Three More Be Kind, Rewind Stills

Every day I wait for this film feels like five days too many. I want my Be Kind, Rewind and I want it now.

Use the tags below to find much, much more Be Kind goodness.

Contrast And Compare: Parnassus One, Parnassus Two

The pre-production art from Terry Gilliam's Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus on Phil Stubb's site has, without explanation, been changed.

Below are both images, next to one another, for you to compare them. The image of the good Dr. - on the right in each - has changed very much, from a standing figure to him faking levitation on a translucent plinth; there's more of the 'modern backdrop' in the first image and our 'proximity' to the stage has been altered; Anton, walking across the top of the stage, is in a different postion and headed a different way in each; the images are of different proportions or aspect ratios; and... that's about it, I think.

Parnassus Logotype

Phil Stubbs has updated his The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus preview with the film's official logotype - at least, it is at this stage of pre-production. See it below, and click it to make it bigger.

Christopher Plummer Is Dr. Parnassus - And Our First Look At A Design From The Film

In a truly genius piece of casting, Terry Gilliam has made Christopher Plummer his Dr. Parnassus. As previously reported, Tom Waits is involved - but as Mr. Nick, the devilish villain of the piece.

Phil Stubbs came good on his promise and has published the image below in his new piece on the film. He's also confirmed the Heath Ledger, Lily Cole, Andrew Garfield and Vern Troyer casting as covered here as the weeks and months have gone by.

For many, many more details I'll point you towards my previous script review, which gives a good idea of the characters and plot. No doubt Phil Stubbs will be bringing us more as the film progresses, and I'll be doing my best to find out what I can also, in the many long moons until it is expected to be released in early 2009.

Please send me any information - any information at all - you have about this film.

Golden Compass Fashion Show

Here's a whole number of Golden Compass model shots, showing Nicole Kidman and Eva Green in their alternative-Oxford get-up. One ice cold by demeanour, the other by exposure to high altitude winds and a lack of footwear.

Click on any of these to make it much, much bigger.

UK Quad Poster, Trailer And Promotional Still For Once

It really looks like Once is something very, very special and, thankfully, it'll be coming to the UK soon.

The UK trailer can be yours in Quicktime, WMV or Real formats and below you'll see the UK poster and a new promotional still.

Diary Of The Dead Stills

I think people are underestimating Diary of the Dead and setting their expectations way too low. Which, in a weird way, is probably a very good thing. I was sent some stills and, after a bit of digging, discovered that they probably originated at Fangoria. Enjoy them.

Be Kind, Rewind Stills

Seven gorgeous images from Be Kind, Rewind have been released. Click on any of them to get the high-res version.

And naysayers said Robocop shouldn't be remade. They're eating humble pie now, I can tell you.

[EDIT: Now film ick also have a number of Michel Gondry sketches from the Be Kind, Rewind script, showing scenes and FX ideas]

[EDIT: And even more images direct from the film]

Your Weekly Invisible Monster Picture

Taylor Dubose sent me the below photo from the 1-18-08 site. It seems that we're getting a new snap every week, or there abouts.

Rush Hour 3 Stills Aplenty

Here's a massive heap of images from Rush Hour 3. Click on any of them for the very hi-res version. Is Jackie Chan playing 'hole tempting' in the ninth one? Looks like it to me.

The Batbike As Pulled From Aint It Cool News

Last night, AintItCool ran the following image of the Batbike. They've since deleted the entire post. Their version of events is that this is a real Batbike, as it were, just from a Batman ride, not from The Dark Knight.

I don't know how true this story is. I'm interested in why they'd remove the entire post relating to this image whereas several other fakes have been left up for all time and just marked as fake.

There's something they're not telling us.

Posters For Paranoid Park, No Country For Old Men, Control And Synecdoche, New York

Ioncinema scanned a series of Cannes posters. Nice work.

More Ratatouille Images

Last night, I ran 20 images from Ratatouille and, of course, the same twenty images started popping up online on other sites with no reference to this site or link back. There had actually been more than 20 released, and I held some back simply to see if this would happen... and it did.

Those who lifted the images: you know who you are. I happen to know for sure that the people behind some of these light-fingered sites come here regularly, too. Naughty. Not actually evil, or immoral or even unlawful - but naughty.

Anyway, here's the rest of the set. Enjoy. And thank Mike Nezhdanny again.

Almost Unfathomably Huge Ratatouille Image Update

These pictures are so big it's a little bit frightening. Click on any of them to be swamped in their gorgeousness. I left the tags on them so you can see, well, who owns the copyright for one thing - but also the names of characters, and so on.

Thank Mike Nezhdanny for the scoop. I just pressed a few buttons.

[EDIT: And now there's more]

A Good Look At Wall-E

A flickr user called 'inkista' has taken a few snaps of a Wall-E model on display at Disneyland, which you can see below. They offer us a very good look at his anatomy, for want of a better word - and the item he's holding in his hand gives some idea, I think of his hobbies on the abandoned Earth of the future. Poor old Wall-E.

You might want to flick through the snapper's other pics of things they saw on their day at the theme park. There's a couple of Ratatouille sculpts.

Here's What's Wrong With The Bat For IMAX

USA Today have broken the news that The Dark Knight will be released to IMAX cinemas. Sounds like a good move, eh? It's not that simple however... we'll get into that in a moment... but first... the pictures.

Yep, they also included two pictures - one of masked bank robbers, one of whom may be The Joker (my money's on the one in the back) and another in which, indeed, The Joker appears without his mask. Let's take a look at them, before we go on...



Quite a cleverly chosen pair of pics, I feel. I've been quite impressed by the marketing of this film so far.

So, back to the problems. What's up with this decision to shoot on the IMAX format? Well, there's two things.

The first isn't specifically an issue this time round but in the case of every feature film shot on IMAX. Simply put, composing images and editing them together for a screen of that size is a trickier thing than working for, say, a decent sized cinemascope frame.

Imagine a simple conversation comprised of two set-ups, each of them over the shoulder shots. Now imagine the sequence cutting back and forth between the two of these pieces of footage. The eye has to travel, on each cut, from side to side of the screen, and this takes time, particularly as the eye has to read a large area ofd information to find a new focal point. And this time is instrumental in the precision of an edit. The difference in scale between a small cinema screen (think about those in the dark recesses of a smaller multiplex, where films wind up after five weeks on release or so) and an IMAX screen is enough to require different edits. Really - to make your cuts absolutely smooth in even a simple conversation scene can require a frame or two, maybe even three or four, of alteration between these two scales. That's assuming, of course, the perfect edit is something we're seeking.

Okay, this isn't a deal-breaker when we're only talking about conversations, about the ping-pong back and forth between two over the shoulder shots. When you start dealing with fast action, multiple angles and complicated shifts in screen geography, however, you might start finding your film unravelling a little. The kinetics of a sophisticated action sequence can be disturbed quite seriously by not taking the scale of the finished product into account.

So, the question now becomes, does Nolan leave a buffer in his edits to allow for the massive scale of the IMAX screen, of the immense, detailed images that the eye has to navigate - even though this might make the film seem a tiny bit sluggish in a normal auditorium or on TV? If he can't work the format pefectly, he'll be left with a trade off between clarity and pace when, really, both are equally important.

That's always an issue, and not specific to this case. And there are solutions, there are ways to stage and cut your sequences to sidestep the problem. But these solutions are tricky to keep in sight, aren't something directors and editors are widely skilled or experienced in, and not everybody is going to be able to pull it off.

And of course, to make matters worse, Nolan is using the IMAX format for only the action scenes of his film - where the above problem will be at it's most noticeable. But this fact also leads us on, however, to the other problem, the one specific to this project.

According to USA Today, the IMAX format is only being used for four action sequences. Nolan explains that these four scenes will 'fill the IMAX screens' - the implication being that the others won't.

Just a few days ago I was listing films that are in more than one aspect ratio during their running time - suddenly, here's another for the list. In the other cases, however, the change was always made horizontally: the film widened, or narrowed. That isn't the case here - this time, the film is to become taller, to expand vertically. And while a horizontal shift isn't exactly invisible, it's much less distracting than a vertical change - at least at this scale.

So, four times throughout his film, Nolan is to suddenly shift the window on his film's world. Four times throughout his film, he's to take his audiences by the scruff of their necks and pull them back into their cinema seats, remind them just how artificial an experience they are having. This is just the same problem the IMAX version of Superman Returns had (without the sideshow bonus of 3D). It's simply not a good idea - and four times, throughout the film? And just as momentum is supposed to be building?

Terrible move. Terrible.

My early recommendation is to avoid the IMAX release of The Dark Knight altogether. Hopefully the compositions in the action scenes will work fine on a normal cinema screen too, and the film will therefore at least have one 'optimum' version.

We're only just starting to see the damage that DVD and home cinema have really done to cinema. They've squashed audience sizes just enough that studios, directors, exhibitors and distributors are turning to William Castle novelty and chicanery, no matter the cost to the film. I hope they stop these silly sideshow gimmicks right now and simply get on with the matter of making all of their films in 3D. That's not only the best solution they have, it represents a genuine step forward in cinema.

Hang Five

Here are some pictures of The Silver Surfer doing his thing (which is, I suppose, silver surfing). Looks like his best movie is still Crimson Tide.

[EDIT: These pics appear to have originated at SuperheroHype. They have lots more, too. If I'd have realised I simply wouldn't have bothered.... I tell you, there's nothing as boring as uploading a bunch of pics only to find out they came from another site]

Up Above The Streets And Houses

If you 'sang' the title to this post in your head as you read it... minus five points. I was more of a Pipkins 'man', I'm afraid.

Here's a Fantastic 4/Silver Surfer banner that I've just been supplied by secretive squirrels. Click upon it and it shall be bigger.

Die Hard Four By Four

Click on any of these Die Hard 4.0 images to make them bigger.

Even More Hostel 2 Snaps

These Hostel 2 pictures are a fair bit less spoilery than the last bunch. Perhaps.