‘Dark Knight’ sequel gets official release date
via Khaleej Times
Warner Bros. has set July 20, 2012, as the release date for the third Christopher Nolan-directed Batman movie.
The studio has barely begun the process of developing the movie, which isn’t yet titled. Nolan is in postproduction on the sci-fi thriller “Inception,” which opens July 16, but is hammering out a story with David Goyer.
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Smokin’ Jonah Hex trailer: Megan Fox and gatling guns!
by Patrick Lee at Sci Fi Wire
The new trailer has gone live for Jonah Hex, the upcoming supernatural western starring Josh Brolin and Megan Fox.
Jimmy Hayward directed the movie, based on the comic-book series, which stars Brolin as Jonah Hex, a hideously scarred bounty hunter with supernatural abilities. John Malkovich also stars.
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Chris Hemsworth’s Thor: First official pic makes us believers
by Scott Edelman at Sci Fi Wire
No hammer, no helmet, but still—the guy’s a god, right?
After photos started leaking from the set of Thor, Paramount and Marvel decided there was no point in holding back and so released the first official photo of Chris Hemsworth as the Thunder God.
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Whose Famed Weapon Is Tony Stark Building In Iron Man 2?
By Cyriaque Lamar at io9
This may be soundless, low-quality leaked footage of Iron Man 2, but that’s certainly Tony Stark holding one of the most iconic pieces of superhero paraphernalia in comic book history. Spoilers way on!
It’s a prototype for Captain America’s shield, natch!
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‘Metropolis’ miracle
by V.A. Musetto at the New York Post
IN one of the cinematic events of the year, a newly reconstructed print of Fritz Lang’s silent German sci-fi mas terwork “Metropolis” is making its New York debut at Film Forum.
The new 147-minute print contains almost 30 minutes of long-lost footage discovered in 2008 in Argentina. It’s not Lang’s original 153-minute cut, but it’s the closest we’ll probably ever get to it.
Lang’s original debuted in Berlin in 1927. It was trimmed over the years, and by 1984 was down to 87 minutes. A “definitive” 2002 restoration got the running time to 124 minutes. Then, two years ago, came the almost miraculous discovery of a 16mm print containing 1,257 shots long believed lost forever.
“When the new footage suddenly turned up, we were flabbergasted,” says Bruce Goldstein, the Forum’s director of repertory programming.
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Princes and Princesses
René Walling at Tor
Snow White, The Snow Queen, The Selfish Giant, Little Red Riding Hood, are just some of the fairy tales that have been animated at one point or another. Very often, the tales are reworked, put in a different setting, or mixed together with varying results ranging from lackluster (Hoodwinked) to excellent (Shrek) and some, like Disney’s Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, are brilliantly animated and are now considered animation classics.
Faithful retelling or post-modern remix, many films lack magic and fail to elicit the sense of wonder these tales had when they were originally told, in short, they don’t feel like actual fairy tales. One exception is Michel Ocelot’s Princes and Princesses, a compilation feature of six fairy tales, told with masterful simplicity where wonder and magic are very much present.
Ocelot, uses the exact same techniques pioneered by Lotte Reiniger in films like The Adventures of Prince Achmed: everything is shot on film and no computers are used in any part of the production. The animation is accomplished solely with pieces of black paper carefully cutout with scissors, articulated with bits of wires and moved by hand between shots.
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I’m glad to see animated movies that are made the old fashioned way: by hand. There’s something beautiful about them that just doesn’t apply to CG movies. And I’m even more excited than ever to see Jonah Hex now, and now I have something to convince other people to see it too. And I’m amazed at how great Thor looks, they did a really good job casting!
What do you think of the Iron Man 2 clip? Have you seen Metropolis? Which summer movies are you looking forward to?
