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Yet another Pixar masterpiece is out on DVD and Blu-Ray, which means it's time to worship at the altar of your media player of choice. And while The Twilight Saga: New Moon doesn't come out until next weekend, it looks like the movie is already out on DVD today! We can't wait to-- wait a minute... We've been duped!
Anticipation for Spike Jonze's latest film, Where the Wild Things Are, has reached an all-time high, and early reviews are skewing towards the positive, giving us all hope that the movie will not only capture the magic of the classic children's book, but live up to Jonze's previous offerings. An unconventional, unusual filmmaker (and occasional actor) who got started making skateboard videos, Jonze moved on to commercial work and music videos before creating two of the most bizarre feature films ever made. In honor of the release of WTWTA, we thought we'd list off the top 10 things Jonze has ever directed, not counting his skateboarding movies, which we would probably appreciate more if we skateboarded, and his commercials, which we wish were longer and not about selling things.
There have been many great adaptations of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. The updated comedy Scrooged with Bill Murray is a modern classic, and The Muppet Christmas Carol alternates between Michael Caine's fine performance and the Muppets' rampant silliness. And the more traditional interpretations are numerous. So when we heard that the newest interpretation would be fully animated -- by Robert Zemeckis, who last directed Beowulf and The Polar Express -- and most of the roles would be played by Jim "The Grinch" Carrey... well, we got a little nervous. Vloggers Omar G. and Pablo G. watched the same trailer we did, and they have similar reservations. See what they have to say about the level of detail on Scrooge's nose and the imagery of Scrooge shooting through the sky on a rocket in the latest episode of "Trailers Without Pity," embedded below for your viewing pleasure.
Only eight days left, and it will be here: Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze's visionary, big-budget adaptation of Maurice Sendak's classic children's book. Now, we really don't know what to expect -- we love the book, and we love Jonze's previous films Adaptation and Being John Malkovich, but can you really make a full-length movie out of 20 pages of illustrations, a barely-there story and the voice of Tony Soprano? We certainly hope so, since the commercials practically have us in tears already, but we're keeping our hearts locked up just in case -- after all, this wouldn't be the first time they were broken by a lame film adaptation of a favorite childhood read. Check out our guide to the Best and Worst Children's Book Adaptations and see which ones made us Mr. Happy, and which were simply terrible, horrible no-good, very bad movies.
Are you optimistic, or do you already know it will suck? Let us know below.
Toys and board games are sweeping through Hollywood as the next big marketable properties, and the optimistically named HIT Entertainment has landed themselves a doozy. He's Thomas the Tank Engine, the cherub-faced locomotive who pulls cars around the English countryside and chats up his similarly smiley-faced (or frowny-faced) colleagues in his successful TV series and omnipresent toy line. Thomas has had model-scale movie adventures before, but we're curious how it might translate to a live-action-mixed-with-CGI adaptation, so we looked to some of the great "train" movies to see if they would have been improved with the addition of Thomas' smiling face.
As everyone knows, board games are the new hot properties in Hollywood. They have name recognition, there's usually a copy in half the households in America, and there's usually a hint of a plot to kick things off with. So while Warner Bros. is still trying to figure out what to do with their A-list superheroes, toymaker Hasbro has used the success of the toy-based G.I. Joe and Transformers films to turn their greatest-hits home games into movies with Universal Pictures. Here's a list of the games that will get movies, and the games we want to see on the big screen.
This weekend Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs takes its weird weather from the page and brings it to the big screen. Next month, Where the Wild Things Are will be arriving in theaters. These are hardly the first children's books to make the transition (even Shrek started as a simple tale without any pop-culture references), but neither book is especially verbose. Hollywood seems to be plucking the kernel of the idea from the written page (and with Cloudy, not even attempting to recreate the original look and feel) and turning that into a full-length movie. It's actually not a terrible idea, so I've come up with some other kiddie classics that producers might want to tackle next.
5 Big Reveals at Disney's D23 Convention
Look out, San Diego Comic-Con -- this past weekend, Disney held their own convention in Anaheim, and it had more Disney-related celebrity panels and announcements than you could shake a stick at. While a lot of the show was simply fan service -- merchandise, collectible pins, a look at new theme parks and attractions in the works, a Miley Cyrus concert -- there were actually a lot of great announcements about upcoming movies, and we thought we'd run down some of the bigger ones below.
I Want My DVD: Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Angela Lansbury, Jason Statham and Valentino Garavani walk into a bar. The bar explodes. End of joke. Start of the weirdest week in movies on DVD ever.
Disney Buys Marvel: The Pros and Cons (from a Fan's Perspective)
Today, the news broke that Disney has bought Marvel Entertainment, lock stock and barrel, for $4 billion. That includes Marvel Comics, with over 5,000 characters, and Marvel Studios, with the successful Iron Man and Hulk film franchises, plus the upcoming Thor, Captain America and The Avengers. It seems like it's a win-win scenario -- Disney gets a boys' brand to bookend the Disney Princesses, and Marvel gets some global multimedia clout -- but what does this really mean for our beloved Marvel superheroes? As fans, these are just a few things we're worried and/or excited about.
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