Screen Rant » the spirit

2009 Scream Award Nominations

Ross Miller — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:37:08 +0000

The nominees have been announced for the fourth annual Scream Awards, held every year by Spike TV. The decisively more “fan-friendly” award ceremony (compared to the Oscars) honors films from the sci-fi, fantasy, horror and comic-book genres of movies, TV shows and comic books. The awards are described as, “the first and only global event of its kind,” to honor those genres.

The Scream 2009 nominees were chosen by the Advisory Board of Hollywood and Genre Leaders, a list which this year includes the likes of Wes Craven, Roland Emmerich, Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller, Eli Roth and Zack Snyder, plus many more. The event will be taped on Saturday, October 17th this year at The Greek Theater in Los Angeles, and will air on Spike TV ten days later on Tuesday, October 27th (check for local times).

Along with ...

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The Spirit Review

Vic Holtreman — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 04:10:18 +0000

Short version: The Spirit is two hours of your life that you’ll never get back.

Screen Rant reviews The Spirit

Wow.

That’s the first word that comes to mind as I think about The Spirit. It’s an example of a movie that just leaves me plain dumbfounded. It’s so awful that I’m completely in the dark as to how a movie like this can ever actually get funded, produced and make it into movie theaters.

The very first line of dialog spoken in the movie was utterly cheesy – and that set the tone for the entire movie. I wasn’t sure what I was in for… I’d seen the footage and the trailers and it ALL looked horribly bad, but I thought that there might be something else to the film that either wasn’t being conveyed in the ...

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Frank Miller To Hopefully Not Ruin ‘Buck Rogers’

Ross Miller — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 17:42:58 +0000

Hot off the heels of directing his first feature film (c’mon, we all know that on Sin City he basically just got to sit next to Robert Rodriguez while he was directing) The Spirit, it looks like graphic novel writer extraordinaire Frank Miller has his eye on another comic project to write and direct. No, it’s not one of his own (how many does he have left that haven’t already been spoken for?) but rather an adaptation of the classic 1930′s newspaper comic strip Buck Rogers.

However Miller’s version will be a lot different than the original:

“Miller will write and direct his own big-screen take on the comic serial; while the creator has only begun to sketch ideas, it’s expected to be a darker take, with many of Miller’s signature visual elements and themes, such as corruption and redemption.”

Boy, I sure ...

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A Big Pile Of New Movie Posters

Rob Keyes — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:43:31 +0000

Today we have a pile of new posters we’ve been collecting throughout the week from a variety of sources.

These include the final poster for The Spirit, the first posters for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and new posters for Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, Lost: Season 5, Red Sonja, and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.

That’s a lot of posters!

Without going into too much detail about what I like/dislike about each one, I’ll say that they’re all pretty good, actually.

Take a look and see what you think:

For Underworld, this poster definitely serves its purpose with Bill Nighy’s character Viktor sitting on the throne – simple, but epic for fans of the first two installments. As always, the poster is dark and drenched with a blue overlay.

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans poster

For Benjamin Button, ...

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Another Unimpressive Trailer For ‘The Spirit’

Rob Keyes — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 17:55:31 +0000

Here we have a short Christmas-themed TV spot/trailer for The Spirit thanks to Coming Soon. It seems like we’ve been getting an onslaught of marketing material for this movie, similar to The Day the Earth Stood Still. Maybe it just feels like it, because I don’t care for it that much.

When that happens in combination with trailers not getting much positive feedback, I get the feeling the movie will be bad and that the studios know it. It seems especially odd that this was released during the same week in which trailers for two other movies have been getting lots of love: Watchmen and Star Trek.

This little trailer looks cheap and to me it plays like a straight-to-DVD rip-off of Sin City. The campy style isn’t clicking and it doesn’t have any ...

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New Poster For The Spirit Looks Better Than The Movie

Carl Lee — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:21:38 +0000

Yet another poster has been released for the upcoming graphic novel adaption, The Spirit.

The Spirit movie is adapted by Frank Miller, both in terms of writing and direction, but is based on Will Eisner’s old comic strip. Although the trailer and images look plenty like Sin City, it is not a sequel. Miller did work with Robert Rodriguez on his adaption of Miller’s Sin City, so it is Miller’s “style” so to speak. And up until recently, that “style” was evident in the posters for the film.

A few weeks ago, Lionsgate released two posters in an effort to of course promote the film, but also possibly to distinguish it from Sin City. And although this poster is somewhat similar to the first few, it gives the first real clue as to what ...

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New Spirit Trailer Still Looks Goofy

Vic Holtreman — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 01:07:13 +0000

Samuel L. Jackson & Gabriel Macht in a scene from The Spirit

There is another (and presumbaly, final) trailer for Frank Miller’s movie version of The Spirit. Up until now, everything about his film has looked ridiculous and pretty awful. I will say that this latest trailer is MUCH better than the previous one or the footage shown at Comic-Con this Summer.

But don’t take that as a ringing endorsement.

I won’t delay any more… watch the trailer for yourself:

[See post to watch Flash video]

To me, this still looks goofy and cheesy beyond belief. There are a couple of hints of the footage we saw at Comic-Con, but it is (wisely) shown only briefly throughout this trailer. I think this trailer is a reaction to the online ...

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Two New Spirit Posters Better Than The Movie?

Kofi Outlaw — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 04:48:51 +0000

Here are two new posters from Frank Miller’s The Spirit. The first one is of The Spirit (Gabriel Macht), standing at the wrong end of two big guns, body full of bullet holes and not seeming to care. The other poster is the reverse angle of Samuel L. Jackson as The Octopus, gripping said guns and looking mad as hell that his bullets can’t seem to take down The Spirit.

Interesting concept, but is it enough to rebuke all the rampant rumors stating that The Spirit is going to be crap?

Screen Rant’s own Vic Holtreman was at Comic-Con this year for Frank Miller’s Spirit panel. He tried to be upbeat about what he saw, but didn’t sound too convinced, and he didn’t feel the movie will have mass appeal. I happened to catch some ...

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San Diego Comic-Con ’08 Wrap Up

Vic Holtreman — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:54:09 +0000

So the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con is officially over – today feels like coming down from a “high.” Covering the Con is always a whirlwind, but at least this year (my second covering it) I felt like a was a bit more in control.

We did our best to bring you the lowdown on what is relevant to you although we couldn’t cover everything. That’s the problem with the Con – as far as movies and television almost everything is relevant to what we cover here at Screen Rant: Sci-Fi, superheroes, action and a bit of horror.

We managed to cover:

The Stargate Continuum DVD movie red carpet premiere.
JJ Abrams’ Fringe panel.
Battlestar Galactica.
Joss Whedon’s highly anticipated Dollhouse TV series.
The Stargate Atlantis panel.
Zack Snyder’s follow up to 300: Watchmen.
The pretty much waste of time ...

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Screen Rant Focus: Watchmen

Kofi Outlaw — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 17:48:02 +0000

Comic-con has been the perfect starting point for the marketing machine behind the upcoming film adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ genre-shattering, classic graphic novel, Watchmen, to start turning its gears. Since the Con kicked-off and that breathtaking teaser trailer premiered before The Dark Knight, the buzz surrounding Watchmen has gone from a few bees in the bush, to an eager swarm of anticipation.

Always ready to serve the will of the people, we here at Screen Rant thought it might be nice to pool a lot of the info about the Watchmen flick together into a nice focus piece – a Rorschach blot that you can look at and determine for yourself how this film is shaping up.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Well, as I’m sure Vic can personally attest, word around the campfire is ...

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Comic-Con ’08: Day 4 Wrap Up

Vic Holtreman — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 09:27:57 +0000

Doug Nagy from TheMovieBlog.com, Alex Billington from Firstshowing.net and me with the three stars of Bitch Slap at the Wrath of Con party

Another day at Comic-Con, another sore rear end from the uncomfortable seats in Hall H…

Today’s events included watching the Season 3 premiere episode of Heroes, which was a huge unexpected bonus. It looks like the show is getting its mojo back and if you’re a fan you’re really going to like it when it returns this Fall.

The Lost panel was attended by the executive producers (who revealed next to nothing) and Matthew Fox (who said almost nothing). They did manage to entertain the crowd, but overall it was cotton candy: a lot of fluff but not very nourishing.

One of the big surprises was how awesome the new Terminator Salvation ...

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Comic-Con ’08: Day 3 Wrap Up

Vic Holtreman — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 10:14:00 +0000

Gotta tell you guys, we’re having a blast. Somehow this year I’m relaxing more yet getting more posts out about the goings-on here at Comic-Con. Here’s a bit of a wrap up of yesterday (since it’s 3AM and no longer Friday).

I’ve enjoyed seeing some of my online movie buds in person again. Nice to actually hang out instead of just exchanging emails, Twitters and IMs.

The biggie: Attended the Watchmen panel and got to see new footage. Awesome.
Saw a bunch of trailers, most of which I’d seen. One I hadn’t seen was for Hamlet 2 and while I’ve heard the movie is great (it premiered at Sundance but I missed it), I thought the trailer made the movie look absolutely stupid.
Saw the first footage from The Wolfman ...

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Comic-Con ’08: The Spirit

Vic Holtreman — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 21:53:33 +0000

Here’s Screen Rant’s live coverage of Lionsgate’s panel for “The Spirit.” It will be starting in about 10 minutes and I’ll be live-blogging it. It’ll be interesting to see if they have any new footage that will look better than the awful trailer that was released a while ago.

This will be the last “live coverage” item that I’ll be doing today but there will be further Comic-Con updates later on today. I apologize in advance if I make any errors so feel free to make corrections in the comments and I’ll update the post accordingly. It’s a bit difficult to pay attention to what’s going on, take it all in and try to get it typed up simultaenously, but I’m doing my best to cover this for you!

Writer/Director Frank Miller and producer Deborah Del ...

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The Spirit Trailer: Action Movie Or Soft Core Porn?

Vic Holtreman — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:02:14 +0000

There was a Youtube, bootleg version of the first full trailer for The Spirit out a couple of days ago, but I refuse to put those crappy versions up here on Screen Rant. Once those pop up you just have to wait a day or two and usually a decent version pops up, so here you go.

Now by “decent” I mean video quality and not the content of the trailer itself because my first gut-check reaction is that this isn’t looking too good at the moment…

I’ll admit I have ZERO familiarity with the comic series this movie is based on. Although Frank Miller (writer-artist of 300 and Sin City) is directing it, he is not the author of the source material – Will Eisner created the masked crime-fighting character in 1940. This is also Frank Miller’s ...

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Weekend Movie News Wrap Up: April 20, 2008

Niall Browne — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 19:31:35 +0000

Welcome to another Weekend Movie News Wrap Up.

This week we feature news on: Val Kilmer and 5O Cent in Streets of Blood, Brett Ratner’s The Incredible Shrinking Man, Robert Rodriguez’s Barbarella, Battlestar Galactica’s Ronald D. Moore to write a big screen Sci-Fi trilogy and see what Eva Mendes looks like in Frank Miller’s The Spirit.

So here we go…

1. Sharon Stone, Dylan McDermott and Brian Presley will join Val Kilmer and 50cent in Streets of Blood, which was previously titled Microwave Park. – Variety

Variety states that :

“‘Streets’ centers on the relationship between two police officers dealing with the lawlessness of New Orleans in the post-Katrina environment.”

The film will be directed by Charles Winkler. It starts shooting next month.

If Kilmer’s in it – I’m interested.

2. Brett Ratner is in talks to direct The Incredible Shrinking Man. Eddie Murphy is currently attached to star in the remake ...

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See The First Teaser Trailer For ‘The Spirit’

Vic Holtreman — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 04:41:18 +0000

Right on the heels of the first poster for the film, below you’ll get your first real look at the upcoming Frank Miller film The Spirit.

This one looks to have a very film noir look and suprisingly (to me) looks very similar in style to Sin City. I really expected a completely different look for this one, much like how 300 was quite different from Sin City. I’m also quite curious how this one will do at the box office… my gut feel is that it won’t do big numbers, but may end up with a very dedicated but relatively small fan base.

For a larger version of the trailer you can visit MTV.com.

So what ...

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First Official Poster For The Spirit

Vic Holtreman — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 23:51:53 +0000

Ain’t It Cool News has scored the first super-hi-res look at the first (non-billboard) poster for the upcoming film adaption of Frank Miller’s The Spirit, by Frank Miller himself. If you don’t know, Miller is the same guy who brought us the highly stylized Sin City graphic novel and movie. Oh, and he also wrote the graphic novel that the movie 300 was based on.

So if nothing else, this film certainly won’t be boring or ordinary.

For a full look at the poster keep reading…

First official teaser poster for The Spirit (courtesy of AintItCool.com)

The Spirit is a former rookie police officer who returns mysteriously from the dead to fight crime in the shadows of Central City. His arch-enemy is the ...

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First Official Photos From Frank Miller’s The Spirit

Niall Browne — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 16:55:51 +0000

Last week I said that the next big comic book adaptation to watch was The Spirit. I stand by that statement with the release of two official pictures from Frank Miller’s film.

The Spirit stars Samuel L. Jackson as The Octopus and Scarlett Johansson as Silken Floss, Eva Mendes and Gabriel “Who did I sleep with to get this role?” Macht as The Spirit

Okay, Okay – I know that they look like Sin City, but that isn’t a bad thing. Didn’t 300 kind of look like Sin City? That turned out okay.

It’s also directed by one of the directors of Sin City, so you can allow him some leeway.

To see the images of Jackson and Johansson… yes…yes… continue reading!

Scarlett Johansson as ‘Silken ...

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Frank Miller & Will Eisner’s ‘The Spirit’

Niall Browne — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 01:11:08 +0000

We love a good comic book film here at Screen Rant. Sometimes we even love a bad comic book film, but what we really want to see is a great comic book film. While the other writers here await Iron Man like the second coming and I anticipate the new Batman film, that I’ve waited twenty years to see one could easily forget Frank Miller’s forthcoming The Spirit.

Forget The Spirit! I hear you scream. Never! How could you forget a comic book adaptation starring Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, Eva Mendes, Paz Vega and Gabriel Macht.

No don’t worry… I’ve never heard of Macht either.

Based on Will Eisner’s comic book; The Spirit is the story of a rookie-cop who returns form the dead to fight crime in Central City. However, his arch-enemy – ...

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