New "Spider-Man 3" Art

Very cool. No doubt this will be a billboard in some theaters and a an eventual poster to be bought. Click the image to make it bigger.

Getting Serious About "The Mummy 3"

Apparently Universal Studios is dead set on getting this movie made and confident that the same actors from the first two films will return. The movie has a set budget of $100 million and is ready for on-location shooting in Montreal. Furthermore, even though no confirmed cast members have been announced, the film is shooting for a July 11, 2008 release date. I really want to have fun with this movie, but I'm afraid it'll just suck. Rob Cohen directing? The last good movie he did was in the mid 90s. Bring back Sommers, he'll atleast make it entertaining.

"Sunshine" Poster

HERE's the one I'm excited about-- And the rest of you should be too. Nice poster, very genuine, classy sci-fi look to it. "Sunshine" will arrive sometime this summer.

"Live Free or Die Hard" Poster

Here is the international poster to the 4th Die hard movie out this summer. Eh, I like Bruce willis a great deal so I'll check it out. He looks cool enough here. "Live free or Die Hard" comes to theaters June 29.

Alan Arkin Joins "Get Smart"

Oscar Winner Alan Arkin, for "Little Miss Sunshine", will be joining Steve Carrel once again in the remake of "Get Smart". Arkin will play the chief of CONTROL, which fights the evil forces of CHAOS. Edward Platt originally played the same character in the 1960s television series.
Cast members that have already been announced include Steve Carrel as Maxwell smart, Anne Hathaway as Agent 99 and, in an unknown, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. The film is shooting for a 2008 release.
So right after he wins the Oscar he goes for THIS movie. That's funny. I'm liking where this is going already, even though the last thing we need is another remake.

TRAILER - "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" TV Spot

Not a bad trailer. Looks even better than the theatrical teaser. I hated the first "Fantastic Four", but I have to admit this second movie looks kind of cool. I know. I'm setting myself up for disappointment. At least the trailer looks fun. Thank God Johnny is in this trailer to make a potentially cheesy line of dialogue pretty funny. Chris Evans is a good actor, he should leave the F4 scene to do some better movies sometime. Anyway, here's the TV spot:

"Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" Teaser Poster

Is it bad that I kind of think this looks cool? Yeah. Probably is.



The "Rise" of the surfer comes out June 15.

Oscar Winners...As If You Probably Don't Know

Sorry I'm late, but I still feel obligated to post this, especially since Scorsese finally won his Best Director award. History was made indeed. Overall it was a pretty good show. A lot better than the past two years have been. One can only hope Billy Crystal will return next year.
"Pan's Labyrinth" should have won best foriegn film. Dumbasses... Al Gore's work of fiction won documentary... how inconvenient for those who value truth. And I'm a little shocked at the Best Supporting Actor and Best Actor wins. Not that I was against the winners, it was just unexpected. You'll get yours one day DiCaprio. Poor Peter O'Toole though. Here's the winners:

BEST MOTION PICTURE OF THE YEAR
The Departed

ACHIEVEMENT IN DIRECTING
Martin Scorsese - The Departed

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Forest Whitaker - The Last King of Scotland

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Helen Mirren - The Queen

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Alan Arkin - Little Miss Sunshine

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Jennifer Hudson - Dreamgirls

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
William Monahan - The Departed

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Michael Arndt - Little Miss Sunshine

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM OF THE YEAR
The Lives of Others

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM OF THE YEAR
Happy Feet

ACHIEVEMENT IN ART DIRECTION
Art Direction: Jeannine Oppewall; Set Decoration: Gretchen Rau and Leslie E. Rollins
Pan's Labyrinth

ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATOGRAPHY
Guillermo Navarro - Pan's Labyrinth

ACHIEVEMENT IN COSTUME DESIGN
Milena Canonero - Marie Antoinette

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
An Inconvenient Truth

ACHIEVEMENT IN FILM EDITING
Thelma Schoonmaker - The Departed

ACHIEVEMENT IN MAKEUP
David Marti and Montse Ribe - Pan's Labyrinth

ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC WRITTEN FOR MOTION PICTURES
(ORIGINAL SCORE)
Gustavo Santaolalla - Babel

ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC WRITTEN FOR MOTION PICTURES
(ORIGINAL SONG)
“I Need to Wake Up” - An Inconvenient Truth
Music and Lyric by Melissa Etheridge

ACHIEVEMENT IN SOUND MIXING
Michael Minkler, Bob Beemer and Willie Burton - Dreamgirls

ACHIEVEMENT IN SOUND EDITING
Alan Robert Murray - Letters From Iwo Jima

ACHIEVEMENT IN VISUAL EFFECTS
John Knoll, Hal Hickel, Charles Gibson and Allen Hall - Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT
The Blood of Yingzhou District

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM
The Danish Poet

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM
West Bank Story

Eckhart Talks Too Much "The Dark Knight"?

Aaron Eckhart, who was recently announced as Harvey Dent, a.k.a. Two-Face, spoke recently to MTV about his role.
"I am excited. Christopher Nolan is an amazing director! It's another movie that's a dream come true." Eckhart says that the depth of character in Harvey Dent matches the transformation that Bruce Wayne went through to becoem Batman.
In the comics, Two-Face is a Gotham City district attorny who becomes horribly scared by acid and is deformed. This ignites the uprise of long suppressed rage within Harvey and results as a split personality.
"Batman is a complex character, and Two-Face comes a little bit from the same world. But [at the same time] he's apart from it." says Eckhart, "I'm looking for the tension between the two, the similarities between the two. I want to find what's similar to Batman and then find what's opposite to him."
The question was asked, will Eckhart only be Harvey in "The Dark Knight" or will we see Two-Face at all, his answer:
"Yeah," Eckhart then paused, "Well, I'm Harvey Dent ... then I go into Harvey Two-Face."
And then there was the rumor that it will be The Joker that ends up deforming Harvey Dent, of course we this:
"I think I'll be killed [if I comment on that] — I'm not even sure I can say as much as I have,"
Indeed he would...

REVIEW - "The Number 23" (2007)

The first thing I need to stress is that "The Number 23" is not a bad movie; it's just not a very good one either. So if I favor either side in this review it probably means that I'm still a bit confused by it. Not the story itself, the story makes complete sense. However, director Joel Schumacher ("The Phantom of the Opera", "Phone Booth", "Batman Forever", "Batman & Robin") wasn't really sure what kind of atmosphere he wanted for this movie.

Jim Carrey plays Walter Sparrow, a dog-catcher who becomes obsessed with a book called...guess. Anyway, his wife gives him the book for his birthday and he begins reading about a character that becomes obsessed with the number "23" and adds up wild conclusions about the number--Conclusions like the letters of a person's name adding up to 23, dates of horrible events being reworked in to 23...etc...etc... Soon Walter becomes infatuated with 23 as well and adds up the same conclusions. The only difference is that the events in the book seem to parellel his own life. Coincidence? Or has good ole Walter lost it?

The movie plays out like a very dark Sesame Street episode-- A whole show dedicated to 23 and how many different ways you can add up to it. Luckily Carrey's character isn't just adding up wild conclusions for too long and 23 actually does end up leading him to some answers. One thing to understand is that Walter is so infatuated with the simularities between him and the book that it appears he's trying to find the number everywhere. The movie will undoubtedly get slammed for all the incoherent conclusions drawn to the sum of 23; but then again Schumacher doesn't make it obvious enough that Walter is simply looking for the number.

On top of that, the character development seems to happen too fast. One moment he's sane and the next he's obsessively looking through childhood memories to make a link with the book. Perhaps I didn't find the similarities too startling-- Atleast not startling enough to go digging through my four-year-old reading material. But I guess that's not too big of a deal anyway. I simply wish the character had a smoother transition to obsession than what was presented. It just didn't feel right.

The movie is told in two worlds, the reality in which Walter lives and the universe in which the book's main character, "Fingerling" (played by Carrey), resides. At first it seems like the book universe will be told in a very stylized, overexposed world-- But it gets harder to distinguish as the movie goes on. The look of the book's world slips too far away from how it started. In the end it just looked and sounded inconsistent.

Jim Carrey does a great job acting as both characters and is probably the most consistant thing in the movie. With the rather disjointed material given to him he developed the character as well as he could and proved, again, that he's cut out for a role outside comedy. I'd like to see him in a more clear cut thriller if he's ever willing to be in a role like that again though. His one flaw was his narration for the book. It was like he was trying to do one of his comedic, character voices. What should've sounded grim ended up sounding a bit too comical.

The idea is enthralling, but the result is sloppy. Despite the flaws "The Number 23" has some visually appealing stuff to it and has a compelling enough story that strays from being too obvious. If the previews sold you to see this movie, it ends up being something you didn't expect. Whether that's a good or bad thing seems to be in the air because the movie has a hard enough time finding its own look and feel. Is it a narrative told as a flashback? It starts that way. Is the book's reality suppose to be over the top, ala "Sin City", or based a bit more in reality? Should the movie be looked at as a psychological thriller? Or a psychological horror? The book's reality appears to be the latter, but Walter's existence seems to be the former. I don't know. It's a fun movie; it's somewhat goofy and really incoherent, but atleast it was enjoyable. In this mess Jim Carrey salvages enough character material to keep us caring about Walter and his quest to find the meaning of 23.

** out of ****

TRAILER - "Next"

Hmm, Nicolas Cage might be in a potentially good movie this year afterall! "Next" looks like a fun new sci-fi thriller for the summer that's (GASP!) not a sequel or comic book. "Next" comes out April 27th. I more excited about "Sunshine", but "Next" has some major possibilites.

J.J. Abrams IS Directing Trek XI

After a lot of online nerd speculation it was officially announed that the creator of "Lost" and "Alias" will be directing the next Star Trek movie. For months now there's been miscommunication (on my part as well) whether or not he'd direct. He's been set to produce the film, but for a long time people weren't sure whether or not he was directing. Well, it's official. He is. So Trek fans that like the guy can relax and rejoice and others that don't can keep their heads in their asses.
Abrams will be working on casting in the following weeks, so I'm sure we can expect confirmation on that soon enough. I hope he can revive this franchise.
The movie is a prequel to the original series about Kirk and Spock during the academy days.

"Avatar" Release Data & Summary

James Cameron has been doing some mad preperation on his long awaited and highly anticipated "Avatar". The film will be in theaters Memorial Day, 2009.
The sci-fi epic tells the story of an injured ex-marine forced to settle on a planet "rich in bio-diversity" and eventually takes over to lead the planet's inhabitants in a struggle for survival.
I really can't wait for this, but damn that's a long wait. It better be amazing with the amount of time and money he has. I hope his genius hasn't faded like many filmmakers from his era.

Warner Bros. Wants a Live Action "Justice League"?

Yeah...sounds like packing way too much in to one movie and not having the writers to do it. Right now Warner Bros. has Kiernan and Michele Mulroney writing a script for the film, but wont reveal who will be in it. It's unlikely unknown characters will star in this film, but with the "Batman" and "Superman" franchise relaunched how will those characters figure in?
Will this be an alternate timeline or will it somehow tie together the two worlds of "Batman Begins" and "Superman Returns"? Hopfully it'll be the former. Combining the two franchises as they are now would be stupid. It just doesn't work.
Regardless of how they want to do this film in relation to other superhero flicks, another question remains: Do you get Christian Bale to play Batman and Brandon Routh to play Superman? For this, I say yes. Even if this movie does take place in a different timeline from the other movies, right now audiences know them as Batman and Superman-- It would be great having them continue the roles that, more or less, made them pretty big.
In any case, it looks like this movie is either very far off or will end up in production hell for awhile. But then again WB must be slightly serious about it seeing as they have two writers on it already...we'll see.

"Sin City 2" Ready for Action

Frank Miller was interviewed by Sci-Fi Wire recently about "Sin City 2":
"The script is largely done, and now we're in that limbo zone where we're casting and making script adjustments as we go," said Miller.
According to him the sequel will have the story "A Dame to Kill For" which is a prequel to "The Hard Goodbye" which was a story featured in the first film. Miller continues:
"There will be a couple of old ones and one new storyline. The old ones are a couple of 'Blue Eyes' stories, and there's an 'Old Town Girls' story, and the new one features Nancy Callahan [played by Jessica Alba] in a very different, very scary role. I'm hoping we'll start in late spring. It gets pretty hot in Austin, so there might be a summer's interruption there, but both Robert [Rodriguez] (director of the first "Siny City") and I really want to be shooting this thing as soon as possible."
Funny coming from a guy who didn't want any of his storylines made in to movies-- What a very different mindset. If "300" is good and "Sin City 2" follows the quality, he may end up being revered as the greatest comic-to-movie storyteller around. Can't wait for both this and "300"!