Today has seen the first Official Image from The Dark Knight Rises. It appeared after the Dark Knight Rises Website went online and some clever bods worked out that the chanting that could be heard was a twitter address, which then revealed this image of Tom Hardy as Bane. Not a lot to see apart from he has been working out! Sure this is the first of many sneak peeks Christopher Nolan will be throwing our way over the next year.
Category: Movie News&comments
Director Gore Verbinski (Pirates Of The Carribean: Curse Of The Black Pearl) has today found his Lone Ranger, for the big screen version of the Radio/Tv Series made famous in the 1950′s. Joining Johnny Depp’s Tonto, the man in the mask is Armie Hammer. Not a big name, but one you might recognise, he played the Winklevoss Twins in, David Finchers’ The Social Network, which was a great performance. You might not know that he was also set to put on another mask as The Caped Crusader, Batman in a 2006 Justice League movie, directed by George Millar. Unfortunately for Hammer the movie got cancelled so now he gets another chance at stardom. The Lone Ranger doesn’t mean a lot to me, as I’m too young to remember it, but could make a good movie, just hope Johnny Depp doesn’t play Tonto as a drunk Indian!
No new reviews to put up, though shall hopefully catch Attack The Block this week. Instead here are two posters for two films that I am really looking forward to this year. First up the Steven Speilberg/Peter Jackson digital animation interpretation of Tintin. Love Spielberg, and love Tintin, so very excited about this one! Second the poster for the return to the big screen of The Muppets. Used to watch the Muppets as a kid and really enjoyed the recent films, so looking forward to this new one. With a screenplay by Jason Siegel (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and an all star human cast including Ricky Gervais, Jack Black and Amy Adams, this could be great.
In one of the worse kept secrets in movies this year, Guillermo Del Toro has been announced as the director of the Hobbit movies. I say movies as they are splitting the book into two movies. To stop this being a bit thin on story they are also adding elements into the story to linl it up to the Lord OF The Rings trilogy. Peter Jackson isn’t directing but is staying on as producer, so it will probably retain the style of the LOTR trilogy but with Del Toro’s distinctive visuals. For the big fans of the Jackson trilogy there is the big news that Sir Ian McKellan is returning in the role of Gandalf. Wouldn’t be surprised if a few other cast members return.
If you are wondering who Guillermo Del Toro is, well he is the director of Spanish horror films Cronos and Devils Backbone, as well as Hollywood movies, Mimic, Blade 2 and Hellboy. The film that really garned him praise was Pan’s Labyrinth which was like a really dark fairytale with amazing visuals and imaginative characters. His next film gets a release this summer and it a sequel to Hellboy, titled Hellboy II: The Golden Army, and it looks amazing and could easily out do it’s predecessor.
This week, the kings of animation, Pixar held a press conference announcing their schedule of films up to 2012 with a few surprises. The first big surprise was that after Wall-E’s release all their films will be in 3D! Two of the biggies of these 3D films will be the re-releases of Toy Story and Toy Story 2, it will be great to see these on the big screen again, but especailly in 3D!
The big Pixar film for 2009 is called ‘Up’ and follows a 78 year old man who abandons his mudane life and sets off on an adventure with an 8 year old wilderness explorer. Sounds a bit different to their usual stuff, but it is Pixar so no need to worry. 2009 also sees the 3D re-release of Toy Story.
2010 will bring the film that everyone hoped for but always looked unlikely, Toy Story 3! This time the horrible day that they hoped would never happen has arrived and Andy has gone off to college and the Toys are out in the cold. I’m so glad that Pixar are doing this, as when Pixars deal with Disney was over the mouse house threatened to make their own third film as a direct to DVD sequel without the the same voices, which would have been terrible. 2010 will also see the 3D release of Toy Story 2.
2011, sees Pixar really spoiling us with two films. First up is ‘Newt’, which sees the last male and female newts of the species put together in a laboratory to hopefully mate and save the species. The problem is they can’t stand each other! It’s directed by the guy who made the ‘Lifted’ short you might have seen before Ratatouille. The second offering is ‘The Bear And The Bow’, which sees a royal in a mythical Scotland decide to try being an Archer but ends up putting her father and mother in peril. Featuring the voices of Resse Witherspoon, Billy Connolly and Emma Thompson.
Finally 2012 see’s a real surprise sequel, ‘Cars 2′! Of all the Pixar films you would have expected a sequel I would have thought the Incredibles would have been obvious, not the film that was slated, though personally I really liked Cars, it looks fantastic on Blu Ray! No news on the story or which characters are returning but it has apparently got a international feel.
On February 19th came the sad news that Toshiba the company that was the producer of HD DVD and it’s players had decided to give up the ghost and hand the format war to Sony’s Blu Ray. For me this was pretty gutting as at the end of December I had picked up my HD DVD player! I already had Blu Ray through my Playstation 3 but was annoyed by the fact I couldn’t get some films on the format, then I saw a Toshiba HD player for only £180 with seven free discs and thought it was time to join the HD DVD camp as well. One of the first discs I got was Transformers which looked amazing, and was everything I hoped from High Definition. The one thing I really love about HD DVD is the lack of Region Coding which was a real pain on DVD till the region free players came out, and is a system that has been adopted by Blu Ray. With the pound being so strong against the dollar importing discs from America is very cheap and worry free due to no coding, I have alreay got a nice selection. Another great Idea with HD DVD was the combo discs, a lot of the US releases had the HD format on one side and the standard dvd on the other, which meant I could lend the discs to my parents, something I can’t do with the Blu Ray unless they get a PS3 and they aren’t really big gamers, though my mum does have a DS!
Almost a week after geting my player I heard the news that Warner Brothers, who were one of the few companies to release their films on both Hi Def formats, were going to go Blu Ray exclusive and that was the first nail in the coffin. It was only a matter of time before the other studios followed suit and when Toshiba made their announcement Paramount and Universal all jumped ship. The players all dropped in price as well, my player is now about £70! and the Xbox 360 HD drive is only £39.99, strangely though the discs haven’t dropped in price yet, well not in rip off Britain. Most annoying was that the studios said all discs that have already been announced would be released, which included Sweeny Todd and There Will Be Blood, then the other day they decided they couldn’t be bothered. So two discs I was really looking forward to have been ditched.
So where did it all go wrong for HD DVD? It’s hard to say as they seemed to have done everything right, unlike Blu Ray which as a format is still evolving, HD was set out from the start and didn’t change it. The interactive feature on the discs are brilliant, the video commentary on MI:III was impressive and so far I have been impressed more with picture quality on HD over Blu Ray. As already mentioned they have the region free status and the players are actually cheaper. What I think was the death knell was the Playstation 3. The console wasn’t doing that well, compared to Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Nintendo’s Wii, but by putting a Blu Ray player in the machine as standard they brought out the cheapest Blu Ray player on the market providing people with an easy entry into the world of High Def movies. If Microsoft had put the HD drive into the 360 as standard I think the format war would have gone the opposite way. Sony have usually been the losers in format wars, from Betamax video, to Minidisc and the UMD format for the PSP, so it is a real shock they have won this time. The thing is they really need to sort it out properly though to win over the average consumer, the format needs a proper set format. They also could do with dropping the Region coding which is just a money making tactic. The one company that uses it the most is 20th Century Fox, all their US blu ray releases are region Coded, so what, you say I’ll wait till it comes out over here. Well when they are released in the UK they are priced at £24.99 in the US they are £17.99, but because of the region coding we can’t import the cheaper disc. Imagine having to pay nearly £7 more for the Star Wars films, it’s just wrong.
So it’s all over for a great movie watching format, hopefully I can get some cheaper discs now and with over 300 available discs there are plenty to pick from. Last night I watched the directors cut of Beowulf on HD DVD and it was simply stunning it’s a shame that for people to watch it in high def from now on it will probably be on an overpriced disc.
A bit late I know but what of this years winners and losers. Unfortunately I don’t have Sky Movies so couldn’t watch the full ceremony but did watch the highlights on Monday and well, it was seemed a bit down this year. I think that was due to the writers strike and the possibilty of the awards not happening, Jon Stewart did a good job with what he had and was prety funny, though I do miss Billy Crystal who is one of the best hosts. So to the winners.
Best Film went to the Coen Brothers, ‘No Country For Old Men’ which also bagged them the Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay awards. I haven’t actually seen this film yet, in fact i ordered it yesterday from the US on Blu Ray so can’tsay whether it was worthy of all the awards it got, in fact the only film it was up against I have seen was There Will Be Blood and that was amazing so No Country must be exceptional to beat it.
The Best Actor went as expected to Daniel Day Lewis for ‘There Will Be Blood’ amd if you read my review you will see I agree with his win.
The Best Actress winner was a slight surprise, going to the gorgeous Marion Cotillard for ‘La Vie En Rose’. Before the ceremony everyone expected Julie Christie to win for ‘Away From Her’ and the outside tip was Ellen Page for Juno. But having already won the BAFTA it wasn’t a huge shock.
Best Supporting Actor provided another award for ‘No Country For Old Men’ with Javier Bardem winning for hir role as a hitman hunting down Josh Brolin. It was quite a tough category with some brilliant performances from Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Casey Affleck and Tom Wilkinson to beat but he was a big favourite.
Best Supporting Actress went to Tilda Swinton for Michael Clayton a film I am at present waiting for to drop through my letterbox. She gave a great speech as well especailly taking the piss out of George Clooney and his Batsuit!
Best Original Screenplay went to Diablo Cody for Juno, which has got to be a first with a tattoed woman collecting an Oscar. Also liked her comment that now she isn’t a stripper but a writer she has seen a drop in wages.
Best Animated Feature not surprisingly went to Pixars ‘Ratatouille’ and a very worthy winner as it is a great film, that said I really enjoyed ‘Surfs Up’ when I finally saw it
In the technical catergories, was glad to see ‘There Will Be Blood’ winning Best Cinematography it was well deserved. Also a bigger winner that didn’t get much mention was ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’ which picked up three oscars for, Editing, Sound and Sound Editing which if you’ve seen the film is thoroughly warranted. It was nice to see Sweeney Todd picking up an award for art direction as it does look amazing. Also congratulations to film ‘Once’ for winning best song despite being up against three songs from ‘Enchanted’ and well done Jon Stewart for letting Marget Irglova come back on and say her thank you’s after having been cut off before she could. A couple of winners that shouldn’t have been in my opinion were best score which should have gone to ‘There Will Be Blood’ which wasn’t nominated on a technicality and ‘The Golden Compass’ winning Visual Effects over ‘Transformers’. Every review of Compass moaned how the effects were pretty poor yet it beats the frankly astonishing effects of Transformers, don’t get it!!
Oh well another year over lets see what’s up for the awards next year, can’t see Indy 4, The Dark Knight and Iron Man being up for best film though!
For those of us who won’t be getting a valentines gift this year, Paramount have something to cheer us up, they are releasing the first trailer for,’Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull’ on Thursday. It is debuting on US TV in the morning and then popping up on the official site straight afterwards so should be availbale over here about 5pm, lets hope! Here’s the web address so like me you can get it as soon as it appears. http://www.indianajones.com/site/index.html
Heard the sad news yesterday that Roy Scheider had died at the age of 75. Apparently he had been fighting cancer of the plasma for the last two years. For me this is a sad loss as he was one of the stars of my favourite film, Jaws, where he played former New York cop Chief Martin Brody who moves to Amity island for a quieter life but runs into a large shark! It was the role he will be most remembered for and returned to for first sequel, but he was actually nominated twice for best supporting actor Oscars, first in the film, Klute and then for his role opposite Gene Hackman in The French Connection. Later in his career he was in a reasonably successful TV series Seaquest DSV. Although he hasn’t had any major roles for a while it is a sad loss.
Long Waits And Mobile Phones!
Also have to say well done to the Alamo Drafthouse cinema in Texas , Ain’t It Cool News recently put up a new advert that the aforementioned cinema is putting up in front of their performances. They have the right idea about film presentation in that people who talk or use Mobile phones are removed from the cinema, and one customers took offence to this policy and complained and they turned it into their advert. Wish the UK cinemas would take notice of this! Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L3eeC2lJZs&feature=player_embedded