Stephen Colbert is the Lord of the Lord of the Rings. The Colbert Report anchor appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live with his friend and Comedy Central colleague, Jon Stewart, to talk about how their cultural interests define them and to further fuel speculation that Colbert will be making a cameo in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.
Also in Friday morning's round-up of news briefs, Jodie Foster will be this year's recipient of the Golden Globes' Lifetime Achievement Award; Jack and Diane and A Late Quartet are among this weekend's previewed Specialty Release newcomers; And Showtime set for new Roman Polanski doc.
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The Hobbit caught some negative reaction when 10 minutes of unfinished footage played at the CinemaCon convention earlier this year in Las Vegas. But Sir Ian McKellen, who stars in The Lord of the Rings prequel, has defended the anticipated film directed by Peter Jackson, after early criticism from fans flared over how it looks in 3-D.
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If you'd like Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey to be a total surprise when it opens on Dec. 14, then, by all means, skip to another post on this page. You won't want to read my reference to a very in-depth — and whimsically illustrated — piece on the secrets of the first installment of the Hobbit trilogy. more »
Star Johnny Depp and a former death row inmate may be an unlikely pairing, but the two have shared ink and a film at the Toronto International Film Festival. Depp is just one of a number of celebrities that came to the aid of Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley and Jason Baldwin who spent 18 years in prison for the yet to be solved murders of three 8 year-old boys in Arkansas. Depp and Echols, now free as a result of a little-known legal maneuver called an Alford plea, sported matching tattoos at TIFF before the premiere of the documentary West of Memphis about the case that spawned films, media attention and calls by celebs around the country for their release.
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Hobbit director Peter Jackson is nothing if not a man of the people, so when he took to San Diego's Comic-Con earlier this month to present footage to 6,000+ lucky fans shortly after wrapping, he recorded a video diary to share with the rest of the Lord of the Rings faithful. Watch as Jackson navigates the perils of press junkets and Hall H's screaming fans, filming on his trusty iPhone along the way! Or, y'know... skip ahead a few minutes to fantastic 10+ minutes of behind-the-scenes peeks from the set of The Hobbit.
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After bringing 12 minutes of The Hobbit to Comic-Con — where Peter Jackson purposefully did not present footage in the 48 frames per second/3-D presentation that perplexed audiences at CinemaCon — the Lord of the Rings filmmaker spoke further about his desire to explore even more ground in the fantasy universe created by J.R.R. Tolkien. One possibility may be a third Hobbit film culled from Tolkien’s expansive LOTR notes and appendices, though Jackson admitted that the author’s posthumously published Silmarillion might present more of a challenge.
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In Friday morning's round-up of news briefs, The Amazing Spider-Man drums up solid numbers at the box office, while Peter Jackson's latest concludes shooting. Several of this weekend's new specialty releases are profiled; AMC ticket takers are taking the chain to court. And Valley Girl is getting a re-do.
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Peter Jackson is currently experiencing the direct opposite of the CinemaCon Oscar Hype phenomenon explored here last week, with his Hobbit — shot at the adventurous rate of 48 frames per second — drawing more than a few skeptics out of the geek woodwork. This calls for damage control.
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Unveiling 10 minutes of Hobbit footage in 3-D at the revolutionary frame rate of 48 frames per second (vs. the standard 24 fps), as Warner Bros. did Tuesday at CinemaCon, should have been the first big buzz moment for Peter Jackson's return to Middle Earth. The immediate reaction to the presentation, however, was anything but good news for the studio or for proponents of the kind of cutting-edge high frame rate cinema technology Jackson and folks like James Cameron and Douglas Trumbull have been championing as the future of film. Instead, it left members of the blogger corps. calling it "jarring," "non-cinematic," and "like a made for television BBC movie," predicting that audiences will be split in embracing the brave new advance.
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Are the Central Park Five the next West Memphis Three? The teenagers wrongfully convicted in the vicious 1989 rape and beating of jogger Tricia Meili — and only released after the actual attacker came forward in 2002 — will be showcased in a forthcoming Ken Burns documentary entitled, appropriately enough, The Central Park Five. And while the film was funded in part by Burns's longtime patrons at PBS, the two-time Oscar nominee and four-time Emmy winner (who co-directed the project with his daughter Sarah Burns and son-in-law David McMahon) is taking the film to Cannes next month with the hope of finding a theatrical distributor: "We want to do it [theatrically] because the running time makes it manageable, and there's something urgent about it," he told TV Guide this week. This sounds... familiar?
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Congratulations to Dan Lindsay and TJ Martin, whose film Undefeated lived up to its title at last night's Academy Awards by taking home the Best Documentary Feature Oscar. Exploring the intersection of class, race and a hard-luck high-school football team, the doc started earning fans a year ago at Sundance South by Southwest — including Harvey Weinstein, who acquired Undefeated on the spot and promptly fast-tracked it for 2012 awards glory. Mission accomplished. The only thing Undefeated didn't do? How about help get three unjustly convicted men — one condemned to die — out of prison?
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When James Franco took to the blogosphere to pledge his awards season support for Rise of the Planet of the Apes co-star Andy Serkis and his performance-captured turn in the film, Serkis was the one person who probably appreciated the gesture most, precisely because it did what he couldn’t do himself: Provide an argument in favor the art of performance capture as a mode of legitimate acting, from an outsider’s perspective. Serkis rang Movieline to chat and expressed appreciation for Franco’s open letter.
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The first batch of reviews are in for The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, Steven Spielberg's long-awaited big-budget adventure that attempts to revive the charming Hergé character (first introduced in 1929) with the most advanced motion capture technology money can buy. So what did the earlybird critics have to say?
Just when you thought that the trailers for Steven Spielberg's upcoming The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn couldn't get any more action-packed, Paramount and Columbia have unveiled a brand new peak at the highly-anticipated motion capture 3-D film that will have you frantically etching the release date -- December 23 in the U.S. -- onto every available calendar surface. Just like you've already done for Adam Sandler's Jack and Jill.
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