Savage Popcorn

(Found @james_gunn)

Here’s a story to warm the heart of anyone who likes their animation a bit twisted. While talking to Bloody Disgusting (via Latefilm) Guillermo del Toro mentioned that he is involved in trying to get a full stop-motion version of Gris Grimly’s Pinocchio off the gound. Del Toro is planning to produce while Grimly - whose forst foray into film was the very well received Cannibal Flesh Riot! - is set to occupy the director’s chair.

The idea came from Gris, and everybody loves his book about it. The original story is far more perverse and spooky and semi-necrophilia vibe to it in certain aspects. Gris certainly has that vein in him, he wants to do this with that original spookiness in it, we are trying to get it going. The Jim Henson Company is the behind it and we are currently working on the screenplay! Its not coming to a screen near you any time soon, even if it were to begin today it would be about three years in the making, but we are working to make it happen. A full-scale puppet universe takes time.

It’s going to be a long time coming, but well worth the wait.

Focus Features have just released a new poster for Coraline and added the tagline: “Be careful what you wish for.” There is a larger version under the fold, and it looks pretty damn impressive.

Directed by Henry Selick and based on the Neil gaiman novel of the same name, Coraline would probably be one of my most anticipated films of 2009 even if I knew nothing else about it. But from what I’ve seen so far, it does look very much like this film will live up to all of my expectations.

2008 has proved to be a good year for animation. Here’s hoping 2009 turns out to be even better.

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Back in 2004 I saw, and tremendously enjoyed G.O.R.A., a science fiction comedy written by and starring Turkish comedian Cem Yilmaz. Twitch has been closely following the progress of Yilmaz’s follow up to G.O.R.A., a time-travel comedy entitled A.R.O.G.

No synopsis in English has turned up yet, but Yilmaz has been releasing a stream of teasers, each of which reveals a single plot element and really does leave you wanting to see more. The fifth teaser is now online and really does need to be seen to be believed.

You can catch all five, as well as the opening scene from the film at Twitch.

It’s what Barack Obama promised. But the signs are that someone in Hollywood missed a memo because the men with the money are still ploughing ahead with bad remakes of classic and foreign films.

Nothing good can come from either of these projects.

The Haunting of Molly Hartley is a tale of spell binding suspense in which something evil lurks just beneath the lush surfaces of teenaged girl’s private school world - and it holds the rights to her very soul…

Happy Halloween

Set in the 2056, Repo! The Genetic Opera tells the story of an epidemic of organ failures that devastates the planet, killing tens of millions. Out of the tragedy, a savior emerges: GeneCo, a biotech company that offers organ transplants… for a price.

It’s a film that seemed destined to become a cult hit, with curiosity and fan interest running high pretty much from day one. Unfortunately, the film fell victim to a change of management at Lionsgate and – as is often the case – the new guy tries to make himself look good by under-marketing the previous incumbents projects.

In the case of Lionsgate, this has let to a pitiful opening for Clive Barker’s Midnight Meat Train and JT Petty’s The Burrowers is receiving practically no marketing at all. Similarly, Repo! Has received a whole lot of nothing in terms of marketing but – in this case – director Darren Lynn Bousman is not prepared to see his film sink without trace and has been doggedly mounting his own campaign which has so far seen him release the soundtrack and pound the festival circuit for all it’s worth.

And now Twitch has managed to score a full musical number that captures the unique aesthetic of this odd little film. Watch it, watch the trailer, demand the DVD.

While I’m still far from convinced that Zack Snyder is going to be able to bring Alan Moore’s classic comic to the big screen successfully, I do have to admit that the first proper teaser poster to be released does set the tone just about perfectly.

You can see a larger version over at CHUD. In the meantime, I shall live in hope but expect to be disappointed.

Waiting for a science fiction film from Ridley Scott is a bit like waiting for a bus. Nothing for 25 years and then two turn up at once.

As I’ve already mentioned, Scott is planning to bring Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World to the big screen. It now seems that Brave New World will be the film he makes after he’s brought Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War to cinemas.

“I first pursued ‘Forever War’ 25 years ago, and the book has only grown more timely and relevant since,” Scott told Daily Variety. “It’s a science-fiction epic, a bit of ‘The Odyssey’ by way of ‘Blade Runner,’ built upon a brilliant, disorienting premise.”

The Forever War tells the story of William Mandella, who returns from from weeks or months of active duty in the interstellar “Forever War” to an Earth which, after centuries of change, is no longer his home.

Sometimes it feels that an unoriginal film – either a remake or an adaptation of a book or, worse, a computer game – is being announced every other week. But every now and then an adaptation appears in the pipeline that looks like it might be worth keeping an eye out for. Here’s an example:

Ridley Scott is planning to direct Brave New World.

All is not rosy, however as revealed in an interview with io9, and they are still struggling with the script:

[W]e’re still struggling with that one. I have 40 things on the go at once. But that’s a very important one. And sometimes, some surface faster than the others. It’s partly luck of the draw. Even with a good writer, he’ll do it and screw up. So then you go back to the table and start all over again, it’s hard. The hardest single thing is getting it on paper.

That said though, it’s positive that they are bothering with a script – and not going straight to the storyboard as seems far too common with many of the summer blockbusters – and I will be very interested in seeing what Scott does with Aldous Huxley’s dystopian classic.