Cinematical

I'm not exactly sure how a scheduled block of round-table interviews turned into a half-organized two-headed press conference, but that's pretty much how it went down in this particular convention hall room. (Sounds like I'm complaining, but I'm just trying to give you a taste of the chaos that goes on here: Nothing's on time, nobody seems to have the right answers, and a lot of time is simply spent ... waiting. (It's fun AND frustrating!)

But to be fair, it's not every day you sit in a room populated by Mark Wahlberg, Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, and Mila Kunis (among others) -- but there we were! (We, um, weren't allowed to take photos -- at a press conference. Don't ask me.) After much waiting and friendly nerd-banter among patient movie folks, the cast and director of Max Payne walked in to share their thoughts on their upcoming videogame adaptation.

Mr. Wahlberg was quick to note that, while he wasn't much of a game player, he was very excited about playing a kick-ass action hero. Interviewers wanted to know why the actor chose a popcorn movie after The Departed, and one even poked a little fun: "So you won't be running away from the wind in this one?" (A cute quip, but a little classless.) When the questioners focused on director John Moore, he was his typically enthusiastic self, promising fans a gritty good time that delivers the mayhem. And just as the adorable Mila Kunis was about to explain how her character is actually a kick-ass assassin-type...

Above: Rose McGowan licking blood off a sword

The room was packed for the Red Sonja panel today featuring Robert Rodriguez, Rose McGowan and director Doug Aaroniokoski, and images of Rose McGowan in that skimpy metal bikini were everywhere (what you see above was one of around 2,000 t-shirts handed out. Below are easy-to-read notes on this particular panel:

-- Red Sonja will hit theaters in the fourth quarter of 2009 (one imagines for Christmas)
-- Robert Rodriguez is acting as a "hands on" producer, and will co-direct a good chunk of the flick. Not only is he doing this for Red Sonja, but he's also negotiating to produce a new Conan film. It seems as if they would eventually (if both are popular enough) cross promote between films.
-- The tone will be darker, like the book, and when asked if it would be R rated, Rodriguez said, "My name is double 'R'!"
--Also on tone and scope, McGowan (who's quite lively and quick-witted in person) said it's "hard, cold, dirty and bloody." And that she's looking forward to "taking a big giant sword and killing a lot of people."
-- Training is already underway, and McGowan is working with the same swords experts who helped out on Matrix and Ninja Assassin.
-- Rodriguez also admitted that Barbarella is officially off, and that Red Sonja has taken its place. He said financing of $70 million did come through from Germany for a shoot next year, but he's obligated to shoot something else for Miramax. He's negotiating right now to direct a "huge summer movie" -- but he wouldn't say which.
-- On the character, Rose McGowan said: "I will not have a mullet!" The crowd cheered.
-- Red Sonja will be shot on location (scouting now) and will use some green screen.
-- Asked who should star in the new Conan, RR shouted: "Danny Trejo!"
-- On Machete becoming a film, RR said they have plans to turn it into a Mexploitation triple feature disc (and somewhere on that disc will be a trailer for a sequel to Planet Terror.)
-- On Sin City 2, Frank Miller has finished writing the script, but no one knows whether or not that's going to happen with each working on different projects.

P.S. For those who think Rodriguez and McGowan aren't a couple anymore, check out this candid snapshot (taken right before RR kissed RM on the forehead).



Gallery from the panel below. My opinion: It looks pretty hot, and while I've bashed McGowan in the past, I'm willing to give her a chance to kick some ass here. This will be her time to shine.

What can I say about our first full day at San Diego Comic Con? First off, there are people everywhere -- I'm absolutely starving (because lines to get any sort of food are tremendous) and everywhere I look someone has fake blood on their body. It's the most surreal experience ever -- sort of like attending a Woodstock-like concert in Fantasyland. But I dig it, and we're trying to do as much as we can, see as much as we can, and bring it all back to you without absolutely losing our minds.

Below is a collection of costumes from the first day of San Diego Comic Con '08. (I don't think I have to tell you which one is my favorite ...)

More coming ... including word from Max Payne, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Red Sonja, Frank Darabont, Twilight and, well, more, more, more ...

Cinematical's Official Comic Con '08 Hub

Here's a round-up of today's news:

• Jamie Kennedy is going to produce an indie called In Northwood, which stars Nick Stahl as a man condemned to a mental hospital after committing murder. THR
• Cocaine Cowboys has picked itself up a scribe -- gonzo journalist and screenwriter Evan Wright. THR
  
• Everyone's favorite pot-smoking Jay, aka Jason Mewes, has nabbed a starring role in the indie slasher flick Silent But Deadly, which shoots in Ontario next month. Variety
• Phillip Noyce, meanwhile, is going to hit the plank and write the remake of Captain Blood. THR
• Check out Jennifer's blood-dripping lips, which just so happens to look like a certain television poster that was released recently. JoBlo
  
• Get ready for Robot Chicken: Star Wars: Episode 2! Coming Soon
• Posters: The Day The Earth Stood Still and Max Payne

The X-Files: I Want to Believe offers the viewer many mysteries to contemplate -- and only one of them is on-screen; as David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson return to roles and a franchise that last graced our TV screens in 2002 (and was last on the big screen in 1998), your mind swirls around the behind-the-scenes facts as fiercely as it does around the events playing out before your eyes. As reclusive, retired ex-FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully (Duchovny and Anderson) help the FBI with an abduction case, you're not following the plot as such; instead, you're thinking things like Hey, didn't this show get canceled six years ago? Haven't Duchovny and Chris Carter, the star and director of this film, both sued the studio behind it? Who, out in the movie going audience, is really clamoring for this movie? If you're an X-Files fan, is this film's freestanding creepy tale, with no link to the weird and convoluted mythos Carter came up with for the show, going to satisfy whatever itch you may still have for the franchise? And if you're not an X-Files fan, is the idea that this film stands alone enough reason to come to the franchise now?

As pleasantly surprised as I was by last summer's musical remake of Hairspray, I can't say that the prospect of sequel potential ever once came to mind. Thankfully, that's why we have Hollywood bean counters and the like, who see the success of that film, Mamma Mia! and High School Musical (including a fair amount of CD and DVD sales for each) as reason enough to have John Waters -- who wrote the 1988 original -- whip up a treatment for a Hairspray sequel.

According to Variety, returning for the project is director Adam Shankman and ... um, no one else at the moment. There isn't a writer attached, nor are any of the original stars lined up to return, although I have little reason to think that most of the young cast wouldn't be down for another one (just what is Nikki Blonsky up to now, anyway?).

Warner Bros. hopes to have Hairspray 2 (Hairspray-ier?) in theaters by July of 2010.

Anyone with more than a passing interest in Judd Apatow's career will note how there's a curious call-back to one of Apatow's earlier works in this most recent of his productions, with the credits for Step Brothers in the exact same scrawled, stretched-out font as his comedy Freaks and Geeks. Freaks and Geeks, though, featured teens who often spoke and acted like adults; Step Brothers features adults who constantly speak and act like children.

The credit-font's evocation of an earlier Apatow work is an omen for the rest of Step Brothers, in fact, with Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly recycling and amplifying their rivalry from Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (also directed by Step Brothers helmer Adam McKay) but without that film's plot structure, surreal wit or inspired mockery (and celebration) of NASCAR culture; instead, Step Brothers seems constructed -- or, rather, contrived -- solely to create a circumstance where Ferrell and Reilly can act like idiot man-children and riff to their great amusement. That, however, is not the same thing as riffing to the amusement of the audience. ...

There are amazing feats, and then there are jaw-dropping, once-in-a-lifetime accomplishments that confirm mankind's remarkable physical and imaginative potential. Philippe Petit can lay claim to having pulled off one of the latter, as in the summer of 1974, the French tightrope walker did something no one had ever done before or will ever do again: he navigated, on foot, a single wire stretched between the World Trade Center's two towers.

As a kid, Petit was an incorrigible climber, and upon seeing a newspaper article that included a diagram of the as-yet-uncompleted Twin Towers, he immediately told himself that one day, he would cross the gulf between the enormous skyscrapers. That he had no formal wirewalk training and had never been to the United States didn't matter, nor did the nightmarish logistical hurdles that would obviously stand in his way. A dream was born, or rather something of an audacious obsession, leading him to hone his craft first through intense training sessions, then by traversing a wire attached to the peaks of Notre Dame and Australia's Sydney Harbour Bridge, and finally by concocting an elaborate plot to infiltrate the still-under-construction WTC and pull off his unparalleled deed.