Coming Soon...

About a month from now the San Diego Convention Center will not look like this. Wookies, klingons, mutants, superheroes, geeks & film icons will be spilling across downtown as far as the eye can see. They will all be here for one common obsession: Comic Con. Chris & Megan being huge geeks and filmmakers themselves will be here reporting it all - minus costumes. Stay tuned for our experiences come the end of July...

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Oscars 2010

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Originally uploaded by marthouli

In an effort to move with the times the Academy of Motion Pictures just announced that the 2010 Oscars ceremony will feature 10 nominees in the Best Picture category. To read the whole press release from the Academy visit their website.

The Oscars have watched themselves become less popular year by year. I would not be surprised if this is the first of many announcements about ways the Academy will try to make themselves relevant to the movie-going masses again.

I loved the changes made to the 2009 Oscars, and I can only hope the rest of the changes will be as positive. I still hold that if I were a nominee and I had five Oscar winning greats talking about me, I’d be crying.

TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE... GOOD GOD MAN!!!

It’s been 5 hours since I’ve seen TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN. As such I think I can now appropriately review the film. Here it is…

WOW, lots of money… freaking insane! Shiny! Boom, he… he I like fast cars and things that explode. Cavemen, I can’t believe there was… parachute. Megan Fox is not human, she’s simply too hot! How in the name of…? Spinny and dizzy, Megan Fox, seriously! MASSIVE! Military porn! Big explosions, more shiny! Jeez laweez, how on earth? ISABEL LUCAS! That doesn’t make… ROBOTS IN TREES! OPTIMUS PRIME! Do you know what kind of movie I could make with this kind of money? Porn, every kind of porn; action, robot, military… this is a 13 year old boy’s wet… ooh, MEGAN FOX! This isn’t a movie it’s… good God! Are your frigging serious? Racist, I can’t believe they… it’s not just the robots, holy crap! Squirrel! I don’t know if I should be offended or applauding the balls on display. MASSIVE, seriously so much but I don’t know if any of it… I want to be 11 years old again! OK, I think Michael Bay is an unrepentant Republican; subversively he’s trying to say… Michael Bay, subversive HAH? Holy crap, seriously this isn’t a movie it’s… BOOBS! There are rules, basic rules that they teach in every film school or that you learn by watching like 5 movies and this thing doesn’t even remotely try to pretend that it even wants to play by… ooh, more shininess, explosions and Megan Fox! I’m coocoo for Coco Puffs! Seriously is there anything the military didn’t give these guys? Too much, it’s just too much, my eyes, my ears, my brain, my soul! HOLY CRAP, HOLY CRAP, HOLY CRAP! No way people didn’t die while making this, there’s just no way! Talk about everything and the kitchen sink, so much carnage, so much mayhem, WWIII and WWIV all rolled into one! I want to live in Michael Bay’s world it must be so. Seriously, testicles, horrifically glaring racial stereotypes and robot testicles? Objectification, objectification… OK, it’s kind of fun but OPTIMUS PRIME WEARING ANOTHER ROBOT LIKE A CANNIBAL OR BUFFALO BILL IN SILENCE OF THE LAMBS!!! Can’t stop long enough to think about how f’d up WAY TOO MUCH EXPLODING TO CARE!!! Not a movie, this isn’t a movie, I don’t know what it is but it isn’t a movie! I think I may be at least 50 IQ points dumber now but I’m really not sure I care… SWEET GOD, it’s simply not possible to put that much money, mayhem, military firepower and female awesomeness on screen! WTF, seriously WTF? They shot on a frigging aircraft carrier with a robot! I… I’m spent, I’m repulsed, punch drunk, feel like a retarded teenager, want to make my ears bleed by seeing it in IMAX. My creative soul and writer’s mind weeps. Need to drink heavily, reconsider my stance on taking recreational drugs and just let myself go while I wallow in the… whatever it is. Seriously you couldn’t parody Bay and come even close to what this film is. I… there’s not way to review it, there’s not, I… do I buy this, do I see it again, do I burn every film print in effigy? SERIOUSLY I need to get this much money to make a movie someday!

WOW

Box office numbers through history kind of fascinate me. Things that are HUGE now if adjusted for inflation could be soooo tiny, and things that looking back at seem so small would actually be HUGE when adjusted for today.

I do not think that box office numbers are the sign of a great movie, or even my favorite movies, but I do think that if you combine good reciepts with great critical and fan praise it's probably a safe bet that your movie is a frackin' good movie.

Some people might know where this is going.

Like it or not JJ Abrams Star Trek is the highest box office draw in the history of the franchise. This is a giant accomplishment for everyone involved from the Studio & Rodenberry's family to the actors. It means Star Trek has finally started to appeal to more than a core fan base, an aging core fan base at that.

I am excited to see what Paramount does next with Kirk and his adventures. If only I could get back on the lot by the sequel...

To see the adjusted box office for all the franchise you can go to this article.

Words

While perusing YouTube the other day, I stumbled across an interview with the late writer/director Anthony Minghella. While at the 2006 Denver Film Festival for the American premiere of Breaking and Entering, he ended up in some very insightful territory after being asked a fairly generic question about how the film came to be.

"Films have this wonderful ability to enable you to think outside of your own skin for a while. You can look at the same story from many points of view. You can perhaps reserve judgment. It can nudge you a little bit towards compassion, and for me, films are like the moral gymnasium. You know, you go to the gym to work out. You go to movies to work out your heart, and your head, and your thoughts, and I love movies like that, and I want to make movies like that, and I aspire to making movies like the movies I’ve loved myself watching. . ."

While it's terribly sad to think that Minghella's voice has been silenced forever, I've had the opportunity to listen to various interviews that he gave. He seems to have been a very astute, thoughtful person. I'm honored to know that to know that the man was a kindred spirit.

Inspiration

As a director myself I am always looking for something that will inspire me visually, creatively, etc. I watch movies constantly, read film jornals on a regular basis, and try to find the good film blogs and podcasts to invest my time in.

One of my new favorite blogs is Mystery Man on Film. He's an annonymous screenwriter who likes to share his tales, give tips and just talk about the story that is movies. He had the below video embedded in his blog and I thought it was just astounding.

A film jornalist/academic collected a series of the most famous tracking/"following" shots in cinema and compiled them. They are the shots that stick with you in films because you are moving with your characters through their enviroment, you always notice them in films because they are incredibly complex and make the world so much more real to you.

Check out the vid and his blog too.

Rumors and Speculation!

I don’t normally do this but for once I’m going to jump into the speculation business. Recently there have been lots of cool rumors and reports running around the net, some of them have already been confirmed and some of them are still in the works. What follows are just some of the things that have me most excited about going to the movies over the next couple years.

*Peter Morgan, the BRILLIANT writer of THE QUEEN, FROST / NIXON and the LAST KING OF SCOTLAND will be joining Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (Writers of CASINO ROYALE and QUANTUM OF SOLACE) to write the next James Bond film! There are very few writers working in the industry that can hold a candle to Morgan’s talent and the last two Bond films were already brilliantly written, adding him to the equation has me chomping at the bit for 007’s next adventure.

*Liam Neeson and Bradley Cooper are joining Joe Carnahan’s A-TEAM. First and foremost I have no idea when Joe Carnahan got his hands on this but thank God! John Singleton, the most boring action movie director working in the biz was originally slated to direct and there’s no way he would have made anything worthy of my childhood memory. To make things even better Neeson and Cooper are joining the cast as Hannibal and Face respectively! When can I buy my tickets please?

*Speaking of Bradley Cooper who turns in a star making performance in THE HANGOVER, he is also rumored to be in the running to play Hal Jordan for the big screen adaptation of GREEN LANTERN. This film is already being directed by Martin Campbell (MASK OF ZORO, CASINO ROYALE) one of the most underrated directors of the last 20 years so I expect great things, but if you throw Cooper into the mix as the emerald ring bearer I may lose my mind with excitement.

*Neil Marshall the guy behind DOG SOLDIERS, THE DESCENT and DOOMSDAY is rumored be in the running to direct the Robert Rodriguez produced continuation of the PREDATOR franchise, appropriately named PREDATORS. I’m telling you right now there is NO ONE on earth more suited to direct a bad-ass, hard R, much needed entry into this franchise than Marshall. If they give this guy the reigns he will blow people to the back of the theatre. Plus you can pretty much guarantee it’ll be the first PREDATOR film with a really strong female lead. Here’s hoping I get to see Rhona Mitra kick some “ugly mother f*&#er” ass sometime soon.

*Kraven the Hunter and / or the Kingpin may be the villains in the SPIDER-MAN 4. Look, SPIDER-MAN 3 SUCKED, but with DRAG ME TO HELL Sam Raimi proved he still knows how to put on a hell of a show. I can totally see the studio wanting to go with The Kingpin so they can tell a badass DARK KNIGHTish crime saga and if handled properly that could make for a pretty darn great SPIDER-MAN movie. Let’s just hope they leave Raimi alone this time and let him work his magic, it did wonders for the first two films in the franchise. Here’s hoping they’re smart enough to realize that.

And that’s just a few of the things that have peeked my interest at the moment. I may start chiming in on this stuff from time to time depending on my level of excitement. Either way here’s hoping we’ve got some pretty movies coming our way.

Get Over it Already

I am sick of Twilight. The movie was horific and I want the fans to be able to look back and admit it. However, I no longer feel alone in my annoyance at the Twilight super-freaks. I was in Hot Topic tonight and had to snap this shot. I sense a fair amount of sarcasm in this hastily scribbled sign...

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