Saw IV Director Hypes Ending
It looks like the end of Saw IV is going to be a bit of a shocker if director Darren Lynn Bousman’s comments are anything to go by: “When I first read it, I was on page 85 but I didn’t feel any way about it, I wasn’t pissed or excited really until I got to page 87. When I hit page 87, I was like ‘God damn it, they got me!’ And I’ve fucking done this for the last three years and they got me and that’s when I knew that I had to come back because everything before that thing took a whole different light to it.” The Saw series is notorious for it’s unexpected and often ingenious narrative twists, but Bousman’s really sold it to me this time, I mean, it shocked a guy who already knew quite a lot about it! What’s it going to do to me? Read the rest of this entry »
The American Film Institute has once again released it’s annually updated list of the “Top 100 Greatest Movies of All-Time”. I personally disagree with a fair few placements, but then again, who am I? I am no film scholar! All I know is that The Shawshank Redemption is better than Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs - so a gulf of 38 places seems absurd. Maybe I’ll compile my own list, that’ll show them. At the top? Uhhh, an Asian film, you know I’m a sucker for those foreign flicks. Wow, this post was a little more informal than usual. Anyway, read on and experience the AFI list. 
What? Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese are going to work together? Again? Why, that’s unbelievable, who would have dreamed of such a thing? Oh wait…the people who helped make the 8 other films they collaborated on. Yeah well, they’re back together for a ninth time on a new project entitled Frankie Machine, which sees De Niro play a retired hitman. Based on the book The Winter of Frankie Machine by Don Winslow, the screenplay will be adapted by Brian Koppelman and David Levien, the guys behind such films as Ocean’s Thirteen, Walking Tall and Runaway Jury. No indication of when the project is going to commence shooting and subsequently, no whisper of a possible release date, so be patient! 
Marvel are determined to milk their comic franchises for all they are worth and it has now been confirmed that The Avengers will be the next entity to make the transition from page to silver screen. Zak Penn, the writer behind such films as X2 and Elektra, is due to write the script and as of yet, there has been no news of who will step in to direct. The vast nature of The Avengers as a group could see some of our favourite Marvel characters unite, whether the correct actors will reprise their roles is unknown, but if they did, it would be a pretty cool movie right? 
So I was doing my usual rounds today, checking all the major scoop sites for something that may be of interest to me and this new D-War trailer appeared to be a rather regular fixture. It may have been the awesome posters that drew me in, but it was the trailer that really got me excited; after all, the last Korean monster I saw was The Host and that was fantastic. The trailer is short but, as I’m sure you’ll agree, intriguing, with the final scene depicting a large serpent-like dragon curled around a skyscraper in a King-Kong meets Anaconda sort-of fashion (if you have any better serpent examples, send them in, there’s no need to glorify a snake that killed Ice Cube). I had actually heard about the project before, but as such things do, it had slipped from my mind and I wasn’t expecting it to appear in such a fashion. 
Not only are this year’s Hollywood blockbusters grossing astronomical amounts in their usual territories, it seems that they have also swept away the competition elsewhere, in places where domestic cinema is often more successful than the produce of its Californian counterpart. This weeks box office figures from South Korea show that Shrek the Third managed to amass $11.3 million worth of ticket sales in just 3 days - Korea’s biggest animated film opening ever. The Mike Myer’s voiced ogre managed to leapfrog Hwang Jin Yi, a film which received a wider release than Shrek and was expected to take in more than the $4.9 million it ended up with. Shrek’s success follows similar triumphs from Spider-man 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean as both films went on to gross $34 million and $31 million respectively, marking them as Korea’s two highest earning films of the year. If only us here in the English speaking world would accept foreign films so readily, it could happen you know. 
I know I’ve always got a friend in Randy Newman, but Woody and his pals won’t be back on our screens until 2010, so what’s filling the gap between this year’s Ratatouille and such a far-off prospect? Well, Pixar have recently announced it and it’s called Up. Due for a 2009 release, Up - according to 
Kim Jee-Woon’s A Tale of Two Sisters is an absolutely masterful horror film, so I am understandably skeptical of the upcoming Western remake which will no doubt turn out to be just as poor as The Grudge was. Anyway, Elizabeth Banks (Slither, Spider-man 3, 40 Year Old Virgin) has now signed onto the project which makes me feel a little better about it - at least it will be watchable now (with the sound turned off perhaps). She’ll be stepping into the shoes of the cruel stepmother who terrorizes her partners’ two mentally ill daughters, preventing their recovery…that sounds really vague, but I don’t want to give anything away because the film is pretty genius. Anyway, Banksy’s on the cast list and I’m happy, man, I’m so shallow. 
I’m not the biggest fan of Gus Van Sant, I know quite a few people that worship the ground he walks on and I concede that he has made some excellent films (Good Will Hunting anyone?), but I really couldn’t stand Elephant and after I watched it, my opinion of him was considerably lower. Nevertheless, his film Paranoid Park was received well at Cannes and now he has started work on a new project entitled The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, so I thought I’d better mention it. The film will be a big-screen adaption of a 1960s novel by Tom Wolfe, which is as bizarre as it sounds (well, maybe not quite that strange). According to 
As expected Ocean’s Thirteen claimed first place in the weekend box office figures, taking in a relatively decent $37.1m and knocking Pirates of the Caribbean off the top spot, however it was still the worst opening for a film in the Ocean’s franchise, taking in roughly $1m less than Ocean’s Eleven when that was released in 2001. Elsewhere in the charts, Surf’s Up enjoyed an $18m opening whilst Hostel: Part II languished down at 6th with a measly $8.75m for it’s first few days and Knocked Up continued it’s strong run by raking in another $20m, bringing it’s total gross to $60m (almost double it’s $33m budget).
