http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSDghOqVKqY
Never heard of Real Steel until I saw this spot on the boob tube today.
I seriously thought this was a tongue-in-cheek commercial for Rock’em Sock’em Robots or something. Yes, even though that’s obviously Hugh Jackman, until the title card came up at the end, it never crossed my mind that this was an actual movie.
A robot knocks another robot’s block off at 0:09, for goodness’ sake.
‘Empire Strikes Back’ deleted scene
Christian Blauvelt, EW.com:
”I’d just as soon kiss a Wookiee”/”I can arrange that… You could use a good kiss!” wasn’t the original parting-shot in Han and Leia’s Echo Base lovers’ quarrel. In an early cut of the film, their squabble lasted much longer, and while that never-before-glimpsed deleted scene will be included on the Star Wars: The Complete Saga Blu-ray (out Sept. 16), EW’s got it for you first.
The video is an exclusive so you’ll have to click through and watch it there. I’ll just say that the final version is a vast improvement.
Chandler Levack, on the Manic Pixie Dream Girl — think Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Natalie Portman in Garden State, Zooey Deschanel in (500) Days of Summer:
All vaguely artistic, politically sensitive over-sharers, they lure in lost boys like the humane society for doomed relationships. But it’s their very irrationality that makes them irresistible. For the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, men (and women) can’t help but lose themselves in their sexy, aimless lifestyle. And compared to girls like them — with their boundless empathy, their emotional vulnerability, their vintage-purse collection — girls like us are totally screwed.
A really fascinating, well-researched article about an archetype that’s all over modern Gen-Y cinema. A couple things struck me:
“Men want to be the listless protagonist who needs a woman to teach them how to be human,” he says. “And for men, I would advise to ‘be your own manic pixie dream girl.’ Free free to prance around and wear silly hats and fly kites all day. And while schizophrenia might ensue, at least you’ll be colourful.”
As for women, Fowles says the first step in confronting the MPDG is realizing, like all the scary creatures hiding under your bed, that she doesn’t exist.
This is probably my favorite part of the whole article — the advice for both men and for women is fantastic. I can speak from personal experience that I’m much happier after I learned both of the above lessons.
The sad truth of sexual liberation is that you have feel liberated. My judgmental/never-getting-laid self believes that the girl who acts freely with her heart and vagina can’t possibly be free because she doesn’t understand the ramifications that come with sex.
I couldn’t resist throwing this in here, even though it’s a bit obscure. But for any student of Strauss and Howe, these sentences should jump right out at you.
(Via Anne K. Halsall.)
Ridley Scott to direct and produce new Blade Runner installment
Back in March, Alcon Entertainment announced they’d acquired the rights to make more Blade Runner movies. There was a bunch of speculation about who would direct, but what pretty much everyone agreed on then is still true now: with Scott at the helm, the chances of this not being a stinker go way, way up.
Lost Hitchcock film found in New Zealand
Paul Chapman and Nick Allen writing in The Telegraph:
All copies of The White Shadow, a silent feature film released by Hollywood in 1924, had been thought lost to posterity, and cinema historians have described the discovery as “priceless”.
Three dusty reels containing the first half of the film – about 30 minutes of footage – had been stored deep in the bowels of the New Zealand Film Archive, where the search is continuing for the other three reels.
The acclaimed director was 24 when he worked on what was billed as a “wild, atmospheric melodrama” starring actress Betty Compson as twin sisters, one angelic and the other “without a soul”. He was credited as assistant director and also wrote the scenario, designed the sets and edited the footage.
Here are the final twenty-five seconds of the 1986 film Ninja the Protector, also known as Project Ninja Daredevils.
I have no idea what is being resolved here, but I can’t imagine it being resolved any better than this.
Andy Khouri, writing for Comics Alliance, brings us some fabulous news:
In what is possibly the best comics-to-film news we’ll report this year, the live-action American adaptation of AKIRA that pretty much everyone agreed was a terrible idea has apparently been shelved.
Why am I so happy about this? Just like The Last Airbender, they were planning on recasting it with white actors. AKIRA is a fundamentally Japanese movie — anyone who’s seen it can tell you that. Good riddance to this project, I say.
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington’s end credits theme
Last night I saw the final couple of minutes of the film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. It’s a good one; I ought to rewatch the whole thing some time.
I completely forgot, or never realized until now, that the music that plays during the end credits is an incredibly silly thirty-five second medley of “Oh My Darling, Clementine,” “Yankee Doodle,” and “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee.” It’s like something you’d hear in a jingoistic Looney Tunes scene.
The only full video of the credits theme I could find is over at Google Video, which has the whole movie. The music starts at 2:09:22.
