Below the break you can read what director Gerard Johnson and star Peter Ferdinando told me about their film Tony, aka Tony: London Serial Killer. This film is perhaps our first real candidate for bona fide cult status in 2010. There was a /film exclusive clip from the film in last Friday’s /film UK update.
Tony is due for US release in April, has been available in UK cinemas and via UK VOD services since Friday, and launches today on UK R2 DVD.
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After the break you’ll find the next two installments of my “Frogumentary”, focusing on The Princess and the Frog animator Eric Goldberg and clean-up animator Marshall Toomey. You may wish to catch up on part one first.
I want to extend my congratulations to Goldberg who last night won a richly deserved Annie Award for Character Animation in a Feature Production with his rendering of Louis in The Princess and the Frog. You’ll get some idea of why from the video below.
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Coming to you weekly from my vantage point in good old Blighty, it’s Slashfilm UK. Anglos and Anglophiles rejoice as every Friday I’ll be bringing you a round up of news, links and coverage specific to the motion picture comings and goings here in the UK. Sometimes we’ll be talking about films that have already played in the US, other times it will be films that won’t make it to the US for a good while yet, and from time to time you’ll read about films that will never make it to the US at all.
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Below the break are the first installments of The Frogumentary, my videoblog from Walt Disney Animation Studios. It takes us behind the scenes of Disney’s The Princess and the Frog and the studio’s return to hand drawn animation. If you, like me, live in the UK, today’s the day the movie opens nationwide for you and, not to put too fine a point on it, I can’t really recommend it enough.
You may choose to watch all of the videoblog installments in order, and get an overview of the entire production pipeline for a modern hand-drawn animation movie, or you may choose to watch only the chapters that particularly interest you. After the break are the first two episodes. I hope you’ll agree that they push to go places that typical DVD supplements or TV coverage of movies don’t.
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Simon Pegg has Tweeted a link to the extended cast list for John Landis‘ Burke and Hare on IMDB. He indicated just one mistake on the roster - John Cleese will not be appearing - but called the rest of it “pretty spot on”. Not only does this mean that Spaced’s Tim and Daisy, Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes, will be reunited, but also that several other alumni of their sitcom will be cropping up, namely Michael Smiley, Bill Bailey and Reece Shearsmith. And then, not noted by Pegg in particular, there are also roles for some of my faves: Hugh Bonneville, John Woodvine and Ronnie Corbett. Superbness.
I’d previously wondered if Margaret Laird would be given space in the film’s narrative, and so far she’s not shown up on the list. Pegg does promise more surprises, however…
UPDATE: And now I’ve received an official press release to announce the start of production which lists both Tim Curry and Christopher Lee as being amongst the cast. it just keeps getting better and better.
One small mystery was put to rest as Paul Davis’ cameo was revealed to be as a patient, presumably of Dr. Knox.
Incidentally, the image at the top of the post shows the death masks of the real Burke and Hare.
Why hasn’t there ever been second series of Watchmen comics? It’s not as though Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons actually own the characters. Well, apparently, any talk of a sequel had been squashed, time and again, by Paul Levitz, former president of DC comics. He was very protective of the title, even denying the creators of the tie-in videogame to invent any new material at all. This was sacred stuff to him.
Now, though, he’s not in charge of the comics at all and is the Contributing Editor and Overall Consultant of DC Entertainment, the spin-off and movies arm. He’s not going to be able to do anything, directly, to stop any Watchmen sequel. More importantly, though, it seems that Dan DiDio, SVP-Executive Editor of DC, has made it his mission to realize not only a sequel series but also several prequels. Why? I suppose he’d say Why Not? And there’s good reason to believe they’ll be coming to screens as well as pages, too.
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There’s been even more gossip about a projected third Kill Bill film from Quentin Tarantino than about his long-delayed Whole Bloody Affair recut of the first two parts. The latest loose-lipped culprit to go sowing wild rumours is Daryl Hannah.
Hannah was speaking to UK TV channel Film 24 about her role in Raoul Ruiz’ A Closed Book when they got her on the topic of Tarantino’s Bride movies. In the first two films she played Elle Driver, the eye-patched Deadly Viper Assassin that we last saw losing her one good peeper. It was safe to assume she’d been offed, though apparently that’s not Daryl’s take. She told the channel:
He always meant it as a trilogy… Think about it. There’s always been a tradition of blind Samurais and you never actually saw her expire in the other film.
Does this mean we’re any closer to a Kill Bill threeque or spin-offl? Probably not, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find out her comments on the blind samurai role were actually founded in something Tarantino has told her.
There’s two new music promos of note for film enthusiasts, one from a music video director who branched into movies and the other, vice versa.
You can see both Michel Gondry’s promo clip for Mia Doi Todd and David Lynch’s introduction clip for Ariana Delawari’s album Lion of Panjsheer embedded below the break. There’s no way you’d get them mixed up: these works fall quite comfortably inside the expected output of their respective creators. But bear in mind that it’s a post Inland Empire digital sketch-artist Lynch we’re dealing with here, not the more painterly artist of his previous works.
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There’s been a lot of problems getting a fourth Bourne script in good shape. Writers have come and gone, Paul Greengrass left the project and Matt Damon even said he wouldn’t do another one unless Paul came back. So, I reckon the following bit of news was pretty much inevitable, if a little quicker coming than I might have expected.
Speaking at the UK premiere for Invictus, Damon gave the following update on the status of the Bourne franchise:
There’ll probably be a prequel of some kind with another actor and another director before we do another one, just because I think we’re probably another five years away from doing it - we’ve got to get a script.
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This rumour comes from a UK gossip magazine, so it’s almost certainly just been made-up. All the same, there’s an interesting kink or two in the details…
According to OK, Efron has been hand-picked for the role of Peter Parker by Tobey Maguire. We’d previously heard that Sam Raimi had personally selected Nimrod Antal for the director’s chair, and that didn’t turn out at all - the job went to Marc Webb. Perhaps (just perhaps) Raimi and Maguire did nominate their favoured replacements, and these favoured replacements were Antal and Efron. That’s not impossible.
Efron is currently making a concerted effort to get on board some good projects, and is currently tied-up with Brian Michael Bendis, creator of Ultimate Spider-Man, the comics that have inspired this new reboot of the movies. In a universe where Bendis has come over to Sony to redraft the new Spidey films, maybe Efron could have come with him. The questions is… do we really live in that universe? I doubt it, but it certainly doesn’t seem like too horrible a place.
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