[Robo]

Originally Posted by Eugene Meanwhile the unrest at Sony grows because people want to see Spidey crossover with the Avengers.

They really should find a way to make that happen.

It doesn't have to be a big part, even a cameo would be good. I think that would be beneficial to both parties: Sony's Spider-man could really use an "Avengers boost," and they'll need to do something to keep the character relevant until his next film in 2018 (though he'll probably appear in the Sinister Six film in 2016). Meanwhile, Disney gets the benefit of an actual surprise in an Avengers film, assuming the whole thing doesn't leak, and they also reap the benefit of increased toy sales (since they, not Sony, have merch rights to Spidey). And it would make a lot of fanboys really happy, and that goodwill is worth something, too.

I think Marvel has said that it's not going to happen until they control the character, but who knows. Stranger things have happened, in Hollywood (remember Roger Rabbit?). A good recent comparison might be Warner Bros. somehow negotiating the rights to use Marvel characters in the LEGO Marvel Super Heroes video game, which WB Games published.

[psmith2.0]

I guess all this separation doesn't apply to other types of productions and output? I keep seeing these Marvel Universe Live commercials on TV, and it's basically the Avengers and some others, but Spider-Man factors in heavily as well (as well as some X-Men...Cyclops, Storm and Wolverine).

http://www.marveluniverselive.com

Too bad we'll never see Spider-Man with the Avengers on screen, or Hugh Jackman and Robert Downey Jr. squabbling and out-snarking each other.

Can you imagine a 3-4 hour Marvelgasm movie...the Avengers cast, Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man, the X-Men (Stewart, Jackman, McKellen, etc.), the Fantastic 4, Daredevil, etc. Each character would get about 4-6 minutes to do their thing, then bug off.

I know the movie version of this would never come to be, but I'd love to see all these folks, in costume, posing for one of those huge ensemble pics like Vanity Fair or other magazines have done over the years (the Star Wars or American Graffiti casts). Just a big "Marvel at the Movies" group photo. I assume Alex Ross has at least painted such a thing, but it would be cool to see a cool photo with all these actors in costume together, regardless of the studio situation.

[psmith2.0]

So here's some car that Ben Affleck will be seen driving in some movie in about 18 months...

Vrrooommm...

[709]

Well, I love that, no matter how *pheh* I am about the rest of the stuff we've seen. That's just awesome. Sure, it's a totally obvious melt between Burton's Batmobile and Nolan's Tumbler, but holy shit. It's like, a perfect meld of those. It has me gently cautious of this movie where I was otherwise dismissive…. that's a lot.

[709]

Though, honestly. The pic of that really nice looking person as Wonder Woman at the bottom of the page reminded me how ridiculous this is going to be.

Oh hai never-introduced-in-this-universe-yet Batman here's a hot chick from Teme... Themer.. Tey..? ah fuck it, Amazonia and hey you guyz are on the same side, ok? Because hot chicks from another world should never set off you BatSensor and this is totally not a trick because you're a massive playboy.

You and others should comment on her hotness at least a dozen times throughout the film. This is because she's hot. And she's not from your neighborhood so there's no way she would hear anything about you from your exes. This is awesome.

[psmith2.0]

BTW, there's another interesting pic at the same site above from another big movie currently in production...an aerial shot of an outdoor set, featuring the construction of a certain vehicle. I don't want to even link it here. Go the batmobile site I linked above, to their homepage, scroll around a bit and just use your imagination. But it's pretty damn cool.

[turtle]

Higher res of the Batmobile posted to imgur:


Guns? Maybe he's an international spy in this version.

[psmith2.0]

I see where people are talking about that, and some are really bothered by it. I know Batman is supposedly "anti-gun", but a few things:

1. The Batmobile in Burton's 1989 movie had those machine guns (it shot through that big door at Axis Chemical)
2. Nolan's Tumbler (and the Batpod that ejected from it) both had rocket/artillery capabilities...we can't split hairs/nitpick over "guns vs. rockets".
3. This hood-mounted gun might shoot rubber bullets, or launch wall-buster charges, flash grenades, smoke bombs (or whatever ammo he wants to load)
4. In the city he lives/works, a rope and grappling hook probably isn't enough to do the job...the criminals and thugs have firepower, so he needs it too (even if it's used in other ways, and not "shooting people").

I have zero problem with an armed, armored Batman. It's more believable than someone thinking he can Judo-chop or Batarang his way through every situation.

I think Batman is more "anti-killing", than "anti-gun" (although, through inaction or indifference, he has been responsible for a few deaths)...if these are tools to knock down/blow out walls or other barriers, disable fleeing vehicles or put down criminals in a non-lethal way, of course he should use it. He's not going to be depicted as driving through Gotham, machine-gunning people to death. And the presence of "guns" on his car shouldn't be taken as that.

As for the car, I think it looks pretty cool. A sportier Tumbler. It looks like the vehicle in those Arkham games...a cross between the Tumbler, a dune-buggy and a roadster. I like the plating and cut-outs around the tires. And I absolutely love the scuffed/battered look, which, from all I've read, perfectly fits into the Batman depicted in this movie...it's not an origin story, and he's been around for many years, doing his thing. So he's going to have some dents, scuffs and scratches on his ride. That makes it look like he's been through it, and has been out there "being Batman" for some time. I like that. We've had the origin story (a very good one), so I love the idea of hitting the ground running with a Batman who's already a known figure on the scene, many years into his crusade.

What I don't want to see is the unnecessary, expected destruction of the vehicle (think back to the other movies, all seven, and how many times we had to see his vehicle pointlessly destroyed for "drama"). That's become a cliché at this point (or, more accurately, a way to sell toys because it has to be replaced with something, right? The car got blown up, so let's get the motorcycle. The plane crashed, so let's use a boat. And so on. I'm hoping this car sticks around, intact, and that the other silliness is kept to a minimum...no Bat-subs, Bat-chopper, Bat-jet, Bat-Jeep, Bat-swamp boat, Bat-scooter, etc. I have no problem with the Bat-glider, however. That's cool and actually fits the theme a bit. If Ben Affleck wants to jump off a building with some cool wing/glider thing, I'll be totally okay with that. Because it would be alike a bat flying around.

[addabox]

Just randomly, I was watching Steven Soderbergh's "Solaris", the remake of the Tarkovsky film. The idea is that the crew of a space station orbiting a mysterious planet start getting visitations from dead loved ones.

They discuss how that could be:

"OK, enough hypothesizing, our visitors: are they made of subatomic particles?"
"Subatomic particles? I'm not sure."
"What do you think?"
"Probably."
"Stabilized by what? Guess."
"I dunno, maybe....Higgs... field?"
"So. If we created a negative Higgs field and bombarded them with a stream of Higgs anti-Bosons they might disintegrate?"
"Maybe. It would take a lot of power."
"Shut down all the non-critical ship functions."
"This is just a theory, you know. We could be wrong."

Ya think?

Terrible movie by and large, where Soderbergh attempts to match Tarkovsky's original glacial pacing and mysterious, psychological interiors but does it with George Clooney and Natascha McElhone (love interest from the Truman Show), two of the best looking people in the world, so long sections come off as a really really slow Obsession ad.

But this kind of science word salad is horrifying to me. I realize sic-fi movies are typically not much for the rigor, but why pretend to get all specific like this? Why not just stick with spacial inversions and temporal incursions and whatnot? Or vague mysticism? Or do what Tarkovsky did and just ignore the whys and explore your themes of memory and loss. I mean, it's not really a sic-fi movie at all, the sentient planet thing is just a way of getting people isolated and dealing with guilt and regret and having to face people you've lost or failed.

What really sealed the deal for me is the above dialogue is between the guy who played Daniel Faraday in Lost and Viola Davis, while Clooney and McElhone look on and nod sagely as the crazy people babble.

[psmith2.0]

I never got around to seeing that. The trailer didn't really grab me. I think Natasha McElhone is absolutely stunning...like "so pretty it almost hurts to look at her". I sat through The Truman Show because of her, and she was the best part of Ronin. We had a woman on our trivia team a year or so ago who looked a lot like her (cheekbones, mouth, chin, nose, long thick hair, doe eyes, etc.). I didn't miss a game.

McElhone is 1/3 of my English Actresses Who Stop Me in My Tracks trio (along with Kate Winslet and Keira Knightley). If the three of them ever appeared in a movie together, I'd have to take the week off. They could just sit around - sipping tea and crying over lost love/innocence - for two-and-a-half hours and it could be greatest movie ever made.

[addabox]

Yeah, actually how stunning she is is a big part of the problem with this movie. Like I mentioned, it's intended to be a meditation on loss, regret, presence, how we might deal with having to literally confront our buried pasts, especially when that confrontation is ambiguous (is this really a person? Does it matter?) But all you can think when she's onscreen is "Good God, those lips! Those eyes! Those cheekbones!" And a somewhat youngish George Clooney isn't much better, so the flashback scenes setting up their romance and marriage are completely un-relatable. When they meet for the first time Clooney just stops dead and stares at her, and she gives him the sex eyes, and they just circle each other for a while kind of grinning with delight, and it's like "Hey, I'm the best looking person I know, you're the best looking person I've seen, probably we should hook up?" Not really the sturdiest basis for deep thoughts on How Humans Deal With Their Past and What it Means to be Alive.

[psmith2.0]

I watched Super 8 all the way through. I've always heard people talking about J.J. Abrams and his lens flares. But, honestly...what's his deal? They're truly everywhere, to the point of being...well, pointless and idiotic (and distracting).

Why does he do this? What's the purpose? Of all techniques or "looks" to base your trademark, go-to move on...why? Half the time, their presence doesn't even make sense. It just looks like a mistake or streak on the film...the kind of thing most filmmakers would hire a CGI crew to remove from their frames. Halfway in, I found myself counting the lens flares and not focusing on the movie. That's a problem.

He's shooting the most anticipated movie in the history of civilization (I checked...it is), and he's going to have all those needless, pointless horizontal streaks of light flashing and bouncing all over the place for two hours...because, apparently, that's his "thing"?

Maybe, in is mind, he's thinking "30 years from now, young filmmakers will be emulating me, the way I did Spielberg and Lucas!"

30 years from now, young filmmakers will still be emulating - and drawing inspiration from - Spielberg and Lucas (just like bands today - and 30 years from now - are still doing with The Beatles (as opposed to, say, The Knack or Oasis). People know what the real deal is, even if it's as old as their grandpa. Good is good. A filtered, second-pass-through-the-copier emulation is just that.

I would've come up with a cooler, less irritating signature move, that's all I'm sayin'...

[psmith2.0]

Hey, does anyone else run screaming from the room, in terror, when those trailers for Annabelle come on TV?

No? Hmmm, okay...

Me neither! I mean, that would be totally stupid, wouldn't it? I'm not even scared or anything.

You are! I love 'em! I wish they'd come on all the time. I watch them with my eyes wide open and everything!









They make me pee my pants.

[turtle]

Bride of Chucky?

Only modern...

I didn't see this one coming. Also, I thought this was Drew posting above until I stopped to read the name.

[psmith2.0]

Man, they freak me out. I can't handle a weird, evil doll and that's all these trailers are. I truly don't think I could go to the movie and sit through it all, start to finish. I might do it for $1,000, but part of that would have to go toward my counseling.

[Eugene]

I don't actually mind the lens flares most of the time if the movie is keeping me interested, and sometimes I intentionally frame my own photos with flares as well. It's mostly a result of using lenses meant for anamorphic/wide aspect ratios.

[psmith2.0]

Nothing like The Exorcist with a huge bowl of popcorn in a cool fall evening.

[addabox]

Originally Posted by Eugene I don't actually mind the lens flares most of the time if the movie is keeping me interested, and sometimes I intentionally frame my own photos with flares as well. It's mostly a result of using lenses meant for anamorphic/wide aspect ratios.

Abrams has actually apologized for his lens flare "addiction" and promised to tone it down for Star Wars. He tells of showing his wife a scene from Into Darkness and having her go "I can't tell what's going on. What is this?"

Apparently he just decided that lens flare equal "exciting" and that therefore more lens flair more exciting, with no upper limit. I read about how he had stage hands running around with lights pointed at the camera so he could get more, uh, excitement into every scene. Really, a bizarre affectation,

[Naderfan]

Compliation of lens flares from Star Trek

I just saw this the other day and thought it'd fit here. Someone sat down and counted all the lens flares in the 2009 Star Trek.

[psmith2.0]

Insane. I don't know what purpose it serves.

[Robo]

Anyone following the "Universal Monsters" reboot/shared continuity thing?

Universal is in a tricky position because now that Fast and the Furious seems to be wrapping things up with the seventh (!) entry, they don't really have an evergreen tentpole (read: comic book) property. WB has DC, Fox has X-Men, Sony has Spider-man, and Disney has everything else, and even Universal's fellow "little big studio" Paramount has been building a lifeboat out of Transformers, Ninja Turtles, and Terminator — but Universal has bupkis. They're betting big on Jurassic World, but they need more than that.

Enter Universal Monsters.

Basically, they're bringing back all the characters from the monster movies that more or less made them, and tying them altogether into a new shared continuity (because that's just all the rage these days). They were going to start with Kurtzfield's 2016 Mummy reboot, but now word is they've done reshoots with this month's Dracula Untold to tie it into the new monsterverse, too.

There's only one problem, and that's that Dracula Untold looks terrible. It feels like a Frankenfilm, a messy amalgam of a bunch of movies we've already seen—I, Frankenstein and Maleficent in particular, and that's just from this year! All through the trailer I was thinking, wait, didn't this already come out?

I think it's going to bomb. Nobody seems to want it, except for Universal execs.

So it's a risk to staple Untold to their new rebooted monsterverse, especially via hasty reshoots in post, and I think there's a very real chance that its poor reception could sour people on the whole series before it even really begins. Which would be terrible, for Universal. They and Paramount only two majors that is yet to break $1B domestic this year, and Universal doesn't have an Interstellar.

They got super lucky casting Chris Pratt for Jurassic World, as his star has risen this year more than anyone ever expected. I think that movie will do well for them. But they need more than that and Minions, and I'm not really sure this Universal Monsters thing is what the doctor ordered.

Maybe they'd do better trying to make (gasp!) a new IP, like Back to the Future was, once. Or even something that's just new to most people, like Jurassic Park was. But that's too risky, I suppose. Better stick to pre-sold properties people already know and love. Stuff like Battleship and Ouija, that's the ticket!

[psmith2.0]

Sounds like a complete mess. I seriously wonder who runs these studios. Sounds like a bunch of monkeys with magic markers.

Trying to build something on the Universal monsters - Mummy, Wolfman, Dracula, Frankenstein - when every 14-year-old walking around is 5x scarier/meaner than all them combined (and the real world is 50x more evil and horrifying) seems like a tall order. They'd have to make them so violent and gory to "appeal" to 21st-century audiences, they'd just be better off trying to create something new and unique.












And then I woke up!

I will admit to loving Van Helsing, however, so my take on all this could be severely out of whack and in need of calibrating.

[psmith2.0]

I Am Legend, a beloved classic from Hollywood's Golden Age - all the way back in 2007! - is getting a reboot.

Will it beat the Spider-Man reboot that is surely in the works?

Word from Disney this morning that the Episode VII reboot is on track for 2019.

Not to be outdone, WB chimed in with "we're rebooting a movie we haven't even made yet. It'll be released in 2011."

[zippy]

The trailer for Pixar's 'Inside Out' is available. I'd provide a link but every time I go to the YouTube page I can't access the fucking web page controls/access the URL bar on my iPhone. Ive never liked the way the controls disappear, but since iOS 8, they can be a much bigger pain in the ass to trigger.

[Frank777]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 Word from Disney this morning that the Episode VII reboot is on track for 2019.

If they rebooted the prequels instead, would we really complain?

[psmith2.0]

Yeah, because that would be like them acknowledging they actually exist, and it would snap me out of my little "nothing happened between 1999 and 2005" spell I've conjured for myself.

Going forward, we just don't speak of it and, in time, it'll be like they never really happened!

But seriously, the more time that passes, and I look back and occasionally revisit them (on TV, or clips on YouTube or whatever), the more "beyond help" those prequels are. They're truly...bad. Set aside the CGI, Jar Jar, Jake Lloyd, etc. Just as movies - with plots, characters and dialog - they don't hold up. That was George Lucas returning to his baby, with more money than God, and under some weird impression that what everyone really wanted to see was a six-hour demo reel of the latest tools at his disposal. Everything else was secondary (or even further down the line). And from the man who created this, and brought it all into existence...man, that just really stung.

And it's a shame, because, done right that could've been a truly wonderful story...if it were smaller, leaner, better actors in a few key roles and more like A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back in tone (vs. I, Robot and John Carter of Mars), it would've been amazing to see. Instead, it was "look at everything we can throw on screen...isn't this incredible?!"

No, not really.

Sadly, we'll never get that "fall to darkness" story as it could've/should've been. We should've all been in, or near, tears when Obi-Wan injured Anakin/Vader there by the lava. It should've absolutely broken our hearts, to see these two friends end up that way (imagine how we would've responded in 1983 if Luke and Han somehow got into a fight in Return of the Jedi, and one of them seriously hurt, or even killed, the other...we would've absolutely lost our minds!). It should've been that level of hurt or shock, there on Mustafar (actually it should've been more since Obi-Wan and Anakin knew each other far longer than Han and Luke). All that weight, and, of course, us knowing what eventually becomes of each. That should've been one of the most amazing sequences in sci-fi/fantasy movie history (maybe movie history, period?). Intead, I was like "hit him again, Obi-Wan...he's still moving and talking, only now he's all bald and on fire, so he's really acting bratty!"

A shame. I've said it before, but it's totally true...the whole "how Darth Vader became Darth Vader" thing I had in my head, from the time I was about 9-10, was never going to be topped by some movie actually showing it. But I truly never imagined it could've been so underwhelming and unsatisfying, the way they went about it. The story in my head is still safe (and better).

[Frank777]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 That should've been one of the most amazing sequences in sci-fi/fantasy movie history (maybe movie history, period?). Intead, I was like "hit him again, Obi-Wan..."

Yep.

[Dorian Gray]

Tonight I watched Winter Sleep, the Turkish film that won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

The trailer is a miserable thing that captures none of the brilliance of this film – for it is truly brilliant – but I suppose it’s better than nothing, even with French subtitles.

I was blown away by almost every aspect of this film, which starts with a boy throwing a stone at a car window and unravels Turkish society and ultimately universal humanity in great, sweeping, insidious arcs. The cinematography is jaw-droppingly beautiful, the acting is sublime, the dialogue is riveting, and the ensemble is so utterly spellbinding that it seems to me to represent the very farthest possibilities of cinema.

If you can find somewhere showing this film within a hundred miles of you it is categorically worth your while getting there. Especially if you’ve just visited Turkey, Chinney.

[Ryan]

Paul, this one was built just to spike your rage-o-meter:

A ‘Tetris’ Movie Is in the Works

[psmith2.0]

After Battleship and others, I guess it's no suprise. Can't wait for Connect 4 and Candy Land!

Although I love Tetris! Not gonna see a movie about it, mind you. But the game itself was a hoot. I bought it for my iPod video back in 2003-2004, even!

In fact, my electronic/video gaming experience/knowledge/interest extends to only titles: Tetris and Angry Birds.