Posted on Friday, March 15th, 2013 by Angie Han
It took Rob Thomas and Kristen Bell several years to get as far as a Kickstarter campaign for the long-awaited Veronica Mars movie sequel, and fans less than twelve hours to scrape together the necessary $2 million budget. Now, just as promised, Warner Bros. has officially greenlit the movie. All that’s left for us at this point is the waiting. By Thomas’ own estimates, Veronica Mars won’t hit theaters for another year or so.
On the plus side, though, that means there’s plenty of time to revisit the original series before picking back up with the Neptune crowd. Hit the jump to find out where you can stream it online for free. Plus, learn more about how exactly Warner Bros. plans to make the movie.
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Posted on Wednesday, March 13th, 2013 by Angie Han
Update from Editor Peter Sciretta: In less than 12 hours from launching the kickstarter, Rob Thomas has raised over $2,000,000 for the Veronica Mars movie, hitting the goal of the project. Of course, they have 30 days left to go, and will still need the fans to help raise more money to allow them to do more in the story. $2 million might sound like a lot to many of you, but consider they lose an estimated $400,000 to Kickstarter fees and taxes. They will likely have to pay 20% in fees and taxes of any future raised funds too. And they also need to pay for the various rewards to those who have and will fund this project, which includes shipping posters, t-shirts, dvds and box sets. The film will likely have to be a union production, and while its expected the actors will be working close to scale (and participate in the back end) it still will be very costly at the absolute minimum level. Basically I’m saying, just because they’ve hit the goal doesn’t mean you shouldn’t “donate.” Do you want to see a good movie? Haven’t donated yet? You still have 30 days… The original story from Angie Han can be read after the jump.
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Yesterday the news came out that the third season of BBC’s Sherlock is about to go into production, with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman reprising their lead roles as modern day versions of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.
There was some question as to whether the third season might be the show’s last. Scheduling the long shoot is difficult, as each of the three episodes per season is basically structured like a mini-movie, and Cumberbatch and Freeman are increasingly busy with movie careers.
But now Cumberbatch has confirmed that a fourth season is planned. Read More »
There has been speculation about MGM’s remake of Poltergeist for a long time now. It reached a height when Sam Raimi was announced as a producer, and once we thought there was a chance he would direct. But now MGM has announced the studio’s choice for director: Gil Kenan, who directed the animated film Monster House and the YA adaptation City of Ember. Read More »
Jane Campion‘s last film was the truly excellent Bright Star, and after a movie like that I’d normally leap at any opportunity to see the director’s next effort. But I missed Campion’s new mini-series Top of the Lake at Sundance, because doing the project justice required a seven-hour commitment, and I couldn’t make that work at the fest.
On television, however, Top of the Lake has room to stretch. This trailer for the procedural suggests that the relatively short time investment is one very much worth making. Top of the Lake stars Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men) as an investigator who leads the search for a missing girl in an unusual, challenging township. The impressive supporting cast also includes actors such as Peter Mullan, David Wenham, and Holly Hunter, who could be mistaken as playing Campion.
Check out the trailer below. Read More »
Shane Carruth‘s film Upstream Color is my favorite film of the year so far. The strange but tender love story is colored with surprising and unsettling sci-fi concepts, all told in a manner that perfectly straddles the line between direct and oblique.
A big part of the film’s success is the score, composed by Carruth. At times the music provides big swells of sound on which the narrative action can roll forward, and at others the compositions are more halting, to echo the evolution of some of the action on screen.
The full score is available now to stream, and also for pre-order on vinyl, which comes with a DRM-free digital download. The good news is that the track titles, which can be read in the streaming embed below, don’t give away anything about the plot. Those who’ve seen the film will know what they refer to, but for the great many people who haven’t yet had a chance to see the movie, the titles will be no more spoiler-laden than the trailers. Read More »
Steven Soderbergh, so often adventurous over the course of his career, closes out his theatrical run with the relatively conventional thriller Side Effects. Though the ideas within are familiar, a winding narrative path keeps predictability out of sight, and prevents Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns from ever falling back to one simplistic message. Soderbergh’s own skill with the form allows him to pursue that path at length, without losing the plot.
Starting off with pharmacological paranoia, the two take clear inspiration from Rosemary’s Baby, and toy with notions that call back to Hitchcock. But this is no throwback. Soderbergh has crafted a smart but pessimistic film rooted firmly in fears that are becoming more and more common today.
The film is built around a woman (Rooney Mara) who suffers from severe depression and falls into the care of a potentially dodgy psychiatrist. Side Effects traffics in the tone of modern paranoia that defined previous Soderbergh/Burns collaboration Contagion, and revels in the duplicity that was a cornerstone of their first partnership, The Informant!. The three films define something like an informal trilogy in which we are chronically disconnected, dishonest, and perhaps eventually doomed. Read More »
I saw three films at Sundance this year that I would characterize as incredibly specific, because they dedicate themselves so thoroughly to a premise and aesthetic that they exist as their own one-film subgenres. All three were so distinct that there’s really nothing else like them. One was the “shot in Disneyland” breakdown Escape From Tomorrow (coverage here); another was Charlie Victor Romeo (review), sourced from flight recorder transcripts of cockpit conversations in flights that ended in disaster. And the last was Computer Chess, from writer/director Andrew Bujalski (Funny Ha Ha and Beeswax)
Shot on Sony AVC-3260 video cameras from 1969, the film is grainy and black and white, and has some strange glitches and artifacts that occasionally seem to have more deliberate life than you’d expect. Ostensibly documenting a small convention of software developers who pit their chess-playing algorithms against one another, the film really looks into a strange crossroads where socially cloistered personalities seek to develop early artificial intelligence. How can people who know so little about life seek to create intelligence from scratch?
I still don’t know if I like Computer Chess, exactly, because I don’t think it fully follows up on some very promising ideas. But I found it to be memorable, and I greatly respect the film. It takes a certain sort of drive and vision to craft a film with a personality as unique as this one. Check out a bit of footage below.
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