Welcome to The Extras! A daily dose of all the smaller movie related news, clips and just plain cool stuff that you might have missed!
The Amazing Spider-Man was a bit of a mixed bag for me. While I thought it had a great cast and amazing characterization, I felt it fell woefully short in other areas, especially the last act. Well, my opinion would certainly have been a whole more positive if the movie had ended like this:
Sir Ben Kinsgley is apparently in talks to join Mary Mother of Christ, which is not an expletive but rather a new historical drama from Sanctum director Alister Grierson that’s being dubbed a prequel to The Passion of Christ (seriously) and looks at the biblical Mary’s “attempts to defy King Herod in order to save her son, Jesus.”
Kinsgley would be up be for the role of the family murdering King, while the all English cast will be rounded out by The Odd Life of Timothy Green’s Odeya Rush, Peter O’Toole as Symeon and Julia Ormond as Elizabeth, Mary’s cousin. The producers are also looking to land Dame Judi Dench for the role of Anna the Prophetess and Hugh Bonneville for the role of Satan.The film is being written by Benedict Fitzgerald and Barbara Nicolosi. Fitzgerald co-wrote Passion with writer/director Mel Gibson.
Karl Urban was recently in the country for the premiere of Dredd 3 and local entertainment blog HighOnReviews managed to score an interview with him. Apparently our premier invite got lost in the mail. At least that’s what my mommy said. Right after she returned from visiting my dog Woofles on that farm they took him to a few years back.
Sad news time: Herbet Lom, best known to audiences for playing Police Chief Charles Dreyfus opposite Peter Sellers in the original Pink Panther films, has passed away at the age of 95. He died peacefully in his sleep at his London home.
Here’s a first look behind the scenes at Roland Emmerich’s White House Down which sees secret service agent Channing Tatum have to defend US President Jamie Foxx after terrorists attack and occupy the president’s home at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (I totally learned that address from that Wesley Snipes movie).
Speaking of Jamie Foxx, the actor was all praise and adulation as he spoke to Collider about his experiences of working with Quentin Tarantino on Django Unchained and how the director tackled its thorny issue of slavery. Also, something about gymnastics.
“You can’t look at Pulp Fiction, and see those performances by Samuel Jackson and John Travolta, and not go, ‘Man, if I could just work with that dude and say those types of words.’ He’s a wordsmith.”
“Quentin was like, ‘Don’t come in here, Jamie Foxx-ing it. Come in here and really be the character.’ I thought that was fantastic for a person to take you back to school and really get to work… You grow when you work with directors like that.”
“With Django Unchained, when you’re dealing with slavery, it’s like a gymnastics routine with the highest amount of difficulty. Quentin Tarantino is not going to do a movie that’s just going to lay there and be safe. There’s going to be twists and flips… that was the challenge.”
Nordling over on AICN has gone and wrote many, many words on Why Cloud Atlas and Holy Motors Are the Most Important Films of the Year, so the least you guys could do is read them.
I must have hit a baby in the face with a puppy in a previous life. How else can I explain the universe punishing me so by having another movie being made based on a Nicholas Sparks novel? The Best of Me will be slightly different though. Well, not in terms of plot, as it’s story of two middle-aged ex-high school sweethearts who meet up again after a tragedy is the same old saccharine rubbish he always churns out, but rather in the fact that this book was a movie, even before it was a book. Sparks pitched the story idea to film execs first and once they greenlit a future adaptation, he then went off to actually write it. Well, maybe “write” is a strong word. Excrete may be more fitting.
Here’s Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan speaking about writing romantic dramedy Ruby Sparks (which opens today) together and why they chose Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris to direct it:
Want to know what’s happening with Jurassic Park 4? Producer Kathleen Kennedy will be happy to tell you:
“Writing, writing, writing… It’s really hard to keep these things going when there’s an expectation and a desire by the public and the audience to keep certain franchises going. As filmmakers, we often sit there going, ‘Okay. We have to answer the question, Why do another one?’ If you can’t answer that question, you shouldn’t be doing it. It’s tough. We’re trying to come up with a story that makes sense and isn’t going to disappoint people and is, hopefully, going to get people excited and reinvigorate the franchise. We’ve got to start with a script and the story.”
Remember the story we had earlier in the week about how Universal Studios have taken over the production on troubled samurai epic 47 Ronin after the budget had ballooned from $175 million to $225 million and had subsquently booted first time director Carl Rinsch from the editing room after he had done several reshoots?
Well, according to Deadline, he’s still behind is still very much in that editing room. They claim that while Universal were concerned about the film, and had indeed taken a firmer hand in the production, the rest was merely sensationalist storytelling, and that Rinsch was still very much hard at work on the film. They suspect that the source of his exaggerated demise may have been some disgruntled cast and crew, who it’s claime Rinsch didn’t get along with too well.
Now here’s a big poster to show off some small people. The new piece of promo material for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has chosen to focus on everyboyd’s favourite set of dwarfs not named after physical and mental conditions.
Variety is reporting that Tony award winning playwright George C. Wolfe (he also directed an adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’ Nights in Rodanthe but the less said about that the better), will be directing Hilary Swank in his sophomore effort, You’re Not You. The film is an adaptation of Michelle Mildgen’s debut novel:
Bec is adrift. It’s the summer before her junior year in college. She’s sleeping with a married professor, losing interest in her classes, and equivocating about her career. She takes a job caring for Kate, a thirty-six-year-old woman who has been immobilized by ALS.
As it turns out, before the disease Kate was a stylish and commanding woman, an advertising executive and an accomplished chef. Now, as she and Bec spend long days together, Bec begins to absorb Kate’s sophistication and her sensuality, cooking for her, sharing her secrets, and gradually beginning to live her own life with a boldness informed by Kate’s influence. The more intense her commitment to Kate, the further Bec strays from the complacency of her college life. And when Kate’s marriage veers into dangerous territory, Bec will have to choose between the values of her old life and the allure of an entirely new one.
CraveOnline has posted the first TV spot for videogame adaptation sequel, Silent Hill: Revelation. I can’t help feeling that this one just doesn’t look anywhere near as creepy as the first one.
Collider have a collection of 30 new pics for Ben Affleck’s so scrazy it must true thriller Argo. So if images of a bearded Ben Affleck reading stuff or talking to people is your thing, then head on over.
It’s been far too long since I posted a cool short film around here, so to end off today, have a look at this amazing little sci-fi film set in a future Amsterdam ruled by robots. What makes this film special is that it’s rather impressive visual effects were created using Blender, the open source 3D content creation tool.
Last Updated: September 28, 2012
Darryn_Bonthuys
September 28, 2012 at 20:35
I’m genuinely gutted that the master of the nervous breakdown and twitching eye has passed on. For me, he was the real reason to watch the Pink Panther films.