Buena Vista Tagged Articles at Cinematical

They're serious. They're grown-ups. They wear black jackets and they use big words. If you missed the Sept. 5 debut of its post Lyons/Mankiewicz resurrection, Buena Vista Entertainment has rolled out an online look at the updated, No Bens At the Movies reboot.

The sentiment expressed by At the Movies' official website is clearly, You know those two boneheads we hired to replace Ebert and Roeper? Don't worry, we canned 'em. The site's main page now features a dauntingly somber photo of critics A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips, alongside a video preview trumpeting "serious reviews, by serious journalists." It's a big ol' slap in the face to Ben and Mank, but it gets the point across -- Buena Vista screwed up by hiring The Legacy and the Chucklehead, and now they desperately hope to repair the damage by replacing them with, well, actual film critics.

The clips of new reviews are like a big, frosty glass of water after enduring the Bens' desert of stupid. In one clip, Phillips and Scott actually engage in -- gasp! -- thoughtful deliberation about the tone of Big Fan, with Phillips telling the unimpressed Scott that he misreads the black comedy as a naturalistic drama. Watching smart critics say smart things, on subjects in which they're actually knowledgeable makes one nostalgic for the days when Siskel and Ebert were a weekly must-see.

After that last flurry of casting announcements and rumors of Jeff Bridges' cloning, we haven't heard anything from Tron 2. But seeing as it's the new Star Trek, we jump on any rumor that leaks from the secret set. The fact that this comes by way of Ain't It Cool News makes it feel like the olden days of scoops and spies.

First off, the title is going to change again, this time going from Tron 2 to one of those colon things that are so popular these days. Like Tron: The Next Generation or Tron: Reboot. Anything's better than Tr2n, though.

The story details spilled by AICN's source sound legitimate, mostly because it's a predictable way for the sequel to go. The movie starts in 1989, where Bridges' Kevin Flynn has created some of the world's top selling games based on his Game Grid challenges in the first film. He's also built a nice fortune out of the technology he saw there -- there's action figures, and Recognizer night lights, which means this will be the stuff you can buy everywhere the summer this is released.

All this financial stability means that Flynn has a family life, namely a seven year old son named Sean. He disappears, leaving behind his son, and Bruce Boxleitner's Alan Bradley takes over Flynn's company (ENCOM). Fast forward 25 years, and guess who's going to be on the lookout for dear old dad? And guess where Flynn will be? There's more, but I'm going to stop there -- 2011 isn't that far away, and we've got to pace ourselves.

I'm trying not to get too excited about this latest -- let's call it a rumor -- that Edgar Rice Burroughs' other famous character, John Carter of Mars, is finally going to get the big-screen treatment he so richly deserves. As this has almost happened a few times before -- the latest being in 2005 when Iron Man director Jon Favreau was attached -- I'm not going to get my hopes up. Even though, as a huge fan of these works, I would really love to see them make it to the big screen. Various producers, directors and studios have been trying (unsuccessfully) to transform the eleven-book series into a film (or films) for a long time -- heck, the first book of the series, A Princess of Mars, was published in 1917.

So, Hollywood has had quite a few years to work on adapting this fantastic series. But, for whatever reason -- story, budget, casting, bad mojo -- it just never happened. So, fans of the series (including your humble writer) were left to wonder if it would ever happen at all. It didn't look like it, but at least we always had the books to go back to and enjoy, an un-official website for the film and some great paintings by artist Frank Frazetta to keep us inspired. But now, at least according to an article over at TMZ, it looks like some people are going to try to get this project going yet again. This time, according to the article, its the folks at Disney's Buena Vista Pictures.

I sincerely hope they get their collective stuff together and actually make something happen this time around. These venerable novels about civil war vet John Carter and his quest to bring order to the ruling clans of Mars are timeless adventure stories that can appeal to most any age. That's probably why Disney is interested -- I mean, you can only get so much mileage out of the Pirate's franchise. Eventually, you need a new one to hang your studio on. Perhaps Disney is hoping John Carter can fill the void left by Jack Sparrow when he finally sails into oblivion? If so, that's one way to make sure these movies finally get made.