In the past 24 hours the film blogosphere experienced what I believe to be the worst movie rumor of all time: a “supported” claim by MarketSaw that George Lucasis planning a new Star Warstrilogy that would be shot in digital 3-D and directed by such prestigious filmmakers as Lucas buds Steven Spielbergand Francis Ford Coppola. Fortunately there wasn’t a whole lot of people fooled and the rumor was debunked right away, but it still made me slap my forehead to see so many sites running the story, even if to comment on how unlikely it sounded or to relay its lack of truth.
Of course, by featuring the topic for this Bloggery post, I’m contributing to the unfortunate attention the rumor is receiving. But with a week left before SpoutBlog discontinues original content, I figure it’s more important than ever to focus on what’s wrong with the movie blogs, so others are able to fluorish.
To add my own two cents to the concept behind the rumor, though, I’d just like to say that nobody should ever be excited about the idea of either Spielberg or Coppola helming a Star Wars movie. We’re already aware that the former can make a terrible flick out of Lucas’ writing, and you must realize that Coppola’s installment would be more Captain EO(a 3-D movie co-written by Lucas) than The Godfather. Or, worse, like Jackin outer space.
Check out the other film blogs’ coverage of and response to this ridiculous hoax after the jump:
Can the San Diego Comic-Con really make or break a movie? That’s a yearly question asked in the days leading up to the annual geekfest, and few experts ever provide a definite answer. Most people point to weak Con receptions of footage from ultimately failed films like The Spirit and Catwoman as proof of the event’s influence. Meanwhile, there’s the corresponding recognition that positive buzz at the Con for certain niche titles like Twilight and 300 led those films to boffo box office.
But despite the few times Con attendees have been on the same wavelength with the rest of the moviegoing public, it’s important to remember the many movies that had geeks excited in San Diego but which couldn’t garner much interest from mainstream audiences in theatrical release. After the jump, we take a look at ten such movies that buzzed well at Comic-Con only to fizzle at the box office. …Read more
If you were a movie producer looking to make a lot of money, and you had the chance to do this with a Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie, would you put the project in the hands of the people who made the first film, which was not successful in any way, shape or form, or would you put it in the hands of the guy who wrote the first, crappy film but who later redeemed himself with an enormously popular, long-running TV series adapated from that film?
Obviously, most of us would choose the latter, but then I guess we just don’t know something Roy Lee and Doug Davison (of the Asian-horror-remake factory Vertigo Entertainment) know. The duo is teaming up with Fran Rubel Kuzui, who hasn’t directed a film since Buffy but who “served” as an exec producer on the TV show, and her husband, Kaz Kuzui (producer of the original movie), to relaunch the franchise with a new, darker, event-sized Vampire Slayer movie, which will have nothing to do with the show, and which, as of yet, has no involvement from Joss Whedon.
Due to the success of Twilightand True Blood, I can see why someone would want to kick start another vampire franchise, especially one with name recognition, but is there anyone who would look forward to anything Buffy without Whedon? And even with him, would anyone accept a new actress in the title role after Sarah Michelle Gellar made it iconically her own? Let’s check out the film blog reactions to this ridiculous announcement after the jump: …Read more
Joss Whedon just confirmed here on his Comic-Con panel that he plans to do at least another episode of Dr. Horrible. His relevant quotes after the jump; more details once the panel wraps.
Updates: Below the jump, details on the Dr. Horrible DVD…
Behold the latest episode of The Dr. Steel Show, about an evil doctor bent on taking over the world. Sound familiar? Apparently it’s been ripped off by the new Joss Whedon project, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, which Karina commented on yesterday. And as early as Adam’s praise last week when Whedon’s series launched, SpoutBlog has been receiving comments from followers (known as the Army of Toy Soldiers) of the allegedly real-life Dr. Steel. Every other online acknowledgment of Whedon’s project also seems to be getting hit with similar allegations that Dr. Horrible is a copycat.
Personally, I can’t figure out the deal with Dr. Steel or his faithful subjects. It’s one of the many viral things on the web that confuse me and make me glad that I actually spend much of my non-blogging time away from a computer. Funny enough, in the past I’ve had the same issue with Browncoats (followers of Whedon’s series Firefly), who seem to be forever monitoring the internet for reasons to defend their beloved franchise. So far, I’ve only watched a few clips of Dr. Steel-related stuff and only some musical clips from Dr. Horrible. Just to be fair, I think I’ll avoid both, though I have to admit that I’m far more interested in a singing Doogie Howser.
Anyway, I await the flames from fans on both sides. I won’t mind the attacks if someone at least clues me into the stuff so I don’t have to spend my evening playing catch up.
Having missed the launch whilst on vacation, I finally sat down last night and watched all three episodes of Joss Whedon’s musical web miniseries Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog back-to-back-to-back. I had two major notes:
1. When did Joss Whedon and Michael Mann become the same guy? Dr. Horrible is a lone wolf anti-hero whose single-minded devotion to his professional obligation to save a small corner of the world (in this case, by way of organized evil) makes the very concept of romance inconvenient. Soundfamiliar?
“Why did she talk to me now?” Billy/Dr. Horrible laments, after prospective love interest Penny makes contact right as he’s about to jump start an evil mission. This segues directly into a song with the refrain, “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.” What Whedon does is the self-mocking, defeatist, loveable loser version of what Mann does, in terms of love as a blight on the record of men who should be above it.
This leads me to my second though, regarding Dr. Horrible’s controversial ending:
Choices, choices. Download the three-part web series Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog over the next few days, or wait for the DVD release? Maybe both.
Dr. Horrible is Joss “man with the Midas touch” Whedon’s experimental comedy/sci-fi musical. If the trailer above doesn’t lie, the whole shoestring production will shine like B-grade gold.
The story: Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser, MD) is Dr. Horrible, too shy to talk to his crush (Felicia Day from The Guild) and struggling to prove himself to the Evil Group of Evil. The doctor’s arch-enemy Captain Hammer is played by Nathan Fillion (Firefly, Slither), the coolest poor man’s action star around.
Dr. Horrible is like an awkward, flamboyant grandson of Vincent Price’s character in The Abominable Dr. Phibes. (By the way, that demented, carnival-esque revenge tragedy must have inspired Max Fisher to do a copycat crime in Rushmore. Remember the bees released into Mr. Bloom’s hotel room?)
A guy like Joss Whedon doesn’t need to experiment to get people to watch his stuff, which only increases my respect for him and my excitement for this project. I hope Dr. Horrible is a success mostly because it looks really, really cool, but also because it’ll show other bigwigs there’s a fanbase for freewheeling, unashamed, genre fun.
At the time of this writing the location of the first installment was switching servers, but hopefully it’ll start streaming for free again.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon recently gave a lengthy interview to the GeeksOn podcast, and half the blogs in my Google Reader are talking about it (yes, the mostly the nerdy ones). You’d assume that the geeks would be most excited about what Whedon had to say about future movie projects, or maybe the his new TV series, which stars Buffy/Angel vet Eliza Dushku. Wrong. All anyone is talking about is a throwaway diss from Whedon on the subject of John Hughes’ Weird Science:
I hate Weird Science not a little. I find it offensive. The boy fantasy of building a girl. Obviously, we were doing the nasty version of it, because I find it grotesque.
When Whedon says “we”, he’s talking about a storyline on a late season of Buffy, in which ancillary character Warren built a robot version of Buffy for the sexual gratification of Spike. Warren eventually got flayed by Buffy’s lesbian witch friend Willow, and the Buffybot was destroyed by demons, so I guess everyone got their comeupance for engaging in the “grotesquerie” of the robot girlfriend game. Except for Spike, who moved to LA and partnered with Buffy’s other vampire ex-boyfriend to fight evil lawyers. But whatever. Back to Weird Science…
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.
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Nothing hurts the credibility of the film blogosphere like bad rumors. Not even supercilious comments 
If you were a movie producer looking to make a lot of money, and you had the chance to do this with a Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie, would you put the project in the hands of the people who made 
Joss Whedon just confirmed here on his Comic-Con panel that he plans to do at least another episode of 
