The producers of Fox’s hit action serial television series 24 have been talking about doing a big screen movie adaptation for years now. I just assumed that it was one of those things that would never happen, and that the made for television movie prequel they did last season was an easy out. Well it looks like star/producer Kiefer Sutherland is serious about bringing Jack Bauer to the big screen, as he has convinced Fox to hire Billy Ray to pen the screenplay adaptation. All we know about the planned story for the feature film is that it will be set in Europe. Sutherland and producers have said that the big screen movie would be “a two-hour representation of a day.”
MTV has released a new redesigned logo, after a 30-year run with the classic iconic Frank Olinsky-designed logo we all grew up with. The redesign isn’t that much different, mostly a one color close-up. The big change is the exclusion of the “Music Television” tagline, which had run underneath the original. Of course, this is a long time coming. as MTV hasn’t been considered a music television network in years. And today most of the program is teen-focused reality shows. Read More »
Things haven’t been going as planned for FlashForward, ABC’s Lost-replacement sci-fi drama that debuted last fall. Ratings have dropped steadily for the series since it launched, it lost Marc Guggenheim as its first showrunner in November (who was replaced by co-creator David Goyer), and then ABC decided to extend the show’s hiatus until March to avoid January competition. Oh, and it’s also sort of terrible.
Now ABC has another reason to sweat — Goyer has announced that he’s stepping down as showrunner as well. The series still has five episodes to shoot of its remaining 23-episode season order, and it’s not yet known who will be replacing Goyer.
I’ve heard that the folks over at Walt Disney Pictures are going nuts for Tron: Legacy, and think it will be huge. A new report coming from AICN claims that Disney might also developing some spin-off television series spin-off for 2011/2012 (probably for Disney XD). No word on if it would be animated or live action, although I’m not sure how they could do live-action and compete with the million dollar effects in Tron: Legacy. So my guess is it is probably animated, most probably computer animated. For now, mark this as rumor.
Also, the new trailer for the Tron sequel is expected to screen before Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, but that is to be expected as Alice is released in 3D by Disney, so it is the perfect promotional venue. This also explains why Disney recently released a new production photo (of Jeff Bridges) from the film. Studios tend to do this right before the release of a new trailer. AICN’s scooper claims the new spot is much longer, almost two and a half minutes in length.
Too bad Russ has already filled the week’s /Film: The Movie quota, because this post is writhing on the floor for our fave bad joke. Director Bill Condon (Dreamgirls, Kinsey) is developing and writing a proposed half-hour series for HBO set in the hectic and catty world of Hollywood movie blogging. If the network takes the next step forward, THR reports that Condon would direct the pilot episode, in addition to being the series’ executive-producer.
Oddly titled, Tilda, with no relation to the ivory actress, the lead character is said to be a female, take-no-prisoners veteran writer/blogger, which automatically conjures Deadline’s L.A.-based Nikki Finke, followed by the less polarizing and /Filmcast-friended Anne Thompson. I checked and was disappointed to find that Finke has not yet commented on the series using a characteristic “TOLDJA!” and complimentary clip art of a monitor and a steaming cup of joe.
Sharing writing and producing duties on Tilda is Cynthia Mort, who worked on Will & Grace and created the sexually provocative, short-lived HBO series (and Adam Scott-starrer) Tell Me You Love Me. Regarding Tilda, it could offer a field day for insidery jokes and awkward sweatshirt-clad cameos from West Coast peers. Further blending the worlds of film and high-concept teevee, Condon recently helmed the pilot for Showtime’s cancer-topical comedy series The C Word.
Our stateside readers who dig serial killer procedural-thrillers in the vein of Zodiac and Silence of the Lambs should make a blood-scrawled note of Britain’s Red Riding Trilogy. This Friday, the epic triptych begins a one week run at IFC Center in New York City, complete with two intermissions and a free popcorn (caution to the hemoglobin phobes, the elderly, and flatulent ). I recently attended all three entries, titled 1974, 1980, and 1983, and definitely recommend the five-hour experience, both for the project’s interconnected, serpentine plotting and to contrast the clear stylistic and tonal differences between the three directors.
Below is an exclusive Slashfilm clip from 1974, which I felt in my review is the superior entry thanks to the charged noir vision of director Julian Jarrold (Brideshead Revisited) and a star-making performance by Andrew Garfield, as a young journo submerged in idealism, booze, and mutton-chopped pheromones. Garfield’s conveyed arrogant dissonance seethes through in this excerpted scene, and the actor is set for a high profile 2010 with upcoming roles in David Fincher’s Facebook drama The Social Network and Mark Romanek’s mysterious Never Let Me Go. He also participated in Spike Jonze’s short film and /fave, I’m Here…
Without spoiling the film, here’s context for the above scene: Garfield’s character, Eddie Dunford, hungry for his big break and his mum’s approval, is researching and investigating the fresh case of a missing girl in Northern England. In the cig-smoke clouded office of his newspaper, Dunford’s equally clouded by older, world-weary cynics. In this particular scene, Dunford is adamant that the recent arrest of an alleged abductor is bullocks. At clip’s conclusion, he finds a suspicious card on his boss’s desk, evidently filled with warm-sentiments from a shady developer named John Dawson (the unseen Sean Bean in a sleazy role that rivals Garfield’s in arrogant machismo).
Dawson’s card is just further proof that the media is in bed with shady elites who are in bed with the cops—all the while nobody seems to give a shit that young girls—those eluded to in the trilogy’s title—are being picked off the street by a madman (men?). Yorkshire in the ’70s, evil was a fan. Also, note the presence in the scene of the always-good Eddie Marsan, who adds a wild-and-defeated-eyed unpredictability to the film(s)—a familiar gift to anyone who saw him in last year’s Happy-Go-Lucky.
It’s a crazy, mixed up world and we are thankful for movies, excluding The Spy Next Door and The Tooth Fairy, that offer proof. /Film’s Weekend Weirdness examines such flicks, whether in the form of a new trailer for a provocative indie, a mini review, or an interview. In this installment, new trailers and a review of the Red Riding Trilogy, a noirish triptych of serial killer dramas imported from British television and being released stateside in February by IFC Films.
During a screening of the entire Red Riding Trilogy, with one intermission allotted for lunch, I found myself pondering the irony in three directors, one screenwriter, one author, tens of actors and three separate crews realizing a project that depicts humanity and bureaucracy at its most foul and irreversibly corrupt. A recent poster for the trilogy forebodingly reads, “Evil Lives Here,” a tagline that would serve most of the work that exits Stephen King’s skull; instead the “here” in Red Riding is Northern England in the ’70s and early ’80s, when a serial killer known as the Yorkshire Ripper carved a trail of female victims and set a mood and mythos ripe for social reflection.
Posted on Saturday, January 30th, 2010 by Peter Sciretta
On Friday, the opening scene from the premiere episode of Lost: Season Six leaked online. This weekend, a three minute sequence from the upcoming premiere episode, “LA X”, premiered on Verizon and was uploaded to YouTube. The video quality isn’t too greatA better digital copy is now online, but I know some of you out there just can’t wait until Tuesday night. So check it out now, after the jump, and feel free to discuss it in the comments below (which means if you don’t watch the clip, be aware the comments might contain spoilers). Read More »
ABC held a sweepstakes which resulted in 815 winners receiving an exclusive message in a bottle, with a digital key containing the opening scene to the final season premiere of LOST, days before it premieres on television. Sl-lost has photos of one of the winner’s bottle, and spoilerfiles has the actual 4-minute scene online, which I have embedded after the jump.
Beware — this is the actual first four minutes of the season six premiere of LOST, Episode LA X. This is not a joke, not a rickroll. Do not watch it now if you don’t want to see it until the premiere! Read More »
Lost showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse appeared on NPR to offer their DVD recommendations to Steve Inskeep. You can listen to the seven minute broadcast segement here, or listen to the entire extended 26-minute interview by clicking here.
MTV has released a new redesigned logo, after a 30-year run with the classic iconic Frank Olinsky-designed logo we all grew up with. The redesign isn’t that much different, mostly a one color close-up. The big change is the exclusion of the “Music Television” tagline, which had run underneath the original. Of course, this is a long time coming. as MTV hasn’t been considered a music television network in years. And today most of the program is teen-focused reality shows.
