Movie Make-out

I’m not sure how we missed this one, but there it is for all your freeze frame-y pleasure. Since I’m only a lukewarm Dragonball fan, I’m okay with them tweaking the backstory a little bit, although I do wonder why Bulma is packing heat.

Justin Chatwin (Goku), Emmy Rossum (Bulma) and Chow Yun Fat (Roshi) are the good guy stars of Dragonball: Evolution, with James Marsters filling out the bad guy role of Piccolo. It’s first release date will be in Japan on March 12, 2009 while it will then go into wider release to the U.S. and several other countries on April 8.

Even though many have been tooting this horn for years, indie filmmakers and buyers in particular are waking up to the problems that a bootleg market can create.

Above and beyond the regular concerns (over copyright, over sound and picture quality, over the loss in honest revenue), Hollywood Reporter notes that the “trade” in screener copies of partially finished films before major festivals could help ruin a legitimate theatrical buy:

Sellers say that part of the problem is that films aren’t completed, leading buyers to make potentially erroneous decisions.

But the bigger issue, they argue, is that the movies are designed to be seen with both an audience and other buyers. Sneak peeks watched from one’s living room don’t give an accurate indication of how a movie will play in theaters and can damage prospects for a theatrical sale. “There’s a reason why people select a particular audience at a particular festival and a particular environment,” one sales agent said. “And bootlegs ruin that.”

This problem is one that’s near and dear to my heart, as I personally gave up watching fansubbed anime titles after hearing a friend and English voice actor give very good and compelling reasons why one shouldn’t do so in a series of panels he’s been presenting at anime conventions for several years.

And besides, shouldn’t we all be supportive of an industry that has given to us so much?

The beginning to this write-up on Eragon kinda says everything you’d need to know about Entertainment Weekly’s list of 25 movies that actors probably did only for the paychecks:

Maybe [Jeremy] Irons (right) is a closet nerd with a thing for fire-breathing flops. After all, he also starred in 2000’s Dungeons & Dragons. But what’s [John] Malkovich’s excuse?

What, indeed. All I remember is salivating over them and Gabriel Byrne in Man in the Iron Mask. Now that’s how one is supposed to musketeer.

This story [of Defiance] needed to be told.

Those of us who make films are forever searching for heroes. More often than not they’re imaginary. Luke Skywalker battles the Galactic Empire; Frodo Baggins duels with the Dark Lord. We have Spider-Man, Batman and Iron Man, but few ordinary men. Because the closer one looks at real-life heroes, the less they conform to the simple verities Hollywood finds easiest to peddle.
—Director Edward Zwick, on why he made “yet another 1940s Holocaust-survivor movie”

[Also, the fact that the NY Times was able to get Zwick to tell his story himself is a reason why I still have respect for print journalism, and I probably always will.]

It’s very tiny, and it’s in Japanese, but the first trailer for Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is available on the official website. Or, you can just watch the Trailer Addict version below.

The Legend of Chun-Li stars Kristin Kreuk (best known as Lana Lang, from “Smallville”) as the blue-eyed Chinese martial artist, with Michael Clark “I’m forever a villain” Duncan as Balrog (Vega, in the U.S. versions of the game), Neal McDonough (last seen on TV in “Desperate Housewives” and “Tin Man”) as M. Bison and American Pie’s Chris Klein as Nash (aka Charlie).

It doesn’t look too horrible, but am I the only one getting shades of “Denise Richards is a nuclear physicist” from seeing Kreuk play a martial artist? I’m also getting shades of 2005’s Elektra, and we all know how well that did.

The Legend of Chun Li is set to be released in the U.S. on February 27, 2009.