I can remember all the way back to 1975 and seeing Disney’s Escape to Witch Mountain in the theater. I was seven years old at the time it came out in March of that year. I don’t remember a whole lot from that age, but I definitely remember that movie because I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. I so wanted to be like the kids in that movie that I had dreams about it for weeks to come. I can also vividly remember the sequel, Return from Witch Mountain, which came out three years later. The fact that I loved both movies as a kid shows that my critical thinking skills still had a ways to go as watching the films today I can see a lot of flaws in them, but they still hold a special place in my memories of childhood.

So it goes without saying that I was intrigued to find a trailer for the remake titled Race to Witch Mountain:

I know you can’t judge a movie by its trailer, but I’d be lying if I didn’t mention that my inner-7 and 10 year-olds are totally geeking out over that trailer.

According to this item on MTV.com:

With Halloween mere days away, it was a nice surprise when Neil Gaiman dropped by the MTV offices to discuss his latest project, “The Graveyard Book” — now number one on its respective New York Times list. Given the intense interest in Hollywood to adapt it before it ever came out, we had to ask: Will there be a movie version?

Yes, according to Gaiman.

“I don’t know if I can talk about this, but seeing that you’ve asked me, and seeing that I haven’t been told by anybody that I can’t talk about it,” Neil revealed, “but yes.”

[...] “They want to start making films, and start producing their own films,” Gaiman said. “And they read it, and they loved it, and I spoke to them, and they said all the right things, and they seem to listen. So I don’t think it’s going to be transported to a graveyard in Los Angeles where they’ve been burying bathing beauties or anything. I think we’re actual going to stick with where the book is written and film that. And I think part of the idea is that they know they can also do the special effects cheaply.”

That will be a big issue for this film, considering most of the characters are “dead, or werewolves, or ghouls, or something else mysterious,” Gaiman said.

Exactly how that will be achieved — what levels of transparency are the ghosts? How corporeal can they get? — is “part of the fun of making the film,” he said. “There’s probably going to be an awful lot of screen tests to figure how you can pull it off in the subtlest, coolest, and most convincing way, and that will be a job for next year.”

The fact that Gaiman is producing the film fills me with hope that it’ll be a good adaptation.

Not impressed with the kids making their own Doctor Who episode? Then how about kids making their own Star Wars movie, with help from Dad of course:

Best part of all? No Jar Jar.

A bunch of kids, with some help from Dad no doubt, film their own episode of Doctor Who versus the Daleks complete with music and appropriately low-budget special effects. It is a six minute and forty-three second tour de force:

The thing that makes this so cool to me is I can remember desperately wanting a film, and later a video, camera as a kid so I could make my own movies. My brother actually had a silent Super 8MM film camera that I used a couple of times to make small movies with, one of which was my own episode of the Mr. Bill Show of which I was a big fan*. I spent hours trying to figure out cheap ways of doing the special effects I’d need for my up and coming Space Epic, building ships out of Styrofoam, putting together model kits and so on, all for naught as in the end I didn’t have access to a camera with enough running time to do what I wanted to do. Nothing I did manage to put together comes close to what these kids have got up on YouTube. It’s a testament to how far technology has come in both ease of use and price that these kids put together a complete film that’s easily as entertaining as anything on prime time American television, if not more so.  The fact that millions of people around the world are also able to view it, whereas most of my attempts were barely watched by my own family, is also pretty amazing. Wish we had had this kind of stuff when I was a kid.

Found over at Boing Boing.

^{*I actually dressed up as Mr. Bill for Halloween one year. No one had a clue who the fuck I was supposed to be.}

It seems all the excitement surrounding the Ghostbusters video game has gotten the studio’s attention and rumor has it that they’re now thinking of making an actual third film. Activision has mysteriously pulled all references to the anticipated game from recent press releases as well as the just past PAX08 convention (though lanyards bearing the Ghostbusters logo did end up at the show). Now an email from Harold Ramis to the Chicago Tribune Pop Machine blog confirms it’s under way:

“yes, columbia is developing a script for GB3 with my year one writing partners, gene stupnitsky and lee eisenberg.  judd apatow is co-producing year one and has made several other films for sony, so of course the studio is hoping to tap into some of the same acting talent. aykroyd, ivan reitman and i are consulting at this point, and according to dan, bill murray is willing to be involved on some level.  he did record his dialogue for the new ghostbusters video game, as did danny and i, and ernie hudson.  the concept is that the old ghostbusters would appear in the film in some mentor capacity.  not much else to say at this point.  everyone is confident a decent script can be written and i guess we’ll take it from there.
best,
harold

Oh that doesn’t sound good to me at all. Mentor capacity implies they’re handing it off to a new bunch of people and I’m not terribly impressed with the movies Judd Apatow has put out so far. Again maybe it’s a sign I’m getting old, but I’d rather see a third film created and starring the original people. If it holds up the release of the video game, which was billed as an unofficial “third movie” by Ramis, then there’s even more reason to be annoyed.

The trailers make it look somewhat interesting, but when the director of the movie himself tells you it sucks then it’s probably not one to spend money on:

Diesel emphasizes the movie’s theme of smuggling people across national borders. “This whole thing that’s happening in Georgia right now is so fresh that no one has even asked about it yet,“ he says. “We’re coming into an age where borders are closing, and I think that our society will be numb to it because of our freedom in the virtual world, our freedom in the Internet.“

But according to Kassovitz, Babylon A.D. fails to deliver any of these messages. “It’s pure violence and stupidity,“ he admits. “The movie is supposed to teach us that the education of our children will mean the future of our planet. All the action scenes had a goal: They were supposed to be driven by either a metaphysical point of view or experience for the characters… instead parts of the movie are like a bad episode of 24.“

Yeah, that’ll be a rental from Netflix.

Well if this rumor at First Showing is true then my enthusiasm for a live-action Cowboy Bebop movie just flew out the window.

Interesting trivia note about the child actor playing the part of Tom Riddle (a.k.a. Voldemort before he became a bad ass). His name is Hero Fiennes-Tiffin and he’s the nephew of Ralph Fiennes who plays Voldemort proper. Anyway, he’s the new trailer:

This small trailer doesn’t do it justice. You can see it in high definition here.

This could be good or bad. I’m a big fan of the Cowboy Bebop anime series so word that a live action American-made film based on the series is intriguing and worrying at the same time. Veteran producer Erwin Stoff and FOX just signed the deal a short while ago and Stoff promises they’ll stay faithful to the series:

Stoff goes on to explain his enthusiasm for the project and their attempts to remain faithful. “I have such an enormous admiration for its creators, that our first and foremost concern is going to be a real degree of faithfulness to the tone of the movie, to the mix of genres, and so on and so forth. When I met with them in Japan, one of the first things that I brought up was the experience that we had on A Scanner Darkly, and how hard we worked to remain faithful to Philip K. Dick, and that was our big concern here.“ Don’t get confused, this does not mean that they’re going for a similar animated look like A Scanner Darkly, as he explicitly said that it’s going to be live-action.

It seems there’s going to be a lot of live-action American-produced anime films coming down the pike. Dragonball Z is already well into production (not that I have any interest in it) and word has it that we can expect to see Ghost in the Shell and Akira in the not too distant future. It remains to be seen if these titles will make the transition to live action and an American interpretation intact, but Dragonball Z is looking pretty fucking cheezy so far.

As hokey as it was I loved the original Tron. I was 14 years old when Tron hit theaters in 1982 and it was a movie aimed squarely at my computer geek button. Rumors of a sequel have been floating around for years and now it appears, some 26 years later, that it’s in production:

Courtesy of the folks at Disney, Comic Con got a surprise look at a scene from the film. The teaser starts off with the camera panning through a strange stylized landscape. At this point, nobody knew what we were watching, so only silence filled the hall. And then, two blue/yellow suit-wearing motorcyclists burst into frame, engaged in a frenzy of a race. Audiences erupted in applause.

The race continues to grow heated between the two players until the yellow guy finds a way to swerve in front of the blue, leaving his yellow race trail behind him. The blue guy smashes into it and causes sort of an electric ripple, launching him over the edge of the track. He grabs on a ledge, just barely holding on.

We then see a bearded Jeff Bridges in his house, sitting calmly with his legs crossed.

Back to the virtual world, we see the yellow guy standing over the blue. His visor lifts up, revealing Bridges underneath. The blue guy shouts, “This is just a game!” Bridges looks down, smiles, and pulls out a glowing yellow circular disc (fans will probably know the name of this thing). Looking at the camera, he swings the disc down violently and the title lights up on screen: Tr2n.

Pardon me for a moment while I have a complete Nerdgasm. **Does the Geek Happy Dance**

From another account of the trailer over at MTV Movies blog it appears Bridges may be playing the villain this time around. Man I hope someone uploads that trailer to the net soon as it appears it’ll be the only footage shown for the next year or so as the film is said to be scheduled for 2010.

The folks who brought you Cloverfield have teamed up with the folks who produce Sesame Street for the next big monster movie smash:

Looks good!

It’s a short promotional clip for the new movie, but it made me laugh:

So gonna see this film.

That’s what the folks over at IO9 are saying about it.

Note, the following discussion pretty much spoils the whole movie so if you think you might want to see it then don’t read any further. I’ll put it below the fold just in case.

... but I have a hard time not looking at it like it was some sort of horrible car accident:

Chewbacca and a Jawa dance to Footloose, Princess Leia and Queen Amidala are Girls Just Want to Have Fun, and Darth Vader is a Thriller in Dance Off with the Star Wars Stars, part of the 2008 Star Wars Weekends Hyperspace Hoopla show at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

This small piece of cherished memory crushing video was found over at /Film.

We went and saw the latest Indiana Jones movie yesterday and I had low expectations because of some of the reviews I’d been reading from around the web. The film was actually more enjoyable than I had expected, but it helps if you keep in mind that realism has never been a strong point in any

Indiana Jones film. There’s a lot of stuff that happens in this film that strains the suspension of disbelief so far beyond the breaking point that you’ll sprain your brain if you think about it too hard, so just switch off and let it wash over you and you should have a good time.

The rest of this review will contain some potential spoilers so stop reading now if you don’t want to know anything more about the plot.