Cinematical

Perhaps the most comically brilliant interview of the month will come sandwiched between naked ladies as a lengthy chat with James Cameron will be featured in December's issue of Playboy. While we don't have the actual interview for you to read, Playboy sent over a whole batch of quotes that were just too good to resist. Based on the quotes, it would appear the interview covers everything from Cameron's directorial approach to his inspiration (Star Wars) to his personal life (married five times) to his films to Christian Bale's famous on-set tirade ("Man, I have to take my hat off to this guy. I could not pull a rant like that if I had to.' I mean, I can get on a roll but not like that. I just had to bow down.").

And speaking of his films, Cameron was quite candid when Titanic came up, admitting there was only one reason why he wanted to make that film and it wasn't to get Kate Winslet topless. "I made Titanic because I wanted to dive to a shipwreck, not because I particularly wanted to make the movie...Titanic was about 'f*ck you' money," he said. And on Kate Winslet almost dying while filming: "[On the set of Titanic] we simply let Kate [Winslet] think she was nearly drowning. A little sputtering and coughing does not count in my book, because I have almost drowned several times...Anybody who signs on [with me] is going to be tested." Right on! James Cameron: The director who will let you think you're dying in order to get the best performance!

Check out a few more choice Cameron quotes after the jump (like why you'll never see him on Twitter), and you can read the entire interview in the December issue of Playboy, which hits newstands and online on November 13th.

If you have a few minutes today I'd strongly recommend reading this fascinating five-page New York Times Magazine story on Megan Fox called The Self-Manufacture of Megan Fox. I know, you're not really interested in reading another "OMG, she said that!" article on the overly hyped, sexified actress, but this one is a little different. Yes, it touches on just about everything controversial that's crossed her plate -- from her much-publicized spat with Michael Bay to her longterm off-screen relationship with Brian Austin Green -- but it also digs beneath the surface and exposes the way in which she's sort of self-manufactured her own image depending on where she is and who she's speaking to in order to expand her brand, which, she'll admit, isn't the most glamorous or family-friendly, but it's what's keeping her working.

Fox admits that she got herself into the whole Michael Bay mess, and wonders why no one came to her defense when that nasty crew letter surfaced online ("I think it's because I'm a girl. They left me out there to be bludgeoned to death"). Another interesting fact was that they were going to include a Hitler/Michael Bay joke when Fox hosted Saturday Night Live, but dropped it because it wasn't appropriate. Fox explains, "They wanted me to do a Q. and A. with the audience for the opening monologue. And Hitler is in the audience. Hitler stands up and says, 'Why did you compare me to Michael Bay?' " Fox laughed. "Which is funny, but we can't do that."

Watch the actual monologue and read more after the jump.

Spoiler Warning: The world isn't going to end in 2012.

The most comical aspect of Sony's marketing strategy for 2012 is that it's got people actually believing that the world is going to end in the year 2012. Folks are so beside themselves that NASA has already intervened to try to combat the thousands of paranoid emails they've received, and now Discovery.com is doing their part to calm down the human race by attempting to prove that the world will not end on December 21, 2012, contrary to what those dastardly Mayans predicted.

What they've done is collected the 10 most popular doomsday scenarios and then systematically debunked each one by presenting, ya know, facts and stuff. So before your cousin Eddie tries to convince you that he totally know what he's talking about and the world is, like, totally going to end in 2012 because he saw it somewhere on TV at some point but he doesn't remember where, well, you might want to read up on what the Discovery folks have to say. Here are a couple examples:

4. An asteroid will smash into Earth.

A threatening near-Earth asteroid that's gotten the most press is the 900-foot wide Apophis. But its chances of collision have been downgraded to 1 in 250,000 at its next close approach in 2029. In theory, an uncharted asteroid or comet could come out of the blue tomorrow. But if we don't know about it today, the Mayans certainly didn't know about it 1,200 years ago. Earth-killer impacts are tens of millions of years apart. So there's no reason to be a doomsday clock-watcher.

More after the jump ...

Bad news folks (or good depending on your personal King beliefs): Turns out J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof will not be adapting Stephen King's Dark Tower series for the big screen like originally planned. The film rights to the epic seven-book series were said to have been purchased by Abrams and Lindelof for $19 (a number that recurs throughout the novels). As recently as this summer, Lindelof claimed they were all too busy finishing up Lost to think about Dark Tower. "The last thing we want to think about is how to adapt a seven book series of, you know, basically the writer who we admire the most and look up to most and has inspired our work the most, and do anything with that," he said.

Now things have changed, and according to an interview with MTV, the Lost crew have decided to leave Dark Tower behind, despite how much they love and respect the series, as well as how much it's influenced their work over the years. "The Dark Tower thing is tricky," Abrams said. "The truth is that Damon and I are not looking at that right now." In an earlier interview with USA Today, Abrams Lindelof added comments that, quite frankly, make a lot of sense. He says, "After working six years on 'Lost,' the last thing I want to do is spend the next seven years adapting one of my favorite books of all time. I'm such a massive Stephen King fan that I'm terrified of screwing it up. I'd do anything to see those movies written by someone else. My guess is they will get made because they're so incredible. But not by me."

Honestly, if Abrams and his clan won't tackle it, I'm not sure who could. I think something this epic might be best on television, but I feel the lower budgets might hinder the overall outcome -- making it look somewhat cheap. What do you Dark Tower fans think? Is there someone out there who could adapt this behemoth? Should they make seven films? Would people go see them? Sound off below ...

Nothing gets the blood boiling like an ambiguous movie ending. You've invested roughly two or more hours of your time on a film only to watch the freakin' thing fade to black right in the middle of a conversation or before the main characters had time to resolve all their issues. The person you're watching the film with almost always goes "That's it!? That's how they're ending it!?" before turning to you and saying something like, "That's the last time I let you pick the movie!"

Well, good news is those maniacs at College Humor managed to dig up the actual endings for a group of movies whose ambiguous finales are pretty memorable. They have Lost in Translation, No Country for Old Men, The Graduate, The Wrestler and even The Sopranos. Always wonder what Bill Murray whispered to Scarlett Johansson? Or ponder what happened to Mickey Rourke's character after he jumped off the top rope? (I like to think he went and had a couple of beers with Sly Stallone while the two discussed a possible confrontation in Rocky 7, but that's just my imagination running wild.)

Watch the video after the jump and find out all the answers ...

Earlier this year I was fortunate enough to catch a screening of Lil' Wayne's The Carter while attending the Sundance Film Festival, and going in I had no idea what to make of it. I wasn't all too aware of (nor did I really care for) Lil' Wayne or his music, and so I was somewhat surprised to find a really heady documentary about a man who on one hand was extremely passionate about his craft, but on the other was extremely addicted to all kinds of drugs. It was almost as if the drugs were fueling his music, so much so that you'd be hard pressed to find one scene in the film where Wayne isn't either smoking a joint or drinking his "syrup", which is some sort of codeine-based liquid that he needs to be drinking while performing in order to maintain a constant buzz.

Yes, I'll admit the film was rather fascinating on a variety of different levels, and I was somewhat disheartened to learn that Wayne was preventing the doc from being released because he wasn't happy with the outcome -- an epiphany he probably had during a rare three-minute sober period. However, a court has since denied Wayne's attempt to block the film's release, and now QD3 Entertainment will send The Carter straight to DVD on November 17th (you can pre-order your copy over here). Regardless of your musical tastes, The Carter is a very entertaining look inside the world of an iconic drug-addicted work-a-holic who lives and breathes a constant high, be it through drugs or his music.

Read a snippet from my review and watch the trailer after the jump.

Well, it's that time of the year again -- time to wait until the very last minute to buy presents for your loved ones in order to solidify the fact that you'll be waiting on insanely long lines next to people who don't shower and like to scream at their misbehaving kids about once every 10 seconds. Or at least that's what I'll be doing this year. One thing I always look forward to, though, is heading out on a cold winter's night to purchase a way-too-expensive Christmas tree for my living room ... and then decorating it while consuming some nice tasty beverages that may or may not be of the alcoholic variety.

But when you're a movie geek like me, you want to decorate that tree with tons of really random movie references so that your family can come over and be all like, "Um, is that the car from Ghostbusters hanging on your tree?" Luckily, for nuts like us, there's Hallmark -- who this year have unleashed a pretty cool collection of nerdy movie-related ornaments tied to Star Wars, The Wizard of Oz, Ghostbusters, The Corpse Bride, Star Trek, Indiana Jones, A Christmas Story, Bolt, Cars, Toy Story, Shrek, Harry Potter and more.

And in case you're wondering which ornament I'll be purchasing for my tree this year, look no further than the right of your screen. I shouldn't have to tell you which movie and scene that ornament references. Check out a few of my personal favorites below and the rest over at Hallmark.



[via Topless Robot]

Pictured: The winner of Cinematical's Fourth Annual Halloween Costume Contest

Our Fifth Annual Halloween Costume Contest saw a record number of submissions, with literally hundreds of freaky movie-inspired Halloween costumes for our crack team of judges to sift through. Naturally it took forever to choose 20 finalists (10 in the adult category and 10 in the child category), but after hours of tireless deliberations we finally narrowed down the list and came away with what I believe to be the cream of the crop. Before we ask you to vote for the winning costumes, I'd personally like to thank all of you out there for dressing up and playing along. Though it's a giant task each year, it's one I always welcome with open arms because nothing puts a bigger smile on my face then to sift through photos of you all getting your movie geek on.

Okay, here's how this works: Below you will see a photo gallery for each category. Within each photo gallery there are ten images which represent each finalist alongside a number and the character they're dressed up as. Below each gallery there is a poll listing the numbers and characters as per the order they show up in their gallery (note: this order is random). We need you to look through each gallery, then vote for who you feel has the best costume in the polls. Got it? Good.

The Adult Finalists are listed below, and the Kid Finalists are listed after the jump (along with the prizing and official rules). We'll keep the voting open through Friday and announce the winner a week from today. Good luck!

Welcome back to another edition of Insert Caption -- the game that whole-heartedly congratulates the New York Yankees on their 27th (!) World Series title! Last week we asked you to join a little staring contest with a few our of goat friends in honor of the new comedy The Men Who Stare at Goats (in theaters now). Congrats go out to our three animal-loving winners, all of whom have admitted to staring at Cinematical all day long (because we're just that cool).

1. "Part of a secret government program to... bake me a cake as fast as you can." -- Kurt P.

2. "The mirror game is a fun acting game to play in Army Acting Class...as long as you know and trust your partner implicitly." -- John R.

3. "Little did the woman know, but an electrifying rendition of the YMCA was about to break out." -- Ben M.

See full image and all captions

This week we're turning up the dial and tuning in for the upcoming release of Pirate Radio, about a group of rogue DJs who, in the 1960s, changed the world of Rock n Roll forever by playing rock records (and simultaneously breaking the law) from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Directed by Richard Curtis (Love, Actually), the film stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans, Nick Frost and Kenneth Branagh. The folks behind our three favorite captions this week will sail away with one Pirate Radio soundtrack and one Pirate Radio poster. Sound off below.



Read the official rules for this contest

While tooling around online I came across a post over at Brobible on the 15 Best Man Caves on the Internet. A Man Cave, for those who do not know, is usually an area somewhere in the house (normally the garage or a spare room) designated for the guys to hang out in and do "guy things" like watch tons of sports or, in the case of one Australian homeowner, tons of The Dark Knight. I'm not exactly sure how much this cost, though Gizmag tells us the screening room won the highly commended prize in the 'above $100,000' category at CEDIA Asia Pacific annual awards, so more than likely this sucker cost a pretty penny to produce.

The room took about 20 days to piece together, while the installation of equipment and acoustic took another 8 days. Apart from very cool-looking and comfortable seats, as well as a big screen, the room also features a full wet bar and a bathroom that can be accessed via a remote-controlled sliding door.

From Gizmag: "Entry to the 'secret location' is via a remote-controlled pneumatic sliding door (unfortunately, not bat poles). A touch of the panel outside and the door opens, the lights turn on to a predetermined level, the projector and scaler come to life, and the processor goes into action. So, by the time you've chosen your movie and had your first mouthful of popcorn, everything is humming along, just like a well-oiled Batmobile."

Check out some images below and more stats on the equipment over at Gizmag. If you had the dough, would you put something like this in your home?