By Jason Apuzzo. • Despicable Me won the weekend box office race, and it looks like Pixar may have some new competition – in the form of Universal’s family unit Illumination, combined with the French animation outfit Mac Guff. Glad to see some new players emerging on the animation front.
• New York Magazine’s David Edelstein and The LA Times’ Steven Zeitchik have posted tepid reviews of Inception. Money quote from Zeitchik about the film: “more headache-inducing than pleasure-producing.” From Edelstein: “clunky and confusing … I truly have no idea what so many people are raving about.” Expect more of this to come as critical tongues slowly loosen prior to the film’s release.
• Roman Polanski has been set free, and the Swiss will not cooperate in extraditing him. And frankly I would care more about this story if Polanski wasn’t so long past his prime as a filmmaker, anyway. What’s worth seeing after Frantic?
• Ed Norton has apparently been dumped by Marvel from playing The Hulk due to his bad attitude, although his attitude can’t possibly be as bad as mine was after seeing him botch the role. Better give it back to Bana.
• New set pics are out from Transformers 3, featuring cars. And more cars. And still more cars and … where’s Rosie Huntington-Whiteley?
• Kevin Costner’s oil/water separator has been deployed in the Gulf. It’s amazing that Waterworld would have such a positive legacy.
• Hollywood power players turned out to raise money for Barbara Boxer the other night, which makes perfect sense given how wonderful Boxer’s tenure has been in terms of keeping film production right here in the Golden State where it belongs. [Sigh.]
• Volvo is the latest corporation to piggyback off Twilight for advertising purposes. That’s odd; I always assumed vampires drove Hyundais. Meanwhile Twilight: Breaking Dawn starts shooting this fall in Vancouver and Baton Rouge, provided the entire state of Louisiana isn’t covered in crude.
• The Mel Gibson Thing is started to have wide consequences in the industry, with questions even being raised about the forthcoming Gibson-DiCaprio collaboration on a Viking epic (!). And, of course, as you’ve probably heard by now, the Gibson situation continues to spin further out of control by the hour. I’m really hoping we don’t see Mel driving a Ford Bronco down the 405 next week, because this is getting really ugly.
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … According to Variety, Amanda Seyfried will be starring in the forthcoming Andrew Niccol science fiction film I’m.mortal, about a future dystopia in which no one has to age … although to keep the population in check, people can only stay alive as long as they can pay their way. Hey – why set this in the future? All of this sounds like West Los Angeles right now!
And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood …
Posted on July 12th, 2010 at 11:10pm.
. . to keep the population in check, people can only stay alive as long as they can pay their way.
Yay! The first anti-tea-party movie! Because we know those nasty ol tea baggers just want to kill the poor people rather than paying their fair share.
Let’s see, it took about a year after the tea party emerged to get the first anti-tea party movie. That would mean that we’ve got another 9 months or so before the first anti-illegal-enforcement movie shows up. Or maybe sooner . .
http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/machete/trailer
K – what are you talking about? How is this an anti-Tea Party movie? Not that I’m that excited about the film itself, but I’m curious why you’re seeing this as something political when I see this as yet another science fiction dystopia film. Frankly, it sounds like a “Logan’s Run” rip-off.
I simply cannot understand why so much of Hollywood would turn out to support Barbara Boxer. She has been a disaster for California. And you raise a good point about film production – where is it? Hasn’t it plummeted in California thanks to Democrat mismanagement of the state economy? Why does Hollywood keep supporting these people?
I wrote a review of Despicable Me on my blog (mondaymorningmovies.wordpress.com) and while my ultimate verdict was that it was clever and a good film, I thought it lacked the simple joy of Pixar’s best and even some of their worst. I definitely welcome competition to Pixar’s well deserved stranglehold on animated movies because competition breeds better films. But I think the jury is still deliberating over whether or not Illumination will make a run at Pixar or just fall by the waste side. Remember, Dreamworks hit it big with Shrek and have done mostly nil since. I liked Despicable Me better as a film than Shrek, so they’re already ahead of Dreamworks in that department, but as for just pure unadulterated fun, Shrek and all of Pixar’s movies could teach a few things to the new guys.
Feel free to post a link to your review, Shin.