Cinecast Episode 59 [75:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

this episode:
Invasion, Superbad, Rush Hour 3 and a few other tangents…

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     Just wanted to let you all know I have started a new show on the NowLive network called Movie Talk! I did my first show today, it isn’t very good (As I don’t have a co-host among other things) but give me a break it’s my first try! So every now and then drop in to Now Live and check when my show is on.

     

     Personally I think the idea of a Justice League movie is such a stupid idea. To me it’s just not something that can work on the big-screen. But despite my feelings about it it looks like they are going ahead and making it anyway. Well the big question on everyone’s mind is, “will Batman and Superman be making an appearance and if so will it be Bale and Routh who will be playing them?” Well according to IESB.net in an interview with Bale about a 3:10 To Yuma he has some answers. The following is from that interview:

Q: Are you doing Justice League after TDK?

A: No

Q: Have you been approached about it?

A: No

Q: How would you feel about the studio recasting Batman for Justice League?

A: It’d be better if it doesn’t tread on the toes of what we’re doing, though I feel that it would be better if it comes out after Batman 3.

     I think Bale is absolutely right. As I said the idea of doing a Justice League movie is just plain stupid. I can tell that if Batman and Superman (there is no info on whether or not Routh is planning on doing it) were to make an appearance that it would be very small ones and the whole JA movie would just to build up the lesser known characters so that they can have their own spin-off franchise.

     

     As always, I never watch these things before I see the movie because I like to go in fresh, but the interview ones are cool. The first is my boy Paul Giamatti (he likes it when I call him “G thang”) talking about his character and the weapons he gets to use and more. The rest are more interviews from the other stars (Belucci and Owen) and the director and a few clips from the movie.

Can’t wait for the film which opens wide release on September 7th. See you at the theater!
Thanks to movieweb for the embeddable code.

Paul Giamatti:

See the rest of the clips after the unwrap by clicking below…
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     I‘ve just learned that one of my favorite sci-fi books of all time is being made into a feature length film starring Moragan Freeman and tentatively directed by David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac).

     Rendezvous with Rama is the story of a mysterious ship (nicknamed Rama) that enters our solar system out of the blue (or black, as the case is) and Earth happens to have a spacecraft close enough that it is able to make physical contact. The astronuats on board have just a few hours to investigate what is Rama and maybe where it came from and what secrets it may be hiding.

     This is not an alien attack flick or a deadly space virus or apocalyptic sort of story. It is true science fiction that is meant to be wondrous and mysterious (much like the glory that is Carl Sagan’s Contact starring Jodie Foster).

     Fincher could very well be a great fit for this film (I have no doubt that Freeman will be) and do hope the film makers don’t muck it up by making the movie more than it should be; i.e. a relatively quiet picture that should be nothing more than fascinating and beautiful. If ever a movie was made for an IMAX experience, Rendevous with Rama is it. If you’ve read the book, you’ll know exactly what I mean.

source: MadAboutMovies

Director: David Lynch

Writer: David Lynch

Starring: Laura Dern, Justin Theroux, Jeremy Irons, Harry Dean Stanton.

Rating: 15

Runtime: 3 hours approx.

After seeing or rather experiencing David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE (He insists it always be written in capitals) I am finding it rather difficult to express it in words. Five words sprung to mind, five simply put but not necessarily simple descriptions that I immediately felt afterwards; WEIRD, INTENSE, FRIGHTENING, CAPTIVATING and CONFUSING. The initial and the latter being the norm within the world of David Lynch.

I can’t, and I doubt anyone else can either, describe the full premise of INLAND EMPIRE, but to my best knowledge this is the basic plot. An actress, Nikki Grace (Dern), gets a big part in a new movie. But when she falls for her co-star (Theroux) she begins to realize her life is mimicking the fictional film they are shooting. Adding to this she finds out that the film is actually a remake of a Polish film that was never completed due to a tragedy.

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     Jonathan over at Cinema Fusion just pointed us to a really cool collection of Top 10 movie lists by Directors, Critics and Stars over at Combustible Celluloid. I thought it would be fun to take their lists and come up with a combined Top 100 Movie List.

     I’ve combined all the lists in excel and sorted by number of times each movie shows up. They are ordered 100 down to 1 and sorted alphabetically when there are movies that had the same amount of votes. I’ve also included the number of times that each movie shows up.

     I actually find this list quite interesting. There are some similarities to the AFI top 100 but there are also some serious differences.

*One final note. I also didn’t spend the time modifying the votes. A few people voted for Godfather and some others voted for Godfather 2 and then there were 6 people who said Godfather 1 and 2 as a choice. The list isn’t perfect but its fun to look at none the less.

UNWRAP TEXT or SHOW **SPOILER**

     Woody Allen has always been a director that escapes me. I never found his humor all that amusing and putting his damn self in every one of his films got to be just annoying over time. The cherry on the cake of course, was finding out (when I was about 10 years old) that Annie Hall had beat out Star Wars for best picture kudos at the Oscars. This cannot stand. So I have not really been a hater of Allen, but most certainly not a fan.

     All that changed in 2005 when he made one of the best and most underrated films of the year: Match Point. It was one of the only films without Allen in it; and it had almost none of Allen’s tiring humor. It was straight up drama with intensity and deep meaning matched by nothing else of that year (other than maybe A History of Violence).

     It seemed Allen had a learned a lesson and I looked forward to his next piece. Then he made Scoop… **sigh**

     Now however, it appears Allen is back on track with his next film, Cassandra’s Dream, starring Colin Farrell, Ewan McGregor and Tom Wilkinson. It appears to be another intense drama with possible murder and suspense. And thankfully, Allen’s name doesn’t appear anywhere in the cast credits.

from IMDb plot summary:

The story of two Cockney brothers (Farrell and McGregor) in south London and their relationship with a young woman (Atwell) who lands in London on her search for fortune. She crosses the two men by accident on her path and when one them falls in love with her, she becomes aware of her power to attract the opposite sex and uses this to the point of leading the two brothers, who are in financial difficulty, into crime, and creating a dangerous rivalry between the two men.

     I am now HIGHLY looking forward to this one. Thanks to Twitch, I’ve been alerted to the new trailer online. Forgive the French subtitles. This is the only embeddable version I could find.

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08.19.07

     Quite often in films, there is a chase sequence. Most of the time it involves a couple of cars - the bad guy trying to get away from the good; or vice-versa. Sometimes it is more than one car (Italian Job) and other times there aren’t even cars involved at all, but trucks, ships or something else entirely. Here are my ten favorite chase sequences:

10) Terminator 2: Judgement Day
- - The T-1000 drives a semi truck off a bridge in an effort to kill John Connor who is frantically trying to escape on his little 100cc dirtbike through the dried up spillways of Los Angeles. Luckily Arnie saves the day on his Harley. Nothing overly special; just an exciting scene utilizing unique vehicles and characters in an equally unique environment. This is pure diesel power at 100 MPH.

9) The Matrix Reloaded
- - The high speed chase down the expressway is VERY fast and very intense with some pretty interesting characters that help make the chase that much more memorable. Major crash ups with a lot at stake. The only thing keeping this from being higher on the list is the obvious use of too much CGI. Had it been more “real”, it’d be higher on the list.

8) The Bourne Supremacy
- - The way Greengrass is able to pull this off in such a believable manner is fascinating. It’s not as intense because it’s so much fun to see the camera inside the car and its passenger as it takes massively huge hits from oncoming and side traffic.

7) Deja-Vu
- - This chase isn’t even really a chase. It’s easily the most original and innovative car “chase” I can think of. Denzel is chasing a guy that was there 102 hours ago using advanced, “see into the past” technology. It’s a total mind trip and exciting as hell. Especially given what is on the line. One of the best sequences of 2006.

6) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
- - The mine shaft chase on carts. So much fun, because they can’t steer and they can’t slow down. Some track missing? Tough luck, you’ll have to jump the tracks. With agents of death hot on their trail, Indy has to be as innovative as ever to get away. Did I mention they’re riding over molten lava?

5) Raiders of the Lost Ark
- - Once again Indy finds himself in a tight spot and must be innovative. And innovative he is in one of the most iconic images of the decade… maybe ever, as Indy goes UNDER the moving truck to come up safe on the back end. Yeah.

4) The French Connection
- - It’s been a while, but I remember the chase through NYC; weaving and dodging traffic and the narrow lanes beneath the L trains as Hackman tries desperately to keep up with the fast moving train in his Pontiac GTO. Some narrow misses and near death for a baby in a stroller made this one a chase to remember.

3) Bullitt
- - My dad told me to watch Bullitt for the car chase, so I did. Man, he was right. Through the streets of San Fran over those huge hills, Steve McQueen and his speed machine gets some serious air. Not the best chase ever, but it probably was at the time. And damn cool it is.

2) Return of the Jedi
- - To this day when I ride my parents’ 4-Wheeler through the woods at top speed I recite lines to myself from the speeder bike chase in Jedi. How fast do you think they’re going in that movie? 100? 200 mph? Maybe more? Impossible with all that foilage and those huge trees of Endor, but no less of a thrill.

1) Ronin
- - Wow. This sequence seems to just go on forever and the speed at which DeNiro drives through those narrow streets is absolutely gripping. I remember my teeth nearly breaking as I gritted my jaw together so tightly and I kept looking for the seat belt on my theater chair. The most exciting and well choreographed chase scene I’ve ever seen. Brilliant.

honorable mention must go to Ben-Hur. It’s not a chase sequence technically, because it is a race, not a chase. Still, it’s exciting and gruesome as hell. I still have seen nothing like it to this day. I would’ve paid top dollar back in the day to watch a chariot race like that.

     There has certainly been more than one poster released for 3:10 To Yuma and here is another one to add to the pile.

     Personally I don’t think any matches this one but I still really dig this poster none the less. If I’m not mistaken, this is the first where we actually see the actors faces, what do you think?

highlight to read

If you think this is annoying to read, it is exactly what you’re in for according to comingsoon. Just when you thought it was safe to back to the theater, I read today that summer blockbuster season isn’t quite over with yet. Are you sitting down? Transformers isn’t quite done yet. If these giant frakking robots weren’t giant enough already, on September 21st they’re about to get a whole lot bigger when they hit IMAX screens across the country.      Not only will they now be bigger, louder (yes, those IMAX sound systems are absolutely dynamite!) and more in your face, it will also be longer. Why would anyone make this movie longer!? But apparently Bay and Co. have decided to splice in more footage not included in its original theatrical run. I haven’t been able to track down exactly what that extra footage will be yet or how much of it there will be, but I can assure you I don’t really care and am not sitting through this movie in a theater again.      I may be interested to sit down with it on DVD one day and watch some of the battle scenes in slow motion, but IMAX? How on earth will you be able to even figure out what’s going on? I wasn’t sure who was who and where was where in the regular theater. Now you’re going to make it the size of 45 elephants and put it even closer to my face and make it longer? No thanks.

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     It’s been a long time since I’ve just sat down and surfed the internet. I usually go to all my usual sites and check out the news and so forth. But today, I started in one spot and just starting following links around. It’s fun to see where you end up. While surfing, I ran across something blog worthy. Over at Windmills of my Mind, Damian Arlyn is taking on the task of “31 Days of Spielberg, in which he picks a different SPielberg film each day to dissect and review. And when I dissect, I mean this guy really delves pretty deeply into each film. Pages and pages of dissection actually.

     As of this writing, he seems to be about half way through the schedule, which goes as follows:

DAY 1: Prologue
DAY 2: Night Gallery – “Eyes”
DAY 3: Columbo: Murder By the Book
DAY 4: Duel
DAY 5: The Sugarland Express
DAY 6: Jaws
DAY 7: Close Encounters of the Third Kind
DAY 8: 1941
DAY 9: Raiders of the Lost Ark
DAY 10: Poltergeist
DAY 11: E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
DAY 12: Twilight Zone: the Movie – “Kick the Can”
DAY 13: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
DAY 14: Amazing Stories – “Ghost Train” & “The Mission”
DAY 15: The Color Purple
DAY 16: Empire of the Sun
DAY 17: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
DAY 18: Always
DAY 19: Hook
DAY 20: Jurassic Park
DAY 21: Schindler’s List
DAY 22: The Lost World: Jurassic Park
DAY 23: Amistad
DAY 24: Saving Private Ryan
DAY 25: A.I.: Artifical Intelligence
DAY 26: Minority Report
DAY 27: Catch Me If You Can
DAY 28: The Terminal
DAY 29: War of the Worlds
DAY 30: Munich
DAY 31: Epilogue

     I’m not taking the time to link to each title, but you can just head over to the main URL or start right at DAY 1: Prefatory Remarks & Pre-history and go from there. You’ll be reading for a while, but it seems to me to be worth the time spent. Excellent pieces that are both interesting and highly informative. I had no idea E.T. would have never happened without the guiding hand of Truffant! Check it out.

     Grindhouse was one of the most fun experiences I’ve had in a theater in a long time and will undoubtedly crack my top ten of the year come December. A big part of that success was the greatness that is Death Proof (MP review); the second in the two features enclosed within Grindhouse. And then, part of the fun of Death Proof, was the inclusion of a stunt woman playing herself in the movie.

     Zoe Bell played Zoe, an adrenaline rush junkie who will do anything for a thrill. As someone who had never really acted before, she pulled off her lines and her acting as well as anyone else on screen and was not only a delight, but also a big surprise.

     Today, I read good news over at Variety (via ObsessedwithFilm) that Bell has landed another role, this one in the leading lady position in an as of yet untitled film about Iraq war veterans.

from Variety:

Bell will play a U.S. soldier adrift after returning home from a tour of duty in Iraq who decides to help a young girl in trouble. The project is based on an original idea from Weber (producer) and screenwriter Sarah Thorpe (”Twisted”).

“This film is a big challenge for me, especially the American accent, which I have to work on,” New Zealand native Bell said in an interview. “But one thing is certain: I will be doing all my own stunts on the film.”

“When I saw Zoe in ‘Death Proof,’ I was immediately drawn to her ability and acting talent,” Weber said. “Her background and likability made her a perfect choice for our lead.”

     I thought Bell was great in Death Proof and I look forward to see if she can pull off more great roles. This movie sound interesting at the very least. We’ll have to see what kind of budget it is given and who they get to direct; but as it stands now, I’m in.

     No, this is not an article on Uwe Boll’s Postal (which I totally want to see). No, this relates to the United States Postal Service’s commemorative stamp releases. Back in March, we reported about the USPS Star Wars stamps that were released (and are awesome by the way). Now, in continuing on with their “Legends of Hollywood” series, the next stamp to be released will be that featuring the likenes of Jimmy Stewart.

From USPS.com…

     James Stewart, a quintessential American film hero whose lanky physique, drawling speech and naturalistic acting style made the characters he played seem “real.” Art director Phil Jordan designed the stamp using a portrait of Stewart by Drew Struzan, who based his work on a photograph taken during the taping of The Stratton Story. The painting on the selvage, also by Struzan, shows Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, the 1939 film for which he received his first Academy Award nomination for “best actor.”

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     Also upcoming within the year, will be an “Art of Disney: Magic” series; featuring characters from various Disney movies who are in some way, Magical. These don’t interest me as much as the Jimmy Stewart stamps, but they’re nice none the less.

Magic is the fourth in the “Art of Disney” series. The first to honor the Art of Disney was on the theme of friendship. The second focused on celebrations and the third on romance.

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     So get this, over at Kung Fu Cult Cinema I found a news bit about Enter the Dragon being remade. My initial thought is damn this just sucks, but the more I thought about it the more I figured I’d head out and see it. Is it a bit of a sacrilege to remake this movie? Sure it is but no more than that of half of the remakes that get made. It sounds like they are going to switch things up a bit:

Based on a screenplay by Sutter himself, the film will be titled Awaken the Dragon and follows a FBI agent who tracks down a Shaolin monk and his journey into the world of underground martial arts fight clubs.

     IT also sounds like they are going to turn it into a film noir style film. This actually could work. My only worry is they won’t go far enough and they will simply remake the movie and have someone who isn’t anywhere near the fighter that Bruce Lee was and it will just be completely forgettable. If they do go with a new style and change things up I’ll be interested to see it.

     As a student who went to University for speech therapy, this litle trailer caught my eye and is opening in Minneapolis this weekend. It’s nothing overly special, but it certainly looks cute and charming and probably has a lot to say; especially for someone who is involved in my “un”chosen profession.

     It’s called Rocket Science and is about a teenage kid with a stuttering problem who ends up joining the debate team in an effort to “work things out.” It’s directed by the guy who did a great little documentary that got a lot of people talking back in 2002 called Spellbound. He’s also directed a couple episodes of “The Office.” Anyway, not much else to post about today, so here’s the trailer and official site:

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I would like to introduce the first volume in my new movie comic strip. I am just trying it out to see how it goes but if all goes well there will be more volumes to come. Here is the first one:

     I just love when new posters for films are released, especially for films I am looking forward to. Here are a few I have just found (click to enlarge):

Eastern Promises - I did a post about this a few weeks ago (view it here) and finally the poster has arrived. And I personally absolutely love it. It’s one of those that gives you a feeling for the film but doesn’t tell you that much about it.



Grace Is Gone - You’d have to be made of stone not to think the storyline of this movie is sadder than a three-legged puppy (look around, the given imdb link gives a much too general outline). The poster I think is very fitting as far as what the film’s about - very elegant and peaceful in my opinion.



Semi-Pro - This, in case you haven’t guessed already, is the new “wacky and zany” sports comedy from the ever-popular Will Ferrell. Personally I think he should cut down on these and try his hand at more serious roles (he did very well in the “straighter than usual” Stranger Than Fiction). But going along with yet another comedy of his I have to admit the poster is pretty funny. I just hope the film turns out to be at least worthwhile.



Dan In Real Life - After getting the “grab for the big bucks” movie out of the way (Evan Almighty - which I avoided for obvious reasons) Steve Carell is now returning to a more independent film. Personally I think this movie is going to be great…although Dane Cook is in there…..

     I‘m getting a little tired of the “weathered” look that seems to be so much of a trend lately in movie one sheets. But this one I really like a lot: The Strangers. It really gives a sense of creepy helplessness. The coffe cup stain in the upper left is a nice touch…

click image for hi-res

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     The second poster could be my favorite poster of the year (except for that second 3:10 to Yuma poster). It looks like the cover of a book and although it showcases Clooney in all his greatness, I dig how they make him totally out of focus and concentrate on the title of the film. The poster breaks two of my personal rules for a great poster: words too big and the main actor’s face too big. But the way this one is pulled of I really can get behind.

click image for hi-res

source: movie poster addict and cinematical

 Cinecast Episode 58 [136:32m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

this episode:
Stardust, Simpsons Movie, Bourne Ultimatum, 2 weeks of DVDs, Prince of Peace God of War and whatever else we feel like…

Unwrap the complete Show Notes by clicking on this link…

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