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'Twilight: Eclipse' Will Run in IMAX Theaters
1 hour ago
The third Twilight film, Eclipse, will open in IMAX theaters the same day it
arrives in conventional megaplexes next summer. This is seriously good news for people dying to see cheap visual
effects at their most transparent and uninspiring.
The logic behind the move is simple: Money, money, money. The Hollywood Reporter quotes IMAX Filmed
Entertainment chief Greg Foster as saying the large screen exhibitor is "poised to take advantage of the rapidly
growing fan base devoted to this dynamic, cutting edge series."
Meanwhile, Summit's Richie Fay believes Twihards "will have a whole new way to experience this next installment of
the series, with the enhanced image and sound quality of the IMAX experience." Now if only those images were up to
par. Actually, the cinematography was pretty good in New Moon, but that werewolf CGI is about as believable
as the Minnelli-Gest marriage.
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- Colin Boyd
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Surprisingly Strong Trailer for 'Sorcerer's Apprentice'
6 hours ago
I guess I hadn't paid attention to the opening date for The Sorcerer's Apprentice before: It's July 16th, the same day as Christopher Nolan's Inception. I bring it up only because this is the easier sell of the two. For this movie, you don't need to see much more than the trailer and for Inception, a psychological drama that takes place within the architecture of the human mind...well, I'm not sure general audiences are going to dive right in to that.
I mention this trailer for Sorcerer's Apprentice being a good sales tool because, frankly, it is to millions of people who go to the movies to shut off their brains. The effects are actually very cool, it's got magic, explosions, and a movie star (Nic Cage), and it looks like a simple enough diversion in mid-July. Formula? Ok, sure. But there's a reason formulas are used, after all: They tend to work.
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- Colin Boyd
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'Ugly Truth' Director May Romance the Stone
9 hours ago
Ready for two more 80s movies revivals? Pajiba says Romancing the Stone is getting an update, which isn't exactly news, but it was dormant for almost a year before news of a remake went anywhere. Now the scuttlebutt is that Robert Luketic might direct, which has to thrill you no end.
Pajiba overstates it when saying Luketic is "the worst director in Hollywood," although I'm certainly not a fan. 21 was better than I thought going in, as was Legally Blonde, but and Monster-in-Law were not very good. The problem with a remake like this, not that it should be off-limits for any overriding reason in particular.
However, good luck matching the chemistry between Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. I mean, seriously. That was a once-or-twice-in-a-generation pairing that peaked a couple of times, in the original and, of course, War of the Roses. That brings up another point: Good luck matching
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- Colin Boyd
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Fincher's 'The Social Network' Opening October 15
12 hours ago
Yesterday, we updated a story from earlier yesterday about Resident Evil: Afterlife. It was strongly
rumored that the movie was having production issues stemming from the incorpororation of 3-D and would be pushed into 2011 from
August 2010. Milla Jovovich Tweeted that it hadn't happened, but then it did. And that was our update: Afterlife is now
January 14, 2011.
There was more news from Sony yesterday, too, as the studio announced a release date for The Social Network. Coming Soon reports that October 15, 2010 is the perfect time to find out more about the history of Facebook. The film is an odd mix: Facebook +
screenwriter Aaron Sorkin + director David Fincher + Zombieland's Jesse Eisenberg + Justin Timberlake.
The movie is currently in production (it got underway in October), and under normal circumstances, I'd say that's plenty of time.
Besides, studios always unveil their annual schedule so that, well, so that they can have a schedule.
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- Colin Boyd
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Josh Brolin Rumored for 'Men In Black 3'
14 hours ago
Sony wants to get back in the Men in Black business because it turns out Sony likes money. We
don't know that Will
Smith will be returning for MIB3, but if you were playing the odds, that'd be the safe bet.
Tommy Lee Jones would also be back in theory, and here's where it gets interesting: Josh Brolin is now rumored to be joining the
cast.
The Los Angeles
Times says that Brolin's role is still up in the air: "He could play a new single-monikered
government agent, with Tommy Lee Jones' Agent K passing the baton to Brolin's character. Or he could play Agent K as a young man. Or
something else entirely."
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- Colin Boyd
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Red Band Trailer - Michael Cera's 'Youth in Revolt'
17 hours ago
Ok, I have determined that the funny scenes in Youth in Revolt will indeed be funny. The latest trailer
is Red Band, meaning it's loaded with bad words, so we get extended clips of scenes from the film with which we've already become
familiar over the past few months. And there are even better punchlines in the not safe for work edition.
The one problem is that we're now three trailers in, the movie has already been pushed back from late October to January (not a big move, I understand), and we're still seeing the same basic material. So it could be that these small moments will all be great...and then you're saddled with 80 additional minutes of boredom. I rather doubt it, but it would be nice to see something we haven't already been exposed to, although I hear the novel is completely worth a read.
This could be
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- Colin Boyd
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Small 'Gears of War' Movie Update
20 hours ago
We have to be on the cusp of a great era of video game movies. I simply can't believe that with all the mistakes that have been made over the years, and with all the upcoming projects in the genre, things finally have to turn around. They just have to. Halo is still out there, Warcraft has Sam Raimi's attention, Call of Duty has had its name copyrighted for future movie use (it's a start), and then there's Gears of War.
This started going down the same road of a lot of its predecessors; Brett Ratner was attached to direct at one point, and who wants that? But it's kind of turned around, in my mind, at least, with the hiring of director Len Wiseman (Underworld, Live Free or Die Hard). But we're still a while away from seeing this in theaters, part of a wave of big movie adaptations of video games.
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- Colin Boyd
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'Zombieland' Writers May Tackle 'Deadpool' Script
8 December 2009 4:34 PM, PST
Deadpool may not need help, but it certainly needs to be different. He's a fantastic character, they probably have the right actor to portray him in Ryan Reynolds, and it could be the sort of comic book movie the two majors desperately need: Not full of itself, not overly dark and somber, not a true tentpole.
But something happened on the way to heaven, as Phil Collins once forgettably sang. Deadpool was latched onto this summer's Wolverine, and too uncomfortably for my taste. Fortunately (or not, depending on your perspective), the events of Wolverine have no bearing on the Deadpool movie...so pay no attention to what you saw, if you even did the first time.
Now Chud reports that Deadpool may hire Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick of Zombieland fame to hammer out the script and give it the kind of left-of-center inappropriateness that is so appropriate. Reynolds has
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- Colin Boyd
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Trailer - Gere, Hawke, Cheadle Are 'Brooklyn's Finest'
8 December 2009 1:53 PM, PST
At long last, Antoine Fuqua's Brooklyn's Finest will finally hit theaters early next year. It was originally going to be an early fall 2009 release, I believe, but by the time it gets here, it will be nearly two years after the film went into production.
Don't pin it on the film itself, however. Brooklyn's Finest was one of several independently produced movies picked up by Senator Distribution. That company didn't last very long, and in fact, the biggest release it had during its very short run was last year's The Informers. It bombed, the company couldn't raise money to market the rest of its 2009 schedule, and just like that, this film and a few others had to start the distribution marathon from scratch. Senator acquired this property at Sundance in January, and by June, it was more or less out of business.
But Overture pulled this one out of the ashes,
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- Colin Boyd
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Malkovich In Talks As The Vulture For 'Spider-Man 4'?
8 December 2009 11:02 AM, PST
You could do a lot worse than casting John Malkovich as your villain, but in the interest of fairness - Teddy Kgb. Malkovich is one of those actors who is somehow better than the good material he's given and often worse than the bad material he's given. Probably has to do with getting or not getting the proper guidance for his character within the framework of the movie as a whole, and some directors can communicate that better than others. Then again, there's no reason he had to say yes to Johnny English, but whatever; I'm getting sidetracked.
Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich is the latest name on the Spider-Man 4 rumor mill, according to Movieline, who has him slated to play The Vulture aka Adrian Toomes. He's not a villain on the same level as Green Goblin, but I will say it's good casting if it's true. Marvel describes Toomes as
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- Colin Boyd
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No 'Hancock 2'...At Least For a Good Long While
8 December 2009 8:14 AM, PST
What, no aliens to fight? Peter Berg, who is making intelligent life from other galaxies a key component of his movie version of the board game Battleship, has cooled on the idea of Hancock 2. Certainly, a Will Smith movie that makes half a billion dollars is worth looking at for a sequel (if you're the studio), so it was no major surprise that Sony was keen on a follow-up. And it was steamrolling ahead until...
Berg tells HitFix that Hancock 2 is on ice for now, and maybe for quite a while. Of his dealings with Smith and producers Michael Mann and Akiva Goldsman, Berg says, “To get us all in the same room where we can talk and then agree on anything? You'll never meet a group of people who will have a harder time agreeing on anything. It's like the Israeli peace process times a thousand in
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- Colin Boyd
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Embarrassing: Leona Lewis' 'Avatar' Theme Song
8 December 2009 4:48 AM, PST
Here's a line I wish I came up with, but it actually came from Vulture's Lane Brown: "Maybe It'll Sound Better in 3-D." The "It" is "I See You" by
British songbird Leona Lewis, which is apparently the closing theme song to James Cameron's Avatar. The reason that the headline is so spot-on is because the song is almost miraculously bad.
This thing makes you wish for "My Heart Will Go On." There is almost no symmetry I can sense between Cameron's movie, a self-
described "action-adventure fantasy" and this song, which has the melodic sensibilities of an electric garage door. The lyrics,
amazingly, are even worse. Since it's such a bad fit, I have no idea who this song is supposed to appeal to. Oscar voters, I guess.
That's another sore subject for me, anyway: Tunes going for Best Original Song that just happened to be Scotch-taped over the
closing credits.
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- Colin Boyd
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'Resident Evil: Afterlife' Facing Production Problems
8 December 2009 2:03 AM, PST
The fourth Resident Evil movie, subtitled Afterlife, may have hit a snag. Shock Till Ya Drop reports that the 3-D needed to make the film ("needed" is a negotiable word in this instance, I'll grant you) might
be causing a few problems with the production, although it's nothing that can't be ironed out with just a little more time.
Instead of an August 2010 release date, Shock says it may wait until January 2011. That's now been confirmed by the studio: 1.14.11. Ah, January, the dead zone. What better time for
a movie with the undead, really?
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- Colin Boyd
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Michael Bay's Explosive Victoria's Secret Commercial
7 December 2009 11:06 PM, PST
Well over 50% of Michael Bay's bag of tricks are on display in this new video. With Victoria's Secret, you'd expect Bay to use hot babes. So there's half of his moviemaking magic. But Bay also works in a classic propeller airplane, a motorcycle, the desert, and - what else - an explosion. About the only thing missing is a heavy marketing campaign for this heavy marketing campaign.
Seriously: Why the explosion? I'd call it showing off but how does it show anything off we haven't seen before? Of course, it's kind of his signature, and what kind of artist doesn't have a signature?
The song's cool, the models kind of go without saying, and it's all well-photographed and sexy. In fact, this is what Michael Bay used to do for a living (and some would say he hasn't moved too far past it in the 15 years since). He doesn't care what we think,
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- Colin Boyd
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Brad Pitt Producing Vampire Flick for Summit
7 December 2009 8:13 PM, PST
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. But if at first you succeed and then again you succeed in an even bigger way, then I suppose you should also try, try again. Summit, having grown fat off the Twilight series, is recruiting Brad Pitt to produce Vlad through his Plan B outfit.
The movie was written by Charlie Hunnam from Sons of Anarchy, who was also quite good in Nicholas Nickelby a handful of years ago. As you might have suspected, Vlad is not about a Dominican baseball player who can and will swing at anything with surprising power but rather the historical Vlad the Impaler, whose story was re-fitted and romanticized into the popular myth of Dracula.
The film will be Dracula as a young prince, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Anthony Mandler, a music video director (The Killers, Eminem, Rihanna), is the top choice to direct,
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- Colin Boyd
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'Moon' Takes Best British Independent Film Award
7 December 2009 5:07 PM, PST
We have seen a few independent film honors doled out already; the Gothams loved The Hurt Locker while Precious leads the pack of Independent Spirit nominees. Now the British Independent Film Awards have been announced, drawing attention to some smaller films that could use it, including Duncan Jones' anticipated-then-most-ignored Moon.
Only about a million people paid to see the film, which stars Sam Rockwell as an astronaut during his final weeks stationed in isolation on the lunar surface, but it should have a better life on DVD. This will help: Moon captured Best British Indpendent Film and Best Debut Director, in a collection of winners that also included Carey Mulligan for An Education and the script for the political/media satire In the Loop.
Daniel Day-Lewis and Michael Caine received honorary awards, which is fine, because they've earned plenty of hardware before now.
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- Colin Boyd
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Depp, Burton Making 'Dark Shadows' Next September
7 December 2009 2:15 PM, PST
Just this past Friday, in a conversation about Johnny Depp potentially playing Pancho Villa, I
mentioned that the film would have to wait until Depp got through his stack of projects, among them Dark
Shadows. That's the Tim Burton movie based on the ABC vampire soap opera from the 1960s and early 1970s. It's a
great franchise opportunity, perfectly cut out for Depp and Burton.
We hadn't heard much about when it might happen, other than Burton saying it would probably be his next project after
Alice in Wonderland. But Sci Fi Wire caught up with producer Graham King, whose Young Victoria with
Emily Blunt is in my stack of awards screeners for the week. King told the site, "We're actually going
to shoot that film next September/October with Tim Burton and Johnny. We've been working on the script a lot, even
though he's working on Alice."
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- Colin Boyd
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New 'Avatar' Running Time and Featurettes
7 December 2009 11:24 AM, PST
Just a quick note that the officially official running time for Avatar has been announced by Fox. Back in mid-November, we heard that it was about two-and-a-half hours, but it's a touch longer than that: 161 minutes, 34 seconds. So, with trailers, you're essentially looking at three hours.
As luck would have it, there are two new featurettes for James Cameron's film, exploring the brave new world of Pandora. This is slightly different than the video about the creatures and machinery in Avatar, though there is some overlap. However, most of this is new to me. It plays a bit like a nature documentary with sigourney Weaver narrating.
The second video revolves around the story, which seems simpler than its many details. However, it's the details that allow Cameron to expand the horizons of visual effects, and if you need any addition evidence that he's doing that here, dive right in.
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- Colin Boyd
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McG Still Thinking He'll Direct 'Terminator' Sequels
7 December 2009 9:13 AM, PST
The one thing that stood out to me about McG's direction of Terminator Salvation was how little flare he showed when it came to the story. The look of the film was terrific, the action was great, he mined quality action movie performances out of Sam Worthington and Moon Bloodgood, but I didn't think there was anything connecting all of it together.
Even though he further derailed a franchise that needed an uptick after T3 and the fourth film essentially bankrupted its producers, McG believes he's still going to direct the fifth and sixth Terminator films. I'm sure the new owners of the franchise will have something to say about that, and the future of Terminator should become clear within a couple months.
Still, McG participated in a Bd-Live chat, providing commentary to a live stream of the film, and Gizmodo was there for the whole thing. Before Terminator Salvation was released,
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- Colin Boyd
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France's 'A Prophet' Tops 2009 'Sight & Sound' List
7 December 2009 6:23 AM, PST
When the subject of film lists comes up, the most common barometer is Sight & Sound, the British film journal that has, for coming up on 50 years, been the gold standard of ranking the all-time great films. It is instrumental with helping establish Citizen Kane's reputation since it was first named the top film in the world back in 1962.
But it's not just the list that comes out every decade that makes Sight & Sound so valuable. There's the year-end lists, too, and for 2009, the publication (by way of In Contention) has chosen Jacques Audiard's A Prophet as the best film of the year. Before you turn you attention away because it's not a film on a lot of lips right now, the list includes potential Oscar fare like The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, and Up.
A Prophet won Best Film at the London Film Festival, took home several European Film Awards,
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- Colin Boyd
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