Paramount and co-financier Skydance Productions today scheduled this long gestating, highly anticipated action thriller that will be the first of an anticipated franchise trilogy. After various starts and stops, bad luck and good fortune, the release date for Jack Ryan now is Christmas Day of 2013. It goes up against Universal’s martial arts movie 41 Ronin with Keanu Reeves as well as Fox’s comedy remake of The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty directed by and starring Ben Stiller. Jack Ryan resurrects the popular Tom Clancy character of CIA analyst Jack Ryan last seen on film in 2002 and now…

ABC has ordered a pilot for S.H.I.E.L.D, a live-action series from The Avengers writer-director Joss Whedon, Marvel TV and ABC Studios. The project is based on Marvel’s peacekeeping organization S.H.I.E.L.D (which stands for Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate or Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division) found in both the Marvel comic book and feature film universes, including the blockbuster 2012 movie The Avengers, in which S.H.I.E.L.D director Nick Fury, recruits Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk, and Thor to stop Thor’s adoptive…

In this version, The Avengers would have opened with a high, slow, Nolan-esque cruise over a battered Manhattan in the wake of the film’s climactic battle. The bulk of the sequence sets up a flashback structure as it features Cobie Smulders as SHIELD Agent Maria Hill, speaking during a post-battle debriefing. “Who would bring those people together and not expect what happened,” she wonders, bitterly.

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And while this sequence isn’t bad, it really doesn’t fit with the movie Marvel and Whedon ultimately signed off on.

Agreed. This scene belonged on the cutting room floor. Still,…

This may be a bit off topic, but it’s fun, and it’s a video so it’s closely related to movies, right? Right?!?

Anyway, I sort of envy the ability this guy has to make chalk art like this. And of one of the icons of my childhood no less. It’s sort of aweseom.

Enjoy.

Considering The Hunger Games was released on DVD barely a week ago, I figured now would be a good time to review what is, in my opinion, one of the finest aspects of the film: the score, composed by none other than J.N.H. I’ve encountered several less-than-favorable reviews of it, and the most common criticism seems to be that score is too minimalistic. I beg to differ: the score is minimalistic, but perfectly so. Howard invests thought and emotion where lesser men would have settled for cheap thrills. And frankly, I find it incredible that most listeners can’t appreciate that. Their loss,…

Organizers tell the AP at least $625,000 was raised from American donors to the Obama campaign at the event tonight in Geneva where George Clooney is the draw. Guests are paying $15,000 per person to dine with Clooney, $5,000 for a photo with him, and $1,000 to attend a reception before the dinner. About 30 people are attending the dinner, with about 100 at the reception. The event is co-hosted by Geneva-based American lawyer Charles C. Adams Jr and Matthew Barzun, Obama’s campaign finance chairman. A more private dinner at Adams’ home cost $20,000 for an individual ticket and $30,000 per…

“The Hollywood community is historically conservative,” he said. “All the people that I so admired growing up were very patriotic and loved the country.” But then came the left-wing “nonsense” of the 1960’s, which Voight admits he also got caught up in it. “I’m quite ashamed of it, actually. . . I know as much as anybody about this stuff and I know how poisonous it is.”

While I personally am not at all happy with the republican party, it is nice to see that not everyone in Hollywood is a completely liberal nutcase when it comes to polotics.

When a sweeping global conspiracy triggers a worldwide pandemic of consumer gluttony and insatiable materialism, one extraordinary man steps forward to fight fire with fire in Branded, a biting, mind-bending journey into a dystopian future. When a sweeping global conspiracy triggers a worldwide pandemic of consumer gluttony and insatiable materialism, one extraordinary man steps forward to fight fire with fire in Branded. biting, mind-bending journey into a dystopian future.

While in a way familiar, this actually seems like a really different concept. It could be really interesting.