In Contention

Tag: comics-to-film

  • ‘Dark Knight’ interviews with cast and crew

    Warner Bros. publicity has made the round table interviews from last weekend’s “Dark Knight” junket available.  There’s a lot of good, in-depth stuff from Christopher Nolan, Christian Bale, Aaron Eckhart and the rest.

    There is, however, a big hole in everything, because you can’t help but wish Heath Ledger was there to discuss his approach to a character that seems to be an award-worthy swan song.

    Keep in mind that these are junketers…so sometimes you get a few doosey questions (usually the first person out of the gate).  But everyone weathers the storm well enough.  Pay attention to the end of the Bale file; he talks briefly about Michael Mann’s upcoming “Public Enemies” and McG’s “Terminator Salvation.”

    There is also a slight spoiler around the 11:00 mark of the Aaron Eckhart interview, however, one that you might want to skip.  It isn’t specific, but it’s enough information that could be irritating to know before seeing the film.  Enjoy.


    Christopher Nolan (writer/director):
    [audio:Nolan-TDKjunket.mp3]
    Download


    Christian Bale (Bruce Wayne/Batman):
    [audio:Bale-TDKjunket.mp3]
    Download


    Aaron Eckhart (Harvey Dent/Two-Face):
    [audio:Eckhart-TDKjunket.mp3]
    Download

    More after the jump, including Gary Oldman, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jonathan Nolan!

    (more…)

  • Revamping Superman for 2011?

    Two posts at /film and Obssessed with Film have me spinning my wheels this morning, wondering just who in the heck has approached comic scribe Mark Millar to revamp Superman for the screen in three years.

    The whole story started with a Daily Record interview that quoted Millar as saying he “always wanted to reinvent Superman for the 21st century.”  He then went on to reveal that he had his “director and producer set up” and that there was even a target year in mind: 2011.

    This, of course, sent the Web geek community into a bit of a tizzy.  In response, Millar (creator of “Wanted” and author of “Superman: Red Son”) had this to say:

    PS: That Superman news is interesting, isn’t it? In the interests of clarity (because I’m sure this will be picked up somewhere) a very well known American action director heard about my love of Superman, approached my (sic) and asked me to team up with he and his producer to make a pitch for this. We’ve been talking for several weeks now and, if this is going to happen, we’ll know by Christmas. He has huge pull at WB so fingers crossed. But this is nothing more than a huge US name pulling me into his fold and making me part of a package.

    The first name that leaps to my mind is Wolfgang Petersen, but he’s obviously German.  However, you may recall Petersen was signed on to direct a Superman vs. Batman film for Warner Bros. way back in 2002.  That was, of course, way before Christopher Nolan unleashed his reboot of the Batman franchise on the marketplace.  Peterson might be construed as having “huge pull at WB” since he releases most of his films through the studio and has managed a few considerable hits there (“The Perfect Storm, “Troy”) despite the occasional clunker (“Poseidon”).

    The filmmaker was also quoted as recently as two years ago — during the build-up to Bryan Singer’s “Superman Returns” — expressing an interest in pitting the two superheroes on the screen together.  Sure seems like a possibility to me.

    Who else could Millar be hinting at?  The Wachowski Brothers have sure made a bundle of money for the studio in recent years.  “Watchmen” helmer Zack Snyder has also been welcomed with open arms in Burbank after delivering big on “300,” and he seems just the sort of person who’d be interested in reimagining the Superman character for a new franchse.

    Francis Lawrence?  “Constantine” didn’t really find its footing, but “I Am Legend” (thanks to Will Smith, of course) made a killing worldwide.

    McG?  The “Charlie’s Angels” films made bank at Sony, but he still convinced Warners to hand him the key to a massive franchise in the form of “Terminator Salvation.”  He’s also been here before and, according to rumor at the time, had one hell of a mind to revamp the franchise with casting speculation such as Beyoncé Knowles and Johnny Depp floating about.

    And surely Tim Burton — a WB staple through the years with “huge pull” indeed — isn’t treading these waters yet again.  Or is he?  He certainly had a unique vision of the character once upon a time.

    Thoughts?  As long as it isn’t Brett Ratner, I’m happy.

  • The Guardian dashes Ledger’s Oscar hopes

    Not particularly new or earth-shattering perspective, but worth a link nontheless.  From a Xan Brooks item this morning in The Guardian:

    History…is not on [Ledger’s] side. James Dean was twice nominated in the wake of his death and yet still finished up as a posthumous loser on the night. More recently, Oliver Reed (for Gladiator) and Ulrich Mühe (The Lives of Others) were both tipped in vain for at least a nomination. In fact, the only actor ever to be awarded a posthumous Oscar was Network’s Peter Finch. Felled by a heart attack during the voting period, he swept to glory on a tidal wave of grief.

  • It’s all part of the plan

    Source

  • Nolan wanted the Joker ex nihilo

    Batman-on-Film.com’s Bill Ramey is probably the biggest Batman fan this side of…well, me.  He made the trip from Texas to Los Angeles over the weekend to see “The Dark Knight” and participate in the film’s junket, scoring a nicely in-depth interview with director Christopher Nolan.

    Here’s the money quote, describing Nolan’s philosophy on whether to include much in the way of an origin story for Heath Ledger’s Joker character:

    I felt very strongly that when you take these extraordinary characters — in the movies, I’m talking very much about the movies here. But you take these extraordinary characters and the more you find out about them — where they came from and all — the less interesting they become. And that’s very true to me of say Hannibal Lectre (sic) or Darth Vader. You know when we first saw them onscreen, they were fully formed and an absolute. Unlike Batman — who I wanted very much to explore his origin and where he came from — with heroes it’s just different. But with villains, it’s the opposite. So with The Joker, I wanted present him as an absolute, an agent of chaos and anarchy.

    Read the rest here.  They do love the Batman-on-Film Web site (11 years running) at Warners and on the Bat crew, I can tell you that.

  • Batman vs. Batman vs. Batman vs. Batman

    A…W…E…S…O…M…E:

  • Sayin’ it now

    With reviews trickling down for “The Dark Knight” in the last 24 hours or so, everyone seems to be going out of their way to hail Heath Ledger’s performance as Oscar caliber, perhaps even sporting the chops to win the award posthumously.

    Of course, we’ve been all over that scenario for months here at In Contention, but it’s occured to me now that Warner Bros. might have a case to push this apparently epic portrayal for all it’s worth.

    I’m talking about a nomination for Heath Ledger in the Best Actor category.

    Stranger things — indeed, similarly atypical scenarios — have certainly happened.  The easiest excuses remain Lee Marvin in “Cat Ballou” and Johnny Depp in “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.”  If a genre performance comes along that is so earth-shattering, or perhaps not even that so much as a head-spinner that demands critical attention and adoration, the Academy seems willing to comply in those often heated lead races.  Why not this year?  Why not this performance?

    By all accounts, Ledger seems to be blowing his co-stars off the screen.  More than simply chewing the scenery, it appears he is gnawing on the film stock, owning the film and every meaningful aspect of it.

    Respect might well be demanded in a manner we didn’t expect — perhaps Mr. Ledger will go into the Oscar books a two-time nominee for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role.

    More in the charts on Monday.

  • Campea on ‘Knight’

    Our pal John Campea over at The Movie Blog is back in Los Angeles after some time back home in Toronto this summer, and right out of the gate he’s slapped up a review from last night’s screening of “The Dark Knight.”

    It’s a glowing assessment to say the least, and at one point John says he was ready to call the film one of the best cinematic endeavors of the last three or four years.  But John’s getting old, what can I say — and the length of the film kind of got to him a bit.

    To each his own.  But I doubt there will be too many people upset with the apparent direction the final act takes (in the way of bridging over to the eventual third film).

    It’s worth noting that John structures his reviews in a very accessible way.  His site is and has always been a film site, a great community of movie lovers with no pretensions.  Keep that in mind as I offer his load-busting assessment of Heath Ledger’s performance:

    One of the things I was preparing myself for was how over hyped the performance of Heath Ledger was going to be. Since he passed away, I knew he’d be getting rave reviews out the ying (sic) yang no matter what and I’d be frowned upon if I said any different. But holy mother suck puss face… HEATH LEDGER DESERVES AN OSCAR NOMINATION FOR HIS PERFORMANCE AS THE JOKER… no… I’m not even kidding in the least. I was totally, 100% blown away like nothing I’ve ever seen in a comic based movie before.

    And the closer:

    Holy crap did Two Face look WICKED!!!

    Then he gets into why the length bothered him, etc.  Check out ther rest here.

    I haven’t seen any other reviews drop yet, but I’m sure we’ll start seeing them throughout Friday and into the weekend, when the junket screenings start to land.  Be on the lookout.

  • Battersea featured in ‘Dark Knight?’

    This one is a stretch, I know — and many of you could care less.  But I can’t escape “Dark Knight” news no matter where I turn.  Seriously, I just click on a link to a random news story about the revitalization of London’s Battersea Power Station, and there it is, staring me in the face.

    The Batman films are always valuable for their design elements, but I didn’t know this monolith — perhaps best known from the cover of Pink Floyd’s “Animals” (an image replicated two years ago in “Children of Men”) — was going to be featured in the film.  But it seems that’s the case.

    I can, like, see Battersea from my kitchen.  Very cool.

    Carry on…

  • Exclusive ‘Dark Knight’ set piece footage on ET

    I know, I know.  The Batman stuff is coming fast and furious.  Being out of the loop in Britain (re: press screenings) is pushing the site’s coverage of the film into the fanboy anticipatory realm, but I’m okay with that.  Kind of reminds me of the old days.

    Here’s a look at one of the big action set pieces of the film, which Entertainment Tonight showed exclusively last night:

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVWg0KHZl4E

  • Letterman’s top 3 reasons to see ‘The Dark Knight’

    1) Everyone dies in the end.
    2) The motorcycle.
    3) Heath Ledger.

    Yes, it seems late night king of comedy David Letterman got an early look at “The Dark Knight,” and while he pokes fun at the anticipation and, of course, the “keep it under wraps” mentality of the studio, there seems to be some genuine adoration for the effort in there.

    Money quote for Ledger:

    Heath Ledger…oh my God is he great in this one…I’m telling you, this is a tremendous performance.  That’s the reason people ought to go see this film.

    Check it out:

    httpv://youtube.com/watch?v=6-sXBkQ13EQ

    The new TV spot, featuring spooking Joker narration (after the jump):

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  • ‘Knight’ falls in L.A. tomorrow (and Travers jumps the gun)

    FYI.  Keep those lids peeled for reviews coming form tomorrow’s Los Angeles screening.

    In the meantime, Peter Travers has the first official review up at Rolling Stone.  Here’s a taste:

    Heads up: a thunderbolt is about to rip into the blanket of bland we call summer movies. The Dark Knight, director Christopher Nolan’s absolute stunner of a follow-up to 2005’s Batman Begins, is a potent provocation decked out as a comic-book movie. Feverish action? Check. Dazzling spectacle? Check. Devilish fun? Check. But Nolan is just warming up. There’s something raw and elemental at work in this artfully imagined universe.

    And praise for Ledger, as if we weren’t expecting it:

    I can only speak superlatives of Ledger, who is mad-crazy-blazing brilliant as the Joker. Miles from Jack Nicholson’s broadly funny take on the role in Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman, Ledger takes the role to the shadows, where even what’s comic is hardly a relief…It’s typical of Ledger’s total commitment to films as diverse as Brokeback Mountain and I’m Not There that he does nothing out of vanity or the need to be liked. If there’s a movement to get him the first posthumous Oscar since Peter Finch won for 1976’s Network, sign me up.

    The rest.

  • Just do it

    Many thanks to reader Mr. Gittes (perhaps as much a Bat-fiend as yours truly), who pointed me to this Wired story detailing director Christopher Nolan’s torrid love affair with all things practical in the world of action cinema.

    Much has been said and written of Nolan’s preference for saving the CGI drama for your mama and having the cojones to go out and actually do the stunts, prepare the gasp-inducing set-pieces and thereby root the new Batman franchise in the reality it deserves and, in a sense, begs for.

    There are so many quotable lines in Scott Brown’s incredibly thorough piece that I find myself anxiously picking and choosing.  But I suppose it’s worth it to start with the basic leader:

    While today’s action heroes routinely come dressed in shades of the giddy synthetic (à la Spider-Man and Iron Man), movie fans have gorged on digital eye candy — and, perhaps fearing retinal diabetes, now they’re cutting back (Speed Racer, anyone?). Still, gritty naturalism is no small leap for the spandex genre. It’s a mood more identified with art noir and the prestige pic, the kind of cinema built to attract Oscars, not mass audiences…

    …Nolan has a cogent Theory of Applied Batmatics: Insist on reality — no effects, no tricks — up to the point where insisting on reality becomes unrealistic. Then, in postproduction, make what is necessarily unreal as real as possible. “Anything you notice as technology reminds you that you’re in a movie theater,” Nolan explains. “Even if you’re trying to portray something fantastical and otherworldly, it’s always about trying to achieve invisible manipulation.” Especially, he adds, with Batman, “the most real of all the superheroes, who has no superpowers.”

    Then perhaps segue into the most refreshing news yet (news to me, anyway), regarding ADR on the film:

    Nolan would rather fix it while everyone’s still on the set. He hates to loop. “I just think separating the voice from the face and the body is very tricky,” he explains. It is, after all, blatantly unreal.

    So did the director get everything he needed from Ledger before his death? He says yes: Ledger nailed it in principal photography. Thomas adds, “Everything you see onscreen is his performance.” (In other words, there’ll be no clunky digital resurrection, aural or visual, no morbid echoes of Oliver Reed’s posthumous performance in Gladiator.) Besides, Nolan doesn’t believe in bringing an actor back six months later and expecting him to re-create the nuances of a character, any more than he believes a computer can re-create the quality of human camera work on its own.

    But I can’t resist offering up the line Mr. Gittes chose, the line that’ll force the hairs on any fanboy’s neck to stand at attention:

    He was moving on. But there was one small problem with leaving Batman behind: He knew how he wanted it all to end. He had something Godfather-ish in mind, a saga of dark doubles and transfiguration — big, dense, and novelistic.

    It’s quite an absorbing piece, with more than its fair share of tech-talk, from the realities of shooting with giant IMAX cameras to descriptions of filming Christian Bale actually standing on top of the Sears Tower.

    Check it out.  You know you want to.

  • Edward Norton and the not-so-jolly green giant

    What can be said of the fearless Edward Norton, who recently became an on-screen comic book hero?  I never understood his choice to take on the role of Bruce Banner, a.k.a. The Incredible Hulk.  And now, post-release, I’m still puzzled.

    He walked into a franchise that became a fast mess just five years ago.  And according to IMDb, he turned the role down back then. Given the actor’s commitment to characterization in his performances, it makes sense that he would turn the other cheek.  After all, so much of Bruce Banner, or at the least what audiences might want to see, is a technological creation. Unlike any of the characters in “Iron Man” or in the upcoming “The Dark Knight,” Mr. Norton doesn’t get to sport a good makeup job and put his true talents on display. He has to disappear all together.  It seems so unlike him.

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  • The western keeps on truckin’

    It’s no real secret that yours truly is in the tank for the western genre.  Being brought up on the films of Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood tends to make an impact in a young man’s life.  I watch Charles Bronson square off with Henry Fonda on a daily basis.  I’m knee-deep in research on the genre for a grad school thesis.

    I dig it, okay?

    The resurgence of saddles and spurs on the big screen has been moving steadily through the industry.  I don’t think anyone expects a return to the 1950s, with pistol-toting heroes plastered on every television screen and nearly every silver screen across America, but I see these efforts taking on more introspective subject matter, perhaps giving way soon enough to the neo-western.  And it is, after all, time.

    Today I see that screen tests may have been revealed of Thomas Jane in the upcoming DC Comics adaptation “Jonah Hex”  The film is set to be directed by the team behind “Crank,” Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor.  This might be real, might not, since the duo is filming “Crank 2” in Los Angeles at the moment.  But I can’t say I’m loving it…seems quite amateurish.  Regardless, “Hex” is a hell of a property with some storylines that just sing, and seeing it on the big screen will do this western fanatic a lot of good.

    Meanwhile, of course, Ed Harris is set to release “Appaloosa” later this year, formerly under the New Line Cinema banner and now, presumably, as another in a long tradition of genre entries from Warner Bros. Pictures.  Harris stars along with Viggo Mortensen and Renee Zellweger.

    These efforts are coming on the heels of a tweak in the genre as of late, with the more abstract works of Cormac McCarthy making their way to the screen (“No Country for Old Men,” “The Road” and, soon, “Blood Meridian”) and David Milch showing in the sadly cancelled HBO series “Deadwood” that the genre could be taken to levels almost Shakespearean.  Meanwhile, a revamp of “The Lone Ranger” is looking like a go, with the team behind the “Pirates of the Caribbean” films hoping to bring an element of sensationalism into the mix.

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  • Bullshit

    Sorry:

    But Lee wasn’t interested in going through the motions, and instead of adhering to the usual conventions of the genre, he subverted them. Hulk doesn’t really look or feel like a superhero movie. But that’s what’s great about it.

    The rest.

  • Teasing it out…

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LirIKbsVCkM

    Tune in 2011, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.

  • Curious about ‘Hulk’ opinions…

    With the weekend behind us, I never got a real assessment (and computer problems have made communication a bit difficult).  What did everyone think?