Too lazy to read all the wonderful news our insightful crew scours the globe to bring you every day? Too outmoded to have an MP3 player for the podcast? Shame on you all! However, being the generous lot we are, welcome to news:blended, your weekly guide to the most interesting stories reported on Cinema Blend over the last seven days.
Face Facts, Indy 4 Is Dead
Tuesday, George Lucas took time out of swimming in his Star Wars gold to yet again screw around Indiana Jones fans by promising that, despite being five years in the writing, the script for a fourth installment is still being rewritten and that the movie will occur before any of the main players dies of old age. Strangely, I don't believe him. Ford is pushing seventy. Spielberg and Lucas are nearly old enough to collect their pensions. George compared Indy to The Phantom Menace in that it could never live up to the hype so as a result the project has been pushed back and back and back. Well, wasn't it one of George's own creations that said; "Do or do not. There is no try." So in that spirit I say; either get filming guys or give it up.
Idiocracy - The Work-ethic of Fox Executives?
I'll confess I've never seen the much geeked about Office Space and having never worked in a cubicled environment probably couldn't relate to it as well as others. The sci-fi follow-up to Mike Judge's cult classic, however, suffered a turbulant ride this week when it was let out last Monday that Fox had postponed release of Idiocracy mere weeks before it was due out in theatres. Then this Tuesday, we were the first to break the news that Fox was doing a bizarre turn-around and announced that Idiocracy would actually be getting a theatrical release, but that this release would be very, very small. Did Fox underestimate the media backlash over this? Or is the movie really that bad? If you find a screening of Idiocracy anywhere in the country on September 1st, maybe you can let us know.
Manniquin Gets Mucky
I remember reading about Real Dolls in FHM back in the late 90s. They were posable life-size and life-like silicone dolls which were as disturbingly anatomically correct as is possible with a massive barbie doll; you may remember one popping up in an episode of Nip/Tuck. They were mainly for crazy japanese perverts and rich Everquest players who'd never get a chance to meet, let alone have sex, with a real woman. And that's all they are really; Blow-up dolls for the 21st century. So I was a little disturbed when I discovered on Wednesday that Emily Mortimer was to star in Lars and the Real Girl, which sounds like a very very wrong updating of 80s cheesefest Manniquin, where a lonely man buys and falls in love with with a Real Doll that turns out to be a lot more real than the rest. Hardly sounds like the stuff of romcom fluff of old, but these are different days I guess...
Snakes in a Screening
Enough is enough!! I've had it with these motherfucking teenagers and their never ending motherfucking quest to prove themselves the most braindead generation ever to pollute this planet. On Wednesday, two Arizona teenagers who've probably watched more Jackass than is healthy reportedly released two deadly rattlesnakes into an AMC theatre screening the most excellent Snakes on a Plane. Not some harmless hissing grass snake, or even a bunch of even more harmless and less PETA-baiting rubber snakes. Nope. Real. Live. KILL YOU IF BITTEN, rattlesnakes. No doubt the boys are, as we speak, boasting of their great achievement on their MySpace and racking up their emo points or whatever the hell it is you earn for killing your mother and boasting about it on your blog these days, oblivious to the very real danger to the public and just plain cruelty and distress to the snakes they caused with their stupid little stunt.
Cruise Control? Mission: Impossible!
Also on Wednesday Paramount announced they had severed their 14 year long ties with that wacky guy Tom Cruise due to what they claim was his "unacceptable behvaiour", referring back to his couch jumping antics on Oprah. But was it really simply because of Cruise's nutjob PR antics? Reports suggest that the Cruise/Wagner's demands were spiralling out of control, to the point that although the $130,000,000 budgeted Mission: Impossible: III took over $400,000,000 worldwide, Paramount itself barely broke-even on it's investment. In a world where the studios are struggling to make back their money, it makes sense that studios are going to start cracking down on stars' outrageous expectations of a cut of the action. None of that will matter to Tom, who apparently has a line of Scientologist investors ready to set up their very own distributor, most likely to end up being called Thetan Pictures with that kinda money.
A Transformation Too Far...
Today I ask the most important question of the week; What the Hugh motherfucking Hefner are ILM and Michael Bay playing at? I refer of course to Josh's story on Thursday which gave us our first look at Megatron from the previously highly anticipated Transformers. Now I was quite willing to accept that changing Megatron from a pistol to something more practical was fair game in the scheme of making Transformers work in a live action movie. "Leaked" pictures of the design panels however revealed that Megatron's alternate form would in fact be an "alien ship" and his robot form, rather than being something closely resembling the character we know, would look like the unholy bastard son of some perverted Treebeard, Sauron and Guyver three-way. It may feature giant freakin robots that turn into other things, but these are not Transformers. It might as well be called Go-Bots or Voltron or Robots Take Manhatten for all the licence the increasingly contemptuous producers are taking.
Well, that's your lot for this week. Remember to visit our News section daily for the smartest and wittiest take on the latest happenings in Hollywood. And remember, through our comments sections you can leave your own thoughts on each and every story and review, even this one. Enjoy putting your opinion forward even more? Why not join the forum. We want to hear from you. See you in seven days.
