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Avatar: A Positive Early Review, More Budget Speculation, Creature Design, Two New Featurettes and More
1 hour ago
With less than two weeks to go before James Cameron's Avatar hits the big screen worldwide, 20th Century Fox is definitely full throttle into marketing and promotion. After the jump we have a lot of new Avatar news tidbits, including another early review, this time a bit positive, more big claims from Sigourney Weaver, some quotes from creature designer Neville Page (Cloverfield) on the creatures of Pandora, more speculation on the real budget of the film, and two new featurettes (one of which is a really cool scientific nature documentary about Pandora). Jeff Wells has spoken to someone who has seen the film, and here is what they said: "the action scenes delivered everything you'd expect from Cameron, even in this digital form. Visceral, detailed, a 'first-person shooter' experience on the biggest game screen ever hoisted. The simple, predictable story was deemed as almost perfunctory, as if adding too »
- Peter Sciretta
Producers Put 2007 Black List Comedy Pictures of You and Jay Baruchel’s Goon Into Play
1 hour ago
Dave Gross and Jesse Shapira are busy. They're teaming with Youth in Revolt producer David Permut to make Pictures of You, the Joshua Friedlander script that was on the 2007 Black List. The teen-oriented romantic comedy will complement another funny picture Gross and Shapira have in the works: Goon, a hockey comedy written by Jay Baruchel and Superbad's Evan Goldberg. Variety reports on Pictures of You, saying that the film is set in a Florida seaside town and follows "a teenage boy who finds a lost camera on the beach. After developing the film, he ends up on a quest to find the girl of his dreams, whose picture was discovered inside the camera." Whimsical! Play this one in a double-feature with Amanda Seyfried's Letters to Juliet. Meanwhile, a mention at the bottom of the same trade report says that Gross and Shapira are also working on Goon, written »
- Russ Fischer
War Birds: Extreme Street Racing, in the Sky
2 hours ago
Fast and Furious may have done pretty well, but movies set in the culture of illegal street racing are passe. (Note, please that I use the term 'culture' there with the heaviest possible dose of mocking irony.) It's time to push the envelope a bit. I can almost hear the pitch for War Birds in my head: it's like The Fast and the Furious, with airplanes. THR reports on the film, which is about "an Air Force veteran-turned-reckless airshow re-enactment pilot as he gets pulled into the underground culture of illegal, real-life aerial combat." Current plans for the film include shooting with real planes (P-51 Mustangs, P-38 Lightnings, F4U Corsairs and a B-17 Flying Fortress, plus modern military helicopters and planes) and doing as much of the action in-camera as possible. All sounds like a good idea, but who's behind it? Directing and producing is Michael Chait, who as »
- Russ Fischer
Dark Shadows Definitely Next for Tim Burton; Set to Shoot in Fall 2010
3 hours ago
A feature adaptation of the late-'60s vampire soap opera Dark Shadows has been rumored for a long, long time. Johnny Depp and his company came on board to produce the film in 2007 (Depp has called main character Barnabas Collins one of his childhood obsessions) and in 20008 Tim Burton was named as director, with John August scripting. This summer, Depp confirmed that he would star in the picture. Now, comments from producer Graham King, the project sounds like it's finally ready to go. SciFi Wire talked to King at a roundtable interview for The Young Victoria, where he said "We're actually going to shoot that film next September/October with Tim Burton and Johnny," when asked about Dark Shadows. They're rewriting the last screenplay draft by John August, but plan to be in production by the fall. As recently as this past September, Burton was referring to the film as »
- Russ Fischer
Page 2
6 hours ago
Page 2 is a compilation of stories and news tidbits, which for whatever reason, didn’t make the front page of /Film. After the jump we’ve included 43 different items, fun images, videos, casting tidbits, articles of interest and more. It’s like a mystery grab bag of movie web related goodness. Has Darth Vader joined the Salvation Army? Several volunteers from the 501st dressed as Star Wars characters and took their turn ringing bells at both Jefferson City Wal-mart. [star wars blog] Peter Berg says that Hancock 2 won't happen, for now. [cinemablend] Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association has awarded Jason Reitman's Up in the Air with Best Film of 2009. [thewrap] Mark Strong gets his own Sherlock Holmes character poster. [impa] ScriptShadow reminds us that the 2009 edition of the annual screenwriting listing, The Black List, will be be released on December 11th. Collider has the first official photos from Sex in the City »
- Peter Sciretta
Summit Bringing Us a Real Vampire Movie With A Dracula Remake, Vlad
9 hours ago
Summit just can't quit those vampires. The studio is apparently working on their own action-heavy Dracula remake, entitled Vlad, with a script by actor Charlie Hunnam. After loving the guy on Undeclared, Children of Men, and Sons of Anarchy, a vampire script from Hunnam comes as a bit of a surprise. Music video director Anthony Mandler is in negotiations to direct, and Brad Pitt is producing via Plan B along with Dede Gardner. Not surprisingly, the film will apparently center on Dracula as the young prince Vlad. Apparently, Summit saw 300 parallels with Mandler's reel, and they're hoping for a similarly stylistic approach to the film. I've seen a few of his videos, and his dark and moody style could certainly work well with a vampire story. Normally I'm suspicious of the trend to 300ify everything, but in this particular case it may actually work. There's no word on casting yet, »
- Devindra Hardawar
Votd: The Horribly Slow Murderer With the Extremely Inefficient Weapon
10 hours ago
Winner of 12 film festival awards, Richard Gale's short film The Horribly Slow Murderer With the Extremely Inefficient Weapon tells the epic story of one man's encounter with what could be the most relentless murderer of all time. Based on an idea for a short comedy sketch, the concept was expanded into a mini-epic... a faux-movie trailer with a 10-minute running time, for a feature film with an alleged running time of over nine hours. Starring Paul Clemens (The Beast Within), Brian Rohan (Criticized), Fay Kato, Melissa Paladino and Mike Kacey. Due to the vast number of locations and sequences, the short film required 22 days of shooting (more shooting days than on his feature film The Proposal!) Accomplished with a small cast and crew, the film takes place all over the world, but was shot entirely in Southern California, and by utilizing a greenscreen set up in the director's living room. »
- Peter Sciretta
Jack Black to Produce New Cryptozoology Animated Film
11 hours ago
I'm beginning to think of Jack Black more as a cartoon character than an actual live person. I blame Kung Fu Panda, Ice Age, and that I keep mistakenly thinking he's been in one of the Shrek films at some point. Coupled with the fact that I've forced myself to forget the comedic failure Year One, Black could very well be made of bits and bytes for all I know. Now he's involved in another animated project, although this time as just a producer. Black has teamed up with writer Jason Micallef (he of the Black List script Butter) to pitch an animated feature centered on Cryptozoology---the search for legendary creatures like Big Foot, chupacabras, and the Loch Ness monster. There's no word yet if it's going to be 2D or CG animation, but given that even Disney couldn't be bothered to put out a decent 2D film in theaters »
- Devindra Hardawar
Tweet in Klingon
15 hours ago
Have you ever wanted to send out tweets on Twitter in another language? TwitLan lets you translate your tweets in 81 different languages. But that's... boring. How about a website that allows you to tweet using a fictional foreign or intergalactic language? TweetInKlingon.com allows you to send messages on Twitter, translated into the same language as the famous reoccurring Star Trek villains. The language's basic sound, along with a few words, was first devised by actor James Doohan (aka "Scotty") for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, subsequently developed by Marc Okrand into a full-fledged language. According to our friends at Mashable, Cryptic Studios worked with Friend2Friend to create the site. Messages are automatically translated, hash-tagged and linked to an English-conversion URL (which makes it helpful for the many Trekkers, Trekkies and non-Trek fans who are unable to converse completely in Klingon). »
- Peter Sciretta
McG Still Wants to Make 5th and 6th Terminator Movies
18 hours ago
The rights to the Terminator franchise are on the block, and the future of the film series is in doubt at the moment. But someone will end up holding the bag sooner or later (or a recapitalized Halcyon will retain them) and at that point another film will go into production. A fifth has been in development, though it hasn't gone terribly far, given the financial instability of rights holder Halcyon. Prior to release, Terminator: Salvation was said to be the first film in a new trilogy, and director McG had previously said he wanted to make the additional films. Last night, during the Bd-Live commentary on Salvation, McG said he still plans to make those movies. The only transcript of the chat I have right now is the liveblog done by a slightly beered-up Jason Chen at Gizmodo. There, amidst some healthy scorn for the technical difficulties encountered during the livecast, »
- Russ Fischer
10 articles
