There’s been a recent flood of Peter Jackson-related news regarding THREE films he’s involved with, so here it goes:
First, some early reviews of Jackson’s The Lovely Bones. In a word, mixed.
- Variety’s says that the adaptation “the massive success Jackson has enjoyed in the intervening years with his CGI-heavy “The Lord of the Rings” saga (the source of which receives fleeting homage in a bookstore scene here) and “King Kong” has infected the way he approaches this far more intimate tale.” Bold words to say the least.
- The Guardian is singing a similar song, awarding it 2 out of 5 stars and writing: “It’s not that The Lovely Bones is a bad movie, exactly. It is handsomely made and strongly acted, while its woozy, lullaby ambience recalls Jackson’s work on the brilliant Heavenly Creatures, before he set forth on his epic voyage through The Lord of the Rings.”
- Meanwhile, AICN’s Harry Knowles digs it, as shallow as his lovely love may be: “Lovely also describes the performances throughout this film.” C’mon, Harry – try a little bit.
- THR sits somewhere in the middle: “This was never going to be an easy story to film. Using the same characters and many events, Jackson and his team tell a fundamentally different story. It’s one that is not without its tension, humor and compelling details. But it’s also a simpler, more button-pushing tale that misses the joy and heartbreak of the original.”
The film is set for a wide release December 11th, 2009, and will open, it would appear, to mixed reviews.
In other Peter Jackson news, the director told the BBC that Steven Spielberg had finished principal photography on The Adventure of Tintin but that post-production will take two full years: “it will take two years for the computer animation to be completed, producer Peter Jackson has said.”
Tintin is based on a Belgian comic trip of the same name, drawn by artist Herge, following a young Belgian reporter named Tintin and his fox terrier sidekick Snowy. It is highly anticipated in terms of new cinema technology, set to follow the highly anticipated Avatar, which sports a similar motion-capture animation via 3-D in Imax.
In that same article, Jackson dispelled the recent rumors that Guillermo del Toro’s The Hobbit (which Jackson is producing) will NOT be in 3-D (“Guillermo wants to shoot in 35mm, old-fashioned film,” Jackson said, “which suits me, because he wants to keep it in the same space as the original trilogy”.). This is surprising news, if only because it seems as though EVERY film in pre-production these days will be in 3-D. Hopefully there’s no studio pressure to change Jackson’s report.
What do you think of this news surrounding Peter Jackson and his slew of projects?
