Direct Download Link For Hitman Origins Animatic-Style Video Comic Strip

Download a Hitman prologue in animatic-ish form, courtesy of IGN.

UK Hitman Poster And Trailer

You can click on the above poster to enlarge it. For the trailer, your options are large Quicktime, large WMV and large Realplayer.

Trailerama - A Direct Download Links Bonanza

Trailers for a goodly number of upcoming delights and frights.

The Hitman trailer, complete with IGN badge, comes in medium or high res Quicktime.

The Signal trailer now comes in hi-res and 480p, 720p and 1080p Quicktime.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford has a trailer in hi-res, 480p, 720p1080p Quicktime too.

The extended Run, Fatboy, Run trailer is (so far?) only in FLV.

Closing Escrow has a trailer that comes only in hi-res Quicktime. and

Direct Download Links For HD Versions Of The Hitman Trailer

See the bald killer in 480p, 720p or 108p. Call the file namelessnumberheadman.mov or similar to ensure it works.

Movie Minesweeper - The World's Longest Ticker Tape Parade Edition

This is going to take me most of the morning, most likely. I must really love you - all of you.

- SuperHeroHype have a cast line-up photo from Iron Man, weird, posed thing that it is.

- Is there to be a woman president on the 2008 season of 24?

- Uwe Boll's Bloodrayne 2 has been denied an R rating by the MPAA. So, whatever it is, it is also more 'adult' than, say, Hostel 2.

- Thor Freudenthal is to direct family film of Lois Duncan's Hotel For Dogs from an adaptation by Jeff Lowell.

- Wes Craven is suing Pauly Shore. That's one dream team we'll never see work together then. I hope Alexander Payne and Carrot Top get to collaborate before some kind of legal entanglement wrecks my dreams there too.

- Stephen King doesn't like the idea of Captivity. Neither does he like Kubrick's The Shining. At least he gives some idea of what upset him about The Shining, whereas Captivity apparently just 'goes too far'. Oh - and he's wrong. Kubricks' film is leaps and bounds ahead of the original book.

- Len Wiseman wants to direct Wolverine. The only thing keeping pen from paper must be the wait for Die Hard 4's opening numbers.

- MTV have some Shaw Bros. clips that are probably very worth watching, including one with commentary by Quentin Tarantino - but I don't know for sure as I'm in the UK, so they won't work for me. Sigh.

- The transfer of Criterion's Berlin Alexanderplatz set has met criticism, but has been easily, and conclusively defended.

- The Princess and the Frog's story reels run to 90 minutes and have been well received. Apparently, the film has a twist ending... place your bets now.

- Mamoru Oshii's next film is to be The Sky Crawlers, adapted from Hiroshi Mori's books. The anti-war fantasy features hothoused teen soldiers sent to die in wars that exist only to entertain. Oshii promises a love story in the midst of the satire and action.

- Enchanted is being seen as the starting point for a new franchise.

- Alex Cox has turned his unprodcued Repo Man sequel script, Waldo's Hawaiian Holiday into a comic book. I saw the link at TheBeat.

- Michael Bay wasn't a Transformers fan before taking the job. Of course not - but I wonder if this has rankled some fanboys?

- Daniel Benmayor's PSP commerical is like Peter Pan meets Parkour. I foudn the link at Feed.

- Openin casting calls are being held for two youthful roles in Harry Potter 6.

- Angela Bassett will star as Brenda, a Chicago single mother, in the next Tyler Perry film, Meet the Browns.

- Amy Adams is in negotiations to take the key role in John Patrick Shanley's film of his own play, Doubt. Her character is to get caught up in a tense, angry confrontation between those played by Meryl Streep and Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

- CAA mailboy Ben Dey pitched the comedy Coma Boy to Brian Grazer, and now it's to be a film.

- Lee Hall is adapting the Children of the Lamp books for Dreamworks. They're fantastical family sagas revolving around a dynasty of genies.

- Howard Deutch is to direct Bachelor No. 2, with Kate Hudson and Dane Cook in the lead roles.

- Suzie Templeton's Peter and the Wolf nabbed the big prizes at Annecy. See her previous film, Stanley and Dog for a (reputedly far less impressive, but impressive nonetheless) taste of her stop-motion skills.

- IESB have noted that John Carter of Mars is to be live action but feature animation. That's like almost every genre film these days, surely? Shot in live action, augmented with CG?

- The Scarecrow has been snapped on the Dark Knight set. So that settles that. Apparently.

- Just to be clear: Frank Miller isn't necessarily directing Trouble is My Middle Name. TheBeat wanted to make that absolutely clear.

- The NC17 rating for Hatchet has been overturned.

- Timothy Olyphant and Xavier Gens have given a Hitman interview.

- John Krasinski seems to be up for the Fletch role. So, what about Joshua Jackson?

- Alicia Keys' Big Pita, Little Pita are to produce Catfish, the story of the woman behind the biggest strike in US history.

- Jerry Spinelli's Stargirl is now set up to be a film from the Montecito Production Co.

- The Weinsteins are coughing up for a series of English language, made-in-Hong-Kong action films. Apparently, wire work will be kept to a minimum - and I know somebody who will be pleased about that.

- Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby are adapting Cowboys and Aliens into a feature script.

- My Zinc Bed is to star Uma Thurman, Paddy Considine and Jonathan Pryce - three out of three, I'd say. Anthony Page is to direct while David Hare is writing from his own play.

- Satoshi Kon has spoken to The Washington Post. Read it.

- Indiana Jones is headed to Hawaii.

- Images of an Alien/Predator combo turned up online. Not from Aliens vs. Predator 2, as it happens, but just a fake.

- Eddie Murphy is the father of Mel Brown's baby after all. What a surprise.

- You can watch Robot Chicken's Star Wars special with video commentary now.

- The Young Ones is returning to DVD, with new bonus features.

- David Strathairn is to appear in the American Tale of Two Sisters.

And, yes, I was right, this took hours.

The Hitman Blog Takes Us To The Set

film ick reader Logan sent me a link to the Hitman blog, where I found the set picture posted below. The blog is in French, but here's a badly autotranslated excerpt:

Here is a new photograph of turning. The scene is supposed to be held in Saint-Pétersbourg, in Russia, but we are in fact with the cathedral of Sofia.

A small precision compared to the preceding article: a establishing shot is simply a plan giving an outline of the place where the action occurs. For example, if the action occurs to Paris one will film Our lady. Where more largely, the decoration in broad plan… Here is for the culture cinema!

Hit Me, Hitman

Thanks to one of the many Mikes for sending over this image. It is, apparently, the first official production shot from Hitman.

The Hitman And Gluck

[EDIT: Variety have now revealed that Xavier Gens will be directing the Hitman movie. Olyphant is also now confirmed as having signed]

According to one of those pesky 'please don't name me' sources, and an untested one at that, Stephane Gluck is the number one contender to direct the Luc Besson-shepherded Hitman movie. Timothy Oliphant was recently given the lead role, Agent 47 - disappointing the surprising number of Vin Diesel fans out there - and Besson is producing as well as co-scripting (with Skip Woods) as he seems very happy to do on any number of these actioners.

Gluck's imdb credits show his history with these 'Besson Presents' films really quite clearly: second unit and assistant director work for the first two Taxi films, The Transporter and Banlieue 13. Most recently, however, he was 1st AD on a rather different project - Juilan Schnabel and Ronald Harwood's The Butterfly and the Diving Bell.