Here’s some really cool tidbits of entertainment news I thought I should share with y’all, with some commentary by who else, but yours truly.
Lasseter to Disney Employees: Hand-Drawn Animation to Return!
As he has repeatedly promised, John Lasseter will revive traditional hand-drawn ("2-D") animation at the Walt Disney Co. with a feature titled, The Frog Princess. The studio said Wednesday that directors Ron Clements and John Musker, whose credits include such hits as The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and the flop, Treasure Planet, will return to direct the Princess movie, based on a Russian fairy tale. Daily Variety also reported that Alan Menken is working on the music for the movie, and that it will have the kind of "Broadway style" for which Menken’s earlier Disney films have been famous. Today’s Hollywood Reporter questioned the strategy behind Disney’s return to hand-drawn animation, noting in its report about the planned film that "traditional animation no longer draws the crowd."
Thank God Disney is bringing back the animation! Don’t kill off the art! And to the Hollywood Reporter? Kiss my ass! What the fuck do you know?!
Smith Takes on Another Writer
Kevin Smith has another film commentator in his sights. After taking aim at critic Joel Siegel, who walked out of a screening of his Clerks II , Smith has laid into L.A. Weekly columnist Nikki Finke , who criticized the decision to add 10,000 names to the closing credits of the movie—a marketing ploy by distributors The Weinstein Co. to get 10,000 MySpace.com users to link to the Clerks II website. Finke had called the list an insult to members of Hollywood guilds who had worked to secure screen credits for their members. "It’s so sad," Smith wrote in his own MySpace blog. "Weinstein Co. finds a fun way to spice up the marketing a bit, and this woman tries to kill-joy the whole endeavor." He insisted that he has not heard a single complaint about the list from a Hollywood guild member. Finke responded: "Total strangers to the film who merely entered a contest don’t deserve credit, no matter how quick the crawl."
The ploy is not entirely unique. Peter Jackson added 29 minutes of "fan credits" to the end of the extended DVD of Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King over music from the soundtrack and music that was cut from the film.
Nikki’s the kind of critic who gives legit ink slingers a bad name. However, I am a lil’ disappointed that whole fan credits thing was just a ploy. Poo. If I was a filmmaker, I would’ve put everyones’ names in there, regardless of guilds or other politics.
Universal Eyes New Strategy for Online Movie Sales
In the latest experiment in making movies available online, the British division of Universal Pictures will begin selling a "three-copy" package of its latest home-video releases beginning next Monday, July 31. For $31 for a new release and $18 for older releases, consumers will be able to download a movie onto a computer, onto a portable digital device, and receive a DVD by mail that can be viewed on a TV set. All three copies will originally be made available on the same date, that is, when DVDs are released.
Dumbest…idea…ever.
PBS vs. The FCC
Meeting with television writers and critics in Pasadena Wednesday, PBS President Paula Kerger said, "This is not just about Janet Jackson. This is an issue of free speech. It is an issue because our filmmakers deserve to be able to tell their stories and tell them well." She cited in particular noted documentary filmmaker Ken Burns’s upcoming The War, in which World War II veterans use salty language in describing their experiences on the battlefield. Acknowledging that the language will be offensive to some viewers, Kerger said, "They should have the opportunity not to watch something if it’s going to be troubling. But for others to be able to see a documentary and to be able to let a person tell their own story and not censor the words that are coming out of their mouth is tremendously important." She said that she recently asked FCC commissioners if PBS stations would be fined if the language was left in. "No one said, ‘Oh, go ahead and run it.’ They said, ‘Well, you know, we understand.’ So I can’t really read their minds. I don’t know."
I’m mighty pleased to see PBS taking a stand against the lame-ass FCC. Kudos!
Arrested Development Returning—On the Internet
Fox’s Arrested Development, which attracted critical raves and an avid cult following — but low ratings — will get a second life on the Internet.
In an unusual deal, Fox has signed an exclusive deal with Microsoft’s MSN web portal that will make all 53 episodes of the series available for free. MSN says it will create a "community" around the videos, which will be streamed and include commercials that cannot be skipped. (The deal does not include rights to sell downloads of the episodes.) The Fox "exclusive" appears to conflict somewhat with a separate AD deal with Comcast’s G4 cable network, which encourages viewers to download its programming (games in particular) to portable video devices. In yet a third deal, Fox granted HD-Net high-definition rights to the quirky series.
DiCaprio Leads All-Star Cast for The Departed
Leonardo DiCaprio’s newest film, The Departed is slated to open in October, 2006. This marks the third collaboration between Leonardo and director Martin Scorsese, whose previous films, "Gangs of New York" and "The Aviator" together garnered 21 Academy Award nominations.
William Monahan wrote the screenplay based on the Hong Kong film, Infernal Affairs. Set in Boston within the intersecting worlds of the Boston State Police and the Irish mafia, the story follows two policemen, one undercover for the police who has infiltrated the mob, the other, a policeman who is actually an inside man for the mob. The cat and mouse game gets increasingly intense as each tries to discover the identity of the other.
The cast includes Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Vera Farmiga, Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg, and Alec Baldwin.
Headlines, links, and commentaries by me. Actual news content taken from IMDb; they originally get it from WENN. DiCaprio story taken from Leo’s own website . Imagery hailed from various public domain sources. Don’t like what you see here? eMail me, and we’ll hug it out.
