We're one cast member away from seeing how Spider-Man fares in a true live-action world. Last December, we learned that Evan Rachel Wood would play Mary Jane in Julie Taymor's Broadway web fest. Now Playbill is reiterating this, plus they're adding another wonderful name to the mix: Alan Cumming. He is once again flitting around the world of geek fare by signing on to play Norman Osborn, known in other circles as the Green Goblin. (But no German accent this time.)

Now titled Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark, the musical is supposed to be kicking off rehearsals this month. Yet while we now have the leading lady and villain, there's still no word on who will play Peter Parker. Taymor was trying to get Jim Sturgess for the part and have a whole Across the Universe reunion, but they're still not releasing whether it's him or someone else.

But Wood and Cumming are just two of the many actors who have made their way to the theatrical stage. Right now, in New York alone, Anne Hathaway is performing Twelfth Night in the Park, Nathan Lane, Bill Irwin, John Goodman, and David Strathairn are currently Waiting for Godot, and Allison Janey is working 9 to 5 -- just to name a few. On the other side of the country, Chris Pine and Chris Noth are getting presidential in LA with Farragut North.

Disney buffs are no doubt aware of the theme park's "Living Character Initiative," where guests of Walt Disney World (and the surrounding parks, like Disney's Hollywood Studios and Epcot Center) are treated to a live-action experience with some of the more memorable Disney/Pixar animated characters. I believe the initiative began a couple years ago with the Muppet Mobile Lab, and it continues now with the character Remy from Ratatouille (who hangs around French restaurants at Epcot Center) and the newest edition -- Luxo Jr. (aka the hopping Pixar desk lamp), who visitors to Disney's Hollywood Studios can now see hanging out over at Pixar Place.

We posted videos of both Luxo Jr. and Remy after the jump, as well as the inflatable Up house stationed over at Downtown Disney. And now if you'll excuse me, Wall-E is about to start on cable and the thing looks absolutely smashing in HD. Enjoy your Sunday!

If you're a Watchmen fan, you surely know that the slick Director's Cut will be hitting shelves on July 21 in all of its beautiful, retro-crime fighting wonder. I'm already trying to decide if I can finally budget for a Blu-ray player because let's face it -- this is the sort of film that's meant for the highest definition possible.

But for some lucky folks, July won't only mean Watchmen on the small screen. While talking to Collider, Zack Snyder revealed that the film will indeed be re-released in theaters -- but only in selected cities, for one weekend (the weekend before Comic-Con), and one theater. The lucky locales: Los Angeles and New York (of course), plus Dallas and Minneapolis.

Considering the fact that the movie wasn't exactly a box office smash, I get not having a huge re-release. But come on! FOUR screens?? Talk about teasing the rest of the masses, who will have to deal with the 27 minutes of extra violence and sexiness on our modest, small screens. At the very least, it could've been some sort of pre-sale traveling tour. I'm sure I'm not the only one who would love to see the Director's Cut on the big screen without impromptu travel. How about you?

As some of you may already know, I've been a big supporter of Gen Art for a long time now. Aside from being heavily involved in their annual film festival in New York City (this year I was a programmer), I'm real close friends with the folks who work there and feel their footprint on the indie film community is invaluable. Gen Art, in case you're not aware, is a company (based in New York) that helps promote emerging talent in film, music and fashion all year round. Not only do they host a very cool film festival in NYC in the spring, but they also host a mini-fest in Chicago ... and part one of this post is dedicated to that.

Beginning tonight with the very cute and quirky 500 Days of Summer, the Gen Art Chicago Film Festival will continue through to June 27 and feature other buzzed-about festival films like Mercy, Patriotville and Shrink. Other than opening night, which will set you back $25 for the movie and after party (open bar!), the other three nights will run you a fairly inexpensive $20 for a short, feature and after party w/ open bar. So if you're in Chicago, please head down to the festival and support these small films, as well as Gen Art. You can find out more information on the festival right here.

In addition to the festival, Gen Art is hosting a benefit in New York City tomorrow to help raise money to keep the company afloat while they navigate their way through some tough economic waters. I know -- yet another company hit hard by the recession. But understand that companies like Gen Art -- who make their living and invest everything they have in supporting emerging talent -- don't really exist anymore. And so they need our help.

This week we've got more to look forward to than just Public Enemies. According to USAToday, a collection of concept art and publicity images for Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland will start wallpapering movie theaters. And they're a lot better than the blurry Hatter pic and first concept pieces!

Luckily, we won't have to die of impatience to see them, because the site included all the images -- a bunch of huge concept pictures that you can drag your mouse around to explore (like Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum), our first official peek at Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter, plus our beloved royalty: Helena Bonham Carter's Red Queen and Anne Hathaway's White Queen. The leaked Hatter pic doesn't do the full-color version justice, with Depp rocking a killer clown look, and Hathaway looks excellent. But Bonham Carter really takes the cake (and coolest bobblehead ever prize) with her digitally swelled noggin and heart-pursed lips. (Check it out in the gallery below.)



In this incarnation, Alice is a 17-year-old girl who flees a snooty party when she learns that she's about to be proposed to. She follows a white rabbit down a hole, and re-enters Wonderland. It's been ten years since that first visit, and she doesn't remember a thing.

Alice in Wonderland is scheduled to hit screens on March 5, 2010. Excited yet?

UPDATE: Movies.ie discovered the first image of Matt Lucas as both Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Check it out in the gallery above and in larger form over at Movies.ie. [via Slashfilm]

I'm happy to say that I'm old enough to have seen a bunch of movies at drive-in theaters during my Southern Californian youth. (I've got plenty of stories that really don't fit here, but some day ...) Even though the number of drive-ins has dwindled steadily over the years, several hundred still survive -- one of my favorite bloggers, Dennis Cozzalio, wrote up a wonderful account of a recent celebration he hosted at a drive-in screening of Drag Me to Hell -- and the spirit of drive-ins is thriving, as enterprising fans take it upon themselves to show movies outdoors in unexpected venues.

The "guerrilla drive-ins," as headlined by the Associated Press, are different than the officially-sanctioned outdoor screenings that Cinematical Dawn Taylor wrote about last month. The AP story revolves around John Young, creator of the West Chester Guerrilla Drive-In, "part of a loosely knit network of celluloid renegades resurrecting the drive-in for a new age." Young shows movies from 16mm films "from a 1970s school projector mounted on the sidecar of his 1977 BMW motorcycle" at "locations suited for the theme: Meatballs at a canoe rental center, Caddy shack on a golf course." (Of course, the king of themed screenings remains the Alamo Draft house's Rolling Roadshow.) Reportedly, guerrilla drive-ins or "Memphis" are popping up around the country, though they typically favor DVDs and LCD projectors.

To truly experience a drive-in, you need the option of watching the movie from your car, and the Mormon site lists "hundreds of chapters around the globe." Creator Bryan Kennedy explains how to locate and power a projector and DVD player from inside your own car, transmit the sound through an FM transmitter. Then all you have to do is find a dark wall and invite some friends. That's guerrilla!

Summer isn't only the time for bombs and blockbusters. Sometimes it's the time for sexy, romp-filled French classics like Jean-Jacques Beneix's 1986 film Betty Blue. Starting this Friday, the film will hit selected screens in a special, newly-struck 35mm Director's Cut print. We're not talking about a little scene here or there, but an hour of footage never released in the US.

The film focuses on the manic love between an imbalanced Betty and an aspiring novelist named Zorg. She's obsessively supportive of his writing, but quite temperamental about much else -- burning down their home, attacking his boss -- the usual imbalanced mania. The film was nominated for a slew of awards including Best Foreign Film at the Oscars, and has collected a sea of fans, although Roger Ebert certainly isn't one of them. Maybe if he'd seen this version... Cinema Libre, who's presenting the feature, promises that this footage more fully realizes and depicts central characters Zorg and Betty while also giving "more screen time to the secondary characters who add a sense of celebration and wild abandon with plenty of extremely funny moments along the way."

I once heard a rumor that the reason a particular screening room in a major U.S. city had installed a theater-linked sound system in its bathroom was so that a particular major film critic with a notoriously small bladder would be able to hear what he was missing during his frequent trips to the restroom. It probably isn't true that they did it just for him, but it is a good idea, and it spotlights an important subject: What if you gotta pee during a movie??! If you've never seen it before, you won't know when the best time to go is.

Now there is a website called RunPee that seeks to eliminate (tee-hee) this problem by providing suggestions on when you should go during a particular movie. Theoretically, if you're about to go watch, say, Terminator Salvation, and you know you'll probably have to tinkle during it because you have a history of this sort of thing (you know who you are), you can check RunPee beforehand to see if other users have recommended a good time to go. And they have: For Terminator Salvation, you are advised to do your business approximately 50 minutes into the film, "when Marcus finds the pilot who ejected and helps cut her down." Below that is a description (scrambled, until you click a button) of what happens during the next three minutes, so you'll know what non-essential action you missed.

Terry Gilliam's latest fantastical adventure, titled The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, screened at the Cannes Film Festival a little while ago, and the first reviews are out. The film, which is obviously drawing more press because it features Heath Ledger's final performance, is, like most of Gilliam's films, a little on the weird side (read the full synopsis after the jump). When Ledger passed away without finishing his work on the movie, it appeared as if the Gilliam curse had struck again -- leaving him little choice but to either scrap the entire film or hire a new lead actor and re-shoot all his scenes. Thankfully Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law came to the rescue, and they somehow found a way to have these three gents finish Ledger's remaining scenes by playing alternate-dimension versions of the same character. So what's the final outcome?

"... the film's convoluted curlicues are tiring, insisting too loudly on how "imaginative" everything is. And when it descends into the real world – Lucy out of the sky without diamonds, as it were – the film can frankly be a bit ho-hum, with some very broad acting from the bit-part crowd players. Gilliam's previous movie Tideland showed he still has teeth, and he bares them occasionally here. The dark side reveals itself, time and again, in the ruined, unsentimental locations in London. But this movie, though perfectly amiable, could be for fans only." -- Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

"Synthesizing elements from several of his previous pictures, including "Time Bandits," "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" and "The Fisher King," the often overreaching director addresses a mad hatter of a story with the expected visual panache and what is, for him, considerable discipline. With Ledger onscreen more than might have been expected, the film possesses strong curiosity value bolstered by generally lively action and excellent visual effects, making for good commercial prospects in most markets." Todd McCarthy, Variety

More quotes, a scene featuring Ledger and the synopsis after the jump ...

"These are not the screens you want," IMAX is, in effect, claiming, trying a Jedi mind trick to downplay recent consumer anger over the smaller, unadvertised size of their new-fangled digital screens, for which they charge a premium of up to $5.00 per ticket. Yesterday, they tried to "wow the media," says The Hollywood Reporter, " while also performing a bit of damage-control."

IMAX claims that it's an "old issue" because the average size of an IMAX screen has been "just slightly bigger" than conventional screens for six years. Really? They also claim that they have a "nice problem: having to choose among films offered for release." Yet the New York Times reports that the company "has not lined up any other Hollywood movies for its ultra-big screen theaters" [emphasis added] after James Cameron's Avatar opens on December 18, leaving the schedule clear until Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland on March 5. (The article mentions size three times, so they haven't gotten the company message.) The company intimates that it wants to be able to "satisfy demand."

IMAX is a public corporation, and their first obligation is to their shareholders. But, clearly, they are so preoccupied with profit that they are ignoring the legitimate concerns of the moviegoing public. (Check out the comments when we originally posted about this.) If IMAX is so convinced that their smaller digital screens provide an "immersive experience," why not disclose it? Why not promote it? "IMAX: Size Doesn't Matter!" or "IMAX: Small is Powerful!" Instead, they claim that interest will be so high that it will take three months for everyone to pay more money to see Avatar on a smaller screen that's only "slightly bigger" than other screens (that charge less) in the same multiplex. Here's another slogan: "IMAX: Taking Your Money and Running."