Volcano Tagged Articles at Cinematical

In the day's "frivolous lawsuit" news, according to a story on PR Newswire, Fathom Studios, the producers of the little-seen animated film Delgo are contemplating legal action against the makers of Avatar, James Cameron's 12-years-in-the-making return to mainstream filmmaking. "From what we have seen, we are amazed by the visual similarities between the two films," a Fathom spokesperson said. "We are reviewing what legal options may be available to us."

The bad news for Fathom is that lawyers for Fox, the studio distributing Cameron's film, are tenacious and shrewd; earlier this year, a dispute between Fox and Warner Brothers over the adaptation rights of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' source material almost derailed the release of Watchmen, and the subsequent settlement virtually ensured that Warner turn over a big chunk of the film's profits to Fox. And of course, there's also the fact that a trailer for a film may or may not actually contain all of a film's surprises, story developments, or ideas, so Fathom may be gobsmacked over several images in the teaser which ultimately have little or nothing to do with Avatar's overall content.

Billy Ray's fact-based dramas are one of this decade's true -- and largely unappreciated -- pleasures. With Shattered Glass and Breach, Ray demonstrated real sense of how to turn a true story into a compelling narrative, maintaining its credibility without becoming a slave to the facts. The same skillset should translate nicely into adapting a novel. Or at least I hope so, since Ray's newest project is a really interesting-sounding adaptation.

The book is The Conjure Wife, the 1943 debut novel by Fritz Lieber Jr., who would go on to become one of the more prolific American fantasy and science-fiction authors. It involves a college professor who learns that he owes much of his success to his wife's supernatural assistance. After demanding she stop, he must face the unpleasant consequences of going it alone. Ray will write and direct, though it's not clear if The Conjure Wife will sneak ahead of the fact-based project Ray currently has in the works -- How to Rig an Election, the story of a political operative who swung a 2002 Senate race using some not-entirely-ethical means.

This is actually not Ray's first foray into the fantastic, though with any luck it'll be better than Volcano, which Ray co-wrote back in 1997, and Suspect Zero, which he co-wrote with Zak Penn in 2004. Nor is this the first cinematic go-round for The Conjure Wife, which has been adapted as Weird Woman (with Lon Chaney!), Night of the Eagle (a.k.a. Burn, Witch, Burn!), and Witches' Brew, none of which, sadly, I've seen.

Last week, I picked two actors who should have won Oscars for their performances, but were terribly and horribly robbed. This week, I'm picking two old films that a few of this year's nominees should have been nominated for before. The Academy -- man, they never get it right. It shouldn't be the likes of Michael Clayton or No Country for Old Men. Forget that. George Clooney and Tommy Lee Jones had much, much more deserving roles. They should have received best actor nominations for Return of the Killer Tomatoes and Volcano. Sinister, slow-moving villains and earnest, fight-to-the-end good guys -- that's what the Oscars should be lauding.

Return of the Killer Tomatoes



With an impressive and untouchable viewer rating of 4.7, Return of the Killer Tomatoes is the next step in the saga of the vegetables of doom. (Well, they're really fruit, but who wants to split hairs?) George Clooney and Anthony Starke star as Matt Stevens and Chad Finletter, two dudes who have to stop a mad scientist (John Astin) and yuppie pervert (Steve Lundquist) from launching the second coming of the Great Tomato Uprising. Things are complicated, however, when Chad falls for a girl-shaped tomato named Tara.

It's got everything the Academy could ever want in an Oscar winner (and a Clooney role) -- heart-breaking romance, intrigue, amazing dramatic performances, flawless direction and cinematography, memorable writing, state-of-the-art special effects, stunning costume achievements, and of course, the best intro song to ever be.

Sing along: Returrrrn of the killer tomaaaatoooooes!

Pizza joints without tomatoes and hot women who want to make love.

A good tomato is a squashed tomato. Period.

The vets come back to fight, with cowboys and ninjas.

Clooney makes the pizza.

I guess fake disaster movies just aren't cool enough anymore. I mean, now that our generation has lived through some whoppers (seriously, though, Americans don't even know what a real disaster looks like), we just aren't settling for volcanoes in Los Angeles. And obviously, combining true stories, which audiences love, with cataclysmic destruction presented with stunning special effects, which audiences love even more, puts dollar signs in the eyes of Hollywood studios. It reminds me of Peter Gallagher in The Player pitching a straight-from-the-headlines movie about a horrible mudslide. "Triumph over tragedy," he explains, simply.

So Billy Ray, the writer-director who co-scripted that volcano in Los Angeles movie (Volcano), is currently focusing on true stories of real disasters. First, he tackled 9/11 by writing a script based on the book 102 Minutes, by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn (I'm not sure what the status is on that project). And now he's about to take on Hurricane Katrina for a film he'll write and direct, called Hurricane Season. Based on Franklin Martin's documentary Walking on Dead Fish, the film will follow a Louisiana high school football team in the aftermath of the storm. Universal, the studio involved in the project, must have gold bars in their eyes, since adding a sports element to the true story/disaster combo (though Ray could avoid showing any hurricane action) should attract an even bigger audience.