Oscar-nominee Josh Brolin is joining the cast of the next Sin City , joining fellow cast members Mickey Rourke , Jessica Alba , Rosario Dawson , Jaime King, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and more. Brolin will star as Dwight in the follow-up to Frank Miller’s 2005 Sin City . In the latest installment, Dwight is hunted down by the only woman he ever loved, Ava Lord, and then watches his life go straight to hell. Chronologically, this story takes place prior to “The Big Fat Kill” (featured in the film Frank Miller’s Sin City ) and explains how Dwight came to have a dramatically different face. Dame weaves together two of Miller’s classic stories with new tales in which the town’s most hard boiled citizens cross paths with some of its more repulsive inhabitants. “Dwight is a constant character throughout the Sin City world and A Dame To Kill For is a defining episode in his life. We’re looking forward to Josh’s take on Dwight,” said Rodriguez and Miller in a statement. The part of the Dame has not yet been cast and production is currently underway at Rodriguez’s Troublemaker Studios in Austin, TX. The film, which was developed by Miller based on his graphic novel, will be released by Dimension Films in North America October 4th.
Things had been quiet on the Fifty Shades of Grey movie front of late, as the hotly anticipated erotic fiction bestseller teased its way through development — that is, until screenwriter Kelly Marcel ( Terra Nova , Saving Mr. Banks ) spilled a tantalizing tidbit to The Sunday Times : “There is going to be a lot of sex in the film,” she said. “It will be rated NC-17 .” NC-17!? Be still, our BDSM-loving hearts! EL James’s steamy erotic lit juggernaut, about demure college grad Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey, the emotionally tortured millionaire she enters into a kinky relationship with, has its fair share of sexy clinches. If you’ve read the series — or the Twilight fan fiction it started out as — you know it’s pretty much a series of sexcapades tempered by interludes of soap operatic dramarama. (For a borderline NSFW idea of what happens in the first book, check out this fantastic fan-made animated trailer . Splash !) A Fifty Shades movie without the deliciously racy sex would hardly be a Fifty Shades movie at all (seriously, we still have Skinemax to serve our softcore needs) but once Focus Features and Universal snapped up the property a proper envelope-pushing rating seemed out of reach. How can studio heads sell an erotic film franchise to the masses that nails Ana and Christian’s heated psychosexual bond onscreen as vividly as it does on the page? Common sense says be prepared for a gentler, more suggestive-rather-than-graphic Fifty Shades movie. And yet, Marcel (who “pored over” the book with James for ten days) insists that they’re going all the way to NC-17 Town on the film: “[There] is going to be a lot of sex in the film,” she says breezily. “It will be rated NC-17 [18 here]. It’s going to be raunchy.” While they are not toning it down — “We are 100% going there” — some of the sex scenes have had to be edited out in order to get some plot in. “We did go through and decide which are our favourites and which are not,” she concedes. “Most of them are in there, but I can’t say more than that.” It’s a fine thought to have, and more power to Marcel if she and James manage to penetrate the MPAA’s conservative sensibilities with Christian Grey’s, to quote from James’s tome, ” kinky f***ery .” It just sounds a bit too much like screenwriter fantasy at this point, but hey — if I’m wrong I’ll send Marcel a pair of Ben Wa balls as a mea culpa and a thank you, on behalf of Fifty Shades fans everywhere. [via The Sunday Times ] MORE ON FIFTY SHADES OF GREY : Law & Order: SVU Spanks Fifty Shades of Grey Author E.L. James 50 Shades Of Grey Hires Saving Mr Banks Writer (Tom Hardy For Christian Grey, Anyone?) 50 Shades of Grey Composite Yields The ‘Perfect’ Christian Grey Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
The biggest question surrounding Peter Jackson ‘s Lord of the Rings prequel The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey , has nothing to do with its strength of story, its Oscar chances, or whether or not Tolkien fans will embrace yet another uber-ambitious adaptation of their beloved fantasy world, but rather: How does it look? Specifically, how will Jackson’s 48 frames-per-second gamble play after months of talk and one particularly disastrous Cinema Con debut ? I’ll tell you this: The grumblings and rumblings after my screening of The Hobbit – in bold, daring, frustrating 48 frames-per-second 3-D – were decidedly not raves. And that’s a very bad sign for Jackson & Co. One colleague couldn’t believe how poor the 48 fps presentation looked, insisting – or hoping, more like it – that something must have been wrong with the projection. Jackson’s big, game-changing crusade for a frame rate that would part the heavens and open humankind’s hearts and minds and brains to a new way of watching film couldn’t possibly look so unpleasant. Could it? I was curious if, back in April when The Hobbit ‘s 48 fps preview bombed at Cinema Con, the journalists and industry folk who recoiled from the hyper-clarity of the picture onscreen were just overreacting to Jackson’s new cinematic order. “After a minute or two of adjusting,” wrote The New York Daily News’ Ethan Sacks in his embargo-skirting first review , “the higher resolution is eye-popping, similar to discovering HD television for the first time.” HD TV did look rather freaky at first, I’ll give him that, and there’s a shared quality of too much visual information that The Hobbit ‘s 48 fps shares with high-def television. But it didn’t take a few minutes of adjusting to get used to it; even two hours and 40 minutes later my brain was rejecting the look of it. It felt like watching daytime soaps in HD, terrible BBC broadcasts, or Faerie Tale Theater circa 1985, only in amazingly sharp clarity and with hobbits. Part of the problem is there’s too much detail in every frame that the magical filter of cinema that makes most 24 fps film so pleasing to the eye is gone; every prop on a set too clear, and even a performance by someone like the very fine Ian McKellen looks embarrassingly, unnaturally theatrical. Moving images, especially walking Hobbits and dwarves – not as much the CG creatures, for what it’s worth – flit at odd speeds that just never look right. With the exception of a handful of scenes, mostly enhanced by CG vs. shot on interior sets, the 48 fps had me imagining how gorgeous everything might look in 24fps. Those who’ve seen it in 24fps seem much happier with the visual presentation, even if 3-D feels superfluous. As Bilbo made his way along his adventure through Middle Earth, the look of The Hobbit and the accelerated barrage of information prompted a flurry of other films and shows to pop into mind, none of them flattering comparisons. Here, in no particular order, are some of them: Fraggle Rock Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood of Make-Believe Shining Time Station Star Trek colony planets The opening POV shot of Dinosaurs (On the plus side, The Hobbit also inspired me to Google “Galadriel-Gandalf fan fiction,” which I guarantee will be a thing after The Hobbit comes out.) As early reviews continue to hit the web, it appears that I’m not in the minority on the frame rate issue. 48 fps may be D.O.A. even before The Hobbit opens in wide release on December 14. Maybe that’s a good thing; save your dollars and see it in regular ol’ 24 fps. The future may well be 48, but it hasn’t arrived yet. READ MORE: ‘The Hobbit’ 3-D Early Review: Back Again, But Not Quite There ‘Hobbit’ First Review: 48 FPS Is ‘Eye-Popping,’ But Watch Out For The Jar Jar Binks Of ‘LOTR’ The Hobbit 48 FPS Preview Divides Audiences at CinemaCon Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Warner Bros. 2015 Justice League movie may not have a director yet, but it looks like it has a villain. Latino Review is reporting that Batman , Superman , Wonder Woman and their super colleagues will be throwing down against a major baddie, Darkseid from the subtly named planet, Apokolips, when the summer of 2015 rolls around. If Darkseid, who was created by the legendary comic artist Jack Kirby , is indeed the villain who will be wreaking havoc in the DC movie universe, it’s an interesting choice, given that Marvel plans to feature the villain Thanos in Avengers 2 , which it plans to release that same summer. Justice League ‘s Darkseid vs. Avengers 2 ‘s Thanos As Comic Book Legends Revealed points out, Thanos was “roughly based on Darkseid” (although the character’s creator Jim Starlin didn’t originally envision him as such.) The connection between the two characters could help ratchet up the competitive tension between the rival movies as release time grows closer. (It’s only, like, years away.) DC could also do some “our super-villain can kick your super-villain’s ass” sassing based on IGN’s Top 100 Comic Book Villains of All Time , in which Darkseid ranks sixth and Thanos is 47th. If you ask me, these two dudes do look alike. That’s Darkseid on the left. Thanos is on the right. What do you think? Sound off in the comments section. By the way, the unforgiving mug of the late actor Jack Palance inspired Darkseid’s face. Kirby based the villain’s evil nature on Adolf Hitler. [ Latino Review , Comic Book Legends Revealed , IGN] Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
When he wasn’t rooting out Communists, cracking down on the mob and spying on civil rights leaders, FBI head J. Edgar Hoover toiled as a one-man culture warrior battling Hollywood decadence. He prevented Charlie Chaplin from reentering the U.S. because of his leftist political views, and he condemned Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life for its “rather obvious attempt to discredit bankers.” So what did he have to say about Alfred Hitchcock , who gave American moviegoers new and strange things to fear? Not a bad word. The only questions anyone’s asking about Hitchcock these days are just how much and what kind of a creeper was he? The famed director’s wandering eye, his sexual obsessions, and less-than-decorous urges roil at the center of Hitchcock , the just-released biopic starring Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren , as well as last month’s The Girl , the HBO film with Toby Jones and Naomi Watts . As The Birds actress Tippi Hedren claimed earlier this fall , the Master of Suspense could be masterfully cruel and unforgiving. But as far as his popular image as an artiste-provocateur goes, there’s probably more than a little self-mythologizing — or branding, if you’d prefer — in that ironic Englishman persona, the casually sadistic remarks about actors, the pretensions to finding truth in nightmares. It’s that last detail that fuels Hitchcock , a tempting portrait of “Hitch” as a crowd-pleasing, truth-telling anti-hero — not unlike Howard Stern and Larry Flynt in their respective biopics — who shows moviegoers the dark things they didn’t know they wanted to see. But was his threat to the American psyche all smoke and mirrors? That’s certainly what Hitchcock’s FBI file, obtained via MuckRock.com , suggests. Hitchcock’s file doesn’t begin until October of 1960, four months after the successful release of Psycho , which casts serious doubt on Hitch’s claim that the FBI followed him for three months in 1945 after he discussed uranium with a Caltech professor as research for his next film, Notorious . (Donald Spoto, a four-time biographer of Hitchcock, also concluded in The Dark Side of Genius that the FBI investigation was likely apocryphal, declaring that the “extremely sensitive” director would have been “emotionally incapable” of making a film under government surveillance.) In fact, the contents of the FBI file have much more to do with Hoover’s obsessions than with Hitchcock’s. Whatever paranoia and “extreme sensitivities” Hitchcock suffered, Hoover suffered doubly so. The bulk of the file has to do with a seven-month surveillance on a single episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents that illustrates the acute obsessiveness of the FBI’s fearsome but fearful director. Through unrelenting pressure and undeserved authority, the Bureau convinced Revue Studios, which produced A.H. Presents, to eliminate a minor character, an FBI agent who instructs a would-be kidnapper that abduction is illegal, from the episode “Coming, Mama.”
Yes, Mara Jade, it’s possible for Harrison Ford to be “open to the idea” of reprising his role as Han Solo in Disney’s Star Wars Episode VII and still hate the character, as Movieline noted back in 2010 . The key here is that the actor may finally get the opportunity to kill off the character that has bedeviled him throughout his auspicious career, which is something he wanted back in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. A “highly placed source” told EW.com that “Harrison is open to the idea of doing the movie and he’s upbeat about it,” but the story also notes, “don’t be surprised if his contract includes a mandatory death scene for the sly old space smuggler.” Now, there’s a reason to be upbeat! Ford gets to chew some scenery in a death scene and cut his ties — symbolically, psychically, joyously — to the role he can’t seem to shake, or love. Even though, two of the video clips seemed to have suddenly been pulled from Movieline’s 2010 post, Ford’s not-so-fond feelings for the space cowboy character that made him a box-office boss have been pretty apparent over the years. As EW also reported, Ford said in a 2010 ABC interview that Han Solo “was not so interesting to me” and that “I thought he should have died in [Episode VI] to give it some bottom.” I also would have much preferred a Solo death scene instead of watching Ewoks dance. So, I hope Ford gets his wish. Then, the next time a talk-show host asks him about his iconic role, he can finally say: “Han Solo — he’s dead.” Related Stories: Harrison Ford’s Long History of Hating Star Wars Luke Skywalker & Princess Leia Knew Of More Star Wars Stories; Surprised By LucasFilm Sale Disney Buying LucasFilm For $4.05 Billion, Promises New Star Wars in 2015 (UPDATED) Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Don Coscarelli and Ridley Scott don’t have a helluva lot in common as filmmakers, but watching the new trailer for the former director’s long-gestating movie John Dies at the End put me in mind of Scott’s Prometheus . Coscarelli’s film, which is based on a David Wong novel, has to do with a drug called “Soy Sauce” that gives its users access to another dimension. Check out the trailer at the 55-second mark where a drop of the soy sauce hangs from the needle of the syringe. Now tell me that its spiky black appearance doesn’t remind you of the scene in Prometheus where Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) — the morning after having unwittingly been fed some of that creepy black goo from the Engineers’ship by the android David — looks in the mirror and sees some scary weird tendrils projecting from his eyeball. As you might expect from the director of Phantasm and Bubba Ho-Tep , the trailer also has jumping Tarantulas, pills that turn into fly-like creatures and a monster that consists of various cuts of raw meat. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Just two quick observations about Joss Whedon ‘s Zomney political ad, which has gotten plenty of coverage elsewhere. The video has a lot of smart, funny lines in it, but it’s tough to beat the filmmaker’s observation that: “The 1 percent will no longer be the very rich. It will be the very fast.” The other thing that I love about the clip is that Whedon, who, based on the success of The Avengers alone is probably a member of the 1 percent — the wealthy, not the fast version — is doing dishes by hand in the spot. Love that earthy image Joss, and the drying rack. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
The political action committee that opposes the National Geographic Channel’s cablecast of Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden is seeking grass-roots donations to runs its anti-Obama ‘Bump in the Road’ ad during the telecast, according to an email making the rounds. The email, which links back to the website for OPSEC, a Republican-leaning group of former special operations and C.I.A. officers that has been likened to the Swift Boat veterans that swamped John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign, is looking for donations of $25 or more to air its commercial during the debut of Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden on Nov. 4, just two days before the presidential election . OPSEC is not happy that major Obama supporter Harvey Weinstein’s The Weinstein Company is behind the film, which, according to the New York Times , has been recut to bolster the President’s role in the historic military operation. Seal Team Six director John Stockwell and other sources told the Times that the changes were not politically motivated but, rather, were meant to give the movie a more realistic feel. Those sources added, however, that Weinstein suggested some of the changes that were made to the film and that Meghan O’Hara, a producer who has worked with liberal firebrand Michael Moore on his left-leaning films Fahrenheit 9/11 and Sicko was also involved in gathering research. Weinstein, who’s identified as a “Hollywood liberal,” is targeted in the fund-raising email, which is reproduced below. (Except where indicated, the use of boldface is replicated from the email and the name of the recipient has been withheld.) The motto on the home page of OPSEC’s website reads: “I Serve Quietly. Not Seeking Recognition or Accolades….” The fund-raising email links back to the OPSEC website which indicates that the Bump in the Road ads “are live right now in Ohio and have impacted Virginia …. but our budget likely won’t last to November 6th,” adding: “We have to count on you to keep these ads running.” The Weinstein Company and OPSEC had not responded to requests for comment at the time of this posting, but I’ll update accordingly. This is the email: We’ve got a major problem….In just a few days, National Geographic Channel will begin broadcasting “Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden,” even after reporting by the New York Times and other media outlets disclosed that the timing and editing of the film by Obama mega-donor and Hollywood liberal Harvey Weinstein were orchestrated to use the heroic work of U.S. Special Operations Forces to promote President Obama’s re-election . OPSEC’s not going take this sitting down. If we can raise the funds necessary — we’re going to air our hard-hitting ad, “Bump In The Road,” right along-side the documentary on National Geographic Channel . Every person who watches will know how this documentary is exploiting service members, divulging national secrets that are putting special forces lives at risk, and is timed to be nothing more than an ad for President Obama. [Name Withheld], please make an urgent donation of $25, $50, $100 or more right now to help OPSEC send a powerful message to Obama, Hollywood liberal Harvey Weinstein, and anyone else who wants to exploit the hard work of America’s Special Forces that they will have to score political points elsewhere! It’s truly sad that once again, Special Forces operations are being used as a political pawn to win votes for Obama’s reelection….not to mention the further leaks of tactics and methods that will further jeopardize future missions against Al Qaeda . National Geographic’s Channel own President even admitted that, “that some people were suspicious of the film’s intentions.” [In the original email, a link to the NY Times article on the editing of Seal Team Six appears here. (Boldface ours)] Our ad hits the Obama Administration hard for lying about the attacks in Libya that cost the U.S. Ambassador, two former SEALs and another U.S. diplomat their lives while also having politicized the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. So will you make an urgent donation to help us run this ad side-by-side with Harvey Weinstein’s exploitive Seal Team Six documentary? It’s absolutely critical we raise the funds necessary to get our response running right along side this TV program. Playing politics with national security is wrong and endangers American lives. It will only result in special forces coming home in flag draped coffins because their missions have been reduced to petty political games in place of protecting America. Thanks, Scott Taylor Former Navy SEAL PS: If we can raise the funds necessary — we’re going to air our hard-hitting ad, “Bump In The Road,” right along-side the documentary on National Geographic Channel. Please make an urgent donation of $25, $50, $100 or more right now to help OPSEC send a powerful message to Obama, Hollywood liberal Harvey Weinstein, and anyone else who wants to exploit the hard work of America’s Special Forces that they will have to score political points elsewhere! Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Jaws , Indiana Jones , Jurassic Park – Steven Spielberg has set the bar for the worldwide blockbuster. Sure, he’s taken praise for other genre as well, including his Best Director win for Schindler’s List (and another for Saving Private Ryan five years later). On the cusp of his Lincoln premiere for the closing night of the AFI Fest next month, the wildly successful director-producer-writer said he is “no longer attracted” to action films, even as some are on his plate. CBS’ 60 Minutes spotlighted the director and his latest Oscar-buzzed film, which had a sneak “work-in-progress” screening at the recent New York Film Festival. The filmmaker reiterated what many of those first crowds said about the film, describing it as less action-packed than many of his previous titles. “I knew I could do the action in my sleep at this point in my career,” he said. “In my life, the action doesn’t hold any … it doesn’t attract me any more.” Was that a possible moment of exuberation considering the feature is widely tipped to be a mass contender this awards season? Spielberg, however, is set to direct Sci-Fi thriller Robopocalypse , which is set in the aftermath of a robot uprising and a quick check of his IMDb page has him set to direct a possible Indiana Jones 5 . Also during the segments on the popular long-running Sunday night news program that his latest, about the 16th President of the United States, focusing on the last months of his Administration when he and abolitionists labored to pass the 13th Amendment soon after his re-election on the waning days of the Civil War, was partly inspired by a reconciliation with his father. “[President Lincoln] was the father of the nation in need of repair,” said Spielberg. “And in a sense, the movies I’ve made recently have reflected the positive relationships that my dad and I have enjoyed for 20 [to] 25 years.” “I was an outsider. The kid that played clarinet at band, which I did,” said Spielberg, who shared that he was bullied at school. He dealt with severe anti-Semitic attacks at school and said he denied his Jewishness for “a long time.” While his mother noted during the interview that he and his father were not close, it was in fact his dad who gave him something that would change his life – a camera. Though his parents later divorced when his mother left after falling for her husband’s friend, Spielberg didn’t know for years the circumstances of their break-up. He idolized his mother and used his sentiment, channeling it to the maternal character Dee Wallace in E.T. In Schindler’s List , Spielberg said, “I did everything I needed to do to tell the story the way I thought the story should be told, to give it as much integrity as I could, never expecting it to make a dollar. The film went on to deliver a worldwide box office haul of $321million and win best picture and director Oscars at the 1994 Academy Awards.” It was his turn at facing down the anti-Semitism he felt growing up. In his latest, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Spielberg researched for the topic for 12 years. “I think the film is very relevant to today. It’s about leadership. And it’s about telling the truth. I think there was a sense of darkness for him…He had to end slavery and abolish the war. And there was darkness in his personal life.” [ Sources: The Guardian , CBS 60 Minutes ]
