Final Potter Trailer

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Fairy tales made into movies

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Walt Disney studio released its new 3D animated film named as Gnomeo and Juliet. It is a twist of Romeo and Juliet based on a drama of Shakespeare. It made a business of $14.2 million in just three weeks of its release

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Hugh Jackman won’t be hosting the Oscars next year. He gave such a great performance with his musical number at the 2009 Oscars, it is a surprise he won’t take the job again. Maybe he is just too busy making movies to give awards for them or host these kind of ceremonies.

Here are the ten best action movies that got our adrenaline pumping and the dynamite exploding.

10. Robocop: A cop is transformed after he is brutally murdered execution style by a notorious gang leader. He becomes a super crime fighter, a Robo Cop who is mostly machine with some remnants of his human memory/life. This film had lots of innovative fight scenes with robots, when that was the huge craze and robots were just becoming known in the late 80′s. Interestingly, Darren Aronofsky has been hired to film the remake, and Aronofsky is a brilliant director (The Fountain, The Wrestler, Requiem for a Dream).

9. Commando: One of Arnold’s earlier films in the 80′s, the title speaks for itself. Schwarzenegger is on a mission to get back his kidnapped daughter, and not even an army will stand in his way. “You know when I said I’d kill you last… I lied.” This is Arnold doing what he does best, shooting machine guns and blowing stuff up. A movie where you don’t have to think.

8. Mission Impossible: Another great film with suspense and excitement. The Mission Impossible team is stealthy and sneaky. Suspended above lasers detection and holding on for dear life as an elevator rockets towards the ceiling. This message will self destruct in five seconds.

7. Rocky: You gotta love this one, “Yo Adrian!”. Rocky Balboa is the prototypical Philly Boxer, he don’t know much, but he can fight. This series was full of excitement except for Rocky V, that one sucked. But with Rocky heads up against fighters like Apollo, Clubber, and Drago, there is tons of boxing action!

6. The Transporter: Fast cars, fast fighting, and hot women. What could be better? Not much, “The Transporter” has it all and like to show off. The car chase scenes and fight choreography are to be admired. The plot is intriguing too, the women, are the package to be delivered.

5. Rambo: An ex special forces guy who can take out an entire police department with a rock and some sharp sticks. The Rambo series show us that with enough will power and makeshift technology, one man can be “an army of one”. One thing you don’t want to do is get on Rambo’s bad side. And yes they’ve made too many in the series, Stallone obviously never says die.

4. Aliens: The first and second and resurrection films in this series were well done. The Aliens depicted in these films are not to be messed with. They are scary looking and will haunt your dreams. Only flamethrowers and a helluva lot of ammunition will take them down. And even then after you shoo them, there could be acid splash back at you. Only Ripley seems to know how to take them down, and maybe that’s because she is carrying one of them inside her, and they don’t want to kill their own. These Aliens are like worker ants only much bigger and much deadlier. The hierarchy is the same though.

3. Predator: How do you kill what you can’t see? Arnold thinks “if it bleeds we can kill it”. Easier said than done as the Predator lives for the hunt and wants humans for trophies. His technology is vastly superior to the measly humans, but lucky for them he will fight on their level for “honor”. This is the only weakness that allow Arnold to have a sporting chance.

2. Terminator: First Schwarzenegger plays a cyborg from the future that comes to kill Sarah Connor, then in T2 he plays one that comes to save Jon Connor to fight for the resistance against Sky Net. I don’t know why but I always think that this apocalyptic scenario is always possible with our technology available. We all await to see whether Terminator: Salvation will be a blockbuster or a failure.

1. Die Hard: “yippy ka yay” This film has action ingrained in its cellophane. Most definitely the best action film of all time. An NYPD cop is trapped in Nakatomi plaza with a bunch of terrorist who hold his wife’s co workers hostage at during an office party. John McClane slips away when they seize control, and manages to undermine and kill off the terrorist one by one. John McTiernan directed this film along with the Predator film, and does an impeccable job.

British actress Natasha Richardson was recently involved in a skiing accident. She was taking lessons at the famed Mont Tremblant ski resort located in Montreal when she suffered a head injury after falling. She was rushed to the hospital and is in critical condition. Her husband, Liam Neeson stopped work on his upcoming film “Chloe” to head straight for Montreal. Our thoughts and prayers are with Natasha and her family.

The Boondock Saints was one of the greatest cult classics of the last century. From the very beginning it had been plagued with setbacks and complications that eventually led to the film being released straight to DVD. The film has been arguably the most successful cult film, winning over millions of fans and becoming highly popular in a sense that it managed to become part of an almost mainstream type of pop culture for many teenagers and remains so to this day.

Director Troy Duffer wrote the screenplay after witnessing a horrid scene: he came home to find that a woman had died in a drug dealer’s room across the hall from his apartment. The film would be plagued itself with bad luck. After impressing Miramax with his script, Harvey Weinstein had decided to give it a $15 million budget. Everything seemed on track for a major launch at the theaters.

Then Duffy happened. After repeated arguments with Duffy over casting, Miramax dropped the project. Due to these troubles, Duffy was forced to find a smaller independent company to finance the film, with a smaller budget and not the cast originally hoped for. Nonetheless, the film he made would become a blockbuster sensation, but not in the way anticipated, and in more ways than one.

The release of Boondock Saints in theaters in 1999 was, according to Duffy, unfortunately timed. Due to the Columbine High School shootings recently occurring, the film was reduced and limited to only five screens in the entire United States, and even then, only for one week. With help from Blockbuster Video, who had discovered it to be widely popular in their stores, Troy Duffy secured financing to re-release the film in 2006. Due to word-of-mouth, Boondock Saints had gained a cult following, which some critics might argue is undeserved. The other die-hard fans have proven it to be a success despite the monumental problems it’s release faced.

With this given trend of bad luck, especially in the development and production of the film, when Duffy announced a sequel to have financial backing in 2002, many would be right to be skeptical. The release date of 2005 never came to be, and Duffy made clear later on this happened due to litigation with the company in control of the film rights. 20th Century Fox would eventually step in and agree to back the production of the sequel. It finally seems that for now, the troubles for Duffy and the crew may now be over. The film has been marked as in post-production, and Duffy states possible release by the end of the year.

You thought a 300 sequel was impossible, right? All the 300 Spartans are dead beside the story teller, how can they live to fight another day?

Well they can’t. This sequel takes place after the Battle of Thermopylae right before the Battle of Plataea and into the epic battle of course. This film might possibly come out in 2010 and they may start filming towards the end of this year if we’re lucky. Zach Snyder will direct this one, so we are pretty sure it will have mind blowing cinematography and story telling. Frank Miller is currently working on the graphic novel that will inspire the film to greatness.

While the Battle of Plataea is not quite as epic as Thermopylae as far as odds are concerned, it is still a huge battle in it’s own right. You know with Frank Miller’s added creativity it will be more stylized than the actual battle. The only thing is they will need a big star to lead the Spartan army. Casting has not started yet but I’m sure they’ll do a good job like on the last film.

The odds were still astonishing at 3:1 in favor of the Persians. The Persian’s army numbered around 300,000 whereas the Spartan/Greek army totaled around 100,000. “A paltry 3 to 1″ as the narrator said in the original film.

There are all sorts of great moments that would be dramatic enough for the film. Like when a large portion of the Persian army was trapped in their camp, and slaughtered. There is also the pseudo retreat by the Greeks that enabled the Persians to charge in and meet their doom against the reformed Greco/Spartan lines.

There is also the gathering of the Greeks and Spartans uniting together against a foreign threat. We saw the army that was formed in “300″ but we didn’t see the call to arms and political bantering to gain support against Xerxes army.

This film will do exceedingly well in theaters. It seems everyone really wanted to see what would take place in the next battle. Frank Miller and Zach Snyder’s work has been doing exceedingly well lately. Snyder directed Watchmen which made 55 million and his directing career is just getting started. Think once he masters the art how great he will be. If they didn’t want to make this film about the Battle of Plataea they could always make it about the Romans battling the Gauls with Julius Caesar or the Romans vs the Huns and Attila. Whatever route they end up taking, I’m sure it’ll be a great one.

It should be no surprise that positive publicity can help determine the success of a business venture. Yet in no industry is it more critical than in the film industry. Recent movies have proven that often times, the trailers for movies can determine their successes more than the quality of the films themselves, except in the cases of complete bombs. One group of films based on Frank Millers’ novels has used trailers to amazing effect, drawing massive crowds. Hollywood better take note, or be left in the dust.

Take the recent release “Watchmen”. Before the movie even was released, many were prepared to call it the greatest film ever, even people who had never read the comic books. Regardless of the content, it is apparent that the hype was perhaps out of proportion to the film’s true quality, as ratings for the film began to fall in the preceding days, rather than rise. Nonetheless, the trailers served to bring crowds, which in turn helped “Watchmen” claim the top spot at the box office, which is sure to bring in more movie goers to see the popular film.

Another example is yet another Frank Miller based film “300″, which soared at the box office and managed to gain an eye-popping number of people to the theater who may have been unfamiliar with Frank Miller. Many who did not take a liking to Sin City, still showed up as the trailer was so impressive in portraying the ferocity and amazing artwork of the war film. The film is remarkable for it’s amazing box office earnings while lacking truly big name actors. The film overall impressed audiences, bringing back repeat watchers as well as earning it extremely positive mentions from fans, helping increase the buzz.

Regardless, it may have well been quite possible that “300″ could have gone relatively unnoticed  at the box office had it not been for the amazing trailers. The “300″ trailers had gotten millions of views on YouTube and other sites, and it’s worth noting that is free advertising to millions of potential moviegoers. Without the great trailers, that would of never occurred.

Many great films had releases with only a small initial turnout or earnings. These cult classics failed to make any sort of splash. Donnie Darko being one great example that failed to make any significant earnings at the box office but went on to become widely popular with steady DVD sales. Others went straight to DVD and never managed to get the type of box office earnings they could have, such as “Equilibrium” and “The Boondock Saints”. Overall, a flashy trailer can do far more for a film than even the reputation of a big name actor or a massive marketing budget can do, as the Frank Miller films have shown.

We all know Joaquin Phoenix is a great film actor, his rapping career however, well let’s just say the only reason you would go to his concert is to see him, not his rapping.

When we first saw him on stage rapping, we thought “oh he’s just having some fun, doing something different”. But when he came out saying he was “quitting acting” to pursue his rap career, we thought he must be joking and this is crazy.

He even went on Letterman for an awkward appearance. Letterman razzed him as Phoenix basically said little to nothing. Phoenix even put gum on the Letterman table when Letterman said “how bout I come to your place and chew gum”. But at the end of the show Joaquin shook hands with Letterman and took off his glasses. So if he was really irritated with Letterman like he appeared why take off your glasses as a sign of respect? He seemed to pick up his mood when the interview was over. He went from depressed to happy in a second. That makes me think Letterman was in on it, or being a good sport. Usually on talk shows like that you go over what you are going to talk about with the interviewee that way the conversation goes smoothly so no one is caught off guard. Now Letterman may be able to roll with punches and ad lib, but he seemed to know something was going on and played along very well.

Another thing to add to the “staged” concept is that Casey Affleck a known director (Gone Baby, Gone) has been filming all along this Joaquin journey. This leads some to believe it will be a mockumentary of some sort akin to that of “Borat”. See the reaction you get from people when you drastically change careers, or the film could be about the comedy of the situation. Now, you definitely have enough material for an hour and a half movie. Especially if you add in Ben Stiller’s imitation of Joaquin with the beard and mannerisms.

If this whole thing was a stunt to get publicity for his next movie, he wouldn’t need someone to film it. Besides couldn’t you pay some Joe Smoh to film it instead of an in-demand director like Casey Affleck. That’s pretty nice of Affleck to film something like that just so Joaquin can have a video to remember his crazy rapping adventures.

Now Joaquin attacked a heckler at his most recent rap concert. He yelled back at the heckler “We have a (double-expletive) in the audience,” he said before jumping into the crowd. It was not immediately clear whether the two men exchanged any blows. This makes me think it was all a stunt to “act like a thug” and more material for his mockumentary. Especially since Affleck didn’t stop filming the whole event. Why wouldn’t he go help his friend in a fight I wonder? Maybe the heckler was also in on it. Course there would naturally be hecklers due to Phoenix’s lack of hip-hop talent.

I just don’t see how this mockumentary will actually be successful. In this day and age with youtube and mass media and blogs we’ve already seen or read about most of these events. So when the film comes out it will be so re-hashed it will be boring and repetitive. Unless the film makers make a really bizarre spin on the film like “how the media treats you if you go off in another direction in your career.” But that seems unlikely as no one will feel sorry for him (Phoenix), when he’s already made millions and we are in a Great Recession.