So. Much. Glitter. Not that that’s a bad thing, really, when we’re talking about Liberace. Some of us (like me) have been waiting a while for a proper full trailer for Steven Soderbergh’s Liberace biopic Behind The Candelabra, starring Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as his lover Scott Thorson. Now we have that full trailer. And it’s really sparkly.
I have a massive soft spot for Guillermo del Toro’s two Hellboy films (Hellboy and Hellboy II: The Golden Army). To me, they’re really what comic book movies should be: violent without being over the top, funny without being self-aware, serious without going melodramatic. So it makes me sad (but not surprised) to learn that there’s a very good chance we will never see the final installment of what should really be a rounded trilogy. Hellboy creator Mike Mignola has claimed, in no uncertain terms, that Hellboy 3 will not happen.
So, you know how Disney has had great success in doing live-action retellings of iconic stories (Alice In Wonderland, Oz The Great And Powerful)? You know how no one seemed to like those two films, yet they made massive amounts of money worldwide? Well, they will carry on the tradition. Disney plans to begin filming a live-action version of Cinderella with director Kenneth Branagh at the helm. And now we have a shortlist of actresses being considered for the title role.
Tim Burton is one of those directors that many love to hate. While I was not in the camp that despised Dark Shadows and Alice In Wonderland, I admit that they feel more like dull rehashes of the same stuff Burton has been doing since the 1990s. So this next piece of news about Burton’s latest project makes me all kinds of happy. Burton will be stepping behind the camera for Big Eyes, from Ed Wood writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. The even better news? Big Eyes will star Christoph Waltz and Amy Adams.
Am I the only one excited for David Fincher’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea? Mostly because it’s a combination of the director of Seven with Jules Verne and Disney? Really? Well, whether you’re excited or not, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea is inching ever closer to production, for Australia has offered itself as a potential site for production once Disney greenlights the picture.
I am more than willing to watch just about anything Guillermo del Toro is involved in. But when del Toro sinks his teeth into the comic book world, things get even more exciting. Del Toro recently dropped details on the DC Comics Dark Universe adaptation, which sounds increasingly exciting.
Heist films are an art unto themselves. They often overlap other genres – crime, thriller, film noir, romantic comedy – but the central element is, must, and will always be the perfect heist. The planning and the execution must be perfect, the criminals charming (most of the time), the take lucrative, the baddies so very bad. A well-planned heist is cinematic poetry – it has tension and cleverness and at its best keeps the audience guessing right up until the end.
Wally Pfister’s upcoming film Transcendence already has an intriguing premise – a scientist who has his brain uploaded to a computer – and an intriguing cast in Johnny Depp, Paul Bettany and Rebecca Hall. Now, we may add more to the list of intrigue as Kate Mara has joined the cast list as well.
Oh dear. The rumor mill surrounding sequels always gives me a pain, because it’s pretty much backroom arguments and reports of disasters that do not have much of a basis in reality. But when a sequel development gets into perpetual hot water, there might be something to the story. This might very well be the case with the planned sequel to Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, which has been reported to be in very dire straits.
File this under ‘unnecessary reboots/sequels that will make you long for the halcyon days of the 1990s.' In today’s edition, we have the endless talk about the Independence Day sequels (there are two of them apparently), entitled ID Forever. Roland Emmerich, the man behind the original, has begun discussing just what these two sequels are going to entail during his press junket for the upcoming White House Down.
