Posts

George Lucas Insists It’s Possible To “Nuke The Fridge” And Survive By Germain Lussier/Jan. 18, 2012 7:00 am EST 50/50: A great 2011 movie and also the odds George Lucas gives that a person would survive if they were in a lead refrigerator during a nuclear blast. We refer, of course, to the now infamous scene early in Steven Spielberg’s 2008 film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull where Jones shields himself from a nuclear blast inside a refrigerator....

Greta Gerwig And Orlando Bloom Cast In ‘Lola Versus’ By Russ Fischer/May 3, 2011 4:00 am EST Variety gives up the synopsis like a waiter handing over a fragrant, filled to the brim cocktail: Some foreign distribution sales will be going on soon at Cannes, and the film is set for a June shoot in New York, with Daryl Wein (Brekaing Upwards) directing from a script he co-wrote with Zoe Lister-Jones (Delocated, The Other Guys, Stuck Between Stations)....

Jamie Bell Joins ‘Man On A Ledge’; Amy Adams May Also Sign On By Russ Fischer/Sept. 3, 2010 6:50 am EST Director Asger Leth (Ghosts of Cite Soleil) suffered a career setback earlier this year when Universal canceled Cartel, the film he was planning to shoot first with Sean Penn, then with Josh Brolin. But he’s picking up steam now with Man on a Ledge, which has had Sam Worthington attached to star for some time....

Jean-Pierre Jeunet And Natalie Portman Considering ‘Brothers Grimm: Snow White’? By Russ Fischer/Sept. 21, 2010 3:41 pm EST I’m at a loss to explain why the ‘dark fantasy’ genre has gained as much steam as it has, but adding blood and boobs to classic stores definitely floats a lot of folks’ boats. (Yeah, I know, just answered my own question there.) So there’s an edgy adult version of Snow White in development, called Brothers Grimm: Snow White....

LOL: Groovin’ With Ken By Peter Sciretta/May 31, 2010 9:00 am EST Pixar produced this faux docu-television clip for the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con International. It was basically created to introduce us to one of the new characters in Toy Story 3: Ken (of Ken & Barbie fame) voiced by Michael Keaton. At the time, I wasn’t too sold on the addition of this new character… but having now seen the film, I can tell you that most people agree he is one of the funniest parts of the whole movie....

Michael Fassbender Confirmed For Ridley Scott’s ‘The Counselor,’ Starting In May By Russ Fischer/Feb. 21, 2012 2:00 pm EST Michael Fassbender is going back to work with Ridley Scott. The possibility we reported a few days ago, that Fassbender might star in Scott’s film version of Cormac McCarthy’s script The Counselor, has come to pass. So just before the opening of Prometheus, which Scott directed and in which Fassbender appears, the duo will be at work again on a story that is being compared to No Country For Old Men....

Neil Patrick Harris Confirmed To Return For A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas By Russ Fischer/June 23, 2010 9:12 pm EST On the off chance that an appearance by Patton Oswalt isn’t enough to get you pre-rolling for the third Harold & Kumar movie, now there is some confirmation that Neil Patrick Harris will appear in A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas, making him three for three in the series. We’ve already had reports that he was in the script, and so figured that this was coming down the pipe....

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau From ‘Game Of Thrones’ Joins Jessica Chastain In Supernatural Horror ‘Mama’ By Russ Fischer/Sept. 12, 2011 5:30 pm EST Jessica Chastain seems to be all over the place this fall. She made her debut this summer in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, and is on screens now or soon in The Help, The Debt, Take Shelter, Coriolanus, Wilde Salome and Texas Killing Fields. Quite a lineup for an actress that no one could have identified a year or two ago....

Noel Clarke Joins ‘Star Trek’ Sequel By Russ Fischer/Jan. 4, 2012 1:00 pm EST Briefly: Details remain skimpy on J.J Abrams’ sequel to Star Trek, though the film should be shooting soon. But we’ve got one more name to add to the roster of new actors, which also includes Alice Eve and Peter Weller. Noel Clarke, the high-profile British writer/director/actor perhaps best known in the US for playing Mickey Smith in Doctor Who, has joined the cast....

Patton Oswalt Cast In Jason Reitman’s ‘Young Adult,’ Patrick Wilson In Talks By Russ Fischer/Sept. 24, 2010 4:24 pm EST Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody, the duo behind the camera on Juno (OK, two of many people behind the camera on Juno) are coming together once again to make a film called Young Adult, based on Cody’s screenplay. The film is about a woman who returns to her high school town, where she tries to reconnect with (read: stalks) the guy she once dated....

Results Of The Slashfilm/Totally Rad Show Summer Movie Game By Adam Quigley/Oct. 6, 2010 3:00 pm EST The teams? /Film’s Peter Sciretta, David Chen and Russ Fischer vs. TRS’s Dan Trachtenberg, Alex Albrecht, and Jeff Cannata. Well gentlemen, the summer is over. The bets were placed—some wise, some considerably less wise—and now, I’ve taken on the mantle of judge, jury and executioner. Find out who won after the break. We’ll get to the top 10 of the summer in a bit, but first let’s review:...

Short List For Spider-Man’s Love Interest Revealed, David Fincher ‘Can’t Imagine’ Andrew Garfield As Spider-Man By Peter Sciretta/Aug. 19, 2010 1:45 pm EST The short list of actresses in the running to play the love interest in Marc Webb’s 3D reboot of Spider-Man has leaked online. Meanwhile, David Fincher, who directed Andrew Garfield in The Social Network, admits that he “can’t imagine” the actor playing the webbed superhero. Which actresses might co-star in the next Spider-Man movie?...

This Week In DVD & Blu-Ray: The King’s Speech, Rabbit Hole, Somewhere, Gulliver’s Travels, The Way Back, And More By Adam Quigley/April 20, 2011 6:00 am EST We may receive a commission on purchases made from links. Approaching a story of monumental scope with charm and intimacy, The King’s Speech is a finely crafted crowd-pleaser that plays fast and loose with history but does so to convey a decidedly more human tale of finding one’s inner strength in order to be heard....

TV Bits: New HBO Pilots From Alan Ball And Judd Apatow, Michael Gambon Joins ‘Luck’ By Germain Lussier/Dec. 10, 2010 9:33 am EST Alan Ball goes to the well once again, Judd Apatow makes a return to TV and Professor Dumbledore bets the ponies. Just another day on the cable powerhouse that is HBO. Ball, the Oscar-winning show runner of Six Feet Under and True Blood just shot a pilot called All Signs of Death, based on Charlie Huston’s book The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death, which follows a trauma cleaning unit, much like Sunshine Cleaning, but less cute....

Video: The Coen Brothers And Noah Baumbach Talk Movie Openings And The Coens Next Film By Russ Fischer/June 13, 2011 3:30 pm EST Joel and Ethan Coen are not known for doing interviews. But over the weekend they took part in the opening celebration of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s new Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, by participating in an hour-long talk with director Noah Baumbach. The subject was primarily the openings to several films from all the participants, but the conversation ranged a bit wider than that....

VOTD: The Spielberg Face By Germain Lussier/Dec. 14, 2011 6:00 am EST If you don’t think 2011 has been a good year for movies, considered the fact that the most celebrated and influential filmmaker of our generation, Steven Spielberg, is releasing not one but two films before the calendar flips. The releases of The Adventures of Tintin and War Horse have not only put Spielberg back in the public spotlight, they’ve once again opened up a discourse about his masterworks of the past four decades....

Will Sony Emulate Marvel’s Strategy And Tie ‘Venom’ To ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ And Other Films? By Russ Fischer/June 11, 2012 11:30 am EST Some people and a few studio execs (I guess some of them are people, too) scoffed as Marvel Studios began to build a franchise of films that would lead up to The Avengers. The team movie was ambitious, and the result of so much planning that it was easy to suspect it would fail....

WTF: ‘After School Midnighters’ Trailer Features A Dancing, Fighting Visible Man By Russ Fischer/April 30, 2012 11:30 am EST There are a couple examples in manga and anime of the school teaching tool The Visible Man showing up as a character or personality. But I don’t think any of them feature the guy dancing, fleeing from half-skinned rabbits wielding machine guns, or jumping a dirt bike through the face of a giant clock....

‘Corpse Bride’ Co-Director Mike Johnson To Helm CG/Stop-Motion Hybrid ‘Oz Wars’ By Peter Sciretta/Dec. 15, 2010 2:00 pm EST Written by Rob Moreland (Space Chimps 1 & 2) and Athena Gam (Alien Rock Band), Oz Wars attempts to transform the Wizard of Oz narrative into “a contemporary, freaky action-packed PG-13 audience pleaser, with Dorothy caught up in a whirlwind of warrior witches, black magic, martial arts and monsters.” It’s being described as an animated film thats “not just for kids,” as the world will be “dark, slick, sexy, and dangerous....

By Russ Fischer/Feb. 18, 2011 7:30 pm EST It’s been a big week for the video game Dead Island, a trailer for which was released and immediately became an internet sensation. The game had been all but forgotten prior to that trailer, but now people at least know the name of the game. Not that they know anything about the game, really. There is no gameplay in the trailer, and even sites that were offered an early peek at the playable action were cautious about saying they needed to see and play a lot more....