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Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Shooting IMAX sequences

This is one of the most exciting things that I have heard in some time.  My favorite movie of 2007 was Transformers, primarily because I grew up watching Transformers.  That and Peter Cullen, the original voice of Optimus Prime,  returned to reprise his role.

The movie was fun and, every time the Transformers appeared, I was blown away.  There just wasn’t enough time with the Transformers.  They were only on screen for about 25% of the film, if that.

For movie 2, I created a want list for the sequel that I’ll be posting again after seeing the sequel, along with my analysis of how I feel they did, and how much they may have met my expectations or not.

Now, thanks to the inspiration of The Dark Knight, Michael Bay is joining the crowd of those that are filming sequences with IMAX cameras.   These are films that deserve to be seen on IMAX, and Michael Bay is the right man for the job.

Read the full press release after the break.

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George Clooney is The Lone Ranger

Well, a few days ago I was talking about The Lone Ranger, and thinking they needed to cast someone in the title role that could and would steal scenes from Johnny Depp, who is in the role of Tonto.  There were rumors about who would take that role, and I believe they have found someone else that was both unlikely for the role, and that can upstage Depp in the role.

George Clooney (Ocean’s Trilogy) has been cast in the leading role.  He’ll be the man shouting “Hi-yo Silver, Away!” in Jerry Bruckheimer’s The Lone Ranger which is due in theatres in 2010.

Super-Poke For the Win!

Epic Win!  This is the result of months of poke wars on Facebook.

New Music: The Backstrokes

A friend of mine named Rob Antecki is in a band called The Backstrokes.  He asked that we all share this if we wanted to.  I figured I would.

Rob writes:

To the friends and fans of The Backstrokes:

We are happy to announce the release of our debut E.P., “Things to Come.” We have included five songs on this release: “Reflections,” “Haunted Landscape,” “Broken Bicycles,” “To Alina,” and “The Secret.”

For those of you who have been following us, you know that this recording represents a very large investment of time, work, finances, and emotional involvement. With this in mind, we would like to ask you for a favor.

Right now, we are at the ground level of our work together. Everything we have done, we have done on our own and with the generous help of family, friends, and acquaintances who believe in our music. We do not have the luxury of major label (or ANY label) support. This means we are fully responsible for recording and promoting our material.

If you like our music, support our material, ideas (detailed below), and plans for the future, I ask you to please spread the word about us. The best advertising you can give us is to tell your friends, for them to tell their friends, and so on. This favor will only take seconds of your time but would mean the world to us. Almost as important, we encourage you to purchase a copy of our E.P., for which we have provided a convenient and secure link. These will also be available at our concerts. We think $5.00 is a reasonable price for your own convenient, CD quality copy with liner notes. Therefore, please pass our music around to friends and spread the word, but also encourage them to purchase the E.P. if they like it and listen to it. We have many plans for the future, which include a debut album, releasing our work on vinyl, concerts, music videos, and short films. All of us are in school and work, so our time and financial resources are very limited. Anyone seriously involved in music understands how expensive studio time, equipment, CD pressing, and promotions are. Any support you can give us is very much appreciated.

With this said, we would now like to introduce some general principles which guide us in our work.

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Johnny Depp: Pirates 4, Lone Ranger and Alice in Wonderland

I’m not a big Johnny Depp fan.  Hardly at all, actually.  But that isn’t to say that I don’t like movies that he’s been a part of.  For instance, I haven’t really watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in years, but I have seen Charlie and the Chocolate Factory a few times. The simple fact that the Roald Dahl Estate enjoyed the adaptation enough to grant them license to use the name says a lot, as the name was revoked from the musical film because it wasn’t what they wanted in an adaptation of the book.

I have also seen him, much to my chagrin, in Secret Window, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and Benny & Joon.  Pitty that those movies weren’t worth watching.  I’m glad I saw them all for free.

The only other movie that I’ve seen him do a decent job in, is Finding Neverland.  But that actually had a compelling story, unlike the last three I mentioned.

That being said, I’ve enjoyed the character of Jack Sparrow.  I didn’t like, however, the chain-reaction of millions of female fans suddenly claiming that Jack Sparrow was God’s gift to women.  To me, that takes away some of what made Jack Sparrow a real man, making him more of a girl (see Girl Vs Awesome Heroes, though I disagree with him about The Karate Kid - quite possibly the greatest movie ever made).  However, Jack Sparrow was always able to manipulate his way out of situations in sometimes very daring ways, making him something more of a man.

Now, Johnny Depp has signed on for Pirates of the Caribbean 4.  He can’t get enough of playing that character.  I’m interested to see where this is going.  I hope that Geoffrey Rush is back as Barbosa, too.  But if Orlando Bloom is in it, and isn’t playing an elf, but instead someone that isn’t supposed to appear wooden and regal, they’re going to need to do a lot to keep me watching.  Let the story move past the characters of Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann.  Their story is now complete, while Sparrow has more to go.  I’m glad that Disney is willing to make a fourth film.  We can’t let the series end with that third one.  However entertaining it was, having a nearly impossible to understand witch-doctor (who should have been subtitled) become a giant in the middle of the film was not very fun.  The rest of the film was epic fun, but that was overkill.

He’s also signed to play a role in Jerry Bruckheimer’s adaptation of The Lone Ranger.  The role of the Lone Ranger’s sidekick, Tonto.  Good thing that Depp is part Cherokee.  Until I learned that, I thought they should have actually cast a true Native American in the role.  It seems they have. Sort of.  Either way, however, when the cast the Lone Ranger, it had better be someone great that can steal the scenes from Johnny Depp.  We don’t want to see the marquee say “Johnny Depp is TONTO in The Lone Ranger.”  Being the side-kick, the actor in the leading role should get the glory and the top-line.

And coming in at no big surprise to anyone, Tim Burton’s adaptation of Alice in Wonderland is going to have Johnny Depp in the role of The Mad Hatter.  Brilliant casting.  If there’s anyone that can pull of a watchable Alice, it’s Burton.  Let’s see if he does it.

I just wish girls everywhere would get over their tendencies to scream every time Johnny Depp’s name is mentioned.  He’s a married man, get over it.

-via Cinematical

Great Wii Games

Spider-Man 4 and 5 are on, Tobey Maguire has Signed

This is some of the best news I’ve heard in some time.  Tobey Maguire has officially signed on to reprise the role of Peter Parker in Spider-Man 4 and Spider-Man 5.

You see, when Spider-Man came out in 2002, I wasn’t a fan of it.  I thought that Green Goblin was too much of a Power Ranger, and including Macy Gray dated the film to a certain era (something I think some films should do their best to avoid).  Not only that, but when it came out, I was anxiously awaiting the release of Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones.

When it came down to it, I thought that some of the effects in Spider-Man were really cheesy.  Peter Parker’s leap from rooftop to rooftop looked pretty bad from time to time, and next to the effects in Star Wars, was pretty lacking.  Yoda looked more alive.

Spider-Man 2 came out a couple of years later, in 2004, and blew my mind.  Not only was Goblin out of the picture, but we had a villain that was both charismatic, and a story that not only topped the original, but made me a fan.  The fight scenes were all incredible and fun.

After that, it took the creative team an extra year of work to create Spider-Man 3.  Now, here’s a movie that split the audience.  Everyone seems to agree that it’s not a great film, and that tends to be a general concensus.  It’s not something that I agree with.  At all.

I think it’s a phenomenal film.  While it falls short of the second film, it does have a lot to love.  The main problems with Spider-Man 3, I think, are the following:

• John Jameson should have been the reason the symbiote came to earth. He was introduced in the second film, and it should have been used.  Instead, the symbiote randomly crashed to earth.
• Gwen Stacy should have been the one in peril at the end. Instead, Mary Jane Watson was once again captured.  The film would have been much more effective if Gwen was the one in trouble.  Instead, it was more of a paint-by-the-numbers routine.
• Emo Peter Parker should have been better explained. The symbiote had started to control Parker, and was beginning to control him.  It was also alien, so it wasn’t really aware of it’s surroundings, and started to make Parker do things that were way out of character.  That’s simply because it wasn’t Parker that we were seeing.  It was a symbiote-possessed Parker, exploring the world for the first time.
• Venom should have been reduced to a minor character until the very end. How cool would that have been?  Rearrange the story of Spider-Man 3 a bit, remove the venom bits from most of the story, and you’ve got a great Spider-Man 3 that is as good as Spider-Man 2.

Here’s how I would have done Spider-Man 3:

• Start it out with Jameson returning from a mission to space, and J. Jonah Jameson has Parker cover the story, acquiring the symbiote at that point.  Sandman (perfectly executed in the film) has center stage for the entirety of the film, as prime villain, although he’s doing this with a noble end in mind: helping his daughter.  Contrasted with that is Parker with the black costume, making our hero into a vigilante.  In a way, this would swap the roles of hero and villain.  Sure, Brock would be a part of the story, but he’d only become Venom for the last moment.  We’d have a final battle with Parker fighting Sandman.  Hobgoblin (New Goblin) would come into it a little bit as well, but after the rescue of Gwen Stacy, there’d be an epilogue.  Brock will have witnessed the battle, and Gwen’s rescue, and gotten jealous of Spider-Man, and found his way to the church, where the symbiote would claim him, and the film would end with Venom leaping at the camera.

This would have led right into Spider-Man 4, with Parker going up against Venom, 1 on 1.  However, now that they already went down the road that they had, Spider-Man 4 and 5 are going to be vastly different from the original plan.  You see, Venom was kind of crow-barred into the story of Spider-Man 3.  Producer Avi Arad was listening to us, the fans.  We were clamoring for Venom to appear in Spider-Man 3, so he forced the character into the third film.  Director Sam Raimi did as he was asked, against better judgement.  Bad move, and proof positive that fan feedback should not be listened to all the time.  We sabotaged Spider-Man 3.  Let’s leave them alone for the next ones.  Deal?

There’s no word yet on what’s going to happen in 4 and 5, or who the villains will be.  Let’s hope that Sam Raimi comes back and is able to redeem himself in the eyes of most of the fans, and makes a pair of awesome films.  Although I think Spider-Man 3 could have been better, I still think it was great.  Sandman made an excellent villain, and Harry Osborne’s storyline was suitably tragic.

I’m looking forward to seeing what they have in store for us next.

Read more at: L.A. Times, Fancast

The Shawshank Redemption on Blu-ray: Dec. 2

One of my top 5 favorite films of all time, The Shawshank Redemption, is coming to Blu-ray Disc on December 2, 2008.  It’s one of those films that you can watch over and over, and it’s still as great as the last time you saw it.

This release will have all of the same features as the Special Edition DVD set that was released previously: an audio commentary by director Frank Darabont, a pair of documentaries, a stills gallery, additional storyboards, a “Charlie Rose Show” interview with Darabont and star Morgan Freeman, and the theatrical trailer.

The Blu-ray, however, is going to come in “Digi-Book” packaging.  It includes a collectible booklet with rare photos, production notes and other archival materials.

It’s going to be presented on a BD-50 dual-layer disc at 1080p with Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround Sound.

See the Cover Art after the break.
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Live-Action Ninja Turtles Hybrid Movie Planned

It turns out that Kevin Eastman’s post that I wrote about just before turned out to be a lot of hot air. All told, had I continued reading, I might have found out, but that was a story I’d had in my RSS reader and really wanted to comment on.

I’m really happy with what I’ve found, though, as it seems I was on the right track with my own ideas for the film. As I said in the last post, the CGI film captured the Turtles like never before, and it would have been a shame to lose that ability by moving back to the costumed variety. But, according to an interview with the other Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles creator, Peter Laird, there is a live-action and CGI Hybrid idea on the table that I think has great potential, as long as the turtles are designed well enough to fit in the real world.

As it stands now, there is no intention of doing another live-action film like the first three, with actors and stuntmen in actual Turtle suits, contrary to what was said by Kevin. We have pretty much decided that the next “TMNT” movie should be what we’ve been calling a “hybrid” — that is to say, live-action humans and sets combined with very realistic CGI Turtles (and possibly some other CGI characters).

Now, when it comes to the storyline for the film, it appears that they have yet to decide where to take the story. This is another good thing, as a re-imagining is something that I think would be regrettable. That being said, they’ve yet to decide, so it still might happen.

The storyline for this new “hybrid” movie has not been settled on yet. We’re still batting some different ideas around. The sky’s the limit. My preference would be a story which fits into TMNT movie continuity in some way. But nothing has been decided.

Something else that he brought up, which I had not considered, until I learned about the hybrid style of the film, are the characters of Casey and April, portrayed by Elias Koteas and Judith Hoag in the first live-action film. Laird believes they might be too old to return to those roles, even if they wanted to.

However, I think Chris Evans and Sarah Michelle Gellar did wonderful work voicing the Casey and April characters in the recent CGI “TMNT” movie, and I think it would be really cool if we could get them to reprise those roles, but this time “in the flesh.” I think that might be the first time something like that has happened.

Laird goes on to say that he is 95% happy with the CGI TMNT film. There are things he would have changed, and things he would have put into it, but other than a few minor details, it might just be what has convinced him to look into the hybrid idea if he had not been thinking about that before:

As much as I loved what Jim Henson and his crew accomplished with those rubber suits in the first “TMNT” live-action movie, I believe that CGI — especially now that it has reached the incredible level it has these days — is the way to go to realize fantastic creatures like the Turtles. The expressions the animators were able to get on the Turtles in this last movie were simply amazing.

This just gets better and better!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles returns to Live Action?

In 1993, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III was released, closing out the trilogy of Ninja Turtles films with a film that is decidedly sub-par.  Especially when you compare it to the first two in the trilogy, the third just doesn’t measure up.  2007 brought us redemption in the form of TMNT, a CGI-driven Ninja Turtles film that captured the feel of the first two films in the series, while giving the Turtles more emotion and fighting style than they ever had before.  It was exhilarating to finally see the Turtles as we’ve always imagined them to be.  Not only that, but they had a lot of depth as well.  In that world, they lived and breathed.  I wasn’t too keen on the so-called ‘progression’ of April O’Niel and Casey Jones’ relationship, but I was still thrilled by the film, and was looking forward to a sequel.

Now it looks like that particular sequel will never happen.  This effectively puts TMNT as the close of the original movies (as you might understand when you see the end of it).  Kevin Eastman, one of the creators of the Ninja Turtles, has commented about the future of the franchise.  And the future, it seems, is going back to the past.

“Although the CGI film did well enough to warrant a sequel, there has been much talk between Imagi and Warners to do a better “re-invention” of the TMNT’s, in a live action film–like what was done with Batman. Back to basics, back to the origin and the intro of the Shredder, etc…there have been talks, trips to Northampton to talk to Mr Laird, and discussions with the original “first” TMNT film director Steve Barron to come back and do it right–but no official
word yet…will keep you posted.”

So, essentially, the TMNT film did make enough to warrant a sequel, but the excellence of that film wasn’t enough for Warner Brothers and Imagi.  Go figure, though.  Warner’s had so much success since re-imagining Batman with both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, they are going to play up the origin stories.  That’s alright, I suppose, but not really what I wanted to see.

But there is still hope.  They’ve approached the director of the first TMNT film, Steve Barron, to offer him the chance to “do it right.”  Whatever that means.  I was very pleased with his first Turtles film, and still watch it often to this day.  To have him back in the driver’s seat would ensure the film has the same feel as the original, while taking the Turtles into this century.

Either way, I’m looking forward to more new Turtles adventures.  This is going to be fun!

-via Cinemablend

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