Thursday, November 30, 2006
News Round-Up: 11/30/06
The FANTASTICAR! Silly name, but one of the most recognizable trademark vehicles in all of superhero comics. USA Today has a first glimpse of the First Family's sweet new ride, which will make its debut in the upcoming Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. The design is neat and futuristic, and as faithful as it needs to be. It even has that special kiddie/retard seat in the back for Ben "Ever-Lovin' Blue Eyed" Grimm. Expect to see the Fantasticar and its passengers whizzing into theaters next summer, and expect audiences to wonder why the hell Human Torch is riding in it when he can already fly. -- Brad Millette
Source: USATODAY.com
So Eddie Murphy is in talks to reprise the role of Axel Foley for Beverly Hills Cop IV. Does that mean it's really happening? Probably. What with the resurgence of some of these 80s pop franchises, that is. Also, it's probably a really good time for a film like this in the eyes of Paramount. Murphy, despite what we think of his recent films, still seems to bring in the monies. And if his Oscar buzz for Dreamgirls (a Paramount/DreamWorks venture) is to be believed (from what I know, I don't see why not), then it'll make Murphy all the more enticing of a commodity, both to the studio and the public.
Oh, kinda related in "FINALLY!" news - Delirious is hitting DVD on February 6th. Thank the almighty gay Mr. T! -- George Merchan
Source: Variety
Joe Carnahan's Smokin' Aces gets another new trailer almost exactly a month after the last (slightly better) one was released. This one seems to distill the plot a bit better, though it features no Jason Bateman which makes me wanna ;_;. It still looks like two tons of fun, although I have heard one camp call it an absolute waste while another said it was, like, the greatest thing ever. I know. I don't know what to do with myself either.
Joe Carnahan does, however. According to Variety and CHUD, he will next be directing George Clooney in White Jazz, the latest of James Ellroy's "L.A. Quartet" books to get the adaptation treatment (The Black Dahlia and L.A Confidential being the other two - The Big Nowhere has yet to be adapted). The film will be written by Matthew Michael Carnahan, Joe's brother. Did you know that Matthew Michael Carnahan also penned the script for the upcoming Peter Berg film, The Kingdom. It stars Jason Bateman. And Smokin' Aces stars both Jason Bateman AND Peter Berg. The circle's complete. I'm out, negroes. -- George Merchan
Source: Apple, Variety, CHUDDiscuss this and other Fakery on our message boards! Continue reading News Round-Up: 11/30/06
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
News Round-Up: 11/29/06
Preacher, Garth Ennis' fart joke filled comic book magnum opus, will be making its way to HBO as a new series. On the plus side, this is a step forward for adaptations of long, single arc comic series. An hour long HBO television series simply seems like the best way to tell this kind of story, rather than trying to cram 60-plus issues of a book into a two hour movie, or a trilogy. On the down side, it's still Preacher, and it's being helmed by Mark Steven Johnson, the visionary behind Daredevil and the upcoming Ghost Rider. Still, maybe with some tight editing and snipping away a lot of the useless fat of the series, something great could come out of this. My casting predictions: Danny Trejo for the Saint of Killers and Jennifer Love Hewett for Arseface. -- Brad Millette
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
While having a pretty terrible tagline, the poster for Texas Chainsaw Massacrer Marcus Nispel's viking epic Pathfinder is a pure work of art. Reminiscent of the great Frank Frazetta - the incredible artist responsible for bringing Conan to life through his covers for Robert E. Howard's Cimmerian novels - the art suggests a lot of violence and grit, but with an epic feel. Also, huge guys with horned helmets. Let's hope the film lives up to its marketing. -- Charlie Brigden
Source: IMP Awards
As Scott mentioned yesterday, Poltergeist might be getting remade. Poltergeist is a film that has a sucky DVD that isn't even available in England. It's also a classic. Remakes aren't really news until they actually suck up your local multiplex and, really, you could re-write the first sentence of this story with 'x' genre film over twenty years old and it will probably still be correct. The interesting thing is that the producers are re-working an 'original' haunted house script into a more faithful redo, probably because they have the rights for the famous title. Adrift is a film about young people stranded in the ocean, made because Open Water was succesful. It has no other relation to Open Water. It is being released as Open Water 2: Adrift in the States. Also the Day of the Dead remake, with the hints of biological testing as the source for zombiehood, seems to be doing the same. Shameless! -- Andrew Clarke
Source: Bloody-Disgusting, DavisDVD
Here's a victory for the anti-remake contingent! Sony has lost interest in the Robocop remake. While I'm sure that that's only one of the scores of remakes in the pipe, it's a good one not to see. Hollywood, if you're going to remake something, remake something that was a good idea but was deeply flawed in some way. Or remake something that's reeeally, reeeally old. Or, ya know, make something original. -- Scott Roche
Source: Bloody-Disgusting
I'm not easily embarrassed. Let's face it, once you've admitted to liking The Mummy, there's almost nothing worse that you can admit to. So here it is... I've seen both Starship Troopers movies. Now, in my defense I only paid to see the first one and that was well before I knew how to check to see if a movie sucked or not before I went to see it. Sadly TFL didn't exist at that point. Could have saved me six bucks. Anyway, on to the news: Starship Troopers 3 is likely to be greenlit by Sony. Screenwriter Ed Neumeier (Robocop) says “Plans are afoot to shoot next year. Casper Van Dien will be back as Colonel John Rico. There'll be a new bug or two. Also draft riots. Religion makes a comeback. And the Federation has a new weapon.” I think I'll take a pass on this. -- Scott Roche
Extra Bonus Unwanted Opinion: Starship Troopers is teh awsum. While it's fair enough if people don't like it for its gleeful violence and general tastelessness, there are people who don't like this ironically fascistic film because it is not close enough to its genuinely fascistic source book. They should be sent to work camps. -- Andrew Clarke
Source: Moviehole.net
He looks like Lee Marvin. POSTMORTEM. -- Ben Miro
Source: PeopleDiscuss this and other Fakery on our message boards! Continue reading News Round-Up: 11/29/06
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
News Round-Up: 11/28/06
This news got missed what with all the eating of pumpkin pie and such, but apparently Del Toro will be shooting a trailer for At the Mountains of Madness. The studios are understandably a bit skittish about filming a movie this challenging. Guillermo says "I'm trying to do a trailer to show the studio what the movie could be. I finished the script three years ago, I already have my designs and I believe we are three quarters of the way there but the studio needs another push. So I'm going to make a trailer to show Warner Brothers what the movie could be. Because I believe that movie could be absolutely amazing." Given the acclaim that Pan's Labyrinth is getting (read TFL's own poncey review here) I would hope that they could recognize what this man is capable of without trotting out a test reel. But if it means we could get a leaked glimpse of what's in his brain sooner rather than later, I'm with it. -- Scott Roche
Source: TimeOut
As already mentioned by our own Insincere Dave, Go Go Tales, a comedy directed by indie filmmaker Abel Ferrara, began filming in Rome this week. What's that mean to you and I? Well if a comedy starring Willem Dafoe and Bob Hoskins doesn't spike your interest meter, then how about the thought of Asia Argento dancing in a cage (the real reason for this particular news blurb)? "The film is about one evening in Ray Ruby’s Paradise, a classy go go/cabaret in downtown Manhattan , that is a factory of dreams and dreamers, run by the charismatic impresario Ray Ruby (Dafoe)". -- Scott Roche
Source: Production Weekly
You know what would be a good idea? Remaking a successful film that came out twenty odd years ago. It's a wonder that no one ever thought of that before MGM decided to give Poltergeist the treatment. Apparently, it will be a frame for frame remake a la Psycho or The Hills Have Eyes. A search for a director is currently on the way. -- Scott Roche
Source: Bloody-Disgusting
Spidey gets the sexiest posters. This one's no exception in my book. It sums up the inner conflict that has molded Parker throughout the three movies. It isn't perfect as the reflection doesn't look quite right, but I love the painted look. -- Scott Roche
Source: IMP AwardsDiscuss this and other Fakery on our message boards! Continue reading News Round-Up: 11/28/06
Insincere Dave's News-O-Rama
Behold the latest movie-related goss, with commentary by our newest member, Insincere Dave...
From TheOneRing.net: Word from a reliable source indicates that Sam Raimi has been approached to direct THE HOBBIT. Since Peter Jackson's (Middle-)earth shattering news that he is off the project, it seems the Spider-Man director may step into his place.
"They should get Ralph Bakshi to do it. His Lord of the Rings was really good!"
From Variety: Fox Atomic has officially ceased production on its remake of "Revenge of the Nerds," which the division had hoped to release next summer. Project was put on hold earlier this month after two weeks of filming when Emory U. in Atlanta, where the pic was skedded to shoot, decided not to participate in the film."That's a real shame!"
From Dark Horizons: Talk about your cushy gig - scribe Akiva Goldsman has been offered US$4 million to write the screen version of "Da Vinci Code" author Dan Brown's "Angels & Demons"."Batman & Robin had a superbly written script!"
From Dark Horizons: Control, Anton Corbijn's film about Joy Division, has come under fire from the remaining members of the band. New Order were to record the soundtrack but bassist Peter Hook has said things are not going according to plan."Joy Division are dead cheerful!"
From The BBC: Willem Dafoe, Bob Hoskins and Matthew Modine will star in Go Go Tales. Abel Ferrara has written and will direct this screwball comedy, after a year of trying to get it off the ground. Legal wrangles between Ferrara and the film's Italian financiers are to blame for the delay."Bad Lieutenant was a comedy classic!"
From Cinematical: Had Sean Connery taken the lucrative deal that was presented to him in 1999 by New Line Cinema to play Gandalf the Grey in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, he could have cleared up to as much as $434 million. Peter Jackson is quoted as saying that Rings executive producer Mark Ordesky told him "New Line was prepared to give him [Connery] between 10 percent and 15 percent of the films' income." Had that happened, Connery would have cashed more scratch for a single project than any actor in history."Sean Connery is really a badger inside a Dalek!"With apologies to Paul Rose.Discuss this and other Fakery on our message boards! Continue reading Insincere Dave's News-O-Rama
Monday, November 27, 2006
Enemies Of Dorothy
The Wizard of Oz is pretty gay and anyone who likes it is a homosexual male, including all small children and my gran. Well The Sci-Fi channel, home of the sorts of nerds whos' sexuality is likely to remain entirely moot, is getting rid of the poofy stuff and making what seems to be a completely hetero Wiz. Join me after the fold to read the synopsis.
(This synopsis lifted wholesale from Sci Fi Wire)
The show "centers on DG, a young woman plucked from her humdrum life and thrust into The Outer Zone (the O.Z.), a fantastical realm filled with wonder, but oppressed by dark magic. DG discovers her true identity, battles evil winged monkey-bats and attempts to fulfill her destiny. Her perilous journey begins on the fabled Old Road that leads to a wizard known as the Mystic Man. Along the way, she is joined by "Glitch," an odd man missing half his brain; "Raw," a quietly powerful wolverine-like creature longing for inner courage; and "Cain," a heroic former policeman (known in the O.Z. as a "Tin Man"), who is seeking vengeance for his scarred heart. Ultimately, DG's destiny leads her to a showdown with the wicked sorceress Azkadellia, whose ties to DG are closer than anyone could have imagined."
I hope you can join with me while I smash my head to pieces on my keyboard.
;iofsa;ingawoihpegaio;newfbk;.nvwq enea vsu;pwsui;pEAVSULI;O;OEIWAVV;DISAVNO;I
Of course, those fuckers behind the Battlestar Galactica remake have gone and stopped us from automatically dismissing any seemingly unwise remake before we've actually seen it. Nevertheless, this sounds like a nu-metal soundtrack. I give myself the option of changing my opinion when we find out how hot DG (vasldndavsn daf dsalqesvo;u) is.
"We're off to see the wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz.
You'll find he is a whiz of a Wiz! If ever a Wiz! there was.
If ever or ever a wiz there was the Wizard of Oz is one because
because because because be-caaaauuuuussseee...
Because of the wonderful things that he does!
We're off to see the wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz!"
Source: Sci Fi WireDiscuss this and other Fakery on our message boards! Continue reading Enemies Of Dorothy
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Trailer Park Handjob: 11/26/06
After hundreds of artists spend hundreds of millions of dollars and several years of their lives creating a work of cinema, they hand over the footage to some of the greatest editors on the planet to distill it down to two minutes of the very purest excitement and it turns out to be slightly less fun than a YouTube of some skater squashing his bollocks on a rail. Trailers!
First up is the first full teaser trailer for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. We had the teaser to the teaser last week. It's best not to make jokes about where this marketing stretegy is heading, as it will inevitably head there. Anyway, here the first image we see is an aerial shot of London's Canary Wharf. This is signifying modernity in a franchise that mostly felt like it could have been happening a hundred years ago. It is attempting to be as bold and unexpected an image as possible, though it is a gamble as much of the appeal of Harry Potter is the idea of living in a timeless faux-medievel bubble, away from the utter drabness of the modern world as represented by the Dursleys. After this we get the odd flash of new characters (including a possibly hot goth evil witch) but mostly we get tension building action movie beats about Evil Voldemort coming back and having lots of power and being all destructive and of Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe trying to look angry while talking about fighting. We can assume that there won't be too many herbology lesson scenes in this movie. The teaser ends with witches and wizards flying broomsticks down the Thames, which is a great image but mostly brings to mind the city battle in Superman 2, both in concept and technical ability. The last shot of Harry zooming towards the camera is especially cheesy. Frame by frame tells us he doesn't have his fist out. Shame. Watch it here.
Curse of the Golden Flower: Zhang Yimou proves here that not only can he make beautiful, epic, exciting, intelligent and emotional martial arts movies like Hero, but he can bang them out every couple of years. His latest stars Chow Yun Fat and Gong Li and tells the tale of royalty, secrets, betrayal, and what happened to those massive armies since they got laid off after The Lord of the Rings trilogy ended. The most important thing to note about this trailer is that it has been cut to terrible Hollywood action music making it feel as much like generic action crap as possible. Maybe they think it has a chance of spreading beyond the art houses and so are trying to appeal to those morons who think that sort of music rocks. In the event of a nuclear attack, it's going to be those people in the depths of the flyover states that survive. Makes you think. Watch the trailer here. Watch the older, better trailers here.
How about yet another trailer for crappy kids fantasy piece of crap, Eragon? The joke is, of course, on us adults for spending time wondering if this crappy piece of kiddie dragon crap will be crap or not but, while we're here, let's have a look. The sub LOTR sfx are all present and correct (the flying things move too fast, without weight and the smoke effects look worse than the 5 year old Balrog), there are the excellent actors (Jeremy Irons, John Malkovich) slumming it for some money, and there's the aryan youth we're supposed to empathise with. We get some dialogue from him here and, bless him, he's dropping his voice as low as possible so he sounds all butch and strong. Actually he comes over smug and entitled, like the jock with the rich parents, trolling through college expecting every hottie to fall on his dick. Maybe his smugness is part of the character arc, but bloody hell is he smug. I thought stories about riding dragons were power fantasies for meek little children who get bullied in real life. Why have the main character be one of the bullies? Anyway, the leading lady is hot, looks disconcertingly like a young Cate Blanchett, and at least seems old enough not to feel bad about the thoughts you have about her (The Hermione Effect). Also, right near the end, she kicks away a sword while wearing a dress and it rides all the way up her perfect thigh to her bum. It's far too quick to see in the actual trailer, but this is why God made the frame-by-frame button. And nerds lonely. Watch here!
How about the trailer for the remake of The Hitcher? No? Me neither. This trailer is introduced by the young lady who stars in the film who tells me personally to watch the film when it comes out in January and the look in her eye told me she'd go down on me in the theatre if I went. But she was looking directly at me, understand. Not you. Got it? Good. Anyway, she then spends the next two minutes being unbelievably whiny, squawky and annoying while acting very badly. The twist for this version is that there are now two kids that pick up the hitcher - one annoyingly stubbled boy and one annoyingly everything girl. At least the trailer tells us the boy gets ripped apart between two trucks. Unfortunately the trailer also tells us the girl, chased through the desert by a psycho, terrorised and shot at, leaps from a burning vehicle into a hero shot that looks taken out of a make-up commercial. Fans of Sean Bean, playing the hitcher here, should know that he's perfectly capable of being bad in bad films, so he's no reason to get excited. Fans of Platinum Dunes, the Michael Bay run production company behind this and the most recent two Texas Chainsaw films, can just go fuck off. Watch it here!
NB: The poster displayed above is not actually for the upcoming remake, but for a film I have no reason to beleive is any worse than the upcoming remake. Plus C Thomas Howell and an awesomely stupid subtitle.
Also released: Are We Done Yet?. A title which pefrectly describes my reaction to the trailer. Sorry Ice Cube. And please stop scowling at me, or I'll force Ex-Lax down your throat. Watch here.
Miss Potter is a middlebrow drama absolutely begging for Oscar attention that promises to be very tasteful and awfully dull. This one is about Beatrix Potter, who wrote stories about cute animals. One for your mum. Watch here.
10 Items or Less is another studio film pretending to be an indie film by looking a bit low budget and not being set in space. Nonetheless, Brad Silberling's last movie was the $100m A Series of Unfortunate Events and in this film Morgan Freeman plays an actor researching a role for a big movie, so it's still firmly set in that cozy self-referential world of Hollywood no matter how many soulless supermarkets it shows. Also the very hot Paz Vega as a check out girl. Points for not resorting to uplifting music and hugs, but the shots of old people dancing and a clip of The Yearling come very, very close. I remain unconvinced. Maybe if Paz Vega promised to go down on me. Watch it here.
NB: The least rude picture of her I could find.
Discuss this and other Fakery on our message boards! Continue reading Trailer Park Handjob: 11/26/06
