The Batmobile has had quite the evolution since actual volition appeared in the ’60s television version to its altogether super-suped up version heading your way in The Dark Knight Rises . Its latest incarnation includes some nifty gadgetry including a rocket launcher, the vehicle’s creator Andy Smith told Beyond The Trailer host Grace Randolph at Comic-Con where the vehicle, aka The Tumbler, is on display along with previous versions of The Batmobile. Smith has a history in race car work and worked on a car for a James Bond film and for an earlier Batmobile back in ’89. The current Tumbler is a hybrid of a Humvee and Lamborghini and it’s the only one that has ever been named something other than a ‘Batmobile.’ Smith gives a rundown of interesting factoids in the video below, including Christopher Nolan and production designer Nathan Crowley’s hand in creating The Tumbler after toying with various model kits. Of note, The Tumbler is 9 feet, 2 inches wide and 15 feet, 2 inches in length. Those stats keep it from being street-worthy at least legally speaking. It also has a top speed of 110mph, but “film makes it look much faster,” Smith notes. The video also shows previous Batmobiles including an interview with one owner and an interview with an early Batmobile designer who also designed many other famous on-screen vehicles including four-wheel stars appearing in Knight Rider , The Dukes of Hazzard and even The Monkees .
Recalling his early years mixed with Sixties feminists and Black Panthers, filmmaker John Waters again charmed and amped an audience at the start of Outfest late last week where he received the Los Angeles LGBT film festival’s 2012 Achievement Award. Never one to bore or to deliver a saccharine tale, he implored the audience to take a “Act Bad” and to use humor as a way of social dissent. He told a cheering audience to hail fashion insults outside the homes of anti-gay politicians and told budding filmmakers that if a studio says your story is “too gay,” then to get your “gay screenplay friends and go back to the studios and yell out the grosses of all their hetero-flops.” He talks about being a Yippie (‘to get laid’) in the ’60s and a hilarious chant in London at a protest against the pope. The 30th edition of Outfest runs through July 22nd in L.A.
Man of Steel enjoyed one of the more bonkers receptions at this weekend’s Comic-Con, culminating in — what else? — a teaser poster just for its San Diego coming-out party. They’ve thought of everything. It doesn’t reveal much of Henry Cavill’s Superman, however, which led Movieline pal Grace Randolph to hit up costume illustrator Phillip Boutte for more details about the look of Zack Snyder’s upcoming blockbuster. Click through for the poster and video.
Twilight has been credited with really putting Comic-Con on the map, or if it was on the map already, then it put the massive fanboy (and girl) genre-action-science-fiction-nerd-bonanza front and center in mid-July pop culture. But now the franchise is complete, but the cast came out en force to promote the film (not that it should have much problem luring adoring audiences and their cash). At the event, Beyond The Trailer host Grace Randolph speaks with the stars including Taylor Lautner who gives his personal feelings about Jacob and Robert Pattinson who offers up his view on whether his character has redefined “prince charming.” And of course, there’s Kristen Stewart, aka Vampire Bella. The actress tells what she thinks about the un-dead version of her character and what she thought of her before reading Breaking Dawn . Randolph also speaks with Ashley Greene about villains, and looking quite the adorable young star, Mackenzie Randolph shares insight on Renesmee. Check out the latest Twilight goings-on from the red carpet…
Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted was an unexpectedly charming addition to the summer’s kiddie flick franchise pile-up, better and stranger than, honestly, it needed to be in a subgenre that is, Pixar aside, usually just about merchandising potential and providing enough bright moving objects to occupy young attention spans for 80 minutes. People hoping for the same pleasant surprise when escorting offspring to Ice Age: Continental Drift might as well pre-crush those hopes in advance before donning their 3-D glasses — the film, the fourth in the series from Blue Sky Studios, is just a sugary jumble of goofy voices, hyperkinetic action scenes and rote plot elements that rolls forward just enough to get us to the de rigueur pop song that plays over the closing credits. Ice Age: Continental Drift finds the series’ makeshift herd of glacial period animals still together and not eating each other (the carnivores in the group presumably have learned to eat only non-speaking extras). Mammoths Manny (Ray Romano) and Ellie (Queen Latifah) have a now teenage daughter named Peaches (Keke Palmer) whose best friend, molehog Louis (Josh Gad), is nursing an inconvenient cross-species crush on her. (She, unfortunately for him, has eyes only for fellow mammoth Ethan, voiced by rapper Drake). Saber-toothed tiger Diego (Denis Leary) remains grumpy, while sloth Sid (John Leguizamo) is still ignorantly blissful, even when the family that abandoned him stops by to leave his senile Granny (Wanda Sykes) in his company and then takes off immediately after. The plot’s precipitated by the series mascot Scrat (Chris Wedge), an acorn-loving saber-toothed squirrel whose journey always frames and runs parallel to the main storyline, and who triggers the rapid breakup of the continents (a process that took millions and millions of years but here happens in maybe a day) by planting his prized nut in a place that manages to crack open the Earth’s crust. The shifting land masses break up the mammoth family, forcing Ellie, Peaches and all to march toward safer territory while Manny, Diego, Sid and Granny end up adrift in the sea for an oddly nautical adventure. They encounter and do battle with pirates, led by the ape Captain Gutt (Peter Dinklage), who use icebergs as ships they’re able to steer with helpful twig technology. Ice Age: Continental Drift is a children’s animated movie, and to complain about it not making sense, not having characters who require more than a one-adjective description, and not being very funny to anyone over the age of 6 may seem beside the point, — except, well, Pixar has proven things needn’t be this way. Ice Age: Continental Drift isn’t bad so much as its devoid of anything particularly good, including the animation. The characters in general have the odd texture of ratty stuffed toys rather than furry living animals, and they’re designed in such a way as to sometimes defy expression — when the camera closes in on Manny’s face to show his alarm, it ends up only framing his two eyes and a giant, fuzzy stretch of trunk, as if someone forgot we wouldn’t be able to see his mouth. The teenage mammoths have been given strange human haircuts on top of their Elephantidae heads, as if they’re a meld between an extinct species and a Bratz doll. It’s Sid and Scrat who come off the best by being built like they belong in the Looney Tunes-esque elastic universe from which the film’s action takes its cue. When Sid melts into a heap after eating a paralyzing berry, the clever physicality of it — Manny scoops him up and tosses him to safety on a glacier, only to have him slide right bonelessly off — is entertainingly done. And Scrat’s voyage has the freedom of the surreal, from the giant ball-bearing that he bounces off of at the center of the world to the map he finds at the bottom of the ocean, the pressure squashing him to a fraction of his original size. While the main characters have battles on glaciers and encounters with sirens who seem to be there only to fill out the runtime, Scrat skitters across the surface of the water and finds his way to a Greece-inspired saber-toothed squirrel utopia that he instantly ruins. And he, blissfully, doesn’t speak. The other animals, sadly, do, in their array of celebrity voices (Nicki Minaj, Aziz Ansari, Nick Frost and Seann William Scott also pop up behind different animated faces), and they grumble their way through an assembly of prepackaged dramas that feels like a few sitcom episodes mashed together — Diego fights and then falls for pirate crew member Shira (Jennifer Lopez), Manny learns not to be so overprotective of his growing daughter and Sid realizes he’s not a screw-up or something. It’s the kind of indifferent filmmaking that wouldn’t be so offensive if it weren’t so often hugely financially successful — it’s the effort of a large group of people, plenty of them talented, to turn out something barely adequate. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
The fun never ends: “When filming 1960’s Kidnapped , he became friends with the Australian actor Peter Finch, also a fond boozer. When they were refused a drink after closing time during a session at an Irish pub, they wrote a cheque to buy the pub so they could have another drink. Having sobered up the next day, they rushed back to cancel their purchase. They ended up befriending the landlord, even attending his funeral. While sobbing as the casket was lowered, the pair soon realised they were at the wrong funeral. Their pal was being buried 100 yards away.” [ The Independent ]
Also in Thursday morning’s round-up of news briefs, DreamWorks Animation will lend its characters to a new theme park; director Joe Cornish is set to adapt a robot comic-book; James Cameron takes his mini 3-D camera to L.A.’s X Games and China cracks down even harder on internet movie and video content. Darren Aronofsky Tweets a Noah Teaser The Black Swan director tweeted what presumably looks like construction of the ark that carried all life forms to safety from the earthly flood. He said: I dreamt about this since I was 13. And now it’s a reality. Genesis 6:14 #noah: http://t.co/QLaIuqXh. The film is slated for release in Spring 2014. Around the ‘net… DreamWorks Animation Theme Park Heads to New Jersey DreamWorks Animation will bring its movie characters to a planned in-door amusement park in the New Jersey Meadowlands, ten miles west of New York City, Deadline reports . Fangirls Fuel Comic-Con Growth Long lines of women camped out to get into the Twilight panel. The movie has increased attendance to around 40%, which has resulted in Hollywood sending over more femme-friendly fare, Variety reports . Joe Cornish to Direct Graphic Novel Rust Attack the Block director Joe Cornish is set to adapt Royden Lepp’s comic-book robot on the prairies story Rust for 20th Century Fox. Fox’s synopsis reads: “”Life on the Taylor family farm was difficult enough before Jet Jones crashes into the barn, chased by a giant decommissioned war robot!” The Guardian reports . James Cameron Debuts Ultra-Mini 3-D Camera at X Games Cameron used the camera in March when he explored the Mariana Trench and is now taking the device to ESPN’s X Games in Los Angeles, THR reports . Internet Content Faces More Chinese Scrutiny A new push by Chinese regulators will force internet video providers to pre-screen programming including drama series and mini-movies before they’re posted, Deadline reports via A.P.
The ever-expanding Crowdsource Era has a new milestone: Charlie Kaufman needs $200,000 to help make a 40-minute stop-motion animated film called Anomalisa , and he’s inviting exiled Community creator Dan Harmon — and you — along to help. The project, which has already raised $80,000 on Kickstarter , brings Kaufman, Harmon, and the animators at Starburns Industries ( Moral Orel , the stop-motion Community Christmas episode) together to tell the story of a motivational speaker who is “crippled by the mundanity of life” until “suddenly one day, a girl’s voice pierces through the veil of nothingness. She fills him with such a rush of ‘aliveness,’ he’s willing to abandon everything and everyone, including his own family, and escape with her to a better life.” Duke Johnson will direct, and apparently you will pay for it — though you can’t really argue with the incentives: A 20-page screenplay about you, written by Dan Harmon? Hand-crafted puppets and/or sets? Executive producer credit? Skype chats with the filmmakers? Pretty amazing, and not cheap: The really good stuff will run you $1,000 and up, with some of the top prizes already spoken for. Maybe there is an aftermarket eBay kind of thing to auction off Kickstarter rewards? Someone should get on that. Anyway, good luck to all! [ Kickstarter via Gawker ]
After creating a public persona with at least as much swagger as the character with whom he’s most strongly identified — Star Trek ’s Captain Kirk — it came as little surprise that the first thing William Shatner said at the beginning of Movieline’s interview for his new documentary was an explicit statement of purpose. “My film Get a Life is debuting July 28th on EPIX,” he said without being asked. “We’re going to show it at Comic-Con on Saturday – and we’re all excited about it.” Shatner is, deservedly, an icon: 45-plus years after first playing Kirk, he’s more beloved than ever, in great part because he has wholeheartedly embraced the adulation of hundreds of thousands of Trek fans. But in naming his documentary after the 1986 Saturday Night Live skit in which he jokingly challenged Trekkies to find something else to do with their time, he demonstrates that he’s not above a little self-satire, especially when it’s those fans who have continued to keep his career alive. That said, neither is he beyond some passing exasperation over hearing the same questions over and over again – evidenced most strongly when he’s finally asked something new. Shatner spoke to Movieline Wednesday morning from Kentucky, where he’s tending to his own obsession – horse breeding. While trying to get at what has made Star Trek such an enduring property, the actor revealed how he came to terms with being James T. Kirk, reflected on how the questions brought up in his first directorial effort, Star Trek V , were oddly answered 23 years later in Get a Life , and explained why fans probably shouldn’t ask him too many questions about Trek mythology. When you first started to examine why people continue to celebrate Star Trek , how in-depth did you intend to get? Was this meant to be sort of a reward for fans’ devotion or a video essay for you to try and understand it? Well, that’s exactly right. You know, the process of making a documentary is one of discovery, and like writing a story, you follow a lead and that leads you to something else and then by the time you finish, the story is nothing like you expected. And that’s the discovery I made – what you see happening to me on film is happening to me on film. I had no idea what to expect, and what I saw, my face reflected the astonishment of these various truths that came out that made it a far deeper experience than I ever thought of. How quickly did the examination become so existential? Was that something you saw in fans’ responses, or did that largely come from your conversation with the Joseph Campbell expert? That’s exactly right – from the fans’ responses, which led me to other fans that had a deeper understanding of what we were looking at, and then it just became exploration. And then bewilderment, and then wonderment! And it was something that was totally unexpected, and I expect that will be the audience’s experience as well – a totally unexpected observation of why people go to conventions, and about what the enduring fascination has been. So that’s the fascination, and that’s the secret behind the endurance of Star Trek – it has become part of the mythology of this culture. And nobody that I knew had a valid answer when I asked, “What do you think is the reason for the endurance of Star Trek , and why do you think people devote their lives to it, so much money and time, and bring their children to it?” The various answers I gave – science-fiction, the story, the appeal of the fact that we exist 300 years from now, all of those are part of it, but the real answer is more mystical than that. At what point did you decide to have that conversation with the Joseph Campbell expert? When I met him, the more I talked to him, the more fascinated I became, and so I decided to get a real setting and sit down and do a real interview. I’ve had some fun doing interviews in the past on television, and brought that experience to bear on him – and there was this whole philosophy laid out in front of me that put the whole documentary to a cohesive whole that I never expected. And had I not had it, it would be that much less. At what point did you really embrace or accept the fandom that your role as Kirk inspired? Quite a while ago. Over the years and talking to 10,000 people on an ad-lib basis, it kind of hones your skills for entertaining an audience in an [improvisational] way. And I began to use those experiences as a way of being an actor in front of an audience, and evolve stories and anecdotes that appeal to them. I wrote some books about it and ended up doing a one-man show about it last year – and we’ll be going out again this year – that exists because I’ve stood in front of large audiences not knowing what the next word coming out of my mouth was going to be. So I embraced the audiences a long time ago and sought to entertain them in various ways – this being one of them, the observation of what they are actually doing. How much are you able to apply the values and characteristics that fans see in Kirk into other creative ventures – to capitalize on the qualities that they seem to respond to? Well, the series appeals on a high moral level, that [Gene] Roddenberry engendered, and they’re universals – people are good, eventually people will be good, the evolvement of man is towards the positive, life will exist and we’ll work our way out of these problems. All of the positive aspects of life are there, and for me that certainly is a personal philosophy. How much at this point do you really know about Star Trek ? Can you go toe to toe with these fans and trade minutiae? No, no, no – I know nothing. My wife has to remind me of my name every so often. You know, it’s 40 years ago – why would I remember? It was a three-year job and then it was over, and then that was it. And then people began to remind me of what I had done. Which episode or part of the Trek world do you get asked about the most, and which do you find they ask about least, or seldom mention? There are many, many general questions, the likes of which you’re asking, and so, yeah, they’re just about what you think they are – your favorite episode, the philosophy, and why it has remained. Those questions still exist. But we sought in the documentary to bring this to another level to show these people – some in need, some in joy – but everybody being attracted to the Star Trek ideals, and yearning – that’s a word I haven’t used before – yearning for them to be true. And hoping, and living for that moment when the beauty that man can exude will be real and paramount. That’s what I think all of these people are looking for. What thing in your life gives you the same kind of passion – the fandom – that people show to Trek ? Well, right now I’m talking to you from Kentucky, where I’m competing for horses, in the horse world that I exist in for a large part of my life other than as an actor. My wife and I are totally involved in horses, and that is one of our great passions. And it’s interesting that I’m talking to you about Star Trek from another area of my life that makes me feel equally good. So in the way your fans know the mythology of the series, you would know the geneology of horses, maybe. Yes, exactly – you’re exactly right. The details of the horses are comparable to the details people ask me about Star Trek , only I think I’m far more knowledgeable about the horses than I am about Star Trek . Star Trek V , which you directed, confronted questions of faith and identity, and in retrospect it almost feels like you’re addressing the subtext of that film in this documentary. What an interesting observation. My God, man – that’s pure intelligence. My respect for you has increased enormously. That’s a wild conclusion, and yes, I agree with you. Had I known what I know now – because I had so many troubles and problems with getting the story for the search for God that Paramount wouldn’t let me make and Roddenberry wouldn’t let me make – I would have had more ammunition to convince them that the story I wanted to tell, and the story they forced me to tell made one or two compromises too many. That’s the lesson I learned on Star Trek V : When do you stand your ground and when do you compromise? We’re looking at that in our government right now, and that’s the problem with our government – everybody is standing on principle. Looking at that film and Get a Life as bookends, do you feel like you were asking questions then that you’re maybe finding answers for now? That’s right, man – you are absolutely right. I wanted to ask the question, if you were able to take a spaceship and find God, what would you find? And if you found the opposite, a fallen angel, what would you find? That’s the question I wanted to ask. That was going through my mind. Eric Van Lustbader used to write novels about an American in Japan and didn’t fit in in Japan, I wanted him to write that movie because he would have been the perfect guy to understand the philosophical questions being asked and put them into action. And the studio and Van Lustbader fought over the book right, and Van Lustbader never got to write the movie – which I think was a blow to what I would have liked to have done. So I never did accomplish in Star Trek V what I wanted to, but in this documentary, exploring those questions – where do we go, what do we do, what is mythology, what were the Greeks thinking when they made up those mythological beings, and what were they looking for. All of those questions that belonged to the universalities of man, those were some of the questions I wanted to ask in Star Trek V . And science-fiction allows us to do that because science-fiction is, in effect, the search for God. Absolutely. And that’s really all I have time to talk to you for. It’s a shame because your questions are now approaching unique – uniqueness. But I don’t have time for you. Todd Gilchrist is a Los Angeles-based film critic and entertainment journalist for a variety of online and print publications. You can follow his work via Twitter at @mtgilchrist . Read more from Comic-Con 2012 here. Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Usher has pulled out of tonight’s Espy Awards following the jet-ski accident that reportedly left his 11-year-old stepson brain dead. According to The New York…
