Showing posts with label movie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movie. Show all posts

Ninjas on roller skates - - the movie



The movie is called Ninja Thunderbolt and came out in 1986. Here's the synopsis at IMDB: "The Ninja Empire has been run by an evil master and one member decides to leave the empire. The ex-Ninja wants a Hong Kong detective to track down the new leader and end his reign of terror."



Here's the intro, which features some deadly serious ninja talk, but no roller skates:



Yes, it's on sale at at Amazon.

*Previously: Modern day ninjas arrested before carrying out their plan of harassing drug dealers.

Three and a half minute opening shot of Touch of Evil

Here's the classic three and a half minute opening shot of Orson Welles' Touch of Evil:



Great opening shot, although I can't stand the rest of the movie. If you're not familiar with the movie, that's star Charlton Heston as a Mexican police officer named Ramon Miguel Vargas.

And here's John Travolta as Chili Palmer in Get Shorty (one of my favorite movies) discussing some interesting trivia about Touch of Evil:



*Find great deals on Elmore Leonard books (including Get Shorty) at Amazon.

Billy Dee Williams was paid to not be Two-Face in 1995's Batman Forever





I'd completely forgotten, but Billy Dee Williams played Harvey Dent in the Tim Burton/Michael Keaton version of Batman, with the plan being that he'd eventually play the villainous Two-Face. But once Joel Shumacher took over, the decision was made to cast Tommy Lee Jones instead. So Billy Dee was paid a sum of money to go away. Link.

(Photo credits.)

*Buy Bat-Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan by Chip Kidd.

Kevin Costner's latest horrible movie is not even an original idea

When I first saw the ads for "Swing Vote," I though, you gotta be kidding, that looks awful. My second thought was, here we go again, the fate of the world is in Kevin Costner's hands. Little did I know that the plot of the movie is a rip off of "The Great Man Votes," a 1939 movie starring John Barrymore. Via these sites.

*Buy vintage movie posters at MoviePosters.com.

Maximillian from Disney's The Black Hole



CollectionDX has a nice gallery of photos of Maximillian toys. Maximillian was the "bad" robot in Disney's The Black Hole. As you can see, he bears a striking resemblance to Wall-E's Gopher:



There's a few Maximillian models at eBay right now.

Here's the movie's trailer, which gives you a good idea as to why it's never on tv:

Wall-E: Best movie ever . . . featuring a creepy guy who

lives in a garbage dump, drugs a girl into unconsciousness after she spurns his romantic advances, ties her up, and takes her bound, comatose body on dates. Naturally, she falls in love with him.

Ladies, better keep a close eye on your drinks if you meet anyone that works at Pixar.



*Previously: The Lorax's real message.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: The Abridged Script

Rod Hilton:
HARRISON packs up props from the prior films, but is interrupted by SHIA LABEOUF.

SHIA LABEOUF
Hey, my mother and John Hurt have been kidnapped. My mom said you’d help me because every great adventure film needs an insufferable douchebag sidekick.

HARRISON FORD
Your mom knew me? Well it seems painfully obvious that you’re going to turn out to be my son, then.

SHIA LABEOUF
And yet, that’s going to be mentioned later in the movie as though it’s some kind of shocking revelation.

Suddenly, more CARTOONY SOVIETS show up and try to kidnap SHIA and HARRISON.

SHIA LABEOUF
Shit, they have guns. What do we do?

HARRISON FORD
Just wait until the movie gets re-released in a few years and they’ll be replaced with walkie-talkies.

Read the whole thing. Via.

*Choose from a huge selection of Indiana Jones toys at Entertainment Earth.

Nikki Finke explains why there's been no real talk of a Grand Theft Auto movie

It's because Fox Atomic owns the rights to the Grand Theft Auto movie title - - but their rights are to the 1977 movie Grand Theft Auto, starring, and directed by Ron Howard. According to Nikki, "a supposed legal settlement over the game/movie/title dictates that Rockstar can't make a Grand Theft Auto movie or Corman/Howard/Fox a video game out of the title."

I've actually previously posted the trailer to Howard's Grand Theft Auto.

*Find vintage movie posters at MoviePoster.com.

Coming Soon: Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, The Movie

Animated, featuring Andy Samberg and Anna Faris, scheduled for March 2009. You can watch Faris talk about it here, if you can tolerate video that buffers. My son will be delighted since I've read the book to him a hundred times easy.

Terminator movie poster by Yann Legendre for the Alamo Drafthouse



Buy it for $30 here. Artist's site. Via.

*See also: Elmo becomes a Terminator.

*Buy Terminator toys at eBay.

Desktop Wallpaper: Eva Mendes, Scarlett Johansson Spirit Posters





Whipped up from movie poster images found here.

Shrek's Scottish accent cost Dreamworks $5 million

Entertainment Weekly has a long article in this week's issue, basically saying Mike Myers is a jerk. I don't think they dug up anything that hasn't been written many times before, but I hadn't heard this:
Myers' clout extended beyond Austin Powers. Midway through production on Shrek, he decided the ogre should speak with a Scottish accent — an inspired notion that cost DreamWorks roughly $5 million in wasted animation.

You can read the whole article here.

I'm pleased to say the same issue of EW lists Camp Camp, which I recommend earlier this week, as one of nine "musts" this week.

(My favorite Mike Myers movie is So I Married An Axe Murderer.)

Alfred Hitchcock The Birds Barbie Doll



On sale here

*Previously: The Birds has not aged well.

Excerpts From Sex And The City And The Crystal Skull

Jill Morris for McSweeney's:
Page 20

INT. FIFTH AVENUE PENTHOUSE

(BIG is making CARRIE dinner.)

BIG: Welcome to our new home, baby.

CARRIE: It's beautiful. But I think I'm going to keep my old apartment.

BIG: What do you mean, baby?

CARRIE: I mean ... I would have no legal rights if anything happened. We haven't even found the crystal skull, yet.

BIG: (Laughs.) Is that what you want, baby? To find the crystal skull, baby?

CARRIE: Are you asking me to find the crystal skull with you?

BIG: Sure, baby. I mean, if that will make you happy, baby. I only want to be with you, baby. I just want it to be us, baby. The skull doesn't matter to me, baby.

(CARRIE smiles, looks down.)

BIG: Baby, let's find the skull together.

(BIG and CARRIE kiss. Two CGI doves land on the terrace and wink.)

Read the whole thing.

Ebert gives Tarsem's The Fall a perfect score

Here's Ebert:
"The Fall" is so audacious that when Variety calls it a "vanity project," you can only admire the man vain enough to make it. It tells a simple story with vast romantic images so stunning I had to check twice, three times, to be sure the film actually claims to have absolutely no computer-generated imagery. None? What about the Labyrinth of Despair, with no exit? The intersecting walls of zig-zagging staircases? The man who emerges from the burning tree?

[snip]

Either you are drawn into the world of this movie or you are not. It is preposterous, of course, but I vote with Werner Herzog, who says if we do not find new images, we will perish. Here a line of bowmen shoot hundreds of arrows into the air. So many of them fall into the back of the escaped slave that he falls backward and the weight of his body is supported by them, as on a bed of nails with dozens of foot-long arrows. There is scene of the monkey Otis chasing a butterfly through impossible architecture.

Read the whole review.

And here's another article by Ebert full of fascinating information about the movie:
Now what about those miraculous locations? I asked him. No special effects? What about the zig-zagging interlocking black and white staircases reaching down into the earth?

"Its true. Its Ripley’s. What people think is not true in the film is true. The steps that go down, it's a reservoir that has been there for 500 or 600 years. It's used for seeing how low the water level is, to determine how to tax people. If the water level is so high, they charge so much tax from the farmers. The problem is most of the time you never see those steps; they’re underwater. Somebody showed me these steps and said they went really way down. And I said, well, has anybody seen that?

"They said, most Indians think they look cheap. But in fact they look like an inspiration by Escher. So labyrinthine and mad. The problem is, when you see the wide shot, you realize they're not what I’m making them out to be. What matters is how I’m framing it. If you see the wider shots, there are about 2,000 Indians on trees watching and wondering why we’re shooting in a really crappy well. But since I shot those steps, three Hindi movies have gone and shot there because they figure, if its good enough for him, it must be beautiful."

[snip]

And as for the Blue City...

"Jodhpur, the blue city, is a Brahmin city where you’re only supposed to paint your house blue. I made a contract with the city; we would give them free paint. We knew legally they could only choose blue. So they painted their houses blue and it looked more vibrant than it ever had before."

Read the rest.

Here's the movie's trailer:



Here's The Fall's official site, where I found this desktop wallpaper:

James Cameron's Avatar crew t-shirt

Front logo


Back logo


Go here for larger images and an explanation for the symbols.

Brand Upon The Brain




Can't vouch for the content, but the dvd and cd covers are certainly striking. Here's the intriguing trailer:



Here's a positive review. And here's several videos of Isabella Rossellini graphically demonstrating the sexual habits of insects.