Science Fiction Fix

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Germain’s 10 Most Anticipated Films of 2012

Published on /Film | shared via feedly

If 2012 is the end of the world, that’s all right with me. Hollywood has overstocked the Mayan calendar’s final year with so many potentially amazing movies that trying to cut it down to a top ten was virtually impossible. How could movies like The Amazing Spider-Man, Brave or Lincoln not be on this list? Ten then became twenty, which was more satisfying but there were still a few major films lingering.

So, while I could have easily done 30, here are my ten most anticipated films with a bloated honorable mention list. Is your most anticipated on the list?

Here are my honorable mention anticipated films of 2012, from least to most anticipated:

John Carter, This is 40, World War Z, Gangster Squad, Wreck-It Ralph, Lincoln, The Amazing Spider-Man, Brave, American Reunion, Looper

And now the top 10, complete with photos and brief descriptions.

10. Les Miserables – While I have a feeling this musical might get bumped to 2013, it’s one of my favorite stories of all time and not only has an unbelievable cast (Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, Sacha Baron Cohen) but a newly-minted Oscar-winning director in Tom Hooper. Short of seeing the show on Broadway, this is the adaptation fans have dreamed of. Release date: December 7, 2012

9. The Hunger Games – If you don’t know, you haven’t read the books. Gary Ross‘ film is a mix of Battle Royale and The Truman Show with a fantastic, kick-ass female character (Jennifer Lawrence) who rebels against an oppressive government in a fight to the death arena on live TV. Release Date: March 23, 2012. Watch the trailer here.

8. Moonrise Kingdom - It’s Wes Anderson‘s latest and he’s never made a movie I dislike. Throw in Bruce Willis, Edward Norton and more along with the Anderson classics (Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, etc.) and it could be about a white room and I’d line up to see it. Release Date: May 25, 2012.

7. Ted – Seth McFarlane‘s feature film debut stars Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis in the story of how an offensive, brash teddy bear comes to life to the detriment of his owner. Think Child’s Play but with Family Guy laughs. Release Date: July 13, 2012.

6. Django Unchained – The fact that it’s Quentin Tarantino should be enough. But the bounty hunter, Western slave story combined with a cast that includes Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson and Kurt Russell, just to name a few, would make this number 1 in any other year. But then there were five. Release Date: December 25, 2012

5. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – Peter Jackson returns to Middle Earth to tell the classic prequel story to The Lord of the Rings with the full cast returning, Martin Freeman as Bilbo, a higher frame rate and 3D? This movie would be number 1 in any other year, but then there were four. Release Date: December 14, 2012. Watch the trailer here.

4. The Dark Knight Rises – I know, I know. Number four is a travesty considering this is the final Christopher Nolan Batman movie. But let me explain. First of all, we’ve seen it before: IMAX, amazing actors, action, practical effects and Nolan’s hard boiled take on Batman. This story is new, but we’ve seen the vision before. Second, Bane’s voice. Third, there are three movies that – incredibly, I want to see more. I know Nolan will blow us away, but it’s simply a stacked year. Release Date: July 20, 2012. Watch the trailer here.

3. The Master – Paul Thomas Anderson is my favorite filmmaker and remember, this is a personal list. Hence the incredibly high ranking. With each and every film he seems to top himself and this one, about a man who forms his own religion after coming back from war, should be beautiful. Throw Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams and Joaquin Phoenix into the mix and you have an insta-Oscar-contender before a trailer is even released. It might be out in 2013 but I’d imagine it gets finished sooner. Release Date: TBD.

2. The Avengers – I know, I know. The Avengers over The Dark Knight Rises? Let me explains. Unlike The Dark Knight Rises, which is the third film in a trilogy, we’ve never seen a group superhero movie on this scale before. It’s the culmination of not two but FIVE movies and the basis for a whole bunch after it. Joss Whedon is the writer/director and as awesome as it will be to see Batman fight Bane or Catwoman, seeing Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, Hawkeye and Nick Fury all fighting at once is almost unfathomable. I literally can’t believe this movie is being made. Will it be better than Batman? Not likely. But the potential is there. Release Date: May 4, 2012. Watch the trailer here.

1. Prometheus – It hasn’t, but it feels like decades have passed since we last saw an honest-to-goodness, classic sci-fi movie. The genre helped many of us begin to love film itself and the man behind Blade Runner and Alien is partially responsible for that. Well Ridley Scott returns to sci-fi with this sort-of Alien prequel which looks like it could potentially be a film that brings smart, big budget sci-fi back. We’re talking game changer. Damon Lindelof co-wrote it. Michael Fassbender, Idris Elba and Charlize Theron co-star. Footage looks incredible. More than any of the amazing movies above, this is the one I’m waiting for. Release Date: June 8, 2012. Watch the trailer here.

Monday, December 26, 2011

Financing and Distribution Set For Keanu Reeves’ Directorial Debut ‘Man of Tai Chi’

Published on /Film | shared via feedly

For some time, Keanu Reeves has been talking about directing and acting in a film called Man of Tai Chi.

Now he has funding set up for the movie, thanks to money committed by Village Roadshow Pictures Asia, China Film Group, Wanda Media and Universal, which will distribute in the US. As he has said before, the film will shoot in Beijing, Hong Kong and Macau, with dialogue in Mandarin and English, and martial artist and actor Tiger Chen will star.

A press release went out announcing the funding, and that the film will start shooting in February.

Tiger Chen is “a young martial artist whose fighting skills brings him to a realm of vast opportunities, and painful choices.” Reeves also stars, and while today’s release doesn’t specify any real detail, he has said before that he wanted to play the villain.

Previously, he said,

There’s 18 fights. We’ve timed it out. It’s about 40 minutes of fighting. I want to make a good, solid kung fu movie. Good story, good plot — but let’s get some good kung fu going!

I’ve liked the idea of this movie for a while and still do — sure, Keanu has his shaky moments as an actor, but it has been evident time and again that he commits himself fully to projects. I want to see how his very own kung fu movie will turn out.

Hi-Res, Clean Images From ‘The Dark Knight Rises’

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Over the last week, we’ve been lucky enough to finally have some moving images from Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight Rises to dissect. With the IMAX release of the film’s first six minutes, as well as the theatrical trailer, there’s been incessant discussion about Bane’s voice, his cruel intentions, Selina Kyle’s necklace and all types of insane minutia. However, just a few short weeks ago, everyone was excited about a series of images from the film that appeared in Empire Magazine showing Tom Hardy as Bane and Christian Bale as Batman in a few new locals and poses. Those images, previously only available as scans from the magazine, have now become available without all the photoshopping. Now you can zoom in on Batman’s new gun, Bane’s outfit and more with incredible detail. Check out the images below.

Thanks to Comic Book Movie for the heads up.

The difference between these images and the moving ones, of course, is that these come with a distinct lack of context. Batman with the gun (or whatever that is, maybe a portable EMP?) is obviously from some kind of action scene, one shot in IMAX as it appeared briefly in the prologue’s finale. The full Body Bane image, without his coat, is likely from one of his fights with Batman, probably the one that was teased at the end of he teaser trailer. Bane’s head down shot is probably just a promo image and the photo of Batman on the Batpod looks like it’s from the same scene as the gun.

As for when or where any of these scenes take place, I have no idea. I write Superhero Bits everyday, have seen literally every single spoiler spy photo, and couldn’t tell you what is happening in these scenes. Point to Christopher Nolan.

Do any of you have an idea of what each of these images means for the film?

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Short New International Trailer for Laika's Stop-Motion 'ParaNorman'

Published on FirstShowing.net Movie Trailers | shared via feedly

"Do you see ghosts, like, all the time?!" Focus Features has debuted another short new international trailer for Laika's ParaNorman, their upcoming stop-motion animated horror comedy starring Norman, just a normal boy who can speak to the dead. The first US teaser trailer was debuted back in October, but this new one is a bit different and sheds a bit of light on the story and Norman as a character. Norman is voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee and while this international trailer does have subtitles on it, they at least use the original English voices as well. This looks like so much fun, can't wait to see more over the next year. Enjoy!

Watch Now on FirstShowing.net

Watch: A Teaser Trailer for HBO's McCain/Palin Film 'Game Change'

Published on FirstShowing.net Movie Trailers | shared via feedly

Even though HBO Films delivers their flicks on cable, most of their productions are much better than some of the stuff that hits the big screen. That's why we like covering projects set up at the cable network from time-to-time and that brings us to this first teaser trailer via THR for Game Change, a film chronicling the campaign run to the White House by Senator John McCain, played by Ed Harris, and Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, played by Julianne Moore. This likely won't be the most objective film coming from Jay Roach, the same director behind HBO's Recount, but it does look like it's going to be pretty damn good.

Watch Now on FirstShowing.net

Thursday, December 22, 2011

‘Star Trek 2′ Will Feature “Original and Unique” Approach to Villain, Bruce Greenwood to Return as Pike

Published on /Film | shared via feedly

With all the Star Trek 2 rumors floating around it’s almost easy to forget we don’t actually know a whole lot about the story at this point. That hasn’t changed, and likely won’t in the near future, but producer Bryan Burk and co-writer/producer Roberto Orci have revealed a couple tidbits of information sure to get fans speculating wildly. (Not that it takes much.)

While doing interviews for Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Burk revealed that they’d be doing something “original and unique and different” with the villain. Meanwhile, Orci has confirmed that Bruce Greenwood will be reprising his role as Christopher Pike in the sequel. Read more after the jump.

Burk wouldn’t confirm or deny any of the rumors that have been swirling around, but told MTV (via TrekMovie.com) that the sequel would take a fresh approach to the villain:

There are amazing villains throughout the Star Trek universe, as well as new villains as we did in the last film. There are a lot of directions we can go in the film and in this particular case we chose to do something that would be original and unique and different and again on paper I think we made the right choice.

Burk also commented on the freedom to hit the ground running in the new film, having already set up the central premise and core characters in the last one:

What is exciting about it is, unlike the last film where we were restarting and resetting up all the characters, we are going to jump right in and we don’t have to set up everyone again and we can go right into it. For those who haven’t seen it, go get it right now. We are kind of in a mad dash at the beginning of the film. In all of our conversations we reference our favorite films and in Empire Strikes Back it is spectacular how they were able to pick up immediately and carry on from the last one.

As for Greenwood, Orci revealed in a recent comment at TrekMovie.com that the actor would very likely be returning as Pike, who was promoted to the rank of Admiral in the last movie. “Spoiler alert!” wrote Orci. “We wrote a part for Greenwood. Let us hope he says ‘Yes!’”

Unlike much of the cast, Greenwood did not have a set option for the sequel. But he’s said in the past that he would like to play Pike again, so it seems likely he’ll come aboard. What exactly he’ll be doing or how prominently he’ll feature, however, remains — as with so many things about this film — unknown.

/Film Talks To Brad Bird About ‘Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol,’ ’1906,’ IMAX and More

Published on /Film | shared via feedly

Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol is Brad Bird‘s first live-action movie. Think about that for a second. In the film community he’s easily one of the most exciting and respected directors out there but he’s never released a movie with a flesh and blood person in it. It’s fairly mind-boggling. Then you watch The Iron Giant, The Incredibles and Ratatouille and realize the characters in those are way more human than humans are in most movies.

The fact of the matter is Brad Bird was simply born to tell entertaining, exciting stories and he’s finally doing it with humans with Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol, which opened last week in IMAX and opens everywhere else today. Tom Cruise returns as IMF agent Ethan Hunt whose team, including Simon Pegg, Paula Patton and Jeremy Renner, are disavowed and must fight to save the world.

In October, /Film spoke to Bird at a Beverly Hills hotel about his first foray into live action, shooting for IMAX, its early release, the then-rumor of The Dark Knight Rises prologue being in front of his movie and the latest on his long discussed disaster film 1906. Read the interview after the jump.

/Film: All right, so ten quick minutes. What is the most surprising or enlightening thing you learned from going from animated filmmaking to live action?

Brad Bird: That you shouldn’t cut right away. (Laughs) I think that I was all set, because I’m used to really pre-visualizing things and being very specific about when I cut and exactly what I need that when I started shooting this, I started calling “cut” way early and I didn’t want to shoot coverage too much. I wanted to say “No, I only need the camera to be here for this shot” and I kind of had to be indoctrinated into that process. I still am a believer in mainly being one camera, but there are a couple of times where I was… There were more than a couple of times where I was encouraged to shoot two cameras and I’m really glad I did, because it allows you some flexibility in the editing room.

Yeah, I mean because with all of your animated movies you do the movie four times over basically before…

Yeah and you are very specific about it early.

So how long did it take for you to learn about shooting coverage, different angles, or do you think shooting too much is a curse of live action?

Well different angles I was already there, in fact a lot of people have commented that my animated films feel more like live action films in terms of the way they are shot and edited, so that was no problem for me to make that adjustment, but being able to have… to physically move around and have some limitations like you can’t drop a camera a thousand feet on a dime, it will crash right through the ground and kill people.

[Both Laugh] Right.

So there are some things like that, but I loved the spontaneity of live action filmmaking. That’s something that’s very hard to get into animation and I think live action films kind of subsist on it.

Now this is obviously your first live action movie and (producer) Bryan Burk told us yesterday before we saw the IMAX footage that you sort of jumped at the chance, which makes sense. It’s a huge movie, a huge franchise, but were you at all scared about the responsibility of the franchise, this huge budget, this… new experience?

A little bit sure, because it was big and very complicated and we didn’t have a lot of prep time and so yeah, sure. I was… I was healthily frightened, but I think that you also are that way before you go out on stage, but that doesn’t keep you from going out. I think if you surf or ski you also learn to respect nature and know that you better do your homework, you know?

So about thirty minutes of the movie is in full IMAX?

Yeah, yeah.

All right, how did you decide how much of the movie to shoot in IMAX, what to shoot in IMAX, and what was it like shooting IMAX?

Well I mean we were somewhat limited. I knew that we were never going to get more than, in terms of screen time, than The Dark Knight got, because although it’s a very big movie, we didn’t have the time or quite the size of budget that that film did. But I was happy Paramount went along with me in doing it, because I think that there’s a certain bit of showmanship that I think is not often done nowadays and I can’t think of a better way to see this movie than on a really big screen with really great sound with unbelievably sharp imagery and IMAX is the ticket to that.

Which is why you guys are releasing the movie five days early in IMAX…

Right and you know look, there’s no studio in town that wants to limit the number of theaters on an initial release, particularly for a big movie like this, because then they don’t get bragging rights to the biggest money number, but I argued with Paramount successfully that that number only means something to business people and being able to say “The movie is number one at the box office” for a week. For the average moviegoer, they react to the experience that they have and I wanted all of the first people that saw this movie to see it at its absolute best, so that when word of mouth happens, knock on wood, that it’s positive, but I think word of mouth is the hardest thing to get and the best thing you can get for a movie and you want the first people to see it to see it at its best.

Right and there’s this thing… We’ve put it on our site and nobody official has confirmed it yet, but you talk about seeing the movie in IMAX and now everybody is saying that you are going to have the first couple of minutes of The Dark Knight Rises in front of that movie. Is that something that you know anything about? [Note: This has since been confirmed, a theater list is here.]

You know, I’ve heard rumblings of that nature, but that’s a Warner Brothers movie you know. (Laughs)

That’s true. That’s true.

Not that I’m against Warner Brothers. I’m working on project with Warner Brothers, but I’m just saying that we are talking about Mission: Impossible, but as an IMAX fan anything that increases showmanship, and Chris Nolan is certainly a showman, is all good in my book.

Cool. And now another thing, I don’t think it’s been confirmed or maybe it has been, but is that Mission: Impossible 4 is sort of a passing of the torch from Tom Cruise’s character to Jeremy Renner’s character. Is that true? If so, did that affect the movie at all? Is that not true?

You know, I don’t view this movie as that. I view it as another Mission: Impossible movie with the addition of some really spectacular actors, one of which was in the last Mission: Impossible, Simon Pegg, but in a much more expanded role. But no, I say this is the next Mission: Impossible movie and that’s it.

I was watching the Dubai sandstorm chase last night and I couldn’t help think of Dash in The Incredibles. Are there any scenes in your previous films that you look at and think that maybe they helped influence your work in Mission: Impossible 4?

I don’t really think about it that way, because I don’t sort of stand outside of myself, I just go “This will be cool” and “That would be cool.” I just was attracted to the idea of somebody putting a chase in a place with limited visibility. That just sounded like a really cool challenge to me.

Okay and the publicist is trying to wrap me up but I have like two more minutes, so I’m going to keep going. What is the most Brad Bird thing about Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol?

(Thinks for a moment) The director, maybe?

[Both Laugh] Sorry, I guess to rephrase it, “How is your movie different specifically because of you as opposed to the last three?”

I can’t really talk about it that way, because I just kind of do what I think I would like to see. I think that there’s a playful quality to it though that might be unique to this movie that sort of enjoys its “movie-ness” without hopefully cutting any of the suspense or any of the action that people want to see when they see one of these movies. I’ve mentioned before a movie that really inspires me is Raiders of the Lost Ark, because it has a slightly whimsical feel to it, but not at the expense of the intensity of the action. You never have the characters winking at the camera and yet it’s a “movie” movie, you know? It’s a popcorn chewer and so I say “Pop it up and throw some butter on top and we are good to go.”

Last one and I’ll make it really quick; you said you are working on something with Warner Brothers, can you say what that is? And what’s the status with 1906?

Well that is what it is.

Will that be next for you after this?

I don’t know. A wonderful writer has been working on it recently named Becky Johnson and we will be looking at it. She will be done with a draft that she has done pretty soon and we will see how it is. It’s a very challenging story to get to work, because it keeps wanting to sprawl outside of a movie-sized box. But if it could work it’d be really… I’m still very much attracted to that idea, but it’s a very challenging project to get work and I want the story to work first and foremost.

Of course. Well thank you very much.

Thank you.

Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol is now playing in regular and IMAX theaters.

Science Fiction Fix

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Thursday, December 29, 2011

Germain’s 10 Most Anticipated Films of 2012

Monday, December 26, 2011

Financing and Distribution Set For Keanu Reeves’ Directorial Debut ‘Man of Tai Chi’

Hi-Res, Clean Images From ‘The Dark Knight Rises’

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Short New International Trailer for Laika's Stop-Motion 'ParaNorman'

Watch: A Teaser Trailer for HBO's McCain/Palin Film 'Game Change'

Thursday, December 22, 2011

‘Star Trek 2′ Will Feature “Original and Unique” Approach to Villain, Bruce Greenwood to Return as Pike

/Film Talks To Brad Bird About ‘Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol,’ ’1906,’ IMAX and More

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