Paul Thomas Anderson Announces Next Film, Starts His Own Religion
Filed under: Casting, RumorMonger, Scripts, Religious
Rejoice! It's time for Paul Thomas Anderson and Philip Seymour Hoffman to work together again. After Sydney, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Punch Drunk Love, Variety reports that the two are teaming up for a new feature about a man who creates his own religion. But don't celebrate too much -- this news is still in the early stages. Anderson is said to be planning to submit a finished script to Universal, who will then decide whether or not they will greenlight it (um, yes please). AND, the trade couldn't get comment from the studio, or either man's reps.But here's what we do know. Should this go into production, there will be a $35 million price tag with Hoffman finally getting center stage playing "the Master" (as in master of ceremonies), a charismatic man who starts "a faith-based organization" in the 1950s. He teams up with a twentysomething drifter named Freddie who becomes his "lieutenant" until the kid finds himself questioning the faith he's gotten himself involved in.
For those of you foaming at the mouth at the thought of a Scientology/Mormon critique, hold on. Variety says: "The drama does not so much scrutinize self-started churches like Scientology or the Mormons, as much as it explores the need to believe in a higher power, the choice of which one to embrace and the point at which a belief system graduates into a religion." Nevertheless, it's about time PTA let PSH grab the full reigns of his vision. Let's hope the whole thing comes to fruition.
The Ten Best High-Def Gifts to Buy This Holiday Season
Filed under: Fandom, Home Entertainment
Now that Black Friday has come and gone and folks have to start making sane if vaguely desperate decisions what to get their friends and loved ones for the holidays, it seemed appropriate that Cinematical put together a list of a few items that might help cross a few names off your list. Scouring the last few months for suggestions, as well as carefully checking the slate of releases in the weeks leading up to Christmas Day, we came up with ten suggestions that will make the space under your tree seem a little less empty, and should hopefully help their recipients' lives feel a little more full - of entertainment, at the very least.
In alphabetical order:
The Kinks Get a Biopic
Filed under: Drama, Music & Musicals, Scripts
The Kinks will soon have us! The English rock band (aka the dudes behind the song "You Really Got Me") are getting a feature biopic. ScreenDaily reports that British director Julien Temple is collaborating with frontman Ray Davies on a film that will focus on the relationship between Ray and fellow bandmate and brother Dave Davies. The two were the only steady members of the band, and as Temple explains: "At the heart of [the feature] is the extraordinary love-hate relationship between these two brothers: love/hate, sibling rivalry is at the core."Right now Temple and Davies are sussing out the approach before any screenplay is started. Of course, that also means that there is no cast yet, but Temple will require the actors to be able to play The Kinks music: "I think you would want to have the music played by the actors ... that is believable and real while miming is problematic." His words to Hollywood god's ears! On that basis alone, I'm psyched to see this come together. (She writes, while trying not to eagerly expect another perfect beauty like Control.)
But there is a reason to anticipate this, besides the subject, since Temple is the man behind flicks like The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, plus a whole bunch of music videos, like, oh, Van Halen's Jump. But who could possibly pull off the acting and music chops of The Kinks? Sound off below with your casting choices ...
Shelf Life: National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
Filed under: Fandom, Home Entertainment, Shelf Life
On Thanksgiving Day this year, I sat with my girlfriend's lovely family eating turkey and watching Home Alone, and it occurred to me that in the hustle and bustle of reviewing new movies, I seldom take the time to go back and revisit the holiday movies that I remember from my childhood. Even among the titles I've viewed for this "Shelf Life" series, few of them were seminal kids movies, whether they were from my own childhood, or from those of previous or subsequent generations, and none of them have been traditional holiday or holiday-themed films.
Home Alone was a film I saw at a formative time in my young life – I was 14 or so – but National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation was probably more important to me, since it balanced gingerly on the line between family entertainment and more grown-up fare. In hindsight, it's probably more oriented for teenagers and kids than anyone, even with (or maybe because of) its abundance of potty humor, but it seemed like 20 years was about the right amount of time to take between viewings. Which is why Christmas Vacation is this week's "Shelf Life" subject. (Well, that and Warner Home Video recently released a deluxe box set including one of those moose-shaped eggnog glasses.)
Box Office: Everybody's Armored Brothers
Filed under: Action, Comedy, Drama, Horror, Box Office, Box Office Predictions
New Moon did 70% less this week but still managed to hold onto first place. Just as interesting is that The Blind Side had an 18% increase from last week while only appearing in 30 more theaters. Old Dogs just didn't have the energy and landed back in fourth with Ninja Assassin taking sixth. Here's the top five:
1. The Twilight Saga: New Moon $42.8 million
2. The Blind Side: $40.1 million
3. 2012: $17.6 million
4. Old Dogs: $16.9 million
5. A Christmas Carol: $15.7 million
Four new releases this week:
Armored
What's It All About: A group of underpaid armored car drivers join forces to swipe a big pile of loot, though of course nothing goes as smoothly as planned. Matt Dillon and Laurence Fishburne star.
Why It Might Do Well: The success of Ocean's 11 and its sequels would seem to indicate there's a market for heist movies.
Why It Might Not Do Well: Unfortunately this movie lacks the flash and star power of the Ocean's series.
Number of Theaters: 1,900
Prediction: $18 million
Brothers
What's It All About: In this remake of a 2004 Danish film Tobey Maguire plays a soldier believed to have been killed in Afghanistan while his brother helps care for his sibling's family back home.
Why It Might Do Well: With Natalie Portman playing Maguire's wife we've got three amazing leads here.
Why It Might Not Do Well: 56% at Rottentomatoes.com isn't a deal breaker but it doesn't fill me with confidence.
Number of Theaters: 2,000
Prediction: $16 million
1. The Twilight Saga: New Moon $42.8 million
2. The Blind Side: $40.1 million
3. 2012: $17.6 million
4. Old Dogs: $16.9 million
5. A Christmas Carol: $15.7 million
Four new releases this week:
ArmoredWhat's It All About: A group of underpaid armored car drivers join forces to swipe a big pile of loot, though of course nothing goes as smoothly as planned. Matt Dillon and Laurence Fishburne star.
Why It Might Do Well: The success of Ocean's 11 and its sequels would seem to indicate there's a market for heist movies.
Why It Might Not Do Well: Unfortunately this movie lacks the flash and star power of the Ocean's series.
Number of Theaters: 1,900
Prediction: $18 million
BrothersWhat's It All About: In this remake of a 2004 Danish film Tobey Maguire plays a soldier believed to have been killed in Afghanistan while his brother helps care for his sibling's family back home.
Why It Might Do Well: With Natalie Portman playing Maguire's wife we've got three amazing leads here.
Why It Might Not Do Well: 56% at Rottentomatoes.com isn't a deal breaker but it doesn't fill me with confidence.
Number of Theaters: 2,000
Prediction: $16 million
New to Me: Twilight Zone: The Movie
Filed under: Comedy, Horror, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Thrillers, Mystery & Suspense, Warner Brothers, Steven Spielberg
I'd seen enough episodes of "The Twilight Zone" as a kid to get the gist of it - bite-sized morality tales that always came with a twist and often gave me the willies. However, I hadn't caught up with 1983's Twilight Zone: The Movie until just last night.Now, I was looking for pictures to go along with my reaction when it became apparent that our own Eric D. Snider had already written about the movie at length two years back. Never content with just keeping my thoughts to myself, I've decided to instead streamline them into a nice, no-nonsense list of bullet points past the jump...
Summit Moves From Sparkly Vamps to an Assassin's 'Alibi'
Filed under: Action, Deals, Scripts, Comic/Superhero/Geek
Back in September, I wondered what Summit would spend their big wad of Twilight cash on. They're primed to rake in a couple billion by the time this is all over. The company made almost $385 mil at the box office with the first installment (having spent only $37 mil), and so far $476,334,668 with the second (having spent only $50 mil). And now they're turning their attention toward assassins. Variety reports that Summit Entertainment has signed on to bring the comic Alibi to the big screen -- a production that kicked into gear back in August. Written by Joshua Hale Fialkov and illustrated by Jeremy Haun, Top Cow's Alibi focuses on the classic socialite-with-a-secret-job scenario. But instead of just putting on a flimsy mask and getting to work, this assassin's got the perfect cover -- a secret twin brother. See, one is the assassin and one is the socialite, and they both work under the same identity. John Hlavin, who will write the next Underworld installment, has been tapped to pen the script.
I think Summit is on the right track -- grabbing a big action film that is in high contrast to the teen-led vampire and werewolf world, and also has the ability to make some good cash. And, let's hope, they continue to find the ways to make big movies cheaply, rather than soaring to new heights with a franchise before seeing it all wash away (yes, I'm thinking about New Line).
'Green Lantern' Will Choose Adventure Over Origin
Filed under: Action, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Warner Brothers, Scripts, DIY/Filmmaking, Newsstand, Comic/Superhero/Geek
Every day, I hope we'll get another big piece of The Green Lantern casting (and not just an open casting call) such as Sinestro or Carol Ferris, or even Abin Sur. This is a movie we're all really eager to see take shape. But for now, we'll have to be content with hints about the script, which Ryan Reynolds gave to the MTV Splash Page. Reynolds revealed that Hal Jordan won't be the beneficiary of a very intense origin story: "It is [an origin story] to a certain degree, but it's not a labored origin story, where the movie [truly] begins in the third act. The movie starts when it starts. We find out Hal is the guy fairly early on, and the adventure begins." That probably comes as a surprise to anyone even remotely familiar with Lantern mythology, as the intergalactic world Hal comes to inhabit is pretty complex and detailed. It would be an easy thing to bog the movie down in that, though, and maybe giving it a more cursory approach is better. This is intended as a franchise after all, and they can always go deeper with subsequent films.
The man who will be Hal Jordan also stressed that the film won't be just about the green and black suit, but about the man who inhabits it. "I think you walk away from this first film, and the moments that you remember and the moments that mean so much to you, not unlike Iron Man, are the moments where the guy's not in the suit. That to me is the tough thing to get right."
Watch This: How James Cameron Scored the Effects Cash for 'Avatar'
Filed under: Comedy, NSFW, Trailers and Clips
Fair warning right out of the gate: the below video is A) Not Safe for Work, unless you conduct business in a place in which no one has ears, and B) targeted for a very specific group of people.
If you've been eagerly anticipating James Cameron's Avatar for years, if you think the man who delivered to the world Terminator, Aliens, and True Lies can do no wrong, and if the backlash to the unveiling of Avatar's colorful aesthetics baffles you, you may want to stay clear of Landline TV's spoof on Cameron's addiction to big budget special effects, which portrays the famous director as little more than a CGI crackhead. It's too silly to call mean spirited, yet it's also too acute to call playful ribbing, but those movie geeks among us who are growing tired of a Hollywood that makes grandiose promises but only ever delivers familiar campaigns of supersaturated digital shock-and-awe might get a kick out of what it takes for Cameron to get his motion-capture fix.
However, even if you're a big supporter of Cameron and the bold approach he's taken to bringing us a new, original science fiction property (as I will readily admit I am), a special little cameo by Michael Bay should put a smile on your face. It's crude, but it's short; and what day isn't complete without a little bit of YouTube fun, anyway?
Free Flick of the Day: The Pirates of Penzance
Filed under: Home Entertainment
Forget Pirates of the Caribbean. Forget musicals like My Fair Lady. My favorite swashbucklers don't have an Aerosmith swagger or terrible speech troubles. They hold their own against the very model of a modern major general. In 1980, theatrical producer and creator of the New York Shakespeare Festival Joseph Papp brought Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance to the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park. It was so popular that it ended up making its way to Broadway, won a bunch of Tony Awards, sailed away to London, and then got turned into the film in 1983.The movie starred Kevin Kline, Rex Smith, Linda Ronstadt, and Angela Lansbury, and detailed the life of Frederic (Smith), a boy who was supposed to become a pilot, until his hard-of-hearing nurse (Lansbury) misheard her instructions and apprenticed the kid to a pirate (Kline). On his 21st birthday, he's finally released, and soon falls for a saucy daughter (Ronstadt) of Major-General Stanley (George Rose), sparking a stand-off between the good Major-General and noble life and the swashbuckling ways of unlawful pirate life.
The feature is silly, wordy, and best of all, allows Kline to be charismatic, sexy, and whole lot more lively than most of his more recent work. After the jump, you can watch the excellent and most impressive "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General," and then:
Head over to SlashControl to watch The Pirates of Penzance!
Note: If you're curious about the stage production, a recording is available on DVD as well.
Sundance Announces the 2010 US and World Competition Lineups!
3D Sequels for 'Zombieland' and 'Jackass' Confirmed_thumbnail.jpg)
Everything You Need to Know About Peter Berg's 'Battleship'_thumbnail.jpg)
Celebs Return to Their Most Iconic Roles for Photo Shoot
Check Out Concept Art From Marvel's Futuristic Theme Park
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