Talk about a match made in heaven. Upcoming Film Scores is reporting that the French electronica duo has been tapped to score the upcoming film starring Olivia Wilde, Garett Hedlund, Beau Garrett and Jeff Bridges (!) reprising his role as super genius Kevin Flynn. It will be directed by Joseph Kosinksi and written by "Lost" screenwriters Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz.
Warner Bros has just released a new 10-minute interactive trailer for Watchmen on 6MinutesToMidnight.com. After deciphering a series of Rorschach images given to you by...well, Rorschach, you are treated to exclusive content for the upcoming Watchmen film. I will give you fair warning, though -if you've been worried about being exposed to too much Watchmen footage just before the movie comes out then DO NOT watch the content offered here. I only watched three seconds of the footage and I'm already worried that I've ruined the movie for myself. But, you know, it's up to you. What the heck do I know?
[reported from /film]
No sooner has Blu-Ray seen off HD-DVD with it’s knobbly knocking stick than another format war starts brewing in, quite literally, the R&D labs. According to a report in Video Business, Panasonic are looking to launch their first 3D-ready HD sets in what they hope will be an industry-wide standard, and will do so as soon as next year.
It’s probably pertinent to tell you right away that while Panasonic aren’t the only manufacturers working on a 3D standard, they are the ones in league with James Cameron. That alone has very possibly won them any upcoming format war before it even reaches the shop floor. Their system does indeed sound really brilliant, but so do the others, in their ways…
Ye olde 3D system used red and blue anaglyph glasses and is obviously already possible on home TVs of all kinds. When the most recent cinema hits have been repackaged for home consumers the 3D has been downgraded to work in this format. Or, rather, not quite work in this format because, frankly, the system is a bit of a dog. It doesn’t work consistently and a very significant percentage of users report that they don’t feel it works at all for them. I can’t believe that Dreamworks dare pollute the public idea of 3D with their Monsters vs. Aliens ad at the Superbowl, and fear they may have confused a large number of viewers with their tacky specs and substandard TV 3D.
But did you know that the new, polarized lens system is already possible at home? There already are ways to line up players and sets and specs to get the same 3D effect you’d get at a screening of, say, Coraline. It just isn’t standardized and until it is, there aren’t going to many major releases.
Here’s a brief run down of the three big players likely to duke it out in the coming months and years:
Panasonic’s system uses a Plasma and the same specs that you get at a Real-D screening. I know this system works, because I’ve seen it in action.
Samsung’s system has been around a while without much content. However, they also have a kind of conversion engine pending that will turn 2D into 3D on the fly - though this is likely to be very problematic and certainly won’t be the optimum solution, not least because it takes control of the stereo elements out of the hands of the filmmakers.
Hyundai’s system uses a polarising sheet over an LCD screen, which is likely to be the cheaper option and will also side step the various issues with Plasma screens (as well, of course, as the various benefits). This system is already on sale in Japan and will be running in Britain very soon with Sky TV planning to steadily ramp up their 3D output over the coming years until they can broadcast a very size-able chunk of the London 2012 Olympics in stereo-vision.
The closest thing to a set standard so far is in Panasonic’s pocket. They already started coding Blu-Ray discs with left and right eye fields and pledge to release Avatar on a 3D disc next year. At the moment, the Panasonic demo discs require a pimped up player that can tear through twice as much data per second than normal. Hopefully this won’t be the case with the release software as asking consumers to replace their newly minted BD decks is simply not going to fly.
Video Business have embedded a recent YouTube video in which Cameron briefly mentions collaborating with Panasonic on “high quality” 3D for the home. It seems to be software, not hardware, that wins format wars, but perversely, it’s the price of hardware that determines how far a media standard will infiltrate the marketplace. While Avatar is very likely to win the war for Panasonic, this success will be in vain if they don’t price-up for the Yous, Mes and Everyone we Knows out there.
If you have the right kind of 3D glasses, the Panasonic logo that James Cameron is conjuring out of thin air at the top of this post will fly around room and poke you in the eye.
franchise opened this weekend to a box office draw of a mere $4.6 million, just a tad bit shy of its $60 million budget. To put in perspective how miserably this movie did, the original Jean-Claude Van Damme cheesefest did $6.9 million for it's opening weekend way back in 1994, when ticket prices were much lower -and they were only working with a $35 million budget. Of course, this is only the opening weekend. I'm sure it will make plenty more in the next few weeks to surpass it's remaining budget. It's not like there's any movies premiering this coming weekend that would take anymore draw from Street Fighter's box office returns. Well, I guess there is the Watchmen movie this Friday, but I mean who the heck wants to see that -am I right? Oh, Kristen Kruek, I bet Smallville doesn't look so bad now, does it?
Justice Leaguers to guest star on the CW's Smallville are both infamous for sporting the classic leg wear. Luckily, neither of them are men (that would just be weird). Last season introduced Oliver Queen's permanent on again off again love interest Black Canary, who is now married to the emerald archer in comic continuity. On march 26th, magician Zatanna lends a helping hand in an episode appropriotely entitled 'Hex', in which Chloe and Clark each learn the true meaning of the phrase, "Be careful what you wish for". Model/actress Serinda Swan will play the magical hero who can only cast spells by reciting them backwards. Yzarc! Well, she definitely has the look down, but we'll just have to wait and see if she has anymore tricks up her sleeve.
movie rocked theaters last summer, it looks like one of them has finally been remedied. For those who don't know, fan-favorite Samuel L. Jackson was a breath away from not reprising his role as Nick Fury, leader of SHIELD, who's after-credits scene in Iron Man introduced fans to the new cohesive 'Marvel Movieverse', where different icons can now share a continuity between seperate franchises. Due to money and contract problems, which Marvel has become infamous for in the last year (Marvel almost didn't re-sign Iron Man director Favreau, went back on Terrance Howard's contract and replaced him with Don Cheadle, and offered Oscar nominated Mickey Rourke a mere $250,000 to play a villian in Iron Man 2, just to name a few.), Jackson had stated publicly that he more than likely would not be returning to the role that was supposed to move between the different franchises building up to the 2011 Avengers movie. Well, Marvel has made a complete 180 and as it stands now Jackson is re-signed for an undisclosed amount of money, but that's not the biggest news to that story. The real kicker is that Jackson didn't get a two or three picture renewal. He is now signed on for no less than nine, count 'em, NINE Marvel vehicles as Nick Fury. That means that Marvel is very ambitiously preparing for at least nine more 'Movieverse' features. Well, we all know that those movies will probably include Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America, and the Avengers film, but what exactly does Marvel have in store after that? The mind reels. Either way, I'm glad to see that Marvel is finally willing to make some concessions for the fans...at least this time.
Good News: Looks like the new adaptation of "The Green Hornet" is back on track again with "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" director Michel Gondry at the helm. You may have heard that original director Stephen Chow dropped out over creative differences. He is, however, still expected to co-star as Kato.
First off.. AS were not directly responsible for Frisky Dingo not coming back... but I do blame them for 70-30 having to shut down.
Adam Reed left 70-30 several months back putting Frisky Dingo in limbo. Why? I didn't get too many details when talking to the other 70-30 guys about it and frankly I didn't want to push the mater but it sounded like he needed a break. Basically they didn't know if he was going to return or not and Frisky Dingo simply can't exist without Adam... him being the voice of Killface, Xander and many other the other characters. In light of this they decided to keep the Dingoverse going by making a spin-off of the Xtacles and still leave open the possibility of FD coming back. They created the short for the season 2 DVD that was going to set the stage and the series was going to premiere after the release of the season 2 dvd.
Here's where AS flubbed everything up. Back in October they were finishing up the first two eps and out of the blue AS tells them they want to run both of them on the same night, just two weeks away. This really gave them barely any time to do all the promoting they could have done. They were able to get one little interview done and mostly used my site to post about it and made us some promotional goodies and posted preview clips... etc. But that really wasn't going to be remotely as effective as the attention they would have gotten from the DVD release and the Xtacles short on it... not to mention months to really spread the word since they had been pretty quiet about it at that point. There was no excuse for what AS did next. On the night of the Xtacles premiere they put up a bump right before it leading people to believe that they needed to choose which show they wanted to have, Xtacles or Dingo, and to vote on the boards. At this point they knew full well that Adam had moved on, yet they kicked off the series making people think that if they liked it they will never see FD season 3. One of the mods even made a post telling people to vote. A couple days later 70-30 tells me that AS didn't like the ratings and that if the ratings on the Friday night repeat didn't reach the number they had expected for Sun night that it would probably be cancelled. So we did what we could to spread the word and get people to watch but that was just not going to happen on a Fri night.
Despite this, they decided to continue working on a 3rd episode with no idea whether it would be picked up or not. Dave Willis even helped them write up the script. AS just would not give them another shot though. With no show to work on and having poured the last 1/2 of the year into the Xtacles, they had little choice but to close up shop and move on. If AS had actually let things play out like they were supposed to and gave the show a fair shot and it still failed... then I'd just have accepted it. The Xtacles never had a chance with the way they handled it. 70-30 deserved better treatment than this.
Congratulations to Heath and his family. You're gone, but definitely not forgotten.
As a member of the Minutemen, you can choose to be either the original Nite Owl or the original Silk Spectre in a mission to defeat the evil Moloch. It's not the most complicated game in the world and it's slightly reminiscent of the classic Double Dragon arcade game, but more than anything it's just another vehicle to allow us to step into the Watchmen world.
t we live in a world where we've endured Ang Lee's The Hulk, Spiderman 3, both Fantastic Four movies, and Indiana Jones Gets Raped Repeatedly While We Are Forced To Watch In Horror, so I think it would be really strange if we weren't worried and apprehensive about something that already means so much to us, but I hope this will calm your nerves until the movie is released: Watchmen is faithful to the book. It respects the book. I swear by the beard of Zeus, it feels like the book. Yes, there are some cuts, but they serve the release and don't disrupt or betray the narrative at all. Yes, they made a change to something that's a pretty big deal in the book, but it doesn't matter; what they did instead accomplishes exactly the same thing, and it does it perfectly. There is some of the Zack Snyder signature slow motion, and though it's a little heavy in the very first scene (which worried me) it isn't overdone throughout the movie at all, and I found it to be pretty cool and entertaining. Ultra-purists who are just determined to pick it apart will be able to find some things to be upset about, but I don't know why they're even bothering to see it, to be honest. Speaking only for myself, as someone who has read the book over and over again, there were maybe ... three ... things that made me go "eh," but I had to work really hard to get even that perturbed, because ultimately none of them mattered. In fact, when the movie was over, and I thought about the stuff they cut or moved around, I just couldn't get upset about it, because nothing happened that [frick]ed with the story or the characters, at all. Zack Snyder's Watchmen is as close to a perfect film adaptation of Alan Moore's Watchmen as we were ever going to see, and when his super-ultimate-here's-everything cut comes out in the fall, I think it will be perfect. But what I saw yesterday is truly remarkable: a big studio movie adaptation of one of the most — if not the most — important graphic novels of my lifetime that not only didn't [frick] it up, but brought it to life brilliantly. I can't think of a better, more faithful, graphic novel adaptation, ever. Nothing else even comes close.
Friday the 13th opened last Friday to the second highest grossing opening President's Day Weekend ever at $42.2 million, burying the competition. Next in line was the chick-flick Confessions of a Shopaholic with a modest $17.3 million and the action thriller The International that basically flopped at 10.7 million. As impressive as the numbers are, it's even more impressive that a slasher film that's a rehash of a previously half-dead franchise pulled in such great numbers. What's not so impressive? The fact that the film with the number one opening President's Day Weekend is...Ghost Rider with Nicholas Cage. Yeesh!
5:29 PM
Jay
