| THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE WTF: Jurassic Parkour |
| Written by Arya Ponto |
| Monday, 18 January 2010 |
|
Avatar is showing no signs of letting up, and with last night's Best Drama Golden Globes win (ugh), it's sure to keep staying on the headlines. We'll start off this edition with a couple of things Avatar-related that—unlike last week's Na'Vi suicide/sex dreams—don't make you question humanity. Fancy that. And then, of course, I counter that sanctuary with another WTF entry about those Avatar fans (are they the new Twilight fans?). Take a look-see.
THE GOOD • Of the (already thinning) good sketches that SNL does these days, very few of them seem to be good enough to be recurring. While Will Forte is the one heading to the big screen with MacGruber, I think my favorite remains Laser Cats. Last Saturday, we were treated to the fifth episode of Laser Cats, this time with the added backing of James Cameron and guest starring Sigourney Weaver.
Gamechanger. • Making its Oscar push, Fox has put out a PDF copy of Avatar for voters, which you can also download here. It's a fun read if you want to compare the finished film to the paper. It has various scenes missing from the final product, including a look at our miserable Earth and the much talked about Na'Vi sex. • Iron Man 2 will be released on IMAX. Not really surprising or make the sequel any more exciting, but still; I always appreciate the chance to see something on IMAX. Don't be surprised if Iron Man 3 makes its way to 3D. • Here's that great Martin Scorsese montage from last night's Golden Globes when he accepted the Cecil B. DeMille award. Watch it before it gets taken down. I'd post an official version, but the montage is cut out of the Hulu clip.
• Oliver Hirschbiegel, the director of Downfall, enjoys the popular YouTube meme that his Hitler scene has given birth to, and even has his own favorites. That's pretty cool of him. For good measure, here's the latest one with Hitler expressing his opinion on the Conan-Leno debacle.
THE BAD
Yes, "upcoming," as in the first issue isn't even out yet, but somehow it's been optioned already and Millar claims they could be in production by the end of the year. Millar's a champ at hyping his own projects like this, getting fans excited over things that are mostly complete fabrications. Does anyone really believe any of this? His "best in the biz" director may well be Len Wiseman or something. It seems like Millar does these creator-owned comics just to get Hollywood to take notice and buy the rights, and it's just a depressing reflection of the industry. • Universal is planning to reboot the Jurassic Park series... Well, kind of. Joe Johnston, director of Jurassic Park III, claims that the planned Jurassic Park IV will be the first in a new trilogy, off-shooting into new stories that don't involve a group of people trying to survive dinosaurs. Oooh, does that mean we're going to get a movie exclusively starring dinosaurs? How can we make that even cooler? Easy. May I suggest... JURASSIC PARKOUR? Think about it. Really think about it. • A new law in South Australia bans film distributors from promoting or displaying R-rated movies. That means no posters, displays or anything.
Now video stores are required to put R-rated films like Mad Max and Fight Club into plain boxes with just the title. Yes, that means in South Australia, you can't go to a store and buy certain movies with the original packaging intact. Let's just cut to the chase: whoever drafted this new law is a moron. It's doubly nonsensical because theatrical releases are unaffected by it. • It looks like Dirk Benedict and Dwight Schultz (the original Peck and Murdock) are both in the new A-Team movie. Director Joe Carnahan teases in this interview that their cameos are associated with their old characters, who are now being played by Bradley Cooper and Sharlto Copley, respectively. Carnahan is also still looking to put Mr. T in the movie, even though he's well aware that Mr. T doesn't want to be involved unless he's playing Baracus again. So what does that mean? Is the movie going to end with a flash-forward to 25 years later, or what? And why do we care so much about cameos? • Michael Bay told the LA Times that Transformers 3 will have less robots, less explosions, and it will get into the robot characters more. He said this like that's supposed to be a good thing and not an anti-thesis to the very reason why a Transformers franchise was handed to Michael Bay. Maybe this is that low-budget intimate drama project he's been talking about for years.
THE WTF
Even nuttier is Deadline Hollywood's report that Lionsgate bought this globally recognizable billion-dollar franchise for $15 mil. The future has been changed. • I'm a little perplexed by this community for people who believe they are the reincarnation of the Na'Vi. Of course, the whole Otherkin movement is not exactly new, and this is just the latest chapter of that... thing. It wouldn't be as weird if they didn't get offended over Avatar parodies and rally against discrimination. This movie came out exactly a month ago. That's just mindblowing that there are already people shaping their lives out of it. At least the Otherkins who believe they were dragons or elves and shit are basing their beliefs off of thousands of years of myths. With the Na'Vi, we know the myth's origin—he was at the Golden Globes last night! • I came across a trailer for Spanish director Julio Medem's (Sex & Lucia) new film Room in Rome, and, uh, I don't think I should post it here, because it's very NSFW, but I guess I can link to it. The film is set to make its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival next month, though IFC has already acquired the US rights. The film is a remake of Chile's 2006 entry to the Foreign Language Film Academy Awards, En La Cama, but changing the couple to two women instead of a man and a woman. The entire film takes place inside a motel room, where the couple spend a night of conversations, passionate lovemaking and... naked pillow fights? • The Roman Porno genre is back! Nikkatsu studio in Japan is restarting it after two decades of inactivity. Roman Pornos are critically acclaimed softcore porn produced by big studios using big budget—often serving as the humble beginnings of great directors—setting them apart from the regular porn industry's output. Let's hope the young directors of these new ones would one day win an Oscar too, like Departures' Yojiro Takita. • I bid you good day with this video of Werner Herzog, director of Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Grizzly Man and Bad Lieutenant, reading and interpreting Curious George.
Okay, so it's not really Herzog and doesn't even sound like him, but it is an amusing mimic nonetheless. |
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• Stop the presses! Mark Millar is a hype machine. Claiming to be posting drunk, Millar posted
• We all know that the Terminator franchise is not what it was once before, but I didn't realize it has become such an unwanted stink. After the rights to the franchise went on sale, many studios—practically all the big ones—passed on this enterprise. Eventually it was bought by genre-loving Lionsgate (yes, Lionsgate, as in the makers of the Saw series and those direct-to-video horror movies you see at Blockbuster and contemplate renting for 10 minutes before putting them back on the shelf).