When a movie usually finishes principal photography, there’s a big party for the cast and crew and they all go their separate ways while the director and an editor hunker down to piece together all the filmed bits into a cohesive whole. But not on director Kevin Smith’s films. This past week, Kevin Smith wrapped production on his political horror film Red State and rather make his cast and crew wait he screened a rough cut of the movie they just finished.
How was Smith able to pull off such a feat? While the cast and crew would relax after each day’s filming, Smith took the footage, all shot on video, and edited it into rough cuts of the scenes they worked on. It is a habit that he first started on while filming Clerks 2 and allows Smith to see if reshoots are needed and can work them into the regular schedule rather than having to reassemble his crew and the necessary cast members months later.
So when will the rest of us get to see the film? That remains up in the air. Red State currently has no distributor. Smith is hoping to take the film to the Sundance Film Festival next year, which will hopefully generate a few offers. But as a Smith fan, I know that we’ll get to see the film at some point because it has been made. And getting it made was the biggest hurtle that Smith had to clear.
Director George Hickenlooper, whose latest film Casino Jack is due for release next month, died this morning, October 30, 2010, in Denver Colorado. Hickenlooper was in town preparing for a screening of Casino Jack later this week at the Starz Denver Film Festival. His death was confirmed by his cousin, Denver mayor John Hickenlooper, to the Denver Post. He was 47.
Prior to the accolades he has been receiving on the festival circuit for Casino Jack, Hickenlooper was probably best known for Hearts Of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, a documentary that looked at the tumultuous production of Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now. Additionally, he directed the documentary The Mayor Of Sunset Strip and the features Dogtown and Factory Girl. His documentary Hick Town followed his cousin John’s trip to the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
Although his death is being investigated as per Denver police protocol, it is thought to be from natural causes.
You know, for all the bagging people do on Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns, it could have been worse. And by worse, I’m talking about Tim Burton’s Superman Lives. It seems that every time we get another look at what the director was planning, it just gets worse. Remember a year ago when we got a look at proposed star Nicholas Cage in the Superman uniform? That was pretty awful.
We have another look at how things may have turned put as makeup and special effects technician Steve Johnson has posted on his Facebook page a gallery of photos taken while he was working on the Burton film developing a different take on the Superman suit that we saw Cage in. While I think that if this would appear in some non-Superman film it would be pretty impressive, but its just too much of a radical departure from the standard Superman look to work. I do like the stylized S-shield, though.
Here’s a choice couple of looks at what Johnson was working on. Check out his 22 picture gallery for more behind-the-scenes pictures of a film that never was.
One of cinema’s most famous cars, the tricked-out silver Aston Martin DB5 sports car first driven by Sean Connery in Goldfinger, sold at auction Wednesday in London for $4.1 million.
Used for driving sequences in Goldfinger, the car was used for promotional purposes after the film was released. The car was so popular with fans that it made a return appearance in Thunderball and was for filming modified with machine guns, rotating license plates, bullet-proof shileld, oil slick sprayer and other spy gadgets that aren’t exactly standard in the models that were sold to the public. Its appearances in the Bond films helped popularize the Aston Martin brand among sports car buyers in the early 1960s.
The auctioned car is one of two that the company specially prepared for Eon Productions for the filming of the Bond films. The other Aston Martin was the gadget car for Goldfinger, sporting many of the devices seen in that film. Unfortunately, it was reported stolen in 1997 and is presumed destroyed.
While that amount might sound a bit pricey for a used car, it is still under the $5.5 million that the car was valued at and far short of the $10 million it was expected to bring in. Still, it is quite a bit more than the $12,000 that radio broadcaster Jerry Lee spent to acquire the car in 1969.
Harry Yeaggy, an American classic cars collector, was the winning bidder and stated that the car may go on display in an upscale office complex in Los Angeles or Moscow. Moscow? Those SMERSH agents would just love to get their hands on the car…
1. Saw 3D (Lionsgate, 2,808 Theaters, 90 Minutes, Rated R): The ads claim that this film will be the last of the franchise. Well, it’s about time. This last vestige of the torture porn genre should go out while it’s still ahead.
In this installment, the rival factions following in Jigsaw’s footprints begin fight it out over his legacy, a group of survivors run into trouble when their support group leader turns out to have some nasty secrets in his past.
You have to admire the way the franchise continued after killing off it’s main villain so early in the chain of sequels and the plots were a slight improvement over the imitators it spawned. But the series is now a throwback, an almost quaint reminder of an earlier time. So, goodbye Saw franchise. Please try to stay away.
Much like The Lord of the Rings trilogy, I’m sure the Academy will reward Saw 3D with the richly deserved and long overdue nominations the franchise has been waiting for all these years.
Or, maybe not. The Academy like to be viewed as young and hip, but they ain’t young and hip enough to nominate something in the torture porn genre.
About two months ago we got our first look at the costume for the comic book adaptation Captain America. Granted, it was a view of a stunt performer on a motor cycle in the costume, but it was still something.
The big reveal of the costume happened today courtesy of Entertainment Weekly, which will feature it on the cover of their latest upcoming issue. The accompanying article features some more pictures of star Chris Evans as Cap, Haley Atwell as Major Peggy Carter, Hugo Weaving as the Red Skull in his Hydra uniform and more.
George Clooney has secured financing to go ahead with his cinematic adaptation of the play Farragut North, which has also undergone a name change to The Ides Of March.
Clooney is also set to star in the film as a state governor making a run at his party’s presidential nomination. Joining him in the cast are Ryan Gosling as the campaign’s press spokesman, Marissa Tomei as a New York Times reporter, Evan Rachel Wood as a campaign intern and Paul Giamatti as the manager of a rival campaign.
The original play was written by Beau Willimon, and based loosely on his experiences working on the 2004 Howard Dean campaign. Clooney and his producing partner Grant Heslov worked with Willimon on adapting the script. Production is set to start in February in Michigan and Ohio.
One has to give Clooney credit, as not many actors make a successful transition to the director’s chair and I’m certainly glad that he went back on his announcement that Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind was going to be the only film he would ever direct that he made after that film’s release. Sure, his last film, the early days of football comedy Leatherheads, did not do well, but with Confessions and Goodnight And Good Luck in Clooney’s win column, it’s looking like Ides Of March is a film to look forward to.
With it being the biggest money making film of all time, not adjusting the returns of Gone With The Wind for 71 years of inflation, it was almost inevitable that there was going to be a sequel to Avatar. And now James Cameron and studio Twentieth Century Fox have come to an agreement that will see the director making his next two films Avatar sequels.
Cameron had this to say in a press release announcing the deal -
It is a rare and remarkable opportunity when a filmmaker gets to build a fantasy world, and watch it grow, with the resources and partnership of a global media company. AVATAR was conceived as an epic work of fantasy – a world that audiences could visit, across all media platforms, and this moment marks the launch of the next phase of that world. With two new films on the drawing boards, my company and I are embarking on an epic journey with our partners at Twentieth Century Fox. Our goal is to meet and exceed the global audience’s expectations for the richness of AVATAR’s visual world and the power of the storytelling. In the second and third films, which will be self contained stories that also fulfill a greater story arc, we will not back off the throttle of AVATAR’s visual and emotional horsepower, and will continue to explore its themes and characters, which touched the hearts of audiences in all cultures around the world. I’m looking forward to returning to Pandora, a world where our imaginations can run wild.
The current plan is for Cameron to start scripting the two films in the new year and having cameras rolling by the end of 2011. Of course, since there is a certain amount of post-production work required for these films, we won’t get to see them in our local cineplexes until December 2014 and 2015.
While I’ll admit that I am excited to see new wonders Cameron has cooked up for the world of Pandora, I’m hoping that there he takes a bit more time to flesh out the characters who will be exploring this world than he did with the first film.
The LA Times had an exclusive interview with Batman franchise helm Christopher Nolan today, who revealed that the eagerly awaited followup to 2008′s The Dark Knight will be called The Dark Knight Rises.
Nolan also crossed one name off of the list of possible comic book adversaries to square off against Batman in the upcoming film saying that Edward Nigma, aka The Riddler, would not be appearing in the film. He also added, “We’ll use many of the same characters as we have all along, and we’ll be introducing some new ones.”
Also knocked out of consideration for the film was the use of 3D, with Nolan instead convincing Warner Brothers brass to allow him to further explore the use of IMAX, which he already used in certain sequences of The Dark Knight.
So with Mr. Freeze crossed off the list of potential villains last March and now The Riddler not making the cut, who do you think is still in the running for the spotlight villain role?
Zach Galifianakis is kind of a muppet to begin with so it does make a certain amount of sense that he is going to be in the new, as yet untitled, Muppet movie.
Of all people, Robert Downey Jr. let the cat out of the bad when the two were doing press for their comedy Due Date, opening November 5. (Hey Downey, how about blurting out whether you’re really dropping out of Gravity or not?) I’m not sure that Galifanakis is irked that Downey spilled the beans in this manner To E!, or if the whole thing was set up between the two.
As of right now, the Untitled Muppet Film has been co-written and is set to star Jason Segal. Amy Adams, Rashida Jones and Chris Cooper are also confirmed for the cast. Cameras are expected to roll early next year when Segal goes on break from the sitcom How I Met Your Mother in which he co-stars.
