Posts Tagged ‘Science Fiction’
Posted by dominie in Films, News on September 8th, 2008
With the influence of anime on Western films becoming increasingly prevalent, artists and filmmakers continue to push the boundaries and explore new creative dynamics. The following press release from Resonance Features popped in our mail today.
The Boston Science Fiction Film Festival presents Anime After Dark, a twelve hour film festival event at Boston’s historic Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Sq., Somerville on October 18th, 2008. It will start at dusk, 7:00 PM, and run continuously until dawn, 7:00 AM.
The festival will bring some of the best in new and vintage anime to the big screen, in many cases for the first time. Ticket holders will be treated to an array of cinema treasures by masters of the genre like Studio Ghibli, Satoshi Kon, Leiji Matsumoto, Kenji Kamiyama, and others in a program that will run from dusk until dawn and include rare 35mm prints. Special events and more surprises to be announced.
In the spotlight of the lineup is Grave of the Fireflies in a special promotional screening of its upcoming 20th anniversary pay-per-view release. Anime After Dark will be one of the first times that this masterpiece has been projected on an American screen. Roger Ebert has called the film, “an emotional experience so powerful that it forces a rethinking of animation.”
New features include the recently released Tekkon Kinkreet winner of the 2008 Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year. Other notable films in the lineup include Millennium Actress, Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society, and Project A-Ko. (more…)
Posted by bob in Films, News on August 22nd, 2008
Outlander, a science fiction tale with creepy creatures, is headed direct to DVD without a theatrical release by The Weinstein Company. Expect it on November 18.
The film from director Howard McCain (Perfect Prey) stars James Caviezel, Sophia Myles, Jack Huston, Ron Perlman, and John Hurt.
Posted by bob in News on August 22nd, 2008
The third season of Torchwood has begun filming in Cardiff, Wales with Paul Copley (Coronation Street) joining the cast. The team has also added Noel Clark’s Mickey character but Copley apparently replaces Freema Agyeman, whose Martha Jones was expected to join the team. Instead, when Agyeman signed with BBC rival ITV for a show, she was excised from the story.
The shortened season will last a mere five episodes but will tell one story, “Children of Earth” with scripts from Russell T. Davies, James Moran, and John Fay. In the United Kingdom, it will air across one week although BBC America will likely run it weekly when it gets to the states in 2009.
Posted by dominie in Comics, Films on August 21st, 2008
Production for the animated sci-fi feature film, Technotise: Edit and I, has been going on for eight years now and will finally premiere in November this year. The film is the first Serbian animated feature to be created. Writer-director Aleksa Gajic first developed it as a sequel to his Technotise graphic novel.
“The plot is set in Belgrade in 2074. The main character is Edit, a female psychology student. After her sixth failure at the same university exam, she decides to have the chip installed to help her pass. From that moment, her life changes and unusual things start happening to her.”
Rumors are that the animated feature “looks far from being unoriginal, both in style and substance.” Inspiration for the graphics came from a mixture of Japanese anime and realistic drawings with static scenes, emphasized atmosphere, and authentic artistic expression. The process also included explorations in classic 2D animation and transitioned to improved 3D animation followed by vector animation.
Posted by dominie in Films, News on August 19th, 2008
Bloody-Disgusting caught up with director Mark A. Lewis (Ill Fated) of the new Sci-Fi Thriller/Horror, The Thaw. In the plot, four ecology students discover a deadly parasite that can potentially cause a global epidemic. Each student successively becomes infected and turns on each other until the remaining survivor must decide to sacrifice their lives and burn everything to the ground.
Lewis tells Bloody-Disgusting that production has wrapped, gasping, “Thank God” and was very happy with the outcome of the project. In comparison to this previous project, Ill Fated, whose budget was only 1/10 of The Thaw, he was ecstatic to have had a proper budget to hire experienced key crew members, but the pressure was always on with time against them.
Filming a bloody horror film was “more something that just happened” Lewis reveals. He had been working on several pieces lately, all of which have been rather dark, and the toughest part of each being to make it meaningful. (more…)
Posted by bob in Films, News on August 18th, 2008
The Dark Knight surpassed Star Wars twice this weekend. First, it firmly grabbed second place on the All Time Box Office charts with a total now estimated at $471,493,000. It’s weekend take of $16,790,000 also surpassed the debut of the CGI-animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars which managed a so-so $15,505,000. The film received mixed reviews and little in the way of anticipatory buzz so its performance over the next week or two will be telling.
20th-Century Fox, which has had a miserable summer, finally got some good news when Mirrors opened with $11,125,000, exceeding studio estimates by 10%. (more…)
Posted by bob in Films, News on August 11th, 2008
Twitch reports that South Korea’s Polygon Entertainment is capitalizing on that country’s current fascination with monsters by serving up two fresh projects. One is called Sector 7 which is described as a science fiction action/adventure blockbuster. The monster here is from the deep sea and terrorizing a crew working an oil rig.
Chaw, coming in December, will be an action adventure/thriller and the monster will be a man-eating, mutant boar. Director Shin Jeong-won (Sisily 2km) sets the CGI creature against a village and stars Eom Tae-woong, Jang Hang-seon, Yoon Je-moon, Jeong Yu-mi and Pak Hyeok-kwon. (more…)
Posted by bob in Films, News on August 10th, 2008
The Dark Knight continues to rule the box office as it takes the number one position for the fourth weekend in a row, the first time any 2008 release has achieved this. Its estimated haul of $26,030,000 pushes its domestic take to $441,541,000, faster than any movie in history.
In its second weekend Universal’s The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor dropped -60.2%, taking in just $16,113,000. With a total of $70,671,000, it chugs along although there has to be some concern that bad word of mouth, poor reviews and steep drop off may mean the franchise is running out of steam despite director Rob Cohen already talking a fourth film. (more…)
Posted by bob in Films, News on August 9th, 2008
Imagi Animation Studios (Astro Boy) has begun production on the feature film version of the 1972 Gatchaman series. The legendary anime originally debuted as a Japanese television show called Science Ninja Team Gatchaman and aired in the U.S. during the 1970s and 1980s as Battle of the Planets and G-Force. The upcoming release will carry the same title, but the animation will be very CGI heavy and less photorealistic.
Paul Dini, perhaps best known known for Batman: The Animated Series has taken over what was originally Kevin Munroe’s (TMNT) position of writing and directing the script for the movie. Munroe was taken off the project due to creative differences. (more…)
Posted by bob in Films, News on August 9th, 2008
In response to the jarring demand for David Carradine as an absolutely must-have in Paul W.S. Anderson’s remake of Paul Bartel’s classic Death Race, Carradine received a call to play a brief role. Carradine, who played Frankenstein in Bartel’s original film, is now the voice of Frankenstein played by Jason Statham. He commented, “All of a sudden, they got a brilliant idea to have me voice Frankenstein in the beginning, because [Statham's] got a big mask on anyway. They ashcanned the original voice and put me in it, so that would satisfy the fans watching this film that really and truly is another movie, not Death Race 2000.”
The remake from Universal opens August 22.
With the influence of anime on Western films becoming increasingly prevalent, artists and filmmakers continue to push the boundaries and explore new creative dynamics. The following press release from Resonance Features popped in our mail today.
