The blog for Peter T. Chattaway, film critic, journalist, religion junkie, etc. Not all posts will be film-related, but film will always be just around the corner.
Note: There may be spoilers here if you have not yet seen any of the ads or read any of the recent prequel comic books.
1. Paramount is so confident that the new Star Trek movie will be a success when it opens five weeks from now that they have already commissioned a sequel, to be produced and written by the same guys who made the current movie. They are currently aiming to release the sequel in two years. -- Variety
2. Paramount has released new trailers aimed at the action-movie and kid-friendly crowds, and the ads contain new images of pointy-eared babies and planetary destruction, among other things. -- TrekMovie.com (x2)
3. Some of my fellow Trekkies, incidentally, have complained that all the planetary destruction feels too much like Star Wars -- the Death Star and all that -- and not very much like Star Trek. But to that, I would reply that the villain in one of the previous movies, Star Trek: Generations (1994; my comments), wiped out not just planets but entire systems, and of course the original series included episodes such as 'The Doomsday Machine', in which the destruction of entire planets might not have been shown, presumably for budgetary reasons, but was certainly part of the plot.
4. Speaking of planetary destruction, the third and fourth issues of Star Trek: Countdown have shown how the loss of his homeworld turned the Romulan character Nero into the revenge-seeking villain that we will see in the movie. -- Ain't It Cool News, TrekMovie.com (x2, x3)
5. Paramount has also released several images from the upcoming set of movie collector's cards made by Rittenhouse -- and some of those images seem more spoiler-ish than anything we have seen so far. -- MTV Movies Blog, TrekMovie.com
6. The town of Vulcan, Alberta -- which I visited with my family two years ago -- was hoping it could host the world premiere of the new movie, and they even had Leonard Nimoy himself campaigning on their behalf, but alas, it was not to be. For one thing, the town doesn't even have a movie theatre. No worries, though; the studio says it will arrange a screening for the residents of Vulcan in nearby Calgary. The actual world premiere will take place at the Sydney Opera House in Australia on April 7. -- Canadian Press (x2), Calgary Herald, Globe and Mail, Reuters, TrekMovie.com
7. People are already beginning to speculate that, if the new movie is a success, it could lead to a new TV series. -- Hollywood Reporter
8. Harlan Ellison -- who wrote 'City on the Edge of Forever', one of the most acclaimed Star Trek episodes ever -- is suing CBS Paramount for failing to pay him for using elements of that episode in their merchandising. -- Variety, TrekMovie.com (x2)
9. More and more Star Trek fans are putting command chairs in their living rooms. -- New York Times
1. Swedish director Mikael Håfström -- whose last film was the Stephen King adaptation 1408 (2007) -- is set to direct Last Rite, based on the true story of an American priest who studied at an exorcism school in Italy. The script is by Michael Petroni, who was recently hired to re-write The Chronicles of Narnia:The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. -- Variety
2. Paul Bettany, having played an albino assassin monk in The Da Vinci Code (2006) and the archangel Michael in the upcoming Legion, will now star in the horror western Priest as "a warrior priest . . . who turns against the church to track down a murderous band of vampires who have kidnapped his niece." Based on a TokyoPop comic book, Priest will be directed by Scott Stewart, who also directed Legion. -- Hollywood Reporter
3. The English subtitles on the American DVD version of the Swedish vampire flick Let the Right One In (2008) are very, very wrong. -- Icons of Fright, Jeffrey Wells
4. Several Native American actors have been cast as members of the Wolf Pack, a group of werewolves who protect humans from vampires, in New Moon, the first sequel to last year's mega-hit Twilight. Meanwhile, British actor Jamie Campbell-Bower has been cast as one of the Italian vampires. -- Variety (x2), Hollywood Reporter
5. Summit Entertainment, the company behind the Twilight franchise, is also developing the vampire-themed Elevator Men. Screenwriter Marc Haimes describes his film as "a reaction to all of these stories now -- TV shows and movies -- that play this kind of romantic, fantastical, sexy aspect of getting involved with monsters. This is the dark, sinister version of what really happens when you decide you're going to get close to really bad things." -- Hollywood Reporter
6.Watchmen co-writer David Hayter plans to direct a werewolf movie called Slaughter's Road through his newly-formed Dark Hero Studios. -- Variety
7. Sam Fell, co-director of the animated films The Tale of Despereaux (2008) and Flushed Away (2006), is attached to direct Demonkeeper, a live-action film about "a Seattle teen who inherits responsibility for a house filled with demons." Naturally, some kids break into the house and set the worst of the demons loose. -- Variety
8. Harold Ramis, who co-wrote and co-starred in the first two Ghostbusters movies (1984-1989), says the much-rumoured third movie will probably revolve around a new generation of slimefighters, but the original cast will still be on board as "sage mentors" to the new guys. -- MTV News
9. Adam Marcus -- best known, if that's the word, for directing the not-so-correctly-titled Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993) -- has been hired to direct the remake of Val Lewton's classic I Walked with a Zombie (1943). Somehow I doubt it will have the subtlety or thematic potency of the original. -- Variety
1. Kevin Macdonald (Touching the Void, The Last King of Scotland) will start shooting The Eagle of the Ninth in August; the film concerns "a wounded Roman soldier and his loyal Celtic slave who try to solve the mystery of the Ninth Legion, a brigade of Roman soldiers that vanished after heading into the untamed Highlands of Scotland 15 years earlier." -- Variety
2. Coincidentally, Neil Marshall (The Descent, Doomsday) is already making his own movie about the Ninth Legion; it is called Centurion, and it is far enough into production that the filmmakers recently released a making-of video and a photo of former Bond girl Olga Kurylenko made up to look like "a savage-looking Pict warrior woman". -- Empire, Rotten Tomatoes
3. Bond girl Gemma Arterton has been cast as the demi-goddess Io in the upcoming remake of Clash of the Titans (1981). Meanwhile, Cinesite has been hired to provide some of the "major creature animation" -- using computers, of course, rather than the stop-motion techniques that living legend Ray Harryhausen used on the original film. -- Empire, VFXWorld
4. Sean Bean will play Zeus, Kevin McKidd will play Poseidon, Pierce Brosnan will play Chiron, Uma Thurman will play Medusa and Melina Kanakerides will play Athena in Percy Jackson, an adaptation of the best-selling children's novel The Lightning Thief, which is set in the present day and concerns the half-human children of the gods. -- Variety, Hollywood Reporter (x2)
5. The Gotham Group is developing a film based on Steven Sherrill's novel The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, which concerns "the mythical half-man, half-bull minotaur who was supposedly slain by Theseus 3,000 years ago and now lives a lonely life in a Wichita trailer park, making ends meet as a short-order cook in a rundown diner." -- Variety
The blogosphere went gaga for Where the Wild Things Are last week, after the following trailer was released for the upcoming film adaptation directed by Spike Jonze from a script he co-wrote with Dave Eggers:
Click here if the video file above doesn't play properly.
There were a few voices of dissent, though. Noah Millman, for example, responded to Peter Suderman's claim that the trailer is "a perfectly sold hipster nostalgia piece" by articulating several "red flags" that, in his view, indicated the film was not paying proper respect to Maurice Sendak's original book.
Time will tell how the movie itself holds up to scrutiny. In the meantime, here are a couple of earlier adaptations, one complete and one merely a test reel.
First, the original 1973 animated film directed by Gene Deitch:
Click here if the video file above doesn't play properly.
And second, a 1983 test reel combining hand-drawn animation and some very-new-at-the-time computer-generated animation -- produced by Disney and directed by none other than future Pixar guru John Lasseter:
Click here if the video file above doesn't play properly.
Here are the figures for the past weekend, arranged from those that owe the highest percentage of their take to the Canadian box office to those that owe the lowest.
Slumdog Millionaire -- CDN $16,370,000 -- N.AM $139,312,000 -- 11.8% I Love You, Man -- CDN $3,930,000 -- N.AM $37,007,000 -- 10.6% Watchmen -- CDN $10,740,000 -- N.AM $103,296,000 -- 10.4% Duplicity -- CDN $2,450,000 -- N.AM $25,639,000 -- 9.6% Race to Witch Mountain -- CDN $4,950,000 -- N.AM $53,295,000 -- 9.3% Knowing -- CDN $4,080,000 -- N.AM $46,220,000 -- 8.8% The Last House on the Left -- CDN $2,380,000 -- N.AM $28,459,000 -- 8.4% Monsters Vs. Aliens -- CDN $4,210,000 -- N.AM $58,200,000 -- 7.2% 12 Rounds -- CDN $354,827 -- N.AM $5,300,000 -- 6.7% The Haunting in Connecticut -- CDN $912,961 -- N.AM $23,010,000 -- 4.0%
A couple of discrepancies: Slumdog Millionaire was #9 on the Canadian chart (it was #12 in North America as a whole), while Taken was #9 on the North American chart (it was #11 in Canada).
1. The upcoming TV mini-series version of Ben-Hur will be shown on ABC in the United States, though an airdate has not yet been set. Casting is still under way, but production is set to begin in May in Spain, Morocco and Canada. -- Variety, National Post
2. Matthew Vaughn is looking at producing an adaptation of the comic-book series American Jesus, written by Mark Millar; the story "centers on the return of Christ in the modern world, leading to a final confrontation with the Antichrist in a bid to save humanity." Vaughn is currently finishing an adaptation of another Millar series called Kick-Ass. -- Hollywood Reporter
3. Universal has hired Dan Harris to write Dante's Inferno, a live-action film that will not be based on the poem by Dante but, rather, on the Electronic Arts videogame "in which players journey through the depths of hell." Harris co-wrote X2: X-Men United (2003) and Superman Returns (2006) and is currently attached to direct I, Lucifer. -- Variety
4. The first image from Lars von Trier's Antichrist has been released, and its depiction of limbs writhing and emerging from the dark, twisted roots of a massive tree has led to speculation that it may have been inspired by a silent-movie version of Dante's Inferno (1924). -- IndieWIRE, Jeffrey Wells
That's what J.R. Jones of the Chicago Reader calls Olivier Assayas's Summer Hours, a haunting and effective drama about three adult siblings who have to deal with their mother's estate after she passes away; it plays in Chicago twice this week as part of the European Union Film Festival.
I am inclined to agree with Jones's assessment, though I saw the film last year at the local film festival. I have been waiting for it to receive a commercial release ever since; in the meantime, I wrote a brief bit about it here.
And for what it's worth, I must say I have been keen to see the film again these past few weeks, since my own grandmother -- pretty much the only grandparent I ever had -- passed away two weeks ago. The various services and family gatherings that took place this past week are the main reason I haven't done any blogging lately, though I hope to get back up to speed in the near future.
For what it's worth, the trailer below doesn't begin to do the film justice, but a few clips bring back just enough of the movie to bring a tear to my eye.
Click here if the video file above doesn't play properly.
Here are the figures for the past weekend, arranged from those that owe the highest percentage of their take to the Canadian box office to those that owe the lowest.
Met Opera: La Sonnambula -- CDN $404,723 -- N.AM $404,723 -- 100% Slumdog Millionaire -- CDN $15,950,000 -- N.AM $137,178,177 -- 11.6% Watchmen -- CDN $10,080,000 -- N.AM $98,140,886 -- 10.3% I Love You, Man -- CDN $1,710,000 -- N.AM $17,810,270 -- 9.6% Race to Witch Mountain -- CDN $4,260,000 -- N.AM $44,496,593 -- 9.6% Duplicity -- CDN $1,300,000 -- N.AM $13,965,110 -- 9.3% Coraline -- CDN $6,080,000 -- N.AM $72,841,173 -- 8.3% Knowing -- CDN $2,030,000 -- N.AM $24,604,751 -- 8.3% The Last House on the Left -- CDN $1,950,000 -- N.AM $23,902,420 -- 8.2% Taken -- CDN $10,410,000 -- N.AM $133,096,403 -- 7.8%
A couple of discrepancies: Met Opera: La Sonnambula was #9 on the Canadian chart (it wasn't on the North American chart at all, though if it were, it would be #19; and if we bracket it off because it wasn't really a film, then the #10 movie in Canada was Dédé, à travers les brumes, which also wasn't on the North American chart at all but would have been #28 if it was), while Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail was #9 on the North American chart (it was nowhere in the Canadian Top 20).
An improvement on guy flicks and chick flicks alike.
I Love You, Man may be a "bromantic" comedy -- a buddy flick about two men who are secure enough in their masculinity to express their platonic love for one another -- but that doesn't mean women can't get something out of it too.
In my own review of the film, I claimed that the film's depiction of women and the relationships men have with them is "a little healthier" than what we have seen in other recent male-oriented comedies, especially those produced by Judd Apatow. (I Love You, Man is not an Apatow film, but its two lead actors, Paul Rudd and Jason Segel, are both veterans of Apatow films such as Knocked Up and Forgetting Sarah Marshall.)
And now, Jennifer Armstrong at Entertainment Weekly says this film "respects" women more than recent female-oriented comedies such as He's Just Not That Into You and Confessions of a Shopaholic; while those other films "paint women as desperate creatures", says Armstrong, this new one "loves its ladies" and "finds fresh angles on female characters".
My review of Knowing is now up at CT Movies, as is my review of I Love You, Man. (One caveat: an editor added a parenthetical remark to the latter review that cites a film I have never seen.)
1. Columbia Pictures has released a new trailer for the quasi-biblical comedy Year One, which opens June 19:
Click here if the video file above doesn't play properly. -- ComingSoon.net
2. The first episode of Kings, the quasi-modernized version of the story of Saul and David, turned out to have even lower ratings than expected when it aired last Sunday, even after NBC moved it from its originally-intended Thursday-night slot. The rest of the first season has already been shot, so the network might as well air the remaining episodes, but it is open to question whether the show will be renewed for a second season. -- Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Nikki Finke
3.Rome star Ray Stevenson says the prospect of a big-screen follow-up to that TV series is "no longer a smoke and mirrors rumor. . . . From what I have heard, they are nearing the end of script development. We shall see." When series creator Bruno Heller discussed the possibility of a big-screen spin-off in November, he mentioned that the show would have dealt with "the rise of the messiah in Palestine" if it had not been cancelled, though he did not say whether the movie would go in that direction. -- MovieWeb
4.The Robe (1953) was one of a number of films that were shot in two versions in the early days of widescreen filmmaking: one version was made in widescreen CinemaScope, and the other version was shot in the regular narrow aspect ratio, using "radically different camera angles and blocking, as well as showing subtle differences in the actors' performances." A bonus feature on the "special edition" of the film that came out on Blu-Ray this week allows the viewer to watch both versions simultaneously. Fox is also working on a high-def release of John Huston's The Bible: In the Beginning (1966). -- New York Post (x2), Parallax View
5.Alan Doyle, recently cast as Allen a-Dale in Ridley Scott's Robin Hood movie, says there will be "a lot of singing" in the film: "A lot of it by different people in different parts of the film. I don’t know quite yet if Russell and I will be singing together. But there will be lots of music in the film." Meanwhile, scholar Julian Luxford has found evidence that medieval monks did not regard Robin Hood in a particularly positive light, Friar Tuck notwithstanding. -- MTV Movies Blog, Associated Press
6. Chow Yun-Fat will play the ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius in a biopic being produced by the Chinese government to mark the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China. -- Variety
7. Ronald Harwood will write a movie about the final days of Russian Czar Nicholas II and his family, based on Robert Alexander's fictionalized account The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar. -- Variety
8. Tristan Wilds has been cast in Red Tails, the George Lucas-produced movie about "an elite all-black unit of escort pilots" that existed during World War II. -- Hollywood Reporter
9.Race to Witch Mountain co-writer Mark Bomback is writing Agent Zigzag, a spy drama based on Ben Macintyre's book about Edward Arnold Chapman, a habitual criminal turned British-German double agent during World War II. -- Variety
10.Defiance, based on the true story of four Jewish brothers who led a resistance movement against the Nazis in Poland, "has tanked at the Warsaw box office after months of criticism over what many Poles see as Hollywood rewriting history." -- Variety
Time has been too tight to blog much lately, but I figured I should link to a couple of brief items I have written up at the CT Movies blog on two recently-deceased Christian film producers who were very active between the 1950s and 1970s: Robert E.A. Lee, producer of the Oscar-nominated Lutheran films Martin Luther (1953) and A Time for Burning (1966); and Dick Ross, director of several early Billy Graham movies (1951-1965) and producer of The Cross and the Switchblade (1970).
Here are the figures for the past weekend, arranged from those that owe the highest percentage of their take to the Canadian box office to those that owe the lowest.
Miss March -- CDN $324,900 -- N.AM $2,350,000 -- 13.8% Confessions of a Shopaholic -- CDN $5,460,000 -- N.AM $41,357,000 -- 13.2% Slumdog Millionaire -- CDN $15,050,000 -- N.AM $132,625,000 -- 11.3% He's Just Not That into You -- CDN $9,670,000 -- N.AM $89,004,000 -- 10.9% Watchmen -- CDN $8,340,000 -- N.AM $86,005,000 -- 9.7% Paul Blart: Mall Cop -- CDN $12,610,000 -- N.AM $137,767,000 -- 9.2% Taken -- CDN $9,800,000 -- N.AM $126,833,000 -- 7.7% Coraline -- CDN $5,140,000 -- N.AM $69,144,000 -- 7.4% The Last House on the Left -- CDN $999,293 -- N.AM $14,658,000 -- 6.8% Race to Witch Mountain -- CDN $1,570,000 -- N.AM $25,000,000 -- 6.3%
My interview with Michael Green, executive producer of the new TV series Kings, is now up at BC Christian News.
The first episode airs tomorrow night, and it's interesting on a number of levels, especially if you're a Bible-movie buff like me. (The show is basically a modernized version of the story of Saul and David.) I'm not reviewing the episode, per se, but here are four extra points that occurred to me while watching it, which I couldn't fit into the article linked above:
First: The way the film depicts David's battlefield heroism, and his reluctance to be feted and exploited by the powerful and influential people back home, is reminiscent of Flags of Our Fathers (2006) -- but when I mentioned this to Green, he said he had never seen that film, so he couldn't comment on that.
Second: The way the show conveys the gap between life on the battlefield and life in the big city -- the gap between those who risk their lives for their country and those who live in the lap of luxury, especially while running the country -- is intriguingly reminiscent of a line from the biblical story of David and Bathsheba, which begins by telling us that "David remained in Jerusalem" when he sent his army out to fight during that time of year "when kings go off to war". There is an implicit critique of David's behaviour in that line, just as there is an implicit critique of the modern, real-world ruling class in the TV show.
Third, and a little more spoiler-ish: The reason Reverend Samuels finally withdraws his support from King Silas is strikingly different from the reason the prophet Samuel gave for finally withdrawing his own support from King Saul. Whereas the biblical king failed to be as thorough as he could have been in wiping out an entire ethnic group (i.e. the Amalekites), the TV king violates a peace treaty and keeps a war going after everyone else had thought it was over. (There's a little more to it than that, but I don't want to give too much away.) So on one level -- and it's not necessarily the most important level, where either of these stories is concerned, but still, it's there -- you could say the TV king is rejected for being too violent, while the biblical king was rejected for not being violent enough.
Fourth, and even more spoiler-ish: The first episode ends with a twist that almost seems to be taking aspects of the biblical David's story -- aspects that come up long, long after Saul is dead -- and transposing them onto this earlier part of the storyline, and onto entirely different characters. I am thinking specifically of how the biblical David faced a rebellion led by his son Absalom and his grandfather-in-law Ahithophel; a similar conspiracy involving one of Silas's offspring and one of Silas's in-laws seems to be in the works here, too.
1.Dark City (1998) director Alex Proyas says there has been talk lately of making a sequel to that film -- and if he does make it, he would like the supernatural hero of the first film to become the villain of the second film: "He should turn nasty because he’s got unlimited power. That’s something I’d like to explore." That certainly fits with some of the changes that Proyas made to the "director's cut" last year. -- MTV Movies Blog
2. Matt Damon is attached to star in The Adjustment Bureau, a sci-fi action romance about "a charismatic congressman who . . . meets a beautiful ballet dancer, only to find strange circumstances keeping their sparks from catching fire." The film is "loosely based" on a Philip K. Dick story. -- Variety, Hollywood Reporter
3. Director Alexander Payne and actor Paul Giamatti, who last worked together on the Oscar-nominated Sideways (2004), are teaming up again for Downsizing, a "social satire" about "a man low on money who decides he can have a much nicer life if he undergoes a process to shrink himself." The film will also star Reese Witherspoon, who worked with Payne on Election (1999). -- Variety
4. The latest name being bandied about as a possible director for Eclipse, the third movie in the Twilight series, is that of Juan Antonio Bayona, director of the spooky Spanish ghost story The Orphanage (2007). -- Hollywood Reporter
5. Casting is already under way for the live-action Star WarsTV series that will take place between the two big-screen trilogies. Hmmm, will George Lucas cobble a few episodes together for the big screen, as he did with the animated Clone Wars? -- MTV Movies Blog
6. Morena Baccarin, of Firefly and Stargate fame, will play the leader of the alien invasion in the remake of V. -- Hollywood Reporter
7. Fox is developing Last Man, a "futuristic action film" about "a group of young, inexperienced American soldiers" who battle an alien race on a distant planet. Um, why do the soldiers have to be American? -- Variety
8. Former New Line executive Mark Ordesky is one of the producers now attached to a "science fiction film" adaptation of Chariots of the Gods, the Erich von Däniken book which argued that the ancient world was visited -- and to some degree shaped -- by extra-terrestrials. The book was previously turned into a documentary in 1970, and its basic premise was also reflected in last year's Indiana Jonesand the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. -- Variety
9. Vin Diesel says writer-director David Twohy is "finishing up" the script for a third film in the Chronicles of Riddick series (2000-2004). -- GameSpot
10. Brett Ratner hasn't decided whether to direct the new Conan the Barbarian movie yet, but he says the script is "very cool, contemporary. It’s not an homage. It’s not a remake, really. It’s going back to the original source material — the mythology of the characters." -- MTV Splash Page
1. Steven Spielberg has just finished a month or so of motion-capture photography on The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn. Peter Jackson and his team will spend the next 18 months on the digital animation and special effects -- but Spielberg will receive the sole directorial credit. It has long been reported that Jackson will direct the next film in what is expected to be a three-part series, but as of right now, there is no script or budget lined up for the next installment. -- Variety
2. Thanks to the recession, less theatres have installed digital projectors capable of showing 3-D movies than was expected even a year ago, and the first big victim of this slowdown will be Monsters Vs. Aliens, which opens March 27. A year ago, DreamWorks Animation said it expected there to be 5,000 screens capable of showing digital 3-D movies by the time the film came out, but last week, they admitted there would only be "in excess of 2,000". Another 4,000 screens or more will show the film in regular 2-D. -- The Wrap
3. Fox is developing a movie based on the comic strip Marmaduke, which concerns "a mischievous Great Dane". It is unknown at this point whether the film will be animated, live-action, or a combination of the two like Fox's previous Garfield (2004-2006) and Alvin and the Chipmunks (2007-2009) adaptations. -- Hollywood Reporter
4.Green Lantern producer Donald De Line says the film will focus on "the Hal Jordan origin story," and the actor playing the titular superhero will probably be "late '20s, early '30s" -- and not as young as Anton Yelchin, the 20-year-old who was rumoured to be up for the part last week. -- ComingSoon.net
5. George Miller says he is "still attached" to the Justice League movie that was almost made last year, but Warner is taking its cue from Marvel now and wants to give each superhero his or her own movie series before bringing them all together as a super-team. Given how long it can take to develop a single franchise, let alone to make a sequel or a threequel, is it safe to say that, by the time any future Justice League movie gets made, the actors would not be as ridiculously young as the actors that Miller was considering last year? -- MTV Splash Page
6.Transformers star Megan Fox is in talks to play the "gun-wielding beauty" Leila in Jonah Hex, an adaptation of the DC comic that will also star Josh Brolin and John Malkovich. Fox is also attached to star in an adaptation of Fathom, a comic about "a young woman named Aspen who learns she is a member of a race of aquatic humanoids who possess the ability to control water." -- Hollywood Reporter, Variety
7. Kenneth Branagh was recently spotted having lunch with Alexander Skarsgård, leading fans to speculate that the son of Stellan Skarsgård might be in the running for a part -- maybe even the lead? -- in Branagh's Thor. -- Latino Review
8. Nicolas Cage says Ghost Rider 2, which is currently in the very, very early stages of development, should "go deeper" into the "action horror element". -- MTV Splash Page
9. Fox is reportedly thinking of rebooting the Fantastic Four (2005-2007) franchise and taking it in a "less bubble gum" direction. -- IESB.net
10. Disney has moved the nationwide release date for The Princess and the Frog up from Christmas Day to December 11, to get the film out of the way of Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel. The film, which marks Disney's return to hand-drawn animation, will also open in New York and Los Angeles exclusively on November 25. -- Variety
11. DreamWorks Animation has bought the rights to Chris Gall's Dinotrux, which "takes place in a fictional prehistoric age, when the world was ruled by . . . creatures that were part trucks, part dinosaurs". The studio plans to develop it as a CG-animated feature. -- Variety
12. Fox has bought the rights to Mr. Popper's Penguins, a children's book that won the Newbery Award in 1939. It concerns a house painter who manages a stage act consisting of 12 performing penguins. -- Variety
Louisiana Movies reports that the ancient city of Sodom, built for Harold Ramis's biblical comedy Year One (which opens June 19), is still standing in northwest Louisiana, and local movie types hope to rent it out to other filmmakers as well.
The next movie to use these sets would not have to be a biblical epic, per se -- as reporter Alexandyr Kent notes, the city could be turned into all sorts of other places with a bit of re-dressing -- but certainly many films in this genre have cut down on costs by re-using sets that were built for other movies. My favorite example of this is Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979), which was filmed in Tunisia on sets built for Franco Zeffirelli's considerably more reverent mini-series Jesus of Nazareth (1977). Who knows? Perhaps, in a reversal of that precedent, the Year One sets could be used in a more pious production somewhere down the road. But would the makers of that film admit to the link between the two films as freely as the Pythons acknowledged their debt to Zeffirelli?
The makers of even earlier biblical epics didn't have to deal with such questions very much, since they were less inclined to share their work in the first place. Cecil B. DeMille famously destroyed the sets for the silent version of The Ten Commandments (1923) and buried them in the California desert, lest anyone take advantage of his monuments and beat him to the big screen with a cheap imitation of his movie. And I have heard similar stories about the massive sets that were built for some of the 1950s Bible epics, too.
Here are the figures for the past weekend, arranged from those that owe the highest percentage of their take to the Canadian box office to those that owe the lowest.
One Week -- CDN $204,375 -- N.AM $204,375 -- 100% Confessions of a Shopaholic -- CDN $4,970,000 -- N.AM $38,356,000 -- 13.0% Slumdog Millionaire -- CDN $13,820,000 -- N.AM $125,441,000 -- 11.0% Fired Up -- CDN $1,460,000 -- N.AM $13,360,000 -- 10.9% He's Just Not That into You -- CDN $9,080,000 -- N.AM $84,647,000 -- 10.7% Paul Blart: Mall Cop -- CDN $12,210,000 -- N.AM $133,643,000 -- 9.1% Taken -- CDN $9,000,000 -- N.AM $118,049,000 -- 7.6% Watchmen -- CDN $3,950,000 -- N.AM $55,655,000 -- 7.1% Coraline -- CDN $4,590,000 -- N.AM $65,680,000 -- 7.0% Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience -- CDN $1,110,000 -- N.AM $16,791,000 -- 6.6%
A couple of discrepancies: One Week was #10 on the Canadian chart (it wasn't on the North American chart at all, though if it were, it would be around #35), while Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail was #2 on the North American chart (it was nowhere in the Canadian Top 20).
1. Bill Donohue of the Catholic League has launched an e-mail campaign against Angels & Demons, the upcoming sequel to The Da Vinci Code (2006) -- but since conventional wisdom has it that all publicity is good publicity, and since the earlier film grossed a phenomenal $758 million worldwide (considerably more than The Passion of the Christ, and more than either of the Narnia movies) despite a similar campaign, an anonymous studio chief has quipped that the only thing that bothers him about Donohue's newest campaign is its "timing": "Maybe we could have hoped for the campaign a little closer to the opening." The film comes out May 15. -- Variety
2.Terminator Salvation producer Moritz Borman is suing fellow producers Derek Anderson and Victor Kubicek for fraud and breach of contract, and seeking $160 million in damages -- two and a half months before the film comes out. -- Variety, Anne Thompson
3. First there was Meet the Parents (2000), starring Ben Stiller as a man who has reason to be nervous about marrying the daughter of Robert De Niro. Then there was Meet the Fockers (2004), in which De Niro and clan get to know Stiller's parents, played by Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand; it went on to become one of the top-grossing comedies of all time. Now, plans are afoot for a third film, to be called Little Fockers, presumably in reference to Stiller's children. John Hamburg (Along Came Polly, I Love You Man) is working on the script, and the studio is talking to potential directors. -- Hollywood Reporter, MTV Movies Blog (x2)
4. Jay Roach, who directed the first two Focker movies, won't be directing the third one because he's too busy working on Dinner for Schmucks, a remake of the funny French film Le Dîner des cons (1998), aka The Dinner Game. Roach's film will star Steve Carell and Paul Rudd, who previously co-starred in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) and The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005). -- Variety
6. World Wrestling Entertainment's film division plans to reboot the Vietnam-set Chuck Norris action series Missing in Action (1984-1988) as a straight-to-video movie set today in the Middle East. One of the writers working on it is Jeremy Passmore, who is also writing the remake of Red Dawn (1984). -- Hollywood Reporter
7. George Miller, who won an Oscar for his singing-and-dancing penguin cartoon Happy Feet (2006), still wants to make Mad Max 4 -- but this time, instead of going the live-action route, he wants it to be a 3-D anime film. Mel Gibson, who worked with Miller on the first three films between 1979 and 1985, will not be involved in this one. -- MTV Movies Blog
1. Alan Doyle, of the Canadian folk-rock band Great Big Sea, has been cast as Allan A'Dayle in Ridley Scott's Robin Hood movie. The film will also star Russell Crowe as Robin Hood and Cate Blanchett as Maid Marian. -- National Post, Globe and Mail
2. New Regency has bought the script for a film called Medieval, about which little is known except that it "plays like 'The Dirty Dozen' in the age of castles, plagues and serfs," and the studio "hopes to spin [it] as a hyper-realistic action movie in the vein of '300.'" More emphasis on "hyper" than "realistic", then, I'm guessing. -- Variety, Hollywood Reporter
3. Guillermo Del Toro wants to make "a Gothic-Western retelling of 'The Count of Monte Cristo,'" which may or may not be called The Left Hand of Darkness. -- MTV Movies Blog
1. Alfred Molina has been cast as the evil magician Horvath in Jerry Bruckheimer's modernized live-action adaptation of The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Nicolas Cage is playing the sorcerer, Jay Baruchel is playing the apprentice, and Teresa Palmer is playing the apprentice's love interest. -- SlashFilm, Hollywood Reporter
2. Chris Columbus, who directed the first two Harry Potter movies (2001-2002) among other things, will direct Percy Jackson, based on the first book in the Rick Riordan series about a schoolboy who discovers that his father is the Greek god Poseidon. The story will revolve around the theft of Zeus's master lightning bolt, and it will star Logan Lerman, who played one of Mel Gibson's sons in The Patriot (2000) and Christian Bale's son in 3:10 to Yuma (2007). -- Variety, Hollywood Reporter
3. It's official: Dakota Fanning will play an evil Italian vampire in New Moon, the sequel to Twilight. Rumour also has it that Drew Barrymore has been approached about directing the third film, Eclipse; the first film was directed by Catherine Hardwicke, and the second film is being directed by Chris Weitz. -- Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Entertainment Weekly (x2)
4. New Line Cinema and Platinum Dunes have set a release date of April 16, 2010 for their Nightmare on Elm Street reboot, and they are working on a sequel to their Friday the 13th reboot as well. No one has been cast as Freddy Krueger yet, but a grassroots movement is afoot to convince the producers to give the role to Watchmen co-star Jackie Earle Haley -- and Haley says he likes the idea. -- ComingSoon.net, Hollywood Reporter, MTV Movies Blog
5. Paramount Vantage and Comedy Central have acquired the rights to Ghosts/Aliens, a "supernatural comedy novel" about "two pothead friends who set out on a quest to discover both ghosts and aliens". This story is presumably not to be confused with Monsters Vs. Aliens, which will be distributed in a few weeks by sister company Paramount and DreamWorks Animation. -- Hollywood Reporter
6. Chris Columbus's production company has bought the rights to the graphic novel Welcome to Hoxford, which concerns "a psychiatrist who must team with a deeply disturbed patient in order to escape werewolves who run an institution for the criminally insane." -- Variety
7. Columbia Pictures is developing a third Ghostbusters movie -- yes, 20 years after the last one came out -- but contrary to all the rumours out there, it will not be produced by Judd Apatow. Meanwhile, co-star and series co-creator Dan Aykroyd says the cameras could be rolling as early as "late fall 2009". -- Patrick Goldstein, Boston Globe
8. MGM has bought the comedy screenplay Once Upon a Time ..., which is described as a "humorous quest story" that "plays with fairy-tale convention in the vein of the 'Shrek' movies and 'The Princess Bride.'" -- Hollywood Reporter
9. Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which stars Heath Ledger in his final role as "a traveling magician who gives customers more than they bargained for," has not yet been able to secure an American distributor. -- Hollywood Reporter
First, Devin Gordon wrote this in his Watchmen review for Newsweek magazine:
Snyder's attention wanders when it comes to meat-and-potatoes storytelling, perhaps because he's never really had to tell one before. He draws performances that range from sublime (Jackie Earle Haley as a bitter antihero named Rorschach) to ridiculous (Malin Akerman, who has a sweet onscreen disposition but is nonetheless the Jar Jar Binks of "Watchmen").
Then, SpoutBlog ran the following picture with an article by Christopher Campbell called '5 Reasons a Watchmen Movie Was Unnecessary' -- an article, I might add, that never uses the words "Jar", "Jar" or "Binks":
And then, I discovered that the image below was one of six finalists in Gizmodo's '104 Ways to Hilariously Ruin the Watchmen Movie' PhotoShop contest:
Well, at least that last item wasn't necessarily saying that the movie was ruined, only that it could have been ruined.
I must confess, I am kind of curious, now, to see if this meme has any sort of staying power. But just for the record, I saw the film myself this afternoon and I do not think Akerman is the Jar Jar Binks of this film.
I am not quite sure just what I do think of the film itself, yet, but for what it's worth, Jeffrey Wells's reaction comes close to my own on several points, and I agree with Heidi MacDonald that the pop-song picks on the soundtrack are often "embarrassingly on the nose".
Oh, and my favorite exchange from the book -- and one of the book's pithiest, most significant bits of dialogue -- has been completely recontextualized and given to two completely different characters, in a way that robs the exchange of its full power, I think. I can't decide whether this is better or worse than, say, the way Harry Potterand the Philosopher's Stone (2001) simply omitted several of the funniest and most character-revealing lines from its source material. I mean, at least the Watchmen exchange is still in there, somewhere... but if they're not going to do it right, then why do it at all?
MTV Splash Page reports that former Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca is not happy about the fact that Watchmen depicts him being shot and killed in an alternate version of the 1980s. Larry Carroll writes:
In director Zack Snyder’s “Watchmen,” historical figures are depicted as existing in an alternate reality in which we won Vietnam, Richard Nixon was elected for five terms, and superheroes walk amongst us. And as much as I personally loved the movie, I’m also a huge film buff — so when I saw a very-alive American icon getting murdered 24 years ago on screen, I found myself struggling to comprehend the “Why?” “How?” and “Has this ever been done before?” of what was unfolding before my eyes.
“It’s nothing against Lee; I think Lee’s awesome,” Snyder told me when I asked him about the scene, in which an actor playing Iacocca meets with superhero industrialist Ozymandias, only to be caught in the crossfire as an assassin tries to kill the crimefighting CEO. “But he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
The fact of the matter, however, is that the former Chrysler CEO and Ford President never met the fictional Adrian Veidt — and when I reached out to Iacocca for comment, he wasn’t exactly thrilled about the details of his big-screen debut.
A spokesman confirmed that Iacocca had never heard of “Watchmen” until I called. The news of his depiction came as a surprise, and his office confirmed that they had never been approached by Snyder, Warner Brothers, or anyone else associated with the film — either to ask permission or to simply give him a heads-up.
When I explained that Iacocca is shown on-screen being shot between the eyes and killed, the phone went quiet for what felt like forever. The automotive pioneer’s office has since attempted to contact the studio to secure a screening, DVD or even an explanation, but as of press time had yet to receive a return phone call.
To answer Carroll's question, yes, this sort of thing has been done at least once before -- and at feature length, too, rather than just a cameo. I refer to Death of a President (2006), a pseudo-documentary that used archival footage and a few special effects to depict the assassination of George W. Bush.
I can't think of any other examples right now, though.
If you're a fan of French filmmaker Robert Bresson, and if you happen to be in the Vancouver area on April 3, then you probably won't want to miss this: the Pacific Cinematheque is hosting a screening of Trial of Joan of Arc (1962) that will be attended by the film's star, Florence Delay. I have not seen this particular film yet, and it seems to be difficult to find on video, so I would probably have made a point of attending this screening anyway -- but if the star is there in person? I'm there, definitely.
1. Leonardo DiCaprio will star in Chris Nolan's Inception, about which little is known except that it is "a contemporary sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind." -- Variety, Hollywood Reporter
2.Battlestar Galactica co-executive producer Mark Verheiden will write Quatermain, about which little is known except that it is a "sci-fi adventure" that is "big, live action and would not be outside the wheel-well for fans of, say, Battlestar Galactica." -- Hollywood Reporter, Mark Verheiden
3. More details are beginning to leak out about Tron 2.0, which is currently being prepped in Vancouver. Among other things, the story will reportedly begin in 1989, and Flynn (the Jeff Bridges character) will have a seven-year-old son. Hmmm, the original movie came out in 1982, seven years prior to that. Who is the boy's mother, I wonder? -- Ain't It Cool News
4. Michael Brandt and Derek Haas have signed on to write the script for The Thirteenth Hour, based on a Richard Doetsch novel about "a man accused of murdering his wife who gets to go back in time -- in one-hour increments over 12 hours -- with the chance to stop his wife's killer." Sounds kind of similar to The Days Before, which concerns a guy who goes back in time in daily increments. -- Variety
5. Apparently there is a big spoiler in this article in Variety. So let's just say that, if you read a novel in the last four years and found yourself thinking, "Hey, isn't the premise behind this story, in which people discover that they are clones created for the purpose of organ donation, kind of similar to that Michael Bay movie The Island?" then you might know which recent novel is about to become a film in its own right. -- Variety
6. Danielle Panabaker will star in Chuck Russell's Prodigy: "It’s about this high school forty years in the future . . . where [the students] are bred to be the best of the best. They are supposed to be the most beautiful, the most talented, the strongest. They’re medicated, fed, and monitored. . . . Someone tries to take over the world, and the whole system comes crashing down." -- MTV Movies Blog
7. John Cusack and Rob Corddry will star in Hot Tub Time Machine, a comedy about "a group of friends who are frustrated when they return to a ski lodge where they partied as teens. They then get in a hot tub -- which happens to be a time machine -- and get transported to 1987." -- Variety, Hollywood Reporter
8. A trailer has been released for The Mutant Chronicles, which opened in Europe a few months ago and comes to North America in limited release in April. The film concerns "a fight against an army of underworld NecroMutants" in the 28th century, and it has a fair bit of God-talk, too. -- Carmen Andres, MTV Movies Blog
9.Party of Five alumnus Scott Wolf will star in V, a remake of the 1980s TV show that is "set in the future, when the human race is ruled by aliens known as the Visitors. Wolf will play a career-obsessed TV newscaster who becomes the aliens' propaganda outlet." -- Hollywood Reporter
10. The trailer for the amnesiacs-in-space thriller Pandorum, starring Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster, is now online. -- ComingSoon.net
It's beginning to look like the Star Trek and Terminator movies could have a couple of very significant things in common -- and no, I'm not just referring to their ILM special effects or to their sometimes overlapping cast members. (Anton Yelchin plays Kyle Reese and Pavel Chekov in the upcoming Terminator and Star Trek movies, respectively; Paul Winfield played the ill-fated Captain Terrell in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan two years before he played the ill-fated Lieutenant Ed Traxler in the original Terminator.)
The newest trailer for Terminator Salvation went online today, and reports coming out of WonderCon 2009 indicate that a new trailer for Star Trek was shown to the masses there, too, and should be arriving in theatres in the very near future. And based on these trailers -- or, in Star Trek's case, the description of that trailer provided by ComingSoon.net and TrekMovie.com -- it sounds like each of these franchises is pushing in a direction that may be new to the franchise in question, but has already been well-covered by the other one.
Warning: There may be spoilers ahead, but they are all gleaned from the trailers that have already been made public (and, in Star Trek's case, some of these details are also gleaned from the Countdown prequel comic-book mini-series that is already out there).
Let's start with the plot element that Star Trek seems to be borrowing from The Terminator, namely time-travel and attempted retroactive abortion.
As we all know, the original Terminator was about a robot that came back in time to kill Sarah Connor before she could give birth to the future saviour of humanity -- and in the first two sequels, the arrival of even more robotic assassins from the future wreaked havoc with the timeline, such that Sarah's son John can now be heard saying, in the trailers for Terminator Salvation, that the future he is living in is no longer the future his mother warned him about.
The new Star Trek movie, meanwhile, begins in the late 24th century and, if what I have heard is correct, concerns a Romulan who goes back in time to the mid-23rd century to kill the parents of James T. Kirk before the man himself can be born -- but while the Romulan villain does succeed in killing Kirk's father (a detail that is reportedly acknowledged in the new trailer), Kirk himself will still grow up to become a starship captain, even if he gets there by a different route.
And just as Kyle Reese and a couple of reprogrammed Terminators came back in time to protect Sarah Connor and her son in the first three Terminator movies, so too it seems that the elderly Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy himself, will come back in time to help the young Kirk in the new Star Trek movie.
The key difference between the two series, in this regard, seems to be that there are many universes and many timelines co-existing in the world of Star Trek, whereas there seems to be only one universe in the Terminator movies, and essentially only one timeline, even if it sometimes rewrites itself. The crew of the Enterprise-Donce encountered many Enterprises from many different universes, but you never get the sense that the John Connor who lives in the timeline where Judgment Day took place in 1997 could ever visit the John Connor who lives in the timeline where Judgment Day took place in 2004, for example.
And then there is the plot element that Terminator Salvation seems to be borrowing from Star Trek and countless other science-fiction stories, namely its increasingly complicated view of human-robot relationships. You can get a sense of that element from the trailer that went online today:
Click here if the video file above doesn't play properly.
The original Star Trek series (1966-1969) frequently made the point that computers and robots were inferior to human beings and should never be given the privileges, esteem or authority that are given to human beings. But Gene Roddenberry's attitude towards such things began to soften in the 1970s, as he produced TV pilots like The Questor Tapes (1974) and movies like Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), both of which were essentially sympathetic portrayals of machines that go searching for their creators. Finally, Roddenberry made the android Data one of the regular members of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994), even going so far as to devote an early episode to the proposition that Data constitutes a form of "new life" that is entitled to what we used to call "human rights".
A similar evolution in sensibility seems to be taking place across the Terminator movies as well. In the first film, the machines were all evil, period, especially the one played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. The second and third films introduced copies of the Schwarzenegger cyborg that were re-programmed to fight for the good guys instead of the bad guys -- but while both of these robots were capable of some character growth, they were still more machine than man, and their identification as "good guys" ultimately rested on the fact that someone had fiddled with their software.
Now, however, Terminator Salvation seems poised to go one step further, by introducing a character who sincerely believes himself to be human and is shocked to discover that he has a robotic endoskeleton just like all the Terminators. What is more, the new trailer seems to suggest that this character will become essential to humanity's survival in some way. He is not a mechanical slave compelled to take orders from the person who re-programmed him; instead, he seems more like an ally.
How, exactly, this character came to believe he was human has not yet been explained -- but on the surface, at least, it seems that the Connors, who once regarded the machines as their bitter enemies, and then found a way to bend some of the machines to their will, must now become partners with a machine who is apparently siding with them of his own free will. And no doubt the movie will raise the question of what makes this new character so different from the rest of us anyway.
So, interesting times ahead.
In the meantime, a few more tidbits about Terminator Salvation came out of WonderCon. In brief:
Hitfix and ComingSoon.net report that whether the film is rated R (like the first three films) or PG-13 may depend on whether the film includes a nude scene that is designed to show what makes flesh-and-blood humans different from the machines.
Hitfix also reports that director McG is still talking to original Terminator co-stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton about finding some way to fit them into the new movie. He adds: "If the first movie's about saving Sarah Connor and the second movie's about saving John Connor, our movie's about saving Kyle Reese."
Finally, Ain't It Cool News reports that McG told the crowd at WonderCon that "Skynet is gathering all these people in order to rip their stem cells out of them, using that as their main study for replicating human tissue." One can only wonder how that might play into current medical-ethics debates.
MAR 5 UPDATE: The Star Trek trailer is now online, too:
Click here if the video file above doesn't play properly.
Born, raised, married, and still living in Vancouver, British Columbia. In addition to a 2005 Evangelical Press Association award-winning film column for BC Christian News, my articles have appeared in such publications as Books & Culture, Christianity Today, Bible Review, Faith Today, ChristianWeek, the Vancouver Courier, the Vancouver Sun, the Georgia Straight and Beliefnet.com. I am a member of the Vancouver Film Critics Circle and the Faith and Film Critics Circle.
