kungfupanda Tagged Articles at Cinematical

For the first time in history an animated film is opening the 62nd Cannes Film Festival. Just announced this morning, Pixar's Up will become the first Disney film since Dumbo to premiere at the prestigious festival, and it will also mark the first time they screened an animated film in 3D. The 3D aspect of Up is also a first for Pixar -- so there will be plenty of cherries being popped in France come May.

Cannes has warmed up to animated films these last few years, with studio's staging elaborate events to promote their projects -- like Jerry Seinfeld flying through the air in a bee costume to promote Bee Movie, and Jack Black arriving on a boat last year with an assortment of Kung Fu Pandas to promote that film. No word on what fantastical stunt Disney will churn out, but I imagine it will include a whole bunch of multi-colored balloons. Other animated films to have played at the festival include Dumbo (1947), The Fantastic Planet (1973), Fritz the Cat (1974), Shrek (2001), The Triplets of Belleville (2003), Shrek 2 (2004), Over the Hedge (2006), Kung Fu Panda (2008) and Waltz with Bashir (2008).

The 62nd Festival de Cannes will run from May 13 to May 24. For more on Up, check out our preview of the film over here. Up arrives in theaters on May 29.

When we were kicking around ideas for year-end superlative Cinematical Sevens, I was proudly tasked with chronicling the year's finest in big-screen mayhem, violence, destruction and other such shenanigans. When I was kicking around ideas for said feature between me, myself, and I, there were too many titles to leave off the list, so instead of highlighting only a mere couple of movies, I've opted to sort these puppies out by specific manner of cinematic excess.

So there.

1. Most pervasive destruction - The Joker may have terrorized Gotham to the tune of a destroyed hospital, a wrecked helicopter, a sunken SWAT truck, a toasty fire engine, and a golden district attorney, but even he can't top the Cloverfield monster's swath of destruction across the real-life Gotham. Statue of Liberty? Gone. Brooklyn Bridge? History. Central Park? Adios. And that's not including all the Hollister stores that our protagonists might've fled to. (On a smaller scale, though, Inside's lady in black terrorizes a pregnant woman on Christmas Eve to the point of all but painting every last wall in her house with the blood of her victims. Gotta love the French!)

It's really creepy, but the moment I start wondering about We3 again, it pops up in the press. Back in August, Grant Morrison had used the project's downtime to write a screenplay that he claimed was better than the original graphic novel. The screenplay was so good, it was attracting all kinds of interest, and Morrison hinted that "a big, hot director" was attached. The possibilities were kind of endless, and I was secretly hoping for Zack Snyder due to the copious amount of blood and guts.

According to ShockTillYouDrop, though, it turns out that director is none other than ... John Stevenson of Kung Fu Panda fame. Part of me is going "Really? That's, um, not a very big name." But I've heard some very good things about Kung Fu Panda (I still haven't seen it, as Netflix just keeps teasing me), and Stevenson certainly has some amazing art direction credits. You could do a lot worse than someone who has some fighting animals under his belt. Though it has a director, it's still looking for a studio to call home, so we have some waiting and fidgeting to do.

Producer Don Murphy assures fans that the film will be live action, not animated, and it won't be "cutesy." The book is pretty impossible to make cutesy (a rat is disemboweled in the first few pages) so, Kung Fu Panda or not, I'm not too worried about that. I just want it to leave everyone in the theaters crying their eyes out, wondering about the nature of empathy. (By the way, have you bought the book yet? No? Well, there's still time. It's the perfect stocking stuffer.)

Now that we've entered the final month of the year, look for our site (and several others) to spend some time looking back at 2008. We here at Cinematical will kick off our year-end festivities real soon, but in the meantime Yahoo Movies was first out of the gate with a list of the most popular movie trailers of 2008. Keep in mind this is only according to Yahoo's numbers and represents the most watched, not necessarily the best (we'll have that list later this month).

As expected, a good majority of this list is made up of big summer blockbuster-type stuff, and guess which flick leads the pack? Yup, the one with that damn bat. The top two (Dark Knight and Indiana Jones) don't surprise me in the least, but the next two are ... Twilight (3) and The Incredible Hulk (4)? Really? Those vampires even beat everyone's favorite boy wizard, Harry Potter, who came in at a disappointing sixth on the list, behind Iron Man. Check out the titles below -- anything surprise you? Did you expect Twilight to take the third spot behind whoppers like Dark Knight and Indy? Sound off ...

1. The Dark Knight
2. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
3. Twilight
4. The Incredible Hulk
5. Iron Man
6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
7. Wanted
8. Hancock
9. Sex and the City
10. Kung Fu Panda

Clockwise from top left: Get Smart, Transsiberian, Kung Fu Panda, Budd Boetticher Box Set, Planet of the Apes 40th Anniversary Collection.

Welcome to this week's edition of Spin-ematical, chock full of alternatives to election coverage!

Kung Fu Panda
Though some of the celebrity voices were useless, Jack Black is great, and the film itself is pleasant, good-natured, and respectful of Asian culture. Available in at least seven editions, including widescreen, full-screen, Spanish, a Christmas gift set, with and without Secrets of the Furious Five (a 20-minute short), and on Blu-ray; oddly, this doesn't release until Sunday. Buy it.

Transsiberian
Traveling by train in the dead of winter from Beijing to Moscow should be much more restful than what happens to Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer in this adventure / suspense / thriller; Ben Kingsley plays a menacing Russian detective. I'm recommending this one sight unseen because Brad Anderson (Session 9, The Machinist) directed. Includes a 34-minute "making of"; also available on Blu-ray. Replays are inevitable. Buy it.

Get Smart
The bumbling Maxwell Smart as a generic action hero? (*sigh*) Steve Carell makes the character his own by repeating the old catchphrases without enthusiasm and proving to be far too adept for his own -- or the movie's -- good. Anne Hathaway is a very sexy spy, but Dwayne Johnson is miscast and even Alan Arkin struggles. The TV series never took itself too seriously; if only the movie had done the same. Available in widescreen and full-screen editions, as well as a two-disk version and on Blu-ray; a plethora of bonus scenes are included, notably a 5-minute "vomit reel." Ugh. Skip it.

After the jump ... Indies on DVD, more Blu-ray debuts, and Collector's Corner.

Is Jack Black replacing Matt Damon in the Bourne franchise? Thankfully, no, however The Hollywood Reporter tells us the funnyman has teamed back up with Kung Fu Panda writers Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger for a live-action comedic take on The Bourne Identity. In the film, Black will play some dude who washes up on the shores of Cuba with no memory of who he is or how he got there. Of course, he automatically believes he's a superspy (thanks Hollywood!), though nothing could be further from the truth. Sounds like a funny premise -- but is Black the right one for the role?

Meanwhile, Sky High's plant-loving sidekick, Danielle Panabaker, is going back to school. According to The Hollywood Reporter, she'll star in Chuck Russell's upcoming sci-fi action film called Prodigy. Based on Dave Kalstein's book, the film focuses on an elite prep school that takes teaching to the extreme -- they make students into geniuses with a "drug-and-diet regimen." Panabaker will play the smartie daughter of a senator who questions the powers that be. This might be particularly bad for those powers since, as Publisher's Weekly describes it, the conditioning makes these kids "ninja-assassin geniuses."

Last but not least, there's the talented Michael Sheen. Putting aside retro politics and The Music Within, Variety reports that the actor has picked up two new gigs. First, there's Sam Jackson's Unthinkable, which dips into the ethics of torture and terrorism, and then comes a little Alice in Wonderland. Unfortunately, there's zip-all on who he's playing in these films. At least that leaves us free to speculate -- who on Earth will Sheen be in the world of Mad Hatters and White Rabbits?! Not Tweedledee and Tweedledum -- that's Matt Lucas, it seems.

It's difficult (and a little silly) to try and judge an entire quarter-year's movies in one lump sum -- but that's what we seem to do at the end of every Summer Movie Season. That's when all our excitement, expectations, and final reactions come colliding together and we find ourselves thinking: "Was I actually looking forward to that piece of crap for four months?" But to me, each summer is like a walk through a carnival: Some of the attractions dazzle me, others simply don't interest me, and a few are just a waste of tickets. But once early May rolls around, I'm always ready for another trip to the Hollywood Movie Carnival. (It's where you find all the tentpoles!)

So while I'm elated to greet the upcoming season of "prestige movies," there's little denying that we've had one hell of a good summer, cinematical-ly speaking. I'm not talking about box office grosses, because frankly that stuff is so unimportant. What matters is that we got some good flicks, a few pieces of mindless (yet well-made) popcorn adventures, and even a few great films that will enjoy a very long shelf life. So while I'm not exactly sure that 2008 represents the finest Summer Movie Season of all time, I'd definitely say it was more good than bad. But if you can think of a summer that was better than this one, you know where to throw your comments. (In the comments section.)

Could a cute children's movie about an adorable furry animal ignite change in a country noted for its official cultural restraints? Kung Fu Panda has enjoyed robust returns at the Chinese box office, which prompted a top cultural advisor to bemoan: "Why didn't we make such a film?"

As reported by Variety, Wu Jiang, a key member of the CPPCC Standing Committee, noted: "The film's protagonist is China's national treasure and all the elements are Chinese." The committee recommended that the government "relax its control in order to accelerate the reform and opening up of the cultural market and to enhance China's cultural influence in the world."

Though China produces hundreds of movies every year, most have been described as "stodgy propaganda pics" -- check out a recent post by Grady Hendrix at Kaiju Shakedown to see a few examples -- and only a select few achieve visibility at international festivals. Director Lu Chuan (Kekexili: Mountain Patrol and the upcoming Nanking Nanking) says the problem lies with the government itself, which stifles the creativity of Chinese filmmakers. He wrote in China Daily that he tried to make an animated film for next month's Olympics in Beijing but finally gave up: "I kept receiving directions and orders on how the movie should be like. The fun and joy from doing something interesting left us, together with our imagination and creativity."

Will the Chinese government be making any changes soon? Don't count on it. Sun Zhonghuan, another member of the CPPCC Standing Committee, says that Hollywoood studios have another big advantage: Kung Fu Panda's $130 million budget is nearly 100 times the cost for an average Chinese film. "We might have the ideas," he said, "but we lack the structure to realize them."

A couple of weeks back, I wrote about the imminent release of three-quel Public Enemy Returns. Hopes were high that the Korean-made crime action comedy would enjoy a measure of success and thus buoy local filmmakers; Korean audiences have been avoiding local product for months.

Public Enemy Returns did indeed have a bountiful opening, grossing more than $7.2 million in its premiere weekend and smashing Get Smart, according to Box Office Mojo. In its second weekend, though, it fell victim to international action powerhouse Wanted, demonstrating that curving bullets and the even more curvaceous Angelina Jolie need fear no borders. Still, Public Enemy Returns has nothing to be ashamed of -- it made $4.7 million to Wanted's $5.4 million -- and provides hope that upcoming Korean movies such as The Good, the Bad, and the Weird, Sunny, and Eye for an Eye will find favor locally in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, Kung Fu Panda has been warmly embraced by China, in the words of The Hollywood Reporter. With $14 million in box office receipts in its first ten days, the animated animal adventure has already been declared "the most successful foreign animated film in China," as claimed by a government news agency. If accurate, that gross would place the film practically neck and neck with Iron Man and the Chinese-made Kung Fu Dunk for the #3 box office position for the year so far. I haven't seen Panda yet; is this is a good thing or a bad thing from a cultural and/or cinematic standpoint?

Notwithstanding the best attempts of some to smear Wall-E as being somehow hypocritical or disdainful of consumers, the little robot gave Pixar the third-best opening weekend in its history, behind The Incredibles and Finding Nemo (and roughly tied with Monsters, Inc.). Its $62.5 million take was on par with expectations, though the lack of the usual family film Saturday and Sunday bump suggests that Wall-E attracted an impressive number of kidless Friday night moviegoers. And that bodes well for the weeks to come: the movie is quite sophisticated and not all that toddler-friendly, so word-of-mouth among adults will be key.

Given Wall-E's apparent cross-demographic appeal, one might have expected Wanted to struggle a bit as the weekend's "adult counterprogramming," but nothing doing: at $51.1 million and a strong second place, we may have a new franchise on our hands. The two combined to make this the strongest three-day weekend of the summer at the box-office overall; in fact, to find a higher combined top 12 gross, we have to go back to Memorial Day 2007 and the debut of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.

The rest of the chart looks unremarkable. The Love Guru dropped almost 61% to 6th place, prompting the unsurprising conclusion that the Guru Pitka didn't connect with summer audiences. The Incredible Hulk continues to run behind Hulk, ruling out the possibility that it will have the staying power to do appreciably better than the embattled 2004 film. Wall-E gave Kung Fu Panda its first significant hit, dropping it to 4th place. Indiana Jones will break $300 million by the end of Monday, if Sunday's final numbers don't push it past the milestone. And The Happening looks like it will top out around $70 million.

The full numbers after the jump.