Posts

Eighteen Films Eligible For 2011 Best Animated Oscar Mean Five Nominees Possible By Germain Lussier/Nov. 5, 2011 8:00 am EST In 2010, only 15 films were eligible for the Best Animated Film Oscar. Under the current rules, at least 16 films have to be eligible to have more than three nominees and this year that’s looking likely. Eighteen films have been deemed eligible to be nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 84rd Annual Academy Awards and it’s a very crowded field....

First Footage From Oliver Stone’s ‘Savages’ Has A Colorful ’90s Glow By Russ Fischer/April 4, 2012 4:30 pm EST Think back to the Oliver Stone films of the 1990s. Not so much JFK and Nixon; more like U-Turn, Natural Born Killers and Any Given Sunday. Those films had a stylized, hyper-saturated color palette that clearly gave Tony Scott some ideas. For instance, on U-Turn, Stone’s cinematographer Robert Richardson shot on reversal film stock — which becomes a transparent positive when developed, rather than a traditional negative — and then cross-processed it as negative film, increasing contrast and color saturation....

First Look: Emma Stone Goes Blonde For Spider-Man By Peter Sciretta/Dec. 5, 2010 10:20 pm EST As you know by now, Superbad, The House Bunny, and Zombieland star Emma Stone will be playing Gwen Stacy in the Marc Webb-directed 3D reboot of Spider-Man. Although she’s known as a redhead, her natural hair color is blonde. We haven’t seen much of that on the big screen. This week they were doing costume tests on the comic book adaptation and Stone was seen sporting her new blonde hairdo on the red carpet at Trevor Live at the Hollywood Palladium on Sunday....

First Look: Michael Shannon And Jessica Chastain In ‘Take Shelter’ By Russ Fischer/Dec. 28, 2010 7:00 am EST I expect we’ll be hearing a lot about Jessica Chastain in the coming year. She’s one of the leads in Terrence Malick’s long-awaited The Tree of Life (see the trailer here) and will be showing up in the adaptation of The Help, in Ralph Fiennes’ Shakespeare revamp Coriolanus, in The Fields, and, probably in 2012, in John Hillcoat’s The Wettest County in the World....

Goro Miyazaki To Direct New Film For Studio Ghibli By Russ Fischer/Dec. 15, 2010 3:30 pm EST Goro Miyazaki, the son of master animator Hayao Miyzaki, will direct a new film for famed company Studio Gibli. The picture will adapt the 1980 manga Kokuriko-Zaka Kara by Chizuru Takahashi and Tetsur? Sayama. Goro Miyazaki has made one other film for Studio Ghibli: the poorly-received Tales From Earthsea. The poor reception was due to the fact that the film is thin and not particularly compelling; add the weight of expectation based on the fact that the director is the son of one of the world’s greatest animators, and there were very high expectations the film had no ability to meet....

Indonesian Trailer For ‘The Raid’ Is Two Minutes Of Pure Adrenaline By Russ Fischer/Dec. 1, 2011 9:00 am EST One of the biggest films to get buzz at this year’s Toronto Film Festival was The Raid, an Indonesian action film by Gareth Evans that features a SWAT team trapped in and trying to escape from an apartment block run by a drug lord. The attraction of the film is a non-stop barrage of action with loads of stunt work, gunplay and martial arts....

Legendary Bringing ‘Pacific Rim,’ ‘Seventh Son,’ ‘Paradise Lost’ And ‘Mass Effect’ To Comic Con; Door Re-Opened For ‘Man Of Steel’ Or ‘Dark Knight Rises’ By Germain Lussier/July 6, 2011 3:21 pm EST For the first time ever, Legendary Entertainment is coming to San Diego Comic Con and they’re bringing some heavy hitters. They’re bring along: Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Charlie Day and Rinko Kikuchi along with writer Travis Beacham and director Guillermo Del Toro for Pacific Rim Jeff Bridges, Ben Barnes, Alicia Vikander and director Sergei Bodrov for Seventh Son Bradley Cooper and director Alex Proyas for Paradise Lost Game creator Casey Hudson and screenwriter Mark Protosevich to talk Mass Effect....

Michael Angarano Cast As Russian Hockey Player In Kevin Smith’s ‘Hit Somebody’ By Peter Sciretta/Jan. 28, 2011 2:30 pm EST The closing title card of Kevin Smith’s upcoming horror film Red State promises that “almost this entire cast will return in Hit Somebody.” We’ve previously told you about what roles Michael Parks, John Goodman and Melissa Leo would play if they return for Smith’s Hockey movie. Now Smith confirms that he also wants Red State co-star Michael Angarano as part of his team....

New ‘Avengers’ International Trailer Highlights Black Widow; Preview Soundgarden’s Contribution To The Soundtrack By Russ Fischer/March 27, 2012 10:30 am EST The promo barrage for The Avengers has really begun in earnest. Below we’ve got a series of international character profile featurettes. Most of them aren’t all that interesting, in part because they use just as much footage from the individual films for each character as they do from The Avengers....

New Poster: ‘The Other Woman,’ Starring Natalie Portman By Russ Fischer/Dec. 27, 2010 1:30 pm EST There’s all sorts of Natalie Portman gossip news today. She’s engaged! She’s pregnant! But let’s leave the details of that stuff to others, and focus on her work. With some of her best acting yet currently being seen in Black Swan, there may be more interest in Portman than ever — hence her appearance on a couple dozen casting shortlists over the past three months....

Noah Baumbach’s ‘While We’re Young’ To Star Ben Stiller And James Franco By Germain Lussier/Dec. 1, 2010 7:00 pm EST Fresh off the welcome Spirit Award nominations for his latest film, Greenberg, writer/director Noah Baumbach will once again team with Ben Stiller, along with Oscar host James Franco, for a film called While We’re Young. It’s about how a hip, young, Brooklyn couple inspires an uptight documentary filmmaker and his wife to loosen up....

Paramount Acquires Film Rights For Ray Bradbury’s ‘The Martian Chronicles’ By Germain Lussier/April 12, 2011 4:00 pm EST With the amount of remakes, reimaginings and retreads of old novels coming out of Hollywood, it’s stunning that no one has made a film adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s uber-influential book The Martian Chronicles. Originally published in 1950, the collection of pseudo-linked short stories about humans leaving a devastated Earth to colonize Mars and all that comes with it, has had an almost infinite influence on science fiction and popular culture....

Paramount Begins Putting Together A Magic 8-Ball Movie By David Chen/April 28, 2010 11:09 am EST Years ago, toy companies went on a film feeding frenzy, attempting to convert many of their products into movie adaptations. Movies like Transformers, Bratz: The Movie, and G.I. Joe were the result. At the time, a movie based on the Magic 8-Ball was also on the table, but as the years passed, the film wound up in a state of limbo....

Paul Greengrass Offered Sony’s Somali Pirate Film, ‘Maersk Alabama’ By Russ Fischer/June 8, 2011 2:30 pm EST Here’s an incremental update on both the film to be based on Captain Richard Phillips’ memoir A Captain’s Duty and the next stage in the career of director Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy, Green Zone). Last week we reported that the director had become a candidate for Sony’s film based on the book, which Tom Hanks became attached to months ago based on the script by Billy Ray....

Platinum Dunes Moves Towards Action With ‘Heatseekers’ By Russ Fischer/April 28, 2010 5:37 pm EST Platinum Dunes has so far been known for horror remakes and one or two original films. But the label is preparing to branch out, thanks in part to a first-look deal with Paramount to make genre films on frugal budgets. The planned Ouija Board movie has an action-adventure bent, for example. Now Dunes has bought the script for Heatseekers, an action film....

Predators Screenwriters Hired For Masters Of The Universe By Peter Sciretta/April 11, 2010 7:43 pm EST Finch and Litvak turned heads in Hollywood last year, selling a spec titled Medieval for $800,000 against $1.6 million. McG was set to direct, and later Rob Cohen became involved. In September, Warner Bros completely dropped the development of the project despite Justin Marks’ screenplay gaining big traction from internet buzz and Kung-Fu Panda director John Stevenson signing on to direct....

Robert Redford’s ‘The Company You Keep’ Adds Anna Kendrick, Terrence Howard, Brendan Gleeson, And Sam Elliott By Angie Han/Oct. 12, 2011 7:00 am EST Robert Redford’s directorial effort The Company You Keep already boasts a top-notch cast, with Julie Christie, Susan Sarandon, Nick Nolte, Brit Marling, Shia LaBeouf, Stanley Tucci, Richard Jenkins, Stephen Root, and Redford himself all signed on. But apparently,there’s still room on the roster for more impressive talent....

Sam Raimi-Produced Horror-Thriller ‘Dibbuk Box’ Gets A Director By Adam Quigley/Oct. 22, 2010 10:00 am EST It’s based on a true story. Well, sort of. The story of the film hails from the LA Times, from an article written by Leslie Gornstein titled A jinx in a box?. In it, she describes an urban legend that resulted from an eBay auction selling a small wooden cabinet consisting of “two locks of hair, one granite slab, one dried rosebud, one goblet, two wheat pennies, one candlestick and, allegedly, one ‘dibbuk,’ a kind of spirit popular in Yiddish folklore”....

Summit Options Upcoming Time Travel Novel ‘Tempest’ By Peter Sciretta/Oct. 5, 2010 8:00 am EST Summit Entertainment has optioned the right to turn Julie Cross’ upcoming sci-fi novel Tempest into a big screen movie. I should note that this has nothing to do with the famous William Shakespeare play or the Julie Taymor-directed big screen adaptation which hits theaters in December. Here is the plot synopsis from the author’s blog:...

Superhero Bits: Batman Live, Captain America, Fantastic Four, Green Lantern, Stan Lee, Powers By Germain Lussier/June 16, 2011 2:00 pm EST The second page of yesterday’s Superhero Bits got screwed up when we published it. Sorry about that. Here it is, once again. Though she was fired a few months back, Julie Taymor showed up at the premiere (yes, finally, the real premiere) of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Though it went though a myriad of chances since she left, the reviews are still pretty lukewarm, though most admit the show improved with the changes....