First trailer for DUE DATE with Robert Downey, Jr. and Zach Galifianakis is curiously un-funny

First trailer for DUE DATE with Robert Downey, Jr. and Zach Galifianakis is curiously un-funny

Jul 15

A comedy movie that sees Downey, Jr. reunited with Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang co-star Monaghan sparks my interest, but this trailer somehow manages to throws a bucket of icy cold water over that meek enthusiasm. Maybe the finished movie will be better, but this trailer for Due Date features way too much of Galifianakis reprising his emotionally stunted man-child schtick from The Hangover, and way too little of Michelle Monaghan doing just about anything at all.

Due Date’s due date is 5 November 2010 in the US; nothing concrete locked in yet for that place called The Rest Of The World. Due Date is directed by The Hangover’s Todd Phillips, and also features Jamie Foxx.

Reel Thinker Podcast #01, June 25 2010

Reel Thinker Podcast #01, June 25 2010

Jun 26

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You’re moments away from listening to our first ever podcast. Go ahead, click the players above or below to start streaming from the web or Download the mp3 file (19 mb). Jason Stringer, Danny Clark and Nyrie Anne share their thoughts on today’s movie topics.

Podcast #01 Topics:

• Intro
• Toy Story 3
• Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
  • Sequels in franchises
• Transformers 3
  • The cinema experience of Transformers 1
• Sam Raimi directing Oz: The Great and Powerful
• The Green Hornet target audience
• Tomorrow, When The War Began trailer

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Alfonso Cuaron’s GRAVITY film sounds too good to be true

Alfonso Cuaron’s GRAVITY film sounds too good to be true

Jun 19

(Note — this film thankfully has nothing to do with Louis Leterrier’s similarly-named Gravity project)

I’m faced with a dilemma here. Alfonso Cuarón’s upcoming sci-fi thriller Gravity (starring Robert Downey, Jr.) will be shot and released in 3D. I don’t really like 3D. So do I see a slick, fresh film print of the movie and suffer the obviously video-based aesthetic, or to I see it as Hollywood intended in all its 3D glory? There’s pros and cons to each option, but it looks like I won’t have to decide until 2012.

Downey, Jr. will start production on Gravity this year, leave to shoot Sherlock Holmes 2, and then come back for the rest of Gravity. Sherlock Holmes 2 is due around Christmas 2011, so why won’t we see Gravity till 2012?

Because it’s roughly 60% CGI. And, you know, it takes time to render stuff in high-def 3D. I remember the last movie they said was going to be 60% CGI turned out to be about 95% CGI; I hope that doesn’t happen this time.

What else is there to get excited about? Well, the opening shot of Gravity is slated to last at least 20 minutes. Holy guacamole, Batman! That’s a lot of minutes! To put that in perspective, that’s like an entire episode of The Simpsons (minus ads). Anyone who’s seen Children Of Men should be salivating profusely by this point.

Gravity used to have Angelina Jolie on board, playing an astronaut on a space station who’s desperately trying to make her way back to Earth after an disastrous accident claims the lives of the rest of her team. The script (written by Cuarón’s 28-year-old son Jonás) was later changed to include a male astronaut (Downey, Jr.) and Jolie has since pulled out. Did I mention the opening shot goes for 20 minutes?

Here are some more tasty morsels from Framestore, the effects company handling Gravity‘s visuals (they also worked on Avatar, and Cuarón’s own Children Of Men and Prisoner Of Azkaban):

The entire film will be made here at Framestore. In effect the film, as Avatar was, is 60% CG feature animation with the balance being hybrid CG and live action elements.

Starring Robert Downey Junior, the film is a contemporary survival thriller that follows a woman as she attempts to make her way back to earth after a satellite crash sets off a chain reaction of further crashes. Because it’s set in space, most shots require every element to float in zero-gravity.

But then factor in that this a stylish Cuarón flick, directed with his trademark languid feel, and you begin to realize the full scale of our challenge. Cuarón’s long and fluid style (the opening shot alone is slated to last at least 20 minutes) leaves no cut points to hide behind. In short, this is a hybrid of a fully animated, photo-real feature film with a blockbusting visual effects movie.

This is CG feature animation meets real world on a large and beautiful scale.

2012 can’t come too soon for me.

Sam Raimi directing OZ: THE GREAT AND POWERFUL, starring Robert Downey Jr.

Sam Raimi directing OZ: THE GREAT AND POWERFUL, starring Robert Downey Jr.

Jun 16

Where do you go searching for your next project after being axed from the mega-bucks Spider-Man franchise you helped create? Why, you simply follow the yellow brick road.

Deadline reports that Sam Raimi has officially signed to direct the project Oz: The Great and Powerful, a prequel to The Wizard of Oz detailing how the man who becomes Wizard wound up in the land of Oz in the first place (also via rogue tornado– hopefully complete with flying old ladies still-cycling mid-air).

Man-of-the-moment Robert Downey Jr. is attached to star as the circus wrangler character who inadvertently becomes Wizard, though it’s not certain if he will remain attached at this stage.

Things we can be thankful for:

• At least it’s a prequel and not a flat-out remake of The Wizard of Oz
• Robert Downey Jr. as the Wizard. I mean, why not?
• Sam Raimi’s slapstick, comic-book, Three Stooges-style of filmmaking should be right at home with this kind of project.
• It’s not being made by Tim Burton starring Johnny Depp and/or Helena Bonham Carter (God, just imagine).

The screenplay has been kicked around for a while, and at one stage Sam Mendes was attached to direct. It’s only now that my interest is perked, however. Sam Raimi in the chair and Robert Downy Jr. on the screen in a prequel to The Wizard of Oz is undeniably intriguing.

THE THING prequel gets a release date

THE THING prequel gets a release date

Jun 16

Matthijs van Heijningen’s The Thing prequel has been slapped with a 29 April 2011 US release date. If you already forgot, Iron Man 2 opened in that slot this year and did pretty good business. But Iron Man 2 had Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr., and Scarlet Johanssen’s chest going for it. What does The Thing have going for it? Some Aussie bloke called Joel Edgerton, John McLane’s daughter from Die Hard 4.0 (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and that really hairy guy who used to write all the Klingon episodes of Star Trek (Ronald D Moore). As much as I want this movie to be awesome, forgive me if I’m not salivating in my computer chair just yet.

Antarctica: an extraordinary continent of awesome beauty. It is also home to an isolated outpost where a discovery full of scientific possibility becomes a mission of survival when an alien is unearthed by a crew of international scientists. The shape-shifting creature, accidentally unleashed at this marooned colony, has the ability to turn itself into a perfect replica of any living being. It can look just like you or me, but inside, it remains inhuman. In the thriller The Thing, paranoia spreads like an epidemic among a group of researchers as they’re infected, one by one, by a mystery from another planet.

Paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has traveled to the desolate region for the expedition of her lifetime. Joining a Norwegian scientific team that has stumbled across an extraterrestrial ship buried in the ice, she discovers an organism that seems to have died in the crash eons ago. But it is about to wake up.

When a simple experiment frees the alien from its frozen prison, Kate must join the crew’s pilot, Carter (Joel Edgerton), to keep it from killing them off one at a time. And in this vast, intense land, a parasite that can mimic anything it touches will pit human against human as it tries to survive and flourish.