Empire has posted the first look at The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn. The behind-the-scenes photo features Jamie Bell and Andy Serkis in their motion capture outfits with Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson right by them. Check it out the full photo after the jump.
We just posted the trailer but here is a new poster for Duncan Jones’ (son of David Bowie) debut film, Moon. It stars Sam Rockwell (Frost/Nixon, Choke). Check it out below:
Another trailer has arrived. From IGN, this one is for Duncan Jones’ (son of David Bowie) debut film, Moon. It stars Sam Rockwell (Frost/Nixon, Choke). Check it out below in HD or on YouTube:
Director Richard Kelly (Southland Tales, Donnie Darko) has just debuted a new poster for his upcoming thriller The Box over at his Myspace page. The Box opens up on October 30th, 2009.
By Dan Mecca
Not that Eurocentrism has ever really gone away, but at least high-profile filmmakers were trying to conceal it with “noble” films like Crash. Hell, Hollywood even buys and sells independent projects like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon every once and a while. When considering what it was like in the 1940s/1950s, in which films like Elia Kazan’s Gentlemen’s Agreement (which won Best Picture in 1948) and Delmer Daves’ Broken Arrow were regarded as milestones of equality and filters for truth (even though both revolve around white men infiltrating minorities they are not a part of, thereby rescuing them from themselves), we have taken several big steps forward.
Thanks to the productions of recent years, usually independent of Hollywood, one can find honest cultural studies like the impressive HBO miniseries Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee or realism-drenched Westerns like John Hillcoat’s The Proposition.
However, all of this progression seems to be fading fast. How else do you explain why the new Street Fighter movie starred Chris Klein and the people behind Dragonball Evolution decided to cast uber-white Justin Chatwick and Emmy Rossum as Goku and Bulma, merely falling back on Asia’s most Americanized actor, Chow-Yun Fat, for validation. And let us not forget Jake Gyllenhaal playing Prince Dastan in Mike “Goblet of Fire” Newell’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.
The Box, the next film from director Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko, Southland Tales), has moved up from a Thanksgiving release date to a Halloween release. The thriller starring James Marsden (Sex Drive, Enchanted), Cameron Diaz (What Happens In Vegas), and Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon) is now scheduled to open on October 30th opposite Saw VI.
By Dan Mecca
During a recession, a paranoid political thriller in which the bad guy is a debt-collecting international bank seems like an easy sell. Unfortunately, The International never takes the time to figure out what exactly it’s trying to say or how exactly it’s trying to say it. Although directed by the perennially-promising Tom Tykwer, the German director who gave us Run, Lola, Run over a decade ago, the film was doomed to fail, first and foremost, on the printed page. Written by first-timer Eric Warren Singer, the BIG messages rampant throughout the plot of this thing are as ambitious as they are convoluted, and it appears there was nothing Tykwer could do to distract viewers from this fact. There are no small lines in this film, just large lines comprised of altruisms that sound like the worst version of Robert Frost (“Sometimes a man meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it”).
Clive Owen stars as Louis Salinger, an Interpol agent bent on taking down IBBC, an evil multi-national bank with countless ties to terrorists, bombs and the like. The poorly cast, or simply under-utilized, Naomi Watts stars as Eleanor Whitman, a Manhattan D.A. also bent on taking down IBBC. There is literally nothing else about her character established – oh wait, she has a family, so I guess that was Singer’s sympathy angle.
BY DAN MECCA
Film critic David Denby, who’s always been hit-or-miss in my book but never short of defending his opinions with excellent conviction, wrote this nice little ditty exposing 4 out of the 5 Best Pic noms (he liked Milk) as studio-backed and fairy-tale frauds. I especially enjoy the bit about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
Check out the piece here. I caught this thing on In Contention and am happy to see people giving Denby some much needed respect. Whether I wholly agree with this column or not (I really enjoyed Slumdog, Benjamin Button and Frost/Nixon but didn’t like The Reader) the guy’s a great writer and should have as big an audience as possible now-a-days, as film critics drop faster and farther daily than the stock market.
So give it a read and write your thoughts at the bottom.
Do you agree with Denby? Did you like Rachel Getting Married or Happy-Go-Lucky that much?
More details have recently surfaced about Steven Spielberg’s Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (including that previously unconfirmed title). Jamie Bell will join the cast as Tintin and Daniel Craig as Red Rackham. It was previously known that Nick Frost and Simon Pegg will play the Thom(p)son Twins. Steven Moffat (Doctor Who, Coupling), Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz, Shaun Of The Dead), and Joe Cornish have all created the screenplay.
/Film reports the film also contains plot from Red Rackham’s Treasure. These are the eleventh and twelfth books in the full series but also the first two parts of a four book cycle that continued with The Seven Crystal Balls and Prisoners of the Sun. The second film is scheduled to be directed by Peter Jackson and no director has been hired for the third…yet.
Production started yesterday. Paramount and Sony are splitting the $135 milllion cost. The film is to be performance captured and released stereo-optically in 2011.
What do you think of the casting additions?
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button leads with 13 Nominations.
Here are the 81st Academy Award Nominations:
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire
Frost/Nixon
Benjamin Button
Milk
Richard Jenkins in The Visitor
Frank Langella in Frost/Nixon
Sean Penn in Milk
Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler
Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married
Angelina Jollie in Changeling
Melissa Leo in Frozen River
Meryl Streep in Doubt
Kate Winslet in The Reader
Robert Downey Jr in Tropic Thunder
Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Doubt
Michael Shannon in Revolutionary Road
Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight
Josh Brolin in Milk
Amy Adams in Doubt
Penelope Cruz in Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Viola Davis in Doubt
Taraji P. Henson in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Marrisa Tomei in The Wrestler
Gus Van Sant for Milk
Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire
David Fincher for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Howard for Frost/Nixon
Stephen Daldry for The Reader
Courtney Hunt for Frozen River
Mike Leigh for Happy-Go-Lucky
Martin McDonagh for In Bruges
Andrew Stanton for Wall-E
Dustin Lance Black for Milk
Eric Roth and Robin Swicord for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
John Patrick Shanley for Doubt
Peter Morgan for Frost/Nixon
David Hare for The Reader
Simon Beaufoy for Slumdog Millionaire
Bolt
Wall-E
Kung Fu Panda
Changeling
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
The Duchess
Revolutionary Road
Changeling
Slumdog Millionaire
The Reader
Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Australia
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Milk
The Duchess
Revolutionary Road
Encounters at the End of the World
Man on Wire
The Betrayal
The Garden
Trouble the Water
The Conscience of Nhem En
The Final Inch
Smile Pinki
The Witness – From the Balcony of Room 306
Best Animated Short Film
La Maison en Petits Cubes
Lavatory – Lovestory
Oktapodi
Presto
This Way Up
Best Live Action Short Film
Auf der Strecke (On the Line)
Manon on the Asphalt
New Boy
The Pig
Spielzeugland (Toyland)
The Dark Knight
Slumdog Millionaire
Frost/Nixon
Benjamin Button
Milk
The Baader Meinhof Complex
The Class
Departures
Revanche
Waltz with Bashir
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Dark Knight
Hellboy II
Wall-E
Slumdog Millionaire
Defiance
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Milk
Down to Earth from Wall-E
O Saya from Slumdog Millionaire
Jai Ho from Slumdog Millionaire
The Dark Knight
Wanted
Iron Man
Wall-E
Slumdog Millionaire
The Dark Knight
Wanted
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Wall-E
Slumdog Millionaire
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Dark Knight
Wall-E
The Oscars are hosted by Hugh Jackman will take place on February 22nd.
Do you agree with the nominations?
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