Immense as it is, it seems that The Hobbit isn’t all that Guillermo del Toro has on the boil. Beyond being just six months or so into a many-year journey to bring the Baggins family back to the silver screen, he’s now teasing that there’s another big project – or big for him at least, he says – about to come to light. What could it be? Thankfully, there are clues lying about and you can peruse them after the break.
Posted on Friday, September 4th, 2009 by Brendon Connelly
That short silent film which Neil Gaiman is currently in the midst of directing, and as reported on earlier, is to start shooting this Sunday. From the info now available, we know that it’s going to be called Statuesque, will star Bill Nighy and Amanda Palmer, pop star and Gaiman’s girlfriend, and is one of a series of films commissioned by Rupert Murdoch’s UK based Sky TV, each to mark one of the twelve days of Christmas. The film is going to be short, at eight minutes long, and I’m prepared to bet it ends up rather sweet too.
After the break: where and when the shoot is taking place.
Posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 by Brendon Connelly
Courtesy of his wonderful blog, as readable as it is popular and probably the most popular individual’s blog in the world, Neil Gaiman is currently in London in pre-production of a silent short film for British TV. This will be his second outing as director after the wonderful A Short Film About John Bolton, a documentary (ahem) about the famed comic artist and his uncommonly powerful paintings of vampires. That one had talking – lots of talking.
For some time now, Gaiman has been set to make his feature film directing debut with Death and Me, adapted from his Death: The High Cost of Living comics. Whether or not this project is still coming or has been stopped in its tracks is not entirely clear but those of you who read my script review will know just how keenly I’d like to see it come to fruition. Before that, if I remember correctly, he almost collaborated with the Weinsteins on a story about the true authorship of Shakespeare’s plays but that one seems pretty much entirely forgotten now.
Posted on Monday, August 10th, 2009 by Brendon Connelly
Digging deep behind the scenes of the recent purchase by Marvel of the character Marvelman (aka Miracleman) from Mick Anglo and Emotiv Records, Rich Johnston at Bleeding Cool has discovered an aborted $80 million Marvelman movie, based upon the Alan Moore run of the comics and – if it all went to plan – co-scripted by Neil Gaiman and an unnamed “A-list screenplay writer”. Sadly, we’ll never get to see this film now but there’s every chance that Marvel will cash in on their new acquisition with a film of their own. Well, one day. And we can pretty much guarantee that Gaiman writing to Alan Moore plots would be eschewed in favour something more like a Brian Michael Bendis and Zak Penn cocktail.
It doesn’t quite add up to me, but the first official confirmation of an in-development Dr. Who movie has been buried by the BBC at the bottom of a considerably less interesting article on one of the Who spin-off TV shows.
Widely acclaimed as the best Dr. ever, David Tennant has this past week completed the filming of his final episodes of the show. In the next month, filming begins with the next Dr., to be played by Matt Smith. Unlike, say, James Bond, Dracula or… er… Reggie Perrin, each actor to play the role of Dr. in the series is actually a new, regenerated incarnation of the same character in the same continuity so the swapping out of actors requires no kind of rebooting. I’ve been hearing rumors for a while that the transfer from Tennant to Smith would be an odd one, however…
Posted on Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 by David Chen
In this episode of the /Filmcast, David Chen, Devindra Hardawar and Adam Quigley share reflections from New York Comic-Con, evaluate the merits of Andrew Niccol’s directorial/writing career, and contemplate a future full of board-game-to-movie adaptations. Special guest Steve Weintraub (AKA Frosty) from Collider joins us this evening.
Tune in next Monday night to Slashfilm’s live page at 9 PM EST / 6 PM PST as we review Tom Tykwer’s The International.
Download or Play Now:
[audio:http://bitcast-a.bitgravity.com/slashfilm/filmcast/Slashfilmcastep37.mp3]
Subscribe to the /Filmcast:
Posted on Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 by Kevin Kelly
Editor’s Note: This is the debut post by Kevin Kelly, who will be offering his expertise in geekdom in a new /Film daily blog feature called GeekBomb. Welcome Kevin to /Film!
Neil Gaiman’s Coraline opens this weekend, and it’s directed by Henry Selick, one of the few modern masters of stop-motion animation. Although he was trained as a traditional animator, he really came to fame with stop-motion, having directed The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, and Monkeybone. In the day and age of everything being whipped up in CGI, it’s really a testament to see people work in a medium that requires hours of tedious work on films that can take an extremely long time to produce. Which is why the Sundance opening night film Mary & Max was such a treat.
Whenever someone mentions stop-motion, most people tend to think of one of the above movies, or the equally excellent Chicken Run or Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit, both co-directed by the amazing Nick Park. And just to be clear, I’m not calling Monkeybone excellent… but the stop-motion moments are pretty damned awesome. You just have to love a naughty monkey sometimes. Even though most of those films are fairly recent, stop-motion animation has been around in one form or another for more than one hundred years. Click through for the highlights and milestones of this under appreciated art form.
