Sep 1 2009 Here's a 3-D Smurf
From PVCBlue.com, some sort of devoted Smurf site, here's the first look at a CGI Smurf from the upcoming film adaptation of the three-apple-high species. Looks like Columbia is really trying to hit that small group that both loves The Smurfs and Scarface references. Get them and the rest will follow. As they say.
(via ComingSoon)
Jun 10 2008 'Smurfs' is Getting More Like 'Alvin and the Chipmunks,' and Not Just in That Both are Awful
A Smurfs movie has long loomed on the horizon, a dark shadow standing three-apples high, but it just got worse. What was once a 3-D animated project, which could be cute if you live free of standards, has just mutated into an Alvin and the Chipmunks--in that will mix live-action, CGI, misplaced nostalgia, and enraged disbelief:
Sony obtained film rights to the blue-colored characters from Lafig Belgium via Jordan Kerner ("Charlotte's Web"), who is producing. David Stem and David Weiss, who wrote the second and third installments in the "Shrek" franchise, are in negotiations to pen the screenplay.Kerner said the genesis of the current project began during a holiday conversation with Sony Pictures Entertainment chairman-CEO Michael Lynton, who grew up with "Les Schtroumpfs" in the Netherlands. "He relished them as I do and suggested that it should be a live-action/CG film," he said. "(Studio topper) Amy (Pascal) felt equally that there was potentially a series of films in the making."
While they're at it, the live-action people might as well be other popular but unrelated characters of the '80s: Balki from Perfect Strangers, Punky Brewster, the guy who played piano on It's a Living, maybe throw in some characters from the new Transformers and G.I. Joe adaptations. Let's just get it all over with; drink the '80s as a thick, brown blend, barely identifiable, all in one go. Please?
Col, SPA send 'Smurfs' to bigscreen [Variety]
Feb 19 2008 Smurfs Dying at Cold Metal Hands of Unseen Robot Foe
Have you ever wanted to see the world through the cold, emotionless eyes of a robot warrior programmed and trained specifically to destroy the Smurfs? I sure have. And though it's unclear whether this image is an unfinished 3D scene or the final moments before a Smurf genocide, it at least gives me some idea.
So what do you think? They seem to look like Smurfs. I don't know what else could be asked, outside of not making a Smurfs movie.
First Look: The Smurf Movie [/Film]
Jan 15 2008 Smurfs To Become Less of a Smurfsage-Fest
When it was announced over a year ago that The Smurfs, would be adapted into a trilogy of feature films, it seemed inevitable that everyone's favorite blue misogynists would be facing an unwarranted update. But what? More three-dimensionally creepy? Backwards hats? References to SmurfTube? A sassy, midnight blue Smurf? Or could it just be, as this article claims, a less gender-biased society...
They will mark 50 years with a series of new comic adventures, statuettes, an exhibition at Brussels' cartoon museum, a set of commemorative stamps and, in a reflection of changing times, more females in their mushroom cottage village.
If studios are really set on recreating my childhood Saturday mornings, they need to at least start recognizing what concepts made it entertaining. Take The Flintstones. While seeing how a pelican or a mammoth could possibly be used in prehistoric household chores gave the show a fair share of its appeal, the blatantly-stolen Honeymooners dynamic is what gave it life. Update Fred to the politically correct, non-wife-abusing standards of today and you've lost your audience.
Similarly, what made The Smurfs stand out as anything other than a pack of small, shirtless mutants was their peculiar society: a living communist manifesto with one woman and precious few members reaching old age. I mean, did you realize Smurfette was originally created by Gargamel to disrupt the natural utopia created by their all-male society? (Shocking but true!) If anything, take this chauvinist idea and run with it--expose its flaws (reproduction issues, for one). But don't correct them. It's not that I don't want an equal society; I just don't want the Smurfs to have one. That's what makes them so smurfy.
