression, conquered statement:

“In some way,” Stone told Variety, “I failed to communicate his story properly to that audience. I still think it’s a beautiful movie, but Alexander deserved better than I gave him.”

Stone goes on to talk about the more controversial aspects of the story:

“They called him Alexander the Gay. That’s horribly discriminatory, but the film simply did not open in the South, in the Bible Belt. There was clear resistance to the homosexuality.

“If I could go back, I’d have put events in linear order and limited the voiceovers. I’d have gotten the film to 2√Ç¬Ω hours and taken out the homosexuality for the U.S. market and for countries sensitive to such things, like Korea or Greece. Kids weren’t comfortable with men who hugged, a king who cries and expresses tenderness,” Stone said.

That’s a lot of changes, and quite a change of direction from the previous statements of defense that have been issued before. I still don’t understand his change in direction, perhaps the humility is designed to try and raise audience figures abroad to recoup the cash invested. I find it hard to see Stone actually feeling this way considering his past movies and the criticism he’s faced before.

For me, none of this changes the fact that I will go and see it, merely for the fact it is an epic, oh okay then, and because of the controversy to date!

Sean Penn is a really interesting movie star, no matter what you say about his past he’s been involved in some fantastic movies. Whether that be for controversy, quality or the plain fact that they just stank, and to his defense he’s been involved in some excellent movies, particularly as Writer or Director. He’s controversial, has strong opinions of his own and makes them widely known, and he doesn’t shy away from them, and there’s more controversy in his latest film release, The Assassination of Richard Nixon.

According to Reuters, Penn…

has chosen to follow his Oscar-winning performance as the villain in Clint Eastwood’s “Mystic River” with a sympathetic portrayal of a would-be presidential assassin and airplane hijacker.

Based on the real-life story of a man killed while trying to hijack a plane so he could crash it into the White House, the film, opening this week in some U.S. cities, is about a man driven to extremism by deep frustration with societal norms and mores.

“Nixon” looks at a social misfit who longs to be part of the system but is rebuffed at nearly every attempt. He loses his job, his wife, his second job and gets denied for a loan to start his own business.

(more…)

The 1925 Soviet film Battleship Potemkin is a true classic and has inspired many great movie moments over the years, with one of the most famous scenes being that of the Odessa steps. That is the scene probably most recently remembered from the homage in The Untouchables, where a baby in a pram race down the stairs as a fight ensues around them.

The film was created by Sergei Eisenstein and dramatises a mutiny on a Russian ship showing how this event allegedly then inspired an uprising against the country’s Czars in 1905, which then failed.

Massively rearranged quotes from the BBC:

A newly reconstructed version of the 1925 Soviet film Battleship Potemkin will premiere at Berlin Film Festival…

…The festival, which is showing the film next year, said no complete print of the original movie survived…

…the film, which was shot for the 20th anniversary of the failed uprising, was victim of “one of the most spectacular cases of censorship in the 1920s” after being cut by the Soviets…

…As well as the inclusion of the graphics and Trotsky’s words, changes and cuts carried out on the famous staircase sequence as a result of the film’s censorship have been corrected…

…Edmund Meisel’s original musical score has been revised for the screening…

The reconstruction has been supported by the British Film Institute and Germany’s federal film archive.

That last part adds the credibility to the reconstructed version, and should mean that the work done does nothing but enhance the original cut and bring back everything that was removed to give it what Eisenstein originally created. Well, that’s the idea anyway.

Even the original score has been revised, and for the screening at the Berlin Festival from 12th to 13th February 2005, the German Film Orchestra Babelsberg will accompany the entire restored movie. That would definitely be something to experience.

DVD Times is carrying the news that The Exorcist: The Beginning has been announced on Region 1 (that means US and Canada for you non-DVD people) for the 1st of March, and is carrying the specifications:

Arriving in separate widescreen and full screen editions features on both include:
English and French DD5.1 Surround
English, French and Spanish subtitles
Director Commentary with Renny Harlin
Behind-the-scenes featurette
Theatrical trailer

Previously, on the MovieBlog, we talked about the Studio announcing that the DVD would contain both versions of the movie, the Renny Harlin version and the Paul Schrader original version, but it’s nowhere to be seen.

Hopefully this is just an oversight and the full details will out closer to the time. What I hope it isn’t is one of the many money making schemes by the Studios to release multiple versions of a DVD. First the standard movie release. Then, once sales reduce, drop the price to induce further sales, once they die down release an Extended or Special Edition and hopefully a proportion of the first time buyers will rebuy and they’ll gather some new customers as well. Perhaps there will be Box set, if it is part of a series, or a further Directors Cut too. We’re wise Studios, well some of us are, and we’ll wait for the bigger and better DVD version thank you!

Here we go, the Motion Picture Academy mailed out its nomination ballots, IMDB carry the facts:

The motion picture academy on Monday mailed out nomination ballots to its 5,808 voting members for the 77th Annual Acadmey Awards. Members have until 5:00 p.m. on Jan. 15 to make their choices and return them to the academy’s offices. Nominees will be announced on Jan. 25.

That’s not too long to wait. When we do hear word we’ll make a couple of special posts which we’ll make constantly available on the navigation bar for you to discuss and make your votes known, then we can have a MovieBlog Awards and see how different they are to the Academy’s.

Along with the notice to the members of the Academy went a notice to the studio reminding them of the criteria in which they will be eligible for nomination:

…in order to be eligible for Oscar consideration, films must be screened for a minimum of seven days in Los Angeles County beginning no later than Friday (the last day of the year).

Quick! Rush out those final scenes of Post Production - get the movie out the door!

Personally I’m not influenced by the awards themselves, it’s more the exposure of certain movies. For instance the blurb a movie is given during the nomination speech might prick my ears up and make me think that movie would be worth seeing, or noticing the talent involved in the movie. Other than that, winning an award or two doesn’t influence me at all.

What do you think of the Oscars nowadays, are they are really worthwhile indication of quality and superior talent, or do you just view them as an interesting programme you might watch and it doesn’t influence your viewing in any form?

Would you prefer to see them scrapped or the voting system revised? Maybe adding a public panel of voters?

It’s always nice to hear that a film wants to upgrade it’s visual effects. That usually means the director is paying attention and not just accepting what he’s got. He/she want to give the audience it’s moneys worth. However, it’s usually a BAD sign when a film (already nearing the end of shooting) has to do major script rewrites and changes nearly the entire 3rd act of the movie. The tells me that the movies’ management team couldn’t realize they had a bad ending when looking at the script they had in front of them and are now scrambling (scrambling is never a good thing) to re-do it on the fly.

With all that in mind, the good folks over at Dark Horizons give us this bit of good and very bad news:

With principal photography on the “Fantastic Four” film about to wrap, Cinescape now reports that the entire third act of the film has undergone extensive changes as a result of Pixar’s CGI family film “The Incredibles”. Seems after seeing the stretching effects of Elastigirl, the final battle sequence of FF needed to be beefed up, especially the similarly stretchable Mister Fantastic (Ioan Gruffudd).

20th Century Fox apparently stepped up to the plate and coughed up more dough, anywhere up to an alleged $20 million in fact so Mister Fantastic could have more screen time to stretch across and some of the other characters may get some more action as well. On top of this, the third act has had to undergo a major rewrite. Writers and producers have been working overtime all through November and December as they thought about ways to better build up the film’s final battles and the resolution. This has lead to almost daily script changes in order to distance the FF ending from that of “The Incredibles”.

It sounds like this whole project has gotten totally out of control. Oh well, I guess we’ll really just have to wait and see how it turns out. Who knows… perhaps all this will lead to a great film experience for us the audience… but I doubt it.

Oh now this one sounds like it’s destined for an Oscar (puke)

The Hollywood Reporter reports that David Carradine (“Kill Bill Vol. 2″) and rapper Kurupt will be joining an urban Western titled “Click.”

The film will take place after the Civil War and follows “a group of outlaws out to rob the town bank in a lawless land. They run into trouble when a scheming cattle baron, a bounty hunter and a female sheriff stand in their way.”

This sounds like a bad idea on sooooo many different levels. You’d think that after his role in the Kill Bill films Carradine would be getting offered better gigs than this. Oh well, I guess even famous guys have to eat. Thanks to the good folks at Cinema Confidential for bringing us the story.

It’s that time of year when all kinds of “year end” lists come popping out. This one is kind of unique. The good folks over at FilmRot point us to this cool little site called MovieMistakes.com where they chronicle… you guessed it… movie mistakes.

Every year I’m linked to their list of films that exceed in the art of the foul-up. The crown this year easily goes to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban with an astounding 235 screw-ups compared to second place’s 65 discrepancies for Spider-Man 2. Quite a gap there Mr. Cuarón.

Holy crap! Thats a lot of foul ups! I still remember the first “mistake” I ever caught in a movie. It was Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indiana Jones’ ex-girlfriend was sitting in her Tibetan bar holding out a necklacce with the eye of Ra attatched to it. Then the camera shot switched to a different angle and suddenly she was still holding the necklace, but it wasn’t actually around her neck anymore. I love little things like that. But 235 of them?!?!

Ok, now I’ll admitt there is no denying that Jenny McCarthy is one of the most beautiful women on the planet. HOWEVER… she’s not exactly Meryl Streep when it comes to acting. Apparently now she thinks she’s a writer too… oh my, read this bit of horror from the good folks at KillerMovies:

Jenny McCarthy talks on Dirty Love a movie which she wrote and will also star in the lead, according to MTV.

“We’re usually cast as the funny guy’s girlfriend, and I say bleep that!” McCarthy explained. “No thank you. I’m gonna do it myself, and I finally became old enough to learn how to do it myself, and I’m doing it.”

“Carmen plays my girlfriend and she’s hilarious in it,” McCarthy said. “The premise is a girl that walks in on her boyfriend sleeping with another woman and she seeks revenge on him the entire time. You know I wrote it, so it’s gotta be pretty controversially insane”. “It’s about ecstasy,” McCarthy said. “There’s so many people taking it and not enough people making fun of it, so I wrote a comedy about it. It’s pretty insane. I have no words of wisdom about it, it’s just plain funny.”

My jaw is on the floor folks. This must be some kind of gag. Really… a comedy about ecstasy?!?! I don’t know which is scarier… the fact that this woman wrote it, or that some studio actually thought it was a good idea and is putting up the money to get it made. Man it’s hard to keep faith in Hollywood with stuff like this. Hmmmm… her and Carmen Electra? Maybe we could go see it and just ask the theater manager to turn the sound off.

Ok, now everyone knows that I’m a fan of the Superhero Genre of films… but this is one I think they should just pass on. Hollywood North gives us this:

Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man is currently in script development as a major motion picture. The character, bio-scientist ‘Dr. Henry Pym’, debuted in Marvel Comics’ “Tales To Astonish” #27 (1962), as “The Man in the Ant Hill”, who discovers a liquid that evaporates into a gas, reducing a man to the size of an insect.

Inhaling the fumes Pym shrinks in size, scurries along the floor and soon finds himself trapped in an ant hill. Eventually he returns to his normal size, deems the formula too unpredictable and locks it away. In “Tales To Astonish” #35, Marvel editor Stan “The Man” Lee re-introduced Pym as the superhero Ant-Man, able to shrink to the size of an ant, while retaining his full-size strength.

Ummm… can you say “running out of ideas”? This one makes me real nervous. I hope they can it before it gets too far.

To say that I’m excited about the upcoming Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith is like saying Pee-Wee Herman liked a little bit of porn. I’m beside myself. You’ll have to forgive me if I sound a little fan-boyish, but every single thing I’ve seen from the final prequel installment of the Star Wars saga has me utterly giddy. Having said that, all the promotional material from the other 2 were pretty sweet too… but I choose not to think about such things.

Now, the good folks over at CinemaBlend have gotten their grubby little hands on a new picture from the film that shows the duel that apparently happens quite early in the film between Anakin and Count Dooku in front of the “imprisoned” Palpatine (Emperor). Does the room look familiar at all? Very reminiscent of the Luke/Vader duel in Return of the Jedi. Oh man… this is gonna so rule!

Now, this is going to test you. Check out the Guardian end of year movie quiz and see how well you can do.

It’s definitely not easy, and there is a little prize involved as well.

…if you get more than 20 right, you’ll get the chance to win 10 each of the best books, DVDs and CDs of the year, as chosen by Word magazine

Sorry, I suspect UK only!

Oh my goodness gracious! If this is actually true I think spontaneous urination will be a reality in my near future. The guys over at Twitch are reporting that Ong Bak freak of nature (in a good way) Tony Jaa is going to be starring along side Jackie Chan in the next Drunken Master film.

Apparently, Jackie will be the master passing his knowledge on to a new generation (Jaa).

Can you say “Passing the torch”? Word is that Jaa is already at work learning English in preperation for this film in which he’ll play Chan’s pupil in the art of Drunken Boxing. I have no idea how the writers will get around Jackie’s alcohol induced brain damage from the end of part two, but frankly I really don’t care. I’ll accept just about anything that gets this made.

Here here! Jaa is a total marvel and the true evolution of Jackie Chan. I’ve alread posted several times on The Movie Blog about Ong Bak, so I won’t go into it much here… but I’ve been waiting for Chan to do a film with someone (Jet Li?) to sort of symbolically pass on the torch. Tony Jaa would be a fine recipient. All he has to do is that little thing called learning English and he’ll be a major action star over here.

Paul W. S. Anderson is a busy man just now, but standing back more in the shadows and working on one type of genre, the videogame. He’s been at this for sometime, but in Now Playing Magazine he says:

“Well, that’s a game [Driver] that I optioned with the idea that I may direct, and that’s still something I’m keeping an option open to direct.” he says. “We don’t have a screenplay I feel happy with yet. We’re still kind of in the development phase of that. [And] at the moment I’m producing a movie for John Fawcett, who made Ginger Snaps, called The Dark. And next year I’m producing a movie for Corey Yuen which is an adaptation of DOA, the Xbox title. So [producing] is something that I’m doing increasingly when I’m excited about the filmmakers that we’re working with.”

So not only is he working on Driver and Resident Evil: Afterlife, although Anderson says:

It’s still just a concept at the moment…The second movie did better business than the first movie did, so obviously there’s talk of doing a third film. When I made the first movie, I always wanted to see it as a trilogy. I always had a vision for a trilogy of films…but we’re still kind of in negotiations. But there’s definitely a will to make the movie, that’s for sure.

…but he’s also working on Dead or Alive and The Dark. All videogames for various games machines.

Resident Evil is pretty much a game like the rest of the series, whereas Driver is much more modern and open game although a poor relation to the incredible Grand Theft Auto series (from III onwards). Dead or Alive will see him return to the world of super beings fighting against each other, much like Mortal Kombat did, and The Dark is a brooding and scare filled adventure game.

I do hope some of these turn out well, Driver and The Dark have good potential on paper, and let’s hope Sean Bean doesn’t suffer another career setback from starring in the latter.

Poor Paul W. S. Anderson, he gets slated a lot these days, mainly for his video game adaptations. AvP…well, let’s move on swiftly, Resident Evil wasn’t that dire, it was fun, same with Mortal Kombat. However, there are two movies of his I enjoyed, and one really enjoyed.

Soldier with Kurt Russell was an enjoyable movie for me, I liked Russell’s character and the way he portrayed him, and I enjoyed the tale. Still, the film that makes me wonder where Anderson has gone these days is Event Horizon. That was an excellent horror and really managed to push you to the edge of your seat and leave you there with complete unease for the movie. It was dark, creepy and filled with vile and dread. Plus it had Sam Neill, Laurence Fishburne and Sean Pertwee.

Well the news from Now Playing Magazine is that a Special Edition DVD is on the way with deleted footage that Anderson wishes was in there, as well as a second time round audio commmentary:

“I just did a commentary for Event Horizon, because we’re releasing a Special Edition of that next year with a lot of deleted scenes,” Anderson told Now Playing Magazine in an exclusive interview. “And I went in and did a truly awful commentary for it that I’m going to redo! Because it had been so long since I’d seen the movie, I just started watching the film and enjoying it, and didn;t remember to say anything. And after like an hour and a half I;d said about 10 minutes of stuff.”

“Paramount has sold so many DVDs of it that they’ve offered to do the fully-fledged ‘You can reintegrate the scenes and we’ll pay for it to be remixed and everything’ version. The problem has been actually finding all of the materials because it’s been quite a long time, so we’re still at the point where we’re trying to decide if it makes sense to do a director’s cut or whether [we should just include] a lot of deleted material with a separate commentary explaining why it was taken out and where the scenes would have gone. Or we may do a branching version of the DVD so you can see where those scenes may have sat.”

I do hope we either get a Directors Cut or a branching version, whichever way it will be superb to see deleted scenes which he wished he had put in first time around.

For me this is one of the winning parts of DVD, understanding the Film making process and hearing the thoughts and visions of the people behind the movie. I love the audio commentaries and deleted scenes can reveal a different light on sections of, or even the entire movie.

Ok, this isn’t a movie related post, but I would feel a little less than human if I didn’t mention it here. By now all of us have seen pictures of the devastation in Asia. I first heard of the disaster boxing day morning going shopping with my dad. At that point they said they feared 3000 were killed. As of this moment CNN is reporting that the death toll stands at around 23,000… 10x the casualties in the 9/11 attacks. This is dizzying.

So listen, seriously, see if you can find one of your local banks that is accepting donations for the relief efforts that are getting started.

Imaginative and new ideas in cinema are hard to find, and writers and directors are always looking back for ideas to bring to the modern screen. It’s interesting though when a project not only looks back for ideas, but also looks back for their choice of movie style, and that’s just what they’ve done.

The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society are making their own movie based called The Call of Cthulu, a Lovecraftian tale filmed as a silent movie! Before you go any further, check out the trailer.

Building sets by hand and borrowing locations from friends, it seems they are close to completion however it doesn’t sound as though it has been an easy journey. Some of this sounds like an A-Team script!

A key part of low-budget filmmaking is to get your friends to let you shoot at their locations.

Our amazing costumer, Laura Brody actually managed to cut fabric from the hem of an actor’s pants and fashion it into a completely suitable hat, all in the back seat of a car at the beach.

Our streak of excellent luck in not getting arrested continued as we moved to another busy beach location for another shot. The police, street mimes and fishermen left us alone and we were able to get our footage and run.

It’s hard to build a swamp from scratch, but with some help from our friends, lots of fabric, yarn and paper mache, we managed to assemble a swamp complete with ten massive trees.

We were all set to shoot when we got word that the mechanic who was prepping the car for us left it in gear and it crashed into a tree. It’s being fixed….

We finished painting the set as the cast was getting into makeup (notice no one grabs the ship rail; it’s paint is still wet).

For a week we toiled like maniacs using 1×2s, luan (thin plywood), cardboard, plexiglass, vintage scientific equipment, accurate nautical charts, a severed finger and several hundred wooden nubs to create The Alert’s wheelhouse.

It all sounds like fantastic fun, although complete hard work, I would recommend reading the article at their official pages, it is quite interesting.

Also, if you can translate for another language, especially a more obscure one, visit the link above and see if you can help them out. They are frantically trying for translations on the DVD!

I’m really curious to see how this project turns out, and to see what the extras are on the DVD, you can imagine some of the cut scenes!

Looking at the trailer and knowing a bit about Lovecraft and his tales, I am really interested to see how this turns out. It does carry a certain style and quality to it which could well make for an appealing movie. Let’s not forget that the people involved are true fans of Lovecraft, and this might make for quite an authentic translation to the screen. Fingers crossed for them.

Should we take bets which way this film will go - good or bad? Let me mix up some of the good and bad things going for it and see how you think it comes out.

Another adventure yarn trailer with the lead character Dirk Pitt played by Matthew McConaughey, what a dumb name…that’s the Dirk Pitt one!

Sahara is from a Clive Cussler novel, the IMDB reader Plot Summary doesn’t really help much more than the character name:

An African dictator’s nuclear waste disposal plant is mutating the red tide, and so threatens the planet’s ecosystem. It’s up to Dirk Pitt and his associates from NUMA (National Underwater and Marine Agency) to find the source of the pollution and shut down the operation.

Cussler is also one of the Producers and his daughter Dayna Cussler also stars. Breck Eisner, who hasn’t really done much, takes the directors chair, and Pen√ɬ©lope Cruz pitches in for big name power.

Oh, and the last point, the Foo Fighters are playing during the latter part of the trailer. The last point wins it for me!

Sometimes an idea comes along for a movie that just grabs you, the very basic premise just makes you sit up and pay attention and in trailer form you just can’t help but become intruiged. This is exactly how I felt when I saw the trailer for Unleashed, Jet Li’s new film also starring the great Bob Hoskins and the superb Morgan Freeman.

The writing and production credits include Luc Besson, and you could feel some of his influence in parts of the trailer, and from the director Louis Leterrier of Transporter 1 and 2.

I’ll keep my eyes on this one. Can Li hold his own against two heavyweights of acting such as Hoskins and Freeman?

I’d seen this trailer before but it wasn’t until watching it again that I realised we hadn’t said anything about it, and it’s quite a significant film, remaking that classic in which Gene Wilder turned a sterling performance in the original Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.

The trailer for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory carries all the visual marks of Tim Burton and it does look like it’s a perfect match for his style. The wonderful Johnny Depp looks set to turn a bizarre and utterly creepy performance which suits the role perfectly, that off-kilter smile is just so unnerving.

Okay, I admit. I laughed, I really did, couldn’t help it either. Despite thinking that Vin Diesel’s Manager had been hitting the bottle and was following the excellent career move of Arnold Schwarzennegar to Kindergarden Cop, I was surprised while watching the trailer for The Pacifier that I laughed.

Damn those trailers, ’cause it actually looks like fun in places, although the premise itseld and the other half of the trailer looks like Red Baby Poo, just check out the scene where he’s telling one of the kids a bedtime story. Sorry, I did laugh.

Holy smokes! for any of you out there who are fans of both the film and book versions of Lord of the Rings, you really need to take a peek at “The Nit Picker’s Guide to the Lord of the Rings“. The guy there has compiled a list of the discrepancies between Peter Jackson’s films and the books. It’s actually quite a fun read. You can read it here.

Well, if you’re anything like me, this past year has seen the following:

1) Some good things happened to you.
2) Some bad things happened to you.
3) You achieved some great things.
4) You made some bad mistakes.
5) Some people were wonderful to you.
6) Some people were idiots to you.
7) You met some cool people.
8) You lost touch with some others.
9) You aged one year.

My greatest hope is that through the ups and downs, the good and bad we grow deeper in our appreciation for the things and people that matter in our lives. Have a very Merry Christmas, may it be spent with family and loved ones, and in the coming year… MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU.

~John

Sony Pictures are preparing to demonstrate their 4K Digital Cinema at the Hollywood Pacific Theater on January the 13th with a screening of Spiderman 2. IMDB carry the story:

Yair Landau, Vice Chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment and President of Sony Pictures Digital, said in a statement: “Sony’s 4K digital projection system is the ideal vehicle for screening this movie in the most dramatic and visually appealing manner, truly showing off all the care and effort that went into this production.” The resolution is four times that of competing digital projectors. Sony said in its statement that it expected its technology “to become the quality standard in digital cinema.”

Sounds wonderful, and I’m sure it will look spectacular, especially with all the technical and monetary support behind the demo that Sony can provide. However notice the phrasing to become the quality standard, not to become the standard. Is that perhaps because it would cost far too much for your average cinema to install?

There are a lot of things that annoy me about the movie industry, and they all make me glad I’m not actually in it as a career. Mind you the money, fame and beautiful women make me wish I was, and with my looks and talent I could definitely be a screen writer for the Resident Evil series.

However, from the outside the downsides just seem to outweigh the good times and this is just reeks of another sleazy, leeching tale from Hollywood.

According to The Guardian Marlon Brando’s business manager has started a law suite against the estate of the departed actor for the tune of $3.5m (that’s √Ǭ£1.8m in real money). She is claiming that it’s all because she was sexually harassed and didn’t receive what she should have done in the will.

Jo Ann Corrales says Brando “caused a hostile work environment due to his continuous acts of sexual harassment” toward her thoughout her employment with him, the newspaper says.

Corrales also claims she was owed commission on revenues earned, plus fees for being an executor of his will - but Brando removed her from that job shortly before he died.

She joins several Brando employees, including his PA and his caretaker, claiming cash after the will named nine children as beneficiaries. Brando died of lung failure on July 1.

You see this is the kind of leeching behaviour that gets on my goat. I’m sure that there may be real valid reasons behind it, but come on why wait to complain about his behaviour until after he’s dead, and will all that money make up for the alleged hostile environment? You could have left you know!

What riles me further is that there are other employees doing exactly the same thing. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, perhaps there really are some good reasons to sue a dead person for vast amounts of cash for something they might have done ages ago and you never complained about at the time under the standard employment laws.

I did consider not posting this, but it’s just an example of all the bad parts of being famous (and there’s nothing else to post about!), and more so being famous and dead. Brando’s estate is coming under such commercial attack it’s degrading the image of what Brando was and stood for, an iconic actor of his time. Just have a look at the previous post about his image branding.

Anyway, with all that good feeling and goodwill to all people, including ex-employees who are initiating law suits everywhere, may you all have a very good seasonal break (whether that be celebrated as Xmas or not) and a most enjoyable start to the New Year. If there is anything to post about over the next few weeks we will, and even if there isn’t anything there’s still plenty to write about.

Hope you get lot’s of movies in your presents!

Damn, talk about a bad shopping experience. According to Ananova, Beckinsale was Christmas shopping with her personal assistant after the premiere of The Aviator when some thieves snatched her purse. On a personal note, I can think of several other things I’d probably grab if I were running by Kate Beckinsale… but I digress.

Then, while shopping the very next day, more thieves snatch her assistants purse. Ouch! Merry Christmas.

MTV Movies are carrying a small but interesting story that Producer Jerry Weintraub is interested in doing an Oceans Thirteen.

“The question is, how do you make another one that’s better than this one?” he said. “This one’s awful good. First one’s awful good. We found a way to make a better one this time, I think, so we’ll see if we have an idea, a way to do it, and we’ll do it.”

I haven’t seen Twelve yet, but it really does sound good, Eleven was great fun although I am spoiled by loving the Rat Pack and the original. Here’s hoping that this is more than the self promotion and that the curse of Police Academy won’t kill off his dream.

Coming Soon has a story from MTV Movies with comments from Jerry Bruckheimer who talks of where they really are with the Pirates sequels:

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer is negotiating with Geoffrey Rush to star in a third “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie. “That’s if there is a third one,” Bruckheimer said. “We’re hoping to start shooting [the second and third movies] in March, but we’re waiting for a very big check from Disney.” Bruckheimer said talk of Keith Richards playing Johnny Depp’s father is premature, although Depp, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley are all signed on to return, along with the director and writers from “Curse of the Black Pearl.”

How unreliable sources can be and quickly stories can spread. Looks like some of the earlier stories aren’t as concrete as we would have hoped, and no mention of Chow Yun-Fat either.

Reading between the lines here, it does look like they are go on number 2, and depending on casting and that big cheque, there may just be the third too.

The BBC’s Film critique program, Film 2004 (obviously that title will change next year!) has announced the results of it’s viewers poll. This is always a telling poll and is a good indication of what the UK audience really has enjoyed watching during the year.

This year the winner was the third part of a trilogy (that’ll be the final part then) that has won the award for each part in the past few years.

The two previous films in Peter Jackson’s trilogy, The Fellowship Of The Ring and The Two Towers, took the title in 2002 and 2003 respectively.

The run down of winners are:

1. The Return of the King
2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
3. Finding Neverland
4. Lost in Translation
5. Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban
6. Shaun of the Dead
7. Hero
8. The Incredibles
9. Spider-Man 2
10. Collateral

A very good list, and personally I am there with almost all of it. For me though number 3 and 5 are no shows in my top ten. In Neverland’s case it’s because I never saw it, and in Potter’s case it’s because I don’t want to see it.

Looks like Shaun has had a nice push for its British connections though, it’s lovely to see it up there I’m really not sure how it contends with Hero and Incredibles for me. I would see them above Shaun but it still in the listing. Definitely Sunshine and Translation that far up though.

What does everyone else think? Make sure when you post your thoughts or your top ten\five, that you mention what country you are from. I think that makes an interesting comparison.

From Moviehole:

“Blade Trinity” scene-stealer Ryan Reynolds tells today’s Herald Sun that his real-life squeeze, Alanis Morissette, is set to make a cameo in his next movie.

“Just Friends”, which started filming this week, stars the 28-year-old funnyman as a record executive who comes face to face with an old crush from his home town. The singer is said to be making a cameo in which “she beats the snot out of me”, Reynolds laughs.

Worried about a bit of a “Gigli” backfire though, working with your real life squeeze? “Not when it’s a tongue-in-cheek movie”, Reynolds says. “If you put them on a romantic lead pedestral, that’s dangerous. But I literally knock into her in the hallway and she’s going to just kick the crap out of me and keep walking”.

After seeing Blade Trinity (one of the worst films of 2004) I’m actually looking forward to seeing just about anything Ryan Reynolds appears in. He was the only bright spot in that piece of trash movie. Add that to the fact that he’s dating Alanis Morissette and he’s officially on my top 10 “Guys I’d like to be for a day” list.

You know, it’s a rare thing when you get a legitimate hottie like Scarlett Johansson who also is a soild actress. They’re worth they’re weight in gold. I personally can’t think of 10 off the top of my head. If for no other reason, her invovment in Mission Impossible 3 has me interested in seeing it.

So even though the film is still a ways away from production, the goold folks over at KillerMovies offers us this:

“It’s been postponed ’til September while it’s rewritten. But I’m doing weapons training for it!,” she told Contact Music. “Just pulling the trigger is easy enough, but when you’re loading your magazine and you have a machine gun and a handgun and a shotgun, and you’re trying to figure out how to use them all.”

Yummy… sounds like she’ll be doing some cool stuff. I really hope this film is a lot better than #2, which in my opinion was just terrible. Well, at least they’re not bringing Thandie Newton back.

As I said before in a previous post, I know I’ll take some heat for this, but I actually liked the first Miss Congeniality… a lot. I thought it was funny and kinda charming all at the same time. There, I said it.

So here we go, the first trailer is now up and online. You can mosey on over and give it a peak here.

I remember watching the original “Longest Yard” a few years ago on some network tv station. It was a man’s man movie, and Burt Reynolds was THE man. It was a pretty fun movie, and it came as no surprise when I heard that a remake was coming our way.

So here it is folks, in all of it’s re-make goodness. Personally I’m not all that impressed, but it’s not too bad and does have potential. If you want to take a peak at the trailer you can go here.

Oh this makes me laugh. Oliver Stone has defended his film Alexander by saying, just so as not to upset or alienate anyone, that it’s…

…themes and approaches are too complex for Hollywood tastes.

The Guardian continues the story with his comments at the Marrakech film festival:

The director told attendees…that the bold themes were too risqu√ɬ© for filmgoers with “conventional minds”.

According to Screendaily.com he told an audience at the Moroccan event: “The script was just too ambiguous, too questioning about an action-hero who was masculine/feminine.

“These are tough qualities in Hollywood.

“It’s just too big a life. It doesn’t fit in into the Hollywood formula.”

Stone speculated that Hollywood producers and studios would have transformed the story into a revenge saga as Alexander pursued the men who killed his father. “Revenge movies are the western ethos,” he said “One of the problems with the movie for the conventional mind is there is no villain.”

Stone also denied rumours circulating in the press that he was preparing to direct a biopic of Margaret Thatcher.

Yeah, yeah, whatever, but no Margaret Thatcher biopic? NO! That’s another great let down of the day!

[Alexander] has been a flop in the US, taking roughly $29m in its first two weeks, having cost $150m to make.

Still, let’s see how it does in Europe eh, after all it was backed largely by European funds so it may be recouped here, and I’m reserving final judgement until I actually see it.