Zoe Saldana Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Last night saw attendees of the Real D-sponsored Fantastic Fest greeted with an extended look at footage from James Cameron's forthcoming Avatar, and with it (for me at least) a more defined shift in expectations for the long-awaited film. The footage -- more often than not composed of extended scenes from Avatar Day -- still looks terrifically realized in 3-D, but the bits and pieces of story filled in by producer Jon Landau between scenes and the voice-over of Sam Worthington's character during them suggest something a little less... rapturous.

The lovely Zoe Saldana is quickly becoming a name to contend with after managing to land plum parts in not one, but two of the biggest sci-fi films of the decade: Star Trek and Avatar. One is a bonafide hit, the other remains shrouded in a lot of mystery, but it's a mark of Saldana's star power that she's making a name outside of their huge hype. Plus, she's becoming an action heroine in her own right, and just might be our generation's Sigourney Weaver or Linda Hamilton.

We had the chance to catch up with Saldana this week, and she was game to talk about both projects. Of course with the Star Trek sequel still in a misty writing stage, she didn't have any big secrets to spill, but she shared the opinion of a lot of female Trek fans in hoping Uhura gets to do a little butt-kicking later on. "In Star Trek, I had so much fun, but the boys got all the action! J.J. [Abrams] promised me that I'm going to -- [that] in the sequel, she will have at least one little fight. I mean, just [let me] kick a guy in the groin or something!" Laughing, she revealed that there was an enormous ongoing e-mail list among the cast, Abrams, and the Trek producers where they regularly chat and joke back and forth. From the sound of it, that's also where the groin-kicking requests are made.

Go below the jump for Saldana talking all about Avatar!

It was a roundabout trip that led me to my local IMAX for Avatar day. For starters, I'm not a big fan of 'sneak peeks' -- I'm all for teasers and trailers, but I'm a firm believer in going in to a movie with as much as a blank slate as possible, and that's not always easy in this job. But the thing is, I love a cultural phenomenon, and brother -- Avatar is one of 'em. So I decided to put up with stalled servers at Fox and multiple confirmation emails with threats of everything short of a cavity search to watch a 16 minute commercial. Add to the fact that while I admire the technical stylings of James Cameron, I've never counted myself as one of the devoted. So as you can see, I was hardly the perfect audience for his experiment and I went in to that theater with an open mind, but very few expectations.

Now, thankfully, I tend to be little high strung about these things, and so I showed up an hour early with email and ID in hand -- and judging by Elisabeth's experience with Fox flacks, boy am I glad I did. So there I was in my seat, and as I looked around I kept thinking: what was with the half empty theater? After listening to horror stories of line-ups and sold out shows this made no sense to me. So I have to wonder if all that talk of sold out showings were an attempt by Fox to limit 'exposure' of the film (and piracy). Maybe they just wanted to beef up the hype surrounding the event by touting sold out tickets. But if that was their plan, then it might have backfired because to me, a half-empty theater made the movie look like the bloated, over-hyped flick that some detractors were calling it in the first place. That said, after a brief intro from the man himself (and in 3D no less!) it was time to get on with the show.

After the jump: my two cents on what I saw...

We all want to meet The Losers, especially with the studio who can seemingly do no wrong (aka Warner Bros) financing the whole thing. It has already has a heck of a cast and though it has kicked off filming in Puerto Rico, they've found time to add one more: Jason Patric, who Variety reports is playing the mysterious and villainous Max. Max is the one who turns a bunch of black ops badasses into the Losers who are out for vengeance, and there's no doubt Patric can lend some gravitas to the role.

Unfortunately, Variety and Patric felt the need to sour the sweet news up. The press-shy Patric sat down with with Mike Fleming in order to explain just how an actor of his caliber ends up playing a mere comic book villain. These days, it's apparently neccessary to "slum it" to keep working. Fleming laments the neccessity, noting "You know that geek validation has become a serious thing when actor's actor Jason Patric agrees to play his first real villain role in his first comic book movie."

Despite the fact that James Cameron took 12 years to produce a fiction follow-up to his blockbuster, award-winning Titanic, he has wasted no time letting folks know that the forthcoming Avatar is destined to be a masterpiece. And yet, given what he showed today at the San Diego Comic-Con, one can hardly blame him for a surplus of confidence. Screening some 25 minutes of material to a capacity crowd for the first time anywhere, Cameron proved that recent interviews, public appearances and hype opportunities are more than just big talk.

Among the information revealed or exposed about Avatar:

Man, does it feel like ages since this summer season got off to a proper start. The blockbuster season was surprisingly front-loaded (and May was pretty great for it), so while I don't mind all the solid indies that have come around the bend recently -- Away We Go, Humpday, The Hurt Locker, In the Loop, Moon, (500) Days of Summer, etc. -- I'm still waiting for something big and blockbuster-y to surprise me quite like J.J. Abrams' exciting Star Trek reboot did.

Unfortunately, Paramount's putting off the DVD release for the prime holiday season (November 17th -- hey, whatever happened to that ever-shrinking theatrical video window?!), but the two-disc DVD and three-disc Blu-ray releases will both be packed with extras, not the least of which are a feature commentary by Abrams and company and several deleted scenes that keen eyes spotted in the trailers, but never made it to the screen.

Read the full press release -- including all the special features -- over at SciFi Squad

Cartoonist/writer Alison Bechdel is credited with coming up with something called "Bechdel's Law" as a gauge for whether she'd be interested in seeing a movie. (See our Cinematical Seven on Bechdel Law) It first appeared in a 1985 installment of her long-running strip, Dykes to Watch Out For, and it goes like this:

1. The movie has to have at least two women in it.
2. Who talk to each other.
3. About something other than a man.

Sadly, if you were to restrict your film-going to films that comply with Bechdel's Law, you'd find yourself avoiding about 99 percent of Hollywood movies, including those that are ostensibly produced for the female audience.

And the new Star Trek? Oh, that's right out.

Like most of America, I love J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot. It's exciting, funny, smart, and the special effects are awesome. But it's a serious sausage fest. If Star Trek were a treehouse, it might not actually have a sign on the door that says "He-Man Woman Haters Club," but there would definitely be free cootie shots available in the sick bay.

How nice it would have been if this brand-new Trek for a brand-new generation reflected some of the strides that women have made in society (if not motion pictures) since the series began in 1966. But the Enterprise's lone named female crew member, Lt. Uhura, is nothing more than The Girl, to be ogled in her miniskirt -- and, at one point, in her underwear -- and lusted after by both Kirk and Spock, if only to make it clear that these new Starfleet men aren't nearly as slash-ficcy as their predecessors.

When Warner Bros first announced they were green-lighting an adaptation of DC/Vertigo series The Losers with Sylvain White directing, it elicited only a minor flicker of interest out of me. It's a not a lost series, per say, but it's not one that a lot of people have read and enthused about.

The plotline is like any action movie you've ever seen: A Special Forces team that's betrayed by its handler, left for dead, and who regroup to seek revenge. Dubbing themselves "The Losers," they seek to remove their names off a CIA death list, and to work against a massive conspiracy involving their handler, "Max."

But now! Now it has a very respectable cast! According to The Hollywood Reporter, Idris Elba and Zoe Saldana are being recruited into the Special Forces. Elba will be playing Roque, the scarred second-in-command, an icy fellow who is motivated purely by money. Saldana will play Aisha, whose both a loose cannon and a cold-blooded killer who leaves a trail of corpses behind her. They'll join Jeffery Dean Morgan, who must have enjoyed Watchmen so much that he'll do anything DC/Warner Bros related. He'll be playing Clay, the meticulous leader.

There's still a few Losers to be cast, and color me curious as to who else the script (penned by Peter Berg and James Vanderbilt) can attract. Sure, it could be cartoony and crappy but I have a weird trust in Mogan, Elba and Saldana, and I think it's going to be worth following from this point on. Mea culpa, Warner Bros.