Category Archives: Film

Film

Depp, Farrell, and Law Save Imaginarium

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Terry Gilliam may be lucky in love, but he’s rather unlucky in filmmaking. Lost in La Mancha chronicled the mishaps and catastrophes that plagued his version of Don Quixote, which eventually had to be scrapped. For his current production, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, he cast the late Heath Ledger as the lead. When Heath tragically passed, many thought the production would need to be scrapped since it was already about halfway through filming.

Gilliam has creatively found a way to save the film by relying on it’s fantastical nature. The main character passes from the “real world” to various fantasy realms through a magic mirror. Luckily for the production, all the real world scenes had been filmed. Now, when Heath’s character passes into a new realm, a different actor will play that part. The three actors taking the roles are Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, and Jude Law. I don’t think Gilliam could have asked for better actors, and the box office appeal will surely skyrocket because of their involvement. And we all benefit by getting to see Heath’s final performance, which will not be edited or enhanced in any way.

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Film

Universal Gets Hasbro’s Leftover Crap

Paramount got the film rights to Transformers and G.I. Joe1. Clearly big wins. Universal has pounced on what’s left: Monopoly, Candyland, Clue, Ouija, Battleship, Magic: The Gathering and Stretch Armstrong. Uh, did they think this through? I can see how video games with intricate plots can work as movies. But… Candyland?

Then again, Ridley Scott is already working on the movie based on Monopoly. No, I am not kidding. I imagine it’s about 4 real estate magnates all vying to buy up the slums of Atlantic City. Keanu Reeves will be playing the shoe, his first convincing role since Ted “Theodore” Logan.

  1. Which comes out next year [↩]
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Film

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

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If you hadn’t already heard, they’re making a movie about Wolverine. According to Wikipedia, it’s not based on the Origin miniseries. Instead, it focuses on his more recent past. Here’s the current lineup (with some spoiler-free commentary):

Wolverine: Hugh Jackson. I’d love to follow this up with “Duh!”, but with WB mixing up casting for the Justice League movie1, you never can tell. Anyway, I like Jackman, even though he is way too tall for Wolverine, who is 5’3″ in the comic books. Glenn Danzig is the obvious choice, but he supposedly turned down the role in 2000.

Deadpool: Ryan Reynolds. I collected Deadpool for a while; he’s a real wiseass. Reynolds can handle that. I never saw his face in the comics, which would make this a voice acting gig when you factor in the stunt men. But this is backstory so who knows.

Sabretooth: Liev Shreiber. Shreiber is a great actor, but I wonder if they’re going to do anything about the size difference between him and Jackman. Sabretooth is huge and towers over Wolverine. It’s sort of a David and Goliath situation. Shreiber is 6’3″, but only 1 inch taller than Jackman. My guess is that they’ll pretend it’s normal, like Burton did with Keaton.

William Stryker: Danny Huston. Another great actor.

Gambit, a major character in the X-Men comics, will be played by a Taylor Kitsch, a relative unknown. Ironically, the relatively unknown characters John Wraith/Kestrel and Barnell/Blackwing will be played by will.i.am from The Black Eyed Peas and Dominic Monaghan (LOTR, Lost), respectively.

  1. Which might be delayed as long as Superman Returns was… [↩]
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Film

Kristin Kreuk Is Chun Li!

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This is awesome. Kristin Kreuk will play Chun Li, the speed-kicking, high jumping uber cutie in Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li.

I’ve sunk more quarters into Street Fighter II than any other game. I even have an X-Arcade stick, pretty much just for fighting games on MAME. And I think Kristin Kreuk (Lana Lang on Smallville) is one of the loveliest actresses on earth. So this is a big win for me.

I’m also happy to hear Balrog will be played by Michael Clarke Duncan, and Chris Klein will play Nash1 . Moon Bloodgood (the hottie from Journeyman), will also star, but I don’t know who she’ll be playing2. To top it all off, it will be choreographed by Dion Lam who did The Matrix.

The only bummer is that we’ll have to wait ’til 2009 for the release. In the meantime, there’s always Smallville. And a couple photos of our heroines:
Continue reading Kristin Kreuk Is Chun Li! →

  1. I’ll be honest, I didn’t remember Nash/Charlie as I didn’t spend as much time on Street Fighter Alpha. [↩]
  2. Chun Li’s better-endowed sister? [↩]
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Film

Horror Gets a Do-over

Update: George Romero is now remaking his 1972 film Crazies. It’s about a Pennsy town that accidentally has a bio weapon dumped in their water supply, which I guess drives them crazy. Of course, it may not look any different from your typical Steelers game.

Some horror remakes in development:

  • Nightmare on Elm Street is getting a complete overhaul, which I assume means the end of Robert Englund in the title role.
  • The Birds will be remade and star Naomi Watts. I’m sure it will be just as good as when they remade Psycho.
  • The Wolf Man is being remade and will have Benicio Del Toro in the title role with Anthony Hopkins co-starring.
  • The Invisible Woman isn’t really a remake, but it’s in the same territory. It will be directed by Matt Reeves, and might not happen until he directs the sequel to Cloverfield.
  • Young Frankenstein is more of a horror parody, but it has been remade as a Broadway play. “Premium” tickets cost $450 (and no, that’s not a scalper or eBay price).
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Film, Technology

Blu-ray Becomes a Death Ray for HD-DVD

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The high def disc battle was supposed to go on for years. Sony, Disney, Fox, and Lionsgate backed Blu-ray. Paramount, Dreamworks, and Universal backed HD-DVD. And Warner Bros. backed both (it goes both ways), making it the deciding factor. If it backed Blu-ray, it could be over quickly, and if it backed HD-DVD the sides would be even and the war would rage for years with everyone buying two players or multi-players.

A week ago, Warner Bros. decided to back Blu-ray exclusively. The war is over. Condolences to the mourners.

Paramount actually had an escape clause in the event this happened, and Universal announced it will no longer be HD-DVD exclusive. There will be some cleanup, commitments fulfilled, but in the meantime, feel free to buy a Blu-ray player. Newline is also backing BR, as is the increasingly irrelevant Blockbuster.

It’s been an interesting ride. Including the BR player in the PS3 caused delays and cutbacks, and inflated the price. It was selling pretty poorly because of this and a fairly crappy game selection. But this past holiday season it sold 1.2M units1.

This change in the film industry should fuel PS3 sales. From what I’ve read, it’s not the highest quality BR player out there. But unlike many standalone players for your home theater, it supports all of the special interactive features the discs have. This is mainly through Blu-ray Disc for Java (BD-J), which is a form of Java ME. Already a number of titles have been enhanced with BD-J, although it seems mostly limited to enhanced menus. Over time, this could lead to some pretty cool hacks and features, esp. with players that are Internet enabled.

Overall, I’m not terribly happy Sony won, but it is nice that a format has been chosen. Using Java for interactivity is another bonus.

  1. Still way behind the Wii, which sold 3 times that. [↩]
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Film

IMDB’s Best and Worst of 2007

Going through 2007’s list of films, it looked pretty good. However, I note that some stinkers still managed to land themselves on the IMDB’s Bottom 100 list:

Rating Title
1.4 Who’s Your Caddy?
1.7 Daddy Day Camp
2.0 The Perfect Holiday
2.3 Epic Movie
2.3 The Comebacks

That rating is out of 10. But not bad, considering 2006 had 12. That’s the bad news. Here’s the good news, new entries into the Top 250:

Rating Title
8.6 No Country for Old Men
8.3 There Will Be Blood
8.2 Ratatouille
8.2 The Bourne Ultimatum
8.1 Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
8.1 American Gangster
8.1 Taare Zameen Par
8.0 Grindhouse
8.0 Juno
8.0 3:10 to Yuma
8.0 Hot Fuzz
7.9 Atonement

Pretty good! Most of these are in the running for my personal top 10 list. I still need to see Sweeney Todd, Taare Zameen Par (an Indian film that I did not know existed until just now), Juno (which I’m super stoked to see), and Atonement. So no spoilers, please!

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Film

Peter Jackson Won’t Direct The Hobbit

Some backstory: Peter Jackson had been battling Newline in court because he felt he was owed a lot more money for Lord of the Rings. Newline had the rights to The Hobbit, but didn’t want Jackson to direct until the lawsuit was settled. It started to get ugly. Also, their option1 was expiring and would be given to another company. So they were making plans to find another director, which got fans and Jackson upset. It looked like the movie would be made without Jackson directing.

Well, Jackson and Newline made nice. But the bad news is, Jackson is now too busy to direct! Sam Raimi (Spiderman, Army of Darkness) will direct with Jackson producing2. So Jackson will still be involved, and they’ll almost certainly film in New Zealand and use the f/x company Jackson set up for LOTR, preserving the look of LOTR. Overall, I’m expecting it to be a good film, although I’d still rather Jackson direct. But let’s face it: if it was directed by McG or Michael Bay and starred Rob Schneider as Bilbo Baggins, you’d still go see it.

  1. The legal right to film, which has an expiration date. [↩]
  2. In fact, Raimi said he wouldn’t direct if Jackson wasn’t involved [↩]
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Books, Film, Humor, Internet

DM of the Rings

I’ve been really enjoying the web comic DM of the Rings by Shamus Young. It tells the tale of a dungeon master leading a group of typical players on a Dungeons & Dragons adventure based on Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Only the players have never heard of LOTR, much less MERP1.

Yes, a little far fetched considering D&D stole heavily from LOTR, and I can’t imagine a gamer who hasn’t seen the LOTR movies. But no matter, the comic is very funny, and the actions of the players are uncannily similar to every group I’ve ever gamed with.

The real ingenuity is that it’s “illustrated” using only screencaps from the films with some occasional Photoshopping. The looks on the characters’ faces is often priceless. By the time you’re halfway through the series, you’ll be convinced Viggo Mortensen went through the whole trilogy with a blank stare.

  1. I actually owned MERP some years ago, but never got around to playing it, or meeting anyone else who had. [↩]
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