Movie Make-out

The City of Ember Pulls Out All Stops on Promo Train Ride to SDCC
In one of those “blink and you’ll miss it” stories that was initially reported last Wednesday in Variety, Walden Media took advantage of Southern California’s usual traffic problems and the rail lines that connect Los Angeles to San Diego by hooking two train cars together, filling them with 23 entertainment reporters who were going to the convention anyway, and for the two-hour commute, bombarded them with clips, information, and interview opportunities for director Gil Kenan for the fall film based on a fantasy novel. Well, it worked, since I’m telling you guys about it, aren’t I?

Leading Actors for Magdalena Introduced During Top Cow Panel on Comics
During their panel on Saturday afternoon, president Matt Hawkins introduced actors Luke Goss (Hellboy II) and Jenna Dewan (Step Up) who will be playing Christoph and Patience, two characters from the upcoming movie based on the comic book. Mega-producer Gale Ann Hurd (the first three Terminator movies, and why wasn’t she on EW’s 10 influential people list?) was also on-hand to promise more information and more to show at next year’s Comic Con.

EW Staff Members at Front Lines of Most Popular Comic Con Panels
Reading Entertainment Weekly’s PopWatch coverage of Comic Con, you’ll notice the phrase “EW’s own” a lot when they speak of whomever is moderating the panel. As a journalist and a fan, that makes me feel a little uncomfortable knowing that someone who is already supposed to be an objective observer becoming part of “the inside” by directing what’s supposed to be a fan-friendly event. While I am a huge fan of the idea of moderated panels at genre conventions–because fans can sometimes ask the stupidest questions–fans have also provided some of the more memorable moments during panels (see the Samuel L. Jackson/Nick Fury comment that I posed about on Saturday). Besides, the only reason why the actors and directors are even at the convention is because of the 125,000+ people who spent a lot of their hard-earned money to go see them. It’s a dichotomy for the ages, I suppose.

Variety’s EIC Peter Bart Thinks He Gets Comic Con, But He’s Wrong
The editor-in-chief weighed in on what he thinks the myths are about the annual Nerd Prom in San Diego, and in my opinion, he not only fails at debunking the myths, he does so at the expense of the very audience that makes Comic Con so great. Examples include such bon mots as: “The geeks and freaks positively thrive on the frenzied overcrowding” and “The dweebs then feel hip!” If you don’t believe me, read the article for yourself.

Early Saturday evening, the national board for the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) announced they would unanimously back their negotiators in L.A. in rejecting the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers’s (AMPTP) final offer, citing the concerns over allowing non-union work for new media productions.

“For some time, we have been telling the industry how important it is for all new media productions under our contract to be done union and how important residuals for made-for new media programming are when programs are re-run on new media,” said SAG National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator Doug Allen in a prepared statement.

The AMPTP responded with a statement of their own, saying, “The continued refusal of SAG’s negotiators to accept AMPTP’s final offer means that actors will continue to work indefinitely under the expired contract - an old contract that contains none of the $250 million in additional compensation provided by AMPTP’s final offer, and an old contract that provides none of the new media rights and residuals that other Hollywood Guild members have now been enjoying for months.”

And though no one has dared utter word “strike,” the uncertainty over where things stand between SAG and the producers is just one of the three things mentioned as a factor behind pushing back the start production date on Ridley Scott’s Nottingham, which is a re-visioning of the tale that casts the Sheriff (Russell Crowe) in a sympathetic light. (The others are having a green enough forest and the script.)

Still, that didn’t seem to dampen the enthusiasm of movie goers this weekend where The Dark Knight grossed an estimated $75.6 million in the domestic box office, losing just 52.2% of its previous weekend’s audience. The Will Farrell/John C. Reilly comedy Step Brothers debuted at around $30 million and movie musical Mamma Mia! came into third place with $17.87 million, despite adding 14 more theaters.

The only downer note was for The X-Files: I Want to Believe, which grossed only $10.2 million, just barely ahead of two other movies that have already been in theaters for almost a month.

Related Posts: Making Out With the Media: SAG To Meet with AMPTP, and Other Stories; The Latest on the SAG/AMPTP Contract Negotiations; Making Out with the Media: Jack Black to Rock Again, and Other Stories; Trailer Watch: The X-Files: I Want to Believe

While we’ve been stuck here in Chicago and New York, everyone else in the world seems to be at the San Diego Comic Con, including representatives from several major motion picture companies who were there to talk up their movies, show off footage, and drum up support and advanced buzz amongst the geek-heavy crowd that can control how the rest of the mainstream public sees their films through the Internet.

Scanning several reports, here’s what we think some of the best moments of the convention have been from those movie panels. It’s worth noting that the convention’s stance on filming exclusive preview reels and clips is that if the studio doesn’t want you to see them, they warn you several times and they have spotters whose job it is to note the people who are filming and kick them out of the convention.

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Dear Tim Burton,

Okay, so Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is my favorite children’s novel of all time ever, and since you’re one of the most visually inventive directors in the business, I was pretty excited when I read that you were doing a live action/CGI 3D adaptation of the book (always retitled Alice in Wonderland in movie versions, despite hundreds of other, far longer movie titles) for Disney, despite the fact that I loathe the motion capture technology they’ve used to make Polar Express and Beowulf. The “animation” just looks stiff and lifeless, despite all the obvious strides that have been made in the field.

But I was really hoping that the humans, at least, would be live action. But then Hollywood Reporter broke the news that Mia Wasikowska (HBO’s In Treatment) was in final negotiations to star as your Alice. So either Alice won’t be live action — which would make me nervous — or you’re actually casting an 18 year old as Alice, who should be around ten — which would make me even more nervous. Didn’t you tell Sci-Fi Wire that you’ve “never seen a version where I feel like they got it all”? And I loved you for it, because it’s true.

Maybe Mia Wasikowska can play young; she certainly looks young, though I’d be surprised if she could pass for pre-pubescent. The books are a love letter to that seemingly perpetual state of wonder innocent children live in… you know, hence “Wonderland”?

Don’t break my heart, please.

UPDATE (7/30): Johnny Depp (possibly) appearing as the Mad Hatter doesn’t bother me, but come on, there are other people who could’ve been just as good and look the part a little more…

(Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is being scripted by The Lion King’s Linda Woolverton and is targeting a 2010 release.)

Welp, color me surprised. A little while back, a Hollywood Reporter article casually mentioned that “Darren Aronofsky among others has recently been in to discuss” a RoboCop project set off a little internet geek-out, and I was a bit skeptical. But now ComingSoon.net reports that MGM has confirmed signing The Fountain and Requiem for a Dream director Darren Aronofsky and Road to Perdition screenwriter David Self onto the 2010-bound “new installment” — not remake! not reboot! — for the franchise.

The news that Self is penning the screenplay is rather encouraging, because while Requiem for a Dream was a great movie, it was a bit self-indulgent stylistically, and while The Fountain was a breathtaking beautiful film — a spectacle of sight and sound that was dragged down (for me, at least) by a piss-poor script. Although far from “incomprehensible,” as several critics have called it, I just found it badly scripted, with several absolutely unbelieveable scenes and wretched dialogue. Only when the characters shut up did I really enjoy the film. (I also felt Aronofsky’s debut feature, Pi, to be pretty but dumb, although on that film, most critics seem to disagree.) With the scripting duties out of Aronofsky’s hands, we might actually get a solid story for him to work his visual magic on.

Related post: Quick Cuts: Elfquest, Red Dawn remake, Aronofsky on RoboCop?, Inglorious Bastards