I'm pretty sure you have read this news elsewhere as well, but I felt the need to post about it anyway: One of my favorite actors, the insanely talented Heath Ledger, has passed away last night. I was flicking channels in front of the TV last night, ready to go to bed, when I fell into a news flash on one of the Dutch channels. It was the end of the piece, and all I caught were the words: "...the star of Brokeback Mountain was only 28 years old". Immediately I sat up straight and began to frantically search for 24 hour news channels that might have more info. I found that on Sky News, which hade a live feed from New York, and which had the words stamped all over the screen: Heath Ledger is dead.
I was stunned. Speechless. Of course, people die, and actors are only people too, but when somebody who is only 28, on the brink of the release of maybe the biggest movie in his career (The Dark Knight), is taken away just like that, it hits home. Hard. I had forgotten my sleepiness and just sat there in front of the television watching the front door of Ledger's apartment building, while news reporters were interviewing dozens of people, all telling how great an actor Ledger was.
When you are the boss of a movie studio, and you have just spent $ 200 million on a movie that was supposed to have cost a whole lot less, then you probably aren't too happy if the first reviews come out and they are mostly negative. Still, that's what's happening with Universal's Evan Almighty, which so far has had 19 reviews posted on Rotten Tomatoes, with only three of those coming to a positive conclusion. And even those positive ones aren't that positive. "Yes, it's sentimental and you have to suspend disbelief (why would the crowd mock Evan as a loon, since after all, 100 pairs of animals are watching him build the ark?), but it's an entertaining enough pic albeit one not crammed with laughs," said critic Harvey S. Karten. Not crammed with laughs? They spent $ 200 million on this movie and they couldn't hire a scriptwriter who could come up with more laughs? Still, it gets worse: "A fairly straightforward retelling of the Noah's Ark tale ... lacking one important aspect of any comedy -- funny jokes," says Coming Soon.net. "The problems with Evan Almighty mostly boil down to questions of scale. The movie warns of an imminent flood, yet delivers only sprinkles of laughter or anything approaching magic," says Variety. And since the movie does not seem to be too buzzed about, this movie might be in big trouble. Still, even though I didn't really like Bruce Almighty, I'll definitely go see Evan Almighty once it hits theaters. Whether that will be to see a disaster, or to watch something I will genuinely enjoy, only time can tell.
There has been a lot of talk about the Puss In Boots spin off movie already, but now things are finally heading towards a real release: Antonio Banderas has signed on to once again voice the role of the popular character, who will star in his own movie called Puss In Boots: The Story of an Ogre Killer. "The movie is going to show his back history, from being born a kitten to the swaggering cat that he is today," Banderas told The Daily Express. "I've seen the scripts and they're very emotional, as well as very funny, and that's a combination that I think the audiences will like." As the Puss In Boots is my favorite character from the Shrek movies, I think this is great news. And if they can come up with a real storyline for his movie, then I think this might be more fun than the next regular Shrek movie.
Thinkgeek has some new Transformers shirts, which will inspire both love and hate. The thing is that the logos on these shirts animate, in different patterns too, which is both super cool (if you own the shirt) and highly annoying (if somebody sitting across from you on the bus has the shirt and has it turned on all the time). In that case you can hope that it rains, as the shirts are battery powered and maybe not entirely water proof...
Early word on the new Pixar movie Ratatouille is very, very positive. At the moment the movie has a score of 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes (only 7 reviews were counted as of yet) and critics are saying this could be the best thing director Brad Bird and Pixar have ever done. Considering their back catalogues, consisting of amazing movies like The Iron Giant, Monsters Inc. and Toy Story, this is insanely high praise.
Writer Neil Gaiman has been in the news a lot lately. Yesterday I told you his upcoming novel Interworld will be made into a movie, his Stardust is hitting the big screen in August, he wrote the script for Beowulf, his Coraline is being turned into a stop motion movie, and there is word that he will direct the adaptation of his graphic novel Death: The High Cost Of Living himself. That's a lot of projects for just one writer, so MTV's Movie Blog had a lot to talk about when they spoke to him recently. And as you can see from the interview, Gaiman is a happy man.
James Bond has a new director, and his name is Marc Foster. Foster was officially announced in a press release issued by Sony Pictures, which was full of the usual gushing you always find in press releases like this. Foster is an interesting choice, since he hasn't really made a comparable movie yet. His filmography is very diverse, with movies like Stranger than Fiction, Monsters Ball, Finding Neverland and the upcoming The Kite Runner, and Bond 22 would be, in Foster's eyes, a nice addition.
Yeah, go ahead and read that headline again. And maybe another time to convince yourself that it really says what it says. Then check the date under this article and see that it's not April 1st. Director Ridley Scott, man behind such classics as Blade Runnerand Gladiator, is really attached to the upcoming Monopoly movie. Now I already read about Hasbro being very interested in a Monopoly movie a little while ago, but I didn't expect them to be this serious about their movie. And get this: Actresses being considered for lead roles in this movie are Scarlett Johansson and Kirsten Dunst.
When Dreamworks announced that they wouldn't need the services of Aardman Animation anymore, I was a little bit worried about what would happen with the British animation giants. But, I shouldn't have worried. Now that Aardman is safe and sound within the realms of Sony Animation, they have been hammering away on no less than four new movies. Most interesting of these, at least to me, is The Cat Burglars, a claymation movie about a posse of stray cats who steal milk, and which mixes Aardman's traditional style with the cool of a movie like Ocean's Eleven. Aardman itself is even dubbing it "family friendly Tarantino", and if that doesn't intrigue you, then I don't know what does.
Dreamworks Pictures has picked up the rights to Neil Gaiman's Interworld, a book that he co-wrote with Michael Reaves, and which has not been published yet. The story focusses on a man called Joey, who has the power to travel between dimensions, and who is soon chased by two armies, those of magic and science, who will do anything they can to gain control of this power. To fight these armies, Joey travels to many different dimensions and recruits every single version of himself that he comes across. A great concept, as you can expect from Gaiman, and one that can surely be turned into a great movie. Later this year we will see Gaiman's Stardust hit the big screen, while more of his work is also on it's way to hit the big screen (he wrote the script for Beowulf, for instance, and might direct the adaptation of his graphic novel Death: The High Cost of Living). His partner in crime on this book, Michael Reaves, is a man better known for his scripts for TV-shows like Star Trek and The Father Dowling Mysteries. Originally, the two friends pitched the idea as a movie idea, but when movie studios failed to be very enthusiastic about the idea, they decided to make it into a book. Which is now being adapted into a movie after all. Sometimes life is so ironic.