ComicCon

July
29
Comic-Con: Costume Parade Reveals Twilight Backlash

DSCN9064

The annual Comic-Con costume parade last weekend revealed a sizable Twilight backlash. Basically, many comics fans are using Twilight as an example of the studio exploitation of The Con for marketing purposes. What really irked people was that many movie fans missed the panels in Hall H Thursday because the Twilight: New Moon fans staked out the line, forcing other less intensely dedicated folks to miss other panels. Twilight also brings in women, not necessarily the dominant demo at Comic-Con, though certainly well-represented there.

Check out full costume photo gallery on the jump. Here's my (noisy) flip-cam survey of the costume paraders:


Find more videos like this on AnneCam

Continue reading " Comic-Con: Costume Parade Reveals Twilight Backlash " »

July
26
Comic-Con: Visionaries Jackson, Cameron Talk Future

ComicConjacksonCameronDSCN9034

By far the high point of the Con for me was EW editor Jeff Giles' interview with Peter Jackson and James Cameron. The two men respect each other enormously. Weta's achievement with The Lord of the Rings' Gollum convinced Cameron that he might be able to forge ahead with Avatar, which had been collecting dust for more than a decade.

Cameron signed up Weta to do the elaborate visual effects on Avatar; Jackson wanted to visit the set but took off to shoot The Lovely Bones just as Cameron was arriving. He came back for the last week of principal photography.

Jackson was making his first visit to the Con. He always sent lovely personal video greetings from Wellywood, full of cool stuff for the fans to see. He clearly understands what goes on at SDCC, and the role the fans play. So it was odd to see him looking so thin, tired and low-key. Jackson made the schlep from Wellywood partly to support his protege Neill Blomkamp whose horror thriller District 9 was the hit of the festival. He candidly expressed his anger over how he and Blomkamp lost Halo, and then made District 9.

Cameron, for his part, seemed energized and mellow, while acknowledging that he and producer Jon Landau have their work cut out for them. (Avatar went over well, but it was not the best-received footage in San Diego. Cameron sets a high bar. And the film plays very sci-fi.) They cooked up the 15-minute free 3D footage stunt set for August 31, knowing that marketing will be key to turning Avatar into the event it needs to be on December 18.

I could listen to these guys all day. I love it that they respect their audience. They make smart movies to please themselves and everyone else at the same time. Which is really hard.

[Thank you, Kris Tapley.]

July
25
Comic-Con: Iron Man 2

Iron manDSCN9037

The audience in Hall H was ramped up for Iron Man 2. They booed moderator Scott Mantz of Access Hollywood, who plowed on. (I had read some Tweets complaining about him earlier today.) Sure enough, he was flustered and not in tune with the Hall H crowd, which is fairly sophisticated.

Jon Favreau knows how to play to the room. So does Robert Downey, Jr., who broke onto the panel in supposed protest of the cheesy Marvel promo piece (conceived by Favreau as just that). Downey got some 6500 people to sing Happy Birthday to Favreau's son Max. "No one cared before you guys," Favreau told the hall. "Roll the other footage. Let's go."

The clip starts with Iron Man, helmet off, lounging inside the Randy's Donut sign. He confesses to not being in touch with reality during a diner scene with a threatening Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. At a Senate hearing, Tony Stark takes on a nasty Senator (Gary Shandling) who wants to confiscate the Iron Man weapon. It's great fun watching them go after each other as Pepper (Gwenyth Paltrow) tut tuts behind Stark.

Mickey Rourke as Ivan Venko aka Whiplash (two characters from the comics combined) threatens Downey at a race track, whirling his nasty fired up lariat. When Rourke heard that his character was a refugee from a Russian prison, he checked out a Russian prison, Favreau learned from TMZ.

At the panel, Sam Rockwell (who plays arms monger and Tony Stark wannabe Justin Hammer) had no clue how to charm the crowd. (That's one reason he's a great actor and not a movie star.) The crowd roared for Scarlett Johannson as Natasha Romonov, or Black Widow. She dyed her hair red before she took the role, took her training seriously, ate egg white omelettes and insisted on doing her own stunts so that her action scenes would look authentic. For his part, Cheadle had never worked on a movie with this level of scope and effects, he said. The War Machine costume was "heavy." When Rhodes makes his first appearance in the Senate scene, the movie deals with Cheadle replacing Terrence Howard by having him say, "I'm here, deal with it, let's move on." Cheadle asked Favreau to screen the footage again because he had missed it.

The movie wrapped last week, as those following Favreau on Twitter are well aware. He was tweeting and shooting photos from his iPhone from the Hall H stage too. With the sequel, "we wanted to add characters but not too many," said Favreau, "to maintain the same tone and dynamic, adding people to further move us toward the eventual Avengers film still coming."

The story was assembled through an elaborate collaborative process among Favreau, Downey, Marvel's Kevin Feige and writer Justin Theroux (who worked with Downey on Tropic Thunder), with much further improvisation on set. Set six months after the first film, Tony Stark is dealing with the pressures of having declared himself as Iron Man. He's a wealthy industrialist playboy operating on the world stage, but there's more to deal with--like his relationship with assistant Pepper and his old military pal Rhodes. He meets Natasha at his bacchanalia of a birthday party. "I wanted to deal with how he struggles with his own id in the face of being a larger than life character who is in fact saving the world," said Favreau.

The director has another year to go; he hopes to be involved in Marvel's upcoming The Avengers in some way, but that will depend on timing. Zak Penn is outlining the film now. After the panel, Marvel production chief Feige said that Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Nick Fury, Black Widow and the Shields Organization will all be in The Avengers--the characters interacting with each other is key. But they're taking it slow to make it right.

We'll see the final product May 7, 2010. Paramount and Marvel have nothing to worry about.

July
25
#SDCC Interview: Cameron Talks Avatar

ComicconcameronDSCN8987

Here's my Comic-Con interview with James Cameron about how his undersea expeditions informed his return to moviemaking, Avatar. He digs into how he perfected the art of performance capture to allow the warmth of his actors to come through. He wants to do some consciousness-raising with SAG on what performance capture really involves. During Friday's panel with Cameron and Peter Jackson, the two men discussed how resistant actors have been to such acting as Andy Serkis as Gollum.


Find more videos like this on AnneCam

July
25
Comic-Con: Photo Gallery

ComiccongalleryDSCN8998

Here's a taste of Comic-Con. And I haven't even visited the exhibition floor where all the action is. I'm still behind on posting all the material I'm collecting. Stay tuned.

Photo gallery on the jump:

.

Continue reading " Comic-Con: Photo Gallery " »

July
24
Comic-Con: Cameron Wows with Avatar

ComicConBannerDSCN8969

Twentieth Century Fox co-chairman Tom Rothman came down to San Diego to intro James Cameron, who in turn presented 24 minutes of footage from Avatar. The studio has backed Cameron's R & D for the dozen years since Titanic. After earning credibility with the deep sea documentary world with a series of 3D docs, Cameron finally opted to chase the promise of advanced 3-D motion-capture with an original story that had been sitting in his drawer for 14 years. But no matter how fabulous this movie looks--and it wowed Hall H, the perfect target audience for a sci-fi adventure--Fox has to market this movie without major stars, branding and the kind of wide release a blockbuster usually commands. That's why they're showing 15 minutes of footage, free, on Avatar Day on August 21 on 35 IMAX theaters around the world.

DSCN8979

The footage shows us a space station, where we meet a tight-necked colonel (Stephen Lang) warning new recruits about the dangers of Planet Pandora, home to an indigenous alien race, the Nav'i. Sam Worthington arrives in a wheelchair. He's a paraplegic whose twin brother has died; he's going to inherit his 10-foot blue, long-tailed avatar, a half-human, half-alien creature that humans can link to and send to explore the inhospitable planet. Cameron vet Sigourney Weaver (Aliens) plays a scientist on a mission to save the planet from degradation and DSCN8977exploitation.

The story is immediately exotic and compelling. But the magic comes from the 3D immersion into the exotic fauna and flora of the Pandora jungle where our hero is saved from certain death by a lovely native girl (Zoe Saldana). She tells him he's like a stupid child stumbling and destroying things. But when he attracts white wood sprites that look like deep sea creatures, she wonders if he might have some spiritual potential and takes him to her people. As night falls the rich jungle becomes as luminescent and brightly colored as a coral reef.

In another stunning sequence, the native warriors challenge Nav'i's new boyfriend to tame a flying pterodactyl-like banshee. He wrestles the creature into submission and flies him into a huge canyon.

ComicconavatarDSCN8986

The audience roared with support for Avatar, as Cameron, Weaver, Lang and Saldana talked to the crowd, and later, the backstage media. (Worthington appeared via video from the European set of Clash of the Titans.) But the movie is clearly ahead of the curve, which could make it a must-see event. But it's also likely to play best for fans of sci-fi adventure, which could limit it to a degree. Wisely, Cameron says he has no interest in competing with his own boxoffice. He's a filmmaker who wants to pursue the edge of technology and reach millions of people around the world. Avatar will be a must-see when it opens on December 18.

July
24
Comic-Con: Disney 3-D Panel Showcases Burton, Depp, Zemeckis, Tron Legacy

DSCN8952Thursday was a long day. The official Comic-Con movie program began in Hall H with Disney's 3-D panel. "A lot of you are going to stay here all day," said host Patton Oswalt. The 6000-strong crowd roared. Bob Zemeckis broke his Comic-Con cherry with footage from the start of Christmas Carol, which stars Jim Carrey in five roles. Instead of heavy make-up, it's the Zemeckis brand of motion capture (in 3D and IMAX 3D), which I find stilted. (People tell me that seeing Polar Express in IMAX was transformative.) The audience went "Ooooh" when they first put on their 3D glasses as Scrooge inspected Marley's dead body and was visited by his green, chained ghost. "It's a ghost story," Zemeckis said. DSCN8958 I was thrown off by Carrey's uncanny Alistair Sim imitation as Scrooge. He probably figured most younger audiences had never seen the British Dickens classic, my fave movie version. That said, Zemeckis's movie looks like a Big, Expensive, Audience-Friendly holiday picture. "We have the filmmaking tools to realize what Dickens wrote," said Zemeckis, who basically said that if Rembrandt could cut through the uncanny valley and paint eyes, so could he, by tracking the retina perfectly with four hi-def "capping" cameras shooting 64 fps also tracking every pore, facial muscle, and crease, he said. "It's happening. We're there. I can put my camera anywhere I want. I don't have to obey the laws of physics."

Zemeckis basically admitted he's working on a Who Framed Roger Rabbit sequel, which if it happens, would keep the 2D toons in 2D.

DSCN8944

I'm eager to see more of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, which takes elements from both the Lewis Carroll classic and Through the Looking Glass, including lines and imagery from The Jabberwocky (a poem I know by heart) and "weave it into a story that had movement and emotion to it," Zemeckis said. The 3D footage was stunning, but was basically the same material that already hit the Web. They ran it three times. It was Burton's first Hall H panel; he came six times in the 70s as a fan. The director was anxious to get back to the editing room and finish the movie. He was crawling out of his skin. He's clearly wrestling with all the CG effects--more green screen than he's ever dealt with--"it starts freaking you out after a while" and said this was so far "the most difficult" movie he's ever done. (He's still in the thick of it, listening to a "ticking clock") He doesn't do much mo-cap, mostly "pure animation and using actors in mysterious ways," he said.

Disney orchestrated their Big Reveal and got a HUGE ROAR when Johnny Depp popped onto the stage. He plays the Mad Hatter with red hair and lots of Tammy Faye makeup. Stephen Fry voices the Cheshire Cat.

I'm on the fence about the sequel to Tron, a movie I actually saw and loved when it came out in 1982. Does anyone remember that it was ahead of its time? It was the first film to use CG, when there were no PCs, and was a boxoffice dud. "I feel like Rip Van Winkle," said Steve Lisberger, who worked on the new one too. (Disney launched a viral campaign at Comic-Con.)

Disney & co. have cooked up some nifty looking updates, but why would racing cars on the grid be accompanied by loud motor roars? This makes me nervous. The movie wrapped principal photography last week--using the Phantom Camera at 1000 fps for some shots--and has another year of VFX work to go. Jeff Bridges is back, playing his old and young selves. "This looks so new and fresh," he said, "I guarantee they'll get some pop for this."

July
23
Comic-Con: Twilight: New Moon Press Conference

DSCN8923

About 600 people camped overnight to get into the Twilight: New Moon panel, which started at 1:45 PM in Hall H. Some came from as far away as the Philippines. But first there was a press conference at the Biltmore Hilton adjacent to the gigantic blocks long convention enter, which at 9 Thursday morning was already a sea of jostling people.

DSCN8929

I drove down this morning and parked at Petco, grabbed my badge without much fuss, and headed for the Twilight: New Moon press conference. And at 1:45 PM Kristen Stewart, Rob Pattinson and Taylor Lautner said all the same things again. A lot of the conversation was about the difference between working with Catherine Hardwicke and Chris Weitz. Stewart suggested that Hardwicke was more "impulsive" and fast and reactive. Pattinson said she used more fast shooting and hand-held cameras, and said he preferred Weitz's more calm, smooth and "balletic" approach. The actors seemed to appreciate being looked after by a grown-up this time around, and indeed, the footage looked more studio-glossy. (I'll need to see the film.)

Pattinson, Stewart and Lautner form the romantic triangle of New Moon and the next film, Eclipse. Stewart (sporting her Joan Jett look) admitted that she enjoyed the acting challenge on New Moon, as her lovelorn character Bella is left behind by vampire Edward, who is trying to keep her safe. Lautner talked a lot about buffing up to play werewolf Jacob, who takes on the role of protector. He also kept saying how much he didn't want to disappoint fan expectations. In one scene, Jacob (Lautner) teaches Bella how to ride a motorcycle; she crashes when she sees Edward (Pattinson) hovering in the air. (This is how the film deals with is absence for much of the film. "I play a supporting role," Pattinson said, keeping things low-key.) Jacob whips off his shirt to wipe blood off Bella's face. The fans seemed impressed by his sixpack abs, but they really went nuts in the climatic second scene when Bella is rushing to save Edward as he stands pale and shirtless, about to step into the sunlight. The clip ended on the verge of their big reunion, which has already been broadcast across the web by a contingent of Twilight fans on vigil throughout all the filming. "They applaud after every take, like theater," said Weitz. There was something slightly anti-climactic about the proceedings. It's no longer innocent and new. As the actors kept saying, "it's a franchise." The fans screamed when Edward came on-screen, but the roar that went up this morning for Johnny Depp, who made a surprise appearance at Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland panel, was worthy of a real movie star.

DSCN8925

I just greeted Avatar director Jim Cameron and producer Jon Landau as they arrived at the outdoor patio area next to the press rooms where the studios are running press conferences and roundtables. The Avatar panel goes on at 3 PM.

UPDATE VIDEOS:

The New Moon stars arrive at the press conference:


Find more videos like this on AnneCam

Here's the press conference:

Lautner and Stewart talk to MSN's James Rocchi:

<a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20110513183613/http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-US&amp;from=sp_en-us_cinemash&amp;vid=7f647662-52ab-41be-960b-96a9f2ad66a7" target="_new" title="Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner at Comic-Con 2009">Video: Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner at Comic-Con 2009</a>

Here's the Comic-Con Hall H press conference:

July
22
#SDCC Looks: Iron Man 2, Whiteout, Nightmare on Elm Street

A-nightmare-on-elm-street-20090722022758177_640w

As I head to San Diego for my umpteenth Comic-Con, I feel equal parts anticipation and dread. It's fun and I'll learn a lot that I want to know--but it's exhausting, large-crowd, insane circus fun.

USA Today looks at Iron Man 2, as does Coming Attractions. (Director Jon Favreau has been keeping his 113,000 Twitter followers up-to-date all along.)

The big fan sites are King at Comic-Con: AICN is getting many scoops, as is IGN, which debuted the new poster for Nightmare on Elm Street, starring Jackie Earl Haley, and the trailer for Whiteout. Matt Dentler rounds up the usual suspects.

July
22
Trailer Watch: Alice in Wonderland Heads for #SDCC

Burtoncu

You have to hand it to Tim Burton. As crazy awful as Hollywood can be, this canny visual stylist somehow manages to hang onto his imagination and personal imprint while navigating the studio system with aplomb. And most of his films--even art-house opera Sweeney Todd--are accessibly commercial. (Next up: a remake of my fave childhood vampire soap opera, Dark Shadows.)

Burton is aided and abetted by producer Richard Zanuck, who protects him from much of the noise. Going into Comic-Con, I'm betting that aside from "game-changer" Avatar (see the LAT's ten must-attend Comic-Con events) Burton's latest, Disney's 3-D Alice in Wonderland will be the big pop at Comic-Con. Which means it will be hard to top. It's just about the first thing to show there. It also marks, clearly, the deepest Burton has gone into the VFX/CG universe. He has used CG sparingly, trying to use mechanical effects whenever possible. But this is clearly a trip to that side of the looking glass.

Look at this trailer. Alice in Wonderland looks like an ideal match-up of artist and material.

July
21
Risky Business: Comic-Con Comes of Age

ComicConBanner

Post-Twilight, Comic-Con comes of age. And yet, it can be risky to chase after that fan buzz. Memorable duds in Hall H include The Spirit and Zathura. When a movie isn't working, the fans sniff it out. But when it does--300 and Superman Returns are vivid examples--they turn up to see the movie in droves. How it plays in theaters is another matter. Watchmen was a hit in Hall H last year--but the good buzz didn't guarantee a wide appeal commercial movie.

Big announcements are flying pre-Comic-Con: after he completes Spider-Man 4, Sam Raimi will take on the video game Warcraft, a fresh franchise-in-the-making for Warner Bros.

AICN's Harry Knowles liked the new post-Cannes cut of Inglourious Basterds. He announces the Weinstein Co. will screen Quentin Tarantino's latest at Comic-Con on Saturday night at 8 PM at the 250-seat Reading Gaslamp Theater in downtown San Diego. It sure makes sense to take advantage of that prime geek demo. So far TWC seems to be meeting its marketing commitments on the movie, which needs to score at least $50 million domestically and much better than that overseas.

Here's a nifty piece from LAT's Geoff Boucher (who once got beat up in the wild back streets of San Diego during Comic-Con) about hard-boiled graphic novels from Donald Westlake.

Last year at this time I was reporting on the much-delayed Where the Wild Things Are, which will finally open in October. Director Spike Jonze posts about visiting Maurice Sendak.

July
20
#SDCC: Pattinson Will Do Comic-Con Twilight: New Moon Press Conference

Robert-pattinson-alice-wonderland-late-08

While Twilight star Rob Pattinson will not do backstage press interviews at Comic-Con this week for New Moon, he and co-stars Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner will participate in an off-site press conference in San Diego early Thursday morning. That's how Summit is handling huge demand for the film's stars, who will also attend a Hall H panel later Thursday afternoon at the San Diego Convention Center. Fans are expected to line up overnight to gain entrance to that panel.

July
15
#SDCC: Directors Visit Comic-Con for First Time

Comic_con_logo-(2)

Comic-Con 2009 is front-loaded. Most of the key movie stuff happens on the first day, Thursday July 23, and Friday, with Iron Man 2 the main play on Saturday. (Here's the EW Iron Man 2 cover-preview.) The trick is to balance the crowded Hall H panels, trawling the exhibition floor, backstage interviews, screenings and parties with actual blogging. Yikes.

Last year I took the Fox City of Ember train down to San Diego, which worked great, actually. I loved not having to worry about a car, but I was staying at the Omni, right across from the Convention Center, so I was spoiled. This year I'm farther away, so I'll drive down at the crack of dawn Thursday to get my pass in time (!) to start off the day with the 11 AM Disney 3-D panel. Tim Burton (Alice in Wonderland) returns to the Con for the first time since college, while Bob Zemeckis (A Christmas Carol ) is coming for the first time. Burton will stay to do some press, Zemeckis will not.

ThirstDSCN8892

The combo of Disney's 3-D animation panel and James Cameron's Avatar pushed the Comic-Con folks to install 3-D in the 65,000-square-foot Hall H. The Titanic director will attend the Con for the first time to show the first U.S. 3-D footage of Avatar, along with stars Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver and Stephen Lang. (Exhibs in L.A. screen the 20 minutes already shown in Amsterdam at Cinema Expo on Thursday July 16.) Sam Worthington, who debuted at The Con last year with Terminator: Salvation, is stuck in Wales playing Perseus in Louis Leterrier's Clash of the Titans. (Check out the photo: Gerard Butler, watch your back.) Fox will also promote off-site Diablo Cody and Karyn Kusama's horror comedy Jennifer’s Body , starring Megan Fox.

Ewironman2-(2)

Cameron is participating in another Thursday panel on The Future of Filmmaking with Avatar's VFX czar, Weta chief Peter Jackson, who is also coming for the first time--he usually beams video to Hall H from Wellywood. Attendees are expecting to see Adventures of Tin-Tin footage. Jackson is also pushing his production of the sci-fi thriller District 9 on Friday. He's not involved in LOTR fan site Onering.net's side panel on pre-production of Guillermo del Toro's The Hobbit, which Jackson is also supervising in Wellywood. UPDATE: Word from Jackson's people: it's way too early for a Bilbo announcement.

Another Comic-Con virgin is Disney/Pixar animation czar John Lasseter, who will host an animation panel Friday with Japanese master Hayeo Miyazaki (must-see Ponyo screens Wednesday night), Disney's John Musker and Ron Clements (2-D The Princess and the Frog), and Kirk Wise (Toy Story 3). This is my idea of Heaven.

Clash-of-the-titans_l

Thursday's crazy madness will be the Twilight: New Moon panel. Heartthrob Rob Pattinson will appear (reminder: must pack earplugs) with co-stars Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner and director Chris Weitz, but lovelorn vampire Edward Cullen isn't the main character in the movie, so Pattinson won't participate in any backstage interviews. Summit is screening Twilight for the fans with cast members on hand. Summit is scheduled to film the third installment of the Twilight Saga, Eclipse, from August 17 through October 31 in Vancouver with David Slade (30 Days of Night) directing Melissa Rosenberg's screenplay.

PattinsonDSCN2330

To promote Park Chan-wook's vampire movie Thirst (which played well in May's Cannes competition), Focus Features mailed the press a pouch of blood in advance of the Thursday panel, and will screen the intense horror film Friday night.

Some films won't be rating panels at this year's Con, although they may have some viral or off-site happenings or displays on the exhibition floor. Universal, for one, is skipping Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood. Disney is ignoring the live action Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and Surrogates. Cash-strapped The Weinstein Co. passed on promoting Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, Rob Zombie's Halloween II, The Road (starring Viggo Mortensen), Youth in Revolt (starring Con-friendly Michael Cera), and Piranha 3-D.

Warner Bros. probably isn't bringing Joel Silver's long-delayed screen adaptation of the graphic novel Whiteout because it was promoed last year. Also missing are Ninja Assassin and Zack Snyder’s animated 3D Guardians of Ga’Hoole. It's early days yet for MGM to promote the Joss Whedon/Drew Goddard horror comedy The Cabin in the Wood, but Whedon fans can catch the first three webisodes of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Thursday night.

Brian Lowry vets Comic-Con on the TV side.

I was going to leave Saturday, but David Tennant is showing up for a Dr. Who panel on Sunday morning. I may have to stay on.

July
10
#SDCC Comic-Con Separates Top Draws Avatar and Twilight: New Moon

Avatarcomiccon2

Last year, I remember a few diehard fanboys mocking me when I flagged Twilight as a big deal at Comic-Con. The power of Twilight fans became clear as thousands of girls screamed their lungs out for emerging star Rob Pattinson. Helping to avert certain traffic gridlock, Comic-Con organizers pushed apart back-to-back Thursday panels for Twilight: New Moon and James Cameron's Avatar, by far the most anticipated two panels of the Con. Many were concerned that the threatened tsunami of fans surging toward Hall H Thursday morning (many of them female, in this very male-dominated universe) would make it tough to also cover Disney's 11 AM 3-D panel (Zemeckis's A Christmas Carol, Burton's Alice in Wonderland) and James Cameron's Avatar on the same day. Now New Moon is at 1:45 pm and Avatar is at 3:00 pm. Covering media may have a tough time getting into New Moon without some kind of press pass.

8742header_banner7266929

As THR covers how the studio marketers are harnessing the rising power of the online fansites--many of whom will participate in Comic-Con's annual Masters of the Web panel on Thursday at 2 PM--The Wrap examines the countering impact of Twitter on movie openings. As the studios try to use Twitter to disseminate information, word-of-mouth is taking on a whole new meaning in the Twitter universe. The Wrap also posts a handy short-form entertainment sked (the full Comic-Con schedule is packed with cool but not movie-centric graphics and comics panels). Here's Marvel's collection of panels, including Hall H's intro to Iron Man 2.

NewMoon47450708

HitFix is also tracking Comic-Con. Stay tuned. I'm covering. I'm looking forward to seeing Hayao Miyazaki and Pixar's John Lasseter for one of my fave movies of the year so far, Ponyo, and seeing Terry Gilliam again, who is showing some footage but not the entire Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassas, starring Heath Ledger, who made the cover of Vanity Fair this month, a must-read. And for the first time ever, New Zealander Peter Jackson is appearing at the Con in person, to introduce District 9.

March
6
Watchmen: How High Will it Fly?

Watchmen-trailer-snyder

Watchmen's Thursday midnight screenings grossed $4.6 million, reports Variety. Here's the boxoffice forecast. We know the comics epic will open huge. The question is, how will it play, not just here, but around the world? Here's my story in The Daily Beast. (I must say I enjoyed writing a full-length column again. I'd been missing it.)

The Wrap wraps up Watchmen. So does Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics' consensus is at 64%--the RT critics' base is wide and includes many online critics. UPDATE: The Guardian has issues with the way women make the transition from comic to screen.

Now that more of you have seen the movie, do you agree with me that it is disappointing and perhaps unfilmable as an action tentpole? And should have been done as a sophisticated, sexy, violent 12-part HBO series?

July
31
Comic-Con: Docter's Visit Sheds Light on Pixar's Up

[Posted by Peter Debruge]

Pixar UpThese days, my favorite thing about Pixar is the way each new idea they announce sounds even farther afield than the last, then the movie comes out, and it charms the pants off everybody: Rats in a restaurant? A robot love story?

Last week at Comic-Con, Pete Docter unveiled footage from Pixar's next curve ball, Up, in which an 78-year-old geezer (voiced by Ed Asner) fulfills a promise to his late wife, setting out on a great adventure to Paradise Falls, Venezuela. In the clip, the old guy pulls a fast one on two retirement home employees sent to collect him, attaching hundreds of helium balloons to his house and drifting away (with a hyper 9-year-old wilderness explorer named Russell unwittingly whisked along for the ride).

It was a gorgeous sequence, full of humor and sheer zen wonder -- the teaser only touches on it, since much relies on subtle character moments as old-timer Carl engineers his take-off (best of all, the presentation assured me Pixar isn't veering into Danny Deckchair territory here). That semi-surreal vision of so many multi-colored balloons against a clear blue sky reminded me of one of my all-time favorite television spots, the brilliant not-a-lick-of-CG ad for Sony's Bravia set:


Pixar_up_artBut Docter lost me a bit when things flash forward to the jungle, to find Carl and Russell dragging the house by garden hose to its final destination: one of the unseen-by-human-eyes mountains that looms above the Venezuelan jungle. Is there really enough material here for more than a short film?

Geri's GameThen again, if we've learned anything from Pixar, it's that plot isn't nearly as important as character, and Docter made clear on the panel that his inspiration for Up was the personal revelation that old folks have led interesting lives. It's an intriguing thought: Could building a movie around a septuagenarian prove to even riskier than rats or robots -- and every bit as rewarding? (Don't forget, Pixar struck gold in this territory once before with the Oscar-winning Geri's Game, left.)

July
28
Comic-Con: Friday the 13th Inspires Screaming By Any Means Necessary

[Posted by Dave Lewis]

On the last day of Comic-Con, producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form allayed fans’ Friday the 13th fears with promises that their reboot of the horror franchise would keep Jason Voorhees out of hell, deep space and Manhattan. 

producer Andrew Form reveals the 'Friday the 13th' poster Fuller and Form are well versed in the land of horror remakes, with credits that include Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hitcher, The Amityville Horror and soon, Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. And, as cineastes might feel about Hitchcock, horror fans expect loyalty to the source material. The first-look teaser for Friday the 13th (shown twice) seemed to satisfy with slick thrills, plenty of R-rated gore and what appeared to be a fleeting glimpse of Jason as a boy. Likewise, the poster offers a faithful image of Jason's gruesome goalie mask.

The producers promised a more "realistic" take on the legendary slasher; this time around, the masked man sticks to Crystal Lake. "We tried to keep it rooted in reality,� said Form. “We tried to go totally away from the supernatural.� Form and Fuller said they took some inspiration from parts 2-4 of the original series, although it goes back to basics by exploring Jason's past and revealing how he got the mask.

'Friday the 13th's' Andrew Form, Derek Mears and Brad Fuller at the film's panel at Comic-Con “They made Jason smart,� said Derek Mears, who plays the iconic Voorhees. “You feel sympathy for him." Leave it to other actors to dream of assaying Hamlet, or at least Superman; Mears said that as a child he used to think, "Someday, I'd like to play Jason."

That said, when the panel suffered from dull spots, Form didn’t hesistate to pull in the film’s hunky and amiable star, Jared Padalecki. Offered Form, "Have you guys seen Jared with his shirt off?" The thought of seeing the star of the CW's Supernatural bare-chested got the fangirls screaming, the sound Form and Fuller hope to hear February 13. See more photos from the "Friday the 13th" Comic-Con panel.

Here's an excerpt from Variety's 1980 review of the original Friday the 13th.

July
28
Comic-Con: Pineapple Express Breaks Out McBride

Pineappleexpress_lThe stoner comedy Pineapple Express, an inspired Seth Rogen/Evan Goldberg/James Franco/David Gordon Green/Judd Apatow collaboration, will score big time. "I always thought Superbad would get made," said Rogen at the Pineapple Express panel. "But this I never expected to get made. When I watch this stuff I am amazed."

See photos from "Pineapple Express" panel at Comic-Con.

Besides the fact that both Rogen and Franco are growing into leading man status, the revelation in the film is the third leg of the stoner trio, Danny McBride.

I ran into him at the Pineapple Express party Friday night, the best of the Con (three agency parties thrown by CAA, UTA and WMA were packed with agents, mostly, while the PE party was poolside, civilized, not too crowded). It turns out that McBride really wants to direct. He studied film at the North Carolina School of the Arts, where he and Jody Hill and Ben Best concocted the raucus martial arts comedy The Foot Fist Way, which played at Sundance and was eventually picked up by Adam McKay and Will Ferrell. He also has a juicy role as a special effects wrangler in Tropic Thunder and is coming up in Land of the Lost and Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles as well.

200pxfoot_fist_way

McBride now has a rising comedy career as a member of the McKay/Ferrell and Apatow comedy troupes. The ungodly stoner trio of Rogen, Franco and McBride did a lot of improvising, he said, including the last scene in the movie. (Apatow says that Rogen is unusually gifted at improvising entirely in character.) "I let the cameras roll," said Green at the Pineapple Express panel. "We do a lot of improvising. I let the actors have as much fun as possible which hopefully will translate to audiences. We started with a sober take, then went higher and higher until they were dancing on the ceiling."

"You don't have to know how to read," added Rogen.

"You don't have to memorize lines, which is nice," said McBride, who was told his character had shaved armpits, but not the reason why. "That's what you have to figure out," Rogen told him.

And nobody smoked dope. There were dangerous stunts, McBride pointed out. "I smoked a lot of weed in high school," said Rogen, who admits he once smoked pot with a fishbowl on his head. "You can't smoke weed when you're making a movie. It's too hard. There's too much heavy equipment around."

McBride answers a few questions on the Comic-Con press balcony:

July
28
Hunks of Comic-Con

Comicconjackman16671
Twilightdscn2322
Pineappleexpress040308
Worthington16783_2
16791

The women of Comic-Con made their feelings known when hunks hit the stage. I will not soon forget the piercing screams at the Twilight panel whenever Robert Pattinson came to the mike. While my methods are hardly scientific, here's my subjective ranking of the top hunks of Comic-Con. It's strictly anecdotal, and I wasn't covering the TV panels.

1. Robert Pattinson, Twilight (adorable, but what's with the hair?) (click here for more photos of Robert Pattinson)

2. Hugh Jackman, Wolverine (no one works a room better) (photo)

3. James Franco, Pineapple Express (killer smile) (photo)

4. Keanu Reeves, The Day the Earth Stood Still (solid) (photo)

5. Patrick Wilson, Watchmen (could break out with Night Nite Owl) (photo)

6. Sam Worthington, Terminator Salvation (macho young Aussie) (photo)

7. Mark Wahlberg, Max Payne (rippling his arms as usual) (photo)

8. Jason Statham, Death Race 2000 (Hall H sang happy birthday to him on Saturday) (photo)

9. Seth Rogen, Pineapple Express (got most of the questions on the Pineapple Express panel) (photo)

10. Brendan Fraser (The Mummy 3, again, his hair was tweaked)

July
28
Comic-Con: True Geek Confessions

EwpanelAt Friday night's EW director’s panel, Kevin Smith, Judd Apatow, Zack Snyder and Frank Miller gave up their geekiest moments.

Smith said he had just hugged Snyder, whom he had never met, after seeing Watchmen footage: �I see Watchmen, I’m ready to fuckin’ die, my life has been fulfilled.�

Apatow confessed: “When I was in 6th grade, I chased Baa Baa Black Sheep star Robert Conrad on my bicycle for five blocks."

When Star Wars fan Snyder was shooting a TV commercial with Harrison Ford, he told the star that he had a full-scale action figure of Han Solo in Carbon Freeze in his house. “He said, ‘You probably shouldn’t have told me that,’� recalled Snyder.

On the set of Miller's first film Sin City (which he co-directed with Robert Rodriguez), in the first scene Bruce Willis comes in and finds out his girl has become an exotic dancer. Jessica Alba appears on stage with a lasso. “I had picked Emmy Lou Harris’s ‘Wrecking Ball,’" said Miller, "and I found myself bursting into tears to find that [what I had dreamed] had come true.�

[Photo courtesy the movieblog]

July
28
Comic-Con: Rise of Werewolves and Vampires

Comicconjackman16671Judging from Comic-Con, vampires and werewolves of all shapes and sizes are on the rise.

Besides the romantic vampire phenom Twilight and the sexy HBO-targeted True Blood, a host of other vampire movies were on display at the Con.

Greek production designer and creature maven Patrick Tatopoulos has taken over the Underworld franchise, heading into prequel territory to provide equal time for the werewolves in Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, starring a well-buffed, long-maned Michael Sheen (The Queen) as a werewolf in love with a sword-wielding, horse-riding, warrior vampire, Rhona Mitra (Doomsday), the daughter of vampire overlord Bill Nighy. "The last two stories were through the eyes of the vampires, in the air," said Tatopoulos. "This is about earth, a love story and quest for freedom."

"I'm a vampire, I'm a zombie and a squid," said Nighy. "How many people do you know can make that claim?"

Comic_con_logo2Some of the fans actually booed a trailer showing Noah Wyle as a gentle librarian who falls for a sexy vampire in Jonathan Frake's The Librarian: The Curse of the Judas Chalice, basically a Something Wildish romantic comedy for TNT. The sequel Lost Boys: The Tribe looked pretty warmed over, too. “You’ll never grow old, you’ll never die and you’ll never know fear again,� one vampire tells a new recruit. Also not something I will ever see is Quarantine, a 2009 Screen Gems horror flick that traps a bunch of terrified people inside a tenement which has been infected by rabid vampire/werewolf attackers. It's done Cloverfield-style, and we're looking at the videotape. Or not.

X-Men's Wolverine is a kind of mutant superhero werewolf, right?

Hugh Jackman brought down the house when he popped into the Con, surprising the denizens of Hall H with a remarkable amount of energy for someone who had been on a plane from Australia, having just wrapped the X-Men spin-off, Origins Wolverine. It's his first visit with an X-Men movie, he said. Impulsively, Jackman jumped into the audience and greeted Wolverine comics creator Len Wein. "I have to shake your hand, buddy," he said. Without your pen I wouldn't have a career."

Hugh_jackman

The movie is due May 1, 2009, based on a script by David Benioff. "The movie is big, it's action packed," Jackman said. "If I can describe the Wolverine movie in two words: It's badass." He added, "You're going to see a lot of berserker rage."

Fox co-chairman Tom Rothman and Jim Gianapulos were in the house as they screened some footage of Jackman and Liev Schreiber pitted against one another in training as they learn to control their powers. Gambit (Friday Night Light's Taylor Kitsch) was also unveiled. After the panel, Jackman flew off across the Pacific again, this time to Japan, for a vacation.

Yes, having Rick Baker (American Werewolf in London) do prosthetic make-up for The Wolfman is a good thing. CG will be used for the transitions, Baker admitted at the Hall H panel: “Something magical happens when you get an actor in good makeup, when he sees himself in the mirror, and says, ‘I’m the Wolfman.' This is an old-school gothic horror movie.�

Comiccon_wolfman16720

“Everybody talks about how boring the makeup process is,� said Benicio del Toro, whose manager Rick Yorn sold Universal on this period remake of the Lon Chaney, Jr. classic, a fave of his client. “I loved watching him build the makeup for four hours. It’s about becoming. It’s exciting. The tough part is taking it off. That gets desperate.�

Even if del Toro is a genuine fan who argued for staying true to the original, the actor (as directed by last-minute helmer Joe Johnston) looks uncomfortable in 19th century tweeds as the estranged American son of Brit noble Anthony Hopkins and pursuer of corseted beauty Emily Blunt.

“I was running and screaming,� Blunt said. “I liked the whole idea of being a damsel in distress.�

“And I was chasing her,� said del Toro.

[Photo Jackman and Len Wein courtesy LA Times]

Click here for more photos from Comic-con

July
27
Comic-Con: McG Runs Terminator Show and Tell

click here for more photos from the Terminator panelThe franchise reboot of Terminator looks pretty strong under McG's direction. (It comes out May 22, 2009.) That the filmmaker is eager to prove himself with this picture can only be a good thing. His career is an odd one: many TV series and music videos led to his first film, Charlie's Angels, and its sequel, followed by the male weepie We Are Marshall. So McG (nicknamed after his mother's maiden name, because there were too many Joes in the house) is ready to rock.

He ran the panel like a paratrooper/cheerleader, even calling Christian Bale in Japan, and frequently asking the crowd to roar its approval. (It's become a sign of success to manipulate the audience into playing footage twice.) McG is in mid-shoot in New Mexico, where he likes the bleak desert, he told me later when I asked him about the film's Road Warrior influence. Playing to the fans, he said, "the whole thing began by listening, everyone wanted to look at the future, not T4. It's post-Judgement Day."

McG surrounded himself with credible talent, from Dark Knight's Jonah Nolan, who did a rewrite, to the dark Knight himself, Bale, ILM and the late animatronics wizard Stan Winston, whose designs "are all over this picture," McG said. "We have a lot of hardware," he said, displaying the bare-bones Cro-Magnon model T-600 Terminator, and plans to dedicate the film to Winston.

Continue reading " Comic-Con: McG Runs Terminator Show and Tell " »

July
27
Comic-Con: Abrams on Star Trek

Jj_l_2J.J. Abrams came to the Con with Fringe and Lost but not Star Trek, even though he could have, he told me. He was willing to, and had enough footage, even if he's still working on visual effects. Paramount did not want him to, he said. The studio's only presence at the convention was a screening of Tropic Thunder, which featured a funny intro with Ben Stiller, Robert Downey, Jr. and Jack Black as stars competing for geek cred. It would have played well in Hall H, if Paramount had done a Tropic Thunder panel, but the buzz on the screening spread throughout the convention anyway, as did the positive reaction to Pineapple Express.

Abrams was looking for Simon Pegg at the Pineapple Express party, who had starred as Scotty in Star Trek.

Here's EW's take on Star Trek's no-show at the Con.

One of my favorite bits in Hall H came from the always amusing Kevin Smith, responding to a question about the endless debate about rebooting Superman again. He cited Bryan Singer's intention to pull off a Wrath of Khan, the good, action-packed Star Trek movie that followed the first one, which was comprised, Smith said, mainly of long, lingering shots of the Starship Enterprise. "If you were into The Enterprise, it was porn," he joked.

July
27
Comic-Con: Miller Shows Some Spirit

Frank Miller at Comic-con - click for more photosFrank Miller's The Spirit may be too smart for the room. (Here's my interview with Miller.)

The footage for Miller’s homage to his comics mentor, the late Will Eisner, looked fun but strictly narrow niche, much the way Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse played best for folks who felt the same way about their B-movie inspirations.

Miller is a gifted, crafty storyteller/entertainer who clearly is having fun playing with his new medium while staying true to Eisner. “I grew up on Superboy, my love of telling stories derives from that,� said Miller at a director’s panel. “Any way I can explore the hero and bring him to life is another way to do my life’s passion. It’s my job to give you what you don’t ask for and don’t know you want.�

“We wanted the voice of the artist on the screen,� said producer Deborah Del Prete at The Spirit panel. “We went to Frank because of that vision.�

Miller embraced the advantages of his new medium, he said at the directors' panel. "I first went crazy with sound and movement. You don't understand how big that was. I was doing boxes with words over heads. My idea of an explosion was to write BOOM. I had some wonderful moments cutting shot to shot. Some aesthetics you develop translate beautifully into film."

Spirit_giantsilken2

When Samuel L. Jackson (The Octopus) kept demanding bigger and bigger guns, Miller asked the prop department to wire some guns together. “We made up the meanest, nastiest bad guns you’ve ever seen in your life,� said Miller. “When he holds them he looks like a robot transformer.�

Then Jackson had to work out in order to carry them. “I lost some weight that day,� he said. “I became a black skinhead.�

Lead Gabriel Macht plays a cop who comes back from the dead with some extra skills and juiced up pheromones, so that every woman he meets falls in love with him. While there are a bevy of bodacious babes (from Eva Mendes to Scarlett Johannson) in this stylized Sin City-style green-screen movie, and leads Macht and Jackson make powerful opponents, Lionsgate has some tricky marketing challenges ahead on this pic, which opens Christmas Day.

Miller says he dropped a half-finished graphic novel to work on this movie. According to Zack Snyder, Miller is also working on the prequel to 300, about an historic Spartan battle set shortly after the Battle of Thermopylae. Miller handed in the script for Sin City 2 some time back. I asked Rodriguez what was going on with that. Clearly the Weinsteins did not encourage him to rush ahead with that one, and he’s put it on a back burner in favor of something else, he said.

Here's The Spirit trailer.

Comic-Con Photo Gallery: The Spirit Panel

July
27
Comic-Con: Watchmen Panel

Watchmen_panel16693The question hovering after Watchmen's delirious reception at Comic-Con is what will Warner execs Alan Horn and Jeff Robinov do now? They were both at the panel, and could see how well the Philip Glass-enhanced extended trailer played. It was gorgeous, visually arresting stuff, and the actors on the panel all reinforced the idea that there were real, rich characters to play here, well-written, with depth.

Of course what Marvel cut from The Incredible Hulk was the extra character nourishment added by Edward Norton. So will WB do the same here? Studios are responsible for looking carefully at the bottom line. So will cutting the movie down and losing some characters hurt the project? Every movie has a perfect length--but is it what's perfect for smart discerning Watchmen-philes and film critics, or the general public?

Here's my interview with Zack Snyder, and here's Reelz' video interview and Time's Watchmen take.

"Superhero movies don't exist just as summer popcorn mindless entertainment," Snyder told the 6500 fans packed into Hall H. "Watchmen talks about stuff that's important and serious. Serious filmmakers and actors are making these into cool movies. There are a lot of other cool graphic novels out there like Frank Miller's Dark Knight to make into movies."

Snyder said most of the movie was not shot the way 300 was made, on green-screen, but rather live action with practical effects--except for the Mars sequences and other FX being dropped into the movie, like Rorschach's moving inkblot mask. Billy Crudup did have to wear a suit covered with 140 dots as the very blue Dr. Manhattan.

"Getting into a costume and sticking a scar on my mouth helped me get in the mood to kill people," said Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who plays Comedian (pictured here).

Watchmencomedian_l

Matthew Goode took a big leap from the very twee Brideshead Revisited to Watchmen, which he admitted he had to look up on Wikipedia.

Snyder is taking the pirate story and animating it and putting it out on its own DVD, he said at the directors panel, with Gerard Butler doing the voice of the sea captain. He says he shot the transitions in and out of the black freighter so it can be added on the Watchmen DVD, too.

Artist Dave Gibbons expressed his amazement at walking around a real set (in Vancouver) and seeing his drawings brought to life. His trademark boxed signature will be visible on some of the sets in the movie, he said. He wished that Watchmen creator Alan Moore hadn't had such a bad experience on his last adaptation (V for Vendetta) that he refused to have anything to do with this one. That doesn't mean, Gibbons added, that the official Watchmen website shouldn't mention the guy's name.

The movie opens March 6, 2009.

Comic-Con Photo Gallery: Watchmen Panel

Here's the trailer.

Watchmen

July
27
Comic-Con: Because Pushing Daisies' Lee Pace is Easy on Our Bloodshot Eyes

Leepace

[Posted by Kristina Rettig]  Actor Lee Pace in the Pushing Daisies press room. Pace said the cast has a $20 bet to see who can find Chewbacca at Comic-Con first. “The one thing that I love about this season is that Ned’s got a lot of problems," he said. "In the first episode, Chuck moves out [and] Olive goes to the convent." Showrunner Bryan Fuller credits the show's tone to Amelie, French cinema and horror movies and "a lot of credit goes to [exec producer] Barry Sonnenfeld" for its visual aesthetic. Photo by Olivia Hemaratanatorn

July
27
Comic-Con: Proyas Directs Knowing

KnowingfirstphotoSome movie footage shown at the Con doesn't score with the crowd. Sometimes it's a question of how the material is presented. I was intrigued by the 4 1/2 minute extended trailer shown by Australian director Alex Proyas of his Nic Cage thriller Knowing (which Summit will release on March 20, 2009) mainly because it looks like it has more brain matter and visual skill behind it than most of the mind-numbing pictures shown here. Clearly, just because I respond to some of the artier presentations-- like Frank Miller's The Spirit-- doesn't mean they'll be mass audience fare.

I can't wait to get my hands on the director's cut of one of my fave dystopian sci-fi films, Proyas's 1988 Dark City, which will be released July 29th. It's the movie he originally made, 15 minutes longer than the bastardized edit that New Line Cinema released. "It's the cut I first tested," he told me. "Unfortunately the testing process did not go so well. We made a lot of changes. There are huge differences. The pace is different. This is a more honest-to-goodness director's cut."

Here's more info on Knowing from my interview with Proyas, as well as his first ever appearance at Comic-Con:

After the visually dense future worlds of Dark City and I, Robot, a studio tentpole which also featured heavy VFX, Proyas was happy to get back to a more reality and character-based drama, he said. "While there are quite a few effects sequences in it, they are subtly done. It's documentary in style, quite raw, hopefully believable."

The breathtaking plane crash scene, where Cage, having deciphered a page of numbered codes that predict disasters about to occur, stands on a highway and watches in horror as a plane crashes in front of him, was shot in one hand-held take, Proyas said.

The spec script by novelist Ryne Douglas Pearson had been kicking around for a decade (Richard Kelly couldn't get it off the ground). When Proyas read it ten years ago, he didn't see how to make it work, but five years later it came back to him in a tweaked form that he liked better. "It was improved substantially," he said. "I saw a clearer direction for where I wanted to take the story. Nic's character has lost his faith in human nature and the way the universe functions. He's on a quest to find meaning in the way the universe works."

Proyas was also relieved to get away from filmmaking-by-committee at Twentieth Century Fox, where making I, Robot, "a large and complex beast," was clearly not a pleasant experience for him. "It's increasingly important as to who I'm working with," he said, grateful that he could shoot in his native Australia.

A sci-fi, not comics fan, Proyas grew up on the classic novels of Arthur Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein and Ray Bradbury. And he has no plans to direct Silver Surfer, he said at Comic-Con: “Unfortunately that is just a rumor. I don’t know where that came from. I do like Silver Surfer, but I’m not going to be doing it.�

Here's the Knowing trailer:

July
27
Comic-Con: Wahlberg Flexes Biceps as Max Payne

Click here for more Max Payne cast photos"It's not minimum Payne, not medium Payne, it's maximum Payne!" declared director John Moore at the Max Payne panel. True confession: my experience with videogames is limited to Myst, Riven, and Sim City, basically. I have never played Max Payne and never will, nor is this movie aimed at my demo. Hardly.

"My challenge was not to screw it up," said Moore, who deployed a subjective video-game POV camera as well as super-so-mo Phantom camera which shoots up to 1000 frames per second. "You've got to follow the story. If you take the controller out of a player's hand, and he gives up control and lets you take it from here, you have to give him something exciting and kick ass. That's the point of playing the game. So on Max Payne we kick the shit out of the camera to make you feel like you're Max Payne in the movie."

The footage played well in the Hall. But no self-respecting female will go see this hardcore actioner, no matter how well Mark Wahlberg flexes his biceps. "After Invincible, The Happening and The Lovely Bones, I wanted to kick ass," he told the crowd. He compared this role (wishfully) to what he did in The Departed and Fear, saying this part is "driven by emotion." Wahlberg felt his Boston street cred helped in playing this role. "Payne is a happy man until his family is taken away from him and he gives up all hope in humanity," he said. "This is a dark and ugly world he lives in."

Mila Kunis plays one of quite a few tough babes on display at Comic-Con this year. "I learned how to use a gun and kick ass in five-inch heels," she said, playing to the gallery. "I had weapons training with an automatic and a colt and baton. I got to beat Mark up."

Click here for cast photos from this panel

Here's the trailer:

[Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis and Ludacris]

July
27
Twilight: Will Male Critics Ever Understand Its Femme Appeal?

Twilightimg_1759700According to a San Diego State University study released on July 22, if things are bad for male film critics, they are worse for women.

Here's a sample of the findings in Thumbs Down: The Representation of Women Film Critics in the Top 100 U.S. Daily Newspapers:

*Men write the overwhelming majority of film reviews in the nation's top newspapers. In Fall 2007, men penned 70% and women 30% of all reviews.

*Of the newspapers featuring film reviews, 47% had no reviews written by women critics, writers or freelancers. In contrast, only 12% had no reviews written by men critics, writers or freelancers.

*Films with women filmmakers (directors and writers) and films with female protagonists and ensemble casts comprise a larger proportion of films reviewed by women than men. Thus, the under-representation of women film critics, writers and freelancers may cause films featuring females or with women filmmakers to receive less coverage.

The bottom line is that film criticism in this country's newspapers remains a largely male enterprise, echoing the heavy male dominance behind the scenes and on screen in the film industry.

And the coverage that movies with femme appeal do get from male critics is not the necessarily as positive or understanding as that from female critics. Mamma Mia! and Sex in the City would be recent examples. Why would a guy particularly engage with a romantic comedy like 27 Dresses? Professional film critics will argue that it is their job to know how to review such a movie. Let's put it this way. Some men are better able to adopt the female POV, and tap into their femme side, than others. Many men are not trained to do see things from the perspective of the opposite sex. All women are.

That's one reason why today's movies are so geared toward men, while women starve for material aimed at them. Women are accustomed to going along and accepting slim pickings in pictures by and about men. Even at Comic-Con, there's a sense that female fans are yearning for romance. The screaming response to Twilight's Brit heartthrob Robert Pattinson was enormous. He could be the next Leo di Caprio after Titanic, if Twilight hits as big as I suspect it will.

Men here were scratching their heads over Twilight. No clue.

Here's the LAT's video interview with Pattinson at Comic-Con. I feel sorry for the guy:

[Variety photo of Twilight's Robert Pattinson by Martha Hernandez]

Photo Gallery: 'Twilight' panel

July
26
Comic-Con: What to Give the Lost Fan Who Has Everything

Lost

[Posted by Krissie Rettig]

Warning -- spoilers ahead.

Lost fans may have come to see series creators Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, but they stayed for the prizes.

Like the Heroes panel before it, Lost needed time to hit its stride. Meeting the fictional head of recruiting for the Dharma Initiative (Hans Van Eeghan) was interesting; video of Octogon Global Recruiting representatives answering bizarre queries can be entertaining. However, fans want only one thing: Answers to burning questions left over from the previous season.

Matthew Fox - click here for more photosAdding to the fanboy and -girl glee, there were prizes for those who did the asking. One of the most unexpected prizes was the surprise arrival of star Matthew Fox, but it proved superfluous as all inquries continued to go to Lindelof and Cuse.

“Death is a relative term, really,� Lindelof told a fan who asked if the characters Jin and Locke were actually dead. “The show will still have both of those characters on the show.� (The fan was rewarded with bottle of water from Lost’s Oceanic Airlines).

And, when asked by a cave-dwelling fan whether Lost would end after two more seasons, Cuse gave the man a Lost calendar. “Mark the date,� Damon instructed. Well played.

Another fan was rewarded with a Heroes DVD box set after slapping Lindelof and Cuse on the wrist for season 4’s flash-forward/flashback episode with Jin and Sun, a combo that thoroughly punked many fans.

Here’s a list of other Lost tidbits revealed in the Q&A:

  • The reflection in the water of the Oceanic Six (which resembled a cityscape to an inquiring fan) doesn’t mean anything. For once, it’s just a reflection.
  • We will get to see Rousseau’s story in season 5.
  • Cuse and Lindelof will employ a new storytelling device that is neither a flashback nor a flash-forward. In their classic nebulous style, the two didn’t elaborate.
  • The show begins shooting in three weeks.
  • Vincent (the dog) did “make itâ€? beyond the season 4 finale and will be in season 5.
  • Cuse and Lindelof wouldn’t say whether Jack and Kate will wind up together.
  • However, they did confirm that Kate and Sawyer will see each other again.
  • Daniel Faraday knows about the “secondary protocolâ€? because his notebook (seen mostly in The Constant) holds information from both the past and present.
  • Richard Alpert is “quite old.â€? Fox guessed that he was about 125.
  • We will see Alpert barefoot in season 5 (for those wondering if the giant stone foot at the end of season 3 was his).

For rabid Lost fans, these tiny yet significant revelations are the biggest prize of all.

Click here for photos from this panel

July
26
Comic-Con: Post-Strike TV Takes Center Stage

[Posted by Brian Lowry]

If television has been something of a supporting player at Comic-Con, the 2008 edition pushed the medium's genre stars fully to center stage.

"Heroes" and "Lost" filled the 6,500-seat main auditorium - the first time series have invaded a space previously reserved for features. Many people slept out to ensure seats for Saturday's "Heroes" session and were rewarded with an early viewing of the full third-season premiere.

New Fox programs from Joss Whedon and J.J. Abrams, "Dollhouse" and "Fringe," were among the weekend's more eagerly awaited presentations. And HBO's upcoming vampire drama "True Blood" was awash in theatrical-style promotion rivaling any of the major movie launches.

Post-strike anxiety clearly played a role in some of the producers' pleas to fans, asking them to beat the drum for shows sidelined longer than usual due to last season's work stoppage.

"Chuck" producer Josh Schwartz wasn't subtle, urging the audience to help the NBC sophomore hour survive a difficult time slot.

Given the tepid ratings for many scripted programs in the spring post-strike, networks and producers have reason for apprehension about the fall. For that reason, Abrams was philosophical about the "Fringe" pilot leaking online in advance, saying the breach at least reflected an appetite existed for the show.

July
26
Comic-Con: The Office, In Their Own Words

Rainn_2

[Posted by Erin Maxwell]

"Feast your eyes on the greatest writing staff in human history," said Rainn Wilson, introducing the writers of The Office. "Behold their gorgeous, gorgeous writer bodies."

It's been three days of Comic-Con. Let's let the writers speak for themselves: 

On Comic-Con
Greg Daniels: I always wanted to come to Comic-Con, but I wanted to spend time with my kids. I regret that now.

The Office vs. the office
Jennifer Celotta: One time we were just watching the animated cube bounce around the screen. Greg asked us what we were doing and we said, "It's just about to land in the corner."

Improv vs. scripted material
Michael Schur/"Mose": Rainn is a magical genius who creates all his own lines on the spot. Actually, we usually shoot the script a few times, but then we will let the actors and the writers tinker with it by adding lines. What gets in the show is a Frankenstein version of what we wrote.

Greg Daniels: The creators of the British Office, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, told us to make the actors great. Sometimes this is too successful.

Favorite characters
Mindy Kaling/"Kelly": I like writing for Ryan, especially for this season. He turned into the biggest d-bag of all time.

BJ Novak/"Ryan": I love writing for Michael. It's so cool to see someone in authority that is so innocent and so wrong.

On Pam and Jim
Daniels: We took inspiration from the classics. Sam and Diane. Ross and Rachel.

Novak: Spence and Heidi.

Using life experiences in writing
Rainn Wilson: I killed my girlfriend's cat once.

Anthony Ferrell: I used to work at Countrywide Loans and the printer would always fail.

Daniels: We had the Dundies at my real office, but we called it the Swampies. And we also had the office Olympics there.

Kaling: Michael, isn't there that time you walked into Greg's office as you saw his penis?

On being, as one fan put it, "the resident sex symbol for The Office."
Wilson: I feel great about that. Eat my shorts, John Krazanski!

Gallery: 'The Office' panel

July
26
Comic-Con: Heroes Panel Saved By Villains

Heroes [Posted by Kristina Rettig]

“Completely. Off. The. Hook.�

That’s what executive producer/writer/panel moderator Jeph Loeb promised for the upcoming chapter of Heroes (subtitle: Villains) as he tried to warm up the crowd before introducing the cast. Unfortunately for Loeb, the panel itself began very much on the hook. Broken elevators, traffic and other mishaps plagued the ensemble cast and they were entirely AWOL for the panel’s first 20 minutes.

As a result, poor Loeb was forced to play gameshow host to kill time, including getting the crowd to chant “He-roes! He-roes!� and having sections of Hall H face off in a screaming competition to prove whose fandom was bigger. Yikes. Nervousness seeped through the hall as fans wondered whether they would ever get the incentive to get on the Villains bandwagon, after what many said was a lackluster season 2.

Heroes cast arrive at Comic-con - click for more photosFans’ fears of an awkward, cast-less panel were relieved at about 10:55 am when the entire cast took the stage, including Tim Kring with a metallic suitcase handcuffed to his wrist. The contents turned out to be a DVD of the first episode of Heroes: Villains, titled The Second Coming. Once it was revealed that the panel would screen the first half of the two-hour season 3 premiere, the audience was pretty much reduced to a puddle of shivery fanboy goo.

Did it deliver? There were some scrumptious superhero goods, setting a high bar for the upcoming season. Without giving away too much, here is what I can tell you without absolutely destroying the experience:

  1. Hiro gets some instruction from beyond the grave regarding his sacred duty and destiny.
  2. Mohinder makes an important scientific discovery that has deep ethical and personal implications.
  3. An unlikely messenger tells Claire something she didn’t know about herself and her abilities.
  4. Malcom McDowell is awesome.
  5. Peter Petrelli has some… issues.
  6. We are given clues as to what superpower Angela Petrelli might have.
  7. Maya’s accent mysteriously disappeared.

Fans were also told that missing episodes and much of the online content would appear on the season 2 DVD.

The episode’s success repressed any traumatic memories of the panel’s first 20 minutes. Milo Ventimiglia described the upcoming season as “Melt. Your. Brain.�

Off the hook, indeed.

Photo Gallery: 'Heroes' panel

July
26
Comic-Con: The Simpsons Panel Takes On Drugs, Merchandising and Bart as Felon

[Simpsonsgroening Posted by Erin Maxwell]

The Simpsons came en masse to take on more than 3,000 crazed fans. The panel included Matt Groening (creator and executive producer, at right, looking jolly), Al Jean (executive producer and head writer), Matt Selman (executive producer), Michael Price (co-executive producer), Matt Warburton (co-executive producer), Don Payne (consulting producer), Carolyn Omine (consulting producer), Mike Anderson (supervising director) and David Silverman (movie and TV series director).

However, the panel did not include name tags that would allow me to tell who is who. And, rather than a moderator to host the event, fans were given a mike to exorcise their demons upon the panel. So, I now give you Team Simpsons vs. Ballroom 20:

Q: Will Marge ever gain weight rather than have Homer lose weight? (NOTE: Asked by either an 8-year-old or a short adult with a really high pitch. Sorry. I had terrible seats.)
A: *Stunned look from the panel*

Q: What celebrities will be on the show next season?
A: We have Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Robert Forster and Denis Leary. Denis will be on the show about Bart wanting a cell phone, but his parents won't let him have it. Denis loses a golf tournament and throws his phone. Bart finds it and does funny things like call his agent and sign him up for Everyone Poops: The Movie. Also, Seth Rogen will be on the show.

Q: Matt, will you be doing more with your Life in Hell comic?
A: For those who don't know, I draw a weekly comic called Life in Hell for the L.A. Weekly. It used to be in the San Diego Reader, but they don't like portrayals of gay couples in their publication, like with the characters Akbar and Jeff. So now every year I come to Comic-Con and denounce the San Diego Reader.

Q: What is the strongest season of the show?
A: Next season!

Q: Tell us about the ride (at Universal Studios Hollywood).
A: If you take drugs and watch The Simpsons on TV, you don't have to take drugs anymore. This will be like doing drugs and watching The Simpsons.

Q: What do you make of the rumors that this is the last season of the show?
A: Nothing should last forever, except The Simpsons.

Q: Why do the characters never age?
A: It would be like The Cosby Show. When the cute kids got older, they just brough on more cute kids. We can't do that with the show because it would change it. Sometimes we wonder what it would be like to see Bart as a teenager. Then you realize he would commit a felony, be tried as an adult and go to jail. We don't want to do that show.

Q: What do you think of all The Simpsons merchandising?
A: I saw this great diorama once at Comic-Con a few years ago of the Simpsons surfing. It was beautiful. The guy told me it was imported from Australia. Then he looked at me for a second and said, "Wait, didn't you create the Simpsons?" I said, "Yes. Yes I did." He said, "Sir, it would be an honor to sell this to you."

Q: Where do you get your jokes from?
A: Family Guy.

Q: How much of your life experiences are used in the show?
A: Well, when I was a kid they put a dome over my city and my family escaped to Alaska.

Q: What's it like to work on The Simpsons?
A: It's a labor of love. And a labor of work.

Q: Words of advice?
A: Remember folks, if you hang in there for 30 years, you too will have an animated show on Fox.

July
26
Comic-Con: Revenge of the Web Masters

Webmastersdscn2301The real working stiffs of Comic-Con are the movie site web masters and their staffers, tirelessly filing away at their laptops, before, during and after panel after panel. "We wake up at 7 AM and go to bed at 2 AM," said IESB's Robert Sanchez at Thursday morning's web masters panel, "posting news, trying to link to others' stories. We celebrate our work. The entire online Comic-Con community can be proud we kick ass."

Enthusiastically and profanely moderated by self-styled bad-ass directors Brian Taylor and Mark Neveldine (Crank and Crank 2: High Voltage), the panel provided a chance for them to promo themselves, natch, with clips from their upcoming Gerard Butler actioner Game.

All of the ten web masters consider themselves movie buffs first. "Instead of more traditional media, we start off as film fans, not traditional journalists," says MovieBlog's John Campea. "Every film fan loves finding a jewel, which we share with everyone else. I am not a journalist. I don't know what I am doing."

Some seemed to revel in the demise of old media. "The New York Times' profits are down 97%," proclaimed Sanchez. "That's awesome! Our profits are up 2 %. We're fanboys and geeks and proud of it. We appreciate filmmakers like you who reach out to the online community and make sure we reach out to our viewers and readers. We work hard not to be spoonfed by the studios. We have to get scoops."

To his credit, Devin Faraci of CHUD distanced himself from that POV, saying: "The internet is great at getting information out there but the truth is none of us assholes are out foraging for the latest George Bush scandal, and neither is Drudge or Wonkette. We need dedicated people who are funded to go places and report. The death of print journalism is a big problem for this country. I do care if the L.A. Times doesn't have a film critic or is closing its Berlin branch. We're fucked. It's a spooky time. Sure, the same way the studios are taking PR back into their own hands, instead of going through newspapers, the government will have its own bloggers on the payroll."

Faraci was also willing to admit that the websites don't always do their fact-checking. "We end up writing stories that turn out not to be true," he added, "scripts are changing day to day. And people from the studios are planting misinformation, like Chris Carter of X-Files."

When asked how Latinoreview got its hands on so many early scripts six months before they go into production, Kellvin Chavez quipped: "We clean your offices."

Today, these once unassuming fanboys are courted by studio flacks and granted early access to set visits, star interviews and marketing materials. "Studios are paying attention to sites and fans as part of the online community," said Sanchez, who was thrilled to be invited to DreamWorks Animation and meet Jeffrey Katzenberg. "They appreciate us more than traditional news."

"To be honest it sort of makes me jaded a little," said Brad Miska of Bloody-Disgusting.

Joblodscn2304

Clearly, these web masters enjoy their access but are on their own as far as following any guidelines or maintaining objectivity. "I've been to a whole bunch of sets and met cool people," said Faraci. "It's amazing to step on a soundstage and see how it happens, to appreciate how hard it is."

AICN's Vespe admitted that all the access was problematic for a reviewer. "The danger of getting to know people isn't so much that you are willing to give a good review to a bad movie but that you see a mediocre movie and want to like it more." He said that when given access to the Transformers set, he made sure someone else reviewed the movie. "I write off the emotion of the first time I see a movie," he said, "that's what separates us from journalists. We're there because we want to be there, we're not some stage critic on assignment who doesn't care about movies."

12-year web veteran Garth Franklin of Dark Horizons, who says he built his site through word-of-mouth, visited the set of Driven and still wrote a bad review. "You have to tell people if a film sucks," he said, "even if you don't hear from them again."

Of course I disagree with Campea's definition of what a blogger does: "Real blogs don't break news like news sites," he insisted. "Blogs write opinion in editorials."

And the boycott of the trades does not seem to be widespread. "I'm not part of it," said Erik Davis of Cinematical. "We just do our own thing and link to whoever we get the story from."

"We do a lot of hard work," said Sanchez. "We had a scoop on G.I. Joe. And then the trades go out and post without giving any credit."

Cinematical uses fan reactions to trailers like The Terminator Salvation to gauge their interest in certain films, said Davis: "Each of these sites is posting about Dark Knight 20 times a day and it's not stopping."

[from left, Mike Sampson of Joblo (also pictured blogging in Hall H), Garth Franklin of Dark Horizons, Brad Miska of Bloody-Disgusting, Erik Davis of Cinematical and Eric Vespe (Quint) of aint-it-cool-news.]

July
26
Where the Wild Things Are Update

Wildthingsbook_2Playtone producer Gary Goetzman wishes that Warner Bros. chief Alan Horn hadn't expressed his reservations about Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are to the LAT's Patrick Goldstein:

"We've given him more money and, even more importantly, more time for him to work on the film," Horn said. "We'd like to find a common ground that represents Spike's vision but still offers a film that really delivers for a broad-based audience. We obviously still have a challenge on our hands. But I wouldn't call it a problem, simply a challenge. No one wants to turn this into a bland, sanitized studio movie. This is a very special piece of material and we're just trying to get it right."

On the City of Ember train, Goetzman responded: "Warner Bros.' vision and Spike and my vision of the picture may be a little different. In the end good taste will prevail. The final cut is Spike's. Warner Bros. is not taking over the picture and has no intention of bringing down the hammer on anyone here."

The kid starring in the pic as Max (Max Records) isn't going anywhere. He was picked by Spike and approved by Warners, said Goetzman.

Goetzman admitted to me and AICN's Mr. Beaks that the live-action animatronic wild things definitely did not work in the context of shooting in the jungles of Australia and that CGI is being added now. "CG can always look right," he says. As for the rumor that kids ran screaming from an early research screening, Goetzman says that's not true: "There was no screaming, no crying, none of that."

Clearly, Jonze, who is still working on the troubled movie, needs more tinkering time. The original October release date is long past. But it does seem to make Goetzman a tad nervous that there is no new release date set. Clearly, limbo is not a comfortable place to be.

Earlier post: Where the Wild Things Aren't.

July
26
Comic-Con: Damn It, Jack Bauer! It's Good to Have 24 Back.

24

[Posted by: Kristina Rettig]

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.

Kiefer Sutherland drew the lion’s share of enthusiasm from the 24 crowd Friday evening, but the panel's special guest star was Carlos Bernard, an actor known to die-hard fans as Jack Bauer’s right-hand man, Tony Almeida – the one who died in season 5 at terrorists' hands in the CTU medical ward.

So what’s he doing here to promote Season 7?

Said Sutherland, “When [the writers] said that Tony was coming back again, I said, ‘How?’�

Fans’ fears of a hokey explanation were (somewhat) assuaged by the promise that the writers have concocted a compelling story arc that includes a very good explanation of why Tony’s still alive. “The writers insisted that Tony wasn’t dead,� said executive producer Howard Gordon. We didn’t love the way he died.�

Luckily, plausibility has never been a deal-breaker for most 24 fans, although they did grill the cast and crew over some of show’s biggest mysteries. Such as: “When does Jack ever go to the bathroom?� ("Whenever they cut to the White House, you can assume that Jack is getting a drink, taking a whiz and getting something to eat.) Or: “How does Jack make it from downtown to Van Nuys in 10 minutes?� ("Our 24-hour day is a really light traffic day.")

The panel also focused on the Africa-set 24 prequel, Exile, which will premiere about two months before the regular season resumes in January. The clip sent sporadic shockwaves through the room as fans got their first glimpses of Bauer kicking butt in Africa (and saving children, of course).

Regarding the show’s controversial use of torture, “Jack is going to have to face and deal with the things he has done,� said co-executive producer David Fury.

The panel’s best moment may have come when a young man, Cameron, asked Sutherland about his pervasive use of the phrase “Damn it!� and asked Keifer to give him a “Damn it, Cameron!� Sutherland turned around and, in classic Bauer bravura, yelled “DAMN IT, CAMERON!� The crowd erupted in cheers. It’s gonna be good to have Jack Bauer back.

July
26
Comic-Con: Reinventing Terminator

Terminatorsalvation_lThe trick with Terminator Salvation is that the setting has moved from contemporary L.A. into the post-apocalyptic future, when the adult John Connor (Christian Bale) is battling to save humans from extinction. So Charlie's Angels director McG, who many film buffs have questioned as the appropriate choice for this project, has been able to reinvent the look of the series, make it "darker and grittier," says production designer Martin Laing, who also designed City of Ember. He says James Cameron spent three hours with McG, and was "very supportive," as was one-time Terminator Arnold Schwarzenegger, now California's governor.

And the rating? "McG will make the best movie," he says. "He's not constrained. It will be PG-13 or R; we're trying for PG-13."

BTW, re: Terminator and Dark Knight star Christian Bale: He will not be at The Con. He's still travelling for Dark Knight, in Japan. And he probably doesn't want to answer questions anyway. Someone from Warners who was in his Hotel Dorchester Room when he had his altercation with his mother said it was not a big deal. He has not gotten along with his family for some time. And he has not been charged with anything by the London police.

UPDATE: Look for my report on the panel and talk with McG.

July
26
Small and Creepy Films

LogoJoss Whedon isn't the only writer taking things into his own hands on the Internet these days. On the City of Ember train, screenwriter Caroline Thompson (Edward Scissorhands) told me about her new short film distribution website small & creepy films, which she launched two months ago with her partner, producer Steve Nicolaides.

The duo invested some of their own money in it, though it wasn't "arduous," Thompson said. "Having worked in this industry so long, and given so much away psychologically, I wasn't willing to give anything more away. I'd look all day on the Internet where there are so many interesting things to see. We lack gatekeepers for outsider art."

Their first production (in partnership with Chiller TV) is the 28 episode web series The Hills Are Alive, produced and co-written by Nicolaides and Thompson, which they shot on their ranch in Ojai over many years.

Their goal is to collect and show "weird, genuinely out-there stuff," said Thompson, whose friends at film fests are sending them material. Small and Creepy is also sponsoring a young animator, Evan York, who records people's dreams and animates them with a Sharpie. For now the site shows shorts. "People don't have the patience or bandwidth to do otherwise," Thompson said.

Her goal, not yet met: "I will make a cell phone feature," she said.

July
25
Comic-Con: Watchmen Panel Video

While many of the questioners in Hall H were fans, one perky babe started to build a fanbase of her own after approaching the mike several times. They're even following her on youtube. She's Leah d'Emilio from Mahalodaily.com and the reason she's doing the public access: PR. Traffic. The usual.

July
25
Comic-Con: George Lucas, the Drinking Game

Lucas
Our intrepid reporter takes on the cult of George Lucas.

[Posted by Erin Maxwell]

Spoiler: George Lucas is a great guy!

These and other startling facts were clearly established at the panel for the upcoming animated feature Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Looking to score a few spoilers and watch a few cool clips, I snagged a place in Hall H. Usually, Hall H has a scary line that promises to eat away at my early 30s; alas, this one was a breeze.

Clone Wars supervising director Dave Filoni, producer Catherine Winder, co-writer and story editor Henry Gilroy and editor Jason Tucker were on hand at the sparsely attended event to chat about all things George. Meanwhile, the folks from LucasFilms got a chance to talk in depth about George, the new movie, George's genius, the new TV show, George's good looks, the trials and tribulations of bringing the toon to the big screen, George as an inspiration and George the legend.

Said Gilroy: "We needed to make something that would stand up to what came before. The bar was set really high. I worked on the comic adaptation of the movie and a few of the 'Star Wars' tales. If you are in that world all of the time, it starts to feel like home."

Said Tucker: "When I first met George, he said he had a lot of respect for the editing process. There is a part of him that is really open to new ideas. He gets very excited. At the end of the day, I learned more about clarity."

Said Filoni: "He was passing on what he knows."

Spoiler: George Lucas is a teacher to many.

Said Winder: "No one was clear how involved George would be. As the project developed, he was so excited by what we were creating and the unique look we were hoping to achieve."

Spoiler: George Lucas is a friend to all.

Said Winder: "When we got the material back, we reviewed it with George on the big screen. George got excited by what he saw. He asked me and Dave to turn it into a big-screen feature for the fans."

Spoiler: George Lucas loves fans. And is very excitable.

Winder added: "There is a lot to juggle with this project. I had to get into George's head. He wanted us to produce something that would blow people away. The first thing I had to do was find the creative team. I spent a lot of time search for the right people."

Said Filoni: "The Star Wars films inspired me creatively. You can tell a lot about a person by which Star Wars film they like… There have been arguements on whether or not a light saber can cut Superman."

Spoiler: The people who work for George Lucas love him like a father and think about him constantly.

Then the panel began to argue whether or not George Lucas had healing powers and if it was possible for him to see through brick walls. This was followed by a prayer thanking the heavens for sending us George Lucas and a hope that more episodes would soon be created as a method to help spread world peace. We then all held hands and sang the Ewok joy song from Return of the Jedi.

Okay. This is a lie. They showed a few more film clips and I had to leave because it was friggin' cold in there.

Number of times George was mentioned during the panel, on average: Once per minute.

This would have made a hell of a drinking game.

Comic-COn Photo Gallery: Star Wars - Clone Wars Panel

July
25
Comic-Con: All Your Joss Whedon Are Belong to Us

Horrible

[Posted by Kristina Rettig]

Joss Whedon is a Comic-Con god, one who inspired fans to wait hours for a seat in the non-Whedonesque Stargate Atlantis panel — the better bum-rush the front as it ended. By the time the next long line outside Ballroom 20 was admitted, holdovers had taken up three-quarters of the room’s 4,400-person occupancy.

The fact that the panel began 10 minutes late didn’t seem to phase the fanboys and girls, some who wore T-shirts proclaiming, “Joss Whedon is my master now.�

While the panel was intended to feature Whedon’s latest project, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, fans preferred to focus on all matters Joss. Not that it mattered. Whedon and his Dr. Horrible stars Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion spent most of the time dodging questions in favor of keeping the party going, an approach that only seemed to further engage the crowd.

“You do kill a lot of chicks,� said Harris in response to a question regarding Whedon’s tendency to put a good storyline above his characters’ general happiness.

“I love happy endings. Some of you can remind me of some of them later,� Whedon replied.

As for his own unhappy endings, Whedon said, “I’m wiser than when I did Firefly. Anything that doesn’t get out, I can make on the internet now. ‘Dr. Horrible’ is about putting power into [fans’] hands.� This got an explosive response from Whedon fans who disagreed with the networks' opinions on shows such as Firefly and Angel.

By the time Whedon left Ballroom 20 to a standing ovation, the audience had learned the following:

  1. “Cabin in the Woods� is in the works.
  2. For now, the “Fray� series is not happening.
  3. Xander will return in the Buffy comic.
  4. The “Dr. Horrible� universe is expanding to include a part 4 (says writer Jed Whedon), a soundtrack (available in the next couple of weeks), a DVD (with a contest for 3-minute videos) and if you want a “Dr. Horrible� van remote, go here.

July
25
Comic-Con: Lost, Pushing Daisies Creators Find Wealth, Fame in Time Travel, Pie

Lost
"We think we are making a character show with a mythology," said "Lost" creator Carlton Cuse. "The characters are the cake and the mythology is the frosting."

[Posted by Erin Maxwell]

"I just wanted to cram a show with as many things as I could that would make me smile, like doggies and pie," said Pushing Daisies creator Bryan Fuller.

Entertainment Weekly’s showrunners panel focused on programs that push the limits of TV viewing, with themes that don’t include a boy-girl romance or a gruff detective with keen insight into the human mind. Instead, we have a pie-loving character with the ability to resurrect the dead, a fembot sent to protect a future leader and a government agent whose prior experience is handling IT at an electronics retailer.

"The best thing to ever be uttered by a network would be, 'We have too many shows about time travel,' Fuller said. “That would be an achievement for everyone in this room."

Showrunners had to deal with writer's strike fallout over the past year, something that was especially difficult for first-year series working to build a fanbase.

“There was a period of time where the network was trying to figure out when to bring us back after the strike, but they didn't want to throw us under the American Idol bus,� said Fuller. “Pushing Daisies is picking up 10 months after the last episode. All of the characters kept the secrets they learned last season and now are ready to bust.�

Josh Schwartz of Chuck says his solution is to pretend they’re starting from scratch. “We are writing the first episode of the new season like a pilot," he said. “We come back with Chuck dangling off a roof and telling us what has happened.�

One of the strike’s key issues was the production of Web content. "It's a reality of the business that people just want more," said Josh Friedman, creator of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Lost creator Carlton Cuse described online content as an opportunity to expand the fiction. "Our reality games are fun because we get to tell a story we can't tell on the show,� he said. “It's for people committed to the mythology.�

Fuller said, "We were going to do a series of animated shorts on Pigby. But due to the strike, we got a lot of resistance."

Showrunners also said they initially faced the stigma of "genre shows,� since programming with heady sci-fi or fantasy themes had a history of being ignored or rejected by networks and/or audiences.

"We call the mythology the 'rabbit hole.' We can spend six hours talking about time travel and will end up not writing at all," said Friedman. "We went down the rabbit hole in a few episodes and it took us a while to get out."

“There is a fine line between mythology and mechanics. George Lucas drew it when he came up with midi-chlorians,� joked Fuller. "No matter what the genre elements, you will have to want to spend time with those characters for a while."

Comic-Con Photo Gallery: Lost Panel

Comic-Con Photo Gallery: Pushing Dasies Panel

July
25
Comic-Con: Reeve's Alien Judges Humans in Day Earth Stood Still

Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly at Comic-con - click for more photosIt will be interesting to see how much interest there is today in the remake of Robert Wise's 1951 sci-fi classic The Day The Earth Stood Still. One trend at Comic-Con is star managers pushing clients who are fans of a remakeable brand-name project. Erwin Stoff pitched Keanu Reeves for this one 15 years ago, and Rick Yorn pitched Benicio del Toro for Wolfman after seeing the poster in his house.

Stars always need tentpole movies. And Reeves seems to be a good fit for the alien Klaatu; he has an ethereal stillness to him that works in the footage we saw in Hall H Thursday. "'That guy can play the alien,'" Reeves joked to Stoff, who liked the idea of a movie that looks at the denizens of earth from an alien POV, Stoff said.

Director Scott Derrickson was also a fan of the original and actually met Wise when he was still a film student. Wise told him to do a horror film to show his stuff. And so he did, with The Exorcism of Emily Rose. "The original film was such a product of its time," said Derrickson. "The idea of updating it made sense. We're not dealing with a nuclear threat. The U.N. exists. The issues are different. The idea of an alien coming to earth who looks at human nature from an outsider perspective is an interesting take. In some ways it's about what it mean to be human."

"There was an objectifying and containment to him," said Reeves, who says this interpretation of the character is less "warm and fuzzy and human. I'm not that guy. He goes on a journey of seeing and looking and being affected by humans."

The relationship of Jennifer Connelly and her stepson (Happyness star Jaden Smith) shows Klaatu what humans are all about.

Derrickson completely reimagined the look of the alien technology as more organic and "ecological," he said. Wellywood's Weta Digital is beavering away on the elaborate VFX.

Comic-Con Photo Gallery: FOX (Includes The Day The Earth Stood Still)

July
25
Comic-Con: Spaced finally lands in America

Spaced [posted by Erin Maxwell]

Blink while watching an episode of Spaced and you'll miss six Empire Strikes Back jokes, at least two references to Evil Dead and a few random tidbits about The A-Team. Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes created the sitcom for the U.K.’s Channel 4 in 1999 and while the tale of Tim Bisley and Daisy Steiner renting Marsha's flat only lasted for two seasons and 14 episodes, Spaced turned comicbook fans and Star Wars geeks into rabid fanboys.

Now, almost a decade since it first preemed on Channel 4, Spaced finally crosses the pond as the DVD makes its U.S. debut with commentary from fans like Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino, Diablo Cody, Bill Heder and Patton Oswalt. It's about bloody time.

“There is an episode in the second season where we parody Pulp Fiction,� director Edgar Wright said on a Friday afternoon panel that included stars Pegg and Jessica Hynes. “It was great to actually get Quentin to do the commentary."

Getting folks on board for Spaced wasn't always easy. "When we were showing him the first treatment, the main studio guy said, 'I don't get any of it, but I love it,'" said Hynes.

"We look back now and realize how lucky we were. We look at American shows and we would never be able to get to make it here," said Wright. "There are a lot of great shows out there. It's always amazing to see what catches fire.

"I think that it resonates with fans because they can sympathize with Tim and Daisy," said Wright. "At the time we made it, we were those people. At the time, youth shows were being written by men in their 40s. We were actively living those lives."

So, what are the chances for a "Spaced" reunion? "I'm so old now," said Pegg. "Tim was 27. I'm 38."

"We were thinking of doing a third season, but with a complete CG background and flat dialogue," said Pegg.

Added Wright, "I would direct from inside an office where I wouldn't have to have contact with humans."

July
25
Comic-Con Photo Gallery

One of the fun things about wandering The Con is seeing all the folks in their costumes. And some other random sightings. The goofy guy is Ben Lyons, one of the two co-hosts of At the Movies, who is here covering for E! (a job he is keeping, btw).

Babedscn2354

Wonderwomandscn2338

Lyonsdscn2337

Wolverinedscn2333

Cartoonsdscn2332_2

Robindscn2298

Bo_peepsdscn2296

For more (and better) Comic-Con photos check Variety's photo gallery. New photos are being added here on the jump:

Continue reading " Comic-Con Photo Gallery " »

July
25
Comic-Con: Twilight Pandemonium

Robert Pattinson - click for more photosWhen EW writer Nicole Sperling posted a Twilight item on her blog, she got 821 comments in 15 hours. Thus it was no surprise Thursday that screaming women flocked into Hall H prepared to screech like Beatles fans whenever Harry Potter star Robert Pattinson opened his mouth.

Twilightdscn2322_2

The poor guy was "tweaked," admitted one Summit staffer who tried to prep the guy in advance. He could barely talk amid the screams in a room packed with some 7000 people. "Let me focus," he begged. One fan asked a question about The Day the Earth Stood Still and Twilight opening on the same day, December 12. 'Who will win?" The fans screamed their answer.

"I just wanted to play the hottest vampire in the world," joked Pattinson. "He's a fantastical dude and he dazzles."

Twilightcast_l

Comic-Con Photo Gallery: Twilight Panel - includes more photos of Robert Pattinson

July
25
Comic-Con Exclusive: Snyder Talks Watchmen

Snyderdscn2345High above the exhibition hall at Comic-Con, Warners was conducting interviews Thursday for Watchmen in advance of their anticipated Hall H show-and-tell on Friday. Zack Snyder is currently battling with Warners over the ultimate running time of the movie, which is three hours. He's trying to cut it down, but doesn't want to lose a character like Hollis, a guy who gets murdered about half way through. ""I'm not ready for that yet. If Dark Knight got two and a half hours, Watchmen should get fifteen minutes more," he pleads. "I'm trying to be reasonable." Snyder is caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of the studio's commercial demands and the fans who love the comics. A movie has to reach beyond the faithful, remaining accessible to mainstream moviegoers.

Thanks to his success with 300, Snyder was able to sell Warners on a faithful adaptation of the Alan Moore mid-80s classic graphic novel. All the previous adapters changed something fundamental, he points out, like updating it to the war on terror. He sets his in the 80s, cast unknowns, and insisted on an R rating. "I wouldn't know how to do it otherwise," he says. "Fans should thank 300 because there's no way they would let me do it, no way, I've taken full advantage."

But the studio still thinks Watchmen is too "too long, too sexy, and too violent," says Snyder. For him, "that's a reason to go. That's the why. If you take that out you take out the why." Otherwise it'll just be another "watered down version of Watchmen, and then you might as well make another superhero movie. There's a million characters out there you could do instead."

On the amazing maturation of comics-based cinema, Snyder says, "People are interested in comic book movies because they represent mythology and adventure heroes. They allow fantasies to exist in our world. That worked with a great movie like Dark Knight, which took it over the top. You look at Iron Man and you have the same thing, a serious actor like Robert Downey Jr. in a serious portrayal of a guy and then you have this cool fantasy aspect that makes for a great time at the movies. That's what comic books allow us to do, they live in our world but they also allow us to experience some sort of mythological connection to gods or whatever you want to call them, and that's archetypal and everyone can relate to it."

Watchmen "deconstructs those same mythological ideas," he says. "Watchmen says, 'you know what? Look at your heros, what are they really? They're us dressed up.' The cool thing about Watchmen is it allows the story and the characters to comment on our world, comment on ourselves. It's a modern superhero movie, modern in the sense that it is slightly intellectualizing the concept of superheroes. People have to come to Watchmen, Watchmen can't go to them. If I've done it right, the movie will get more people into the graphic novel Watchmen itself, so they could read it and say, 'wow, this is what a superhero could be!'"

When he put the looks and costumes together, Snyder used the book, he says, "it works. Why would you change it? The film has to exist for a cinema audience the way the comics existed for comic book fans in 1985 and 1986. It's got to be able to comment on how cinematically people relate to superheroes. The cool thing about Silk Spectre is her outfit is overtly sexual. You can't put that outfit on a Fantastic Four. If I was making a PG 13 movie everybody would be up in arms. This girl is clearly using sexuality as a weapon. That's the point. It's nipply. It's like a dominatrix outfit. That's the fetishistic aspect of it. You have to go all the way."

Showfloordscn2339

Comic-Con Photo Gallery: The Watchmen Panel

July
25
Comic-Con: Dexter Is a Bunch of Sociopathic Chocolate kisses

Dexter

[Posted by Liz Shannon Miller]

COMIC-CON -- The "Dexter" fanbase turned out in force Thursday night, primarily for the chance to ask what it's like to play likeable serial killer Dexter Morgan. In between scarfing chocolate kisses on the table (having been stuck in traffic all afternoon, "Dexter" star Michael C. Hall was starving), Hall said the character was fun and challenging. "He confides in the audience in a way that he doesn't confide with anyone else on the show," he said. "And if you watch the show, you find yourself implicated in these events."

Hall wouldn't get into how his relationship with Rita (Julie Benz) evolves in the upcoming season, but, per footage screened prior to the panel, "He's definitely learned how to have sex. That I'll cop to."

Said Benz, "(Rita) truly sees the good in Dexter. Even if there was DNA evidence and photos in front of her, she still wouldn't believe it was true.

"Every man needs a hobby," Benz said."Some men play golf." ("At least it's not a boring hobby," moderator Kristin Dos Santos agreed.)

Nonetheless, the panelists agreed that the show's dark nature affected all of them. Producer Clyde Phillips said one writer's assistant on the first season left after the first few episodes because she was "bringing it home with her."

"The longer you do it, the easier it gets to decompress," Hall said.

Regarding the series' repurposing for CBS, Phillips said the cuts made by CBS, in order of priority, were for time, language, nudity, and finally, for gore. "We're really not that gory a show. If you add up two years of what we've done, we've only done a few minutes total." However, everyone seemed happy to exchange the content for the chance to reach a larger audience.

"'Dexter" first came to CBS because of the writers' strike, but it also fit into the networks' pattern of crime shows. However, while no one believed the possibility of a "Dexter" crossover was likely, Hall floated the idea of a "CSI: Miami" guest appearance -- where, in his role as a crime scene analyst, all he would do is help solve a crime.

"Dexter" season 3 airs on Showtime this fall.

July
24
Comic-Con: Comedies Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder and the City of Ember Train

Tropicthunder21633rv2I saw three summer comedies in a row this week, two from the Judd Apatow factory, Step Brothers and Pineapple Express, plus Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder, which screened at Comic-Con last night (Pineapple Express screens here too). UPDATE: Here's Todd McCarthy's Tropic Thunder review.

Step Brothers is a great premise that has been sketchily executed; Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly are often hilarious acting like ten-year-old boys, but the concept quickly wears thin. Pineapple Express is the best of the three movies, and the smartest; Seth Rogen, James Franco and Danny McBride are inspired throughout as pot heads on the run from some killer drug dealers. An intelligent director, David Gordon Green, an indie dramatist-turned-studio-comedy guy, makes all the difference. These guys cared about the details. It's not sloppy.

While Tropic Thunder is also funny, it's also really expensive, so it gets top-heavy as a star-studded big- budget action film shot on location in the jungle. The Comic-Con crowd ate it up--especially the opening intro with Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr. competing for Comic-Con geek cred--although I had a sense that it was probably too inside for many of them. It's a rather reflexive and sophisticated treatise on filmmaking in Hollywood today as well as the art of acting. Robert Downey Jr. (as an Australian actor staying in character as a black dude) and Stiller (as an action hero who can't discern reality) dissecting their identities as actors is hilarious. Tom Cruise and Matthew McConnaughey also offer support with risible results as producer and agent, respectively. Actor/screenwriter Justin Theroux did so well with this he's writing probably the hottest project in town right now, Marvel's Iron Man 2.

Dscn2279

On the City of Ember promo train from L.A. to San Diego on Wednesday, I found myself in close quarters with folks from the likes of Time, LA Times, aint-it-cool-news, sci-fi channel, and CHUD. I've always prided myself on being able to hold my own with the fanboys, but was stopped cold when one guy asked me point blank, as a large group listened intently, what was my favorite Adam McKay/Will Ferrell movie? My heart stopped cold. "Um, I've never seen Talladega Nights," I stumbled. "I didn't like Step Brothers that much either. So I guess it would have to be Anchorman."

I0301d248

So lame. BTW, the train ride was a brilliant promo idea on the part of Fox Walden's Jeffrey Godsick, who commandeered two cars and attached them to a train, showed 23 journalists some footage of Monster House director Gil Kenan's City of Ember, which was adapted by Caroline Thompson (Edward Scissorhands) from the 2003 novel. It took Playtone's Gary Goetzman four years to get the movie made, for a price, $35 million.

Dscn2282

The footage was promising: Saorise Ronin runs around an amazing set that was built by production designer Martin Laing in Belfast, Northern Ireland in a gigantic ship factory eight stories high. (The Titanic was built there.) He emptied it out and built what may be one of the last gigantic practical sets.

I got Kenan to admit that having come from the freedom of the CG animation world, he was a tad frustrated by the limitations of live action filming, and may return to animation. The movie looked like one of those fun escape into a future fantasies that still relate to the real world: deep underground, City of Ember is running out of resources, and mayor Bill Murray is hoarding. "It's a relevant and potent morality tale," said Thompson, "about society running out of food and power, corrupt at the top and so startlingly to the point, as the grown-ups are asleep at the wheel, in denial."

It's the younger generation that figures out how to save the human race from extinction. Shades of Wall-E.


About

Variety blogger Anne Thompson is your trusted source for film industry news. She tracks Hollywood, Indiewood, awards season and film festivals for this daily blog.
Member: Alliance of Women Film Journalists


Recent Comments

Categories

Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman star in Baz Lurhmann's highly-anticpated drama, 'Australia.' ; Nicole Kidman; trailer; Baz Lurhman; australia; movie; Drama; Hugh Jackman; variety; Death Race Movie Trailer; Michael Cera and Kat Dennings star in the teen comedy, 'Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist.' ; video trailers; Michael Cera; Kat Dennings; Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist trailer; College Movie Trailer; Daniel Radcliffe stars in Warner Bros. and author J.K. Rowling's final chapter of the 'Harry Potter' franchise. ; 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince' trailer; new; trailers; video; variety; Josh Brolin stars as George W. Bush in director Oliver Stone's portrayal of the controversial President. ; W trailer; trailers; Oliver Stone; bush; Josh Brolin; 'W' trailer; video; variety; Christian Bale plays 'John Connor' in Warner Bros.' fourth installment of the 'Terminator' series. ; Variety Video; Christian Bale; 'Terminator: Salvation' teaser trailer; Based on the memoir by Danny Wallace, Jim Carrey stars as a man who must say 'Yes' to everything for one year. ; Zooey Deschanel; Jim Carrey; trailers; variety; 'Yes Man' trailer; Warner Bros. brings one of the most popular graphic novels of all time to the bigscreen. ; Watchmen movie trailer teaser; 'The Watchmen' trailer; video; variety; BETWEEN THE LINES explores the Vietnam War through the prism of the surfing sub-culture.; Paul Rudd and Sean William Scott star as two "Role Models" in the new comedy from Universal. ; trailers; Paul Rudd; Sean William Scott; video; variety; 'Role Models' movie trailer; Tom Cruise stars in the upcoming WWII thriller about the assassination of Adolf Hitler. ; World War II; katie holmes; Hitler; trailer; valkyrie; Tom Cruise; video; variety; Daniel Craig stars as James Bond in Sony's highly anticipated sequel to 'Casino Royale' ; Daniel Craig; trailer; 'Quantum of Solace' trailer; free download; James Bond; variety; embed; Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo play two con man attempting to swindle an eccentric heiress in 'The Brothers Bloom.'; Adrien Brody; 'The Brothers Bloom' trailer; video; variety; Mark Wahlberg and Twentieth Century Fox bring the gritty videogame hero to the bigscreen. ; Mark Wahlberg; New Trailer; Download; 'Max Payne' trailer; variety; Eva Mendes, Scarlett Johansson, and Samuel L. Jackson star in comic mastermind Frank Miller's directorial debut. ; Rainn Wilson stars as an out-of-work '80's drummer who's called upon for a last-minute gig. (Fox); Fox; comedy; christina applegate; 'The Rocker' trailer; video; variety; Rainn Wilson; The Coen Bros.' follow up to 'No Country' is a quirky drama starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney. (Warning: graphic language); George Clooney; Joel and Ethan Cohen; trailer; Brad Pitt; Burn After Reading; John Malkovich; video; variety; Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe star in Ridley Scott's adaptation of the CIA thriller. ; trailers; Leonardo DiCaprio; 'Body of Lies' trailer; variety; Ridley Scott; Russell Crowe; Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connolly star in Twentieth Century Fox's remake of the sci-fi classic.; december 12th; Fox; 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' trailer; Remake; jennifer connolly; movie trailers; variety; keanu reeves; Director Guy Ritchie returns another British gangster film. This time starring '300' stud Guy Ritchie. ; Gerard Butler; madonna; Guy Ritchie; trailers; 'RocknRolla' trailer; Anne Hathaway plays a drug-addict sibling who returns for her sisters wedding in the Jonathan Demme drama. ; movie; 'Rachel Getting Married' trailer; Jonathan Demme; trailers; Anne Hathaway; 'City of God' director Fernando Meirelles directs Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo in the adaptation of José Saramago's epidemic novel.; trailers; Mark Ruffalo; 'Blindness' trailer; video; Variety review; Julianne Moore; Based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzerald, Brad Pitt stars as a man who ages in reverse in David Fincher's chronological drama. ; trailer download; angelina jolie; Warner Bros.; 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' trailer; Brad Pitt; David Fincher; movie trailers; variety; 'Disturbia' director D.J. Caruso reunites with Shia LaBeouf in this political assassination thriller. ; 'Eagle Eye' trailer; Shia LaBeouf; movie trailers; video; variety; Bill Murray and Tim Robbins star in this fantasy/drama about a illuminous city that slowly begins to fade. ; free; Bill Murray; 'City of Ember' trailer; movie trailers; Tim Robbins; variety; embed; Saw V Teaser Trailer; Vin Diesel returns to the action-genre in Fox's futuristic thriller, 'Babylon A.D.'; August 2008; Fox; Vin Diesel; 'Babylon A.D.' trailer; video; variety; Woody Allen is back behind the camera with Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardhem and Scarlett Johansson topping this Spanish romance. ; Scarlett Johansson; Javier Bardhem; 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona' trailer; Penelope Cruz; Woody Allen; spain; Movie Trailer; Dennis Quaid stars in the real-life story of Ernie Davis, the first African-American to win the Heisman trophy. ; Dennis Quaid; Heisman Trophy; Ernie Davis; 'The Express' trailer; video; variety; Twilight trailer 2; A scene from Alex Gibney's upcoming documentary, 'Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson' ; 'Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson' scene; trailer; variety; Jennifer Aniston, Ben Affleck and more top this star-studded romantic comedy from Warner Bros.; He's Just Not That Into You; trailer; Ben Affleck; Jennifer Aniston; Justin Long; Drew Barrymore; variety; Righteous Kill - Movie Trailer; A young girl tries to navigate her way through the dubious (and sexual) temptations of Los Angeles. ; sexual crowd in los angeles; 'Garden Party' trailer; young girl; video; variety; Sean William Scott and John C. Reilly star as two co-workers vying for the same promotion. ; comedy; 'The Promotion' trailer; Sean William Scott; John C. Reilly; video; variety; Mulder and Scully return to the bigscreen this Summer in FOX and creator Chris Carter's 'X-Files: I Want to Believe.'; trailer; Fox; Mulder; Scully; Chris Carter; David Duchovney; Gillian Anderson; variety; X-Files: I Want to Believe; Seth Rogen and James Franco star in the Judd Apatow produced stoner comedy, 'Pineapple Express.'; James Franco; 'Pineapple Express' trailer; comedy; Judd Apatow; stoners; Seth Rogen; variety; stoner; Lucasfilm is back with another 'Star Wars' movie. This time, however, the jedi's are animated. ; Film; jedi; trailer; lucasfilm; Star Wars: Clone Wars; animated movie; George Lucas; variety; Heath Ledger stars as the Joker in Christopher Nolan's highly-anticipated sequel to 'Batman Begins.'; Kiefer Sutherland stars as an ex-cop who begins to investigate the evil force that has penetrated his home. ; Kiefer Sutherland; Mirrors; trailers; 'Mirrors' trailer; horror; video; variety; Real-life teens star in one of the most talked about documentaries of the year. ; documentary; trailer; American Teen; variety; sundance; Fox's intergalactic comedy highlights the antics of astronaut chimps with all the “wrong stuff.�; ' Fox; 'Space Chimps; trailer; animation; video; variety; Jack Black and Ben Stiller topline this jungle comedy about a group of Hollywood actors getting caught in the action.; Matthew McConaughey; comedy; Robert Downey Jr.; Ben Stiller; Tom Cruise; movie; Tropic Thunder; Jack Black; Meg Ryan and Annette Bening star in the remake of George Cukor's 1939 film.; Bette Midler; eva mendes; 'The Women' trailer; Meg Ryan; video; variety; Diane Keaton; Marvel Comics returns to the bigscreen with the second installment of the action/fantasy thriller. ; The Golden Army; Marvel Comics; Hellboy 2; movie; sequel; Selma Blair; Three women are stalked by a killer with a grudge that extends back to the girls' childhoods.; Sony Picturehouse; trailer; Thriller; amusement; horror; variety; Pixar's latest entry tells the story of a loveable yet mischievous robot named 'Wall-E'; Will Smith plays a superhero with some not-so-super habits in Sony's big-budget 'Hancock.'; Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy star in this action-apprentice tale of justice. ; Morgan Freeman; Thriller; James McAvoy; angelina jolie; action; movie; wanted; Twilight - Movie Trailer; Physicist Bruce Banner takes flight in order to understand -- and hopefully cure -- the condition that turns him into a monster.; Pierce Brosnan and Meryl Streep star in the film adaptation of the Broadway hit musical. ; Will Smith plays a superhero with some not-so-super habits in Sony's big-budget 'Hancock.'; Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly star as two step-brothers who must find their way to brotherly love. ; sony; comedy; 'Step Brothers' trailer; John C. Reilly; will ferrell; video; variety; Heath Ledger stars as the Joker in Christopher Nolan's highly-anticipated sequel to 'Batman Begins.'; The newest trailer for the Ed Norton-starrer 'Incredible Hulk.'; America's favorite gal pals jump to the bigscreen this summer. ; Jack Black voices a 600-pound martial arts whiz in the Dreamworks animated film, 'Kung Fu Panda.'; Brendan Fraser and co. are back at again in 'The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor'; Made of Honor Movie Trailer; Based on the classic 1960's Japanese animated series chronicling the aspirations of a young race car driver as he attempts to obtain glory, with the help of his family and the Mach 5.; Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: Movie Trailer; The Forbidden Kingdom - Movie Trailer; Get Smart: Movie Trailer; Story about six MIT students who were trained to become experts in card counting and subsequently took Vegas casinos for millions in winnings.; Dreamworks Animations presents Kung Fu Panda.; Single business woman who dreams of having a baby discovers she is infertile and hires a working class woman to be her unlikely surrogate.; A team of people work to prevent a disaster threatening the future of the human race.; Two sisters Anne Boleyn (Natalie Portman) and Mary Boleyn (Scarlett Johansson) contend for the affection of King Henry VIII (Eric Bana) ; Jack Black destroys every tape in his friend's video store. In order to satisfy the store's most loyal renter, an aging woman with signs of dementia, the two men set out to remake the lost films.; The attempted assassination of the president is told from five different perspectives.; A genetic anomaly allows a David Rice ( Hayden Christensen) to teleport himself anywhere.; Once moving into the Spiderwick Estate Jared and Simon Grace find themselves in an alternate world.; A story about family, greed, religion, and oil, centered around a turn-of-the-century prospector in the early days of the business.; Amir (Khalid Abdalla) has spent years in California and returns to his homeland in Afghanistan to help his old friend Hassan.; Back home in Texas after fighting in Iraq, a soldier refuses to return to battle despite the government mandate requiring him to do so.; An attorney known as the "fixer" in his law firm, comes across the biggest case of his career that could produce disastrous results for those involved; George Clooney; sydney pollack; Michael Clayton; John Rambo (Stallone) assembles a group of mercenaries and leads them up the Salween River to a Burmese village where a group of Christian aid workers allegedly went missing.; Trailer to Iron Man Video Game; Trailer from video game; "Margot at the Wedding" is a circus of family neuroses and bad behavior that perhaps a therapist could make sense of better than Noah Baumbach can. ; Nicole Kidman; Margot at the wedding; jennifer jason leigh; vareity review; movie review; variety; review; A young man from the South Bronx dreams of making it as a rapper, until a run-in with local thugs forces him to hide in Puerto Rico with the father he never knew.; You have to believe it to see it.; The last man on earth is not alone.; The rebellion begins. ; Variety presents a special screening of "The Darjeeling Limited" with Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola and Adrien Brody.; A CIA analyst questions his assignment after witnessing an unorthodox interrogation at a secret detention facility outside the US.; A freak storm unleashes a species of blood-thirsty creatures on a small town, where a small band of citizens hole-up in a supermarket and fight for their lives.; A scorching blast of tense genre filmmaking shot through with rich veins of melancholy, down-home philosophy and dark, dark humor, "No Country for Old Men" reps a superior match of source material and filmmaking talent.; Tommy Lee Jones; movie review; variety; Variety review; No Country for Old Men; Directors: Vincent Paronnaud & Marjane Satrapi Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Danielle Darrieux, Tilly Mandelbrot...; Trailer from video game; Robert Ford, who's idolized Jesse James since childhood, tries hard to join the reforming gang of the Missouri outlaw, but gradually becomes resentful of the bandit leader. ; Brad Pitt; Casey Affleck; the Assassination of Jesse James; Variety Screening Q&A; with director Sidney Lumet.; Before the Devil Knows You're Dead; Sidney Lumet; Philip Seymour Hoffman; movies; The search for true love begins outside the box. A delusional young guy strikes up an unconventional relationship with a doll he finds on the Internet.; ryan gosling; trailer; Patricia Clarkson; movies; Craig Gillepsie; Lars and the Real Girl; Survivors of the Raccoon City catastrophe travel across the Nevada desert, hoping to make it to Alaska. Alice (Jovovich) joins the caravan and their fight against the evil Umbrella Corp.; Director: Sean Penn Starring: Emile Hirsch, Hal Holbrook, Vince Vaughn; THERE WILL BE BLOOD chronicles one Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), who transforms himself from a silver miner into a self-made oil tycoon. ; There Will Be Blood; Here's an exclusive look at Joel and Ethan Coen's trailer for their Cannes hit "No Country for Old Men," starring Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin and uber villain Javier Bardem. ; trailer; movies; No Country for Old Men; Tomy Lee Jones; Ethan Coen; Josh Brolin; Javier Bardem; Joel Coen; Directors: Nadia Conners & Leila Conners Petersen Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sylvia Earle Ph.D., Mikhail Gorbachev...;

TIP ANNE THOMPSON

Visit the Widget Gallery

Anne's Links

August 2009

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
            1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31