Mark will recieve a copy of the film's official poster from Warner Brothers.
Thanks to all who entered, and check back for more promotional contests in the future.
A writers' strike may be upon us, but that hasn't slowed Sony's plans for Spider-Man 4. James Vanderbilt, the writer behind David Fincher's gritty thriller Zodiac, has been hired to pen the script for the new Spidey installment. (Vanderbilt may not be able to write during the strike, but the WGA can't stop him from thinking, right?) It's unknown whether Sam Raimi will direct the four-quel, but he's likely to be involved in some way. The studio is scheduling the film for a 2009 release.
The ‘Saw’ horror films have been voted scarier than the horror classic The Exorcist.
The series, which has just spawned its fourth film, tells the story of an evil torturer who puts his victims through a set of horrific moral and physical trials to see if they have the will or the wit to survive.
In one sequence, a man must cut the key to a booby trap from behind his eye with a scalpel before he is killed.
At this present time, the series sits at the top of the poll for MSN Movies, garnering 17pc of the votes over the Exorcist’s 16pc.
The Exorcist, made in 1973, tells the tale of a young girl possessed by a demon. It remains notorious today for its blasphemy, visceral horror and depiction of a child swearing and performing a sex act with a crucifix.
The Shining is currently in third place with 14%.
The supporting cast, however, is also top notch, especially Alexis Llewellyn and Micah Berry (Halle's real life son) as Audrey's children.
Thanks to Sasha Stone at Awards Daily for posting these. You can also see more here.
Best Feature
Great World of Sound
Craig Zobel, director; Melissa Palmer, David Gordon Green, Richard Wright, Craig Zobel, producers (Magnolia Pictures)
I'm Not There
Todd Haynes, director; Christine Vachon, James D. Stern, John Sloss, John Goldwyn, producers (The Weinstein Company)
Into the Wild
Sean Penn, director; Sean Penn, Art Linson, Bill Pohlad, producers (Paramount
Vantage & River Road Entertainment)
Margot at the Wedding
Noah Baumbach, director; Scott Rudin, producer (Paramount Vantage)
The Namesake
Mira Nair, director; Lydia Dean Pilcher, Mira Nair, producers (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
Best Documentary
The Devil Came on Horseback
Annie Sundberg & Ricki Stern, directors; Ricki Stern, Annie Sundberg, Gretchen Wallace, Jane Wells, producers (International Film Circuit)
Jimmy Carter Man from Plains
Jonathan Demme, director; Jonathan Demme, Neda Armian, producers (Sony Pictures Classics)
My Kid Could Paint That
Amir Bar-Lev, producer/director (Sony Pictures Classics)
Sicko
Michael Moore, director; Michael Moore, Meghan O'Hara, producers (The Weinstein Company)
Taxi to the Dark Side
Alex Gibney, director; Alex Gibney, Eva Orner, Susannah Shipman, producers
(THINKFilm)
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
Albert Finney, Rosemary Harris, Ethan Hawke, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Brian F. O'Byrne, Amy Ryan, Michael Shannon, Marisa Tomei (THINKFilm)
The Last Winter
Connie Britton, Kevin Corrigan, Zach Gilford, James LeGros, Ron Perlman (IFC First Take)
Margot at the Wedding
Jack Black, Flora Cross, Ciarán Hinds, Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Zane Pais, John Turturro (Paramount Vantage)
The Savages
Philip Bosco, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Laura Linney (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
Talk to Me
Cedric the Entertainer, Don Cheadle, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Mike Epps, Vondie Curtis Hall, Taraji P. Henson, Martin Sheen (Focus Features)
Breakthrough Director
Lee Isaac Chung for "Munyurangabo"
Stephane Gauger for "Owl and the Sparrow"
Julia Loktev for "Day Night Day Night" (IFC First Take)
David Von Ancken for "Seraphim Falls" (Samuel Goldwyn Films)
Craig Zobel for "Great World of Sound" (Magnolia Pictures)
Breakthrough Actor
Emile Hirsch in Into the Wild (Paramount Vantage)
Kene Holliday in "Great World of Sound" (Magnolia Pictures)
Ellen Page in "Juno" (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
Jess Weixler in "Teeth" (Roadside Attractions)
Luisa Williams in "Day Night Day Night" (IFC First Take)
Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You
August the First
Lanre Olabisi, director; Shawn Alexander, Gabriel "Swede" Sedgwick, Nicky Arzeu Akmal, Lanre Olabisi, producers
Frownland
Ronald Bronstein, director; Marc Raybin, producer
Loren Cass
Chris Fuller, director; Chris Fuller, Frank Craft, Kayla Tabish, producers
Mississippi Chicken
John Fiege, director; John Fiege, Anita Grabowski, Victor Moyers, producers
Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa
Jeremy Stulberg & Randy Stulberg, directors; Eric Juhola, Jeremy Stulberg, Randy Stulberg, producers
From Slate.com:One day before shooting began, Mark Wahlberg stepped in to replace Ryan Gosling in "The Lovely Bones," the Peter Jackson-directed adaptation of the Alice Sebold novel for DreamWorks.
Wahlberg has taken the role of Jack Salmon, the grieving father of a young girl. That role was vacated Friday by "Lars and the Real Girl" star Ryan Gosling, who stepped out after gaining 20 pounds and growing a beard for the job. Sources attributed the exit to creative differences.
After reading the script, Wahlberg quickly committed Sunday. He joins Rachel Weisz as a couple whose world is shattered after their daughter is murdered. The girl watches over her family and her killer from heaven. Jackson wrote the script with Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens.
The film begins shooting today in Pennsylvania
Hearing of trouble on The Lovely Bones makes me nervous. It's a difficult enough book to film, but with such a sudden major cast shakeup, there could be problems. Especially if the film is overshadowed by litigation.Bye-Bye: A strong source tells us that things blew up badly with in The Lovely Bones, the Peter Jackson-directed film based on the Alice Sebold novel. Recall that in May, DreamWorks prevailed in a bidding war by offering a very rich deal to make this film, which tells the story of a child who is raped and murdered. Gosling is out in the role of the child's father, and Mark Wahlberg slid in over the weekend just hours before shooting was set to begin. And apparently, the break with Gosling may lead to litigation, though it's still unclear what the fight was about. Sure seems that DreamWorks has been hitting a few speed bumps lately. The first movie under its own label was The Heartbreak Kid. Things We Lost in the Fire got incinerated over the weekend, opening to $1.6 million. And Kite Runner has been delayed because it put its child stars in danger in Afghanistan. Schadenfreude, Mr. Grey?
This would also seem like worrisome timing for Gosling, who got an Oscar nomination for his role in Half Nelson and is getting a fair bit of praise for Lars and the Real Girl. If he's managed to tick off Peter Jackson and DreamWorks honcho Steven Spielberg simultaneously, that could not be considered a good career move.
This is no run-of-the-mill western. This is a breathtakingly beautiful rumination that totally immerses its audience in a bygone era. As shot with painterly brilliance by Roger Deakins, “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” is the single most gorgeous film of the year, and the screenplay by Dominick takes minimal dialogue and turns it into pure organic poetry.
...under the surprisingly nimble direction of 85-year-old Alain Resnais, a veteran of the French New Wave (a movement that gave rise to the likes of Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut back in the early '60s), "Private Fears" skillfully avoids any cliché that might have brought it down. If anything, it resembles a less grim version of "Closer," itself a much darker examination of failed relationships, crossed with the upbeat and cheerful "Love Actually." "Private Fears," despite its rather bleak subject matter, is never depressing or hopeless. Resnais has crafted a tender and bittersweet mosaic not just of loneliness but of the unexpected connections we find when we least expect it that have nothing to do with romance. I'm talking, of course, about family and friends - two subjects that often take a back seat to romantic love in the film world.
LOS ANGELES, Oct. 3 — The studio distributing “The Kite Runner,” a tale of childhood betrayal, sexual predation and ethnic tension in Afghanistan, is delaying the film’s release to get its three schoolboy stars out of Kabul — perhaps permanently — in response to fears that they could be attacked for their enactment of a culturally inflammatory rape scene.
Ahmad Jaan Mahmoodzada, father of Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada, an actor in “Kite Runner.” Executives at the distributor, Paramount Vantage, are contending with issues stemming from the rising lawlessness in Kabul in the year since the boys were cast.
The boys and their relatives are now accusing the filmmakers of mistreatment, and warnings have been relayed to the studio from Afghan and American officials and aid workers that the movie could aggravate simmering enmities between the politically dominant Pashtun and the long-oppressed Hazara.
In an effort to prevent not only a public-relations disaster but also possible violence, studio lawyers and marketing bosses have employed a stranger-than-fiction team of consultants. In August they sent a retired Central Intelligence Agency counterterrorism operative in the region to Kabul to assess the dangers facing the child actors. And on Sunday a Washington-based political adviser flew to the United Arab Emirates to arrange a safe haven for the boys and their relatives.
I love the tagline - "truth is the first casualty of war."
Thanks to Awards Daily for the link.
Mindful of the sensitivities, Berg has prefaced his film with a three-minute history lesson, a computer-animated sequence that charts Saudi-Western relations from the discovery of oil in the 1930s through to the cataclysmic events of September 11, 2001. At this particular screening, though, as the introduction concludes with the image of an airliner gliding towards the towers and a respectful fade to black, the reverential, pin-drop silence in the cinema is punctured by a gleeful “ba-boom” from the auditorium.
In The Kingdom, the fictitious but very plausible atrocity is the suicide bombing of a compound in Riyadh (similar attacks happened there in 2003), in which the deaths of 100 or so American workers, slaughtered while playing baseball and the like, must be avenged, if not judicially, then at the point of one of Mann’s beloved M16s. Of course, its makers deny any John Wayne leanings. “It’s not a jingoistic Team America Destroys Paris movie,” defends Mann. Neither is it, adds Berg, “a bloodthirsty, pro-American sense of, ‘Let’s go and kill some f***in’ Arabs.’ It’s not. It’s truly not”.
Try telling that to the enthusiastic early reviewers and patriotic bloggers (“In a season sure to be dominated by Meryl Streep movies about the war, it was nice to see one that actually bothered to have us as the good guys,” reads one). Preview audiences have been equally yee-ha (“The numbers were so high that the studio was confused,” says Berg). Which suggests that, for all Hollywood’s liberal posturing, the American public might just be a bit tired of all that self-flagellation and prefer to have a good old-fashioned, guilt-free crack at the baddies.
Indeed, Berg has since expressed regret about choosing a patriotic, heroic outcome for his film over several bleaker alternatives. “I do think it’s not entirely realistic,” he apologises. “I boxed myself into a corner. Next time that won’t happen.” Like it or not, he seems to have made the first war-on-terror film simply to accept the conflict as an unchangeable reality, the backdrop for a buddy cop flick – CSI: Riyadh.
“We had an incredible screening,” Berg recalls. “We very concerned that we were perhaps going to have a more negative reaction than we wanted. But the cheering and laughing and clapping that was there in the American audience was all there, and then some, in London.” Afterwards, a focus group was asked to explain why they had rated the film “excellent” on their score-cards. “A Muslim woman put her hand up – full head covering, the robe. She leaned forward and said, ‘Kick-ass action.’”