Archive for September, 2009
We had a behind-the-scenes glimpse at Seth Rogen’s upcoming Green Hornet project a few weeks ago, when set photos surfaced. Those photos gave us a taste of the film’s look, and notably revealed what Kato’s costume would look like. Now, courtesy of Splash News (via CHUD), we also have a blurry look at the Green Hornet’s costume (above). Moreover, an interview with Edward James Olmos this morning at the LA Times reveals a few tantalizing tidbits about certain plot elements of the film. Note that the Splash News video and the LA Times interview both contain potential spoilers, so be warned before you click through to the video or click through to the jump.
The video shows a fairly impressive explosion, as well as what appear to be a brief glimpse of Kato and the Green Hornet. We also see a bulldozer dropping on top of a car. Note that while the above photo is probably an accurate representation of the Green Hornet’s look, it may in fact be Seth Rogen’s stunt double in the costume and not Rogen himself. The video is embedded below, but I’ve had mixed results viewing it in different browsers so head on over to Splash if if you’re having trouble with it.
From this brief shot we have, I’m kind of a fan of the look. It’s simple and elegant, not overly elaborate or ostentatious. I think it bodes well for the film.
Actor Edward James Olmos certainly agrees that the film is coming together well. In an LA Times piece published this morning, Olmos crowed,
I’ll put it to you this way — it’s quite a fun journey…It’s my first time doing this kind of a movie. ‘Blade Runner’ is the only thing that comes close to this. I’m having a lot of fun. People are really going to like what we’ve done.
Olmos also revealed that he will play the character of Michael Axford, a reporter at The Daily Sentinel, the paper run by Britt Reid’s (AKA The Green Hornet’s) father:
We’re the backbone of the paper. Things go awry, and I end up having to try to sustain what’s going on in our lives. And of course the Green Hornet doesn’t make it any easier. I don’t want to give anything away.
Discuss: What do you think of the Green Hornet costume, and Olmos’ role as Michael Axford?
What is it about Sonya Walger that every network casting person adores? I mean, she’s certainly a very good actress and extremely pretty to look at but she's not the only pretty actress in Hollywood. There have to be at least six others. Yet, Sonya Walger seems to get every part out there.And sometimes it gets disconcerting. She’s dear sweet Penny on LOST. Her hubby Desmond has gone through hell and earth and time for her love and yet there she is on HBO giving her other husband a handjob on TELL ME YOU LOVE ME. And now she’s married to a third husband on ABC’s FLASH FORWARD. In the pilot she has a vision of the future and being with another man. Maybe it’s Desmond during one of his time travels. My head is exploding.
In past years she was the wife Mike Binder was cheating on in HBO’s MIND OF THE MARRIED MAN (which made no sense at all since she’s far hotter than the trollops he chased after).
Sonya was also in the American version of COUPLING and had recurring roles on SLEEPER CELL, CSI: NEW YORK, and THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES. How does she keep straight which set to show up at each morning?
And again, nothing against Sonya. I wish I were her agent. Every year there seems to be another network darling. This year she's the lucky one. Last year it was Kim Raver. Despite annoying fans on 24 she also was a series regular in THIRD WATCH, NINE, and LIPSTICK JUNGLE.
The queen of course is Paula Marshall. Paula's starred in seven different series and recurred in five others. Someday there will be cloning and she'll be in all twelve at once.
Networks like familiarity. Whenever you see the cast list of pilots, next to the actors’ names in parenthesis are always the last series they were in. Rarely do you see…
“Rachael Needimeyer” (never been in anything but is really good).
The irony of course is that TV makes stars. And when a new show takes off it usually is because it features some exciting newcomer (Jon Hamm anyone?). And it’s not just the broadcast networks who favor familiar faces. The only HBO show Sonya has not been on is JOE BUCK LIVE.
I’m sure Paula, and Kim, and now Sonya test through the roof. They’re attractive, versatile, likeable, and if I were in a focus group and saw Sonya Walger naked giving a handjob I’d give her the highest score too.
But I’d sure love to see Rachael Needimeyer get her shot. Who knows? She could star in a series. Or two. Or seven.
It takes a lot to wow me when it comes to animation stills, especially ones conjuring yet another rainy, dreary, effing dystopia. Part of me still hopes for a vibrant comeback for traditional animation and the swathing warmth and human connection that computer animation simply cannot match, at least in my opinion. But there is a mesmerizing and bewitching appeal to the following stills, and coinciding trailer, for Metropia that, as you may have guessed, I’m a bit gaga for. Add voice/character work from Vincent Gallo, Juliette Lewis, and Stellan Skarsgård (the first two POTC) an adult rating, and years in the making to further alleviate the Philip K. Dickian tropes.
Gallo voices Roger, a working stiff with no social life who rides his bike in semi-defiance of a massive underground transit system in Europe. It’s 2024. As seem in the trailer, Roger suffers from a mundane voice in his head. He is also smitten with a model and complete stranger, Nina, (Juliette Lewis) who appears on television advertising shampoo. One day he meets her and she clues him in to a conspiracy regarding the voice in his head, one that reveals a consumerist conspiracy. The director and co-writer, Tarik Saleh, aspires in scope and style to evoke the works of Terry Gilliam and George Orwell. He previously directed a live-action documentary in 2005 entitled Gitmo, about the real life dystopian camp that should have never happened. There is more information online per the conspiracy, but I’ll stop there.
The film premiered recently at Fantastic Fest, and reviews have been encouraging. What’s more, the Swedish film only cost $4.5 million U.S. leading to Twitch Film to declare in a review, “Set in a disturbingly familiar near-future, Tarik Saleh’s METROPIA blends the grey, surreal absurdity of vintage [Franz] Kafka with cutting edge digital animation to create something truly striking and unique. …his technique immediately establishes him as one of the most striking and unique voices in global animation.” The feted animation technique is said to utilize real life photos and actors similar to the rotoscoping in A Scanner Darkly, but with an all-encompassing, anime character-like bent. For instance, the Roger character is said to be directly based on the body and movements of a Stockholm chef who was friendly with the production team beforehand.
Let us know what you think in the comments….
No, that isn’t Harry Dean Stanton. Darn.
The above image is probably my fave; looks like art you might see at Gallery 1988.
Metropia is currently on the festival circuit and a wider release schedule for American is not currently available. Vincent Gallo can also be seen—if you track down a theatre—in Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro, still in limited and oh-so-quiet release. He said in an interview about Metropia that it was a relief not to have to worry that he was ugly on screen. Oh, Gallo, you pretentious, over-talented basterd. Viewer ratings for the film at Fantastic Fest are currently at ***1/2 stars out of four on the fest’s official site.
Hugh Jackman is in talks to star in Shawn Levy’s futuristic robot boxing movie Real Steel. The film tells the story of a father and his estranged 13-year-old son who enter the world of robotic boxing. You see, in the future, human boxing has been outlawed, replaced with sports combat between human-trained 2000-pound heavy steel robots.
According to Variety, Jackman would play the father, an ex-fighter turned promoter whose “access to sub-standard robot parts hampers his hopes for glory in Robot Boxing, until he discovers a discarded robot that always seems to win.” The concept is something we’ve never seen before on the big screen, and in the right hands, could be a good Summer tentpole film.
Real Steel is based on a short story by Richard Matheson, which was made into a Twilight Zone episode featuring Lee Marvin. The screenplay adaptation was originally scripted by Dan Gilroy (The Fall), but has since been rewritten by Leslie Bohem (Taken, Dante’s Peak) and John Gatins (Summer Catch, Dreamer).
Shawn Levy is best know for directing mediocre or bad comedies, the Night at the Museum series, Cheaper By The Dozen, The Pink Panther, Just Married, and Big Fat Liar. This could mean that the family sci-fi actioner might be redeveloped with more of a comic tone.
A Christmas Carol behind-the-scenes clip "The Event” features actors Jim Carrey and Colin Firth, along with director Robert Zemeckis and producers Steve Starkey and Jack Rapke as they share their perspective on bringing Charles Dicken’s tale to life.
The Brand Licensing Europe event is currently underway in London’s Olympia, hawking big name franchises to potential licensees. Amongst the /Film-friendly exhibitors are Marvel Entertainment International and Sony Pictures Consumer Products. What that means is an on the floor presence for Iron Man 2, Thor, The Avengers and Ghostbusters 3.
Bleeding Cool notes that each of the Marvel movies are being presented with an Avengers Assemble tagline. It looks like the crossover twist will be being sold up front from here on out, not only on the films themselves but the assorted cash-in lunchboxes, duvet covers, colouring books et cetera.
Will we even be seeing the Avengers Assemble strapline on the Iron Man 2 trailers? I certainly wouldn’t be surprised. The public at large might be rather confused at first, but if the whole scheme is going to work at all it will need selling to the man in the street. We’ve got a few years of hard sell coming our way, Avengers Assemble stamped all over it.
Rich at Bleeding Cool also tells us that Marvel had “had a massive Stark Industries booth with the five Iron Man suits from San Diego and a bunch of Stark Industries security guards”. He doesn’t have pictures of the Marvel promotional artwork, but did describe it. Of the Thor logo, for example, he says “[It] is chunky, and stone-like, very different from the image… seen previously”
As for Ghostbusters 3, it seems that Sony were keeping their promo materials away from snoops. To further suggest it was there, however, here’s a quote from the event’s official brochure:
A selection of properties for which it seeks licensees and/or retail partners includes Ghostbusters, The Karate Kid, The Green Hornet and Spider-Man 4.
Okay, it says Ghostbusters, no 3… but it also says Karate Kid and not Kung Fu Kid. I’m thinking that Sony are likely trying to get their commercial ducks in a row regarding the next ‘Busters picture, which is possibly a more solid indication of progress on the project than what we were last being told about a script in the works and a cast interested ‘in principle’.
For the record, neither of the images featured at the head of this post comes from the licensing show.
Filed under: New Line, Fandom, Tech Stuff
A while back I wrote a little post about a movie that I would never see, and plenty of folks lined up to tell me that it was impossible to make a decision about a movie through word of mouth or what I had read on the Internet. Of course, I disagreed, because frankly how else can I make a decision about where to spend my hard earned time and money? But if I had to blame anyone for keeping me away from the movie theater that day, I'm going to have to blame the Internet. Yup, it was thanks to those sneak peeks and early screenings described in detail online that helped me make my decision before those battling robots ever took the stage. People are talking about movies more now than ever before thanks to social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook, and a new study from New Line's Web guru Gordon Paddison has proven that when it comes to movie marketing, all the action really is on the web.What the report seems to be saying is that you need to know your audience if you want to sell your movie. Now, there are some daunting statistics that prove the power of the Internet when it comes to going to the movies, and if you aren't buying the effect the net can have on a film's success, keep in mind that 94% of all moviegoers are online, and 73% of moviegoers surveyed have profiles on a social networking site -- and if people are talking, you want to make sure it's positive because as the old commercial goes, they tell two friends, and they tell two friends, and before you know it, you have a flop on your hands.
After the jump: so what does this all mean for movie marketers?
Continue reading The Internet Takes Control of Movie Marketing
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Even a broken clock is right two times a day. And it was bound to happen eventually…. Uwe Boll has made a good movie. Not a great movie, but a decent film. Not just good in comparison to the rest of his filmography, but a good movie in its own right. Rampage isn’t based on the 1986 Midway arcade video game, although you might assume so since Boll is involved in a lot of video game adaptations.
Instead, Rampage is the movie that Postal should have been. It is Falling Down without the morals. Rampage is angry, sadistic, fun, yet disturbing.
Brendan Fletcher plays Bill, a young man who plans possibly the biggest killing spree in history, gunning down innocent people in a small town. Unlike Falling Down, the film doesn’t feature a bad guy and the good guy trying to stop him. Instead, we see the mass murder spree from the point of view of Bill, who you will sometimes find yourself relating to, especially in the early minutes of the film before the killings. And that is why this film works — it puts you in a very uncomfortable position. When Bill walked into a bingo hall with hundreds of old men and women, my mouth was never open wider in anticipation of what horrible things may come to follow.
At my screening, there was a group of moviegoers who would cheer and laugh every time more people were destroyed using semi-automatic weapons, in the same way you cheer on Rambo has he kills off the bad guys. But these aren’t the bad guys, these are innocent people (for the most part), in the wrong place at the wrong time. At times I wanted to cheer on an awesome kill, while most moments I felt disgusted at the reaction from others in our screening room (and I’m not super politically correct or anything). This is a movie that makes you think and decide on a moral stance, because it never offers one itself. It is Grand Theft Auto with real people, and real-looking violence and gore.
The film has flaws, including but not limited to some of the improv acting. Boll shot the film using handheld cameras, doc-style putting the viewer in the middle of the action, sometimes in close-up. And from what I understand, the action beats were planned out, but most of the dialogue was improved by the actors based on a treatment, to give the film a more natural feel (which sometimes works and other times doesn’t even come close).
/Film Rating: 7 out of 10
I’ve included the trailer below for those interested:
Last week, I got to attend Fox Home Entertainment’s Blu-Ray press summit and interview several of the creators behind such films as Wolverine, Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge and Fight Club. Perhaps the highlight, however, was seeing the Fox team’s presentations on the future of the Blu-Ray medium and how they’re brewing up some tasty new functions and features for future releases. I’ll detail it all after the break, from iPod touch and iPhone connectivity to Real-D style 3D for the home, and more in between.
Fox’s secret weapon is Joe McCrossan, formerly the senior manager of research and standardisation at Panasonic and now tied to this one studio exclusively. When he stood up to speak to us and detail just what Blu-Ray breakthroughs Fox have in store, my heart rate started to steadily build. By the time we were invited to ask questions from the floor, my pulse was a blur and all I could do was beg him for more. Call me a geek all you want, but this stuff sounded simply amazing to me.
Live Lookup
Already on shelves in the US and hitting international markets on October 19th is the Wolverine disc, equipped with the IMDB-supported Live Lookup facility (see the image at the head of the post). This is just a taster of what the future will bring, but it’s definitely a nifty one allowing those of us with BD-Live enabled players (ie. those we’ve hooked up to the web) to call up the current IMDB pages of any of the actors featured in the film from within the film, and without disturbing it. And I do mean current - the player updates the data every time we fire up the disc; and I do mean any of the actors - even the smallest bit player, sorted by actor’s name or character, selectable on a chapter by chapter or full film basis, or even from a series of headshots in case you can’t manage a name at all.
By the way, I noticed one flaw in the way the function works on the Wolverine disc. Say you look up Hugh Jackman; you will be able to see listed his up-to-date listing as an actor, a producer and as himself. Those categories will always be updated live, from the IMDB itself. However, should Jackman become a director, that tab won’t appear when you access the disc and that credit will never be available. Having pointed this out, I was promised that future titles could be ‘fixed’ in this respect. I do hope so - it’s a niggling fault in a smooth, easy to use and fun special feature.
Connectivity and Functions For Your iPod, iPhone or Other Remote Device
This kind of multimedia experience is a fantastic prospect, I think. But suppose you don’t want to disturb the other viewers of the film with pop up boxes on the screen? What if you could use a separate device to get this information, networked to the main Blu-Ray player? Here’s a quote from McCrossan on just that possibility:
I think a really interesting area for Blu Ray to go in and certainly a very active area for research is how can we leverage the network connection that’s on your player and the network connection that’s on your device, like an iPhone, to give you new ways to interact with the content. So that could be as simple as using the iPhone or some other device as a remote control or as a keyboard all the way through the ability to use the iPhone to provide ancillary experiences so that when you’re watching the content you can get some information or an experience with the content that isn’t affecting the ability of other people around you who are watching the content.
I think Digital Copy could also be an interesting area where, for example, we’re able to push content from the disc using the network connection of the device to your secondary device and again give the consumer better access to the content.
Say Goodbye To Boring Loading Times
So that’s all pretty exciting, particularly for nerds like me. But maybe you just want your Blu-Ray player for the basic movie experience and don’t care about accessing trivia tracks on your iPhone? McCrossan and Co. are also working on ironing out a couple of annoying wrinkles in the fundamentals of the format. Thankfully, we’ll soon be able to wave goodbye to those long loading times:
One of the things we’ve actually been working on for some time now is how to improve the fundamentals of Blu-Ray. What can we do to actually improve the basic experience that a consumer gets when they put a Blu-Ray disc into the player to watch a movie? One of the things that we have been looking at is how can we reduce the load time?
We’ve actually been looking at a project that will do away with that altogether and so that when you put the disc in and you’re watching some cards and you’re watching some trailers, in the background we’re doing all of the set up, we’re doing all of the loading, getting the disc ready to play the movie. This will dramatically decrease the time that many consumers experience when they put the disc in.
We think that’s a really important feature for the format so that’s something we’ve been working on for quite a while and I’m actually expecting its something that could be available in the near future.
Saving To Your Player
Another basic update is the recreation of the facility we know from DVD, where the player will remember where in a movie you are if you have to remove the disc for any reason. Of course, it’s going to go a little further on Blu-Ray:
One of the things that we have been looking at is how can we let the consumer go back to the disc after they’ve played it once and re-engage where they left off. This was one of the things that we had on DVD where if you ejected a disc many of the players offered a feature that enabled you to resume playback. Unfortunately, with Blu-Ray its much more difficult for a player to do that but on the content side, leveraging the capabilities of the format, that’s actually something we can do.
And so, again, from a research standpoint we been working on some features that again I think you guys will see in the near future where when someone ejects the disc we’ll make sure that all of the stuff that you’ve done with that disc up to that point is saved, whether that’s playing a game, creating your own bookmarks even where you are in a movie, all of that will be saved so that the next time you put the disc in again very quickly you’ll have a screen option exactly where you left off and the option to resume.
3D Blu-Ray
McCrossan didn’t address 3D Blu-Ray himself, but we were promised during the panel that the technology is approaching standardisation right now. Some of us will have to buy new players and we’ll all need new TVs but the end effect will be fully realised, 1080p-per-eye stereoscopic video, working much like the modern Real-D system does in cinemas. Apparently, Fox titles (at least) will play happily in 2D for those who are under equipped, meaning that the same disc will work for all consumers and forced double-dipping will be thankfully sidestepped. That’s the way to do it.
I’m hoping to see the other studios step up to the challenge and try to outdo McCrossan and team. I want to see the format benefit from some seriously ferocious competition. Surely Sony have the inside track here and can come roaring up with some exciting prospects of their own?
Law Abiding Citizen stars Gerard Butler and Academy Award® winner Jamie Foxx in an explosive "neo-noir" film directed by F Gary Gray.
