Paul McGuigan, director of Gangster No 1, Lucky Number Slevin and the upcoming Sherlock Holmes TV series by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, has confirmed for LiveForFilms that he will be indeed working on a new TV series for BBC Scotland, written by Grant Morrison and starring polymath Stephen Fry. Bleeding Cool reported on this possibility previously, and McGuigan says that currently Morrison has written a treatment.
Read More – Bleeding Cool: Paul McGuigan, Grant Morrison, Stephen Fry In New BBC Thriller
(via Cat Vincent)
There may be another short video game ad before the actual Heavy Rain mall scene trailer:
(via Nadreck)
Wikipedia entry
Ars Technica Review (via Cat Vincent)
Was Alan Moore on Oceanic flight 815? It was either him, or someone deliberately meant to look like him (note the rings!). I noticed this guy and commented on him while watching the season premiere (“LA X”), but didn’t think much of it. That is, until I was the above screencap from Bleeding Cool.
What are the chances it was actually him? Well, Moore appeared on The Simpsons and recently name dropped the Sopranos in an interview, so we know he’s not totally adverse to American television.
See also: Alan Moore’s influence on LOST.
Above: Nuke from Robocop 2
Inside that device that looks like something you’d stick a check in while at a drive-thru bank is nuke, a red liquid that drug that is administered via an injection directly into the bloodstream. It’s highly addictive and causes effects that I guess are closest to that of cocaine, which makes it so popular on the future streets of Detroit. Nuke effects everyone, from cyborg cops to 12-year-old drug dealers. Most people take nuke through a quick injection into the neck. Hardcore.
Other drugs covered include Substance D, Moloko Plus, and Ephemerol.
Unreality: The Most Memorable Fictional Drugs in Movies and Television
(Thanks Paul)
In response to this NY Post piece by Emily Nussbuam, Robert Moore makes a persuasive case that Buffy the Vampire Slayer made TV art:
This was the decade in which television became art. So argues Emily Nussbuam in a recent New York Magazine essay, “When TV Became Art”. She certainly makes a strong case that 2000-2009 was a pivotal age for TV and I strongly recommend her essay to anyone interested in the development of television over the past decade. I agree that this was, all in all, the finest decade for great television. Others have argued that TV had arisen as an art form in earlier decades, some (though in dwindling numbers) arguing for the fifties, based on the series that presented staged plays for a television audience, including such original masterpieces as “Twelve Angry Men”, written by Reginald Rose for Studio One, and “Requiem for a Heavyweight”, written by Rod Serling for Playhouse 90. Later, Robert J. Thompson, in his widely cited Television’s Second Golden Age: From Hill Street Blues to ER, argued for the eighties as the crucial period. But Nussbaum has numbers on her side; it is difficult to argue against the sheer quantity of very fine shows that emerged in the past ten years. The number of truly great series from the past ten years is so substantial that it might surpass the number of great shows from all previous decades combined.
Nonetheless, I want to take issue with Nussbaum. I think that chopping the overall picture up into decade-sized blocks obscures the reality. I believe that one can point at a precise point where TV became art, and that point was the debut of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. [...]
I understand Nussbaum’s desire to fit the birth of TV as art into a decade framework, but the truth is that art, like life, is messier than that. TV had become art before 2000 and it was largely thanks to Buffy.
Pop Matters: When TV Became Art: What We Owe to Buffy
(Thanks Zenarchery)
I love the The Wire but it certainly wasn’t the most ground breaking series on television (remember, both The Sopranos and Six Feet Under preceded it). I haven’t watched Buffy, but Moore makes a strong case. Either way, the 00s certainly marked a turning point in the history of television. It was, perhaps, the decade in which television eclipsed film.
Actor Sam Elliott has accused the Catholic Church of pressurising Hollywood producers to scrap a classic fantasy trilogy.
Studio bosses have shelved plans to film the final two instalments of His Dark Materials, despite the success of the first movie, The Golden Compass, two years ago. [...]
Asked what happened to the series, Elliot said: “The Catholic Church happened to The Golden Compass, as far as I’m concerned. It did ‘incredible’ at the box office, taking $380million. Incredible. It took $85million in the States. [...]
A spokesman for New Line Cinema declined to comment.
This London: Catholics ‘forced film chiefs to scrap Dark Materials trilogy’
(Thanks Cat Vincent)
This is geared mostly to aspiring screenwriters, but I think other writers and appreciators of film would benefit from at least reading this article, if not the scripts as well.
My PDF Scripts: Mystery Man’s Seven Scripts You Gotta Read!
(via Jorn Barger)
In May it was announced that Jodorowsky was going to work with acclaimed director David Lynch on King Shot which was described as a “metaphysical spaghetti western.” Though he hasn’t exactly been relevant in contemporary filmmaking over the past two decades, it looks like his work with Lynch has paid off as Quiet Earth reports that he now has the funding needed to make his dream project Abel Cain.
Jodorowsky calls the film “the sons of El Topo” (see above), a nod to his 1970 revisionist western El Topo. The story follows Abel and Cain who, upon the death of their mother, embark on a journey to bury her holy body next to their father’s grave on a forbidden paradise island.
First Showing: Alejandro Jodorowsky Gets Funding for Dream Project ‘Abel Cain’
(Thanks Neko)
Looking for an intelligent horror film to watch this Halloween? Check out this Pizza SEO post from a few months ago:
1. The Devil’s Backbone
2. Cube
3. Intacto
4. The Descent
5. The Abandoned
6. Butcher Boy
7. Jacob’s Ladder
8. The Cell
9. Silent Hill
10. Dead Ringers
Pizza SEO: Intelligent Visionary Horror Movies
More films are discussed in the comments.
I love Dead Ringers, and most of Cronenberg’s output – especially Videodrome, which totally holds up. I liked Intacto, but wouldn’t really call it a horror film. I didn’t care for the Cell or Cube. I haven’t seen the others.
Gus Van Sant and author Bret Easton Ellis will team to write a feature about the double suicide of artists Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake.
PalmStar Entertainment, Celluloid Dreams and K5 Film have acquired screen rights to “The Golden Suicides,” a Vanity Fair article written by Nancy Jo Sales. [...]
The couple descended into a paranoid spiral when the artists developed a consuming belief that government and religious organizations were conspiring against them. She killed herself in 2007. Blake found her body on the floor of their bedroom, and walked into the Atlantic Ocean a week later, ending his life.
Variety: Scribes make suicide pact
Previously:
Vanity Fair coverage of the deaths of Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake
Dead Woman Blogging: Theresa Duncan at 10 Zen Monkeys
(via Jorn Barger)
There do seem to be different rules involved when it comes to death and the island. It reminds me of both Donnie Darko and The Invisibles. In Donnie Darko dying in the time loop allowed someone to step out of regular time as Frank the Bunny does. From this new position he is able to effect events. Similar effects are in play in The Invisibles comic series by Grant Morrison.
Hatch 23: Lost and the Supercontext
So, those were the agendas that we were following then. We thought it would be a great idea if comics could be recognized as the wonderful medium that we secretly knew them to be. And when I say “we,” I’m talking about the 50 actual people who turned up at those early conventions, which was pretty much the sum total of everybody in this country who’d ever heard of American comics. But back then our agenda was this progressive notion that, wouldn’t it be terrific if people were to get involved with comics who could make them more adult, more grown up, to show the kind of themes they were capable of handling? So this was the agenda that, 20 years later, I was still following toward the end of my first DC run. [...]
When I was working upon the ABC books, I wanted to show different ways that mainstream comics could viably have gone, that they didn’t have to follow Watchmen and the other 1980s books down this relentlessly dark route. It was never my intention to start a trend for darkness. I’m not a particularly dark individual. I have my moments, it’s true, but I do have a sense of humor. With the ABC books I was trying to do comics that would have perhaps appealed to an intelligent 13-year-old, such as I’d been, and would still satisfy the contemporary readership of 40-year-old men who probably should know better. But I wanted to sort of do comics that would be accessible to a much wider range of people, and would still be intelligent even if they were primarily children’s adventure stories, such as the Tom Strong books.
Full Story: Wired
Plus:
Wired interview with Dave Gibbons
Wired interview with Zack Snyder
Disinfo podcast interview with Alan Moore
“With the Star Wars saga officially wrapped up with Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, fans will seek out any remaining sliver of that galaxy far, far away on screen. The Clone Wars animated movie gave them a little bit of light drone lasering action, but what really caught their attention was Kyle Newman’s Fanboys.
Set in 1998, the film tells the story of four friends who learn that one of their number has terminal cancer, and will die before he gets to see the long-awaited Star Wars prequel, Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Thus the gang scheme to break into Skywalker Ranch and steal a rough cut. This celluloid tribute to Star Wars fandom was supposed to hit theaters in August 2007, but distributor The Weinstein Company thought they could turn it into a bigger event. They hired Steven Brill to reshoot scenes with more dirty jokes and nudity, and removed that downer cancer bit. After news of the new version leaked, a grassroots online rebellion was mounted, spearheaded by a group called Stop Darth Weinstein who helped get Newman reinstated to deliver his version of the film, albeit two years later.
The saga wasn’t all bad for Newman. He met his wife, Jaime King, on the film. She plays a Las Vegas escort who plays Jedi mind tricks with one of the boys. The online support from fans who just wanted to see the original version also warmed his heart. However, the morning of his press junket in Beverly Hills, Newman was already visibly exhausted. The day was just beginning, but the journey to bring Fanboys to the screen was nearly over. All he had to do was keep his posture up on the sofa and answer questions about Weinstein as diplomatically as possible.”
(via Suicide Girls. Thanks Nicole!)
I came across a snippet in Sci-Fi Wire about a couple of producers closing in on a writer for a film based on the Ouija Board. Guess they forgot about the series of Witchboard movies from the ’80’s. This one may turn out to be good, but the movies that I’ve seen recently haven’t impressed me much. (Then again I haven’t had the time to watch very many.) What’s next? Some marbles and Pik-Up-Stiks become animated and seek revenge? Tarot cards come to life and start the revolution? GI Joe zombies??…
“Platinum Dunes producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form told SCI FI Wire that they’re close to hiring a “very high-level writer” to begin drafting a script for a Ouija-themed movie, tied to the Parker Brothers’ “spirit board” game.
“I don’t think we’ve closed the deal, so I can’t say, but we’ve got a very high-level writer to write that, and we start writing it, I think, within the month,” Fuller said in an interview over the weekend in Beverly Hills, Calif., where he and Form were promoting Friday the 13th.”
(“Closing in on a writer for Ouija movie: The signs are auspicious” via Sci-Fi Wire)
(Related: “Turn your ipod into a Ouija board” via Cnet Uk)
We would talk at great length every time Alan started to script an issue, he’d run by how he thought it might be broken down, then I’d give him my suggestions on that, and then based on the various thing we were talking about – we would both go off into reminiscences, and speculations about how we came through music to comics to childhood experiences to vague feelings about things – somehow we’d come back to the topic of Watchmen again, and this stuff, largely contextual and largely sort of, er, mood as much as anything, would find its way into the finished comic book. We just talked and talked a lot, and then Alan typed and typed a lot and I drew and drew a lot. And then John Higgins – I shouldn’t leave him out – he coloured and coloured a lot, and I very much would talk things through with him, and then just leave him to his own devices. I think good collaborations are like that; you have to trust what the other guy’s going to do, have him put into it, stir the pot, throw in what you’ve got and leave it alone.
Full Story: The Quietus
Plus: New Dave Gibbons art on Ain’t It Cool
Another Philip K. Dick movie is coming soon: Radio Free Albemuth, starring Alanis Morissette as Sylvia, Jonathan Scarfe as Nicholas Brady, and Shea Whigham as Philip K. Dick himself.
Official movie site
IMDB entry
(Thanks Joe)
“Eliza Dushku has more going on than just her much-talked-about starring role in television guru Joss Whedon’s new upcoming series, Dollhouse.
The Bring It On beauty just told me she’s co-producing a movie about the life of Robert Mapplethorpe, the late photographer who caused national headlines with his controversial homoerotic work.
“Literally this week after quite some time, we finalized the deal with the Mapplethorpe estate,” Dushku told me at Gatorade’s G-Gym at Sundance’s Village at the Yard. Dushku’s brother, Nate, will star as Mapplethorpe, who died of AIDS in 1989 at age 42.”
(via E!online)
(Related: “Black, White and Grey: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe” via SangFilms)
“Twentieth Century Fox is bringing the Japanese anime TV series Cowboy Bebop to the big screen, with The Day the Earth Stood Still star Keanu Reeves attached to star as a bounty hunter traveling through space in 2071, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
One of the big titles in anime, Bebop is set in a time where “astral gates” make interstellar travel possible. Humanity, decimated by a lunar explosion resulting from a gate accident, spread out across the solar system, as did crime, which gave rise to the use of bounty hunters. Reeves would play Spike Spiegel, a bounty hunter and former member of a crime syndicate.”
(via SciFi Wire. Thanks JK!)
Patrick McGoohan, the Emmy award-winning actor who created and starred in 1960s TV show The Prisoner, has died at the age of 80.
The actor’s son-in-law, film producer Cleve Landsberg, said today that McGoohan had died yesterday in Los Angeles after a short illness.
McGoohan was best known as the title character Number Six in surreal drama The Prisoner, which aired on ITV in the UK. He played a former spy who is held captive in a small village and constantly tries to escape.
He also won two Emmys for detective drama Columbo, playing different characters, with the first coming in 1974 and the other 16 years later.
More recently, McGoohan appeared as King Edward Longshanks in the 1995 Mel Gibson film Braveheart.
Full Story: the Guardian
I guess this means we won’t see him play Number Two in the new movie and/or TV series. RIP Number Six.
“Just when it appeared that George Lucas had finally laid to rest his epic saga of Jedis, Wookies and Ewoks, he has announced that Star Wars will return as a stadium experience. The Times has learnt that Lucasfilm has authorised Star Wars: A Musical Journey, a retelling of the story that will combine excerpts of the film with live orchestral accompaniment. Diehard fans may dream of Jedi Knights serenading Jabba the Hutt and C-3PO singing “Don’t cry for me, R2-D2” but they are likely to be disappointed. Producers for the show, which will have its world premiere in Britain, emphasised that although actors would be used to narrate the story, it would not be a stage musical.
The production, which condenses more than 13 hours of film into 90 minutes, will be more like a classical music concert performed in front of a cinema screen, 27m (90ft) wide. The audience at the 17,000-seat O2 Arena in southeast London will watch key scenes from the film as 86 musicians from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra play extracts from John Williams’s score. The composer has reworked the music for the show, which will take place on April 10. Other shows may follow, depending on demand.”
(via The TimesOnline)
Over the weekend some friends of mine went to the premier of “My Name is Bruce”, where Bruce Campbell himself conducted a question and answer session after the movie. I finally got to see the movie myself and it’s a hilarious parody of Bruce and his movies. If you like silly B-horror movie schlock with self-depreciating humor thrown in it, you’ll enjoy this movie. Here are some of the Q and A’s from that night:
Q- “You’re named after a king of Scotland!”
Bruce- “Yes, I was named after Robert the Bruce! Robert the Bruce of Scotland!”
Q- “Have you thought of doing a Celtic/Scottish style horror movie with kilts and swords?
We wanna see you in a kilt and waving a sword around.”
Bruce- “No, I hadn’t thought of that. I’m actually not Scottish, I’m descended from the Basque.”
Q- “Well, they wear kilts too! How about it?! You can call it BruceHeart!”
Bruce- ” I like the way you think! What do you do?”
A- I’m a student.”
Bruce- “Well, you better stay with that!”
Q-”How many Hawaiian shirts do you own?”
Bruce- “I don’t know. I like to pick up goofy shirts. I hate wearing ties! Is anybody here wearing a tie tonight?” (silence)
“Good!”
Q- “Do you have any of the Elvis outfits from Bubba Hotep?
Bruce- “You know, I don’t have any Elvis suits. They all belong to the place that originally made them for Elvis. You can’t buy them, only rent them. So I don’t have any of those cool costumes at home in my closet.”
Q-What was your favorite movie to work on?
Bruce- “You mean like, the most pleasant circumstances to work in, or favorite movie to make?
If you have too good a time, it isn’t going to be that good of a movie. You have to work to make a good movie. You’re up early, working 12-16 hours a day. If it is not a pleasant time then you end up with a good movie.” (Basically he said that he enjoyed making movies and he really didn’t have a favorite.)
He also mentioned that he had the set for “My Name Is Bruce” built on his property in California. Now what can he do with it? A delivery man came to drop off a package, drove up the drive, got out and looked around with a look of befuddlement or amazement and said “I didn’t know there was a ghost town out here. Is this a ghost town? Gold Lick [the name of the town in the movie]? Was this here all along?”
(Many thanks to the Jones’!)
(See also: A brief interview with Campbell “Cult Star Campbell Does Double Duty in Horror Comedy” via The Daily Herald)
“Over the weekend I attended The Future of Entertainment 3, a conference organized by MIT’s Comparative Media Studies department. The two day event featured back to back roundtables focusing on issues related to social media, audience participation, and “spreadable media,” a term CMS director Henry Jenkins coined as a more appropriate way to describe content than “viral.” (Viral connotes an inexplicable element the “infected” have no control over. It suggests you can “design the perfect virus and give it to the right first carriers.”)
From a post on Jenkins’ blog last year:
Our core argument is that we are moving from an era when stickiness was the highest virtue because the goal of pull media was to attract consumers to your site and hold them there as long as possible, not unlike, say, a roach hotel. Instead, we argue that in the era of convergence culture, what media producers need to develop spreadable media. Spreadable content is designed to be circulated by grassroots intermediaries who pass it along to their friends or circulate it through larger communities (whether a fandom or a brand tribe). It is through this process of spreading that the content gains greater resonance in the culture, taking on new meanings, finding new audiences, attracting new markets, and generating new values. In a world of spreadable media, we are going to see more and more media producers openly embrace fan practices, encouraging us to take media in our own hands, and do our part to insure the long term viability of media we like.
Indeed, our new mantra is that if it doesn’t spread, it’s dead.”
(via The Tomorrow Museum)
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