We know that James Cameron isn’t really proud of his debut work as a film director, 1981′s Piranha II. True, he was fired mid-way through production, so you can be sympathetic to his feelings about the whole experience. However, his hatred for what happened  has now spilled out towards the recent 3D remake. In an interview that appeared this week in Vanity Fare, Cameron went so far as to say -

I tend almost never to throw other films under the bus, but that is exactly an example of what we should not be doing in 3-D. Because it just cheapens the medium and reminds you of the bad 3-D horror films from the 70s and 80s, like Friday the 13th 3-D.

I think it’s interesting to note that Cameron doesn’t say that he saw the movie, so trashing Piranha 3D without a caveat either way seems to be a rather jerk move.

It looks like Piranha 3D producer Mark Canton thought the same thing and earlier today released the following statement/open letter to Cameron -

As a producer in the entertainment industry, Jim Cameron’s comments on VanityFair.com are very disappointing to me and the team that made Piranha 3D.  Mr. Cameron, who singles himself out to be a visionary of movie-making, seems to have a small vision regarding any motion pictures that are not his own.  It is amazing that in the movie-making process – which is certainly a team sport – that Cameron consistently celebrates himself out as though he is a team of one.  His comments are ridiculous, self-serving and insulting to those of us who are not caught up in serving his ego and his rhetoric.

Jim, are you kidding or what? First of all, let’s start by you accepting the fact that you were the original director of PIRANHA 2 and you were fired.  Shame on you for thinking that genre movies and the real maestros like Roger Corman and his collaborators are any less auteur or impactful in the history of cinema than you. Martin Scorcese made Boxcar Bertha at the beginning of his career.  And Francis Ford Coppola made Dimentia 13 back in 1963.  And those are just a few examples of the  talented and successful filmmakers whose roots are in genre films.  Who are you to impugn any genre film or its creators?

Having been deeply involved, as either an executive or as a producer, on Tim Burton’s original BATMAN and the first MEN IN BLACK, as well as 300, and now IMMORTALS, one of the things that has been consistent about all  of the filmmakers involved in these landscape-changing global films is that, in each and every case, all of the directors were humbled by their predecessors, their colleagues and by their awareness of the great history of film that came before them.  The enjoyment and the immersion of an audience in a movie theatre, as they had and will have with the above-mentioned films, and as audiences are experiencing with PIRNAHA 3D now, comes from the originality and the vision of the filmmaker, and not just from the creation of the technology.  You as much as anyone certainly knows that there are many pieces to the puzzle. Going to the movies still remains, arguably, amongst the best communal experiences that human beings can share.

My sense is that Mr. Cameron has never seen PIRANHA 3D…certainly not in a movie theatre with a real audience.  Jim, we invite you to take that opportunity and experience the movie in a theatre full of fans - fans for whom this movie was always intended to entertain.

Does Mr. Cameron have no idea of the painstaking efforts made by the talented young filmmaker Alex Aja and his team of collaborators?  Clearly, and this one is a good bet, he has no clue as to how great and how much of a fun-filled experience the audiences who have seen the film in 3D have enjoyed.  Those of us who have tried to stay in touch with the common movie audiences – the ones who really matter, the ones who actually still go to the theatre, put on the glasses, and eat the popcorn – take joy and pride in the fact that movies of all kinds, including PIRANHA 3D, have a place in filmmaking history – past, present and future. 3D unto itself is not a genre Jim, it is a tool that gives audiences an enhanced experience as they experience all kinds of movies.  I believe  Mr. Cameron did not see PIRANHA 3D either with any real audience or not at all. On opening weekend, I was in a Los Angeles theatre with a number of today’s great film makers including  JJ Abrams, who actually had nothing short of the fabulous, fun 3D experience that the movie provides. I am fortunate enough to have worked on, and continue to work on, evolutionary movies in all formats from just simple good story telling, which still matters most of all, to CG movies to tent-pole size 3D movies, and genre 3D movies like PIRANHA 3D.

What it comes down to, Jim, is –  that like most things in life – size doesn’t really matter.  Not everyone has the advantage of having endless amounts of money to play in their sandbox and to take ten years using other people’s money to make and market a film….like you do. Why can’t you just count your blessings?  Why do you have to drop Marty Scorsese’s or Tim Burton’s names, both gentlemen who I have personally worked with, and who have enjoyed great joy and success with movies of all genres and sizes well before the advent of modern 3D?  Then as now, they were like kids in a candy store recognizing, far beyond your imagination, the possibilities of storytelling and originality.

For the record, before you just totally dismiss PIRANHA 3D and all, in your opinion, worthless genre movies that actually undoubtedly gave you the ability to start your career, you should know that PIRANHA 3D had an 82% “fresh” (positive) ratting on Rotten Tomatoes on opening day - a web site that all the studios, filmmakers and the public use as a barometer of what makes a quality film.

We know that PIRANHA 3D has not achieved a boxoffice that is on the level of many of Mr. Cameron’s successes.  To date, PIRANHA 3D has earned over $30 million around the globe with #1 openings in several countries.  And, as the “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes indicates, critics and many, many others have embraced and celebrated PIRANHA 3D for the fun and entertaining – and even smart – movie-going experience that it is.

Let’s just keep this in mind Jim….you did not invent 3D. You were fortunate that others inspired you to take it further. The simple truth is that I had nothing but good things to say about AVATAR and my own experience since I actually saw it and didn’t damn someone else’s talent publicly in order to disassociate myself from my origins in the business from which we are all very fortunate. To be honest, I found the 3D in AVATAR to be inconsistent and while ground breaking in many respects, sometimes I thought it overwhelmed the storytelling.  Technology aside, I wish AVATAR had been more original in its storytelling.

We have to inspire, teach and mentor this next generation of filmmakers. It is garbage to suggest that any film or any filmmaker who cannot afford to work to your standards should be dissuaded from following his or her craft by not making 3D movies or not making movies like DISTRICT 9, for example, which probably cost the amount of AVATAR’s craft services budget, but totally rocked it in the movie theatre and in the marketplace. In that case, it was not a 3D movie.  But had it been, it certainly would not have been any less original or impactful. The enormous worldwide success of AVATAR has been good in all respects for you, your financiers, your distributors and the industry, as well as for the movie going public. Jim, there is a difference between Maestro which is a word that garners respect, and Dictator or Critic which are words better left for others who are not in our mutual boat or on our team. You are one of the best, it is reasonable to think that you should dig deeper and behave like it.  Young directors should be inspired by you, not publicly castigated by your mean-spirited and flawed analysis.

While we are all awed by your talents and your box office successes – and I compliment you on all of them – why don’t you rethink how you address films with which you are not involved?  You should be taking the high road that is being travelled by so many of your peers, and pulling with them to ensure that we, as an industry, will have a continuum of talented filmmakers that will deliver a myriad of motion pictures both big and small, with 3D or any other technologies yet to come that will entertain audiences throughout the world. That is the challenge that we face. That is the future that we should deliver.

It’s a shame that Cameron had to badmouth Piranha in this way. Along with the dance movie Step Up 3D, it is one of the only live action films presented in 3D that was actually shot for the format since Avatar‘s release. All the rest of the live action films have been post-production jobs that quite frankly looked pretty bad. Cameron should be applauding and encouraging any filmmaker shooting in 3D, not crapping on them.

After a summer’s worth of negotiations, Jonathan Liebesman has been officially signed by Warner Brothers to direct their sequel to this past spring’s financial blockbuster but critically reviled Clash Of The Titans. Back in June, Liebesman had been the frontrunner on Warner’s shortlist of candidates based on footage that execs saw of his upcoming alien invasion flick Battle: Los Angeles.

While the first film made $491 million at the international box office, it did not fare well with critics. (The film currently has a 28% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.) To combat the complaints about Clash‘s muddy and horrible looking post-production 3D conversion, the studio is planning on filming the movie in the format. Writers, Dan Mazeau and David Leslie Johnson are currently working on the film’s script, which they developed as a treatment with Greg Berlanti.

Warners is hoping to have the project in front of cameras by early spring in order to have star Sam Worthington finished in time for his duties on an Avatar sequel which is hoped to start shooting in later half of 2011.

While the Russell Brand headlining remaking of Arthur was filming on location in New York City earlier this year, there were lots of paparazzi giving us photos of the shoot and how Brand and the rest of the cast looked in character. Thanks to the New York Times, we now have an official look at Brand as the drunken playboy who falls for an average girl.

The Times article talks about how the script was constantly being tweeked on the set. News like that can either indicate that things are going badly or they are going very well. Given the presence of Greta Gerwig in the cast as Brand’s love interest, with her background in indie semi-improvisational films, I’m leaning towards the “going very well” side.

Arthur hits theaters next year.

British actor and former Doctor Who star Sylvester McCoy has confirmed that he is currently in talks to appear in Peter Jackson’s upcoming two-part adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Previously, the actor had been rumored as a possibility for the titular role of Bilbo Baggins, though at age 67, many thought he might be a bit old for the role.

McCoy told the Argyllshire Standard, a Scottish newspaper, Saturday, he is one of two characters being considered for “one of the wizard parts.”

I am being cast in The Hobbit… We’re currently in negotiations – there are two of us under consideration. It’s not the Bilbo role, but could be bigger.

As there has been no word of Ian McKellen leaving his Lord Of The Rings role of Gandalf The Grey, I can only assume that McCoy is up to play Radagast the Brown. Radagast was not seen on screen in Jackson’s adaptation, but in the books was another of the wizards who were sent to help Men and Elves in their struggle against Sauron but became an unwitting tool of the wizard Saruman and helped in imprisoning Gandalf in the tower at Orthanc. I am assuming that he will appear in some of the material that Jackson is developing for the film from the appendixes in Lord Of The Rings that detail  what Gandalf was up to when he was not with Bilbo Baggins and the group of dwarves he was traveling in The Hobbit‘s main storyline.

The is an exciting bit of news for a couple of reasons. First, it means that Jackson and company are slowly continuing to work on the Hobbit films while MGM continues to figure out their financial problems and may be an indicator that there is a light at the end of that particular dark tunnel. Secondly, as a nearly life-long Doctor Who fan, McCoy has been one of my favorites in the role, especially in his second and third year of the film when he was given some meatier material to play. I’m intrigued as to exactly what material Jackson has been developing to fill out The Hobbit in to two films to connect them with the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, and now doubly intrigued to see McCoy in that material as a character that never got much “screen time” in Tolkien’s works.

Never count a good male supermodel out.

First, the proposed sequel to Ben Stiller’s 2001 comedy Zoolander had a writer in Tropic Thunder‘s Justin Theroux and it looked like Stiller might be able to get the studio interested in making the film.

Then a few months later, Stiller tweeted that that the follow-up’s future looked to be in doubt due to Paramount not wanting to pony up the $50 million needed to finance the film .

But if you’re still looking for Derek Zoolander to strut down the runway and hit you with his patented Blue Steel look, there’s hope. On Friday, Stiller tweeted that he and Theroux were still working on getting the film in front of cameras -

It’s unclear exactly what they are working on, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were going trough the script and looking for a way to trim it down a bit to get it a bit more inline budgetarily with what the studio is willing to pay for. Hopefully, this won’t compromise the comedy.

1. The Last Exorcism (Lionsgate, 2,874 Theaters, 87 Minutes, Rated PG-13): Exorcisms are pretty good horror film fodder. You have an innocent possessed by an evil demon. You have a heroic priest or priests fighting to save her soul. You have a battle that they could conceivably not win. You really only have to do two things: stay as far away from the plot of The Exorcist as you possibly can and look at the procedure from a different angle.

This film appears to take a cue from police films (with a little bit taken from The Blair Witch Project as well). A burnt-out priest decides to do one final exorcism before he retires. He also allows a documentary crew follow him for this last time. Unfortunately, it procedure doesn’t go all that smooth.

Of course, the film is PG-13, which is one strike against any horror film, in my opinion. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that its going to be bad.

2. Takers (Sony/Screen Gems, 2,206 Theaters, 107 Minutes, Rated PG-13): You can say one thing for this cast, it certainly is eclectic. You have troubled hip-hop stars (Chris Brown, T.I.), Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen), and that guy from Fast and Furious plus that guy from The Wire (Paul Walker, Idris Elba). And Matt Dillon, who is always good, even in bad movies.

But what kind of movie will this be? It deals with a group of very successful bank robbers who have come across a bit of dissension in their ranks. Apparently, it revolves around T.I.’s character and his feeling neglected while being in prison. This crack in the team’s unity could be just the thing to allow the cops to bring the crew to justice.

This film could be a fun caper film, or it could be kind of bad. There are a lot of unproven actors in the cast.

3. Avatar: Special Edition (Fox, 811 Theaters, 160 Minutes, Rated PG-13): Welcome to blatant cash-grab theater! James Cameron is second only to George Lucas when it comes to putting out multiple versions of the same movies.

This film features nine whole minutes that were not in the original release last year. Yes, nine whole minutes. They weren’t in the DVD release from back in April, but they probably will be in the new, 3-D DVD/Blu-Ray that is set to come out later this year, which will probably have even more footage not seen in the original version.

What? Didn’t the first Avatar make enough money the first time around? I mean, you can’t deny the pull of the film–it is the highest grossing film of all time. That means that hardcore Avatards will be lining up to see this film. But really, haven’t you made them spend enough? Two DVD/Blu-Ray release is almost the industry standard. Two theatrical releases (excepting the “let’s remind the Oscar voters reissuing that is quite common) is just being greedy.

Last month, it was announced that this Friday’s theatrical re-release of Avatar would contain about eight or nine minutes worth of new footage. Well, it turns out that isn’t all of the new footage from director James Cameron’s blockbuster science-fiction epic that you’ll be seeing.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the film’s 2-disc DVD and Blu-ray release in November will feature an additional sixteen minutes of deleted scenes added back into the film.

While there is no details yet as to what footage will be included for home video outside of the additions being unveiled this weekend, Avatar producer Jon Landau detailed what that new footage will include -

We tried to look at what people have responded to in the film and give them more of that… There’s a whole new scene that takes place in the (Na’vi) school, there’s more night bioluminescence, there’s new creatures, and there is a new action scene. The scenes don’t just feel like added scenes — they are very organic to the story and embellish it.

I’m still hoping that at some point we’ll see an insertion of the subplot of the unlikely romance between Michelle Rodriguez’s and Joel Moore’s characters which helps provide Rodriguez’s character the motivation to break with the military and help the scientists defend the Na’vi.

In the meantime, here is James Cameron on G4′s Attack Of The Show demonstrating the 3D camera that he used to shoot the movie.

This Friday will see the first public screening of a Fleischer Studio cartoon in almost eight decades in New York. The previously thought lost short “Ace Of Spades” will screen as a part of animation historian Tom Stathes program of silent-era and early talkie cartoons at Attic Studios in Long Island City.

There’s not much info on the short floating around out there. It was released in January 1931 as part of Fleischer’s Talkartoon series. Bimbo had recently been given a girlfriend in the form of Betty Boop, and “Ace Of Spades” is one of the small number of solo outings he would have left before Betty’s popularity would eclipse his own.

From the short compilation of clips below, the cartoon certainly looks like a classic mix of all the familiar Fleischer Studio elements – rubber hose animation, crazy character design and bouncy music with rhyming dialogue.

You can find more information on the screening here.

Did the poor reception that recent horror franchise remakes like Friday The 13th and A Nightmare On Elm Street receive cause producers at Dimension to rethink their plans of relaunching their Hellraiser series? It certainly looks like they have abandoned their strategy of producing a new theatrical version of the first film in the series, based on author Clive Barker’s novella The Hellbound Heart, in favor of continuing things the way they have been for the last ten years as straight-to-home video releases.

But the one thing that will be different about that latest installment, titled Hellraiser: Revelations, is that it will proceed without Doug Bradley, the actor who has breathed life into the series’ demonic centerpiece Pinhead, since its inception in 1988. The actor was recently approached about appearing the sequel, which is prepping to start production in a week or so, but declined. As he told Dread Central -

I know that many of you will have caught up with the sudden burst of Internet chatter about a new Hellraiser film going into production, and will be keen to know whether I’ve been approached to play Pinhead again, so here’s the deal … I have been approached just in this last week (w/b 16 August) regarding a proposed new Hellraiser film. This is not the ‘remake’ which has been endlessly discussed for the last three years: with the working title Hellraiser: Revelations, it will be the ninth film in the series. I would stress that I have had no contact from, or negotiations with, anyone from Dimension Films: rather these contacts have been by way of private discussion with individuals involved with this project.

Following these discussions, and after reading the script and giving it due consideration, I have decided not to participate. The ink is barely dry on the script, and it is scheduled to be in front of the cameras in two weeks time and in the can by the middle of next month (September 2010). The miniscule shooting schedule is more than matched by the budget.”

Whether or not this means that somebody else will be stepping up to play Pinhead, I have no idea. I guess we can watch this space together …

At the risk of sounding snarky. I think the other bit of real news here is that there has now been eight Hellraiser films made! I remember seeing the first two in college on video and catching parts three and four in theaters in the 1990s. But the disappointment I had for those two installments certainly didn’t fuel any desire to follow the series when it shifted over to direct-to-video releases with 2000′s Hellraiser: Inferno.

With the series having such a life as a direct-to-video franchise, I can see why producers are looking to do this quickly and cheaply to maximize a very probable minimum return. I’m sure though, that fans are disappointed that such a penny-pinching approach has

With principal photography set to start in just ten days in England, producer Bryan Singer has let slip some plot details about the comic book adaptation X-Men: First Class.

Speaking to Aint It Cool‘s Harry Knowles, Singer expounded on a few points about the film’s setting a storyline.

Most excitingly, the film will be set in the early 1960s, in the era of President John F. Kennedy’s “Camelot.” It was the time of JFK and RFK, of MLK and Malcom X, a time when the Civil Rights movement was just beginning to gain momentum. It was around this time that the first X-Men comics began hitting newsstands in the fall of 1963 and it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to compare the conflict between the heroic mutants the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants as an allegory for the different approaches to the civil rights struggle between Rev. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

When Singer brought the comics to film in 2000, he updated the civil rights allegory in the second film to reflect a new civil rights struggle, that of homosexual civil rights. (“Have you tried…not being a mutant?”) And there’s no denying that a rewatching of the films, with all mutants being branded as terrorists over the actions of a few, certainly doesn’t carry a new resonance today. But I think it will be interesting to see how the allegory plays by going back to its roots, setting the characters as contemp0raries with their analogues.

Singer also confirmed many details that were already being inferred by the casting announcements we have already seen. The main villains will be the Hellfire Club, lead by Sebastian Shaw and Emma Frost being played by the previously announced Kevin Bacon and January Jones.

Other tidbits that Singer disclosed -

• The film’s storyline is not going to be based on the 2006 comics miniseries or the ongoing series that followed.
• Instead, we will see how Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr met and developed the idea for a team of mutants heroes. Xavier (James McAvoy)  will not be wheelchair bound at the beginning of the film, though I tend to doubt that he’ll remain that way all the way to the final credits.
• Founding team member Scott “Cyclops” Summers and Jean “Marvel Girl/Phoenix” Grey will not be in the film.
• Scott’s brother, Alex “Havoc” Summers, will be in the film, played by Lucas Till.
• The film will be an international adventure (the Cold War USSR is mentioned as a location).
• Director Matthew Vaughn is patterning much of the technology to look like/recall the Sean Connery James Bond-era films.
• The costumes will look more like their comic book counterparts than they have in previous installments of the franchise. And we will get a look at them fairly soon.

Normally, I would be less than enthusiastic at the idea of a franchise going back to the “origin story” well just ten years in to it’s existence (Spider-Man, I’m looking at you), especially since the X-Men franchise has done this once already with none too stellar results. But this certainly has some intriguing elements to make me over look the origins angle.