Category: Sci-Fi Movies (Page 48 of 93)

Midweek movie bits

March 17, 2010 /

I’m going to be taking a day off from the blogging grind, but there’s plenty going on this late evening in the world’s cinema capital. Starting with…

* Team Coco, the movie! Okay, it’s a documentary about Conan O’Brien’s upcoming live tour and it’s still only in the “early talks” stage according to Mike Fleming’s exclusive. It’s apparently in compliance with his severance deal, even though most people will probably end up watching it on television sets anyhow.

* Speaking of documentaries and comedy, A.J. Schnack rounds up some of the SXSW reaction to James Franco’s SNL documentary.

* At the risk certainty of being repetitious, speaking of comedies connected to SNL, Pete Sciretta rounds up the SXSW reaction to”MacGruber.” We also have reaction direct from Jason Zingale at the big Austin fest just a few posts below.

* In the wake of the sale of Miramax, go-to producer Scott Rudin is negotiating to leave Disney, writes Claudia Eller.

* Okay, even if I might not be a fan of all the movies, I confess to enjoying the idea of having the stars of past Marvel films recreate their roles in the long-discussed “Avengers” film and Edward Norton appears possibly willing to play along by returning as the Hulk, maybe. Whatever else may be true, Norton is a very interesting guy.

* Does a serious version of the Black Knight sequence from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” sound like your kind of film? If so, Anne Thompson thinks you might like “Centurion.”

* I think all the entertainment reporters should just take the month off and let Mike Fleming do all the reporting of stories like the one that Jeremy Renner may be joining Paul Thomas Anderson’s not-about-Scientology movie which will star Philip Seymour Hoffman as not-L. Ron Hubbard. Though it’s relatively modest $35 million budget may be a bit high for the finance folks at Universal, other backers may have been found.

That’s hardly all. Fleming also brings us the one about “Hit Girl” Chloe Moretz joining the cast of Scorsese’s lastest and that Tobey Maguire confirmed to be playing Bobby Fisher.

And one two more from Mr. Fleming…If you think Spike Lee has been working as much as he should after the success of “Inside Man” and his acclaimed Katrina documentary, you’re apparently not alone. He’s switched agencies.

And, oh yeah, another beefcake “Captain America” potential. At least the names for the female lead have a bit of spark to them, I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing Keira Knightley or Emily Blunt hanging around a Marvel movie.

* Jeffrey Welles is nutso for “Hot Tub Time Machine,” for what it’s worth.

* I often say that the best movies these days are long-form television. So why shouldn’t Martin Scorsese be getting involved? However, does everything crime and Scorsese oriented have to have Rolling Stones music in the background? Unless I’m misidentifying that anachronistic music in the “Boardwalk Empire,” trailer, I guess it really does. Still, yeah, it is Steve Buscemi’s time to play a big bad boss.

* If it’s not news that Jason Segal will be costarring with muppets, why are we talking about  it? Still, based on his obvious love for puppetry as portrayed in the rather brilliant “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” I think it may turn out okay.

Action Movies, Actors, Actresses, Documentaries, External Entertainment, External Movies, External TV, Movie Comedies, Movie Dramas, Movies, News, Sci-Fi Movies, TV, TV Comedies, TV Dramas

Monday movie news

March 15, 2010 /

Just a few items on a warm and sunny SoCal Ides of March…

* David Fincher is really keeping busy. I missed the story late Friday about him putting together a new movie iteration of “Heavy Metal.”

The first attempt to transpose the appeal of the legendary European-based anthology comic magazine is pretty much unwatchable these days — I know because I tried and failed to watch it at Comicon a couple of years back — but that’s all the more reason to give it another try I suppose. Considering that the late seventies and early eighties were pretty much the lowpoint of animation and the high end nature of this project, it pretty much has to be an improvement on most levels.

And that’s not all. Having taken on Facebook with Aaron Sorkin, another upcoming project may possibly involve an equally cinematic undertaking: chess.

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* With John Krasinski apparently out of the running for “The First Avenger: Captain America” (a title I’m not fond of, by the way), the Marvel gang has apparently adopted a “nobody excessively interesting” rule in its prospective casting. The latest name being floated: Ryan Phillipe. Still, he played effectively off of Chris Cooper in the highly underrated “Breach,” one of my favorite films of 2007, so perhaps he can do the same with Hugo Weaving here.

* Ben Kingsley and Sacha Baron Cohen are “in talks” to appear in Martin Scorsese’s ambitious, 3-D, meta-film, “The Invention of Hugo Cabret.”  As a Deadline commenter notes, this one appears to be DiCaprio-free, at last. Kingsley and Coehn could make an interesting buddy film.

* Tim Adler of Deadline|London thinks that the success of 3-D screenings of “Avatar” in Europe is funding the growth of digital movie theaters in Europe.

* I’ve said it before, but the career of director David Gordon Green fascinates me. He starts out like an American Vittorio De Sica by way of Terrence Malick with the neo-neo realist “George Washington,” and then transitions to stoner-frat comedies apparently spoofing eighties sword and sorcery flicks. Attention must be paid.

* If you really wanna know more about “penis trauma” and the MPAA ratings system…

* Phrases like “penis trauma” aside, SXSW really does sound like the most fun of the festivals, doesn’t it?

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The Pacific war in the movies, pt. 3

March 14, 2010 /

There’s absolutely no denying the reality of racism in the war between Japan and the United States. While the Japanese military dictatorship was in many respects almost as virulently race obsessed as their Nazi allies, it’s easier for an American viewer to see the fact that the U.S. was guilty of  race hatred of its own, starting with the imprisonment of thousands of innocent American citizens on the west coast who happened to be of Japanese ancestry,  many of them parents and grandparents of friends of mine. Meanwhile, Italian-Americans and German-Americans were accepted as the loyal citizens of this nation that nearly all of them were.

And so it took decades for Western filmmakers to begin to treat the Japanese side of the war with any complexity.  As we continue with a series of film clips inspired by HBO’s “The Pacific,” which premieres Sunday night, we have a brief but haunting and beautifully composed scene from John Boorman’s 1968 two character war film, “Hell in the Pacific.” The film stars Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune as two stranded soldiers who, in a plot that may remind science fiction buffs of the story and 1985 film “Enemy Mine,” are forced to work together in order to survive despite their enemy status.

Also, of course, no Western filmmaker that I know of explored the Japanese side of World War II with more depth or compassion than Clint Eastwood did in his bold, masterful “Letters from Iwo Jima” from 2006. Apparently, it took an icon of American toughness to illustrate the pain of some of the deadliest, most implacable, and bravest enemies this country ever faced.

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The Pacific war in the movies, pt. 2

March 13, 2010 /

Continuing our look at film about the allied war against Imperial Japan inspired by “The Pacific“, which debuts on HBO Sunday night, we’ll start with a movie that isn’t as well known today as you might think considering that it’s directed by Howard Hawks one of the most rousing of the wartime-era propaganda/action films.

Did that seem a bit familiar? If so, it could be that “Air Force” is often cited as a major inspiration for “Star Wars” and that briefing scene certainly seems like a tell to me. Still, I’d probably argue that “Air Force” is — cultural/geek impact aside — the far better film objectively.  Hawks had a very personal connection with aviation, the topic of one of three or four greatest works, “Only Angels Have Wings” and no one in his time was better at expressing the visceral thrill and danger of flight. The film also benefits from a screenplay written by one of the greatest of classic Hollywood-era writers, Dudley Nichols (“Stagecoach,” “Bringing Up Baby“) with an uncredited assist from William Faulkner and two lesser known scribes,

So why isn’t “Air Force” as well known as the two classics I discussed yesterday?  Well, John Wayne‘s not in it, so there’s that. No, this film was made in the throes of the deep U.S. anger created by the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, the kind of anger we would not see again in the U.S. until September 11 of 2001, and there are some disturbing, though historically understandable, moments in the film that might seem both callous and racist to modern audience because they kind of are. Still, “Air Force” remains one of the best films of its type from an era when making a war film that was also kind of fun  didn’t seem as borderline obscene as it does in our post “Saving Private Ryan”-era.

But that’s not to say that Hollywood never tried to make an slam-bang action-oriented World War II film set in the Pacific again. They just did it with more bloat in 1976.

Toshiro Mifune, the only Japanese film star to really become a household name to American audiences, gets a mention here. Now, however, the great Japanese-American James Shigeta. Shigeta is probably the equal of Mifune in terms of acting talent and presence but being an American of Asian ancestry seems to severely limit your acting possibilities somewhat no matter how talented and charismatic you are, even today — just ask Harold John Cho. Shigeta did get to play a male romantic lead in an actual tough-guy film in his first film and one kind of fun/silly/embarrassing musical, and that was it. You don’t get to be an actor of Mifune’s stature by being the token Asian in Elvis Presley movies.

Action Movies, Actors, External Entertainment, External Movies, Movie Dramas, Movies, News, Sci-Fi Movies

Midnight at the movies

March 13, 2010 /

Not quite a movie news dump, more of a movie news sampler…

* The various Deadline folks have a lot of reporting going on tonight, starting with the news from Mike Fleming that Robert Downey Jr. is negotiating to possibly star in a new science fiction film Alfonso Cuaron wrote with his son. He also reports on the somewhat delayed sale of a hot Sundance feature staring “Twilight” fave Kristen Stewart, James Gandolfini, and Melissa Leo. In addition, there’s word from the London office that 72 year-old Dustin Hoffman is finally graduating to directing with an upcoming project with BBC Films.

* Todd Gilchrist has the closest thing yet to an official review I’ve seen of “Kick-Ass” and it’s…mixed. Could the film already be a victim of its already amazingly effective hype? Or is it that Gilchrist is, after all, just one guy? Of course, there’s always the possibility that it’s simply not as good as we all seem to be expecting. If so, shoot me now, I say!

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* The Red Skull has always been one of my favorite supervillians — just pure evil and nothing but. I think casting  Hugo Weaving to play him in the upcoming Captain America flick is probably about as good a choice as they could make. If anyone can act without skin, it’s Weaving.

* Quentin Tarantino will not be smurfing around, after all. He did, however, accept an award at SXSW, which is just getting started and where our own Mr. Jason Zingale is hanging out.

* Patrick Goldstein doesn’t approve when Tom Hanks has the temerity to voice a strong opinion because it annoys rightwingers and that’s just the worst thing ever.  Yes, it’s a celebrity’s job to play it safe at all times. Good to know. I wonder if he’ll hold rightwing actors to the same standard when they say something controversial. It’s a true fact that many journos who probably themselves vote Democrat wind up carrying the water of the far-right through their obsession with being even-handed at all costs at all times and regardless of the merits. The American rightwing really did a number on the press during the late 20th century, and it doesn’t look like they’ll ever recover.

* I hate to see any creative person lose their job, especially in this economy, but I hope this item means there’ll be some kind of shift in the creative direction of Robert Zemeckis’s future animated/motion-capture projects. How anyone can think that style of animation is  anything other than creepy — and not in a good way — is beyond me.

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