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.
Transformers was released on July 4th, or was it the 3rd, actually it seems to have come out on the 2nd. In any case, it is making a boat load of money and it looks like my dream of Michael Bay being reduced to directing commercials in Thailand will have to wait for another day. In addition to the robot stuff, other things happened last week.
SATURDAY
Joel Siegel died, which is sad.
Long-time critic Joel Siegel passed away from colon cancer this week. He was one of those critics that never got much hoity-toity respect but he was always enjoyable to watch. Always seemed like a nice guy reviewing films, never caught up in his own self-importance. He was also rabidly against product placement in movies. Not really, but he should have been and so should you. It’s getting ridiculous.
SUNDAY
People talk about health care by bathroom.
Josh Tyler wrote about his first hand experience of seeing people moved to action after watching Sicko. It wasn’t to do research on the veracity of claims made in the movie, which would be my guess. Instead, the people talked about how there needed to be some changes and how they would try to make them. They exchanged email addresses and then went home and did nothing.
MONDAY
Giant robot movie gets us all giant robot nostalgic.
Ratatouille wins box office weekend for first and only time.
The release of Transformers had Josh Tyler thinking about other movies with big robots in them. He went ahead and ranked them since that’s about all you can do with giant robots these days. The top robot turned out to have a link with the box office winner for last weekend. That’s right Brad Bird got the double plus good pleasure of having the most popular movie and winning the CB Top 5. I bet he is all atwitter.
TUESDAY
Singer isn’t making movies in line with our time schedule.
Germany and Tom Cruise get all up in each others faces.
Bryan Singer dominated the news on Tuesday. He may not direct the follow-up to Superman Returns after he finishes with Valkyrie like the studio wants. That means we may have to wait another year to have the plot of Superman II copied almost exactly. Singer’s current movie, the aforementioned Valkyrie is going through a love/hate relationship with the German government. They would love to film in some official buildings and the government hates Tom Cruise and won’t let them do it. The back and forth on this makes you almost glad they blew us off in Iraq.
New trailer for Abrams produced movie on net, then not so much.
Katie Holmes is let off the leash.
A trailer for Cloverfield, the Matt Reeves directed and JJ Abrams produced movie about something was all over the Internet in bootleg form for awhile. It looked like a monster movie, but who knows. The lawyers got involved and now you’ll have to wait to get excited about the movie until an approved date. Speaking of approved, Katie Holmes auditioned for a musical. It’s not clear how many people needed to approve her leaving the house to work but I have no doubt she’s being appropriately supervised.
THURSDAY
Radcliffe might or might not be in last Potter.
But he’s definitely in the fifth one.
Despite press releases to the contrary from the studio, Daniel Radcliffe said that there better be a good script and director for the last Harry Potter movie or he’s taking his wand and going home. Unsaid in Daniel’s statement is that good script better be wrapped around a big pile o’ money. For those who can’t wait for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix to be released (and according to Josh, you can), there is about 13 minutes of the film available around the Internet.
FRIDAY
Danny Boyle talks about Danny Boyle related things.
Transformers makes lots of money.
Danny Boyle has a new movie called Sunshine that is not about the Age of Aquarius. It’s a sci-fi type of movie about the sun, I think. I haven’t actually seen it, but Boyle has and answered some questions at a critics screening and Lexi Feinberg summarized it for you. I haven’t seen Transformers either, but that doesn’t really matter since it is making gobs of dough regardless. More than gobs. Super-gobs.
That’s all for another week of news blending. It’s like what you get at Jamba Juice, but cheaper and not quite as healthy. If you liked it or didn’t, leave some feedback.
