Movie Make-out

IGN has provided us with the trailer for the Bangkok Dangerous remake. Okay, so this stars Nic Cage… but it’s directed by the Pang Brothers, who directed The Eye, and are currently shooting Storm Riders 2, so I was curious. And, sure enough, it looks like it could be enjoyable —  provided it doesn’t take itself too seriously or the action is really well done. Not having seen the original (also by the Pang Brothers), I’m not entirely sure what to expect story-wise, but the action looks fun. The remake opens in the US on August 22, 2008.

Related Post: Storm Riders sequel finally happening

The domestic trailer for Sergei Bodrov’s Academy Award-nominated Genghis Khan film, Mongol, is online courtesy MovieWeb. There is an odd (but not necessarily bad) music choice at the end, but it looks promising. The film has been hitting festivals for a while (it’s at the AFI Dallas Film Festival this weekend), but enjoys a limited release on June 6.

Variety reports another development in the movie theater biz: Village Roadshow Ltd., Act III, Lambert Entertainment and the Retirement Systems of Alabama pension fund have joined up to give the US the new Village Roadshow Gold Class Cinemas. The $200 million endeavour plans to build 50 "luxury" theaters over the next five years, with the first two in Redmond, Washington, and South Barrington, Illinois — both very wealthy suburbs (of Seattle and Chicago, respectively, of course).

Each location will have around eight screens, each featuring 40 reclining armchairs with footrests and digital projection (with 3D capability). Each location — and this will really be the key in establishing and maintaining the "luxury" image — will also contain a lounge and bar featuring a full menu of cocktails and food (including appetizers and other "theater-friendly" foods like sushi), concierge service, valet parking… and because they serve booze, the theaters will also have an 18/21 age minimum (presumably dependent on local laws).

The ticket price? $35. Not including any food or drinks. That’s just the admission! 

Scoff all you want at the exorbitant ticket price (as AICN does), but this is not the first luxury theater chain: Regal Entertainment, Cinemark, National Amusements and Sundance Cinemas have "similar" luxury theaters, with "high-end food and concierges," albeit at much lower prices ($12–18). At $35, it’s really not about the movies; it’s about the atmosphere. Even if you don’t spend the money on a movie, each location is still basically a bar, and movie theaters always make more money from "concessions" than from ticket sales.

Yet if were a multi-millionaire, I would consider $35 for a comfortable seat, decent food, booze, and a lack of cell-phone slinging assholes — depending on the movie, of course. But the question is how many millionaire cinephiles are there, it’s… just how badly do the rich want to be isolate themselves from the poor? And we already know the answer to this: a lot.

However this pans out, I highly doubt that any of these luxury movie theaters will look like this.

Earlier this week, Regal announced that it will be adding 31 more IMAX screens to its roster, doubling its current stake in the big big screen by 2010. (Within the same time frame, "Regal will have 52 IMAX theaters (and) IMAX will have more than 300 running worldwide.")

The article also mentions that IMAX is "upping the number of studio pics it releases on its screens in the 2-D and 3-D formats. Its digital projection system will enable it to unspool up to 12 pics per year vs. the six it now plays annually."

Related posts: Around the Web: A new business model for movie theaters, an indie movie glut, more (updated), 2007 box office breaks a record, ticket sales flat; Monsters vs. Aliens to be first true 3D animated film (updated)

Ain’t It Cool News brought the trailer for Gillian Armstrong’s Death Defying Acts to my attention. It’s a film British/Australian co-production about Harry Houdini at the finale of his 1926 world tour, in Edinburgh, and starring Guy Pearce (The Proposition) as the man himself, alongside Catherine Zeta-Jones, Saoirise Ronan (Atonement) and Timothy Spall.

The way AICN is displaying the trailer, it’s cropping off the sides as if it were fullscreen, which is kind of mind-boggling. There is another, slightly different trailer in 2.4:1 at YouTube, which is more likely to be the theatrical aspect ratio, but unfortunately that version has fucked up sound (it’s out of sync). Although the shitty video quality at YouTube makes it hard to tell, that version gives you the strongest idea of how good the film will actually look, and it looks like cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos has shot a gorgeous film. But in the interest of watchability, here’s the less than ideal 4:3 version:

Death Defying Acts is out in Australia now and making its way through a few other countries in the next few weeks, but there is no US release date yet.

Haris Zambarloukos also shot the Abba musical, Mamma Mia!, which stars Amanda Seyfried (Mean Girls) as a woman who — on her wedding — wants her father to walk her down the aisle on her wedding day — except she doesn’t know who that is; she has, however, narrowed it down to three candidates, and… oh, Christ. Read the synopsis here if you actually like Abba. I have no interest in this movie; I only mentioned it because it’s coming out soon, and it’s the same soon to be in-demand cinematographer as Death Defying Acts. Meryl Streep headlines as Seyfried’s mother; Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan, Dominic Cooper and Stella Skarsgård co-star as men. Mamma Mia! opens on July 18, 2008.

This isn’t exactly an earth-shattering "scoop," but I just got word directly from Scott Pilgrim cartoonist Bryan O’Malley that the title of Scott Pilgrim’s Little Life as reported in HR was incorrect. The full title of the book is, of course, Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life — but not only did they inadvertently leave out the "Precious," the title of the screenplay is even from different volume in the series.

No word on which one it is, but the other volumes (to date) are: Scott Pilgrim versus the World, Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Sadness, and Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together. There is, of course, the possibility that it’s from an upcoming volume, but my money is on "versus the World."

Those of you who haven’t met Scott Pilgrim yet can get a taste by reading the main story from the Free Scott Pilgrim Free Comic Book Day issue over at Newsarama.

Oh, and watch this video for Plumtree’s "Scott Pilgrim," which the character was named after:

Update (3/21/08): Bryan Lee O’Malley has posted about the Cera casting at his LiveJournal, saying he "can ‘confirm’ that Michael Cera is going to play Scott Pilgrim in this movie adaptation." (Whether this means negotiations have concluded or are as sure as sure can be without being concluded yet, I’m not sure.)

He also adds that the movie is "based on the entire story arc, not just the first book," and that he and co-writers Wright and Michael Bacall "talked a lot about what should happen in the later parts of the story, but at the same time we have already diverged significantly. It is a complimentary story, not an exact copy."

Updated (3/31/08): Bryan Lee O’Malley has confirmed that the title for the upcoming "done-in-one" adaptation is indeed Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. He states, "It may change in the future, but I’m pretty sure every draft I’ve seen has had that title on it."

Related post: Michael Cera in talks to play Scott Pilgrim

Variety has revealed the Neil Marshall (Doomsday) is set to direct an adaptation of James Sallis’s novel Drive, in which the life of “a Hollywood stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway car driver” life goes to hell when he learns that “a contract has been put out on his life.” Hugh Jackman is attached to star.

Marshall told Variety, “This is something I haven’t done before, and I’ve wanted to bring a British sensibility to an L.A. shoot and a scorched classic film noir concept. Hoss (screenwriter Hossein Amini) is a fantastic writer, and he’s written three amazing car chases in the film. He’s turned them into dramatic scenes as opposed to the usual crash, bang, wallop. I would like to be shooting it this summer.”

Although I wasn’t too crazy about Doomsday (and I haven’t seen Marshall’s other work), I’ll grant that the car chases in it were much better executed than the ADD-edited hand-to-hand and gunfights, and the film was pretty fun overall, so this could be a lot of fun.

A proper sequel to the 1998 Andrew Lau (Infernal Affairs) kung fu flick, Storm Riders, is finally getting off the ground. Variety Asia reports that Aaron Kwok and Ekin Cheng are set to return as Cloud and Wind in a long-awaited sequel to the comic book adaptation. The film was noteworthy more for its groundbreaking (if low-budget) use of CG and kung fu as a means to more faithfully recreate manga and anime works in live action (paving the way for later films like, um, The Forbidden Kingdom) than actually being very good, but it was still a lot of fun.

With Lau busy prepping a trio of films for the Weinsteins and Gold Bandits for 20th Century Fox, Danny and Oxide Pang (The Eye) are set to direct this time around, with much of the film’s relatively (for Hong Kong) large $12 million budget going towards post-production, apparently aiming for a 300-like feel. Like 300, it will be filmed entirely against blue screen and custom-built sets; it is the first Hong Kong flick to do so. Fans of the original may know that Danny Pang served as editor on the original film. Storm Riders 2 starts shooting next month.

In 2004, Wind and Cloud: The Storm Riders, a so-called sequel was released with none of the original film’s cast, but this was just a hack job on some episodes of the Storm Riders TV series directed by Raymond Lee.