‘The Dark Knight Rises’ Has ‘Phenomenal’ Script, Says Cinematographer Wally Pfister

Following up the best reviewed superhero film of all time and an instant classic would be an uphill battle from the start and that’s what Christopher Nolan is facing with ‘The Dark Knight Rises’. With the addition of Joseph Gordon Levitt in talks for the film and Bane and Catwoman being the villains, should audiences be in doubt that the finale won’t deliver? According to cinematographer of the movie Wally Pfister, you’re in for the best installment yet.

On Kevin and Josh Movie Show, Pfister was asked how ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ can possibly follow up on the greatness of ‘The Dark Knight’. And this is what he says:

Plain and simple — he’s done it. It’s a phenomenal script. He’s still in the process of cutting it back because it’s a very long script right now, but it’s really phenomenal. And he actually had me go back and wanted me to watch, in IMAX, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight again. When I watched those I had read the script for The Dark Knight Rises and was like, ‘Dude, it is a perfect trilogy.’ I think that was his intent, to work off those two pictures — and they are very different pictures. And it’s funny, we all had different opinions about which picture we like better.

If that isn’t reason enough to get excited, I don’t know what is. That’s high praise for the film and I cannot wait for it to release.

There’s more details in the interview about a mindblowing opening scene and the movie shooting in IMAX:

Our goal is to shoot as much in IMAX as we can. We’re going to put in on the screen, and put it on the screen big. And I really encourage everyone to see it in IMAX if they can because we’re really going for it this time. In terms of the action, we are all scratching our heads right now trying to figure out how we’re going to do it; how we’re going to do it in the amount of time we’re going to do it in. The opening scene of the movie will blow your mind.

‘The Dark Knight’s opening scene is now one of the most memorable sequences in film and was played six months before the movie’s official release, hyping fans worldwide. I cannot imagine how this film will top that scene, but I’m willing to believe it will.

‘The Dark Knight Rises’ opens July 2012.

’68th Annual Golden Globe Awards’ Nominations: The Expected and The Surprises

Usually, the Golden Globes are a pretty good indicator of what the Oscars next year will be limelighting. And if that is the case this year, they’re going to be some major snubs in favor of some extremely odd choices. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association revealed the nominations for the 68th Annual Golden Globe Awards and this is the basic rundown.

Deservedly, ‘The King’s Speech’ led with seven nominations including Best Picture and Best Actor/Drama. ‘The Social Network’ and ‘The Fighter’ got a lot of love with six nominations each also including Best Picture and Actor nods both in supporting and lead. It’s great to see ‘Inception’ getting recognized as well and the movie scored a Best Picture and Screenplay nod. Even ‘Black Swan’ earned a deserved nod in the above categories. So far so good.

But then there’s the strikeouts that stick out like a sore thumb? Where’s ‘True Grit’? It’s nowhere to be seen and not even in the Actor’s category. The first reviews have been great so this is extremely striking. So is the exclusion of Leonardo DiCaprio, who didn’t get nominated for his excellent performance in both ‘Inception’ and ‘Shutter Island’. Why is there never any love for Leo?

Yet ‘The Tourist’ gets three nominations. Reviewed as one of the worst of the year, the movie scored a nomination for Jolie and Depp in the Best Actors/Comedy category as well as Best Picture/ Comedy. How about critically lauded ‘Scott Pilgrim’? Or you know, movies that aren’t romantic espionage thrillers? A part of me suspects it’s just so that the two stars attend the ceremony. It was great to see Emma Stone get recognition as well as Jeremy Renner for ‘The Town’.

Overall, the disappointments were too glaring for it to be called a fair game. But at least a good part of deserving films did get nominated in the right categories. It will be interesting to see who takes the trophy home.

Read all the nominations including the TV nominations (Dexter and The Walking Dead got their due) below. The ceremony will air January 16th, 2011 with Ricky Gervais hosting again.

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New ‘Rio’ Trailer A Winner

Is it just me or does ‘Rio’ look like the next big animation franchise? The first trailer was very well done and this full trailer is one of the most enjoyable animated movie trailers I’ve seen recently. Check it out.

Set in the magnificent city of Rio de Janeiro and the lush rainforest of Brazil, Rio centers on Blu, a rare macaw who thinks he is the last of his kind. When Blu discovers there’s another — and that she’s a she — he leaves the comforts of his cage in small town Minnesota and heads to Rio. But it’s far from love at first sight between the domesticated and flight-challenged Blu and the fiercely independent, high-flying female, Jewel. Unexpectedly thrown together, they embark on an adventure of a lifetime, where they learn about friendship, love, courage, and being open to life’s many wonders. Rio brings together a menagerie of vivid characters, a heart-warming story, colorful backdrops, energizing Latin and contemporary music, and family-friendly song and dance.

There’s a pretty charming story that holds the film and something that will appeal to everyone. The voice cast is excellent and does the job well while the gags here are genuinely funny. Also, it’s high time Brazil was in an animated movie. The visuals are pretty neat too and 3-D will surely help. Greatly looking forward to this movie.

Trailer below.

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Emma Stone’s Blonde Look For ‘Spider-Man’ Reboot

When Emma Stone was announced to be a part of the upcoming ‘Spider-Man’ reboot cast, everyone expected her to play Mary Jane. Instead, she’ll play Gwen Stacy in the movie. For the sake of the character then, the brunette has turned blonde. Here’s how she looks like.

The image comes from JustJared and though I prefer the brunette Emma much more than the blonde here, she is starting to look the role already. About the process, she told MTV earlier:

“Today I went and did hair tests, because I have blonde hair now since Gwen has blonde hair. My natural hair is blonde, so it’s kind of nice. I looked in the mirror and said, “Oh my god, it’s me again, it’s been so long!” We’re finalizing the visual stuff. And I think we’ll start actually rehearsing, because we start shooting in two weeks.”

Movie is set for a summer 2012 release.

Hans Zimmer Scoring ‘Superman’ Reboot

One of the greats things about Nolan’s past few movies including ‘Inception’ and ‘The Dark Knight’ is how much an epic and sweeping score helped the movies and perfectly complemented them. So there’s no surprise both were scored by Hans Zimmer, one of the greatest working composers in the business today. Now, he’s set to score another major comic book reboot for Warner Brothers.

Composer Hans Zimmer revealed to TOH during an interview that he will indeed be scoring the upcoming ‘Superman’ reboot helmed by Zack Snyder and overseen by Christopher Nolan. That shows that Warner Bros is goin the ‘Batman Begins’ route with Superman this time around and that’s a great thing. He says about the project:

“You are allowed to reinvent, but you have to try to be as good or at least as iconic and it has to resonate and it has to become a part of the zeitgeist. That’s the job. On ‘Gladiator’ I remember people always talking about ‘Spartacus’ and I kept telling them, ‘When you saw ‘Spartacus’ and how it affected it you, that’s how I want a modern audience to be affected by what we do now.’ So I think ultimately you’re supposed to reinvent.”

In short, he’s not going to use the John Williams score from the previous films and something new will be expected. That’s not a bad thing considering they don’t to start off fresh and I’m intrigued to see how it will turn out.

The movie is currently looking for a lead and aiming for a 2012 release.

Mark Walhberg Offered Lead In ‘The Crow’ Reboot

Though ‘Max Payne’ had moments of great action, it was largely a failed adaptation of a great videogame. But we can’t fault Mark Wahlberg for the material he was working with, since he suited the role and the dark tone perfectly. Now he’s getting another dark role that might not be something I could ever imagine him as.

Bloody Disgusting reports that Mark Wahlberg has been offered the lead role in the reboot of ‘The Crow’ by Relativity Media. The original movie was directed by Alex Proyas and starred Brandon Lee, who unfortunately died mid-shooting due to a set accident with a loaded gun firing at his chest. There’s no official confirmation yet, but shows that work on the reboot is seriously underway.

Last we heard, Nick Cave was writing the script with Stephen Norrington attached to direct. Well, now we hear that Norrington has decided to move off the project which might or might not spell trouble for the project since something is clashing as far as conflicts of interest go.

Personally, no matter how good of an actor Wahlberg is, I cannot imagine him in that make-up and something makes me feel he will pass on the project. I would prefer the role to go to a newcomer or someone much more intense since the character requires it.

Let’s see what comes up as the result.

‘Avatar: Special Edition’ Re-release Struggling At U.S. Box Office

This isn’t a blow to Fox at all considering ‘Avatar’ is the highest grossing movie of all time by a mile, but is definitely of note. James Cameron prepared a special edition of ‘Avatar’ with more than 8 minutes of new footage for limited release in 3-D once again. The industry had pegged it to do pretty well, maybe even take the top spot from ‘The Last Exorcism’ which was expected to win. And now the box office weekend results are out for the U.S., and it’s not looking too great.

Deadline has the early box office results and those who were predicting ‘Avatar’ would at least make the top 5, hear this – ‘Avatar: Special Edition’ didn’t even make the top 10. It flatly placed at 11th place with an extremely disappointing $1.2 million for the weekend. Now granted that this is almost a year old movie, but with the amount of hype going for it, you’d think it would place in the top 10 at least.

What could be the reason for such a washout? Firstly, the summer season is officially over and not a very good one at that. Audiences are tired and worn out and it would be hard to bring them to watch a movie they can easily revisit at home. But an even likelier reason is this – 3D ticket prices are high as ever and audiences are very careful when spending. This can be found in the disappointing returns on ‘Step Up 3D’ and ‘Piranha 3D’ which sold their 3-D experience only. Now when you have a movie that pretty much everyone has watched already, audiences would rather watch it at home. Add to the fact that the announced Special Edition DVD will have an additional sixteen minutes of footage and you can paint a picture why the hype was wrong to begin with.

There’s no way the movie will hit the predicted $800 million mark in the U.S., although it doesn’t need to really. Foreign grosses could be better when the movie rolls out, though.