Oliver Stone to make Vietnam movie, again

Cinemablend, Oliver Stone just can’t stay away from Vietnam. Variety reports that he’s headed there to shoot a Vietnam War era movie Pinkville, which stars Channing Tatum and some guy named Bruce Willis. Did you hear that teenagers recently picks Zac Efron as the hottest male actor working in Hollywood today? That’s what Channing Tatum gets for trying to, you know, act in real movies instead of cranking out more dance films with Jenna Dewan or worming his way into one of those awful High School Musical sequels.

Hopefully Tatum actually can act, because his mad dance moves won’t be of much use in Pinkville. However, his ability to look sexy in a tank-top may indeed serve some purpose. It’s Vietnam after all. Anyone else shocked that Oliver Stone even knows who Channing Tatum is, let alone wants to cast him in his movie? Weird.

In case you were wondering, Pinkville is a drama about the investigation of the 1968 Lau massacre. During it, US soldiers killed as many as 500 defenseless villagers, most of whom were women and children. I’m sure Stone will find a conspiracy in there somewhere. Bruce Willis plays William R. Peers, the army general who supervised the investigation. Tatum will be a helicopter pilot who witness the massacre and tried to stop it by landing his helicopter between the attacking soldiers and their victims, ordering two of his crew to fire on any soldier who shot more people.

New AVP 2 still

Those pesky bootleggers strike again

From darkhorizons, Just four days prior to its release, a near DVD quality work print copy of Rob Zombie's remake of the classic John Carpenter's "Halloween" has leaked onto torrenting sites.

This is far from the first example of this happening, notably earlier this Summer a similar DVD quality work print of another horror film - "Hostel: Part II" - managed to make its way online pre-release.

Whilst director Eli Roth was more than happy to blame that film's only moderate financial takings on pirates, it was never shown to have notably effected that film's box-office at all. The same goes for Michael Moore's documentary "Sicko" which suffered a similar fates.

This leak is more interesting in that it's the film's 'work print,' the version shown to test audiences back in June which was panned and lead to a rushed week of reshooting to change the ending and "beef up" the gore quotient (allegedly six more deaths were added in).

Not only does it imply somebody in the production process leaked it (rather than exhibitors or audience members with cameras), but also gives insight into the test screening process as to what about the film has been changed.

Right off the bat for example, the 'sample clip' being offered with the torrent shows off a disgustingly brutal gang rape by guards on a female prisoner in front of Michael. It's a scene that is non-existent in the final film in theatres, replaced by a thankfully tamer 'escape scene'.

Lucas to make non-Star Wars movie

From AICN, That's right, forward progression has begun on Lucas' RED TAILS project. For - actually, I don't have a clue how long he's been talking about making a film about the Tuskegee Airmen. I know it began sometime in the same century as the actual event.

I actually seem to have a memory of this project around the same time as HOWARD THE DUCK. Now that's not to cast a HOWARD THE DUCK cloud on this project. Quite the contrary. I've always been excited about HOWARD THE DUCK and the Tuskegee Airmen. I'm hoping he casts folks like Laurence Fishburne or Andre Braugher or Cuba Gooding Jr.

Kidding aside - I love World War II aviation flicks. This is a great story, that even though it was told wonderfully on TV, the story could be amazing with the tools Lucas has at his disposal. I had assumed this was dead a long time ago. And what was the forward progression? He hired John Ridley to write the script. I wonder - all these years that it's been "in development" was there never a script? Hmmm...

So how great is John Ridley? Well... no joking... he's pretty fucking good. He wrote U-TURN, THREE KINGS, and my favorite... UNDERCOVER BROTHER - which is a work of genius that was underappreciated by a world filled with blind heathens.

But now that Lucas has hired a writer, something he usually does in secret and rarely acknowledges to the public - I think there's a chance this will actually get made. And it'll be an interesting combatting Visual Fx battle between Weta and ILM. Because Peter Jackson has his DAMBUSTERS in the pipeline - I wonder which will hit first.

D'Oh!

From simpsonschannel, Sydney has the dubious distinction of being the first market in the world where "The Simpsons Movie" was pirated, with distributor 20th Century Fox tracking an illegal Internet copy of the film to a Down Under locale within 72 hours of its Australian release. But in an indication that the industry's enforcement initiatives are working, the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft said Friday that a 21-year-old Sydney man was arrested the day before in relation to the unauthorized recording and uploading and charged with copyright theft. He faces up to five years jail.

The "Simpsons" copy was found before the film's U.S. release July 27 and tracked back to a computer in western Sydney. AFACT alleges that the man arrested used his cell phone to film the movie at a cinema in western Sydney before uploading it on the Internet. Close international cooperation between the Australian Federal Police, AFACT and 20th Century Fox resulted in the removal of the unauthorized recording within 72 hours of its posting. But during that window the movie was uploaded to a U.S.-based global streaming site where it was viewed or downloaded more than 3,000 times.

AFACT additionally tracked it to other streaming sites and P2P systems where it had been illegally downloaded in excess of 110,000 times. Investigators even found a version of the film dubbed in French. Copies of "The Simpsons Movie" already are widely available on the street in China, though it is unclear if the Chinese copies came from the Australian upload.

Burton pressured to make his musical even more lame

From cinemablend, There’s a lot of excitement about Tim Burton’s next movie, an adaptation of the gruesome murder musical Sweeney Todd starring Johnny Depp. Well, everyone but the studio funding it is excited that is. It seems Warner Brothers wants it to be gruesome… but not too gruesome. SlashFilm has picked up a story from The Daily Mail which says that the WB is pressuring Burton to make massive cuts to his movie in order to water it down to a PG-13.

The Daily Mail story says, “The thing is, the studio really likes the film and they want to make it accessible to as big an audience as possible - which means stemming the blood flow. But that’s a bit difficult for a story involving a guy who gets high slitting throats.”

It’s the same old song and dance. Screw artistic integrity, let’s make a movie that grandmas and teenagers can buy a ticket to see. Meanwhile, somewhere out there, Uwe Boll is being allowed to make anything he wants. This is Tim Burton after all, he’s not some idiot first-time director fresh in off the turnip truck. The guy is a proven commodity, you’d think Warners would have a little faith in him. Apparently all their interested in is making a movie that’ll play broad, screw whether or not it’s any good. Of course if they wanted that, then maybe they shouldn’t have commissioned a movie about a barber who runs around slitting throats. Or, maybe they shouldn’t have hired Tim Burton to make it. Dark and disturbed is sort of his thing.

Substitute Elvis for just about anyone (or thing) else and you've got my heaven

Schweet!

Yep, it's the Holiday Special Boba Fett!

Speed Racer uses new filming technique

From filmstalker, It seems that the Wachowski Brothers have other things up their sleeves after the new filming technique that they brought to the industry with Matrix as they do the same with Speed Racer. This time there's no bullet time and it's not just a few scenes, this time it's the whole film.

Apparently the Wachowski's are using brand new cameras and techniques to make sure that everything in the frame is in focus, and using high saturation film stock they are bringing out the colours to make it even closer to a comic book.

In a press junket for In The Valley of the Elah Collider and Tommy Lee Jones quiz Susan Sarandon on the camera and what's involved, and it sounds rather interesting.


“They’re using some high def thing that comes with guards and it’s beyond anything I’ve ever...They’re doing something where they’re layering film so that the front and the back are in focus like a cartoon and they’re also doing two dimensional and three dimensional stuff and mixing and everything is very, very saturated with some new kind of film, so they actually have to treat the actors in some way so we can hold our own with the background. So it’s every color that wasn’t in The Matrix is seriously in this film...

...they have these two big, huge, widescreen things…at the end of the day you can see how everything is going to be before it’s treated and they have a room of 200 or 300 guys that are doing all the background...”


It sounds a rather cool technique and it sounds like they are looking for a live action comic effect without the post production styling techniques from Sin City, it sounds like the style will be applied as they film.

What did Danny teach his daughters?

From perezhilton, Wow. This is just on a whole other level!

Mary-Kate Olsen makes a memorable exit from Hyde lounge after a long night of partying on Friday.

She must have been having a really good time.

There’s just no excuse for that outfit, though.

What the eff was she thinking????

Dark Knight update (spoilers)

From iwatchstuff, Thanks to my super-secret connections, I've heard some reports of what was shot on The Dark Knight this weekend, and it's some fairly heavy stuff. How heavy? Fatty Arbuckle heavy. Heavy enough that I'm forced to hide it behind a cut to keep the spoiler-hating community from destroying me.

Learn Anthony Michael Hall's role, who that crazy Joker shoots at, and other top secret mysteries under the cut!

Spoilers

[THIS IS WHAT HE HAD HIDDEN]

According to the source, here's what went down over the weekend:

A parade is held to honor the fallen Commissioner Loeb. It's attended by Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal), the Gotham Mayor (Lestor Caronell), and other city officials, officers, mourners, etc. From the sidelines, an intrepid reporter covers the story, played by none other than AMH himself, Anthony Michael Hall. It seems he's just a reporter, not The Riddler or a nerdy boy trying to scientifically create the perfect woman.

The Mayor gives a speech, which is followed by a rifle salute to Loeb. After several shots are fired, some of the shooters turn towards the mayor and begin firing at him. Gordon (Gary Oldman) dives for the Mayor, Dent and Dawes run for cover, and one of the offending officers is revealed to be a certain villain without his signature makeup on. You can guess who. He's named after a playing card.

Does this exciting news give anyone else a case of Batmania?!