Cinematical

At a press junket earlier this summer for 2012, Roland Emmerich told reporters he's not doing any more blow-'em-up flicks. "I would not know how to top this... It's just one of these things, you know. I had a hard time deciding to do another disaster movie, but... you cannot make a disaster movie if there's not something --- an idea in this disaster which elevates it to something more than a disaster. And so it was this idea, you know, that there will be a global flood and it's a retelling of Noah's Arc."

Later he added, "It's not my last film, it's my last disaster film. And that's because I wouldn't know what else to do. It's just, you know what, I really didn't want to do this movie at first... But when I decided that the idea was too good to not do it for the reason I had done before, I said, okay, if I do it, I will do it in such a spectacular manner that nobody can top it for a long time. I have that pride in my work."

Horror fans will be slipping back into a new Nightmare on Elm Street on April 30th, 2010, but we're already being teased with new Freddy Krueger toys, thanks to Entertainment Earth and Mezco Toyz. You can buy a little Freddy of your own in plastic or vinyl next April just in time for Jackie Earle Haley's debut as the mutilated monster who haunts our dreams.

The first question I had when I saw the plastic toy was, why does he look like those little dolls with dried apple heads that are sold at craft fairs by sweet grandmas? But thanks to a wily blogger over at Albotas and the wonders of Photoshop, you can see that Earle Haley's Freddy definitely looks more like this toy than Robert Englund's Freddy.



I'm not sure which I prefer -- the menacing creep with a big smile or the flat-faced, expressionless killer. An early review from a test screening posted at Ain't It Cool News praises Earle Haley for his performance (although not much else in the movie), but will old fans be won over too?

Either one is sure to give me, well, nightmares. It's too bad that Johnny Depp won't be there this time around.

Do you collect movie toys? And, more importantly, do you leave them in the box or take them out?

Check out a larger version of the toy after the jump.

(Via Dread Central)

Yahoo! has posted an incredibly cool video of George Clooney acting out his role as Mr. Fox in the freakin' adorable Fantastic Mr. Fox. The video shows cool side-by-side comparisons of Clooney acting out different scenes on a farm with costar Wallace Wolodarsky, who voices loopy sidekick Kylie, as well as just running around pretending to be Mr. Fox, down to rolling around on the ground and doing his super cool whistle.

This behind-the-scenes peek at Mr. Fox also offers mini-interviews with director Wes Anderson, producer Allison Abbate, and Bill Murray (Badger) about working with Clooney on the film. The funniest part shows an argument between Mr. Fox and Badger, which involves growling and swiping, split-screened against the actors themselves doing the voices in an office.

As Abbate notes, "There couldn't be a more perfect Mr. Fox, because he has the Cary Grant suave, debonair sparkle where he can talk his way out of any situation, which is so our Mr. Fox character. He's just got a great voice."

Clooney's got a rather full docket this season, with The Men Who Stare at Goats coming out this week, Fantastic Mr. Fox coming out at the end of November, and Up in the Air out on Christmas day.

Click through to see the video itself, then let us know which Clooney feature you're going to be lining up for at the theaters this season, by cuss!

Someone spent a lot of time and energy building a Flash-heavy website for Jim Carrey that is overwhelming enough to confuse even the most web-savvy user. Besides the usual bio, filmography, TV appearances, and news items, there are tiny arrows to click on on that swoop you from one movie-inspired dimension to another. There's creepy music I couldn't turn off using Safari or Firefox until I randomly clicked on a little doodad on the homepage (note to developers: that's always a crowd-pleaser!). The problem is, the whole site is nearly impossible to navigate. Even the filmography page is practically useless for finding actual info on his past movies -- unless, of course, you would like to see the trailer for A Christmas Carol.

If you have split-second reflexes and click on the little dude who pops up and snaps a photo, you can see "informal" photos of Jim Carrey in real life -- covered in mud or snuggled up with his sweetie, Jenny McCarthy, or posing with a crab in his mouth. Click on the bird with a Jim Carrey head, and you're taken to his Twitter account. It's all very click-y, like a movie website. Which as we all know are, well, kind of annoying.

Because I am a nerd, I looked up the source code of the site, and the meta-description reads, "Explore the eccentric, psychedelic corners of Jim Carrey's mind on his official site. Discover archived appearances and movie trailers, behind the scenes clips, family photos and even notes from Jim himself!" Well, it is very psychedelic, I'll give it that.

If you're looking for a great, informative site for someone famous, I suggest you turn to the far simpler and yet more pleasing sites for Edgar Wright, which features funny photos, unseen video and on-set video diaries, and, smartest of all, links to buy his movies.

Amazon sellers are selling copies of Ken Russell's Salome's Last Dance on DVD for a minimum of $214.89. It's not on Netflix. However, if you're in the mood for the kind of bizarrely decadent films that only writer/director Ken Russell (Gothic, The Lair of the White Worm) can serve up, it's high time you headed over to this hard-to-find Oscar Wilde adaptation for free over at SlashControl.

In Salome's Last Dance, Russell plays around with Oscar Wilde's banned play Salome, adding a bit of meta-goodness to the whole shebang by making the film about Oscar Wilde (Nickolas Grace) and his lover Lord Alfred Douglas (Douglas Hodge) watching a performance of the famous play in a brothel. The actors are all employees or patrons. And it's no accident that this is also Guy Fawkes Day.

Alfred Taylor, the brothel-owner played by Stratford Johns, announces, "Guy Fawkes wanted to strike a spark for freedom and blow up a Parliament he considered oppressive; you have done the same with your play, Salome... In defiance of the law and in honor of our greatest playwright, the premiere of Salome will take place here tonight, the 5th of November, 1892."

We've already explored the history of 2012 here on Cinematical and what you need to know to see the movie (hint: the world might blow up!), but here's what 2012 stars John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, and Woody Harrelson and director Roland Emmerich have to say about the end of the world. Do they believe the world will end with a whimper or a bang, T. S. Eliot-style? Will we go out in fire or in ice? Do they even believe the world will end in 2012? Let's find out.

Roland Emmerich: It's always great if you find some sort of belief people have and put it in your movies, as fantastic as they may be. For example, Independence Day, I used Area 51 and centered my whole story around Area 51 because I found out in my research that people really believed in it. And in this movie, as we discovered the phenomenon of 2012, because some culture, the Mayas, gave the end of the world a date. An exact date. The 21st of December, 2012. And that's just so incredible and so interesting that a lot of people are fascinated by it and there's believers; there's people like you [who] just find it fascinating. I hope it will not happen. But when you research it a little bit deeper, you kind of find a lot of other cultures [that] believe the same thing. They only don't put an exact date to it, but they have other predictions which all point to 2012. It's quite eerie...

The original Boondock Saints was relegated to video store shelves before most would-be fans had an inkling it had passed them by in theaters. But eventually, chances are one night a friend would suggest watching this weird, violent movie about hot twin brothers with a serious gun fetish, Catholic complex, and Latin tattoos, and you'd pass the word along. Basically, Murphy MacManus (Norman Reedus) and Connor MacManus (Sean Patrick Flanery) were blue-collar Irish guys who decided that they'd had enough of the scum on the streets and began wiping them out in various creative ways, although their favorite weapons were and remain the gun. Their buddy Rocco, a mob errand boy, was the de facto third Saint. Meanwhile, they're being tracked by a very odd FBI agent by the name of Paul Smecker (Willem Dafoe in a fabulously bizarre performance) and three bumbling local cops. And then there's Il Duce (Billy Connolly), the infamous assassin who's finally paroled from prison.

Ten years later, the Saints are in Ireland with Il Duce, aka their dad, when the word comes that someone in Boston killed a priest they knew and tried to make it look like the Saints did it. Game on. The boys shed their woolly sweaters and their long hair and beards and return to Boston.

The MacManus brothers are back with guns blazing in the long-awaited sequel to The Boondock Saints. The Saints are living in Ireland with dear old dad (Billy Connolly) when they get word a priest in Boston has been killed in a way that sets them up to be the fall guys. Long-haired and bearded from the Irish winters, they shed their hair (and their clothes) to head back to Beantown to set things straight. They're joined by a new Saint, Romeo (Clifton Collins Jr. with a sweet mullet), along with the trio of cops from the first movie. And although the unforgettable FBI Special Agent Paul Smecker (Willem Dafoe) is nowhere to be found, Special Agent Eunice Bloom (Julie Benz) is on the case, full of piss and vinegar just behind that sweet Southern smile.

Who's behind the murder? Why do they want to lure the boys back to Boston? You'll have to see The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day to find out. Meanwhile, Duffy spilled the beans on the legions of diehard Boondock fans, including his femme fanbase, his critics, and what he thinks women want from men these days. Read on after the jump ...

Some super-fan made a crazy audio/video remix of scenes and sounds from Pulp Fiction that you have to check out. It's so good that it could be confused with an underground techno mash-up. The remix uses multiple split-screens with the sounds from the scenes remixed to a beat, like Jules's delicious shake, Butch's getaway, Jimmie Dimmick slapping soap into Jules's hand, Zed slapping the Gimp's head and shushing his victims, and Marsellus Wallace grunting behind a ballgag.

The detail on this is impressive, especially the remixing of the different scenes. The person's YouTube channel is otherwise made up of music performances, so I'm very curious if there's a collaborator involved or what. There's a lot of Pulp Fiction mashups on YouTube that pale in comparison, although this one is pretty cool. The music mashup culture is a fascinating one; it seems more underground than the video mashups, probably because of how easy it is to share things via YouTube and perhaps how much more litigious the music industry is. Personally, I love music mashup artists like A Plus D and think that creating new forms of art through pre-existing work, like the source files offered by Sita Sings the Blues creator Nina Paley, will become more acceptable as artists realize the potential of sharing their work.

Then again... everyone's got bills to pay.

Watch the Pulp Fiction Remix after the jump ...

As I watched Michael Jackson's This Is It, I found myself wondering exactly what I was supposed to be reviewing. It's nearly impossible to separate the context of the film from the film itself -- that it was supposedly never meant to be a documentary and is only now being seen by public eyes because of Michael Jackson's death in June as he was preparing for his last tour. And, as difficult as it is, I'm obviously not reviewing the person himself. Was I reviewing his performances? That's not it, either, because they're rehearsals and Jackson was saving his voice and strength for the tour. The documentary itself is a strange, confusing look into Michael Jackson's world, or at least the version of it that his friends, family, and/or estate wanted us to see.

Producer Randy Phillips is quoted in the production notes as follows: "What makes this footage so compelling is that Michael is so open and unguarded. From March 5 when we did the press conference [announcing Jackson's tour] to June 25 when Michael died – we had a three-person crew with HD cameras." The production notes also say they shot "more than 100 hours of rehearsal footage shot in Los Angeles." Why were three people shooting with HD cameras, producing over 100 hours of footage that "was never intended for wide release"? And if it was eventually going to be part of a behind-the-scenes doc, then why did it often look blurry or shaky, and why, if there was so much more footage to choose from, are we seeing rehearsals that seemed to be from a handful of different days, judging by the different clothes Jackson wore?