A little while into the panel, the crowd went wild as Whedon “confirmed” his involvement with The Avengers. When Whedon mentioned that he was set to direct The Avengers, the audience went wild. However, he jokingly said it was “just a gig.”
I’ve heard from a few people this week that “Hollywood finally came up with an intelligent creative film.” They are speaking of Inception of course, the Christopher Nolan project starring Leonardo Dicaprio as a dream manipulator and thief. Still, though Hollywood is known for its controversy, boundlessness, and liberalism. However, when it comes to what movies receive “the treatment” the business is surprisingly risk averse.
Before the instant classic, Tinseltown was already creating mind-bending, otherworldly and controversial movies. Of course with current technological advances these types of films are a more likely treat. And one movie can spark a lasting trend. If a single film makes a ton of money the Hollywood suits gather to see how they can make lightening strike twice at multiplexes. Consider X-Men in 2000 and Spider-Man in 2002 … and then everything after that.
This week on the circuit we visit The Town directed by Ben Affleck, rev things up with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in Faster, take a puzzled glance at the Comic-Con teaser for The Goon and settle The Debt with Helen Mirren and Sam Worthington in a WWII thriller. Last off we have the first trailer for Woody Allen’s latest, the lengthily titled You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger.
Comic Con, the place where dreams come true, is also known to be a hub for studios to drop major news, first-look footage and all kinds of tidbits on some of the most anticipated films being released in the next year. With that in mind, here is a list of ten things we want to see or hear coming out of this year’s Con.
Fancy an old-fashioned wizards duel that will make the PG stuff in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice seem like weak sauce? I challenge you to beat me, the master of Player Affinity’s weekly box office prediction competition. All you’re required to do is predict which five movies will place in the top five of this weekend’s U.S. domestic box office chart. Simple enough, right? I will make my own predictions here and explain them to you each week to give you some sort of reference point. It’s then your job to enter a comment with your top five.
They’re known as the movies you have to see twice, or sometimes more affectionately as the movies after which you say “I don’t know what the $%*# just I just saw.” For now, I’ll call them mind-benders: films that are so enigmatic and intricately woven that wow you at the end, even if you have no idea what happened. Considering that tomorrow’s Inception could easily be one of those films, PAM and I thought we’d share with you my Top 10.
With the impending release of Inception this week, we PAMers thought that it is time for another Actor Affinity. With an impressive cast that includes Joesph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Marion Cotillard and Cillian Murphy we have decided to focus on Tom Hardy, who you may have seen in Star Trek: Nemesis and RocknRolla.
Class, passion and creative integrity are quickly becoming the exception rather than the rule, as over the past decade, big budgets and countless soulless rehashes dominate Hollywood products. The widely accepted “greats” of cinema will soon be behind us (or in many cases already are). How much longer will the likes of Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Clint Eastwood be able provide us with the intelligent escapism and Oscar-pedigree films we have come to love and rely upon?
Welcome all to Trailer Tracker, where we at Player Affinity go bobbing for trailers in the proverbial bucket that is the Internet. Coming at you this week is the supernatural thriller Devil from the mind of M. Night Shyamalan; we find out that It’s Kind of a Funny Story with Zach Galifianakis, conduct an experiment with Adrien Brody and Forest Whitaker, check out the second trailer for Robert Rodriguez’s Machete and finally get welcomed to the Riley’s.
When you write/blog about movies, there are two non-verbally accepted truths: 1.) It’s never too early give Oscar predictions (just ask our own Julian Stark about that one) and 2.) There’s no unacceptable time to evaluate the year’s best movies. Today, we’re celebrating the latter, by giving your our Top 5 films of 2010 to date. We figured we ought to get it in before Inception debuts on Friday and more or less ransacks and usurps many of the movies our lists.
