Hey there guys! This post is more for our regular readers who have been following The Movie Blog for a while. You may have noticed that over the last few months, I haven’t been posting nearly as much as I usually do and that Rodney has been picking up most the slack. Well… there is a very good reason for that:
A few months ago I was contacted by AMC Theatres and agreed to become the Editor for their brand spanking new movie news blog “Script To Screen”. Since that time we’ve been working on getting the site ready for launch… and yesterday, the new AMC site went LIVE! You can see the new site here.
I’m joined by my new associate editor, the immortal Kellvin Chavez, who is also the Editor n’ Chief over at Latino Reviews, and by our contributing writer Christina Warren of Mashable (you’ve been hearing her on our podcasts a lot lately). We’re adding more writers in the coming days as well.
First of all… I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to continue to do The Movie Blog as a place for my thoughts and opinions, and I’ll be doing AMC STS for news. Now that the STS site is finally up, you’ll be seeing more from me around here on The Movie Blog.
This is going to be a great arrangement for The Movie Blog, and I’m really looking forward to getting the ball rolling!
Sorry for my absence, but it’s been a hectic couple of months and we’ve had to keep quiet about it. But now we’re live. Thank you for all your continued support and encouragement!
As a side note, today I put up my first video for AMC. It’s a quick interview with our old friend Milo Ventimiglia from Heroes about his new movie Armored coming out next month. You can see it here:
The opening segment of The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day has been put up online.
This gets right to the meat of the film setting the pace of the film in about 5 minutes, recapping the first movie and jumping head long into the next.
This looks like its going to be a kickass ride. Billy Connolly’s assessment at the beginning says it all. They called out the Brothers by killing a priest and making it look like the Saints did it. Only one problem with that. It worked.
I love that.
And knowing those sassy legs at the end of the clip belong to Julie Benz makes this all that much better!
Golf is just one of those sports that I find no appeal in whatsoever. I have played a couple times, and I enjoy the company of those I am with more than the game itself but I can do that without a golf course.
That being said, I find golf movies entertaining almost in spite of the sport itself being as amusing as watching grass grow. Especially golf comedies.
And Steve Carell looks to be heading up Missing Link, a new golf comedy that no doubt will have my attention.
GeekTyrant says:
It’s looking like Carell will produce and possibly star in a new golfing comedy called Missing Links, which is based on the novel by ESPN’s Rick Reilly. Carell would play a golfer angling for a better place to play. The story follows a group of bumblers who, after playing for years at a run-down municipal golf course in a working-class Boston neighborhood, concoct a series of schemes that they hope will lead to them teeing off at a nearby elite club.
I like Steve Carell for his humble everyday man personality and this looks like a good fit if he is to star in it as well.
Sometimes when playing video games there are cutscenes that are just so amazing I wonder what a whole film created using the same stylings would look like.
Well that film might just be The Cup of Tears, a CGI Live action Hybrid film directed by Gary Shore.
Geek Tyrant describes it as:
Follows a scorned geisha who creates a magical cup made of tears that causes any man who drinks from it to fall into a permanent sleep. One night the cup is stolen, setting off a chain of events that threatens civil war amongst the clans. Taro, a gifted samurai, sets out to find the cup and one who can break the spell.
That was pretty awesome.
This was filmed on an ultra low budget using the new RED camera (Same camera John used for The Anniversary). Recently discussions about live action anime adaptations costing too much to meet the visual appeal of its source material. I think this is an option that certainly proves it is possible.
I do like the layout and the shelved collection of oddities and other characters in the background, and I don’t even mind the pun of the slogan “Holmes for the Holiday” as this is being released for the Christmas season.
But damn, they airbrushed the hell out of RDJ to the point that he looks a little like Alan Cumming. I wonder if this was even from a photo or if it’s off the video game cover? That barely looks like the smarmy actor cracking wise that we are used to. For a brief moment I thought he was recast and I missed the news.
I would have preferred to see a little more of Rachel McAdams in the poster to, but the film is called Sherlock Holmes, not Sherlock and his Amazing Friends.
Keira Knightley has won out for the role of Eliza Doolittle in a remake of the musical My Fair Lady.
Empire Online says
Keira Knightley, long rumoured to be on for the role, will shortly be starring as Eliza Doolittle in a redo of My Fair Lady. She’ll be re-teaming with Joe Wright (Atonement, Pride and Prejudice)
Keira seems destined to star in each and every period film in existance!
My wife loves her version of Pride and Prejudice (my favourite version as well), and I have no doubt she will be in love with this one as well. I will likely be forced to endure multiple viewings as well as the repeated scenes captured as I walk through the living room while she is bored on a Sunday afternoon.
But My Fair Lady is a musical, and I have yet to hear Miss Knightley’s vocal prowess, she has been reportedly taking singing lessons winning out the role over Scarlett Johansson.
The story is a musical version of the Pygmalion, which concerns Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl who takes speech lessons from professor Henry Higgins so that she can pass as a lady. Daniel Craig is already touted to be playing Higgins.
Let me first say that I have zero confidence in a Footloose remake. The director Kenny Ortega directed the High School Musical films, and while I enjoyed those for what they were (teen pop musicals) I didn’t see a real paralell to those and Footloose so I feared for its direction.
But it seems that Kenny Ortega has moved on from the project citing creative differences.
Chud shares:
Kenny Ortega has left the film over disagreements with Paramount’s production prez Adam Goodman over the tone and budget. Ortega, who has directed the High School Musical movies, wanted to make something with big musical numbers and spend a bunch of Paramount’s cash. Goodman, meanwhile, wants something ‘edgier’ and more of a drama - probably closer to the original than to the Broadway adaptation.
I think every last quality that made it great in the 80s is exactly why it wouldn’t work now.
In the 80s, dancing and music were not a part of pop culture, they WERE the culture. I can think of no other fad, style or mentality that dominated so many subcultures as music in the 80s did. No matter what you listened to, it defined you. This generation is still influenced by its music but not nearly to the degree that it did in the 80s.
So to have a film about a rebellious young hipster who moves to a small town where all that is banished, and actually illegal? That had REAL value. An updated story where they had a town where any one popculture influence was illegal, today’s youth wouldn’t relate. Remove any one popculture reference, and there are a dozen others to satisfy the crazed defining qualities of todays youth.
And that Ortega was directing implied to me they would be adapting the stage musical with the characters breaking into song and dance much like High School Musical. While that still had its appeal, it lost the message of Footloose to begin with. At least that is steering back towards the point of the original film.
Bottom line for me is that Footloose taught me how to dance. Not literally, but it gave me a deeper meaning to going to school dances and clubs. It wasn’t an activity or show. It was an outlet and expression. Today I don’t dance at all. Its just not the same. And frankly I would look like a retard to dance like I used to.
I worry that this remake would also look like that to me. Just not the same.
Broken Lizard has just enough low brow comedy to appeal to me without offending me completely. They have found just the right mix of “that’s just so wrong” and witty comedy to make just about anything funny.
That being said, I have patiently been waiting for The Slammin’ Salmon to get a theatrical release, and Christmas has come early for me as this December the film will be getting its wide theatrical release.
Anchor Bay’s theatrical distribution arm will be distributing THE SLAMMIN’ SALMON according to Variety. The flick is about a one night competition between a group of waiters where the top seller gets a $10,000 bonus and the loser gets the shit beat out of them by Michael Clarke Duncan who plays the dumb ex-boxer owner of this swanky Miami restaurant.
The trailer reminded me of the Ryan Reynolds film Waiting, which shows a dirty behind the scenes look at the restaurant business. It really made me question the fake smiles and tolerant faces of those who serve me at restaurants.
The Slammin Salmon however appears to be a more encapsulated story that deals with the events of one night, and I just love Michael Clarke Duncan’s character who is constantly impressed with his own charm. Beautiful.
If you haven’t seen the trailer, check it out here:
Netflix is taking the direct streaming content service by storm offering it on a multitude of platforms. This service is a free content service that delivers movies and TV shows via devices like a Roku set-top box or XBox 360.
And now finally they are getting Playstation 3 users on board!
Dark Horizons says:
Sony and Netflix have announced that they are teaming to make thousands of movies and TV episodes from Netflix available to be streamed instantly to TVs via the PlayStation 3.
Netflix expects to begin streaming via the PS3 system next month at no additional cost to Netflix members in the United States who have a PS3 system.
I bought my PS3 purely to kill two birds with one stone. First was to get a next gen gaming system for myself (kids got the Wii) as well as a BluRay player.
Once I got the unit, I found out that much like the 360, I could stream media from my computer making it the central hub of my living room entertainment system.
When I found out about the Roku set-top box to stream Netflix content, I was so Jazzed. And that you could do it with your 360 was interesting but I didn’t have a 360.
And then I found out you couldn’t get it in Canada. (If anyone knows a work around I would pay the service fee for a US Netflix account gladly) So while I find this all fine and dandy, and a step in the right direction for customized entertainment content delivery, I am really hoping that one day my grand country catches up with this technology!
Thanks for checking out our Astro Boy review. If you’d like to see a video version of our Astro Boy review you can watch it at the bottom of the written review below.
Like “Speed Racer” before it, Astro Boy was destined to bomb at the box office. Like Speed Racer, a semi-recognizable name that is too far removed from its days of popularity to the point that it lacked enough of a built in audience. Still, that doesn’t mean that the movie itself can’t be good (Speed Racer wasn’t). So off I went to see Astro Boy and I was very surprised by how strongly it started… but not so surprised about how it all went downhill from there.
THE GENERAL IDEA
The synopsis for Astro Boy reads something like this: “Set in futuristic Metro City, Astro Boy is about a young robot with incredible powers created by a brilliant scientist in the image of the son he has lost. Unable to fulfill the grieving man’s expectations, our hero embarks on a journey in search of acceptance, experiencing betrayal and a netherworld of robot gladiators, before he returns to save Metro City and reconcile with the father who had rejected him.”
THE GOOD
Without question the very best thing about Astro Boy was the hard hitting, and rather dark, first act that introduced us to the story. It was NOT what I was expecting. We are introduced to the brilliant scientist Dr. Tenma (voiced by Nic Cage) and his his bright excitable son. Being a kids film, I expected some sort of accident to happen where Dr. Tenma had to turn his son into a robot/cyborg in order to save his life and thus turn him INTO Astro Boy. What the film gave us was much darker. The son dies, and in his grief Dr. Tenma creates a Robot in his son’s image to replace him. He gives the robot all the weaponry and defenses science has conceived of to make sure nothing ever happend to this version of his son like it did to the last one. The emotional depth if this was surprisingly effective, and it got even better as the doctor realizes the robot does not replace his son, and only serves to remind him of what he lost… leading to him rejecting the robot (Astro Boy). This whole component, in my opinion, was handled brilliantly and gave the rest of the movie a solid base to launch from.
Some of the action in the film was quite visually appealing from both the perspectives of animation and cinematography. Those elements help the film become something quite pleasant to look at… if there was no sound… but unfortunately there was. Which leads us too…
THE BAD
After the effective first act, the film just spirals out of control to become the cheesy, cliche riddled, unfunny, uninteresting, ineffective piece of cinematic drivel we all feared it would be.
One of my pet peeves in movies are useless characters. Characters who serve no function other that to take up valuable screen time and whose presence would not be missed in the slightest if they were to suddenly disappear. There are a group of these characters called the Robot Revolutionary Front. A small group of three robots dedicated to freeing robots from human enslavement. They don’t… do… ANYTHING. Their actions and presence have absolutely no effect, positively or negatively on the story or the path of the film. The movie itself acknowleges this at the end when Astro looks to them and say “Thanks for everything” to which the robots respond “well… I guess we didn’t actually DO anything”. So true… so true. If you’re going to have useless characters taking up screen time… at least make them funny or entertaining is SOME way. These things weren’t.
I need to do an editorial post about this later… but WHY DO THESE ANIMATED MOVIES FEEL THE NEED TO USE ALL HIGH PROFILE ACTORS FOR THE VOICE ROLES?!?!?! It’s stupid. The only voice that remotely worked was that of Bill Nighy who voices Dr. Tenma’s best friend. All the other voices were flat, emotionless and usually distracting. What ever happened to using… you know… trained VOICE actors for these movies? But I’ll go into that in another post later.
OVERALL
Astro Boy stars off with a bang, but then echoes out into an android like whimper. Clearly little to no thought was put into this movie other than “Hey, let’s do an Astro Boy movie”. No good humor, no interesting characters, no story and a completely wasted fantastic introduction leaves this film wanting. Because of how effective I thought the first act was, I’ll go so far as to give Astro Boy a 4.5 out of 10.
The hype machine has already been moving full forward for Tron Legacy, but this is the first look at an official poster… which is probably fake.
The image is clearly supposed to be a disc weapon from the film, but with that title “It’s not just a game anymore” it automatically made me think it was a Simon Says electronic game from the 80s. Well a two tone version anyways.
With films like Viewmaster and Battleship coming out I wouldn’t put it past them but I am satisfied that this image is making its way about the intarwebs with the forewarning that its very likely fake.
Considering all the other amazing visuals, I would hope we would get something better than this.
George Miller, the man behind Mad Max 4: Fury Road, allowed some media types to follow him around the set where they are building some of the cars to be used in the film.
In the clip we barely get a glimpse of the cars, and he talks about how they are spending the next year creating them, as well as addressing the casting rumours. He doesn’t mention Charlize Theron or Sam Worthington by name but sidetracks it saying that nothing is finalized as of yet, downgrading those casting news back down to rumours.
He then sidetracks to talk about the climate of movie production in New South Wales.
An interesting view just to glimpse those topics, however I would have liked to have actually seen THE CARS!! We get a look at an engine as he muses about their production, but no real look at them.
Well we have more than a year, so I am sure it will come up eventually.
Mamma Mia is headed into the Hollywood machine to churn out a sequel to the highly successful musical featuring the stylings of Abba.
But will it be the music of Abba? One might presume as much considering the title, and Seyfried has expressed her feelings of leaving out Abba.
Cinema Blend says:
There seems to be some confusion among the movie’s cast as to exactly what songs they’ll be singing in the next film. Last month Colin Firth said here that they’d be picking a new band to provide the sequel’s lyrics but Seyfried insists, “I know it’s still going to be Abba music, because what else would it be. Come on, I wouldn’t do Mamma Mia 2 without Benny and Bjorn.”
I was conflicted with Mamma Mia, but I enjoyed the music and especially the surprisingly adorable vocal talents of Amanda Seyfried. But I also wondered exactly who lost a big game of poker to get Brosnan in there. Man he was terrible.
But still, Mamma Mia made tons of money so why not do a sequel. Maybe Seyfried will sleep around with three different guys then hatch an elaborate plot to lure them to her island paradise to find out who the baby daddy is. Maury can cameo.
Paranormal Activity is one of those films that needs no advertising because the word of mouth on this and its viral status alone did it all.
But as per the rule in Hollywood, if it makes money (and this film made 2000 times its cost on its first week) then they will likely do a sequel.
Dark Horizons shares:
Costing a mere $11,000 to make, the studio picked up the rights to the film for $300,000 and spent less than $10 million on marketing with most of the promotion coming from online viral campaigns and word of mouth via a staged rollout releasing scheme throughout October.
Going wide this week, the film sat at the top of the box-office with $22 million - easily beating the critically slammed “Saw VI” which opened in more theatres to $14.8 million.
This phenomenon is widely being compared to The Blair Witch, and we saw how that sequel worked out so well.
The very reason that this film made so much money and gained so much popularity is precisely why they should hesitate to make a sequel.
Thanks for checking out our “The Vampire’s Assistant” review.
Continuing the trend of young adult books being turned into movies comes Cirque Du Freak: The Vampires Assistant. The trailers for the film seemed interesting enough, but right from the first time I saw one, the casting of John C. Reilly as the Vampire Crepsley seemed out of place. It’s almost as if I expected to see Will Ferrell in the next clip. Still, I’ve always enjoyed Reilly’s work in both drama and comedy, so why not as a Vampire? So off I went to see The Vampire’s Assistant. Was it worth it? Yes, but I can’t help but feel there was a lot of missed potential.
THE GENERAL IDEA
The synopsis for The Vampire’s Assistant reads something like this: “A young boy named Darren Shan meets a mysterious man at a freak show who turns out to be a Vampire. After a series of events Darren must leave his normal life and go on the road with the Cirque Du Freak and become a Vampire.”
THE GOOD
The trailers for the movie made it out to be a very thin concept of some young boy bored with his life who decides to run off and become a Vampire for thrills. However, that’s quite misleading and the underlying mythology and background story to the film is MUCH deeper and actually quite rich. There are two fractions of Vampires (One called Vampires and one called Vampanese. The only difference between them is that one kills humans to drink their blood, and the other just knock out humans to drink SOME of their blood. So it’s just a philosophical difference, nothing else) that have lived under a peace truce for 100 years. However, there is an ancient prophecy of the two sides going to war, both lead by young leaders, which brings about the apocalypse. As the film progresses we learn of the role Darren has to play in this. The idea is rich and leaves me quite interested in seeing a sequel (if they ever get to make one).
Where the film tries to be funny… it modestly succeeds. Though I can’t remember any “laugh out loud” moments in the movie, there are a good number of giggles which kept the tone light.
Despite the fact that his role is a relatively small one, Ken Wantanabe always just blows me away and his performance as the head of Cirque du Freak, Mr. Tall, he gives an erie and dark feel of texture to the movie that is otherwise missing from the film. This guy is just amazing.
THE BAD
This film reminds me a lot of the first Underworld movie. A fantastic mythology and background story, that is ultimately wasted. Referenced in passing, but left on the shelf for a much inferior plot line. In the case of The Vampire’s Assistant, the movie abandons this terrific mythology it introduces us to about the Vampire war prophecy for 90% of the movie in favor of whimsical teenage jokes of a kid adjusting to being a Vampire. It was such a wasted opportunity.
I think John C. Reilly is beyond fantastic, but as I suspected from the trailers, this movie is a firm example of miscasting. I was never able to buy him as a fearsome warrior Vampire general, nor was I able to buy him in his softer moments. Essentially, Reilly was a bust in this movie, and without buying into the character of Crepsley, the rest of the film seems to buckle under its own weight.
An efficient movie introduces us to side characters who, without taking up too much valuable screen time, add more dimension and depth to a movie… but not in this movie. We get introduced to a series of freaks who add NOTHING to the movie and just eat up screen time. For example… the snake boy you see in the trailers… if you remove him from the film… NOTHING CHANGES. If you remove Orlando Jones, NOTHING CHANGES. I kept expecting some sort of relevance to be revealed about these characters in relation to the story… but it never comes.
OVERALL
The Vampire’s Assistant has a terrific foundation for a solid movie with an interesting mythology and background, but wastes all that potential as it uses its screen time for other, more useless stuff. John C. Reilly is completely miscast and never works as the key character in the film. I’d be willing to see a sequel because of the potential of the mythology, but I wouldn’t recommend this movie on its own merits to anyone. Over all I give The Vampire’s Assistant a 4 our of 10.
A clever little webcomic online called xkcd often tickles me, and today’s strip embodies exactly how I feel about the scale of Movie Quality vs Movie Enjoyability.
Everytime you look back and wonder if there was ever anything worse than JarJar in the Star Wars films, remember the Holiday Special. George Lucas denies it exists for a reason.
He still accepts that JarJar exists even though he knows it was not his best idea!
With Star Trek 2 a foregone conclusion the questions arose as to just who would be in the film. One name we thought was forever lost to the franchise was William Shatner since his character died in Generations.
Well what would Star Trek be without a time travel plot device? Someone really has to put a lockdown on that tech … seriously.
Get the Big Picture quotes Abrams:
“The problem was his character died on screen in one of his Trek films and because we decided, very early on, that we wanted to adhere to Trek canon as best we could…the required machinations to get Shatner into the movie would have been very difficult to do given the story we wanted to tell and also to give him the kind of part that he would be happy with.”
Adds the director-producer, “It was this thing where it would have felt like a gimmick in order to get Shatner in the movie, which would have honestly, to me, been distracting.” But the past, as they say, is prologue. And now that the story can go new directions, Abrams says he’s “open to anything.”
So while Abrams is open to the idea, it doesn’t mean it will happen but this is a nice reminder that with Trek effectively getting a Reboot with this sequel, there is no reason we can’t see Shatner involved.
I could see them having Shatner appear, but he wouldnt neccessarily be the exact older James T Kirk that we all know from the original series. Perhaps he makes an appearance as future Kirk that shows Pine-Kirk what became of him later in life due to a choice he is about to make. Maybe Shat-Kirk will be the Kirk who comes back in time to change his own history… again.
I kind of hope they don’t go that way JUST to have Kirk involved. Let Shatner play Pine-Kirk’s grandfather or something like that just to suggest the family resemblance.
I want this new Trek to move forward, not bury itself in its own past.
One of the things I love about the Spiderman movies was the quiet addtion of Peter’s college professor Dr. Connors, who comic fans are well aware later becomes Spiderman’s enemy The Lizard.
Well with all the speculation around who the potential villains could be for Spiderman 4, we throw another log on that fire as Dylan Baker, the actor who played Connors confirms he is back for part 4.
ScreenRant says
Dylan Baker, the actor who played the minor role of Dr. Curt Connors in the last two Spider-Man movies has confirmed that he’ll be in Spider-Man 4. Now, this doesn’t mean we’ll be seeing his scaly alter ego known as The Lizard, but it sure wouldn’t be surprising.
If they DON’T go with the Lizard as the villain, I would be shocked. This would be the longest buildup to a character appearance EVER. Especially considering the previous badguys have all been introduced and sprang to life within one film.
So Baker has confirmed that Connors will return, but not neccessarily The Lizard.
I would love to see the Lizard or Mysterio be the badguys, but only if it works. Multiple villains is not a bad thing if written well. But if you can’t make it work, I would sooner see Lizard instead of Mysterio.
Ghost in the Shell is one of those mastpeices of Anime like Akira that hold up over the years. It is among my favourite animated films of all time.
Now Dreamworks is trying to make it a live action film again.
First Showing
DreamWorks has hired screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis to adapt the Ghost in the Shell manga into a futuristic live-action 3D police thriller.
As with any film with as many rich visuals and effects, I worry that the undertaking to make a faithful adaptation will cost more than Avatar, and therein lies its risk to make its money back.
I personally am excited to see some of these animated wonders be given life as a live action feature and I don’t jump to the conclusion that they will rape the Asian stylings out of the film like everyone assumes the Akira adaptation will do.
Not saying they won’t, but I have faith that if they are choosing these as source material, they will want to be faithful to it to some extent.
This project was shelved when Speilberg tried to roll the ball, so who knows if this has more legs or not.
Deciding against an Ice Age 4 (yet) Blue Sky Studios and Fox Animation will be creating Rio, with voice acting by Anne Hathaway and Neil Patrick Harris.
Anne Hathaway, Neil Patrick Harris and Rodrigo Santoro are negotiating to lend their voices to “Rio,” the next collaboration between Blue Sky Studios, Fox Animation and director Carlos Saldanha, all of whom are riding the $882 million global tsunami of “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.”
“Rio,” which follows the adventures of a nerdy macaw who lights out from his small-town Minnesota cage for the exotic Summer Olympic city of Rio de Janeiro, is scheduled for an April 8, 2011, release. Like “Dinosaurs,” it will be filmed in 3D digital animation.
I find Hathaway to be irresistable and only half of that includes what her mouth does. But still she has a melodic pleasant voice I could enjoy in animation. But what really got me here is NPH doing voice casting.
That man is the master of the spoken word. He could speak the alphabet and I would be amused by it. So despite this plot sounding like a ripoff Madagascar (domesticated animal returns to his wild origins?) I am looking forward to seeing how it shapes up!
