Tim Burton Making 3-D Alice in Wonderland for Disney

He's already taken filmgoers to Sleepy Hollow and into Willy Wonka's factory -- and now, Variety reports, Tim Burton will team up with Disney to give audiences a new take on Alice in Wonderland.

Burton's Wonderland is part of a new two-picture deal with Disney, one which will also find him bringing an expanded version of his 1984 short film, Frankenweenie, to theaters. Oh, and did we mention that both pictures will be shown in 3-D? Read on:

"Alice in Wonderland"...will combine performance-capture imagery, currently seen in "Beowulf," with live-action footage.

After "Alice," Burton will helm and produce "Frankenweenie," based on his 1984 short film about a pet dog brought back to life by his loyal owner. Pic will be shot in stop-motion animation and shown in digital 3-D.

As the article points out, Disney has been looking to increase its 3-D presence for some time now, and new technology has only helped fuel the studio's ardor. Disney's Oren Aviv tells Variety that Burton was the only director the studio wanted for the Alice script, proving that occasionally, the studio heads really do know what they're doing.

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Big Batch O' Super Hot Daily Links: Weekend Edition

We've got a preview of the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show which allows me to link to one of the better things I've ever written - a live diary of the 2006 proceedings.MTV was permitted to speak to Natalie Portman for Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium because they don't have a restraining order against them like certain website writers.

New poster for Wall-E. Um, okay.

I always enjoy it when major media outlets have to bash a film.

Finally someone has the courage to ask "What does the strike mean for the actors?"

Will the strike affect the Awards Season? Definitive answer: Maybe.

Has McG confirmed for Terminator IV?

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has completed casting... so sorry if you were still waiting on a phone call there.

No more Bionic Wednesdays? What will my friends and I do?

ME LIKE NEW HULK PHOTO. Sorry, couldn't resist. We'll continue in non-Hulk speak going forward.

Tom Cruise as Hugh Hefner? It sounds so awful I'm praying it happens.

The name of Cloverfield is Cloverfield. They should have called it Snakes on a Plane 2008 because that's what we're headed for given the hype to substance ratio.

If Outlaw Vern reviews Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer we're morally obligated to link to it.

The nine most racist Disney characters.

Our song of the day is a throwback, "Particle Man" from They Might Be Giants.

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Rumor We're Starting: Calvin & Hobbes: The Movie!

We get tired of reporting nothing but news stories and valid opinions, so we thought we'd branch out with some blatantly false (but oddly believable) rumormongering. Try it! It's fun!In development: Calvin & Hobbes: The Movie.

Bill Watterson is legendary for being reluctant to license his beloved comic strip characters, but Paramount Pictures has finally convinced him that they'll treat the mischievous boy and his pet tiger with the respect they deserve. And what a treat they have in store for us!

The brilliant comedy director Adam Shankman -- who made such masterpieces as The Wedding Planner, Bringing Down the House, The Pacifier, and Cheaper by the Dozen 2, before selling out with Hairspray -- will direct Calvin & Hobbes: The Movie, and he promises to make it the kind of family comedy America loves. That's right, folks: plenty of fart jokes!

Paramount is looking for an unknown actor to play Calvin, while the rest of the cast is chock-full of superstars. Calvin's boring parents will be played by Eugene Levy and Amanda Peet, while Hobbes will be CGI and voiced by Jim Carrey.

The story is being kept mostly under wraps, but here's what we know: it focuses on a 6-year-old boy named Calvin who's sassy, precocious, and doesn't take no for an answer! His best friend is his stuffed tiger, Hobbes, who comes to life when no one's around. Together they get into all sorts of trouble!

Calvin's favorite pastime is urinating on the Chevrolet logo. Whenever he sees it, he pees on it! In the film, the Ford Motor Company finds out about this and wants to hire Calvin as their new spokesperson. Before you can say "transmogrifier," Calvin and Hobbes are whisked off to Hollywood, where Calvin quickly becomes a celebrity. (Paris Hilton has promised to make a cameo in the scene where Calvin sneaks into an exclusive L.A. nightclub.) He wreaks havoc on the studio lot where his Ford commercials are being filmed, and he's always making a mess of things!

Meanwhile, Hobbes tries to be a real "cool cat" and keep Calvin out of trouble. Hoo boy, does he ever have his work cut out for him! You can expect lots of hilarious scenes where Calvin accidentally destroys things, or where he says something that adults find offensive. But hey, Calvin's just keepin' it real!

Calvin & Hobbes: The Movie will open May 28, 2009. Three sequels have already been greenlighted.

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Heavy Times Call for Happy Movies

A few weeks ago our man Dre had some harsh words for the people of America about how we are shunning serious movies in lieu of fanciful ones. My retort? So what? Yeah, we're shunning serious movies. And while many of the ones Dre listed failed for reasons other than being serious (i.e., they were total crap), there is a definite upturn of the nose by audiences against solid, entertaining, serious fare. Like last weekend's Lions For Lambs. Why?We're tired. We're sick to death. We just don't want to hear it anymore. Is there anyone left in this country who thinks war is a good thing? Is there anyone who is glad that we're at war? Is there anyone still itching to hear more about it? No. Not at all. There are very few people left still enamored with the President and even fewer satisfied with his opposition in Congress. And if there's a truly worthy person ready to take his job and inspire us all out of our slump on either side of the aisle, I sure haven't seen him or her yet. No matter what side of the fence you sit on, we can all agree on one thing: we're tired of all the yelling. We're sick of all the bickering. And when we go to the movies we don't want someone to give us something else to have to worry about.

We want fantasy. We want explosions. We want teen sex comedies with a heavy emphasis on the teen, the sex and especially the comedy. We want to watch a giant robot blow up a building and we want to see it from 13 different angles. We want to watch John Cusack fall in love with the girl next door that he hasn't seen in 20 years over and over and over again until he gets it right. We want Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn to break out in an unending string of jokes about their private parts and what they want to do with them. And we want all of that to come with a side of fries and a big old heaping helping of happy ending.

So what in the hell is wrong with that?

I want you to do me a favor. Next time you're wondering aloud why the box office is in a slump and why audiences are staying away from the cinema, ask yourself this: are the endings happy? Are the movies designed to entertain rather than preach? Are the audiences seeing the films walking out with smiles on their faces? These are not happy times. Heavy, thoughtful movies are great for happy times. These are heavy times. Give us something happy and don't begrudge us the need for a pick-me-up when we're laying down a ten spot at the box office. You don't tell a depressed person about Africa. You buy them a puppy. So what's really wrong with the cinematic version of that?

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Interview: Denzel Washington talks American Gangster

Critically acclaimed and professionally lauded, Denzel Washington has taken home two Oscars and a stack of praise for performances in films like Training Day, Malcolm X and Remember the Titans. In 2004 he worked with Tony Scott on Man on Fire, following up with Deja Vu last year. And with the release of American Gangster he marks his first association with the other Scott brother, Ridley, in a true-to-life tale as drug-dealer Frank Lucas, pursued in 1970's America by Russell Crowe's Detective Richie Roberts. The film, released in the UK on November 16th, is Certified Fresh, and Rotten Tomatoes caught up with Washington to find out more.

This is a really big film and it's an interesting and twisted character that you play, what about him drew you to it?

Denzel Washington: Actually, it was as much about the two characters. That one man appears to be so straight and honest in his police work is so dishonest in his private life. Another man who seems to be so dishonest in his work life is so honest in his private life. And how these two guys came together and actually, to this day, are still friends. I thought it was an excellent opportunity to work with a great actor again and, actually, a great filmmaker. To be in my home town!

Frank Lucas is really a bad guy, but he has this integrity and honesty in his private life, as you say, how did you find that in yourself?

DW: As he said to me over and over, he said, "Denzel, it's a dirty business and if you choose to be in it you've got to be dirty." There are no nice heroin dealers, they don't make it, and they end up on the sidewalk. You're dealing with crooks all the time; it's just a den of thieves. As he said to me many a time, he said, "I would tell you once." I said, "What if they just slipped up?" He said, "I would tell you once." That was his reputation. You just didn't cross Frank Lucas; you didn't get the opportunity to cross him.

 

What were your scenes with Russell Crowe like?

DW: We had one big scene together and it was just like good music, you know, it's seamless. We started doing this whole business with this coffee cup. Maybe I slid it to him first, and he'd slide it back and start knocking it off the table. It was just a good chess match.

You worked with him years ago, what was it like getting to do that again?

DW: Well he's a bit more famous now! He was very eager then and he still is; still intense. He's a family man now; he has a beautiful wife and children. And just his life experience had grown, you know, he's been through a lot. Professionally, you're so in the work that none of that matters. You just get on with it.

He has a history with Ridley Scott, they've made several films together now and I would imagine they have something of a shorthand. Did you feel a bit left out when you were discussing scenes?

DW: No, not at all; It's a collaboration. All of our names are up there and I didn't feel that at all. But getting the opportunity to work with Ridley was great. Ridley's intense and he's obviously a brilliant director. He knows what he's doing, he's a great shot-maker and he knows what to do.

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Interview: Brian De Palma Goes To War With Redacted

Brian De Palma fans beware: his most recent film will make you think that the veteran director has -- to borrow a line from Full Metal Jacket -- been "born again hard." Redacted is a war drama centered on the rape and murder of a fifteen-year-old Iraqi girl at the hands of American soldiers. Based on true events and told in documentary fashion, the movie uses a collage of digital media to portray the heinous crime up-close and personal, giving audience members every reason to look away but also, by doing so, asking us why it's taken so long to cringe.

De Palma's film presents the conflict through every facet available to us, the civilian viewers. His patchwork story expertly addresses the Iraq conflict on its own terms, using the war's own visual language: a soldier's video diary is interwoven with a French documentary about military check points, which gets mixed in with Arab TV broadcasts, security camera footage from the army base, internet blogs by wives of the enlisted, webcam chats, recordings of judicial inquisitions, clips posted online by terrorists, YouTube rants, and a slew of still images (which ultimately give real-life footnotes to the fictionalized events). The complex style of Redacted feels like a Google search for "Iraq, war crimes." This hyper-abundance of accessible media shows that the horrifying war is not just taking place on the ground in Iraq, but also, literally, in the terrain of cyberspace; a place where everyone with a homepage is a resident, and where the rules of engagement are still being written.

Yet despite this daring strategy, the response to Redacted has been ambivalent. Critics, who currently give the film a 57 percent Tomatometer rating, point to flaws in the dramatic logic and a few misjudged performances. But similar problems plague most movies, and these mistakes do not detract from the emotional impact of Redacted or tarnish the film's craftsmanship in any way. When was the last time you saw a movie with a fifteen-minute shot, handheld, at night, that exposes the true nature of every main character? To disparage Redacted for technical reasons is to miss -- or, perhaps, to willfully avoid -- its rich, textured, and honest depiction of how the Iraq war is being waged for an audience.

Checkpoint tedium in Redacted

In short, De Palma has made a movie that could only exist in the 21st century, about a war that could only be waged in the 21st century. Whatever missteps in direction he has taken do not indicate a flagging talent but instead reveal that, in this warp speed wireless world, the direction has yet to be defined. If we don't fully understand Redacted -- in other words, if it's a difficult film for us to read -- then that's because the narrative language remains incomplete. But by risking a new filmmaking vocabulary, De Palma has begun to create the cinetax.

Rotten Tomatoes recently spoke with Brian De Palma about modern warfare, surfing the web, and how video games might just be the vanguard of storytelling.

People who attend Redacted expecting to see a "Brian De Palma film" are going to be surprised by how different it is from your previous work -- I certainly was. What about this subject matter made you alter your style so significantly?

Brian De Palma: I discovered the form while I was researching the material. I was approached by HDNet to make one of their 5 million dollar movies, on anything I wanted. The only requirement was that it be shot in high definition, and I thought that was great, if I could figure out something that would work best in that medium. When I read about this incident that was so similar to the events in Casualties of War (1989) I did some research on the internet and I came up with all these unique forms where people were expressing themselves in relationship to this incident, and the war in general. That became the shape of the movie. It was a unique way of presenting the material in a format that was interesting to me because it's a whole new way of creating a storyline in this kind of fragmented mock-documentary. My initial idea was to use as much real material as possible, but of course the lawyers told me I couldn't use it because it was too close to the real case, so I was forced to fictionalize everything. I relied very much on the characters in Casualties of War, not knowing much about the actual soldiers except for the prime instigator. There wasn't much information about them. They were all being prosecuted while I was making this movie.

Redacted

Redacted rings very strongly of truth, so even if you had to change the facts, it's one of those stories that's very familiar to people who get up every morning and read the headlines. But it goes much further than that, with all the different points of view that you include, each with its own voice. How did you develop this tapestry?

De Palma: It all emerged from my research. My first task was to get the news stories about the actual case, but since I couldn't use the real news stories I had to fabricate ones using international correspondents who were in Amman, where we shot. So I basically duplicated the original news stories. That was the beginning. Then I read somewhere about this Los Angeles-based Spanish-American filmmaker making a movie from his war diaries to get into NYU Film School -- that was based on something I stumbled upon on the web. I realized that this could provide my principle narrative. And, of course, that idea also comes out of the documentaries I looked at where there were soldiers with cameras recording what's going on, because everyone has a camera over there. I saw all that in the documentaries. Then the attitudes, and the feelings, and frustrations, and the passion about the war, all those were expressed in the soldiers' blogs, and in many independent documentaries that I looked at. So the principal narrative form came from Salazar's personal diary.

Then I had all this information I had to convey about what happens at check points, because this particular unit was on a checkpoint and that's where they saw the girl going in and out every day. There were many, many news stories about accidents at check points and how many people were killed all the time. So I had to present all that information, and I also wanted to slow the movie down. Being deployed in Iraq is incredibly boring most of the time, but then it's punctuated by incredible, crazy violence from out of nowhere. I had to slow the movie down. That's why I created the mock French documentary -- very elegant, Handel music playing from Barry Lyndon -- it slows everything down, and it gets all the statistics across about what happens when people go in and out of check points.

The pacing of the movie was extremely effective, with how you gradually build tension for the frantic violence that happens later on. It sounds like your research process was a micro version of what historians will have to do when they look back on this conflict years from now, in terms of synthesizing a gigantic amount of very specific information.

De Palma: That's what surprises me about the people who are shocked by Redacted, or the portrayal of the soldiers, or the pictures at the end of the film -- all this material is out there! It's like they assume I dreamt this up. It's all there. The problem is, it's not in your mainstream media, so nobody knows about it. But if you get on your Google search engine and put any of these things in, you'll come up with all the same devices that I used, including something like the rant of the protestor. That's one of the few things we were able to buy, actually. That was somebody's rant. We actually bought the rights to that, and I just rewrote it to be played, and the best person to do it was Abigail Savage. But that's an actual rant.

Redacted

It's shocking because it's so familiar, but it's the stuff that you subconsciously try to forget about, you don't want to pay attention to it.

De Palma: I think not many people are doing the kind of research that I was doing. They're watching, you know, what happens to Britney when she takes her daughter to some play group. Those are the kind of things that dominate the web, and YouTube, and whatever. You have to dig a little deeper. But all of this stuff is out there.

There have been other films recently about the Iraq conflict, such as Jarhead and The Kingdom, but you've very intentionally and very effectively adopted a completely different perspective from those: the documentary perspective. Do you feel like a documentary style, for the nature of this war, is the best method for examining it?

De Palma: That's something that I discovered. It's not like I had a plan. In the process of researching I came up with all these unique ways of expression that are completely indigenous to the web. Nobody's ever seen this onscreen before. I have another idea to put in this form, but things have changed in the last six months since I wrote it! There are even newer forms that people have not seen yet. There's all of this new media going on. It's very interesting to tell these types of contemporary stories in this form.

Straight-forward narrative filmmaking essentially would have been Casualties of War, but there's no point in doing that again. I was quite happy with the different forms that I came up with when I researched the material. And who knows; this may be one experimental film that comes and goes, and we move on to whatever. But I feel that there's something here, in Redacted, and I want to experiment with it more, because it's the way that I've noticed my daughters take in information. They're sixteen and eleven, and they sit on their beds with their computers on their stomachs and they browse from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing. They don't go to the theatre and sit down and watch O'Neil for five hours. That's not how they're getting their stories told to them. So, I don't know where it's going, but it's certainly changing.

The uncomfortable reactions to the movie must be coming from not only the disturbing subject matter, but also from the fact that it's a new language. A normal theatergoing audience can't quite comprehend it yet.

De Palma: Exactly correct. To me it's almost atonal. Suddenly you're playing atonal music and people don't know what to make of it. That's what I noticed when I screened it at the beginning, is people had nothing to say afterwards. Basically they were struck dumb. They couldn't process the material. Then the first thing, of course, when you don't understand something, you attack it. "It's not this, it's not this, it's not this." I'll never forget the first time I saw Barry Lyndon, I just wasn't ready to process the way Stanley Kubrick did the movie, and I reacted very strongly against it. The way he told this particular story, with this particular technique. But over the years it's become one of my favorite movies of Kubrick's. Once it gets you into the temporal sense, and the pictorial sense, of the period, of the piece, it all makes perfect sense to you. But when you first see it, you go, "Why all these endless shots, why these zoom-ins -- what's going on here?"

Like Redacted, Barry Lyndon is also a movie where the filmmaker imposed very stringent technical limitations on himself.

De Palma: Exactly correct.

Is there any other reason besides your admiration for Barry Lyndon for why you wanted to use the same music in your movie?

De Palma: I think what was so instructive about Barry Lyndon was how Kubrick slowed down time; using very classical, measured music, he used very elaborate pull-backs. Of course I didn't have the beautiful pictorials that he did. You make the audience study the frame; something that I think people have completely forgotten about.

Redacted

I'd like to dig a little bit deeper, if we can, into what you discovered about the language of digital storytelling. It's such a new phenomenon, and I think Redacted is one of the few films that really prods at the edges of what's possible -- ultra long takes, handheld consumer cameras, relationships developed over the internet, everyone allowed a voice -- it's fascinating. And the other thing about digital media, which is why this war is a perfect topic for it, is the immediacy and the responsiveness of it. You can produce images like a reflex. That's the raw nerve that this film strikes.

De Palma: It's a great new way to deal with narrative forms. It's like things you discover in video games; the way they tell their stories. And of course video games emulate films a lot, and television shows, with their little story sequences within the games. But there was a really big breakthrough when they started to have games where you could approach the world from any place. It didn't go linearly. It was more like a mosaic. You could discover the story from the north, the south, the east, the west, and I said, "Wow."

I remember when I saw my first video game where it was played from a point-of-view shot. It was Colony and this must have been twenty years ago. I was knocked out by it. I said, "Oh my God." The players were perceiving all of this space through a point-of-view shot. And of course that's one of the main building blocks of moviemaking; it's totally cinematic, it doesn't exist in any other art form. I'm always fascinated by what the video games are doing. I truly believe that the creative forces in my generation, instead of being filmmakers, they wanted to be game programmers. They're literally creating spaces and stories. They're constantly discovering new forms. Every six months there's a new game where they push the envelope into something else. And this is also very true of the internet. The other day I discovered BloggerTV, where you have two guys talking about a subject, like an iChat, and it's any topic they want to talk about, like talking heads on television, except it's a discussion about a specific subject instead of people screaming at each. In any event, all this stuff is changing every day. And as I think about doing another film in this form, I'm constantly amazed at the new things that crop up.

Is it a coincidence that you've been influenced by video games, and quite often the "video game mentality" of modern warfare is cited? Is that something you brought into the film, this idea of soldiers being trained by virtual simulation and how that might affect their actions on the battlefield?

De Palma: Yeah, people say that, but the reality of on-the-ground has nothing to do with a videogame. As soon as soldiers get over to Iraq, they get it real fast. You can play every one of the most violent videogames in the world, and it doesn't give you a clue about what it's like to really be deployed in Iraq. A comparison is ridiculous.

Redacted

As far as the actors whom you chose to portray the soldiers, none of them will be recognizable faces to an audience, but I thought all of their performances were convincing. Private Flake was an incredibly frightening character.

De Palma: It's interesting that you say that, because that's one of the main criticisms I get all the time, "Oh, these actors are overacting; they're a bunch of amateurs." Ridiculous! I mean, they're acting in relationship to what situation they're in. When they're in barrage, they behave like warriors at the post, because that's what they're supposed to look like; that's how the director wanted them to look, and the actors take on a personae and an acting style appropriate for that form. When they're being filmed by Salazar, they're mugging and confused and spontaneous, which is exactly what it's like if you're taking a home video. When people react against Redacted so strongly, they don't understand the context of what the actors are doing. People are used to movies where the actors are always the same because the point of view never shifts. But when you change the form, the acting has to adjust.

So instead of a classical "character arc" you were going for a more prismatic study of people.

De Palma: Yes, but there's still very much a sense of character progression. Flake is a little tweaked when he gets over to Iraq, but you can see him sort of changing as the movie goes forth. People just don't understand how the form affects character presentation.

My immediate reaction after seeing the film, and what I did, was to view it a second time. In thinking about why that was, I got the notion that it was almost too much to absorb in one sitting -- to learn how to view the film, and then to appreciate it at the same time -- and so it resists a sense a resolution.

De Palma: The resolution is very much how I feel. I very much identify with McCoy; I feel frustration at not being able to stop the war, of being a participant in it, but being unable to do anything about it, just like McCoy can't do anything about the girl being raped. He carries that guilt with him. The other thing we'll be living with for decades is all of these soldiers coming back from Iraq harboring what they've been through. It's going to be like Vietnam but ten times worse. And it's going to go on for decades. I live near a V.A. hospital in California and I see these guys all the time, wandering around with that aimless stare on their faces, and of course everyone forgets about them. This is going to be going on for decades.

Redacted is in limited release this Friday.

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Interview: Richard Kelly Tells Southland Tales of Love and Devotion

The fan base that rallied around Donnie Darko has for years been anxiously awaiting the release of Richard Kelly's second film, Southland Tales, scouring the film's abstract website and three prequel graphic novels in anticipation of its release. And then came the infamous 2006 Cannes screening, where the film premiered to a near-historic critical harpooning. Since then Kelly has spent a considerable amount of money to augment the special effects and now, more than a year later, he's revealed a shorter, more distributor-friendly picture. Although cameo sequences with Janeane Garofalo are now on the cutting room floor, the film boasts abundant acting talent and a cache of cultural references that rivals Jean-Luc Godard's Histoire(s) du cinema in sheer volume. Kelly calls it "apocalyptic science fiction film noir," but as he explains, the film reaches ever further than that.

Southland Tales opens in the fascist, media-debased near future. Our navigators through this profligate America are an amnesiac named Boxer Santos (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson), and Ronald Taverner (Seann William Scott), a cop who has unwittingly been embroiled in a secret agenda by neo-Marxist rebels. Private Abilene (Justin Timberlake) is the narrator and askew conscience of the film, whose off-kilter prophecies describe a distorted America that bears a pointed resemblance to our own. Kelly's film is a pastiche of references from many facets of media and culture funneled as if through a funhouse mirror. CNN screens display images of technology that look like Metropolis by way of Mel Brooks. The futurist nightmares of William Gibson and Thomas Pynchon are explored with the snark of Mike Judge (Idiocracy). Philip K. Dick shares the stage with noir classic Kiss Me Deadly, as well as Repo Man, Mad Max, Satyricon, and Brazil. This wouldn't seem so odd if it didn't also recall so much of The Gospel According to John.

Literary and pop references aside, what Kelly has built is as much a mythology as it is a fever dream about today's America. And though it may divide critics and take time to attract new audiences, Kelly is putting forward a work that few would attempt and none could imitate.

Richard Kelly on the set of Southland Tales

Tell me about the flag on the cover of Book 1: Two Roads Diverge. It's also behind Mandy Moore in one of her last scenes with Dwayne Johnson. It looks like a Jasper Johns cut in half. Is that original art?

Richard Kelly: That is original art by my friend J. Kelly. He did that art as a collage right after 9-11. I was over at his house and he did it over a couple nights. It thought it was pretty powerful. I said, "That's the movie I'm getting ready to make! That's Southland Tales! That's what it's about. That painting." So it became an icon to the film.

One of your prequel graphic novels is called The Mechanicals. This is named for the improv group? Tell me a bit about them.

RK: They're an eight-person comedy troupe that I stumbled upon a few years ago. They used to hang out at Barney's Beanery and we used to go drinking together. Abby McBride who plays one of the porn star girls -- two of the girls are mechanicals, Starla, the girl who stalks Dwayne on the beach with the gun is a Mechanical, the Asian kid who gets shot on the toilet is a Mechanical. They're spread all throughout the movie. I just thought their comedy was brilliant. I used to run around with video cameras and do little sketch comedy stuff with them over the years and they became good friends of mine and they were all struggling so I thought, I'd give them all parts in the movie and name the third chapter after them.

Seann William Scott in Southland Tales

The toy soldier crawling on the LA street, was that a reference to the toy monkey in Rebel Without A Cause?

RK: No, that's funny you would mention that. I stumbled upon that toy soldier when I was doing research in Venice and it was raining the morning we shot that and we stuck the soldier on the pavement and we got this great shot and it was absurd, it was trippy, disturbing funny and brought up all these emotions looking at this toy soldier on the pavement. I thought it was emblematic of the futility of conflict or war. It may be Justin's character a little bit: A mechanical pawn the government is using.

Johnson's character as well.

RK: Yeah, alone on the wet pavement in Venice. It's one of my favorite shots in the movie and it's something we did as a whim that became something significant.

This film is so packed with references. Why did you feel a need to construct your film with such thick references? Do you think that's become a tool for critical division?

RK: Well, you talked about that painting: Resolved, the American flag divided in two. That's a piece of collage art. He [J. Kelly] has taken newspaper headlines and images from American history and he's embedded them into a collage and I wanted this film to be like a big piece of pop art and if you think about the way we use product placement in the movie, the way we use pop culture and music, we sort of put them into this kaleidoscope blender. I think at its base level I see it more as influenced by Philip K. Dick or Thomas Pynchon or Raymond Chandler -- apocalyptic, science fiction, film noir. That's where it's rooted stylistically. If you go to LA, you're surrounded by pop culture faces and products and billboards. LA is a collage. It's like a gigantic messy collage with everything flowing together. And I wanted it to feel like LA. Not only that, the fragmentation you see on CNN and the news screens and quad screens, that's the way life feels and I thought the movie should be reflection of Los Angeles life and it all came together that way.

When you construct a collage you ultimately affect the modern values of the pieces you cut up to build it. I wanted to ask a question about rewriting the last line of T.S. Elliott's The Hollow Men. Initially I thought this was about spin but now I'm seeing it differently.

RK: Flip flopping T.S. Eliot's last line in The Hollow Men was an absurd statement. [The original goes] "Not with a bang but a whimper." Me, [I think] that's T.S. Eliot having a premonition about global warming. The whimper is us slowly drowning ourselves over many hundreds of years. This is the flip-flop of that [notion] where it all ends on the fun party weekend before the election in 2008. It all happens just the day after tomorrow -- just right around the corner. The idea that "with a bang" is Hollywood blockbuster hero Dwayne Johnson is your guide through that final three days. It felt comedic and it felt like an inversion of the poem was the right way to go.

It also seems to be a good tennis fellow for your Road Not Taken reference. It seemed to me as if you were saying "we took the road more commonly taken, and here we are."

RK: The Road Not Taken really is the one where we all vote, take a stand, make a difference and try to solve the energy crisis together. That's the 'road not taken', unfortunately.

The aspect of the film I found most challenging was the acting. You've wrangled some adept talent here but their performances sometimes broach the realm of camp, which I should qualify can be ambiguous if not easy to confuse for poor performance. As deliberate as I understand the performances were, could you explain Timberlake's histrionics and Johnson's Monty Burns impersonations?

RK: (Laughs) It's funny you say "Monty Burns." Dwayne was playing Boxer Santeros but he's also switching into Jericho Kane, renegade cop: The Ralph Meeker character in Kiss Me Deadly. And he studied Ralph Meeker's lowering voice. That became Jericho Kane and he's a schizophrenic [living] between those two identities. It was a deliberate discussion had with each actor to understand the role he was playing and the whole greater mystery was a lack in my mind. With Justin it was all about - he's this doomsday prophet who's a famous guy who's been drafted and disfigured by his best friend in Iraq and now he's been put on this perch in front of this big alternative fuel center to guard it. [He's] a terrorist in the Santa Monica Bay. And he's dealing this underground drug. The elaborate mythology the audience has understood, Justin was able to latch onto that, in a way. Like you said, it was all very deliberate. I was just trying to capture the humanity beneath any of these eccentricities they developed.

Do you feel that could be a future vehicle for camp?

RK: Yeah, but the characters are all sincere, even when they're acting eccentric. What the actors were trying to do was remain sincere in their moments of eccentricity. Dwayne is really terrified when the woman pulls the gun on him at the beach. He had an absurd facial expression but he was terrified and really is schizophrenic and thinks he's the cop trying to talk her down with the gun. I think one of the more important things to understand about Dwayne's character is he is schizophrenic and he is playing this ridiculous cop character. He's researching the role to get into character.

JT bringing apocalypse back.

The film involves a lot of parallel texts: TV, news, the plot of the underground, the plot of the right wing, Boxer's story, the script he's carrying around. And all these texts blur into each other and share details. Tell me why you felt this blurring was important to involve in your apocalypse satire?

RK: I think that there's a metaphysical quality to the way in which the news media is scripted and our lives feel scripted. In a way [when] you think about the way the war in Iraq was sold to us, almost as a screenplay. And I feel like there's "what could have been" and "what we're living with now." It's a very metaphysical thing. It's hard to wrap it all into one easy explanation but sometimes I wonder if there's someone out there who's written a screenplay for our lives. And living in Hollywood, are we all living in a movie? Sometimes I feel like my life is a movie.

Are you talking about destiny?

RK: Yeah. It is about predestination. What is the destiny of our country? Are we going to be able to pull ourselves out of this or are we going to continue [like this]. Are we going to self-destruct?

The critics are really wrestling with this one but I for one hope it's seen by a lot of people.

RK: I'm proud of it. I can finally sleep at night.

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Seth Rogen Set to Make a Porno for Kevin Smith

In any town other than Hollywood, the words "Kevin Smith," "Seth Rogen," and "make a porno" might seem to make for an unusual combination.

Actually, they're unusual in Hollywood, too -- but, as Variety reports, Smith and Rogen are doing just that. Sort of. Rogen has signed on to star with Elizabeth Banks in Smith's upcoming Weinstein Company comedy, Zack and Miri Make a Porno. From the article:

Story revolves around two lifelong platonic friends who are deep in debt and enlist the help of their friends to make a porn pic for some quick cash. But Zack and Miri realize that they may have more feelings for each other than they previously thought.

The production, scheduled to begin filming in Pittsburgh early next year, will reunite Rogen and Banks -- who worked together on The 40-Year-Old Virgin -- and mark the seventh collaboration for Smith and the Weinstein brothers.

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Box Office Guru Preview: Beowulf Set To Conquer Multiplexes

One animated film will bump another from the number one spot at the North American box office. But the new warrior Beowulf is no B movie but an A-list production from an Oscar-winning director offering action audiences something new. Also opening this weekend but likely to see more modest grosses are the family pic Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium and the romantic drama Love in the Time of Cholera. Without a compelling selection of great films, the marketplace should once again fall well below year-ago levels.

Paramount looks to capture the box office crown without the help of DreamWorks this time with Beowulf, a computer-animated action adventure based on the ancient epic poem. The PG-13 film comes from Robert Zemeckis who expands upon the motion capture technology he used in 2004's The Polar Express. This time around his film is aimed at somewhat older moviegoers as young children will be too frightened by the violence, gore, and yes, nudity. Beowulf aims to pry 14-year-old boys away from their videogame systems and into the multiplexes with a new type of action film that is presented in 3D in selected theaters. Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, and Angelina Jolie lend their voices and digital likenesses.

The marketing has been terrific on the part of the studio. The core audience of young males is excited and ready to buy tickets and the film might even pull in part of the literary crowd curious to see how this classic tale is adapted to the big screen. The marketplace needs something like this now with hits like American Gangster skewing more adult and kidpics like Bee Movie not offering enough violence. If last December's Eragon could open to $23.2M, then surely Beowulf can target the same crowd and go higher. Launching in over 2,800 theaters, Beowulf could conquer the box office this weekend with about $32M.

The digitally-altered likeness of Ray Winstone in Beowulf
Dustin Hoffman stars as the eccentric owner of a magical toy store in Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, a new entry for family audiences from Fox. The G-rated film co-stars Natalie Portman and Jason Bateman. With Bee Movie and Fred Claus already out there doing solid business, and likely to collect a combined $30M this weekend, competition for Emporium will be intense. Bad reviews will make parents hesitate, but if kids respond to the TV commercials, then they will find a way to force their parents to take them. Opening wide in around 3,200 locations, Mr. Magorium could bow to about $11M this weekend and try to remain a relevant choice over the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday session.

Dustin Hoffman and Natalie Portman in Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium
To counter his current role as a brutal killer in No Country for Old Men, Javier Bardem stars in the romantic drama Love in the Time of Cholera. The R-rated tale from New Line is getting a moderately wide release and will play to an older adult audience with a female skew. The Oscar buzz Bardem has been receiving for Country could rub off on Cholera helping its case. And Latino audiences are being counted on to show up as are fans of Oprah who has endorsed the book that the film is based on. But overall, the Columbia-set film has not generated enough excitement to deliver a solid debut. Plus poor reviews will turn away much of the target audience. A slot on the lower end of the top ten could await. Opening in about 800 theaters, Love in the Time of Cholera might gross around $3M over the weekend.

Love in the Time of Cholera
Bee Movie should fall from its spot at the top of the box office and slide by about 30% since there is not too much new competition for young kids. A weekend tally of $18M could result giving Paramount $97M to date. Universal's American Gangster should drop by 40% to about $14.5M giving the crime saga a total of $102M. The holiday comedy Fred Claus could dip by 35% in its second weekend. That would leave the Warner Bros. release with a weekend take of $12M and a ten-day cume of $35.5M.

LAST YEAR: In a major pre-holiday showdown, the penguin toon Happy Feet edged out the new James Bond film Casino Royale for the number one spot with a strong opening of $41.5M. The Warner Bros. family hit went on to collect $198M domestically and a stellar $384M worldwide. Sony's relaunched spy series still posted a muscular debut grossing $40.8M over the weekend on its way to $167M domestically and a sensational $595M globally making the Daniel Craig-starrer the top-grossing 007 flick ever. After two weeks on top, Fox's Borat slipped to third with $14.6M. Rounding out the top five were Disney's The Santa Clause 3 with $8.3M and the Sony release Stranger Than Fiction with $6.6M.

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

New Ghostbusters Games Coming Next Year

It won't be in the form of the sequel that Dan Aykroyd has been trying to get off the ground all these years, but Ghostbusters is making a comeback.

Variety reports that Sony Pictures and Vivendi Games are teaming up to produce a series of Ghostbusters videogames, set to debut in the fall of next year -- and that Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Bill Murray, and Harold Ramis have all agreed to do voicework and provide their likenesses. Even the films' supporting cast is getting in on the fun; the article names William Atherton, Brian Doyle Murray, and Annie Potts as additional participants in the games. From the article:

Deal comes on the heels of several other classic movies that have recently been adapted into successful vidgames, including EA's "The Godfather" and Vivendi's own "Scarface: The World Is Yours."

"We noticed we did well on 'Scarface' and were alert for new opportunities to turn iconic film products into games in a way that is a new manifestation of the franchise," Vivendi Games CEO Bruce Hack said. "'Ghostbusters' is unquestionably among the small number of movies in that class."

Hack noted that, in making both deals, Vivendi did a survey of gamers asking which movie properties they would like to see turned into videogames. "Scarface" and "Ghostbusters" were both in the top five.

According to the report, Aykroyd and Ramis will write a story for the game "that takes place in the early '90s, after Ghostbusters II, during a new ghoul invasion of New York City." Looks like the studios just found a way around the writers' strike!

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Justin Marks Talks New He-Man Movie

Okay, show of hands: Who's ready to take a trip back to Castle Greyskull?

Screenwriter Justin Marks is hoping that a lot of you have your hands up right now, because he's up to his eyebrows in excitement for the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe script he's working on with Neil Ellice. He's heard all the rumors about the movie, too (He-Man as a soldier in Iraq?), and he recently sat down with Toyfare Magazine to debunk them.

We haven't read the latest issue of Toyfare -- in fact, until a few minutes ago, we weren't even aware of its existence -- but that's okay, because the helpful folks at IESB have excerpted a few bits and pieces from Marks' interview. After establishing his fanboy credentials ("A lot of people think of He-Man and...laugh him off, but those of us who grew up on him, we don't laugh about He-Man at all"), Marks offers fans a few general outlines of his vision for the film.

Telling Toyfare that it'll be "a Skeletor movie," Marks goes on to promise a non-wrestler cast, and talks about the challenge of melding the major elements of the (cough) He-Man mythos into a deliberately enjoyable film:

He-Man is sword-and-sandals meets science fiction. If you avoid it and just try to make it sword and sandals, then it becomes a boring movie. If you just try to make it science fiction, it's going to be really kitschy and weird, and it's not going to be true to He-Man. You have to make it both. So we have to come up with specific ideas, grounded, that would spawn a world that was people carrying around swords, and yet, guys like Tri-Klops running around with his spinning visor and this sort of nano-technological way about him. What is the sorcery that can create stuff like that?

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Two More Tyler Perry Films Coming, Including Another Madea

Some critics have turned up their noses at his films, but there's no denying Tyler Perry's commercial track record at the box office -- a winning streak that Lionsgate has just rewarded with a new two-picture deal.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Lionsgate has acquired the rights to Perry's next two films (titled The Family That Preys Together and Madea Goes to Jail) for an undisclosed sum. Keeping with tradition, Perry will write, direct, and star in both movies. From the article:

"Madea Goes to Jail"...is an adaptation of Perry's play about a series of events that occur after Madea spends a night in jail. Both films are scheduled to begin production in the spring.

" 'The Family That Preys Together' and 'Madea Goes to Jail' are going to deliver everything audiences have come to expect from a Tyler Perry production: humor, uplift and unlimited heart and soul," said Michael Paseornek, president of film production at Lionsgate.

Perry's most recent release, Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married?, opened at Number One with a $21.4 million gross last month.

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

The Mummy Returns Again, But Without Rachel Weisz

Hey, there's a new Mummy movie heading our way. Did you know that? I didn't. I really loved 1999's The Mummy -- I loved it cuz it was the fourth Indiana Jones movie we'd been waiting for -- and the 2001 sequel, The Mummy Returns, is almost as much fun. So I'm primed for more.The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, which looks like it's got a planned release date of August 1, 2008, moves the story to post WWII England and China, where the O'Connells' now-grown son, Alex, makes a major discovery of great archaeological and supernatural import. (IESB.net: The Movie Reporter has details on the plot and such: none of it sounds spoilerish.) Action-comedy will ensue, I imagine, as well as some kung fu fighting: Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh are listed as among the new cast members.

There's another new cast member, though, that makes me worry just a bit for Mummy 3: Maria Bello is replacing Rachel Weisz as Evelyn. Now, don't get me wrong: Bello is a fantastic actress, as daring and powerful and gifted as they come. (Have you seen The Cooler? Oh, man, see it.) But part of what made the first two Mummy movies so enjoyable was the potent chemistry between Brendan Fraser -- who will be back, thank the movie gods, as Rick -- and Weisz. Screen chemistry is such a delicate thing, and so impossible to fake: what are the odds that Fraser will be so lucky the second time around with a different actress opposite him as the same character?

I'm keeping my fingers crossed, even with the other pinch-hitters among the creative team. Original creator, writer, and director Stephen Sommers is all but gone -- he's acting as producer only on this one -- but Rob Cohen is taking over behind the lens. Yeah, he's made mostly cheese like Stealth, XXX, and The Fast and the Furious, but it's at least competent, engaging cheese. And screenwriters Miles Millar and Alfred Gough have written such highly amusing flicks as Spider-Man 2 and Shanghai Noon. That's gotta be a good sign, right?

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Angelina Jolie vs. Natalie Portman: Who Ya Got?

Once again, it's a weekend battle of head-to-head stars. This weekend we have another truly titanic matchup and this time it is a battle between two of the most beautiful women in the world. In this corner we have everyone's favorite foster mom, Angelina Jolie. And in this corner we have one of the few actresses to run the child actress gauntlet and make it through unscathed, Natalie Portman. Let's drop the cage. You know the rules. Two women enter! One woman leaves!In the box office this weekend: Winner = Jolie
This one is a real wild card that only the folks with a line on tracking will really be able to predict. But, while I definitely believe in the long term holiday weekend potential of Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, I think the sheer star power of not only the cast, but the behind-the-CG brains on Beowulf will lead this unique endeavor right to the top this weekend.

In the critical arena: Winner = Jolie
Despite the fact that Magorium was scripted (not to mention directed) by one of Hollywood's hot new talents, Zach Helm, the guy responsible for last year's wonderful and sadly overlooked Stranger Than Fiction, I've got a feeling that critics are going to be bowled over by all the bells and whistles of Beowulf and particularly the, um, talents of Miss Jolie. Although, I'm getting the feeling that neither is going to be particularly savaged this weekend.

In their careers: Winner = Jolie
This one pains me. I want to give it to Portman. She's more talented. She has a much better sense of what projects to take. And she has yet to achieve her full potential as both an actress and a celebrity. But Angelina Jolie is one of the biggest stars in the world. As bizarre as she might be, as poor as the career choices are that she's made in the years since her Oscar win, as much as she can't keep herself out of the tabloids for so much as five minutes – she's huge. She's reached the peak of success and doesn't appear to be going anywhere. She's not even the main character of Beowulf and I'm writing about her. What can you say? She wins.

In my heart of hearts: Winner = Portman
How can you not love Natalie Portman? She's adorable, sweet and a talented actress. Jolie is just… weird. And frankly it kind of creeps me out that she seems to have to concentrate to completely close her lips. Natalie takes this one in a walk.

Winner = Jolie
Please. The only way Portman could win in this contest is if someone distracted Jolie with some stray orphans.

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Five Reasons We Love Natalie Portman

Having an unhealthy crush on Natalie Portman makes me about as unique as a weed. I'm aware of this, how pitiful my little critic's brethren and I seem huddled together talking about how she's smart and purty too, but I'm still helpless to stop it from happening. So what can I do? I've got to accept, right? I need to accept that the gal from V for Vendetta, the girl who so carefully projects the "girl next door" image (when in truth she is anything but) is never going to meet me and fall head over heels. It's not in the cards. But with that acceptance perhaps a greater and more honest awareness of all things Portman can be ascertained too... which leads nicely into:Five Reasons We (I) Love Natalie Portman:

1.) She's been around forever, even though she's only 26.

I remember her scene in Heat. I remember her from Beautiful Girls, a film destined to make you feel creepy the older you get. My point being we've grown up together, Natalie and I, and I appreciate her sticking around. Like an old friend, she's been there through thick (Closer) and thin (Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium??).

2.) She's not afraid to mix things up.

When I first saw the Portman rap (warning: salty language) from Saturday Night Live I was stunned that she even agreed to it. She opened herself up to an incredible amount of backlash... and yet, she got away with it. I never heard a thing about it afterwards. Incredible. Is it possible everyone without a sense of humor in the world suddenly got one once Portman was involved? Whatever the case, I've never loved her more than when she threatened my pet.

3.) She changed her mind on the nude thing.

Don't worry, I'm not going to get pervy with this. My point is when she filmed nude scenes for Closer everyone involved realized they weren't necessary to the story. So they were axed according to her wishes. Later, when filming Hotel Chevalier for Wes Anderson she did a bit of nudity. This shows maturation, and good judgment too. There are times in life where people are sans clothes. I'm not talking exploitative horror-style nudity here, I'm talking something that moves the story forward in an interesting manner. Hotel Chevalier was that scene and she nailed it. Kudos to her for not giving in to fear and for allowing a master filmmaker like Wes Anderson to accomplish his vision.

4.) She's willing to try and fail.

Natalie's work in Star Wars is about as bad as she's ever done. But she committed to it and she saw it through. In between she worked on things that were interesting and successful: Garden State and Closer come to mind. No actor is ever going to bat 100%, but Natalie's wide range of projects guarantee that she'll always have something interesting cooking.

5.) Okay, okay, she is smart.

I recently read an interesting study where it was suggested that men don't want to date/marry someone smarter than them. Phooey on that noise. If Natalie wants to attend Harvard and make me look intellectually small, by all means, be my guest. Since when are we competing with each other for who is smarter in a relationship? I figure a smart gal could save my life some day, Macgyver style. Thus, smart people, in general, are highly preferable to dumb people. That's sort of my mantra for life actually (you may use it too though).

Natalie doesn't fit the current Hollywood version of glamour: she's not out getting drunk and high; she's not having surgery; she's not switching out a boyfriend every week on the cover of People magazine. Instead she's doing interesting movies and becoming a person of substance. Weird, I know.

So, for all these reasons and more, we at cinema-pedia.com salute her. May her reign last 1,000 years.

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Zellweger Isn't a Fan of Showbiz Parties

What makes Renee Zellweger most proud in her celebrated acting career is that she's kept her sanity.

"It's weird to have fame precede you in any situation ... and I'm very proud of myself that I've not been to Betty Ford (Center) yet," Zellweger, 38, tells Harper's Bazaar. "Never say never!"

Among her career achievements? "Learning what my boundaries are. That I've been able to stay out of the psychiatric wards despite the really bizarre exchanges I have on a daily basis," she says in the magazine's December issue, on newsstands Nov. 20.

Zellweger prefers privacy to hanging out with the Hollywood crowd in public at least. "I'm not a big scene girl," she says. "If I see the scene once a year, that's more than plenty."

The "Bridget Jones" star says an ideal night out could be a "really nice Christmas party."

"I love to go to somebody's house when it gets a little bit later and there's dancing and laughter and nobody's pointing at the weird actor-girl in the corner," says Zellweger, an Oscar winner for 2003's "Cold Mountain."

Zellweger, who filed for an annulment four months after her 2005 wedding to Kenny Chesney, says she's "not sad" about being single. "I'm so busy catching up with the people I miss when I'm working that I'm not busy missing someone."

She's been romantically linked with Jim Carrey, George Clooney and Paul McCartney. When asked about McCartney, Zellweger says: "He's as lovely as I expected. We have mutual friends. The crush and I have mutual friends."

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Awards Shows Could Suffer in WGA Strike

Without the quips between celebrity presenters, inside jokes about the entertainment industry and skits that poke fun at stars behaving badly, awards shows would be little more than shiny trophies and long lists of names.

That could be the case for some of the shows in Hollywood's fabled awards season this year if the Writers Guild of America remains on strike for several months.

Things get under way Sunday with the American Music Awards, which will air live on ABC. The script was written before the strike began last week, but without writers to make revisions, it won't include any topical quips from host Jimmy Kimmel.

"We were aware of the impending WGA strike and planned accordingly," said producer Larry Klein in a statement.

They were also lucky to be the first out of the gate.

December is nominations month and therefore writing time for the Grammys, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards, with the Oscars nominations coming Jan. 22.

People behind awards shows say it's too soon to say how the strike will affect their programs, but they're likely to feel the pinch when nominations are announced. That's because writing typically begins once the nominees are known, said Ken Ehrlich, who has produced more than a dozen Grammy and Emmy shows.

"With the Grammys, it comes down to who's performing on the show. Same thing with the Emmys; it depends on who you're going to book to present," he said. "It can't really be canned because it's got to be tailored to the people who are saying it."

During the writers strike of 1988, the Oscars still went on but that situation was different from today. Back then, the show's script had been written before the strike began and remained essentially unchanged throughout the telecast. Writers Guild members who appeared on the show were allowed to ad-lib, but were cautioned against writing any new material.

It would be impossible, though, for an Academy Awards script to have been written before the 2007 WGA strike began, as the year's Oscar-qualifying films are still being released.

Spokeswoman Leslie Unger said the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hasn't even reached the planning stage yet. "Our show is a number of months off and we have no way of knowing if or how (the strike) will impact us," she said.

It also may be difficult for the Academy Awards to "find people who will perform on the show who aren't members of the Writers Guild," said veteran writer Bruce Vilanch, who has worked on the Academy Awards for the past 18 years. "Most standup performers write for themselves and when they have shows, they get a writing credit."

Nominees for the Golden Globe Awards will be revealed Dec. 13, and the script begins the following day, said executive producer Barry Adelman.

"We're hopeful the issues pertaining to the ... strike will be resolved to everyone's satisfaction before then," he said in a statement. "We intend to explore all of our available options in the upcoming weeks."

Some shows employ a dozen or more writers, Vilanch said, with starting "a couple months" before showtime and continuing until the final curtain falls.

"You're responding to what happens during the course of the show, so there's writing going on all evening long," he said, adding that nearly every part of the program is the work of the writers "anything basically except an acceptance speech."

"If it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage," he said. "The contribution the writers make is the same contribution every other creative element makes. It's important."

The Screen Actors Guild could find itself writer-less, too. Nominees will be announced Dec. 20, and "the majority of writing is done after we have the nominations announcement," said spokeswoman Rosalind Jarret.

Jon Stewart, whose "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" on Comedy Central has been in reruns since the strike began, had no comment on how it might affect his duties as host of the 80th Academy Awards.

Even the Writers Guild is unsure about the strike's impact on the upcoming awards season.

"Many of the awards shows are written under WGA contracts," said spokesman Neal Sacharow, "and how the strike will affect those shows remains to be seen."

However, Vilanch is sure of one thing: Awards shows would be dull without writers.

"There might be a show where people just kind of come out and read the names and give the awards, and in between you have some lovely production numbers," he said. "I bet choreographers are just champing at the bit."

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Spielberg Named Cecil B. DeMille Honoree

Steven Spielberg will receive the Cecil B. DeMille Award for his "outstanding contribution to the entertainment field" at the 2008 Golden Globe Awards.

Josh Brolin made the announcement Wednesday at The Beverly Hilton, calling Spielberg a "one-of-a-kind talent."

The 60-year-old director has won six Golden Globes and three Oscars best director and best picture for "Schindler's List" and best director for "Saving Private Ryan."

He has also received lifetime achievement honors from the Directors Guild of America, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the American Film Institute and the Kennedy Center.

He is in post-production on "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," which will be released next year.

Spielberg will be presented with the Cecil B. DeMille trophy at the 65th annual Golden Globe Awards on Jan. 13. The awards will air live on NBC.

Rumer Willis was named Miss Golden Globe, who assists in the awards ceremony. The honor is traditionally granted to the offspring of a well-known celebrity.

Willis, 19, is the daughter of Demi Moore and Bruce Willis, so she is "doubly qualified," said Hollywood Foreign Press Association President Jorge Camara.

"It's really an amazing opportunity to help recognize people who've done great work in this industry," said Willis, who appears in two films scheduled for release next year.

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Bush Tops Film Threat's Frigid 50 List

He's not exactly a movie star. He doesn't even play one on TV. But President Bush nonetheless has been named the coldest person in Hollywood.

The online magazine Film Threat placed Bush at the top of its "Frigid 50," an annual ranking of the "least-powerful, least-inspiring and least-intriguing people in Hollywood" in contrast to the "hot" lists that celebrity magazines often compile.

Film Threat's editors point out that Bush has been parodied in movies like "Transformers" and "American Dreamz" and scrutinized in documentaries such as "Sicko" and "No End in Sight."

"With all due respect to Hollywood," they wrote, "the mighty W is as much a cinema celebrity as the next despotic tyrant."

Coming in at No. 2 is someone who's a perennial fixture on those lists of the hot, sexy and powerful: Angelina Jolie.

"Traveling the Third World with a small army of stylists and publicists, the one-time Lara Croft feels like an unholy mix of Mother Teresa and Paris Hilton: Look at the poor, but make sure you get me in my best light," the magazine says. "Ironically, more people saw her in Cambodia or Namibia than in `A Mighty Heart.'"

Also making the "Frigid 50" are Oscar winners Nicole Kidman and Hilary Swank for their less-than-stellar film choices of late, and Jon Heder who "hasn't made a single good movie" in the three years since "Napoleon Dynamite" made him a cult figure.

The "winners" in previous years include Mel Gibson, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, Michael Moore and Freddie Prinze Jr.

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Thurman, Jones to Host Nobel Peace Concert

OSLO, Norway (AP) Uma Thurman will join Tommy Lee Jones as co-host of the Nobel Peace Concert honoring former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.'s climate change panel, organizers announced Wednesday.

The Dec. 11 concert, held the day after the Nobel Peace Prize is presented in Oslo, draws top music and film stars, and is broadcast to more than 100 countries, a news release said.

Organizers earlier announced that Jones, who was Gore's roommate at Harvard University, would be one of the concert's hosts.

The lineup of performers includes Alicia Keys, Annie Lennox and Melissa Etheridge, who won an Academy Award this year for the song "I Need to Wake Up," which was featured in Gore's environmental documentary "An Inconvenient Truth."

Thurman, 37, starred in such movies as "Pulp Fiction," "Dangerous Liaisons," and the "Kill Bill" films. She is also politically active in supporting gun control and fighting poverty.

Geir Lundestad, the secretary of the Nobel Peace Prize committee, said they were delighted that Thurman had agreed to host.

"She brings iconic style and substance to the event and will help us tremendously in our mission of spreading the global message of peace," Lundestad said.

Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change share the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to help spread awareness about man-made climate change.

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Openings a Casualty of Broadway Strike

No talks. No comment. And no opening nights.

Wednesday was to have been the New York premiere of "The Farnsworth Invention," the eagerly anticipated return to Broadway of playwright Aaron Sorkin, the creator of such television shows as "The West Wing" and "Sports Night."

Instead, the Music Box Theatre, one of Broadway's most elegant playhouses, sits dark along with 26 other theaters as Local 1, the stagehands union, and the League of American Theatres and Producers remain deadlocked in the fifth day of an acrimonious contract dispute.

Neither side is talking to the other. Silent pickets stand in front of locked theater lobbies. Other unions, including Actors' Equity and the musicians' local, have lined up in support of the stagehands. Even Broadway press agents, instructed by their own union to honor Local 1's picket line, are silent.

"The Farnsworth Invention," Sorkin's look at the birth of television starring Hank Azaria, wasn't the only opening scheduled this week. "The Seafarer" by Irish playwright Conor McPherson had been set for Thursday. It, too, is shut, and its opening uncertain.

McPherson, author of "The Weir" and "Shining City," says the challenge now is to psychologically stay ready even though the actors aren't allowed to rehearse at the theater. "We'll be doing our best to sort of get together and talk about it and keep our chin up," he said.

Previews, which began in late October, stopped after last Friday's performance.

"I'm confident that if we get a chance to open, it should be all right," the playwright said. "We'll just keep our fingers crossed and pray pray that the testosterone levels drop on both sides of the strike and see how it goes."

"August: Osage County" imported from Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company, had an opening planned for next Tuesday. But the play by Tracy Letts also went dark in mid-previews, and its producers have offered to fly the Chicago actors home for the duration of the walkout.

In a gesture of support, Second Stage Theatre has offered a little bit of off-Broadway hospitality to the Steppenwolf actors. Carole Rothman, its artistic director, has set aside 15 tickets for the Wednesday matinee performance of "Edward Albee's Peter and Jerry" for the Chicago performers who remain here.

The contract dispute has focused on how many stagehands are required to open a show and keep it running. That means moving scenery, lights, sound systems and props into the theater; installing the set and making sure it works; and keeping everything functioning well for the life of the production.

The existing contract requires theaters to use at least four stagehands for plays: a carpenter, a property master, an electrician and a fourth, either a sound technician, a fly man or a second stagehand. A musical also requires four stagehands, and a fly man is mandatory. This is the person in charge of scenery, props and other things that move up or down, or from offstage for example, the "bubble" that transports Glinda in the musical "Wicked." The fly man also raises and lowers the curtain.

The league wants to have flexibility in how many stagehands are hired for shows, and does not want to use four if all are not needed.

The union also has cost of living and pension concerns. The annual salary for stagehands ranges from $67,500 to $88,500, according to the union, which would not disclose what increases it seeks.

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Winona Ryder Joins Star Trek

"Star Trek" is beaming up Winona Ryder.Paramount Pictures and director JJ Abrams have set Ryder to play the Vulcan mother of a young Spock (Zachary Quinto).

Scripted by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, the film revolves around the Starfleet Academy days of the crew of the Starship Enterprise. Chris Pine has been set to play Capt. Kirk, Simon Pegg will play Scotty, Karl Urban is Dr. McCoy and Eric Bana will play the villain, Nero.

Ryder recently wrapped "The Informers," a Gregor Jordan-directed adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis novel, and the Geoffrey Haley-directed "The Last Word."

She is in pre-production on the Rebecca Miller-directed "Private Lives of Pippa Lee."

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Ten Actresses To Keep an Eye On In 2008

Actress: Cate Blanchett
2007 notables: Hot Fuzz, I'm Not There, Elizabeth: The Golden Age
2008 notables: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Fantastic Mr. Fox

Why she made the list: Cate got great reviews for revisiting Queen Elizabeth even if the actual movie didn't. Meanwhile, there's a good chance a Best Supporting nod is on the horizon with her turn as a Dylan in I'm Not There. Cate, or "The New Meryl" as I like to call her, will try to continue her strong streak of performances with the heavily anticipated Indiana Jones movie and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button starring Brad Pitt and directed by David Fincher.

Actress: Tilda Swinton
2007 notables: Michael Clayton
2008 notables: Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Burn After Reading, Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll

Why she made the list: It's my firm belief that Swinton doesn't get nearly enough love because she looks like an alien. She's kind of like Christopher Walken in female form. She is good-to-great in almost every movie she's in though and I really liked her turn in Michael Clayton this year. She joins Cate in Benjamin Button, but the movie I'm looking forward to more is the Coen Brothers' Burn After Reading with George Clooney, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich and Frances McDormand. Swinton has one more notable project that inspires me to drink: Phantasmagoria, a bizarre project about Alice In Wonderland author Lewis Carroll that will be written by, directed and star Marilyn Manson. I'd like to tell you I was lying. I'm just not.
Actress: Halle Berry
2007 notables: Perfect Stranger, Things We Lost in the Fire
2008 notables: Happily Never After, Tulia, Class Act

Why she made the list: You ever see that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry dates a woman he finds beautiful, but every so often with the right (or wrong, really) lighting, she's turns into a butterface? Berry's career is kind of like that. Sometimes it looks good (like her latest, Things We Lost In The Fire) and sometimes it looks like Perfect Stranger. John Singleton's legal drama Tulia, and the heartwarming true story, Class Act, sound like potential winners.
Actress: Reese Witherspoon
2007 notables: Rendition
2008 notables: Four Christmases

Why she made the list: I know she doesn't have much on the plate but her December 2008 release, Four Christmases sounds like a doctor-prescribed rebound flick. It's about a couple (Reese and Vince Vaughn) whose parents are both divorced. You know what that means... four trips to four homes on Christmas Day. It's Christmas, it's Vince Vaughn so you know all kinds of crazy hijinks will ensue. It doesn't matter whether or not this movie is good or lame because it sounds like a holiday hit.
Actress: Rachel McAdams
2007 notables: Nada
2008 notables: Married Life, The Lucky Ones, The Time Traveler's Wife, State of Play

Why she made the list: With Wedding Crashers and The Notebook, Rachel looked like she was primed to make le leap. As far as I can tell, everyone loves Rachel McAdams. Everyone I talk to is positively smitten. It'd make me nauseous if I didn't have a serious case of puppy love for her as well. So yeah, lots of love to go around. We just all hated Red Eye.

I think she felt scorned by this. She took 2007 off and went out to the lake where she spent her fondest childhood years. She had time to reflect, hook a worm and watch the sun set. All the while, never forgetting and methodically planning her comeback to the very last detail. Twirling her mustache, shaving her mustache... until finally she was ready to unleash herself again upon John Q. Public.

Or maybe the scheduling just worked out the way it did. Anyway, with a full slate of films to be released in 2008 (including State of Play with Brad Pitt and Edward Norton), McAdams looks to be one of next year's most prolific prospects.

Actress: Katherine Heigl
2007 notables: Grey's Anatomy, Knocked Up
2008 notables: Grey's Anatomy, 27 Dresses
Why she made the list: She's on a little TV show that a few people watch and she appeared in one of this past summer's surprise hits. If 27 Dresses connects with the ladies and they drag their boyfriends with promises of late night flirtations, the Grey's Anatomy producers might be in for a world of trouble. You know they'll all be smiling at Heigl's face, wishing her good luck with the new movie all the while praying it suffers a quick, albeit painful box office death. Now you are ours forever!
Actress: Kate Hudson
2007 notables: She was nowhere to be found
2008 notables: Fool's Gold, Bachelor No. 2, Cutlass, Bride Wars

Why she made the list: Kate needed a year off after the whole Raising Helen-Skeleton Key-You, Me and Dupree era and quite frankly, so did we. But I'm feeling a comeback for Penny Lane. She's got a safe bet with Fools Gold in which she co-stars with Matthew McConaughey for a second time. A movie with that guy always helps with the female audience. Women like women who like Matthew McConaughey, I think. She also has a safe-sounding movie in Bride Wars about two women who schedule their wedding on the same day and begin a rivalry. She's even writing and directing a movie called Cutlass, which I'm pretty sure will suck, but hey, at least she's out there living it up. The other bad news is she's doing a movie with Dane Cook. Nobody's perfect.
Actress: Michelle Monaghan
2007 notables: Gone Baby Gone, The Heartbreak Kid
2008 notables: Trucker, Made of Honor, Eagle Eye

Why she made the list: She starred (and was pretty good) in Gone Baby Gone -- one of the year's better films -- and The Heartbreak Kid which isn't. If I could sum up her 2008 outlook with one word (or two) it would be ... Le Shia. You got it. She stars with LeBeouf in a flick called Eagle Eye. The Shia has been pretty platinum of late (late night visits to Walgreens notwithstanding). Plus, in 2008, Le Shia has Spielberg in his entourage with a little Indy movie (and I don't mean "independent") so it's going to be hard to bet against him or, for that matter, her.
Actress: Nicole Kidman
2007 notables: The Invasion, Margot at the Wedding, The Golden Compass
2008 notables: Australia, The Reader,

Why she made the list: Kidman can be tabloid fodder sometimes. As a result I become dangerously close to forgetting what a good actress she is. I have a feeling a rough 2007 is going to end pretty well for Ms. Kidman as The Golden Compass rolls into theaters next month. And I'm very interested in seeing what kind of insanity Baz Luhrmann has cooked up in the form of Australia. Meanwhile, I've read Bernhard Schlink's novel The Reader and it has serious Oscar potential if done right.
Actress: Ellen Page
2007 notables: Juno
2008 notables: Jack and Diane, Smart People

Why she made the list: She made me pay attention with Hard Candy and now she's turning even more heads (and starting some Oscar chatter) with this year's Juno. Her 2008 schedule looks pretty light but she has at least one project that is already raising eyebrows. The movie is called Jack and Diane and it's being described as a "lesbian werewolf movie." I don't know, personally I'm getting a little tired of all of these lesbian werewolf flicks. I mean, enough already. Have you really run out of ideas, Hollywood? If you fix this whole WGA strike, will I be able to tell the difference? Anyway, if Page lands herself an Oscar nom, expect those 2008 prospects to kick into another gear.

That about does it. I know, I know I left off some of your favorite actresses with some exciting projects. And here's your chance to give me a piece of your mind. Leave a comment below and give me a real earful!

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com