The Movie News Thread!

[Cube]

3D as in CGI or 3D as in the current fad?

[Ashley]

Unspecific. Probably both to be fair. The article says Sony's CGI house is doing it so I presume its 3D CGI but they'll probably throw 3D in too.

[Cube]

Unspecific. Probably both to be fair. The article says Sony's CGI house is doing it so I presume its 3D CGI but they'll probably throw 3D in too.

 

This 3D thing gets even more confusing when it comes to games, especially on handheld consoles as you still get a lot of 2D games, so 3D is still used a lot to describe the games.

 

The really should have called it 3DV (Three Dimensional Vision) or something like that.

[Ashley]

It did amuse me that an article in 3D World (magazine) was complaining how other industries are stealing their terms such as CGI and 3D. </random>

[Platty]

Just seen Kick Ass

 

10/10

 

Loved it and want to see it again already.

[Ashley]

Joss Whedon to direct The Avengers?

 

 

After some checking, insiders at Marvel Studios say no director has been signed yet but that Whedon was on the short-list and conversations took place.

 

Still doubtful (Wonder Woman anyone?) but hey ho.

 

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2010/04/its-whedon-weekend-actually-when-is-it-not.html

 

Although when I first heard I presumed they were talking about the British Avengers series.

[Dan_Dare]

I can see it working in his hands. He clearly gets action (Harro, Serenity bar fight) and his character moments are always good. Yeah, I can see it working.

[Paj!]

Especially if it's as based on Ultimates as I've heard (which was written very well, with good character bits).

[Dan_Dare]

Yeus, I heard also.

 

Although, reading it again recently I'd rather it was done like '616 Avengers, but doing The Ultimates' Millar's crew are just...too knobbish. To a man, they're pretty much horrible people.

[Paj!]

Well yeah, but I meant like...actually having personalities that feel kinda realistic.

 

Not necessarily exactly how they're portrayed in the comic.

[Happenstance]

I think its less based on the Ultimates and more just using elements of the more realistic reality for the Avengers, im not worried about them using more of the dickish nature of some of the ultimates. Seeing as a lot of these characters will be coming from or possibly getting their own movies then they'd need them to be likeable.

[Mundi]

Joss Whedon? I dunno....

I just know that it is gonna get cancelled before it hits the second season.

[Ashley]

Henry Selick Joins Disney/Pixar

 

Henry Selick (Nightmare Before Christmas, Coraline) has "struck an exclusive long-term deal" to direct features in his trademark style "for Disney/Pixar" apparently.

 

"I first met John Lasseter when we were classmates at CalArts," Selick said in a statement. "I've watched with awe and amazement as Pixar created a new way to make animated movies with computers."

 

News is still sketchy but he will continue to use stop-motion animation.

[Happenstance]

Captain America: Bucky is Cast

 

Captain America won't be fighting the Nazis solo. The character of Bucky, Cap's partner in the comic books, has been cast in The First Avenger: Captain America - and it's someone who almost played the title role.

 

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Sebastian Stan (Kings / Gossip Girl) will play James Buchanan Barnes, AKA Bucky, a character from the classic Captain America comics of the 1940s. Stan was one of the finalists to actually play Captain America himself, before Marvel ultimately cast Chris Evans in that role.

 

The 26 year-old Stan is only two years younger than Evans – in the comics, Bucky was a young, teenage sidekick to an adult Captain America. Barring Stan being asked to play much younger than he is, it's possible they are simply aging up the character. This may have to do with the direction Bucky was taken in recent years in the comic books. Previous depictions of Bucky were as a traditional, upbeat teen sidekick, only for it to be revealed he was actually a wetworks soldier, committing the far more dark and murderous acts that Captain America himself could not during World War II. Bucky then returned in the present as the brainwashed Winter Soldier, before ultimately reconciling with Captain America – and eventually becoming Captain America himself, in the wake of Steve Rogers' assassination (don't worry, Steve got better).

 

 

Given the large scale plan for the Marvel Comics films, it's hard not to wonder if the Winter Soldier storyline will come into play in the Marvel movies as well – and when you factor in the Reporter saying Stan has signed on for five or six films, according to insiders, then we have plenty to speculate about.

 

The First Avenger: Captain America goes into production this summer for a Summer 2011 release.

 

http://uk.movies.ign.com/articles/108/1081582p1.html

[Dan_Dare]

Yay for Bucky! One of the best characters in the MU right now so if they take him in the Brubaker direction with the Winter Soldier and everything, it should be pretty cool.

 

Definitely not going the way of The Ultimates with him, then.

[Happenstance]

Yay for Bucky! One of the best characters in the MU right now so if they take him in the Brubaker direction with the Winter Soldier and everything, it should be pretty cool.

 

Definitely not going the way of The Ultimates with him, then.

 

Well they still could take him the Ultimate route, it depends how much they want him to feature in later movies I guess instead of just in the 40s

[Retro_Link]

I'm really excited to see something from the Captain America movie!

 

I've always known the character, but never actually seen anything of him (animated etc..), as I'm not sure there's ever really been anything has there?... at least not to the extent that other Marvel franchises get like Spiderman and X-Men, even The Hulk etc...

 

It's kind of like Iron Man was for me.

Edited April 4, 2010 by Retro_Link

[Happenstance]

I'm really excited to see something from the Captain America movie!

 

I've always known the character, but never seen actually seen anything of him (animated etc..), as I'm not sure there's never really been anything has there?... at least not to the extent that other Marvel franchises get like Spiderman and X-Men, even The Hulk etc...

 

It's kind of like Iron Man was for me.

 

He appeared in a few episodes of the 90s Spider-Man cartoon but he was caught in a time vortex or something with the Red Skull.

 

I never read Captain America before Brubakers run, now I think hes a brilliant character. Especially when you see how other heroes view him.

[ReZourceman]

The Telegraph review of Kick Ass.

 

Don't be fooled by the hype: This crime against cinema is twisted, cynical, and revels in the abuse of childhood

 

 

Millions are being spent to persuade you that Kick-Ass is harmless, comic-book entertainment suitable for 15-year-olds.

Don't let them fool you. Kick-Ass has been so hyped that it is certain to be a hit. It is also bound be among the most influential movies of 2010. And that should disturb us all.

It deliberately sells a perniciously sexualised view of children and glorifies violence, especially knife and gun crime, in a way that makes it one of the most deeply cynical, shamelessly irresponsible films ever.

 

Damaging role model: Chloe Moretz as Hit Girl in Kick-Ass

The title character is nerdy American teenager Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson from Nowhere Boy). He yearns to be a superhero so he dresses up as one. The trouble is that he has no superpowers and - unlike Batman - no money.

His one asset as a crime fighter is that he can survive serious thrashings because his nerve-endings have been destroyed by previous beatings. Like Wolverine in X-Men, he has metal plates where some of his bones should be.

 

More...

Clash of the Titans: Back to Argus, the whole lot of you

Remember Me: Steer clear, unless you're a teenage girl

How To Train Your Dragon: Forget Fido, here's a red-hot pet

The movie's central appeal is to fanboys like Dave, who will spot the references to previous comic-strip movies, and imagine that these constitute satire. Really, the tone of the movie is deferential pastiche.

The plot is an unimaginative clone of Spider-Man 2, and the screenplay - by director Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman, wife of comic-book enthusiast Jonathan Ross - conforms slavishly to the cliched norms of Hollywood action movies by working towards not one but two huge action set-pieces at its climax.

 

Superhero: Aaron Johnson as Kick-Ass

As a rip-off of its Hollywood betters, it is sporadically funny, efficient, and well shot - hence my arguably overgenerous award of one star.

The biggest problem of the movie, creatively speaking, is that it has pretensions to intelligence but is profoundly, irredeemably bone-headed.

It starts as though it's going to expose the huge gulf between comic strips and reality, but ends up reducing the real world to the most morally fatuous kind of comic strip.

A worthwhile satire on comic-book culture might criticise the idiotic way it uses sadism and voyeurism to entertain, with no thought of the social consequences.

It would also lampoon the risible pretentiousness of many so-called graphic novels. Kick-Ass does neither.

The movie looks at first as if it might satirise the era where talentless nonentities can become celebrities. But it has nothing to say about that either.

Although it runs nearly two hours, there's even less character development than there is social comment. Our hero learns nothing, except that extreme violence against criminals is cool, which is something he thought in the first place.

The reason the movie is sick, as well as thick, is that it breaks one of the last cinematic taboos by making the most violent, foul-mouthed and sexually aggressive character, Hit-Girl, an 11-year-old.

Played with enormous confidence by Chloe Moretz, she's the most charismatic character in the movie. She may not realise it, but she has been systematically abused by her father, brainwashed and turned into a pint-sized

She believes that her vigilante dad (played, simplistically, for laughs by Nicolas Cage) is a hero just as much at the end as she did at the beginning.

Her attitude towards him doesn't mature, which makes her pathetic, rather than cool. The fact that many people who see the film are going to think she is cool is one of its most depressing aspects.

The movie's writers want us to see Hit-Girl not only as cool, but also sexy, like an even younger version of the baby- faced Oriental assassin in Tarantino's Kill Bill 1. Paedophiles are going to adore her.

One of the film's creepiest aspects is that she's made to look as seductive as possible - much more so than in the Mark Millar and John Romita Jr comic book on which this is based. She's fetishised in precisely the same way as Angelina Jolie in the Lara Croft movies, and Halle Berry in Catwoman.

As if that isn't exploitative enough, she's also shown in a classic schoolgirl pose, in a short plaid-skirt with her hair in bunches, but carrying a big gun.

And she makes comments unprintable in a family newspaper, that reveal a sexual knowledge hugely inappropriate to her years.

Oh, and one of the male teenage characters acknowledges that he's attracted to her.

Now, children committing violent and sexual acts should be a matter for concern. Children carrying knives are not cool, but a real and present danger.

Underage sex isn't a laugh. Recent government figures revealed that in this country more than 8,000 children under the age of 16 conceive every year.

Worldwide child pornography is a multi-billion dollar industry. In Africa and South America, brutalised youngsters who kill and rape are rightly feared as members of feral gangs or child soldiers.

Movies such as City Of God, Innocent Voices and Johnny Mad Dog have treated the issue with sensitivity.

But in Kick-Ass, childish violence of the most extreme kind - hacking off limbs, shootings in the mouth, impalings and fatal stabbings - is presented with calculated flippancy, as funny, admirable and (most perversely of all) sexually arousing.

The film-makers are sure to argue that there's nothing wrong with breaking down taboos of taste - but there are often good reasons for taboos.

Do we really want to live, for instance, in a culture when the torture and killing of a James Bulger or Damilola Taylor is re-enacted by child actors for laughs?

The people behind this grotesque glorification of prematurely sexualised, callously violent children know full well that they are going to make a lot of money, and they'll get an easy ride from the vast majority of reviewers, who either don't care about the social effects of movies or are frightened to appear ' moralistic' or 'judgmental'.

The truth is, of course, that all critics moralise and make judgments, whether they realise they are doing so or not. So please don't be misled. Kick-Ass is not the harmless fun it pretends to be.

Yes, it's lightweight and silly, but it's also cynical, premeditated and mindbogglingly irresponsible.

And in Hit-Girl, the film-makers have created one of the most disturbing icons and damaging role-models in the history of cinema.

 

Choice quote

 

The plot is an unimaginative clone of Spider-Man 2

 

How?

[Coolness Bears]

The Telegraph review of Kick Ass.

 

Choice quote

How?

 

because Red Mist takes over his fathers mantle when he dies at the end like Harry Osbourne?

 

 

I read that article earlier today! but I thought it was from the Daily Mail. :p

 

It was source of a good laugh. That isn't really a review but a hateful rant about their own paranoid issues.

[gmac]

yeah it's that bastion of good taste Christopher Tookey of the Daily Mail

[Ellmeister]

I actually rather enjoyed the quote:

 

"With no power, comes no responsibility." :p Rather clever really.

 

I rather enjoyed reading that article. But as said before, can't be from the Daily Telegraph! I actually rather enjoy that paper and it wouldn't be so abrasive as that in a film review that just hopes people will jump on the hating bandwagon they are creating.

[Ashley]

Still not getting my hopes up but:

 

The truth is that I'd like to and we are -- I say we [meaning] my agents and I are still exploring avenues to make it happen. We're trying to combine independent financing with Warner Bros. to see if there is a version of the movie that could get made....I guess what I'm saying is I think there's a different movie that's made as an indie-financed movie and one that Warner Bros. puts its muscle behind. One is artier and one is more populist. I think there are certain ingredients that I would have to -- and I don't say it disdainfully -- but it would have to be a much more popcorn movie if Warner Bros. was financing it. If it were made for $5 million then it would probably be a little more noir and edgy.

 

 

An "edgy and noir" movie would be better anyway. Kristen is so gung ho, as is Colantoni and I presume pretty much everyone else (Majorino and Lowell are the only ones I can think of who are in permanent employment) so maybe they'd do it for cheap. Plus, Kristen lives with Ryan Hansen anyway so I'm sure she can make him do it too :p

 

But yeah. Doubt it'll ever happen.

[mcj metroid]

from telegraph:

And in Hit-Girl, the film-makers have created one of the most disturbing icons and damaging role-models in the history of cinema.

 

good lord way to take it overly serious!

 

i thought she was great and it's nice to see a child actor do something rather than whine and complain about having a shitty childhood, no father etc etc

One of the worst reviews i've read, ironically I find the review way more offensive than the movie.

Edited April 6, 2010 by mcj metroid

[Cube]

from telegraph:

And in Hit-Girl, the film-makers have created one of the most disturbing icons and damaging role-models in the history of cinema.

 

good lord way to take it overly serious!

 

i thought she was great and it's nice to see a child actor do something rather than whine and complain about having a shitty childish..

One of the worst reviews i've read, ironically I find the review way more offensive than the movie.

 

I found it quite clear that it was a disgust-filled review, and that the disgust wasn't in regards to the film, but in regards to himself. He was clearly traumatised about how attractive he found Hit Girl and that the only way to hide it was to complain about how attractive he found her.