Okay, I'm going to try to write this post without pissing off a gazillion people. See, our resident Twilight expert, Kim, is flying to France right now, and so I'm the lucky guy left to write about Twilight. And speaking of the biggest teen vampire film to hit the states since The Lost Boys, a brand new poster for Twilight has been released by Summit Entertainment. (You can check it out to the right and click to enlarge.) Additionally, we've decided that now is the time to introduce our official Twilight gallery (see below). Fans of the film should definitely save that gallery link and check back daily as we'll be adding more photos real soon.
And there's more! CulturePulp's Mike Russell tipped us off to this super funky comic strip he created, which was inspired by a recent trip of his to the set of Twilight. The comic strip is supposed to compliment an article he wrote for The Los Angeles Times. The comic is a damn funny read, as Mike takes you through a scene where they're playing vampire baseball and running at 30mph. Don't know, but it sounds good.
Confession time! I've never read Twilight, and I have absolutely nothing against the book or its fans. However, the only thing that worries me about this film is Kristen Stewart. Hate me forever, but she always plays the disturbed, "I have several emotional issues that stem from my childhood" kinda gal. Not a bad thing, mind you, but I've never seen her give us an ounce of power, of energy, of anything, really.
So here's a question for you fans: Do you think Kristen Stewart is the right actress to play your beloved Isabella Swan? Have you seen her other films? (Or maybe Isabella is a really boring person, because then Stewart would be excellent in the role.
The Twilight teaser trailer is up over on MySpace, and it's short (oh, so short!), but pretty damn sweet (you can watch it above as well). What we do see of Bella and Edward, and the chemistry between Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson looks good. We get a feel for how Catherine Hardwicke is handling the vampires' ability to move faster-than-life, and see a snippet of the scene where Tyler nearly runs over Bella with his van, only to have Edward zip in out of nowhere and save her. It's one of my favorite scenes from the book -- it's really the first moment when Bella comes to realize that there's more to Edward than what she sees, and it looks like Hardwicke has captured that moment well.
My only real complaints are that it's short (I want more!) and that we don't see Alice or Jacob, or the trio of bad vampires. I know, I know, more will be coming, but I'm impatient. Oh, and also ... is it just me, or do Edward's eyes look too normal? I want to see golden eyes, topaz eyes ... "good" vampire eyes!
Alright, Twilighters, I know you're out there, and you always have plenty to say on everything Twilight. What do you think of this teaser-trailer? Are you liking the look and feel of what you've seen so far? And most importantly, how, oh how, are you going to wait until December 12, when the movie finally hits theaters?
Holy Cullens! Hold onto your seats, all you Twilight fanatics. This is the first official ensemble piece with final hair, makeup and costume (those other photos, we believe, were test shots, but this one gives our first official look at the characters inside the Twilight universe) Click on the image for a larger view -- you know you want to -- then let's take a moment to dissect the loveliness, shall we?
We've been covering the various bits of Twilight news, set visit write-ups and behind-the-scenes goodies extensively here, but this is the first time that we've seen the cast in character like this. Aside from the fact that the image looks totally cool and perfectly captures that "Twilight-vibe," can I just say that any doubts anyone out there is still harboring about Robert Pattinson as Edward should be totally laid to rest by this picture?
Ooooh, boy. Over on Stephenie Meyer's website today, they posted a link to some new behind-the-scenes Twilight video over on MTV, and what I saw on the video looks very promising. They have footage on there of the filming of the fight scene between James and Edward, and some chats with a few of the stars of the film, and I have to say, it seems like director Catherine Hardwicke and her cast seem to really "get" both what Twilight is about, and their responsibility to fans of the series to get it right.
The more I see of how Hardwicke is putting the film together, the better I feel about the possibility that this might actually end up being a case where the film adaptation comes close to being as good as the book, and it's looking like hardcore Twilighters might end up loving this film. And of course, Hardwicke knows that if they're going to make this a series of films, it's imperative that she not screw up this first installment; most Twilight fans I know would rather not see a movie made at all than see it done poorly.
Twilight author Stephenie Meyer added an update to her blog today after a visit to the Twilight set. She shares some nice tidbits about how she felt watching the "humans" in the cast bring their characters to life, and has a funny anecdote about a prank pulled on her by Peter Facinelli (Carlisle) over the crucial issue of what happens to food vampires eat if they ever have to pretend to eat to fool humans (kinda gross answer: they eventually have to regurgitate it!).
Most interesting to me of Meyer's thoughts on how the filming is going, though, is what she has to say about Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson "channeling" Bella and Edward. Meyer seems very pleased with the performances by both actors so far, and notes that the chemistry between the two is so good that fans "might want to bring a paper bag to the movie, because their on-screen chemistry may cause hyperventilation." Dang.
I have never been all that keen to read Stephenie Meyer's vampire romance, Twilight. That is probably because I'm just a little out of the prescribed age range, plus, I'll always be an Anne Rice girl at heart. So like a lot of other people, I'll just catch the movie. Back in February, Monika brought us the first photo from the film set, and now ET Online has behind-the-scene video and interviews with cast members Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Nikki Reed.
In Twilight, Stewart stars as Bella, a young girl who moves to a dreary, rainy town and finds herself drawn to her mysterious (and plasma-challenged) classmate, Edward (Pattinson). The two begin to fall in love, and if all those years devouring anything remotely 'vampy' have taught me anything, it's that there probably won't be a happy ending for these two. When a coven of vampires that doesn't follow Edward's example of eating only wildlife comes through town, Edward and his 'family' band together to protect Bella.
Twilight has been filming on location in Portland, Oregon since February, and the production is scheduled to finish shooting later this month. Fans have had mixed reactions to the film (mainly over casting), but Summit is hoping that they can get enough of them into theaters for at least two more installments of the series. Twilight is scheduled to arrive in theaters on December 12th. Twilight fans, sound off with your thoughts on the casting, and what you hope to see them do with the film.
You could say that Bella's father in Stephenie Meyer's young adult fantasy collection Twilight, which is about to become a big-screen series of movies, is the reason for all the vampire romance. In the book, the young Bella (who will be played by Kristen Stewart) heads to Forks to live with her father. There, she falls for Edward (Robert Pattinson), and in typical YA, romantic, vampire fare, things get sticky.
Up to this point, we've gotten a slew of casting notices about Bella and the parade of vamps, but now MTV, which seems to be the official source for Twilight info, has confirmed that Billy Burke will be playing him. The actor has popped up in a ton of television shows, but he's also been in flicks like the recent Untraceable. Ashley Greene, who plays Alice Cullen in the film, confirmed his casting and said: "I've only met him once, and I don't really have any scenes with him yet. But I think he's a pretty good fit ... He's commented on making the character a strong character." Strong, weak, or anything in between, he's definitely a good fit to play the dad of Stewart. If you're a fangirl or boy itching for more info, in another post, Greene discusses her involvement in the film, from softball to complaints that's she's just too darned tall for her character.
Oh, this latest bit of news gives me a bit of a fangirl jump. Variety reports that Jake Scott and Jordan Scott -- offspring of Ridley -- are both gearing up for new feature films. Why do I care? Jake's not only the guy behind a lot of memorable videos like "Fake Plastic Trees," "Disarm," and "Everybody Hurts," but also Plunkett and Macleane. If you haven't seen it, it's a terrible, great movie starring Jonny Lee Miller and Robert Carlyle (plus Liv Tyler and Alan Cumming) that has disappeared from shelves. So, not only could the film be good, but maybe Macleane will get a new DVD release. At least, I hope!
While the previous flick dealt with robbers in the 18th century, this new feature, Welcome to the Rileys, is a bit softer. The film will star James Gandolfini and Kristen Stewart, focuses on "a man and a woman who have been driven apart by grief after losing their daughter, and are brought back together when they meet a troubled young woman." Somehow, there's "unexpected love" and "catharsis" in there -- perhaps between the stars listed? That would be, um, interesting. While production should begin in New Orleans this April for the above film, Jordan is looking to make her debut with Cracks overseas. A period drama set in a British boarding school, Scott describes it as a film "about misguided love and obsession, as told through the eyes of a group of elite girls in this boarding school." She'll start scouting locations next week.
Why are these features being lumped together? Handmade Films International is handling worldwide sales and will present the films as a package to potential buyers at Berlinale.
I'm starting to dislike films that sell themselves with the tagline: "Love is where you least expect it." Isn't it about time we retire that line? Yellow Handkerchief arrives as yet another indie road flick featuring characters very different from one another on the outside, but similar on the inside. It's pretty to watch (thanks to great camerawork from Chris Menges), but the film never really soars above "That was a nice moment," and into must-see territory. However, superb performances from the four leads lend Handkerchief enough charm to leave those watching with a smile ... and an odd desire to visit Louisiana.
William Hurt stars as an ex-con named Brett, who, after six years in prison, stumbles back out into the world with a sense of purpose. Soon after his release, Brett winds up hitching a ride with Gordy (Eddie Redmayne), a kind-of-slow outcast heading down to New Orleans. Joining the men, after watching last night's fling hook up with another girl, is Martine (Kristen Stewart) -- a fidgety gal with massive father figure issues. Because of her sour relationship with Pops, Martine desperately attempts to latch onto men who show the slightest interest, and when Gordy fires up a conversation with her, it's enough for Martine to forget about the last guy and jump into a convertible with the next one. Thus, our three strangers head out for a ride to escape their problems -- and jaded pasts -- but ultimately wind up banding together to confront the purple elephant in the corner and wash away their damaged souls.
Wizards, vampires. and gay lovin', oh my! He's already set teen hearts a-flutter with his portrayal of Cedric Diggory in the Harry Potter series, so it's no surprise that he's taking on another mystical good-guy role. The Hollywood Reporter has posted that Robert Pattinson will co-star with Kristen Stewart in Twilight -- the young adult vampire story that Catherine Hardwicke will direct early next year. He'll play the sharp-toothed Edward, the object of young Bella's affection.
To recap -- the project is based on Stephenie Meyer's young adult novel/series and focuses on a teen named Bella who moves to a small town to be with her dad. She falls for a hot, pale dude who happens to be a vampire. They get together, she lusts for him and would rather be dead than be without him, he tries to refrain from drinking her blood, and all is well in fantastical relationship land until his nemeses comes to town, sets their sites on her, and makes things more challenging.
When this project wraps, Pattinson will have handled two old-time fantastical staples -- magic and vampirism, which could easily get him type-cast. But he's going the Radcliffe route and mixing adult lasciviousness into the mix with his sexy Dali movie, so that should help him balance his teen dreaminess with meatier fare. But what about you Twilight fans? Is Pattinson the vampire Edward come to life?
She has comforted herself in The Safety of Objects, she has struggled for life in the Panic Room while Jared Leto terrorized her with really, really terrible cornrows, she visited Cold Creek Manor,* and that was only her first three features. Now Varietyreports that Kristen Stewart, fresh from Sean Penn's Into the Wild, has been tapped for another starring role. She'll take the lead in Thirteen writer/director Catherine Hardwicke's next movie, the young adult thriller/romance called Twilight, which I first told you about in October. Sorry Emily Browning, who was once rumored to star.
Based on the YA series by Stephenie Meyer, Twilight focuses on a 17-year-old named Bella who moves to a small town to live with her dad. Unfortunately, she falls for a pale and mysterious classmate, which can only mean one thing -- he's a bloodsucking vampire. According to Variety, he's determined to push her away, so he's not only a sexy vampire, but a noble one. But, there's only so long that a man, even one that drinks blood, can push off undeniable attraction, and they head into a romance. But that's complicated when his nemesis comes to town. (This sounds so very similar to LJ Smith, which I mentioned last time...) The film will start filming this February, but in the meantime, we need a nemesis, and more importantly, a vampire hottie. Who should it be?
It's going to be hard to follow Superbad, but as we've previously learned, Greg Mottola is going to give it a try. He's already working on his third film, Adventureland, which at least has that goofy-cool compound-word title thing going on, just like Superbad. Of course, this seems to be a theme that goes all the way back to Mottola's first feature, The Daytrippers, and so the similarity can't promise that the new movie will be anything like Superbad (not that The Daytrippers was bad; it just wasn't Superbad). Then again, if Mottola really wanted to ride the Superbad train he would have tried to get Adventureland made with Judd Apatow as producer, and he probably would have cast Michael Cera in the lead. Instead, according to The Hollywood Reporter, he's got Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale), who also has a great awkwardly comic manner but is certainly underrated compared to Cera. Joining Eisenberg are two more people who had nothing to do with Superbad: Ryan Reynolds (Van Wilder) and Kristen Stewart (Panic Room).
Eisenberg will star as a college graduate who has to take a job working in an amusement park rather than go on a European vacation (he should have worked at Epcott, which could have been a compromise). Stewart is a tomboy (isn't she always?) co-worker who he falls for. Reynolds' role is a bit confusing. He's apparently an aspiring rock star (too old) who is, and I quote both The Hollywood Reporter and Varietyhere, "the icon of cool to all the kids working at the park." Does he also work there? Is he playing a concert there? Are all the kids working at the park really that uniform? I'm not sure. Mottola wrote the presumably autobiographical script (it's set in 1987, around the time he would have graduated from college) and The Door in the Floor's Ted Hope and Anne Carey are producing. Adventureland begins shooting next month in Pittsburgh (at Kennywood?).
Though it has this certain "Lifetime Movie of the Week" quality about it, The Cake Eaters is one of those films that sneaks up on you a half hour after the credits roll. Pic, which marks Mary Stuart Masterson's directorial debut, is charming when it needs to be, and careful not to become too melodramatic. It's one of those comfortable quiet films where most of the action is non-verbal and the characters rarely ever say what's really on their minds. But when they do, the dialogue is delivered in a way that's so personal, you almost feel like that awkward third party -- the ear that's not supposed to be hearing all this. Set in one of the many small towns of Upstate New York, most of the drama revolves around two families; each dealing with their own separate tragedies.
The Kimbrough's, which consist of Easy (Bruce Dern) and his two sons Beagle (Aaron Stanford) and Guy (Jayce Bartok), are still trying to come to terms with the recent death of their wife and mother. Things become a bit complicated when Guy returns home after disappearing to New York City for three years in search of those rock star dreams. Thus, he missed his mother's slow, agonizing death; he wasn't there when the cancer was at its worst. And he never made it to the funeral. Meanwhile, Beagle was at his mother's side every moment of every day -- even in the end when not even Easy could stomach the sight of his deteriorating wife. Throughout the film, there's this thick tension between all three men; tension that turns to anger once it's revealed to Beagle that his father had been having an affair for years.
I just can't decide whether I should be excited or worried about Robert De Niro's upcoming film, What Just Happened? In December, I brought you news of of the star once again teaming up with Barry Levinson (they collaborated on Wag the Dog) on an adaptation of Hollywood producer, Art Linson's memoir, which he turned into a screenplay. De Niro will play Ben, a movie producer based on Linson, who struggles with the treachery of Hollywood and a failed second marriage. All of this is not the worry -- it's the excellent, growing cast.
There seems to be a fine line in cinema between a solid cast making a film stellar, and overwhelming talent leading to a disasterous, exploding film failure. However, Wag pulled it off, so the worry could be for naught. The Hollywood Reporter says that Stanley Tucci, John Turturro and Kristen Stewart have all signed on as co-stars. Tucci, fresh off a 3 lbs. failure, will play a screenwriter; Turturro is playing a Hollywood agent; and Stewart (Panic Room and Zathura) will play De Niro's daughter. In smaller roles, Bruce Willis and Sean Penn will make brief appearances, as themselves. While I'm all about seeing The Tooch in something less fashionista, Levinson is more psyched about the content: "What excites me about this film is that it's not only very funny, but it's terrifyingly accurate." We shall see! Principal photography begins in March.
Today we read from the Horror Movie Bible, chapter 13, verse 666: "When there are no Asian horror movies left to remake, Asian filmmakers will alight to Hollywood and create Americanized versions of The Ring, The Grudge and Dark Water and lo the PG-13 rating will be applied -- and it will be not good." But since The Messengers was written by a really cool horror geek named Mark Wheaton, I walked into an opening day matinee screening of the flick with some high hopes. Despite everything the TV spots, the trailers and the pre-release buzz had been telling me, I was actively intent on trying to enjoy The Messengers. Sorry to say that my pilot light of enthusiasm was snuffed out after less than twelve minutes of on-screen activity. This is a stunningly inert, painfully derivative, shamelessly cheap and aggressively dull ghost story that delivers nothing you haven't seen before. About 43 times.
Clocking in at a scant 84 minutes (and that's including a tiresome prologue and a lengthy opening credits sequence), The Messengers is The Grudge on a farm (The Grarm!) -- and it's about as thrilling as that description implies. It's about a family of four (Mom, Dad, Teenage Daughter, Mute Boy Toddler) who bail on Chicago in favor of Nowheresville, North Dakota. (Dad's got a bee in his bonnet about becoming a sunflower farmer, darnit, and nothing's gonna get in the way of that dream!) While Mom, Dad and Mute Toddler go about settling into their new home, teenage daughter has a problem; basically, she sees shadows, visions, apparitions, etc. -- and of course nobody believes her. (There's a ridiculously prolonged backstory about why Mom and Dad don't completely trust Teenage Daughter, but it's much too silly to get into at this point.)
Okay, I'm going to try to write this post without pissing off a gazillion people. See, our resident Twilight expert, Kim, is flying to France right now, and so I'm the lucky guy left to write about Twilight. And speaking of the biggest teen vampire film to hit the states since The Lost Boys, a brand new poster for Twilight has been released by Summit Entertainment. (You can check it out to the right and click to enlarge.) Additionally, we've decided that now is the time to introduce our official Twilight gallery (see below). Fans of the film should definitely save that gallery link and check back daily as we'll be adding more photos real soon.
Ooooh, boy. Over on 
I have never been all that keen to read 
You could say that Bella's father in Stephenie Meyer's young adult fantasy collection Twilight, which is about to become a big-screen series of movies, is the reason for all the vampire romance. In the book, the young Bella (who will be played by Kristen Stewart) heads to Forks to live with her father. There, she falls for Edward (Robert Pattinson), and in typical YA, romantic, vampire fare, things get sticky.
Oh, this latest bit of news gives me a bit of a fangirl jump. 
Wizards, vampires. and gay lovin', oh my! He's already set teen hearts a-flutter with his portrayal of Cedric Diggory in the Harry Potter series, so it's no surprise that he's taking on another mystical good-guy role. 
She has comforted herself in The Safety of Objects, she has struggled for life in the Panic Room while Jared Leto terrorized her with really, really terrible cornrows, she visited Cold Creek Manor,* and that was only her first three features. Now 
It's going to be hard to follow .jpg)
I just can't decide whether I should be excited or worried about 
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SCOOP: Spider-Man 4 and 5 Might be Shot at the Same Time!
Cinematical Seven: Disney's Awesome Live-Action Kid Adventures
