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Saturday, May 31, 2008
Friday, May 30, 2008
Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins News
T4 producers speak-First Look at Post-Apocalyptic Future in Terminator 4
T4 producers speak (Derek Anderson and Victor Kubicek) (The Guardian)
-about the rumours that Arnold Schwarzenegger would return to the series (the duo said they couldn't say anything,but):"At the moment we're keeping everything under lock and key, we want the fans to be really excited and surprised."
-about the series in general(Victor Kubicek):"We were both big Terminator fans which is why we acquired the franchise. We're approaching it as real fans -- what would make us really happy to see in the next Terminator movie."
"If you think of where Terminator 3 left off, there's still a lot of potential story to be told," said Anderson. "Being huge fans, we wanted to know the rest of the story."
First Look at Post-Apocalyptic Future in Terminator 4
Welcome to 2018.
This rendering of the post-apocalyptic, nuclear blast-devastated cityscape in Los Angeles is the concept art for the newly extended arm of the Terminator franchise, Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins.
The wretched landscape delivers an early glimpse into a grim future ruled by blood-thirsty bots. Dark Knight Christian Bale stars as John Connor, the leader of the human resistance against the army of terrifying Terminators.
This early art isn't much, but it sounds like the visual effects are only going to get better. Dare I say it could be as mind-bogglingly badass as the morphing silver skeleton action from T2?
"Everything we’re shooting is designed to be tactile and real, you’ll be seeing a whole set of inspired designs you've never seen before, and best of all you'll finally get to see some of the post-judgment day future that was only hinted at in the previous movies," wrote director McG on the site.
Charlotte Gainsbourg, from avant auteur Michel Gondry's Science of Sleep, has been tapped to star alongside Bale. In this fourth installment of the cyborg series, Gainsbourg plays Connor's wife, who according to the Terminator 'verse, originally sent back a machine programmed to save John from assassination.
The Connors (along with all of humanity) are still on their primary mission -- to stop Skynet from destroying humans -- but amnesia-riddled figure Marcus Wright, played by Sam Worthington, throws a wrench into the mix. Sci-fi blog io9 also points out that we'll be seeing all kinds of crazy killing machines, including vintage cyborgs and a souped-up model with an exaggerated exoskeleton.
The highly anticipated next installment drops us into the story 14 years before John's death in 2032 -- leaving plenty of wiggle room for sequels. Terminator Salvation is slated to hit theaters May 22, 2009.
Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Wired,23/5/2008
Sources:The Guardian,IGN,Wired
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Tobey Maguire Still Top Pick for 'Spider-Man 4'
A few days ago, Latino Review broke the news that Patrick Fugit was being considered as the heir to the Spider-Man throne. His suitability was hotly debated, but apparently all for nothing if the Internet is to be believed.
CHUD happened to be on set of Cirque du Freak, which Fugit has just finished filming, and one of the producers sent off an inquiry as to the truth of the casting rumor. The e-mail was the first Fugit had heard about it -- which means little in the world of "insider scoops," as Fugit could still quite possibly be on a "to be considered" list. Every 20-something male in the world could be on it. Maybe there's a Cinematical reader just waiting to be plucked from obscurity!
Or not. According to sources over at IESB.net, which included everyone from CAA to Marvel, no actor has been approached. Not even Maguire. But so worried has Sony been about the rumor that they have supposedly been scrambling to have the Fugit story taken off the sites, down to every link and reference. A Sony rep also told IESB that the Fugit story is completely false. "No one is being considered for the role but Tobey. Period."
I'm surprised that it caused such panic, given that everything about this movie is in the rumor stage. Are they worried Maguire will be miffed? He isn't the type. Naturally, they will offer it to him first, and I think he knows that. And I certainly hope he makes a return. In my opinion, nothing mars a franchise like losing the original actor, and I would like to see him tackle an older and wiser Peter Parker.
Cinematical.com,29/5/2008,written by Elizabeth Rappe
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Beverly Hills Cop 4 News
Recent years have seen some of the great franchises of the 1980s undergo timely updates. In the last 12 months alone, we've had Rambo IV, Indy IV and Die Hard IV, so it was only a matter of time before iconic action comedy Beverly Hills Cop got the same treatment.
According to Variety, Paramount -- currently raking in the nostalgia dollar off the back of Indy -- has set the project up, with Eddie Murphy reprising his role as smart-ass detective Axel Foley.
Meanwhile, perennial fan-boy hate figure Brett Ratner (who directed the none-too-dissimilar Rush Hour films) is "in negotiations" to direct the film. Jerry Bruckheimer, who produced the insanely popular originals along with the late Don Simpson, will not be involved.
Transformers producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura will instead oversee the project, and is currently searching for a writer to pen the screenplay.
Filming will begin in 2009, so expect to hear that iconic theme tune in summer 2010.
ign.com,29/5/2008,written by Orlando Parfitt
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Thursday, May 29, 2008
Lost flash-forwards in chronological order
The chronological order was found on Lostpedia.com (according to uploader danomano65)
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Soderbergh and Tarantino: Warrior Auteurs (TIME)
They emerged as hot phenoms, at Cannes and in Hollywood, within a couple years of each other. Steven Soderbergh brought his first feature here in 1989. That's when sex, lies, and videotape proved itself a come-from-nowhere winner of the Cannes Palme d'Or in 1989, then a sizable commercial success, Quentin Tarantino showed Reservoir Dogs at Cannes in 1992, but that was the merest fanfare to his Pulp Fiction, a Palme d'Or triumph in 1994 and probably the defining movie — certainly the most vivid, film-wise comic epic — of its decade.
Since then, Soderbergh has won an Oscar (for directing Traffic), guided Julia Roberts to a statuette of her own (for Erin Brockovich) and launched an action-movie franchise (Ocean's), while Tarantino, a slower worker, created the vertiginous, voluminous Kill Bill. Today both gents were back on the Riviera, Soderbergh for the world premiere of his Che Guevara bio-pic, Tarantino to give a film "master class" — essentially a 2hr. interview, plus clip show, with the eminent French critic-historian Michel Ciment.
Not to keep you in suspense, Q.T.'s session was loads more illuminating, cinematic and fun than S.S.'s.
CHE PASA?
In preview stories on Cannes, some movie each year is referred to as the most eagerly anticipated of the festival. There should be another category — most acutely dreaded — and this time that was Che. At an announced running time of 4hr.28min. (it wound up at about 4hr.20min.), and with the madly idiosyncratic Benicio Del Toro as his star, the film wasn't promising so much as it was threatening.
Say this for Soderbergh: among all contemporary American directors, he has the most restless ambitions. His interests range far and wide, across different genres but, more important, different kinds of movies: the indie romantic comedy (sex, lies, and videotape), the all-star action spectacle (Ocean's) and the defiantly obscurantist conundrum (Schizopolis). His films can toady to an audience's prejudices (Erin Brockovich) or virtually say, "Don't watch me" (Bubble). He has the clout to get his projects off the ground and the work ethic to make them quickly: Che is his ninth feature this decade, not including shorter films and the TV series K Street. And he doesn't just direct his own films, he photographs them (under the pseudonym Peter Andrews). Yet Soderbergh seems defined more by these giant, wayward ambitions than by a discernible authorial personality. If his name were taken off his films, sophisticated viewers would be hard pressed to locate a visual or thematic through-line.
Che is a halfway movie: too expensive (reportedly $61 million) to be relegated to art houses, too stiff and forbidding to appeal to any part of a mass audience. In its Cannes gestation it was presented in two parts (though neither part bore an official title here), each slightly more than two hrs.: The Argentine, which covers Guevara's role in Fidel Castro's 1958 campaign across the Cuban jungle, ending in the flight of President Batista and the ascendency of Castro (Demian Bichir); and Guerilla, detailing Che's failed, ultimately fatal attempt to bring revolution in Bolivia.
In the program notes, producer Laura Bickford says that the first part is "more of an action film with big battle scenes," and the second part "more of a thriller." Actually, neither tag truly applies. Though Part One begins by hopscotching from 1955, when Castro and Guevara meet, to later scenes in Havana and New York, at least 80% of the whole effort takes place in the Cuban or Bolivian jungle. It's the woodsiest war movie ever, and less along march than an endless slog.
Directors often say that their favorite version of one of their films was the 4hr. rough cut; after that, trimming the material down to standard length was like flaying or filleting your baby. Given the expanse of Peter Buchman's script, Soderbergh must have figured he had a story that would take 4 hours to tell and, dammit, that's the movie he'd show here. So the running time is not the problem of this honorable, doomed effort; it's that so many scenes are repetitions of earlier ones. Che has to instill military discipline in his ragtag rebels in Cuba, then in Bolivia; in both places he has to decide whether to accept underage volunteers; in both, he gives his men a chance to quit before the decisive battles, where they are fired on by unseen regular soldiers and suffer the deaths of friends who've made their big speech or poignant impression moments before. And forgive me for asking, but with all these young men spending up to a year in the jungle, why (with one rapacious exception) so they never express any interest in women. Are they bearded Boy Scouts, or celibate monks with guns?
Occasionally, the film is enlivened by the guest appearances of familiar actors, sometimes cast appropriately (Lou Diamond Phillips as Mario Monje, Catalina Sandina Moreno as Che's second wife), sometimes not (Matt Damon as a negotiator in Bolivia!?). But the major burden falls on its star, who as one of the producers has nurtured the project for almost a decade. And Del Toro — whose acting style often starts over the top and soars from there, like a hang-glider leaping from a skyscraper roof — is muted, yielding few emotional revelations, seemingly sedated here. Except for one thrilling confrontation at the UN between Guevara and ambassadors from other Latin American countries, Che is defined less by his rigorous fighting skills and seductive intellect than by his asthma.
The dyspepsia of Del Toro's performance is partly due to the bromides he has to enunciate — that the most important quality of a revolutionary is "love," and that he's not a Catholic but "I believe in mankind" — and partly because so little information is vouchsafed about his non-jungle career or his private life. (You're about 100 mins, into Part One before Che mentions in passing that he has a wife and child back home.) Halfway through the film he has lost much of the power and poignancy you might expect of such a character, and by the end he's relinquished all our interest. After all that time spent with the revolutionary leader, the viewer still may ask, "So, who is this guy?"
As Roger Ebert put it: "No attempt is made to get inside the mind of this complex man, Guevara. We are told he was a medical student, suffered from asthma, was more ruthless than Castro, was the real brain behind the operation. Big deal. ... When we aren't getting newsreels, we're getting routine footage of guerrilla clashes in the jungle. ... All this movie inspires toward the Cuban Revolution is excruciating boredom..." He wrote this in 1969, in a review of the flop Hollywood bio-pic Che!, with the not-very-Latin Omar Sharif as Guevara. Yet most of Ebert's denunciations apply to Soderbergh's movie, which dispenses with the exclamation point — and, in fact, with almost all of the compelling, sometimes contradictory drama in Guevara's life.
VIVE QUENTIN!
Before a packed house at the 800-seat Debussy Theatre, Tarantino bounds onstage with the sort of animal and intellectual energy seen in few films here this year. Without much prodding from Ciment, he pinwheels opinions, more or less praising the new flop movie Speed Racer (bravo, brave Q.T.!), and railing against film composers, coming in at the last moment to "save" a film with their intrusive underscoring: "Who the f--- is this guy, throwin' his sh-t over my movie?"
He was sharpest in recalling his early days, when a film lover had no video store to serve as his library-cinematheque. Instead, he said, "I'd get the TV Guide every week, go through [the movie listings] cover to cover, circle the films I was going to record." Later he famously worked at Video Archives in Manhattan Beach, Cal., but that was only part, and not the crucial part, of his film education. "Everything I learned about writing I got from acting class." James Best, a longtime film and TV actor (Sam Fuller's Verboten!, Budd Boetticher's Ride Lonesome and Ray Kellogg's The Killer Shrews, to pick only from his work in 1959), taught a class called Camera Technique: how to act in movies. "He started teaching me the vocabulary of the camera." That was the beginning of Tarantino's rise to becoming a writer with camera movement and actor's behavior as well as the wild dialogues that get all the attention in his movies.
Just before he was to make Reservoir Dogs, he took part in a directors' workshop at the Sundance Institute. He shot a long-take dialogue scene and showed it to three veteran directors; they all thought it stank, and one cinematographer told him, "Not only is this scene horrible, the most frightening thing is that you're going into production." The next week, a new group of directors came in; this time there were raves for the same scene. Terry Gilliam offered encouragement, and Volker Schlondorff said, "Ah, da little genius!" Tarantino says this taught him an important lesson: "People are gonna really like my stuff or really not, so get f---in' used to it."
By now, the world is used to Tarantino's stuff, and most of the time can't get enough of it. (Now he's working on a World War II epic.) But in the back of his head is the grudging ambition of the outsider, the movie geek, the 45-year-old fanboy. He still feels defiantly out-of-step; while every other director is going digital, Tarantino says, "I go backwards. It's lower-lower-lower tech for me." More than once today, he confided what he once felt and may still feel: "They don't let people like me make movies."
They ought to. Indeed, considering the vapid quality of films these days, at Cannes and beyond, they ought to make him make more movies.
TIME.COM,22/5/2008,written by Richard Corliss
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Shirley Manson cast in "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles"
Garbage lead singer Shirley Manson is venturing into acting in a big way with a regular role next season on Fox's "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles."
On "Sarah Connor," produced by Warner Bros. TV, Scottish musician Manson will play Catherine Weaver, the CEO of a cutting-edge high-tech company.
The sci-fi series, an offshoot from the "Terminator" feature franchise, is returning for a second season in the fall after launching in midseason as the highest-rated new scripted series of the 2007-08 season.
It stars Lena Headey as Sarah Connor, Thomas Dekker as her son John Connor and Summer Glau as terminator Cameron Phillips.
Formed in Madison, Wis., Garbage broke on the national scene in 1995 with its self-titled debut album, which spawned the modern rock hit "Only Happy When It Rains" and has gone double platinum. The quartet, which also includes Nirvana producer Butch Vig on drums, has released three other albums, the most recent in 2005.
Hollywood Reporter,29/5/2008
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David E. Kelley makes a move
After more than twenty years at 20th Century Fox TV, Emmy-winning writer-producer David E. Kelley is packing his bags.
One of the longest and most succesful collaborations in television history is coming to an end as Kelley announced that he is entering into a three-year partnership with Warner Bros. TV.
The new deal, said to be worth around eight figures, will have Kelley developing new shows for broadcast and cable as well as Warner's digital projects.
Kelley's deal with 20th Century Fox, which spawned TV hits such as Boston Legal, Ally McBeal and The Practice, expires in June, and the final series under that deal, Boston Legal, is in production for its final season 13-episode order at ABC.
Even though Kelley has been at Fox since his TV career with his job as a writer on L.A. Law in 1986, the change was prompted by Kelley's desire to deal less with administrative issues and more with creating shows.
While Fox did make an offer for a new deal with Kelley he ultimately opted to go to Warner Bros., partly because of his relationship with studio president Peter Roth, who used to work with him at Fox.
Tv Squad,28/5/2008,written by Paul Goebel
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Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Wanted U.S Trailer 4-Featurette
Wanted is a 2008 film loosely based on the comic book miniseries Wanted by Mark Millar. The film is directed by Timur Bekmambetov and stars James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, Thomas Kretschmann, Konstantin Khabensky and Angelina Jolie. Production began in April 2007. Wanted has a target release date of June 27,2008. Wanted is rated R for strong bloody violence throughout, pervasive language and some sexuality.
Wesley Gibson(James McAvoy) is offered the opportunity to seek revenge in the murder of his father, who was an assassin. Gibson is invited by his father's partner, Sloan (Morgan Freeman), to follow in his father's footsteps.Sloan's second-in-command (Angelina Jolie) mentors Gibson,who follows the death orders issued by the Fates, weavers who read individuals' destinies in fabrics produced by mystical looms.
U.S trailer 4
Featurette (www.empireonline.com)
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U.S Box Office May 23-26
| 1 | Indiana Jones and the Kingdom... | $ 126,917,373 | 4,260 | 1 | $ 29,793 | $ 151,958,445 | | ||
| 2 | The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian | 29,810,163 | 55,034,805 | -45.8 | 3,929 | 2 | 7,587 | 97,855,173 | |
| 3 | Iron Man | 26,111,130 | 31,838,996 | -18.0 | 3,915 | 4 | 6,670 | 258,278,546 | |
| 4 | What Happens in Vegas | 11,363,713 | 13,883,874 | -18.2 | 3,188 | 3 | 3,565 | 56,609,605 | |
| 5 | Speed Racer | 5,272,202 | 8,117,459 | -35.1 | 3,112 | 3 | 1,694 | 37,481,539 | |
| 6 | Made of Honor | 4,240,435 | 4,702,950 | -9.8 | 2,393 | 4 | 1,772 | 39,901,734 | |
| 7 | Baby Mama | 4,208,105 | 4,680,610 | -10.1 | 2,158 | 5 | 1,950 | 53,016,250 | |
| 8 | Forgetting Sarah Marshall | 2,269,775 | 2,786,220 | -18.5 | 1,073 | 6 | 2,115 | 58,798,745 | |
| 9 | Harold & Kumar Escape From... | 1,163,460 | 1,997,450 | -41.8 | 750 | 5 | 1,551 | 36,152,416 | |
| 10 | The Visitor | 940,037 | 672,448 | 39.8 | 270 | 6 | 3,482 | 4,591,262 | |
Source:boxofficeguru.com
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Cannes 2008: Tarantino Announces Next Project
News on Quentin Tarantino's long-mooted, eagerly anticipated WWII movie Inglorious Bastards has been pretty thin on the ground in the last couple of years, with the project seemingly stuck in the dreaded 'development hell' - or writing phase.
That all changed in Cannes this year, with the Pulp Fiction director telling a French TV show that Inglorious Bastards will not only be his next outing, but that filming is imminent.
He said: "The next movie I'm doing is my World War II movie. I just finished up the first draft of the script and when I go home I'll be finishing it up and if all goes well, I will be here, in Cannes, in 2009 with Inglorious Bastards!"
The title is taken from the American name given to the 1977 Italian war movie Quel maledetto treno blindato, but instead of a straight remake, Tarantino intends Inglorious Bastards to be an homage to both the movie and other war fare including The Dirty Dozen, Cross of Iron and The Great Escape .
ign.com,27/5/2008,written by Orlando Parfitt
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Spinoffs becoming ever more common
The knock against television series used to be that shows essentially told the same story week after week.
But lately, networks have been trying to replicate entire series night after night.
From NBC's "The Office" to Fox's "Family Guy" and Sci Fi Channel's "Battlestar Galactica," ratings-hungry networks increasingly are urging their best performers to produce offspring. The debut of "Grey's Anatomy"-inspired "Private Practice" in the fall was only the start. Next season there's the still-unnamed "The Office" spinoff and Fox's "Family Guy" extension, "The Cleveland Show," as well as the "Battlestar Galactica" prequel, "Caprica," which is filming a two-hour backdoor pilot. Projects based on Fox's "House" and "Prison Break" also are in development.
"It's a simple financial equation," "House" creator David Shore said. "Something is working, they want more of it. If you can figure out a way to split it in half, they're gonna go for it. It's really that simple, and I can't blame them. It's just a question of making it work."
Spinoffs are nothing new. The annals of television count more than 100 attempts to successfully spin off a show's character or concept. The 1970s in particularly were spinoff boom years, when such hits as "All in the Family" and "Happy Days" spun off multiple shows.
By the '90s, however, spinoffs had become much less common. Sometimes a network would spin off a dying comedy to fill a ratings void (such as when NBC's "Cheers" successfully spawned "Frasier" and NBC's "Friends," less successfully, gave rise to "Joey").
More recently, networks tried copying such crime procedural hits as NBC's "Law & Order" and CBS' "CSI." The spinoffs worked partly because their parent shows had an episodic formula that was precisely replicated to fill multiple hours.
TV historian Tim Brooks said the new spinoff projects represent an overall trend of networks trying to make safer plays. "Networks with their declining audiences and pinched financials seem to be trying to stretch things more than create things," Brooks said.
"Office," "Grey's," "Family Guy" and "House" also each bear the tricky-to-copy distinctive voice of their respective creators -- a point "Lost" co-creator Damon Lindelof says is no longer unnoticed by media-savvy fans.
"I've seen in the press and also on the message boards, people are concerned with what's going to happen to 'The Office' if Greg Daniels starts to work on a second show," he said. "Whereas before, the public perception would be that Steve Carell makes 'The Office' great 'cause he just makes up the show as he goes along."
Fan concern that showrunners could spread themselves too thin is perfectly valid, writers say. Just running one broadcast series is more than enough to fill a workday.
"The studio will say, 'You know, we'd love to get another show from you,' " one showrunner said. "Then 10 minutes later, they'll say, 'But your current hit has to be your No. 1 show.' And they mean both parts of it. What they really want is for me to work 48 hours a day."
Lindelof noted he's frequently asked by fans if he'd ever do a spinoff of his trapped-on-an-island hit "Lost." His answer: "How does that work?"
Hollywood Reporter,23/5/2008,written by James Hibberd
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Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Tv series 26/5-1/6
Thursday May 29:-Lost Season 4 Episodes 13-14 "There's No Place Like Home" (Season finale part 2)
Friday May 30:-Battlestar Galactica Season 4 Episode 8 "Sine Qua Non"
Sunday June 1:-The Tudors Season 2 Episode 10 (Season finale)
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Sunday, May 25, 2008
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Review
19 years have passed since the release of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (it's probably my favourite movie from the first three).Until recently,it was considered as the last Indy movie and as it's pointed out it was a nice way to end a successful series.All this time,there was a lot of of talk about a fourth Indiana Jones movie,many rumours about the script,the release,the disagreement between the key people involved in the production (George Lucas,Steven Spielberg,screenwriters).Until 2006,nothing was certain.However,after all these years of waiting,the new Indiana Jones movie is released.
You may have read about the various scripts of Indy 4.The final script was written by David Koepp (Spiderman,Secret Window).He kept what he felt were good ideas from previous scripts (such as Mutt, which he felt was an interesting role reversal from Last Crusade).The crystal skull was already the plot device.The screenwriter aimed to make Indy 4 less dark than Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom yet less comic than Last Crusade, aiming for the balance from the first film.However,in my opinion,the movie is tonally closer to Last Crusade.
19 years after the Last Crusade,in 1957,the era is different:Cold War,McCarthy era.This era is depicted in the movie (from the FBI suspicions,investigation,pursuit of Dr.Jones to the Soviet agents).The opening scene serves serves as a great introduction to the movie,in a place familiar from a previous Indy movie.It's one of the many references to the original trilogy ,which are successfully integrated to the plot and will please Indy fans.Dr.Jones still teaches in college and we learn some things about his activities after the last movie.After a series of events,he's back in action and in pursuit of the crystal skulls.During this time,Mutt Williams (Shia La Beouf) is introduced.You probably know that he is Indy's son.One of the most funny moments,is the reaction of Indy when he learns that Mutt is his son.It's not the only funny moment in KOTCS,there are many of them,many hilarious lines,which don't make the movie a comedy,but they are successfully integrated to the plot.
Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) returns and the chemistry between her and Indy,that we saw in Raiders of the Lost Ark,still exists,although her role here is smaller.At first,the impression about Mutt may be mixed,but he becomes a likable character and he participates in many action scenes.If Shia La Beouf can be the protagonist of a possible fifth Indiana Jones movie,that's another subject.In my opinion,the recent George Lucas statements are not incidental.In KOTCS it is evident,that the writers had in mind this possibility.
Harrison Ford,although he is 66 years old,he's still in shape.He's still Indy,athough a little tired,and he proves it.His perfomance is very good and the script helps him,with smart and funny lines.Cate Blanchett is also very good as the villain,Irina Spalko.She's beautiful,even with that hair.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has a lot of action,many action scenes and many impressive scenes.Although David Koepp,wrote most of the script,a significant part was a combination of elements from previous scripts.And maybe that's one of the movies flaws,the plot.The movie,sometimes,slows down and the alien element is a matter of controversy,which either you'll like or you won't.Initially,i was not negative about that,but with the conclusion of the mystery of the crystal skulls,my feelings were mixed.However,Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a filling movie,with lots of action and with many funny moments.It's a very good,entertaining movie.
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Indiana Jones video games:the Future
Upcoming Indiana Jones video games
Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures trailer
Indiana Jones(working title) E3 2006 (Gametrailers)
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Indiana Jones video games:the Past
Indiana Jones video games released in the past
Angry Video Game Nerd: Indiana Jones (Gametrailers)
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/34277.html
Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine
intro level review by Newkidaye
Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb trailer
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Lord of the Rings prequels:Guillermo Del Toro and Peter Jackson speak
The live chat "An Unexpected Party" was held on May 24 at Weta's website between fans and Guillermo del Toro, director of The Hobbit and its untitled sequel, and executive producer Peter Jackson. Del Toro and Jackson fielded fans' inquiries about the two projects, revealing a good deal about their plans for them.
"At this point in time the plan is to write [the screenplays] for the rest of this year and start early conceptual designs. 2009 will be dedicated to pre-production on both movies and 2010 will be the year we shoot both films back to back," Jackson told fans. "Post production follows one film at a time with The Hobbit being released December 2011, and (Film Two) release Dec 2012. That is the schedule in about as much detail as we have ourselves at the moment." Del Toro said the ratings for the two Hobbit movies would be the same as the Lord of the Rings trilogy, "an intense PG-13."
Casting buzz claims that LOTR veterans Ian McKellen (Gandalf), Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn), and Andy Serkis (Gollum) have all been approached to reprise their respective roles for the films. Del Toro clarified the matter by saying, "No casting has started yet ... but some people have thrown their helmet into the ring."
Jackson went further. "No casting has commenced and won't until the scripts are written. We have had chats with one or two of the LOTR actors however but the casting will be driven largely by the writing and it is impossible to cast 13 dwarves without knowing their personality and characters. We anticipate we won't be in serious casting mode for these movies until well into next year."
The Oscar-winning LOTR filmmaker later wrote that, "apart from extreme circumstances, we would never recast a character who appeared in the LOTR trilogy. You can read The Hobbit and pretty much see which characters play a part. The unknown factor is Film Two, which we are still developing. If we wished to write one of the LOTR characters into the narrative of Film Two, we would only do that with that actors blessing, and willingness to take part. Otherwise we'd take the writing in another direction."
Del Toro and Jackson's attention is now dedicated to adapting The Hobbit for the screen and developing a second film from scratch along with LOTR co-screenwriters Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens. Jackson said that "the second movie doesn't have a title yet and probably won't until we write the script. As you will see we have the incredibly boring name Film Two which I assure you will not last for very long. Bear with us."
When asked if del Toro's Hobbit, which is based on a children's book, would depart tonally from the dark LOTR trilogy, Jackson replied, "I personally feel The Hobbit can and should have a different tone. The 'tone' of these stories shouldn't be defined by the pressure our characters were under in LOTR. The world is a different place at the time of The Hobbit. The shadow is not so dark. However, what should stay the same is the reality of Middle-earth, and the integrity we bring to it as film makers."
Del Toro advised fans that, unlike in the LOTR movies, animal characters in his Hobbit will speak (as they do in the book). "I think it should be done exactly as in the book -- the 'talking beast' motif has to exist already to allow for that great character that is Smaug. It is far more jarring to have a linear movie and then -- out of the blue -- a talking Dragon."
Of Smaug, del Toro wrote that he "should not be 'the dragon in the Hobbit movie' as if it was just another creature in the bestiary. Smaug should be 'The DRAGON' for all movies past and present. The shadow he cast and the greed he comes to embody -- the 'need to own' casts its long shadow and creates a dramatic/thematic contunity of sorts that articulates the story throughout."
ign.com,24/5/2008
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The Women of Indiana Jones
If there is one thing I want to learn from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull -- one damn thing -- it's why the hell Dr. Henry Jones Jr. didn't end up married to Marion Ravenwood. Was she just too much for him? Or did she dump him, fed up with a man who was not only a scattered academic, but a fly-by-night adventurer? Really, that has to be a tough combo when you just want him to take you out to dinner.
With Kingdom of the Crystal Skull not only bringing back Ms. Ravenwood, but introducing the domineering Irina Spalko, I think it's high time we discussed Indy's women. Where would Dr. Jones be without the ladies? Without Marion, he probably would have been in an early grave, without Willie Scott and Elsa Schneider, he may have been spared a few extra scars.
I don't really need to sing the praises of Ms. Ravenwood here. We already know how she was the coolest sidekick of all, the sort of kickass chick who was not only unusual in 1981, but still pretty rare today. She rivals Princess Leia as one of George Lucas' finest characters. (It's rather sobering that the man who gave us Leia, Marion and Sorsha could only conjure up the broken-hearted Amidala years later. Seriously, Lucas, you burned your geek girl cred on that one.) I give Lucas the credit because my gut says it is owed him. When it comes to his action-adventure movies, Spielberg never quite spent the kind of time on his heroines like Lucas did. But he gets major props for the way his moms shine -- Spielberg knows that when you have kids, you don't immediately become a screeching moron -- even if your kids do surprise you with an extra-terrestrial.
Unlike a lot of fans, I was never too perturbed that Marion never returned. It made sense he had a different chick in each movie, it was a throwback to the serials, and it kept you guessing. For me, it was clear Marion was destined to be with Dr. Jones and in my own imagination; they went back and forth for years before finally settling down together. I always figured that's why she was absent from his adventures – she had a life, and didn't need to tag along. He knew where he could find her. (On the other hand, this article in Newsweek is a little alarming. How were audiences the only ones who fell for her?)
But I digress. I think it's time we examine the other women of Indiana Jones -- and I'm going to shock you all by defending the two everyone love to hate (especially the one named Wilhemina Scott).
I won't lie. As a kid, I loved her. I thought she was hilarious. I loved her musical entrance – and I still covet that dress. (And the ability to sing Anything Goes in Chinese. I think it could come in handy.) Even in adulthood, I can't muster up the incredible hate everyone feels towards her. She is annoying, certainly; she is shrill -- but she's also a throwback to the 30's, an homage to screwball comedies. She's the one average chick Indiana Jones encounters in his adventures and as such, you have to feel bad for her. She has a nice gig at Club Obi-Wan, an apartment in Hong Kong, dresses from Paris – and she somehow gets sucked into one nightmare of an adventure. How is a nightclub singer really supposed to cope with jungles, monkey brains, and tunnels full of bugs? I defy any chick, even Marion Ravenwood, not to totally flip out when someone tries to rip out your still- beating heart. Especially when the handsome archaeologist you were kind of into is just standing there watching. Knowing he was brainwashed with the Blood of Kali just doesn't make that situation any easier to tolerate. We would all be shrieking – in fact, I'm pretty sure most of us would be in the fetal position, weeping. Willie Scott manages to survive, sanity and scathing retorts intact. Maybe she even became a better person after.
And then there is Elsa Schneider. I don't particularly like Elsa, but I think she's well written. It's easy to forget that in her own way, she's a rebel. It says much about the times Indy lives in that he immediately assumes the Dr. Schneider he is to meet is a man. You could even imagine that with her cool practicality, she played on that every time she submitted a paper for publication. While she shamelessly used sex and beauty to get ahead, I'm not willing to believe she slept her way to a doctorate, because she knows her facts. She struck me as a solid academic – and one who enjoyed subverting the male expectations of a female brainiac by looking like Veronica Lake. She knew what idiots men could be – and that is how she manages to play every single man in the movie, from Donovan to Jones.
Action wise, she's just about as tough as Marion; handling fire, rats, and high-speed water chases with aplomb. Oh, she has terrible political leanings. But like Belloq, she tries to play the Nazis to get the prize, seemingly not appreciating what kinds of monsters she was dealing with. (Both scholars are what Indy could become, except that his conscience and beliefs override his desire for fortune and glory.) Unlike Belloq, I think she actually realizes it, but far too late. Like Anakin Skywalker, there is still good in her (you see it when she cries over the slain Knight of the Cruciform Sword), but she is in too deep. I think her complicity in killing Donovan is her way of atonement, as chillingly horrific as it is – and for all Indy's disapproval, it isn't like he stopped her.
To bring this all to some kind of unwieldy close, I think that when it comes to women characters, you have to give a nod of approval to Indiana Jones. The women in all three movies could have been vapid love interests, like so many Bond girls. But three films produced three unique women – and love them or hate them, they were at least recognizably human. But most of all, they held their own against Dr. Jones ... which is an adventure all by itself.
cinematical.com,21/5/2008,written by Elisabeth Rappe
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Saturday, May 24, 2008
Indy IV Looks Back at the Original Trilogy
There's never before seen behind the scenes footage of the original films, storyboards, interviews with George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Frank Marshall, Kathy Kennedy, Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, David Koepp, Ray Winstone, Jim Broadbent, John Hurt, Cate Blanchett, Shia LaBeouf and much more!
Part 1
Part 2
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Tarantino's Advice: Don't Go To Film School
Director Quentin Tarantino had this advice for aspiring filmmakers: take the money they have saved to go to film school and use it to make their own movie instead. "Trying to make a feature film yourself with no money is the best film school you can do," he said during a Cinema Master Class at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday, referring to his own early experience. Tarantino also revealed why he uses previously recorded music from other movies and TV shows rather than an original score for his films. "I just don't trust any composer to do it," he said, noting that the music is the last major element added to a production. "The idea of paying a guy and showing him your movie at the end -- who the f*** is this guy coming in here and throwing his s*** over my movie. What if I don't like it? And the guy's already been paid!"Cannes-Tarantino film lecture live blogged
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Interviews: Indiana Jones's Harrison Ford and Karen Allen
27 years after Raiders of the Lost Ark burst onto movie screens, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull brings Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones and Karen Allen's Marion Ravenwood back to the big screen: Reunited, as the song says, and it feels so good. What felt less good was the timing of the press interviews for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; Paramount scheduled their Cannes publicity interviews the day before the press screening of the film. (Call me a traditionalist, but normally I like to see the actual movie before talking to the actors in it; I'm just funny that way.) Still, Ford and Allen were funny and disarming -- they seemed a little amused by the hypothetical questions and broad general inquiries the chain of events required -- and Cinematical was there to learn about Harrison Ford's take on the best part sof playing Indy, Karen Allen's musings on Marion Ravenwood's sex life and much more;
I'm just wondering how your own excitement level is, returning to the Indiana Jones character?
Harrison Ford: Well, I'm very excited to bring another one of these spectacular adventures to the screen, and to work with Steven and George again. For the last twenty years or so, these films have continued to appeal to an audience, and young kids, as it becomes age-appropriate, have been introduced to the films on DVD by their parents, and to have the opportunity for them to see it full-scale in a movie theatre, with a big screen and big sound, in the dark with a bunch of strangers, and have this common visceral experience is a brilliant opportunity, so I'm delighted to be a part of it again.
You've always resisted having a favorite character. I was wondering if you'd say that Indiana is now your favorite.
HF: Well, you've worn me down: Indiana Jones is now my favorite character. No, all I insist on is that the pleasure of the process for me as a professional is the work itself, and I don't have a favorite character. You have favorite characters. You're the viewer, the buyer, a customer if you will, and it's perfectly natural for you to have favorites. But for me, it's about the experience, it's about the process, it's about the challenge of it all, so regardless of whether or not it's highly successful or moderately successful or not successful at all, it's not about having favorites.
What about coming back to Indiana Jones ... you've been talking about it for years and kept saying, "Well, they're working on a script, we'll see ..."; Was there ever...
HF: Well, of course they were lying; they just made it up two weeks before we started. No, it was a long slog, it was a complicated process, it was, as it has always been. George works on the germination of the idea, he and Steven work with a writer they have agreed on, there are adjustments to be made – by the way, these guys, they're a little busy, they do other things, other than Indiana Jones movies – so it's not a full-time job to get one of these scripts together. But when it's ready, and we all agree, when they do their process, it comes to me, and I have my little say about it, and the recipe is adjusted. It's a meal for three, so maybe a touch more of this or a little too much salt ... we work it all out amongst us until we're all confident that we have something of the quality that we've done in the past.
And did you think it was always going to happen, that you'd come back for a fourth time?
HF: I didn't think about it much at all, until I read the script, a script that finally engaged me and I thought was a challenge and an opportunity.
Based on the trailer, it looks like you handle the age question with humor ...
HF: We don't handle the age question, we ignore it. Obviously, we've moved twenty years deeper into history, we're no longer dealing with Nazis but with Russian villains. It's 1957, the Cold War and the era of McCarthyism in the United States, a very interesting resonance to modern times that might engage us a little bit. And the character: the hair's a little gray – a lot gray – and...
And some of the stunts go a little awry, based on the trailer... in the sense that you can be more clumsy than you were in 1981.
HF: I beg your pardon. (Laughs) You're getting a little bit more clumsy too.
Yeah, I am.
HF: No, age has its virtues and it has its disadvantages, and I think we embrace the reality of the passage of twenty years of time. We're not coy about it, you know, constantly commenting on it, but the guy is twenty years older.
Did you ever worry that they might be waiting so long that they'd have another Indiana Jones come in and you couldn't do it?
HF: Oh, yeah, I was desperate about that. No, I was just hoping that Brad (Pitt) wouldn't be available.
You mentioned a couple of times about the challenges of doing this. What were the challenges?
HF: The challenge is always – ladies and gentlemen, Karen Allen – the challenge is the same as it always is, to bring a character and the situations to life, to manipulate and express the ideas of a story. Every scene's got a reason to be there. There's a germ of the story, there's a character opportunity, there's a relationship opportunity in every scene, and the actor does the best he can to give that life and expression and fiber for the audience.
Is it more or less of a challenge, doing a fourth?
HF: It's the same job, and I don't think it's more of a challenge. If you feel that you're equipped with a script which gives you the opportunity to do your best work – and certainly, everyone had that ambition – then you just go ahead and do it. You don't sit and think, "Oh, this is gonna be a challenge," you know? It's work, and it's fun, by the way; I hate to spoil everyone's enjoyment of their own job, but... this is a better job. It's really fun. I get to work with really smart people who are amongst the best in the world at what they do, including this young lady. ...
What was it like going back twenty-six years after the first one, after you first worked together?
HF: I was delighted that Karen could rejoin us. She's the original relationship for Indiana Jones. We know Indiana Jones through the character that Karen played in the original film, and we learn more about him.
Karen Allen: Well, they have a history even before the film begins. We know that they've known each other, which comes forward right away, when she socks him in the jaw, we know that there's some history that never gets filled in, but they go back a long way.
HF: That's how we progress the relationship, in the understanding of the characters through the relationships that they have.
When you were talking about the script, you mentioned the McCarthy era and hinted on contemporary resonance, and I wondered if you could expand on that, and does this film have some kind of message or is it pure entertainment?
HF: No, it's not a message. Every bit of history has an opportunity for resonance to current times, and it was a period of time in American history when academia was under a real challenge for the freedom that makes people who are part of the academic process flourish, and so, well, I think we'll leave it at that and let you draw what you will from the film, but it's not a message and it's not a pointed sort of reference to the current day, but everything is the past is an opportunity to learn from the past and deal with the present.
You've just been named to the board, in Boston, of the Archaeological Society there?
HF: Yeah, I've just accepted...
The board of directors?
HF: Honorary, I think, board of directors.
Isn't this because you've been playing Indiana Jones, or is it something with your personal life as well that...?
HF: No, it's because Indiana Jones is the only archaeologist in current film history, and it has been good for archeology to have a contemporary representative of that profession on the screen.
Cinematical: Ms. Allen, Mr. Ford, have the scope and nature of the filming experience changed significantly from the first one? Were you just able to go back into working relationships with people, or was it different on a technical level, on a resource level, or even on a level of expectation?
HF: You mean, were the trailers bigger?
Cinematical: Not necessarily, but if that's what comes to mind...
HF: They were a little bigger, yeah...
KA: When we made Raiders of the Lost Ark, Steven was working with a lot of people for the first time, and my impression coming onto this set in the very beginning was, they have an amazing kind of team. Janusz Kaminski and all the people that Steven works with, it just felt so seamless, just like a well-oiled team of people, so there was something in that that felt really great to me, you know. They almost don't even have to speak; they make hand signs to each other across the room and people are moving and doing things, and that felt kind of different, because I remember Doug Slocombe, who was doing the first one... everybody was kinda trying to learn everybody's language. One thing that was so extraordinary to me coming onto a film like this for the first time, in London at Elmstree [Studios] when we were shooting Raiders, was just the extraordinary craft of the building of the sets, which just blew my mind. I'd never seen anything like that before, and I have to say that the craft of the sets in this film also blew my mind, almost on a daily basis. You'd walk into these sets that were being built, and I felt just like a little kid a lot of times. It was just like, "Wow! How'd they do this, and aren't we lucky to be working on these sets?" So those are the things that jump to mind...
Did you two stay in touch since Raiders? Have you seen each other at all in the last twenty years, or was it just on the set, like you picked up where you left off before?
KA: We'd seen each other a couple of times, when we did a promotion for when they came out with the box set of the films together. They brought Kate Capshaw and myself and Alison Doody together, and Harrison came by, and I saw him...
HF: We ran into each other on the streets of New York one time, but we haven't really... Karen lives in New York, I live in California, we haven't worked together, obviously, since then. We have different lives in different regions of the world, so we haven't really seen much of each other.
KA: But it felt very seamless. When I walked on the set to do the camera test in Los Angeles, and Harrison knocked on my door, and I opened the door, and suddenly, we're standing there, talking to each other as though weeks had gone by. It just felt very easy to me.
Ms. Allen, a couple of years ago (in an interview), you told me that you were utterly convinced that Marion and Indy had had a child together.
KA: No, I didn't tell you that. (Laughs)
You did tell me that.
KA: Years ago, I told you that?
Two years ago.
KA: I don't remember this conversation. What did it have ... In reference to what?
A phone interview for the New York Post.
KA: Oh, was I just making things up?
Yeah, you were making things up. (Laughs)
KA: There was a funny moment a couple of years ago when they did a couple of special screenings at the Paris Theatre in New York, and I hadn't seen the film in several years, and I was watching the film on the big screen for the first time in a really long time, and I remember the scene when we're on the submarine, and I wake up, and you're gone, and I remember noticing in this particular screening, my character reaches up and grabs her nightgown, and I thought, "gosh, I don't remember that!" I was thinking, I didn't remember that they had had a moment, like a romantic moment. In my mind, I was thinking of the missed kiss – you fall asleep, and there's that missed kiss – but then I forgot about the moment of her grabbing the... So I may have been making a joke about that moment or something...
Harrison, it seems like your attitude to the press process has changed; you used to seem as if doing interviews is worse than a root canal. Now, you seem...
HF: I've had a lot of root canals. (Laughs) I've got a mouthful of 'em. Of course, it's something you become somewhat more ... inured to. I recognize the value of the process, and hopefully, I'm not as ... impatient with it as I might have been. That's one of the virtues of the age, is becoming a little bit more graceful.
Does it help when it's talking about a film, or a series of films, that has become a part of popular culture? I mean, the impact of Indy goes beyond the individual installments of it. It just seems that it's a reference point now certainly in American popular culture, and also in world culture.
HF: Well, of course it's easier to talk about a film that you have the expectations and it's been admired rather than picked apart at the seams. But, of course, I have great confidence in this film on account of the people who are involved, which is not to say that any other people that I've worked with, I had less confidence in during the process. But this is a film that's made for the audience to enjoy, the pure pleasure of the moviegoing experience, and it's a huge, huge engine. We've seen the movie, and I think we have a degree of confidence that it'll be... an experience that people will enjoy.
And do you allow yourself to take pleasure in the idea that this has become a part of the popular culture?
HF: You know, it doesn't occur to me to think that way. It's my job, it's what I do for a living, and I'm really pleased when it's successful, when it brings pleasure to the audience, and it advantages me in the pursuit of my profession.
Obviously, you both used to work with each other. How did you both find working with Shia, and do you have any memorable moments in the filming with him?
KA: Shia's just a delight, as far as I'm concerned. He's very, very funny and – I don't know how much I can describe particular scenes in the film – but there's some moments where Shia has some quite challenging tasks he had to perform in the film, and there's just some very, very, very funny, wonderful moments with Shia where he was just above and beyond the call of duty. He's an incredibly talented young actor, I find him very eloquent as an actor. With his face, he says a lot... he's remarkable. I'm really very impressed with him, and I had an awfully good time with him.
HF: Me too. He's very professional, he works really hard. He had some very sort of arcane skills to acquire, and he worked really hard. He was an enormous pleasure to be around, and I really enjoy him a lot.
Did you teach him anything on set?
HF: I taught him how to act. (Laughs) Because nobody understands that except me... I didn't teach him anything; he taught me. He's been an actor for ten years or something, and he has an enormous talent. He's gonna be around for a long, long time.
You were talking it when it becomes age-appropriate to show the DVDs to our children. My six-year-old son watches the first three movies, which probably makes me a bad parent, but when did you let your kids see the movies, and the second part is, the violence in the movies isn't very graphic, it's somewhat old-fashioned, and do you think that's a good alternative, because, increasingly, we see really violent movies for kids out there.
KA: I think a little bit depends on the kid. My son, who's seventeen now, was very, very sensitive to violence in films. I mean, he would get extremely upset over things that wouldn't dawn on me as to find too violent, but he's just a kid who got very absorbed in whatever was on the screen in front of him, and he could get frightened very easily. So I waited, I don't think he saw Raiders of the Lost Ark until he was maybe 8 or 9, but I certainly know other kids who saw it at a much younger age, and the melting heads and things just didn't seem to bother them at all.
HF: Yeah, I agree absolutely. We have a seven-year-old at home, and I think he self-censors in a way. He's very much like Karen described her boy; it's not what he's looking for, and when he has an experience with a movie, he's really not ready for physical contest because it's not something that's part of his experience. So, in his case, in Liam's case, I think it would be another year or so before I let him see this film. This film, with the possible exception of ripping out hearts ...in The Temple of Doom, which, as you know, established the PG-13 rating, I think we're gonna have a film that the entire family can enjoy together.
How do you feel about showing it in Cannes, which is probably in front of the toughest crowd in the world?
HF: I'm really eager to see the train leave the station... and I think it'll be just fine.
Cinematical.com,22/5/2008,written by James Rocchi
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