Screen Rant » John Scott Lewinski

Princess And The Frog Trailer Rallies Classic Animation

John Scott Lewinski — Mon, 11 May 2009 00:20:27 +0000

The Disney Channel unveiled the studio’s next animated feature Saturday, previewing the trailer for The Princess and the Frog. You can catch it below.

Why should you care? After all, there isn’t a single TIE Fighter in it. No killer robots. Not a single laser blast or skyscraper-shattering explosion. The princess isn’t a scantily clad zombie, and the frog doesn’t transform into a missile-laden Porsche.

But there’s also no all too familiar CGI, either. This is Disney’s long-awaited return to hand-drawn animation — moving away (temporarily) from the Pixar-dominated CG era of Toy Story, Cars, Shrek and Madagasgar. It’s the grand rally of the art form that brought us classics like Snow White, Dumbo, Fantasia and The Lion King. It’s the chance for anyone under the age of 21 to discover what intricately rendered animation drawn by a human hand with pen and ink looks like on a big screen. Any movie lover should root for such a big comeback.

The Pixar technique will take over full-time soon enough, and there’s nothing wrong with CG-animated movies. In fact, it’s fair to say that Pixar hasn’t made a bad movie yet. But there’s a richness and a soul to hand-drawn animation that the more high tech art form has yet to match. It’s easy enough to root against Disney on occasion, but here’s hoping this movie scores big. See for yourself:

As for the trailer itself, it looks great. But does it look good enough to get you excited about the return of classic Disney?

Thanks to AICN for finding this new trailer (for as long as it lasts).

The Princess and the Frog opens on December 11, 2009.

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Robot Chicken Meets Voltron In ‘Titan Maximum’

John Scott Lewinski — Fri, 08 May 2009 17:06:43 +0000

The brains behind the sci-fi, super-hero and action figure-stuffed animated comedy Robot Chicken are taking a spin-off to Saturn’s biggest moon with Titan Maximum.

Co-head writer/producer Tom Root and co-creator/executive producer Matthew Senreich created the spin-off series, which pits a collection of dysfunctional heroes and their Voltron-style assembled robot (pronounced “RO-bet,” if you’re cool and from the 1950s) against a solar system-conquering villain and crippling budget cuts. The comedy adventure’s animation will resemble Chicken’s stop motion style.

While Robot Chicken is a rapid-fire, short attention span-friendly sketch show, Titan will feature full plots per episode and an overall story arc for the series’ ongoing war of attrition.

Adult Swim ordered up nine episodes, and the show is set to premiere in September, just in time for the new fall season. With the Voltron live action movie mired in an ongoing legal dispute, this spoof could be as close as anime fans get to a new “giant robot assembled by mashing different ships together” story. (Yes, that’s a legitimate genre title.)

Will you be watching Titan Maximum?

Source: Hollywood Reporter

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Fox Building on Wolverine’s Mojo With Deadpool Movie

John Scott Lewinski — Wed, 06 May 2009 13:45:59 +0000

Fresh off the almost $90 million opening weekend for X-men Origins: Wolverine, Fox is rushing ahead on a similar treatment for Marvel’s favorite mercenary, Deadpool.

If you’re keeping score along at home, a Deadpool movie would be a spinoff of a spinoff of the original big screen adaptations of X-Men. Ryan Reynolds played the wisecracking super gun for hire in Wolverine, and will return in the title role.

Spoiler Alert Below:

The movie’s version of Deadpool is beheaded by Wolverine, but a post credit sequence on some prints unveils that the mercenary survived.

End Spoiler

While the new movie seems like a sensible enough move considering the success of the first X-Men Origins, there’s a risk here. If you walk down the street in any American neighborhood, your fellow pedestrians know who Batman is. They could pick Spider-Man and Superman out of a line-up. So, movies based on those characters become blockbusters. But, once you start to get to faces from the outer reaches of comic lore, the receipts can dwindle quickly (see Ghost Rider, Judge Dredd, The Punisher, Steel and (yes) Watchmen.

While Marvel Studios will act in a co-producer capacity, this will be a Fox Studios film.

No doubt die-hard comic book fans would catch a Deadpool flick, but would casual moviegoers flock to it in Wolverine-ish amounts? And there’s also the question of whether they’ll undo the butchering of the character (figuratively and literally) that took place in Wolverine.

Source Hollywood Reporter

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Pitt Looks Like A Total Basterd In Tarantino’s New Poster

John Scott Lewinski — Sat, 02 May 2009 16:58:26 +0000

We have a new promotional poster from Universal for Quentin Tarantino’s World War II exploitation flick, Inglourious Basterds. It looks like nothing more than an introduction to the look of the film, and I think we can safely expect the rest of the film’s major players such as Diane Kruger, Eli Roth, Samm Levine, etc., to get their own preview poster before the official one-sheet arrives.

As Tarantino’s first film since 2007’s Grindhouse segment, Deathproof, Basterds should provide an interesting reception at the box office. It remains to be seen if audiences are ready to accept Tarantino’s smart-mouthed, anti-hero take on the holocaust and Nazi atrocities.

Take a look at the poster and see what you think:

Brad Pitt Inglorious Basterds poster

Of course, it’s not the first holocaust revenge fantasy to hit the screen, but it’s a safe bet it’ll pack more f-bombs than its predecessors.

Are you ready for this — or even looking forward to it?

Inglourious Basterds hits theaters August 21, 2009.

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Star Wars Back In Production In Hollywood

John Scott Lewinski — Sat, 02 May 2009 16:33:33 +0000

As Admiral Ackbar would say, “It’s a trap!” And, it’s an admittedly cheap headline.

There isn’t a new Star Wars movie in production if that’s what you’re thinking. And, the live-action series Lucas is planning is still in the writing and pre-production phase.

What’s really going on then?

A West Hollywood sound stage is full of familiar faces like Ackbar, C3PO and Boba Fett as Lucasfilm produces new material for an updating of Disney’s Star Tours ride. You can always trust Disney and Lucas to keep up with the newest in entertainment tech.

It’s hardly surprising Lucas is sticking to the “classic trilogy” heroes and villains for the updating. I mean, what are the odds that we’ll catch anything resembling a glimpse of Jar Jar Binks anywhere?

Source: /Film

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New G.I. Joe Trailer: More Cheesy Than Heroic

John Scott Lewinski — Fri, 01 May 2009 20:27:55 +0000

The new international trailer for G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra looks to hit all its cues, but viewers might come away with the early symptoms of CGI fatigue.

We’re introduced to all the players, including General Hawk (Dennis Quaid), Destro (Christopher Eccleston) and The Baroness (Sienna Miller). We see that Cobra’s minions get metallic masks, in keeping with G.I. Joe tradition. We learn that the Joes get elaborate bio-suits that turn them into semi-superheroes.

But, the tone so far looks to venture a little too far into camp. The action comes off way over the top, while the CGI skirmishes look not too far removed from the “one per half-hour” frame rate of the original animated series. The great war between the defenders of freedom and international terrorism is just looking a little childish in these trailers — in an era when we’re fighitng the real thing every day.

Then again, it’s just a trailer. And it’s not like this is aspiring to knock off Citizen Kane. There’s a chance we’ll be looking at more of The Mummy than Van Helsing. What say you?

G.I. Joe opens on August 7, 2009.

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Drop Dead, Fred: We Predict The Next Top 5 Bad 80s Remakes

John Scott Lewinski — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:33:03 +0000

The news this week that Universal plans to remake the painfully awful 80’s disaster, Drop Dead Fred, shocks the imagination into envisioning what other horrible cinematic outings of two decades ago we’ll have to sit through in coming years.

The impressively unfunny Russell Brand will star in Fred, a dark “imaginary friend” comedy for adults. The original made no money and was roundly struck off during its theatrical run. But, everything pastel and techno-pop is new again in a movie industry seemingly devoid of the huevos necessary to make something original. It seems the studios are dead set on remaking every story set to celluloid while Ronald Reagan was president.

So, it’s inevitable that they’ll run through the lists of decent 80s movies and decide to crank out more remakes of the decade’s embarrassments. Here we’ve included five such choices, and we fully expect all of them to surface on the front page of “the trades” soon enough. These are not official announcements, but only Screen Rant predictions — just as Nostradamus predicted the Black Death and Hitler.

1. Cannonball Run: Instead of the aging Rat Pack mixing with Burt Reynolds’ crew, you’re going to end up with the Will Farrell clique racing cross-country against Seth Rogan and company with Judd Apatow directing. Throw in cameos by Kevin Smith and Super Dave Osbourne, and it’s a wonder this isn’t in production right now.

2. 976-EVIL: As the only 80s horror franchise not assaulted by Rob Zombie, this phone-themed demonic possession vehicle could update itself with a satanic iPhone app that causes anyone who uses it to become a slightly more pretentious knob than every other iPhone owner.

3. Ernest Goes to Camp: Just recast the late Jim Varney and you have a series of hits here. But, we may have to remove this from the list as it’s possible the Larry the Cable Guy franchise is more or less feeding this hunger.

4. Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo: No, they’re not even going to bother remaking the original Breakin’. They’ll skip right over it because the only part of either film anyone remembers is the back end of this movie’s title.

5. My Dinner with Andre: The only difference for the remake of this insufferable pile of self-important navel gazing disguised as a movie will be casting. The new faces wasting a couple of hours of film by yacking over dinner? A resurgent Vin Diesel and a wise-cracking CGI marmoset voiced by Dane Cook.

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Swine Flu Delays Mexican Star Trek & Wolverine Premieres

John Scott Lewinski — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:35:45 +0000

“Quien es mas macho? James T. Kirk o el virus de la gripe porcina?” The answer in English? Swine flu.

The only thing that can stop Star Trek — J.J. Abrams’ May 7 box office juggernaut — is the virulent, pork-themed virus currently dominating the headlines. Paramount announced Tuesday that it will indefinitely postpone the movie’s premiere throughout Mexico.

Mexico’s moviegoers were already set to miss out on X-Men Origins: Wolverine as 20th Century Fox announced it would also hold off on screening that blockbuster because of the pandemic.

In the wake of the flu, Mexico City is essentially shut down — making potential film premieres in the Mexican capital as unprofitable as they are potentially deadly. Both studios also expressed concern for their distribution staffers who would have to move in around the would-be infected.

There’s no word when either movie might arrive south of the border, or how the summer’s entire release schedule will change as Paramount and Fox have to find an empty weekend somewhere to salvage as many Pesos as possible.

Source: Variety

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Hollywood Limps To Another Remake With Videodrome

John Scott Lewinski — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:43:51 +0000

“Long live the old flesh!”

The remake craze in Hollywood trudged on Monday with the announcement that Universal picked up the rights to redo the bizarre 1983 horror David Cronenberg flick, Videodrome. Ehren Kruger, a co-writer of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is set to write the script.

The announcement merely continues the disturbing trend of the studios picking up movies of the mid (or even late) 80s and remaking them. We’ll also supposedly be seeing “new” versions of Romancing the Stone, The Last Starfighter, Back to School, Clash of the Titans, Short Circuit, etc. Movie audiences are simply going to have to sit through a CGI version of the 80s.

The concept of a remake is not a new one in the movie business, but the audacity of making most of a decade’s successful films less than a generation since the originals played in multiplexes reveals just how crippled by fear Hollywood has become.

With conglomerate overlords relying on movie studios to make up for losses suffered by other divisions of a given corporation, studio executives at all levels are afraid anything less than a hit will cost them their jobs. The best way to secure that hit is to have a big premiere weekend, so studios look to familiar titles to guarantee a safe opening.

Along the way, the odds of any studio taking a risk of spending time and money on an original idea — from script to screen — are dwindling rapidly in the new remake-happy culture. We may not see the real cost of that lack of originality until years down the road as there’s so little out there to inspire new writers and filmmakers.

The current generation of creative folk in Hollywood might point to Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Ark as their inspiration. The pros assisting them and waiting to move up might look to The Matrix as their eye-opener. But what are kids watching these days that will spark their creative fires? A remake of Footloose?

As one agent told me this week, “The studios are no longer in the development business. They’re only interested in the ’sure thing.’”

And, somehow, a shiny new version of The Swarm (no kidding) is what this new Hollywood considers “a sure thing.”

What do you think about a Videodrome remake?

Source: Variety

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