Filmgoers in Liverpool with tickets to “The Artist” recently demanded refunds because they didn’t realize the film is virtually silent, The Wrap reports. And for once, it looks like American audiences are a step ahead of their cousins across the pond:
“We haven’t had any walkouts,” Brian Hunter, facilities manager of the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor, told The Wrap. “In fact, we’ve had only positive things being said to us.”
Read the full story here.
Via TotalFilm, some tantalizing plot points for the webhead’s big screen reboot:
“This new take on the friendly neighbourhood web-slinger will be a more romantic affair than Sam Raimi’s creation, at least according to Avi Arad.
“In our movie, [Peter] finds his true love. Gwen Stacy was always the true love of Peter Parker… We found a very, very good story about what makes a human being. About what sets their destiny.”
“We introduce our villain, Dr. Connors,” continued Arad, “and in the great tradition of Marvel, Dr. Connors is going to be connected to Peter Parker and, in our case even more interesting, to Gwen Stacy. Right there, the challenge of having to deal with a villain who is a mentor and the only one who you can look at and say, ‘So what really happened to my dad?’ That’s a very hard person to fight.”
Read the full story here.
Take Note, Hollywood.
Here’s the future of your distribution model. The Guardian reports this morning that video-sharing service YouTube has launched an online short film festival where 10 winners will be sent to the Venice Film Festival to compete for a $500,000 prize.
The competition comes on the heels of YouTube’s successful launch of the independent short film “Life in A Day,” which
was produced by Scott Free, a British company owned by directors Ridley and Tony Scott, the newspaper reports. The filmmakers will pick 50 semi-finalists and users will be able to pick the 10 finalists.
“Through this program, YouTube will give film-makers the opportunity to reach a vast audience, screen their work during the Venice film festival and potentially be rewarded in a career-changing way,” YouTube boss Robert Kyncl, told the newspaper.
Ridley Scott tells the newspaper that, “Short film-making is exactly where I started my career 50 years ago, so to be helping new film-makers find an entry point like this into the industry is fantastic.”
Get cracking, indie kids. The future beckons. Who’s the new Tarantino among you?
Owen Wilson with Corey Stoll as Ernest Hemingway and Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein in Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris."
In this Carpetbagger interview, the New York Times’ Melena Ryzik talks to actor Corey Stoll, who plays Ernest Hemingway in last year’s “Midnight in Paris.”
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… but you won’t be seeing the Englishman in “The Avengers,” he tells TotalFilm:
“A couple of tidbits of casting news concerning Thor 2 for you today, with Idris Elba confirming that he will reprise his role as Heimdall, the towering guardian of Asgard’s rainbow bridge Bifrost.
When asked about his involvement in any future Marvel projects, Elba responded “Thor 2, for sure,” before going on to elaborate, “we’re going at it again.”
Elba went on to admit that he had yet to meet with new director Alan Taylor, and also confirmed that he hadn’t been at all involved with The Avengers, scotching rumours of a potential cameo appearance in that film.
Elba’s news comes hot on the heels of Jaimie Alexander confirming that she will also rejoin her Thor buddies to reprise the role of Sif, Thor’s childhood sweetheart.
Here’s a few shots of actor Channing Tatum in the upcoming “Wrath of the Titans,” the sequel’s to the rebooted “Clash of the Titans.”
And here’s a synopsis:
“A decade after his heroic defeat of the monstrous Kraken, Perseus (Worthington) – the demigod son of Zeus (Neeson) – is attempting to live a quieter life as a village fisherman and the sole parent to his 10-year old son, Helius.
Meanwhile, a struggle for supremacy rages between the gods and the Titans. Dangerously weakened by humanity’s lack of devotion, the gods are losing control of the imprisoned Titans and their ferocious leader, Kronos, father of the long-ruling brothers Zeus, Hades (Fiennes) and Poseidon (Danny Huston). The triumvirate had overthrown their powerful father long ago, leaving him to rot in the gloomy abyss of Tartarus, a dungeon that lies deep within the cavernous underworld.
Perseus cannot ignore his true calling when Hades, along with Zeus’ godly son, Ares (Edgar Ramírez), switch loyalty and make a deal with Kronos to capture Zeus. The Titans’ strength grows stronger as Zeus’ remaining godly powers are siphoned, and hell is unleashed on earth.
Enlisting the help of the warrior Queen Andromeda (Rosamund Pike), Poseidon’s demigod son, Argenor (Toby Kebbell), and fallen god Hephaestus (Bill Nighy), Perseus bravely embarks on a treacherous quest into the underworld to rescue Zeus, overthrow the Titans and save mankind.”
The Gatsby cast (l-r) Tobey Maguire, Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan and Joel Edgerton.
So you’ve probably heard by now that Australian director Baz Luhrman’s adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” is going to be in 3D. In fact, there may even be a chance that you heard about it on this very blog.
And, if you’re like me, and “Gatsby” is one of your favorite books in all of American literature, you may have shuddered at this great work (which has generally defied adaptation to the big screen) was going to be shot in a medium usually reserved for sci-fi and superhero movies. And I say that as an admitted fan of sci-fi and superhero movies.
In a New York Times piece published Tuesday, Lurhman opens up about the film, letting us know that there’s a method to his madness. His 3D is intended to bring the viewer into the film — such as Tom Buchanan’s pivotal confrontation with Gatsby in the book’s final act.
Here’s the nut graf:
“The ‘special effect’ in this movie is seeing fine actors in the prime of their acting careers tearing each other apart,” Mr. Luhrmann explained in a telephone interview this week.
He spoke of using 3-D not to create thrilling vistas or coming-at-you threats, but rather to find a new intimacy in film. He referred particularly to a climactic scene in which Daisy’s husband, Tom Buchanan (played by Joel Edgerton), confronts Mr. DiCaprio’s Gatsby in a suite at the Plaza hotel, all in three dimensions.
“How do you make it feel like you’re inside the room?” he asked.”
Luhrman, who says he’s been knocking the idea for the film around in his head for about a decade, also reflects on the problems that have plagued past versions of the book. Of the 1974 version starring Robert Redford as Gatsby, he concludes that Redford was “the coolest thing in the world,” but the film didn’t tell him”who Gatsby was.”
And of the 1949 version starring Alan Ladd, Luhrman concludes that the movie was hobbled by a “weak script,” direction that was “completely artificial and stiff,” and Ladd’s decision to play Gatsby as that “stock character he usually plays.”
Luhrman’s cast Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby. I’ve never been completely sold on him, so I’m reserving judgment until I see the movie. I’m more curious about how Tobey Maguire will decide to play the book’s narrator, Nick Carraway, who’s one of my favorite protagonists in literature. I’m already sold on Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan.
From NYMag’s Vulture blog. This is probably just as well:
“So no more Star Wars movies? “Why would I make any more when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?” gripes Lucas. Despite his distaste for carping fanboys, though, Lucas admits to the Times that one of the most hated moments in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull — the infamous “nuke the fridge” sequence — was his own idea, not Steven Spielberg’s. “
George, bubeleh, we don’t hate you for making more Star Wars movies. We hate you for endlessly tinkering and screwing up the first three, which were perfect just the way they were. And we don’t hate you. You’ve just broken our hearts one too many times.
Clearly, it’s scary, because there’s a big alien-looking thingie in the background. But where are the little red and white pegs on the ship?
And who puts out a shipwreck poster right after an actual cruise ship goes belly up in the Med?
Via TotalFilm:
Here’s the latest trailer for the long-awaited (by someone) reunion of the cast of the original 1999 raunch comedy, which spawned one in-the-theaters sequel and a seemingly endless run of direct-to-DVD reboots and rebrandings:
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The Crunchable Net/Work
The Cineaste's Lament. 