Well, it makes perfect sense to me.

If there were going to be a movie made about Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland what would you expect? Let's see, we could get Marilyn Manson to write and direct it, yes? Sure, and we could have him play Carroll, too, that'd be awesome. And then we could get model Lily Cole (pictured) to star as Alice. And Angelina Jolie (not pictured) to play the Red Queen. And we'll call it PHANTASMAGORIA - THE VISIONS OF LEWIS CARROLL. Yay.

Now, I think we should try to get Vince Vaughn in it. Mad Hatter maybe? Or the Chechire Cat? Yeah? Come on! Why not? He'd be great dammit!

You're no fun.

Don't get caught with your hand in it

Seriously, that's just an awesome cookie jar.

I used to work with a guy named Hollywood.

South Korea is LOWERING it's quota of Korean made films that must be shown in it's theaters. This move will allow more Hollywood crap to be shown in the country.

"Under the quota, introduced in 1966, local cinemas have to screen South Korean movies for 146 days a year to protect the local film industry. As of July 1, the quota will be reduced to 73 days, the finance ministry said."

Personally, I've seen too many bad Hollywood movies and too many good Korean movies to see this as a positive. Maybe, I'm just being biased, but anything that potentially limits the number of good movies being made is a bad thing to me. And if Korea needs to show fewer Korean movies, then logically, they'll make fewer movies and potentially take fewer chances and I think you could see more American style crap. Christ, Hollywood makes movies like The Dukes of Hazaard and Starsky and Hutch and they remake movies and they do very few unique movies, and I think it's a shame for that to spread to other parts of the world.

Read more at the Guardian

Something tells me they won't get Heston for this one...

Warner Brothers is apparently working on a new adaptaion of Richard Matheson's book I Am Legend.

The story is about the lone surviving human in a world taken over by vampires. The story is set in LA, but the shooting will take place in New York. No idea who is going to star in this movie, though Charlton Heston was featured in the 1971 adaptaion called The Omega Man.

There have been a handful of adaptaion's of MAtheson's book in the past few years inculding Stir of Echoes and What Dreams May Come.

Read a book for a change.

More Milla News

Bloody-disgusting.com is reporting that a third Resident Evil is in the works. Titled Resident Evil: Afterlife, Milla will of course be returning and Mike Epps will also be featured. Possible characters include Leon Kennedy and Wekser (from the games).

Paul W.S. Anderson will return to the director's chair after skipping RE: Apocolypse. Anderson is also writing the script. Expect to see this sometime next year.


Read the whole thing

I'm sure it's only news to me

Lucy Liu will be starring in a movie called Rise coming out later this year. In it she plays a reporter turned vampire, from there it take a Kill Bill kind of turn.

Sebastian Gutierrez directed the film which also features Michael Chiklis and Marilyn Manson. Gutierrez is also writing the script for the American remake of the Pang Brothers film The Eye.

There's no official site or release date yet.

Lets see if I actually remember this when it gets closer

Now, admittedly, living near Detroit makes it hard for me to talk about something like this in, say, Orlando or Chicago. Regardless, this May, the Detroit Film Theatre will be showing Chan-wook Park's Lady Vengeance.

From their website:

LADY VENGEANCE

May 5 - May 7, 2006

(South Korea/2005)
directed by Park Chan-wook
Conceived as the final installment of his critically acclaimed revenge-cycle (including Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy), cult director Park Chan-wook has nevertheless made a self-contained work that stands proudly on its own, it may well be the most purely thrilling epic of the three. Lee Geum-ja, or “Lady Vengeance” (Lee Yeong-ae), is a pale beauty who was wrongly imprisoned at 19 for a terrible murder. Fourteen years later, she is released and wants to begin living a good life, which means, naturally, making the real killer pay. As always, Park displays the storytelling bravura that has made fans of such directors as Quentin Tarantino and Brian de Palma. Yet in its second half, the movie pushes beyond its visual exuberance to take on surprising emotional force. Rather than exulting in its spectacular violence, this viscerally exciting film becomes an exploration of the spiritual price of vengeance, however justified it might seem. In Korean with English subtitles. (112 min.) Fri. and Sat. at 7:00 & 9:30, Sun. at 4:00

Lady Vengeance was a really enjoyable movie, that personally, I think would be cool to seen on "the big screen".

Check out the DFT's schedule

I'm not sure if this makes me feel any better about it

More news about The Grudge 2. Apparently Sarah Michelle Gellar will only appear briefly in the sequel in order to pass the baton to Amber Tamblyn. Tamblyn will play Gellar's younger sister.

Amber is no stranger to horror movies or Asian remakes. She was not only in The Ring, but I want to say she was the first person you see die.

Even scarier, she was in some movie about pants getting up and moving on their own...at least, that's what I get from the title...

At least it's coming out somewhat soon.

See, I have this problem. I need to have something to look forward to. And, since I've seen Underworld: Evolution now, I need something new. So, I'll look ahead to UltraViolet.

That being said, here's your Milla fix for today.


Enjoy.

I couldn't get into the game. It was kinda boring.

Sam Raimi and Rob Talpert, through Ghost House Pictures, will produce a movie adaptation of the Playstation 2 game Siren.

Japan is getting ready to see the theatrical release of thier adaptation called Forbidden Siren.

Guess which one is about an American in Japan...

Read More at HorrorMovies.ca

It was awesome. What, like a hot dog? Like a hundred billion hot dogs!

As a man of my word, I went to see Underworld: Evolution last night after work. It started off innocently enough, with me playing pinball before the movie. Someone had left the machine after only playing one ball, and it was a Lord of the Rings machine which was kind of cool. I finished that and headed into the theater.

I sat down in my usual middle of the back row. As I watched the coca-cola trivia reel thing that they do before the show, the place started to fill up. And by Monday standards, it was probably a full house, dispite having only about a dozen or so people in there. We were already off to a good start, then someone sat down in my row. 2 people actually. Wearing some sort of cologne or perfume. I don't know, but they were wearing a LOT of it. They were a good ten seats away and my eyes were watering. That however, is social commentary best left to another forum, this is about movies, and I swear I'm getting to it.

The lights go down, the Coke commercials begin. Actually, the commercials went by pretty quick, there were I think 3 of them and they were surprisingly short. Then the previews, a quick rundown: Slither looks silly but interesting. Pulse looks cool (in that Hey! I'm a remake of a japanese movie! kind of way). Silent Hill looks a lot more promising than I had originally thought. Ultraviolet looks REALLY good. Final Destination 3 looks like, well, like everything I didn't care to see about the first 2 *shrug*. And When A Stranger Calls just looks like another dumb remake.

Right, the movie. It starts in 1202 AD. Viktor, Amelia and Marcus are trying to capture Marcus' brother, the first lycan, William. Flash forward to the present day. Selene and Michael are on the run, Kraven returns to the mansion to kill Marcus before he wakes up. Too late. Marcus has already been woken up thanks to the dead werewolf left lying there in the first movie.

The movie moves pretty fast and there's always something going on. Marcus kills everything and comes after Michael and Selene to find out where his brother is imrisoned. As they go on, Selene and Michael get help from some unlikely allies...and I don't mean the lycans.

The continuity was surprisingly good. Everything really picked up where the first one left off, so very little time was spent establishing the principal characters. That is also what allowed the movie to pick up a full head of steam so quickly. As the movie went on, I could really feel myself physically reacting to the fighting on screen. I was literally on the edge of my seat.

It was everything I wanted out of the sequel. And it was worth every penny of the $8.75 I paid to see it. My single complaint is that where the first movie worked so hard to avoid calling the lycans "werewolves", the sequel was pretty haphazard about it.

You have to be willing to buy what they're selling. If you couldn't do that and you didn't like the first one, I'm not sure that the sequel will change your mind. But if you DID like the first one grab your wallet and go. It's worth it.

That was irrational of you... not to mention unsportsmanlike.

Happy Birthday Rutger Hauer!




















Official Site? Rutger Hauer has his own site???

It was the house stupid!

Sarah Michelle Gellar and Director Takashi Shimizu are teaming up for The Grudge 2...

Um, this sounds like a terrible idea to me. See, when it comes to remakes, I kind of enjoy watching Hollywood destroy good Asian movies. Why? So I can be that jerk that tells you that the original was better! And, secretly, I hope they might get it right, but mostly the whole being a jerk thing.

But this just sounds like a bad idea to begin with. They did the wrong thing in The Grudge by focusing on Gellar's character to begin with. The main character of the story was the house, not the girl. So, now, by bringing her back, they're just making matters worse.

Now, this was a movie I liked.

To sum up Abnormal Beauty, it goes kind of like this... Girl is an artist, girl gets obsessed with death, girl goes crazy, girl gets normal again, girl recieves video tape of her roommate/sister/girlfriend whatever being brutally murdered, girl gets kidnapped, mom comes home. It's a bit more complicated than that, but it was mostly fun to watch.

As Jin, our main character, becomes more and more obsessed with capturing images of death on canvas and film, she begins to alienate those that she's closest to. As she goes from paying a man t kill chickens while watches to photographing a small girl committing suicide by jumping off a building, you watch Jin slip into a sort of madness. And by the time she's ready to give up the morbid aspect to her art, it's too late.

Izo...oh geez

Oh, Izo, I'd been looking forward to seeing you for a couple of months. You were directed by Takashi Miike and you had 'Beat' Takeshi. And then you pulled a sword from your vagina and stabbed me.

Maybe I'd had too much to drink, maybe I'm just not smart enough, maybe it just wasn't very good, but Izo bordered on unwatchable. Not because it was graphic or obscene, just because it made no sense. Izo bordered on being a waste of 2 hours. That's about the worst thing I can say about a movie, that it was a waste of time. On a scale of Shaun of the Dead to House of the Dead, it ranks House of the Dead.

Read a review from someone who "gets" it if you want.

I do this a lot

I picked up a copy of Moon Child about 6 months ago. I got around to watching it today. That's pretty typical for me actually.

Anyways, Moon Child is the story of a group of kids and a vampire. Kind of. Well, the kids grow up and become gangsters, the vampire goes to jail and stays a vampire. Well, it's a bit more complicated than that. It pretty uch starts when a very young Sho finds Kei in an abandoned building while running from a man he and his friends had just robbed. While the kids are counting the money, the mad they robbed shows back up. Kei attacks the man and drinks his blood but Sho wasn't scared, so Sho and Kei became friends. Flash ahead a number of years and they're all still good friends while managing to become bolder thieves. They meet Son while trying to rob someone and afterwards meet up with Son's sister.

Part action movie, part vampire movie, small part goofball comedy, but in the end a very sad movie as Kei's worries about befriending Sho come true. There's a lot going on in the story, but it's never confusing or difficult to follow.

I really wish I had watched this sooner. It was really good. As I have no "scale" for rating movies, let's pretend for a moment that I do and I'll say that this gets just below the top rating.

One more? One more.

Movies.com has an interview with Kate Beckinsale about her new movie (the oft mentioned) Underworld: Evolution. In the interview she talks about her involvement in the writing of the new movie and her plans after this movie. Also, she talks just a bit about wearing the latex outfit that Selene is so well known for now.

I do hope to post something unrelated to the new Underworld film today... we'll see how that works out.


Read the entire interview

Did you really think I wouldn't try to bring it up at some point today?

Well, Underworld: Evolution opens today. While I don't plan on seeing it until probably Monday, I figured that in the meantime, I would at least post a review from someone else. However, Sony didn't do an advance screening for it, so reviews are rather limited. But don't worry, I found you one...

This time around, without having to introduce anything new, director Len Wiseman is able to make an easier to follow story by just having the entire history of his universe plus the whole first movie, all in the first 15 minutes, via narration and showing some key shots, and so that sets us up for what's to come, which is non-stop action, gore, and almost naked Kate. The result is a better movie that expands what we knew and though it ends with everything pretty much explained and done, there is hope for this to be a trilogy and that third outing really can't get here any faster.

Sounds Good. I can't wait till Monday.

Read Hakeem's Full Review at MoviesOnline.ca

Now I REALLY want to see this

Showtime has apparently turned sissy. Takashi Miike' contribution to Showtime's Masters Of Horror has been pulled from the schedule. His contribution, titled Imprint, was apparently a bit more than Showtime anticipated, so they've decided to release it with the DVDs for the series but not air it.

Seriously, sounds interesting. Of course you know this will be a huge selling point for the DVDs.

Check it out, the NY Times wrote about this one.

I can't think of a title right now. Sorry. Pang Brothers!

There's a huge article up over on About.com about their visit to the set of the Pang Brothers' upcoming American debut, The Messengers. Lucky bastards got to go visit the shoot.


Read the article. It's huge.

Because, really, can you ever get enough Kate Beckinsale?

MoviesOnline.ca has 5, that right 5, new clips from Underworld: Evolution available for your viewing pleasure.

You Don't Scare Me
We Need to Go
Rescue
You Need to Feed
What is Thy Bidding

I'll say one thing...I haven't been this excited about a movie since the last movie I was this excited about!

Pick a good one, cuz I might buy it.

With the US release of Lady Vengeance on the horizon, you, yes YOU can help decide what the poster will look like.

Tartan Films has put together a MySpace profile for the movie, from which you can vote on which one of the 7 options you prefer. You have until Valentine's Day to vote.

Currently, the only problem I see is that I can't see any of the options. All they have is a photobucket graphic say that it has exceeded bandwith. Hell, I suppose you could just guess.

Vote early and vote often.
See the Profile

Don't shoot! He's my clone!

I watched The Island last night. And as I sat down to write this, I looked at some of the reviews for it. At least 3 seperate reviewers claim it to be a remake of 3 seperate movies.

Mostly, the critics didn't like it. That's fine. Critics are paid to watch movies and hate them. They typically do a fine job. I'm not a critic. I'm just a jerk who likes a good movie, and you know what? I liked The Island. My only complaint is that at 2 hours and 16 minutes, it's a bit longer than it needed to be. Oh, and Shawnee Smith could have been in it more...

Otherwise, it was just a fun scifi movie that, yes, stole some ideas from other films. Fine, it never claimed to be original.

I also got the rare chance to play spot the landmark since part of the movie was filmed in Detroit. And, Detroit stands out in a movie...at least to me.

Got a dream they've come to share they're coming to america

The Pang brothers (The Eye) are bringing their vision to Hollywood, or at least Sasketchawan, with The Messengers.

Set in North Dakota (though filmed in Canada), the story revolves around a family trying to fix up a sunflower farm. As they progress, the father's behavior begins to change for the worse.

I suppose it's better than someone trying to remake one of the Pang Brother's films. I'm curious to check this one out.

I want this poster

That's all. I just want this poster. I want to buy it. I can't find it anywhere though. So, if you know where I can get it, tell me. Make me happy. Thanks.

Sam Raimi + Terry Pratchett = Sounds Interesting

More from SciFi.com:

Sam Raimi (Spider-Man 3) will direct The Wee Free Men, an adaptation of Terry Pratchett's best-selling young-adult fantasy novel, Variety reported. Sony Pictures Entertainment has acquired the book and set Pamela Pettler to write the script.

Published in 2003, Wee Free Men centers on a 9-year-old farm girl who heads off to a parallel world to retrieve a brother who has been grabbed by a nasty fairy queen. She battles the monsters of Fairyland with the help of 6-inch-tall, blue-faced rowdies who wear kilts, speak in thick Scottish brogues, steal sheep and drink heavily.

The novel is part of the British author's Discworld series, whose volumes are big sellers around the world.

Raimi and Josh Donen will produce through their Sony-based company, along with Created By's Vince Gerardis and Ralph Vicinanza.

Good News, Bad news? YOU DECIDE

From SciFi.com:

Warner Brothers has acquired a film based on Maurice Sendak's classic children's book Where the Wild Things Are from Universal Pictures, which had placed it in turnaround, Variety reported.

Spike Jonze will direct from a script he and novelist Dave Eggers wrote. It's expected to get under way late in the year, the trade paper reported.

Playtone's Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman are producing, along with Sendak and John Carls.

Figuring out a way to turn the 338-word Wild Things story into a movie has been a long process, with multiple helmers and writers weighing in. Details of the Jonze-Eggers version have been closely held, but the movie will be a live-action feature that will likely require a sizable computer-animation budget.

The current vision of the movie has the strong support of Sendak, who told The New York Times in October, "I am in love with it. If Spike and Dave do not do this movie now, I would just as soon not see any version of it ever get made."

News that will get at least one person interested

Thora Birch is in a new movie called Dark Corners. Written and Directed by Ray Gower, Dark Corners is about a woman, Karen (Birch), who works in a mortuary preparing bodies for their funeral. As she goes through her days, strange things...bla blah blah, split personalities.

It looks interesting, and you can see what I left out here. It looks really interesting, and being a bit of a fan of Thora, I probably will check it out at some point. I get the feeling though that this will be the kind of movie that flies under the radar.

There's no release date yet, but it's in post production now so I would anticipate a late spring release.


Visit the Official Site

Ok, so it's really just an excuse to mention Battlestar...

Katee Sackhoff, Starbuck on the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica (SciFi Friday's at 10), is about to start work on a movie called The Last Sentinel. Sackhoff will play a character simply named 'Girl'.

"She's got blue hair and a scar down her face, and she's covered in tattoos, and she's pretty much just a renegade. Like, she's really bad. She's got knives like hidden all over her body. Yeah, so I'm excited."

The Last Sentinel will also feature Bokeem Woodbine and Don "The Dragon" Wilson and will be directed by Jesse Johnson.

I didn't know that "the Dragon" was still making movies... actually, I didn't realize he was still alive. Still, nothing says quality movie like Don "the Dragon" Wilson.

More from Scifi.com

I'm sure this won't be the last time I mention it this week

Sci-Fi.com has an interview with Underworld: Evolution director Len Wiseman and stars Kate Beckinsale and Scott Speedman.

From the interview:

Wiseman: I think the second movie will impress a lot of people, and it'll upset the same amount of people.

I was one of those people who enjoyed the first movie. I liked the idea and the execution. I'm not purist I suppose when it g\comes to the vampire and werewolf mythos. I just like a good movie.

Underworld: Evolution of course opens this Friday, Jan 20th and is the first movie this year that I am actually interested in seeing.

Read the entire interview here
Visit the Official Site

I liked it

Revolver, the new film from Guy Ritchie, is finally showing in America on January 26th. Revolver stars Jason Stratham, Ray Liota, Andre Benjamin and Vincent Pastore.

Gambler and conman Jake Green (Jason Statham) always ran with a bad crowd and it cost him seven years of his life when he took the rap for mean Dorothy Macha (Ray Liotta) and wound up in jail. After his release, Jake becomes unbeatable at the tables using a formula for the ultimate con that he learned from two mysterious fellow prisoners. Now he is ready to take his revenge. Macha is plotting to eliminate his ruthless rival, Lord John, and has staked his credibility on a huge drug deal with the all-powerful Sam Gold. Jake visits Macha at his casino and humiliates him publicly in a game of chance. Macha fearing more of the same medicine sends his goons to "take care of" Jake. His life is saved by enigmatic Zach (Vinnie Pastore) who, with his equally inscrutable partner Avi (Andre Benjamin), offers Jake protection. Against his better judgment, Jake accepts. He soon finds himself playing the very last game he wants to be playing, and there is danger at every turn. But the biggest danger of all comes from a totally unexpected source…

The movie feels a little scattered at times, but is mostly very enojyable. Outkast's Andre (3000) Benjamin really gave the most surprising performance, mostly because I didn't expect much from the rapper turned actor, but in the end he did very well as the too slick loan shark.

Check out the Official Site

2 Extremes and 1 WTF

Watched 3 Extremes tonight. I enjoyed it for the most part. Three "extreme" short films from three different countries, Japan, China and Korea.


Fruit Chan's Dumplings was really good, though it reminded me of Jonnaton Swift's 'A Modest Proposal' with a fountain of youth twist. Chan Wook Park's Cut didn't remind me of anything, but I really enjoyed it's movie within a movie feel with the sets. Takeshi Miike's contribution, Box, left me scratching my head a bit, and was probably the weakest of the three if I had to choose.

For the most part though, if you're a fan of any of these directors, or asian movies in general, it's worth checking out. They're the kind of stories that Hollywood tends to stay away from. Then again, I said that about Oldboy, and it looks like Hollywood is going to take a stab at it anyways.

Mmm...Milla...

UGO has a trailer up for the new Milla Jovovich movie Ultraviolet. Essentially a Underworld/Resident Evil looking hybrid, Ultraviolet is about a group of humans with a vampire like disease on the verge of civil war with the healthy humans. Jovovich's character finds herself responsible for the life of a 9 year old boy marked as a threat by the government.

Luckily for me, I liked Underworld and Resident Evil and have been a fan of Milla since The 5th Element. In other words, I will probably end up seeing this.

Watch the trailer

Because the last movie wasn't bad enough

Now Spike TV wants to make a TV series. Comingsoon.net has a press release from Spike TV announcing the new Blade television series.

"'Blade' is perfectly suited for Spike TV and its male viewers," says Pancho Mansfield, Executive Vice President, Original Programming at Spike TV. "The new 'Blade' promises to capture what men want to see: thrilling action and effects combined with an intelligent and highly creative story."

Also

Kirk "Sticky" Jones (Over There) has been cast in the leading role of "Blade." Jill Wagner (Monk), Neil Jackson (Stargate SG-1), Nelson Lee (Traffic, the TV mini-series) and Jessica Gower (Blurred) round out the cast for the tele-picture.

David Goyer, who wrote the screenplays for the movies, will be writing for the show.


You can read the entire press release here

The first Chinese President actually

Wong Kar Wai, director of 2046, has been accepted the role of president of the jury for this year's Cannes Film Festival.

I want to see 2046, I've only ever read reviews saying how good it is. And from the sound of it, it just seems like it would be so good...

"He was a writer. He thought he wrote about the future but it really was the past. In his novel, a mysterious train left for 2046 every once in a while. Everyone who went there had the same intention.....to recapture their lost memories. It was said that in 2046, nothing ever changed. Nobody knew for sure if it was true, because nobody who went there had ever come back- except for one. He was there. He chose to leave. He wanted to change."

That's the "synopsis" from Amazon.com. Someday, i'll get off my ass and sit my ass down to watch it.

Here's something to think about though, when Tarantino was the president of the jury, Oldboy won the big award. And now the DVD claims that Oldboy recied the Tarantino Seal of Approval. Will this years winner be advertised as having the Wong Kar Wai Seal of Approval? I doubt it.

Read the Press Release here

I really hated that game. Stupid stealth.

But you know what? I would look forward to them doing a movie. Ryuhei Kitamura, director of such wonderful movies as Versus, Azumi, SkyHigh and Godzilla: Final Wars talked to Kotaku recently about his work on the video game Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes and a bit about the possibility of adapting it for a movie.

You know what, Kitamura is a director that has come along way since his first movie and I for one would be thrilled to see a Metal Gear Solid movie if he were directing it.

Go here. Read the interview

Watch a movie really quick.

The Horror Channel has something really cool.

They have a clip of Night Watch, aka Nochnoy Dozor, except it's not really a clip or a trailer.

What we’ve got here, courtesy of the good folks at Fox Searchlight, is Night Watch, the entire film, only really, really fast.

Night Watch is the first film in a trilogy by Timur Bekmambetov, it's a Russian movie for those who are still unsure. The sequel, Day Watch, has already been released in Russia and earned back it's entire production cost in one day. So what if it only cost $5 million to make, that's still damn impressive.

Night Watch is getting it's American release on February 17th.

Quentin Tarantino Presents: Sequel.

After the opening weekend success of Hostel, a sequel has already recieved the green light. No plot or cast has been announced.

The plan is to have Eli Roth resume his roll as director and get the movie made and released by this time next year.

Also still up in the air is whether Tarantino will slap his name on the sequel as well...

They're coming to get you Barbara...again

UHM is reporting that the release date for Night of the Living Dead 3D is being pushed back from January to March.

The remake of the George Romero classic will be shown in selected cities and then it will move from city to city in a limited release.

More info can be found at the Official Site.

Time to bust out the sexy 3D glasses. Oh yeah.

File under remakes that didn't need to be remade.

From Variety.com

Dimension Films has reeled in domestic distribution rights to "Piranha," the remake of the 1978 genre hit that Chuck Russell will direct in spring.

Is there really someone thinking that this will be a good idea?

A Scanner Darkly gets pushed back

According to MoviesOnline.ca, the Keanu Reaves preso-animation film A Scanner Darkly has been pushed back by Warner Independant Pictures. Originally slated for a March 31st release, A Scanner Darkly, based on the novel by Blade Runner author Philip K. Dick, will now open nationwide in July.

I really hope that this is move is being made to put some finishing touches on the film and not a move to cash in more on the summer audience instead of the spring audiences. Regardless, the live action/animation hybrid looks like an interesting concept.

I'm Not Even Supposed to be Here Today

So, over on the Clerks 2 website there's a teaser trailer up for the movie due out in AUGUST. It's about 2 minutes long and from what I can see, it looks like the Quick Stop is closing, forcing Dante and Randall to work at a Mooby fast food joint. Jason Lee and Ben Affleck both appear in the trailer and Smith seems to have viewed this as another chance to put his wife in a movie. Rosario Dawson also will be joining them in this movie to which I say...cool.

From Smith:

Some folks have asked why I’m even bothering to put any footage of the flick out there, eight months before it’ll hit theaters. The only reason I can sight is that I’m proud of the flick; I fucking love it, and I can’t wait to share it with the world. Just as “Clerks” was a film about what I felt it was like to be in my twenties, “Clerks II” is a film about how I feel it’s like to be in my thirties, and for the audience which has made that trans-generational journey along with us over the last decade, I think it’s gonna really connect in a big way.

The site is basically a video journal of the progress of the film. What I want to know is why did Tarantino stop by? Someone, please tell me, because I won't watch the clip myslef to find out.

I can already see QT now trying to figure out how to make it look like it's his movie.

And now NEW news

According to CinemaEye, Azumi is FINALLY getting a US release only 3 years after it's theatrical run in Japan. Azumi will get a limited theatrical run here this spring.

If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. It was an excellent movie, and even the sequel was pretty good. I think this is still one of Ryuhei Kitamura’s best movies.

Hopefully this also means that Azumi will also be getting a DVD release in late spring or early summer.

And then came the...surprising and admittedly OLD news

From Variety.com

Apparently, Warner Bros is planning a CGI Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. Kevin Munroe is set to write and direct the first Ninja Turtle movie since 1993.

I really didn't think that this was a property that people still cared about.

What could be the most exciting thing I've heard today

According to Tartan Films, Chanwook Park's follow up to the great movie Oldboy called Sympathy for Lady Vengeance is going to get a US theatrical release on March 24th along with a name change to just Lady Vengeance.

While it's very different in style from Oldboy. It's still the same basic theme. It's a revenge story. It's also very good. I had the opportunity to see it last weekend and it was just a very good story. This is going to be a movie to check out if you liked Park's previous work.

It complete's Park's Vengeance Trilogy with a lot of apperances from actors from the prior moves, Oldboy and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. Including Oh Dae-su himself, Min-sik Choi as Mr. Baek.


There is a Korean 2 DVD set for this movie that does something that sounds really cool on the 2nd DVD. As the movie plays it slowly fades to black and white. So, while you are watching the movie the color just drains out of it. My main hope is that they find a way to release that version here.

Because it's something to look forward to

A week from Friday, on January 20th, Underworld: Evolution opens in theatres. Now, unlike, I'm sure, many people in this world, I really liked the first one. I know a lot of people complained that it had strayed too far from it's White Wolf origins. I, though, had no knowledge of those origins, so I never saw that as a problem. All I saw was a fun action movie that had one hell of a hot chick in leather all throuh the movie. In fact, the first Underworld movie is still one of my favorite vampire movies.

But then we come to what I don't understand. Why is it such a big problem when a movie adaptation strays too far from it's source? Or, not even and adaptation, but if it's even loosely based on something. The "fanboys" hating it, I understand. But why did it seem like America avoided the first Underworld in droves?

Saves me the trouble of seeing it

After seeing the cinimatic diarrhea that was House of the Dead, I haven't watched any Uwe Boll movies. So, I never really intended to see BloodRayne anyways. Luckily, gaming blog Kotaku is saving me the trouble.

Had it been bad, I probably would have enjoyed some elements of it. I would have, perhaps, found it campy or silly or just worthy of ridicule, but what I saw last night was really just, just mediocre.

For the rest of the review, head on over to Kotaku.

You know what Pete, someone should rub your nose in it.

I went and saw King Kong a couple weeks ago. I should have written about it then, but $7 Popcorn didn't exist yet.

So, King Kong, directed by Peter Jackson who of course directed 3 of my favorite movies...The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. In LotR, what stands out is how great the effects were. How seamlessly they worked themselves into the movie and how REAL all of the fantastical creatures looked. Saddly, this could not be recreated for King Kong. Sitting in the theatre, there were just too many times when a bad visual effect took me right out of the movie. All of a sudden I just was sitting there thinking about Jurassic Park and he good all of the dinosaurs looked and comparing the two movies and noticing how much better a 13 year old movie looked. Too often you noticed a computer effect and it looked cheezy.

Now, this isn't of itself enough to indict a movie. There have been some great movies with horrible effects. And that only shows the importance of story, acting and directing. In King Kong, the acting was pretty good. Jack Black was fine. Naomi Watts was good when she wasn't around the monkey. Adrien Brody was...fine. There were no real bad acting jobs. The acting was good. The story was not. And perhaps that is just a flaw going back to the 1933 original. I can accept that. But then there was the directing. Which left me with two questions:

How in the world do you make a pretentious monster movie?

Did the studio make you cut the make out scene between Naomi Watts and the giant monkey?

You can wrestle with that first one yourself, the second question though...come on! I haven't laughed at such a bad love story since Attack of the Clones. At least Watts and the Monkey had some chemistry together!

In the end, all I can say is that King Kong was almost worth what I paid to see it. The problem is, I saw it for free.

Because you have to start someplace

Who the hell declared Quentin Tarantino the god of modern cinema? Seriously, what's so great about him that his name needs to be plastered on every movie coming out in the past few years regardless of his having ANYTHING to do with it. Chunking Express is the first movie I can remember this problem with. Right after Pulp Fiction, and in fact it was a trailer on the Pulp Fiction VHS, Tarantino wanted to "introduce" the world to this movie. He continued by "presenting" Hero, a movie that had been released in China a year prior to being released in the States. So, QT slapped his dumb name on it and it got released here.

Have you seen the movie Oldboy? It recieved the Tarantino Seal of Approval...even though it's NOTHING like a Tarantino movie (it's MUCH better) it's assumed that because Tarantino is an "edgy" director that fans of his work would LIKE this movie I suppose?

He's an Executive Producer on Hostel...you know what? That makes me want to AVOID the movie. Christ, I liked Resevoir Dogs. I liked Pulp Fiction. I mostly kind of liked Kill Bill (sorry, but the script was unnatural and the acting was stiff. it's saving grace was Go-Go Yubari played by Chiaki Kuriyama).

There's a fine line between payng tribute and ripping off. And for a guy who has thus far made only 4 fucking movies, I'm just thinking that he's maybe getting a bit too goddamn full of himself.

Who the hell do you think you are???

Hi, I'm dreamrot, I'm your humble narrator.

What are you doing here?
Mostly, complaining. Occasionally recommending. Or the opposite. Basically, I'm just talking about movies.

Why?
Because I like movies. A lot.

What makes you so goddamn special to recommend or complain about movies?
Well, nothing I suppose. I'm just someone who watches a lot of movies. I have over 400 DVDs. I watch movies from around the world.

What kind of movies do you like?
Good ones

-----------------------------------------------

That was the original introduction to this little project back at the start of 2006. I was bored and fuming over the time I'd lost watching Peter Jackson's King Kong. Back then, I had no idea where this would take me. No idea what $7 Popcorn would become. Hell, I probably wouldn't have guessed that I'd stick with it for more than a few months. Another bloated corpse of a blog floating down this river we call the interweb.

Here we are though, 7dp is still going strong. A site centered on monsters of all kinds, horror, science fiction and low budget movies (with some forays into whatever else I feel like doing). I try to keep things lite around here. This is about movies, and movies are supposed to be fun. And, if this ever stops being fun...I'll stop it. Right then and there. I'll tell you what though, after 3 years and 500 posts, I still dig what I do here.

The Ratings

In the last half of 2008, I dropped the 1-10 rating scale. As much as I enjoyed it, it'd become a bit too cliche. I switched to a much more basic scale. Movies would either be Approved or Rejected.

Any movie receiving the 7dp Seal of Approval is a movie I would recommend to someone that I don't know very well.

However, I might still like a movie and reject it anyways. A movie that gets the 7dp Seal of Rejection is a movie that I wouldn't recommend to someone either at all or without knowing a lot about what they like.

Also Worth Noting:

I have a tendency to refer to actors by their character names. And not the name of the character they play in the movie I'm talking about. For example, Katee Sackhoff is referred to as Starbuck, Andy Griffith is Matlock and Mark Hamill is Luke, etc. Always. Some actors escape this treatment. I don't refer to Harrison Ford as Han or Indy or anything like that. Some actors transcend the roles they play. Some don't.

I like sharks and I like shark movies. In fact, I do a shark week every year to coincide with the Discovery Channel's  Shark Week programming. I think it's fun. In fact, I think theme weeks like that, in general, are fun. I'm always looking for a new theme week idea.