Also in film news, the AICN boys obtain some very nice Episode III concept artwork of the big duel. Alas, between the idea and the reality falls the shadow, particularly with regard to the prequels.
Tag: Cinema
Prepping for Arkham.
In today’s trailer bin (Warning: This being IFILM, you may have to suffer through a commercial for the Catwoman DVD), Gulf War vet Adrien Brody gets experimented on by evil Dr. Kris Kristofferson (and only Keira Knightley can help him) in our first glimpse at The Jacket. Looks intriguing, and I like the cast…but, really, next time somebody locks up Brody in an insane asylum, I want to see him come out as the Joker in Nolan’s Batman Begins sequel. (He’d be so spot-on for The Killing Joke.)
What’s (Sith) taters, precious?
A young Jedi named Darth Tater, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped Chick-Fil-A hunt down and destroy the Jedi Taters…he’s more machine now than potato, twisted and evil. (Ok, sorry, I couldn’t help myself — Still, I kinda like the look of Darth Potatohead here.)
Great Caesar’s Ghost.
Quite a bit of new comic-to-film news today: Hugh Laurie and James Marsden join Superman as Daily Planet editor Perry White and Richard White (Lois’s non-Super love interest) respectively, the Dark Knight cradles Katie Holmes in this new EW pic from Batman Begins, and 20 seconds of the new FF trailer appear online (along with this shot of The Thing, also from the new EW.) I know I keep piling bad vibes on this project, but really, the litany of hard-to-discern FX shots coupled with the “Kick out the Jams”-style whiteboy-angst-metal does nothing for me.
A Little More.
In no surprise to anyone after the seemingly somewhat abbreviated RotK:EE, PJ announces a probable “Ultimate Edition” of LotR, to be released in a few years. The UEs would include more deleted scenes (not re-integrated into the films), more documentaries, and the blooper reels. (I wouldn’t expect to see any of this until well after both Kong and the pending format wars.)
In my country, there is no problem.
Somebody tell Tuscon. “The State Department is insisting that, contrary to the impression you might get from all that vitriol spewed by Sacha Baron Cohen’s character Borat Sagdiyev on ‘Da Ali G Show,’ Kazakhstan is not a ‘a wild den of misogynistic dog-shooting Gypsy- and Jew-haters,’ as faux Kazakh journalist Borat once put it, but rather a perfectly nice country with little record of anti-Semitism.”
He’s Lost Control Again.
The long-rumored Ian Curtis biopic, Control, is now a go, with none other than U2/REM/Depeche Mode rock photographer Anton Corbijn at the helm. I still think it’ll be hard to do this any better than 24 Hour Party People, but at least with Corbijn running the show, it should look nice.
Kinsey on Lincoln.
Schindler, Rob Roy, Darkman, Qui-Gon, Kinsey…why not Honest Abe? Liam Neeson is apparently in talks to play Lincoln in a Spielberg-directed biopic, to be based on Doris Kearns Goodwin‘s forthcoming book, The Uniter. Ok, that’s not bad…but hopefully this project turns out better than Amistad.
Also in loosely related Lincoln-by-way-of-Kinsey news, Salon‘s Andrew O’Hehir casts a troubled eye at C.A. Tripp’s Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln. As he ably points out (as does George Chauncey in the excellent Gay New York), “the difficulty with assessing Lincoln’s private life (or that of anyone else who lived before the 20th century) is that the nature of private life has changed dramatically from his time to ours, and the distance between us distorts the view…Whether [Lincoln and Joshua Speed’s, with whom Lincoln shared a bed] relationship had a sexual component or not, it belongs to a vanished world of intimate male friendships of a kind almost unrecognizable to us.” In other words, sexual orientation is an historically dynamic idea. Homosociality does not necessarily imply homosexuality, and one cannot simply read 19th century sources and infer a 20th century mindset. You have to delve a little deeper. Update: Columbia’s David Greenberg also weighs in for Slate.
War without Mercy.
As reported by The Digital Bits, the upcoming hi-def format war began in earnest at last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas: As the HD-DVD camp announced a slew of titles for 4Q 2005, Blu-Ray signed on more powerful allies, including EA and Vivendi Universal. It’s gonna get ugly soon, folks, ’cause one of these formats is going the way of Betamax and DivX. Right now, it seems Blu-Ray is probably the better product (66% higher capacity), but HD-DVD is closer to cornering the market. Either way, I doubt I’ll be buying all that many DVDs until the new format is chosen, Highlander-style.
Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes.
In anticipation of Hitchhiker’s, Disney and AICN have banded together to offer a spiffy and brutal Vogon office desk set — mug, stapler, and pen — to whomever composes a lousy poem worthy of the Vogons (or, for that matter, Paul Neil Milne Johnstone of Beehive Court, Redbridge.) The contest notwithstanding, the idea that all Vogon construction is based on the square is exactly the type of clever design flourish that gives me hope for this film. Update: Even more Hitchhiker’s news: ComingSoon talks with Hammer & Tongs (a.k.a. the producer and director) about the movie’s progress.