Briony: I promise to stop embellishing the truth.
Sweeney Todd: I will have vengeance
Robert Graysmith: I will stop obsessing on serial killers … or, to be more specific I will stop obsessing on serial killers as soon as I finish this book.
and all the other ones I borrowed from the library. Really I will.
OK and the ones I ordered from Amazon. After that I will stop. I swear.
Erik Davis
Filed under: Fandom, Tech Stuff, Distribution, Newsstand, Home Entertainment, Monday Morning Poll
For the last official Monday Morning Poll before 2008 comes rolling in, I thought we’d tackle a topic that will be talked about a lot throughout the month of January and well into the new year: Movie downloading. Or, more specifically, renting your films online through iTunes. Chris told us recently that Apple was gearing up to launch a service that would allow folks to rent films through iTunes (with an official announcement expected to land during next month’s MacWorld). As of now, iTunes only allows users to download films for purchase, and not rentals. However, the majority of people would rather rent, and so this new service — coupled with a familiar name like iTunes — could revolutionize the entire rental industry come 2008.
Add to that the fact that Variety has just announced Apple’s first studio partners in the rental game: 20th Century Fox and Disney. Other studios like Paramount, Lionsgate and MGM — all of whom already make titles available for purchase on iTunes — are expected to join the club as well. While on-demand rentals are nothing new, being able to rent and download directly to an iPod is new … and very exciting for some. Me? I’m not hip enough to start renting and downloading online, and so I’m not yet prepared to dive in. But I am curious to know how many of you will be scarfing down iTunes’ new video rental service? Is this a big deal? Or not so much?
The deeper I sink into cinephilia the less room I have for other things in my life like music. I can’t do a top ten list of favorite songs or CDs since I haven’t been paying much attention. But I do occassionally get into something or am convinced to love a song/artist by pleading friends. A close friend of mine –who some of you will know from the comments as ‘kristoferrobbin’– is in town and he’s making cinematic concentration difficult. Damn him! So herewith a semi random assortment of 10 videos/songs I dug this year. Enjoy whilst I work on the movie stuff.
The poor old Statue of Liberty. Over the years we’ve seen it consumed by a tidal waves, submerged in ice and buried under sand, all for our cinematic pleasure. Now Lost creator JJ Abrams has decapitated it for his latest feature Cloverfield, which premieres on January 18 after one of those lengthy, teaser viral campaigns which at first intrigues but rapidly goes stale and starts to stink the internet out.
Writing in the New York Times last week, Sewell Chan wondered what the compulsion was for us constantly to see New York destroyed onscreen. Former mayor Edward I Koch thinks it’s envy. But for anyone who’s seen the Cloverfield trailer (has anyone not by now?), there’s one overriding emotion - and it’s neither envy nor a sense of vengeance. Clouds of dust and filthy smoke buffeting through downtown Manhattan? Citizens sheltering from falling debris in shop doorways? All shot via hand-held cameras and mobile phones? This is a re-enactment of September 11. There’s no coincidence: Abrams (and director Matt Reeves) have gone out of their way to recall the panic of the terrorist attack on New York in order to sell us this film. Only this one has monsters in it too! Even better than the real thing!
Patrick Sisam’s The Year of Getting to Know Us premieres at Sundance, but an early trailer (with a different title - Rocket) has popped up online.
Jimmy Falon stars in what Sundance describes as a “darkly comic exploration of the classic dysfunctional-family dynamic” and “a quirky exploration of how the people in our lives make us who we are.” Christopher Rocket escaped his sheltered life as the only child of a golf-obsessed father and eccentric mother in Florida to become a commitment-phobic successful freelance writer in New York. The story intercuts between Rocket’s “less-than-normal ’70s childhood and present-day adulthood” as Christopher returns home to reconnect with his estranged comatose father. Lucy Liu, Sharon Stone, Tom Arnold, and Illeana Douglas co-star.
Ryan Stewart
Filed under: Action, Drama, Casting, Sony, Fandom, James Bond, Remakes and Sequels, Daniel Craig
The British Times has gotten word that Bond 22 will be filming a scene next week at the Barbican, a performing arts center in the north of London. The center is typically used to host music concerts, art exhibitions and theater productions, and according to the paper the “a sign has gone up giving warning that next week it will be the venue for the filming of a scene from the next James Bond film, currently working title Bond 22, which will again star Daniel Craig. Relax, ladies, Craig won’t be there as far as I know, but in the Sculpture Court … they will film a man talking on a mobile phone, the sign says. We’ll have to wait for the release of the film, set for November, to see why it was necessary to go to the Barbican to film someone talking on their mobile phone.” And that’s it. At first blush, this sounds to me a lot like the Miami Body Worlds scene in Casino Royale, doesn’t it?
Meanwhile, a source who would know tells me that Eon Productions has yet to release any information whatsoever on Bond casting to Sony, and that includes a thumbs up or down on Gemma Arterton having a role in the film. In other words, they are trying their level best to keep all of this information secret for the time being. Still, I bet that whoever the actress is, she’ll eventually be spotted lunching or walking down the street with Barbara Broccoli or Michael Wilson and the game will be up. The last time a major hiring decision was made — Marc Forster — the press knew about it before the release could be put out, because the press knew that Daniel Craig was incongruously walking down the street with Broccoli in L.A, obviously to talk business.
Peter Martin
Filed under: Action, Drama, Foreign Language, Independent, Box Office, Cinematical Indie
Here in America, our box office returns show that we’re awash in aliens, predators, chipmunks, secrets and a self-made legend, but Swedish cinema lovers supported one of their own when it opened on Christmas Day. Variety reports that Arn: The Knight Templar has earned a robust $2.2 million in its first two days of release. That breaks down to a per-screen average of $10,821 at 207 engagements and is the “biggest opening ever” for a Swedish film in its homeland.
As I reported in August, Arn is the most expensive film and TV project ever made in Scandanavia, budgeted at $30 million to adapt the trilogy by Jan Guillou into two movies and a TV series. The books revolve around a fictional character forced into service as a Knight Templar during the Crusades. Variety says that local reviews “ranged from positive to negative with the majority falling somewhere in-between,” but producer Valdemar Bergendahl gave the mixed reaction a positive spin: “It was expected. But I’m happy with all the copy that has been written about the film. It has shown what great interest there is in it.” There’s a good producer for you: any news is good news!
Hey there Folks. As promised many months ago, we have now made my documentary, “Prince of Peace - God of War” available for purchase by digital download. The DVD is still available for ordering at $17 (we’ve sold just a little over 1000 copies since the end of of November), but you now have the option of downloading the digital file of the movie for just $4.99
For those of you who may be new around here, here’s a little synopsis at what the movie is about:
Australian soap star turned late-90’s pop singer Natalie Imbruglia (remember her one hit wonder Torn?) auditioned for a role in Gavin Hood’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The singer/songwriter supposedly tested two weeks ago for a role in the upcoming X-Men prequel/spin-off film starring Hugh Jackman. No word on the role that she read for, or if she got the part.