R.I.P. Phil Brown 1916-2006, who withstood the blacklist and is best remembered as Uncle Owen. (He joins Aunt Beru, who passed in 2000 (9/14).) And, also in unhappy news, farewell to the Bluths, who’ve gone the way of all good and tragically misunderstood television families…for now.
Category: Fanboy
Stand don’t Deliver.
Six new one-sheets from X3: The Last Stand make the rounds (as do a few new stills) and, hoo boy — Let’s just say that they’re not going to thwart the negative energy surrounding the project ever since Ratner came on board. Will this be the X-Men’s Batman and Robin?
Steelers’ Reels / Capt. Cromwell.
Another Superbowl has come and gone (Congrats to the Steelers, some of the calls notwithstanding), and — while I personallly preferred the FedEx cavemen and Hummer monsters — some new movie ads were scattered throughout the game, including new looks at V for Vendetta, MI:III, Poseidon, and Pirates of the Caribbean. (And, also in movie news, the increasingly over-stuffed Spiderman 3 picks up another marquee name with James Cromwell as Capt. Stacy, Gwen’s father.)
Skekses and Spiders.
Clone Wars and Samurai Jack creator Genndy Tartakovsky will helm The Power of the Dark Crystal. And, in other fanboy news, Bryce Dallas Howard shows off the Gwen Stacey tresses while promoting Manderlay, and Dark Horizons obtains a pretty large spoiler about James Franco’s role in Spiderman 3.
Phoenix Force Five.
The cast for Order of the Phoenix is announced, with Helen McCrory as Bellatrix Lestrange, Natalia Tena as Nymphadora Tonks, Kathryn Hunter as Mrs. Figg, and newcomer Evanna Lynch as Luna Lovegood. (Previously announced were George Harris and Imelda Staunton.) I have no sense of any of these actors, but they all seem to look the part.
Being Kingsley.
Joining Imelda Staunton for Year 5 at Hogwarts, veteran actor George Harris will play Kingsley Shacklebolt in the forthcoming Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (set to begin filming next month.) You may recognize him as Capt. Katanga in Raiders of the Lost Ark, or, more recently, as Morty in Layer Cake.
Rosebud…
Here’s a soon-to-be-valuable resource for the morbid moviegoer: the Movie Deaths Database, an “outpost dedicated to documenting death scenes in films,” replete with sorting categories such as Blaze of Glory, Contrived Self-Defense, Not Quite Dead, Master/Pupil, and Pointless. Oh, the humanity. (Via Triptych Cryptic.)
Princes kept the view.
With The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe still raking it in, the next Narnia movie, Prince Caspian, moves forward. Apparently, all four Pevensies are on board and shooting will begin this autumn. “If we don’t make it now we’ll never be able to, because [the kids]’ll be too old.” (Via WebGoddess.)
The Night Gwen Stacy…Returned?
Curiouser and curiouser…The Village‘s Bryce Dallas Howard joins Spiderman 3 as none other than Gwen Stacy, Peter Parker’s doomed childhood sweetheart. I find this somewhat strange, since they’d basically turned Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane Watson into Gwen Stacy in the first film (#6). (Plus, they’ve switched hair-colors, but ah well.)
By Any Other Name.
Byrne. Rose Byrne. Word is that’s who been tapped to play the next Bond girl (“Vesper Lynd”) opposite Daniel Craig in Casino Royale. (Prior to this gig and Sofia Coppola’s upcoming Marie Antoinette, she was in Troy, Wicker Park, and I Capture the Castle.) But who’s playing Moneypenny?