Lego’s Run, via Goatee Style. I’ll betcha Gregory Harrison comes by to check the progress every day.
Tag: Cinema
It’s Oh So Quiet.
Still catching up with my Oscar slate, and last night’s foray was Phillip Noyce’s remake of The Quiet American. All in all, very well done, and a battered, despairing Michael Caine deserves an Oscar for this much more than he ever did for his turn in the schlocky Cider House Rules. (As I said last week, though, the Best Actor field this year is very, very strong, and I still think Day-Lewis has the edge – having not yet seen any of the movies featuring Best Actress nominees, I can’t really comment on the women.) Brendan Fraser is also quite good, and the political dimension of the story (i.e. America’s involvement in sponsoring Vietnamese terrorism) is very well-integrated with the dramatic tale being told. If anything, the film slipped in the ratings to the right only because (a) The Pianist was better, or at least more powerful, (b) I found this film a bit slow in the first hour, partly because the tale begins at the end with the death of the “quiet” American (not much of a spoiler – it’s almost the first shot in the film), and thus much of the dramatic tension in the story has already been siphoned off, and (c) the “Vietnam is a woman” allegory is a bit heavy-handed – the audience can pick up on what’s going on without it being stated over and over again. But it’s worth seeing, and Michael Caine is magnificent.
Rising from a Ring of Fire.
While Todd Haynes works on getting his Bob Dylan biopic off the ground, MTV has a scoop about the Man In Black: Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon will play Johnny Cash and June Carter respectively in the forthcoming Walk the Line, to be directed by Girl, Interrupted‘s James Mangold. I’ll give it a chance, for the subject matter if nothing else.
Arboreal Poets, Schizophrenic Guides.
PJ talks briefly about the extended Two Towers cut, and sure enough it looks like we’re getting more Ents and more Smeagol. Not sure I really need to see Treebeard deliver bad poetry, but I’ll reserve judgment until I see the cut.
Grimm Amusements.
Terry Gilliam fans take heart: Although Don Quixote may be dead and buried, it looks like The Brothers Grimm has now secured funding from a parnership of MGM and Dimension. The film currently stars Heath Ledger and Matt Damon as the eponymous brothers, with Robin Williams and Jonathan “Sam Lowry” Pryce as the villains. Dimension, the senior partner, has a pretty lousy track record with regard to burying films they don’t have control over (Re: Existenz and Below), but hopefully Gilliam can buck the curse this time around.
Smaug Awakens 12.19.06
The site’s getting killed at the moment, but at some point this fan-made teaser for Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit is definitely worth checking out. Brought a smile to my face. In loosely related news, the second Animatrix trailer is also up – not half as intriguing as the first installment, but worth a look if you’re at all into anime (which, frankly, I’m not).
Bad news and Good news.
Harry finds out directly from PJ what’s been holding up the rumored Return of the King trailer. Says M. Jackson, We’re not doing a ROTK trailer for the end of Two Towers like we did last year. The reason is that the TT extended DVD has been so complex this year, it would have taken too many resources away from trying to get that finished. The FOTR extended cut had 35 extra CG shots – the TT extended cut has over 150.” Ah well. The waiting is the hardest part, but at least it sounds like more Ents and more Gollum are in our future.
True Partners.
Looks like they’re getting on even better than hoped. Making a sizable $14 million per pic (plus a cut of receipts), Vin Diesel plans to use his movie star muscle to secure co-star Judi Dench a much larger paycheck for her forthcoming work in the Pitch Black sequels.
Bespectacled Freak!
The casting powers-that-be over at Sony officially announce Alfred Molina as Dr. Octopus in The Amazing Spiderman. This isn’t bad casting at all, although I still think Stellan Skarsgaard or Phillip Seymour Hoffman (if he could be induced not to go too far over the top) would have been great fun. Also, the new, Michael Chabon-penned script is rumored to only feature Doc Ock here as the main villain – they have wisely decided to forego the Batman route and instead will use one Spidey arch-nemesis at a time. Update: In a similar long-rumored casting call, WB announces that Michael Gambon will play Dumbledore in the next Harry Potter film. With Gary Oldman, Timothy Spall, and most importantly Alfonso Cuaron, this one could be a definite improvement over the first two.
xXx and Elizabeth.
I can already see the sparks fly. Garth of Dark Horizons reports on the movie pairing you’ve all been waiting for: Vin Diesel and Dame Judi Dench. I know the Pitch Black sequels are set in space, but hopefully they can squeeze in a scene of the two of them simultaneously screaming from out the front windsheld of a car. In other Dark Horizons news, along the lines of K-19, director Kathryn Bigelow is now working on a historical film about the Scottsboro case, which could be quite interesting.