Academy Announces 10 Best Animated Short Film Contenders [-->full article]
Sat, 21 Nov 2009
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced the animated short films short list, a list of 10 shorts, narrowed down from 37 films, that will advance in the voting process for the 82nd Academy Awards. The Academy branch members will select five nominees from the ten titles. I have included the list of 10 short films after the jump, along with trailers/previews, or video embeds of the full short films, when available. "The Cat Piano," Eddie White and Ari Gibson ...

30 Minutes of Avatar Are Still Not Done, But Don’t Flip Out [-->full article]
Fri, 20 Nov 2009
The World Premiere of James Cameron's Avatar is set for December 10th, just 20 days from now but as of Wednesday, "around 30 minutes of the movie remain incomplete". Cause for concern? According to Jon Landau, the film's producer, the scenes need work ranging from sound mixing through colour timing along to visual effects. What isn't clear is how many minutes of FX work need to be locked, and how much of that floating half hour is requiring the more final post production polish only. ...

The Twilight Saga: New Moon Movie Review: Let the Wrong One In [-->full article]
Fri, 20 Nov 2009
Every fifth or sixth word in my notes on The Twilight Saga: New Moon is 'mope'. If there's a more listless, disengaged piece of film this year I hope I don't have to suffer it. (Actually, there is, and I did right after writing this. The guys' flipside to New Moon: Ninja Assassin.) This second Twilight film is not a dreamy, thorny gothic romance; it is a stereotypical, unimaginative caricature of depressed teens expanded into 120 minutes. By comparison, Catherine Hardwicke's creaky first fil...

Youth in Revolt Release Date Moves Up One Week; Film Will Get Sneak Previews [-->full article]
Fri, 20 Nov 2009
Back in September, just as the film was screening to very positive word at the Toronto Film Festival, The Weinstein Company moved Youth in Revolt back to January 15. That wasn't a huge surprise. Though audiences seem to really like Miguel Arteta's adaptation of C.D. Payne's novel, thanks in part to what some call a career-expanding performance by Michael Cera, TWC already has their awards season movies in Nine and (maybe, but looking less likely now) The Road. Saving Youth in Revolt for 2010...

Season of the Witch Movie Trailer [-->full article]
Fri, 20 Nov 2009
Last month, Lionsgate released a special 30-second Halloween teaser trailer for Dominic Sena's supernatural thriller Season of the Witch which had us scratching our heads. Sena is best known as the director of fun but disposable action films like Gone in Sixty Seconds, Swordfish and the recent comic book adaptation Whiteout, and I had heard great things about Brian Schut's script... But the teaser looked like a direct-to-dvd Dark Castle production. The new trailer gives us a much better idea...

The Twilight Saga: New Moon Destroys Harry Potter and Dark Knight at Midnight Box Office [-->full article]
Fri, 20 Nov 2009
Summit Entertainment has announced that The Twilight Saga: New Moon has broken box office records, earning over $26.27 million in midnight screenings from 3,514 theaters. This destroys the $22.2 million midnight record held by Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince, and the previous second place, Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins sequel The Dark Knight, which earned $18.4 million in midnight earnings. Also, Summit's re-release of the original Twilight on Thursday night on 2,057 screens resul...

Special Episode of Bones To Be Heavy With Avatar Product Placement [-->full article]
Fri, 20 Nov 2009
The next episode of Bones, set to air on December 3rd, is to be called The Gamer in the Grease and appears to be jam packed full of Avatar product placement. There's a promo clip on Youtube, which you can see embedded below the break. The show airs on Fox which is, of course, a sister wing of Newscorp. to 20th Century Fox, the studio behind the film and I don't think we can blame them for wanting to promote this phenomenally expensive piece of product as well as possible. But it's not jus...

This Week In Trailers: Jump, The Slammin’ Salmon, Kandahar, My Tehran For Sale, Bodyguards and Assassins [-->full article]
Fri, 20 Nov 2009
Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: I celebrate all levels of trailers and hopefully this column will satisfactorily give you a baseline of what beta wave I’m operating on, because what better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of adv...

Geek Deal: Fight Club and Boondock Saints on Blu-Ray for $23 Total [-->full article]
Fri, 20 Nov 2009
Amazon has a promotion today which allows you to buy both Fight Club and Boondock Saints on Blu-ray for $22.98, $5 off their already sale price. Scroll down to the Best Value section and click "add both to cart" to qualify for the deal.

Michael Bay Promises Next Transformers Film Will Give Megan Fox a Good Role and Not Kill Her Off [-->full article]
Fri, 20 Nov 2009
Michael Bay has been hanging around at the launch of a Victoria's Secret Show, with the excuse that he directs their commercials, and discussing his supposed nemesis in lipgloss, Megan Fox. And what does he have to say about her? I love her. Er... okay, Mike. He did also discuss the role he's creating for her in the third Transformers film. "She’s got a great part in Transformers 3" he promised. So he's not going to kill her off? "No, no, no. She gets enough of that already”. Okay... w...

The Tobolowsky Files Ep. 4 - The Alchemist [-->full article]
Fri, 20 Nov 2009
The Tobolowsky Files is a new podcast from the people who brought you the /Filmcast, featuring a series of stories about life, love, and the entertainment industry, as told by legendary character actor Stephen Tobolowsky. In this episode, Stephen shares memories of his mother in honor of her birthday. You can always e-mail Stephen at stephentobolowsky(AT)gmail(DOT)com, or you can e-mail David at slashfilmcast(AT)gmail(DOT)com. Please let us know what you think of the show! Also, starting ...

Letters to Juliet Movie Trailer: This Time, You Really Have Seen the Whole Movie [-->full article]
Fri, 20 Nov 2009
The common trailer complaint is that they always give too much of the movie away. Which is funny, because that's actually not the case nearly as often as you'd think, and after being able to compare many movies and their trailers, I would have long ago hoped that people would realize the truth of it. In the case of Letters to Juliet, however, things are different. When I saw the trailer in front of the New Moon screening two days ago I couldn't help feeling a great sense of relief that I'd n...

The Looking Glass War Concept Art [-->full article]
Fri, 20 Nov 2009
After concept work on Battlefield Earth, Red Planet, two Star Wars prequels and The Astronauts Wife, poor old Stephan Martiniere sure could use a break. Okay, that's not entirely fair - he also got to contribue to I, Robot which ended up being quite a clever film, at least in terms of it's imagery. One of his assignments appears to be character designs for a film of The Looking Glass War, the Frank Beddor Alice in Wonderland spin off that Charles Roven is currently shepherding towards the b...

Re-Edits: Brett Ratner Cuts Up Kites, Peter Jackson Adds More Intensity to The Lovely Bones [-->full article]
Fri, 20 Nov 2009
Some of the weirdest and most interesting news lately has been about action in the edit bay. We saw that a couple of world-class craftsmen had been brought in to rework The Wolfman, for one. Now there are tales of tweaks that run both ends of the crazy spectrum. When we can run a news item that puts Brett Ratner and Peter Jackson in the same headline you know the world has gone topsy-turvy, but at least they're not working together. First up, THR reports that Ratner has been hired to re-e...

Shield Writer to Pen Fourth Underworld Film [-->full article]
Fri, 20 Nov 2009
What would it take to get you really excited for the fourth Underworld film? I'm not sure anything would do the trick for me (I wasn't excited for the second and third by any means) but putting a really good writer on the job would help. Seeing that a writer from The Shield would be writing the picture gave me a little boost of interest. Only a little boost, though, because it isn't series creator Shawn Ryan, but John Hlavin, who wrote a couple episodes of the final season. THR has the go...