The 3D revolution (or fad, depending on how you see it) has finally engulfed the classics. Specifically, the format has reached out to Alexandre Dumas’ swashbuckling adventure story The Three Musketeers, which Paul W.S. Anderson has co-scripted and will direct as a 3D feature.
On the same day we heard about this news, Harry Knowles of Ain’t It Cool News relayed a rumor that Iron Man 2– and possibly the first Iron Man– could also get the 3D treatment, through a retrofit conversion process. Provided he didn’t simply mishear some kind of reference to Dumas’ The Man in the Iron Maskthis would be another big step in the development of 3D cinema.
But is it still too early for all these 3D movies to be getting the greenlight? Sure, The Final Destination 3Ddid great business over the past weekend, but its 3D effects were terrible. And we’re still unsure whether or not Avatarwill be the success that Hollywood hopes it will be.
Since TFD3D topped the box office, though, we’ve been hearing about more sequels and more old movies that we can expect to hit theaters in 3D over the next few years and beyond (provided they continue doing well). So, many a film blog has begun suggesting other movies to be fitted and retrofitted with the technology. Some of them are sampled after the jump and we encourage you to submit your own pitches in the comments section below.
Of all the whining I heard over the past few days from Comic-Con, the complaints about missing the Iron Man 2panel and footage seemed to be the loudest and most drawn out. Perhaps people were just that eager to see Scarlett Johansson as she talked about playing Black Widow? It’s likely considering the whole SDCC event has apparently turned into something more to do with sex appeal than comic books (though one could argue that comics have always been about sex appeal anyway).
The big topic of the day seems to regard ScarJo’s character in the movie, specifically her weight loss and fitness training for the role, which makes her somewhat the female equivalent to New Moon’s Taylor Lautner, who helped promote his movie at the Con by showing off his amazing abs. But because this isn’t a gossip blog, I’m going to spin the discussion toward the more important things learned from the actress and the rest of those involved with IM2.
Check out the last of my collection of favorite Comic-Con coverage, as it focuses on the man of iron, after the jump: …Read more
Between Jon Favreau Tweeting the making of and USA Today and Entertainment Weekly covering promotional bases in more-traditional ways, we may actually be sick of Iron Man 2 by the time it’s done shooting, let alone by the time it opens next summer. Okay, that’s not at all true, but isn’t it still a bit premature for EW to feature the Iron Mansequel on its magazine cover already? Even with Comic-Con around the corner?
Well, the mag and the production might at least be a little more careful about what is being let out of the figurative poly bag so early in the game. After all, on the day that Paramount releases the first official (and initially blurry) look at Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow the online discussions shouldn’t be focused on Mickey Rourke’s cockatoo. Never mind that not all the reactions to Rourke’s quote in EW aren’t negatively the sort of preemptive backlash studios fear, the distraction from the big sell alone should be cause for slight alarm.
Personally, I’m more excited about the bird than the chick, anyway, seeing as how awesome Rourke was with a little dog sidekick in Once Upon a Time in Mexico. Let’s see the rest of the blogosphere’s reactions to Rourke’s new pet after the jump:
The Internet seems eerily quiet today, which is probably due to all the blog writers being miles above wifi signals, flying towards Austin for SXSW. Of course, there are some posts here and there discussing rumors about Jon Favreau directing The Avengersand continued commentary on Watchmen’s box office future and Joaquin Phoenix’s “brawl” in Miami, but there’s not much new news to get excited about.
So, I’ve decided to highlight some recent SXSW-related posts from other blogs in anticipation of the festival. I won’t be there this year, and the Bloggery posts will be taking a week off in order to let SpoutBlog focus on film reviews, interviews and other SXSW goodies, so this is my one chance to be a part of the SXSW fun, albeit from a very cold, very jealous perspective up here in NYC.
I wish everyone down in Austin a good time and, more importantly, a lot of good movies.
Not that adults can’t already appreciate Muppet movies enough as they are, but The Jim Henson Co. has a new film in the works that will primarily be for grown-ups. Described as being a little Avenue Q mixed with a little L.A. Confidential and Pulp Fiction, the movie will be set in a world where humans and puppets co-exist (umm, like any other Muppet movie, uh huh), in which the latter are considered second-class citizens (still kind of like any other Muppet movie) and become victim to a series of murders (ok, there’s the adult part). Titled The Happyland Murders, this seemingly Muppets version of Who Framed Roger Rabbit will be directed by Brian Henson (The Muppet Christmas Carol).
This should be the year to debut hot political films, not announce them, but Fox Searchlight has reportedly acquired the rights to Allen Raymond’s memoir How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative, which has been adapted and will be directed by Billy Ray (Shattered Glass).
The boys of Peter Billingsley’s Couples Retreat have now been assigned wives: Jason Bateman gets Kristen Bell; Vince Vaughn gets Malin Ackerman; and Jon Favreau somehow gets Kristin Davis. The plot has all these pairings headed to a tropical island in order to save their marriages. There should really be an official genre called Romantic Fantasy Comedy for this one to be classified as.
In more typical romantic comedy genre news, Amy Adams will star in Leap Yearas an uptight woman who wants to follow Irish tradition and propose to her boyfriend on February 29. The script, from the writers of Made of Honor, is described as being like It Happened One Night. I’m sure.
“Some believe that with the country reeling from the economic breakdown on Wall Street, moviegoers will go for comedy,” says Variety, which predicts My Best Friend’s Girl to top the weekend over Lakeview Terrace. Of course, there’s also Ricky Gervais yukking it up in Ghost Town, but The Hollywood Reporter notes that film has tracked so poorly that Paramount cut back its screen count. I guess moviegoers won’t go for just any comedy in depressing times.
Forget all the rumors about Russell Crowe or Colin Farrell playing Watson to Robert Downey Jr.’s Holmes in Guy Ritchie’sadaptation. Jude Law is now reportedly in talks to play the detective’s associate. And so I must elementarily deduce that Sherlock Holmes will surprisingly not be a hit.
The kid from A Christmas Storywill make his directorial debut with Couples Retreat, which will star his usual collaborators Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn, as well as Jason Bateman.
Luke Wilson and Giovanni Ribisi have been cast in a film about the beginnings of the Internet porn industry. But will any of its target audience leave the computer long enough to go see it?
Finally, though this isn’t big news, the 3-D animated adaptation of my favorite kid’s book of all time, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, has rounded out its voice cast with James Caan, Anna Faris, Bill Hader, Andy Samberg, Bruce Campbell, Tracy Morgan and Mr.T!. I can not wait.
So often reviews of films like Iron Man, even positive ones, give you the sense that the critics are a bit embarrassed that they’re required to go through the motions of critiquing a Hollywood product for which financial success and pop cultural domination is a foregone conclusion. I’m the first to sympathize with the critical crisis of futility, but it baffles me that so many critics so blatantly suggest that it’s barely worth their time to decode and deconstruct the films that are going to be seen by the largest number of people. Check the qualifiers that get thrown around: “As big-budget comic book adaptations go…”; “works well enough as your standard comic-book blockbuster.” Read: “Giving this film the full strength of my critical acumen would be beneath me.”
So it’s no surprise that the strongest and most considered review of Iron Man that I’ve read comes from a blog. Though io9’s Charlie Jane Anders admits that Iron Man “is not exactly a perfect movie,” she carefully deconstructs its political slipperyness and “Cronenbergian body horror” before branding the film “the first comic-book movie that’s actually better than its source material.” Traditional critics bitch and moan that their reviews of “sure” blockbusters don’t matter, but when millions of consumers invest in a shared entertainment experience, film reviews transcend arts reporting and become anthropology. It’s always exciting to see someone take the responsibility of that anthropological study seriously.
An excerpt from Anders’ review after the jump; you can read the full thing here.
Interesting. David Poland, who is not crazy about Iron Man (”I just wanted a character who actually dealt with the obvious demons that he overcomes… and not just another really, really cool suit of CG armor”) posits that the fact that other critics are crazy about the film (it’s currently at 86% on Rotten Tomatoes) might be a sign that it’s not going to connect with audiences:
This appears to be the Pass movie of the early summer for critics. Is it because of Downey or the middle-aged hero or talk about a huge opening or the use of the Middle East and the half-ass political arguments of the film that play out hypocritically but pay active lip service to liberals… I don’t know.
All I do know is that when film critics are the ones identifying with your superhero, you may be being successful with the wrong demo for mega-bucks… which is all the film producers wanted in the first place.
After interviewing George Romero at Sundance 2008, Joe Swanberg and Ronald Bronstein (the interviewers) began to debate whether or not there’s even a place today for subversive directors (i.e. those who defy an institution–Hollywood–while pretending to support it). Romero’s Night of the Living Dead served as a blood and guts zombie vehicle carrying everything troubling him about the turbulent 60’s. The argument today is that subversion is unnecessary. No filmmaker is limited to studio controlled dollars, equipment or theaters to get their ideas out. Although you don’t have to take subversive tactics to get a film made anymore, I think there’s a new institution to game, that of a jaded movie watching audience.
For a generation who doesn’t know a world without premium cable channels and DVD shops on every corner, a trailer is shorthand (largely due to uncreative marketing) telling an audience to drop a film full of challenging ideas into the skip it bin. A lot of films buzzing through the festival circuit offer more of the same life-crashing drama Robert Downey Jr.’s characters are synonymous with. So, in a statement about his decision to play Tony Stark in Iron Man, a remark that there’s more room to build a character with a comic book hero than in most parts that come across his desk rings true. However, I think what he’s referring to is more than just the opportunity to enjoy his craft, it’s an opportunity to implant something in an audience that rolls their eyes at the “broccoli” dramas he’s expected to play in.
The new subversion is to get in front of a jaded audience that switches off interest the moment they hear of hot topics like Darfur or Iraq. By pretending to play to their sensationalist needs, directors like Jon Favreau engage a disaffected audience that has a thousand titillating stories to distract them from anything of substance. At least, that’s what I’m hoping he does (I haven’t seen Iron Man). Maybe comic book heroes are the perfect vehicles to reopen thoughts about Iraq and other box-office poison. To that end, I hope I’m right about Iron Man and I hope it succeeds.
Alison at the IFC Blog points to the 50th and apparently final episode of Dinner For Five, which premieres on IFC Friday night, but which you can watch online via Brightcove now. According to this press release, it’s basically a promo for a soon-to-be-released film documenting Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show, but in practice, it doesn’t feel that shilly.
The show has always had a boy’s club romanticism to it that can either be fantastic or unbearable, depending on the assortment of guests, but this last episode is interesting if only because it draws attention to the entire series as a work of Jon Favreau/Vince Vaughn autobiography.
Was it star power? Strong reviews? The kind of holiday shopping climate that makes hiding out in a movie theater all weekend seem ideal? Whatever it was, I Am Legend bested all expectations this weekend, to take home $76 million at the domestic box office. That’s the best December opening of all time, stronger than any of the Lord of the Rings films. Meanwhile, from the Adding Insult to Injury File: The Golden Compass continued to disappoint, while Alvin and the Chipmunks scored $45 million in its first weekend.
On the “specialty” side: Atonement and No Country For Old Men rode their Golden Globe nominations into the overall top ten, landing at spots nine and five, respectively. Expanding to 140-something screens, Juno earned $36,018 per screen–more than any other film, and good for eleventh place overall.
Awards sludge: the Academy has declared 15 films, including the animated films Beowulf and Ratatouille, eligible for Visual Effects prizes; the American Film Institute put out their annual, totally unremarkable list of the ten best films of the year.
Is it even news, when Jon Favreau joins the cast of a film already starring Vince Vaughn? Apparently.
The massive Paramount panel took place at Comic-con yesterday afternoon, where the studio leaked tidbits on Iron Man, Beowulf, Indiana Jones 4, and two J.J. Abrams projects. Here’s some notes from those who were there.
According to MTV, Abrams confirmed that Cloverfield is not going to be titled Monstrous. It still *could* be titled Cloverfield. But probably not. Also, there’s a new poster, which is getting a lot of bloggyattention. While most of the chatter seems to center around the question, “What is this, a Godzilla remake?” MOVIEBOB notes that visually, the poster looks a lot like a certain photograph taken on 09/11/01:
Now, Michael Bay can get away with it when he claims that he doesn’t think of 911 when crafting city-destruction scenes because, well, Michael Bay was born without a human soul. But Abrams and company, being both human and extremely insightful about humanity, MUST have either intended the analogous gut-punch this poster provides or at least recognized it and decided it was appropriate. I’m now even more strongly thinking what I was only considering when the blurry “spy” shots of this first appeared: Is this the real key to what this mystery-movie actually is?
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
filmcouch-114
The 3D revolution (or fad, depending on how you see it) has finally engulfed the classics. Specifically, the format has reached out to Alexandre Dumas’ swashbuckling adventure story The Three Musketeers, which Paul W.S. Anderson has co-scripted and will 
Of all the whining I heard over the past few days from Comic-Con, the complaints about missing the Iron Man 2 panel and footage seemed to be the loudest and most drawn out. Perhaps people were just that eager to see Scarlett Johansson as she talked about playing Black Widow? It’s likely considering the whole SDCC event has apparently turned into something more to do with sex appeal than comic books (though one could argue that comics have always been about sex appeal anyway).
So often reviews of films like 
Alison at the IFC Blog
Was it star power? Strong reviews? The kind of holiday shopping climate that makes hiding out in a movie theater all weekend seem ideal? Whatever it was, 
