Nov 18 2009 Dr. Grant, Matrix, et al. Join 'Guardians of Ga'Hoole'
Sam Neill (Merlin, creepy red meat supporter, raptor enthusiast), Geoffrey Rush (Captain Barbossa), Hugo Weaving (elf, evil Matrixer) and David Wenham (Faramir) have signed on to provide voices for Guardians of Ga'Hoole, Zack Snyder's upcoming film that will bring his trademark excessive slow-motion into the world of 3D animation:
The big-budget fantasy film, in production in Sydney and directed by Zack Snyder, also will feature the voices of Aussie actors Emily Barclay, Abbie Cornish, Emilie de Ravin, Ryan Kwanten and Jay Laga'aia, as well as English actors Miriam Margolyes, Helen Mirren and Jim Sturgess.The film follows Soren, a young owl enthralled by his father's epic stories of the Guardians of Ga'Hoole, a mythic band of winged warriors who had fought a great battle to save all of owlkind from the evil Pure Ones.
Good luck at school tomorrow, guys. Those older bullies are going to have a field day calling you "Guardians of Gay Holes."
Jul 13 2009 Watch Nite Owl I Die!
When director Zack Snyder was editing Watchmen down to a barely-more-manageable 162 minutes, some scenes were necessarily lost. But did you realize one of those scenes involved the slow-motion murder of an elderly man? It's true! And you thought you'd seen every slow-motion murder of an elderly man. (You have, besides this one.)
Thankfully, Warner Bros. has released the clip, depicting the death of the first Nite Owl. Your collection is now complete:
Jun 29 2009 'Watchmen' Back in Theaters--and Now Incredibly Long!
If your primarily complaint about Watchmen was that it wasn't excruciatingly long enough, I've got some happy news, you: to promote Zack Snyder's director's cut on DVD, out July 21, the 25-minute longer edit will also be showing July 17 in venues in New York, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis! According to Box Office Mojo, just twenty-five thousand dollars in ticket sales should push the film's all-time domestic gross just above the Tom Hanks/Madonna/Rosie O'Donnell baseball comedy A League of their Own! Let's get Fandangoing!
For those on the fence about whether or not they want to sit all the way through the new, 186-minute Watchmen, understand that there will be a brief intermission when Alan Moore rushes the stage and disavows himself from both the film and society as a whole before finally being pulled off stage by security guards who assume the insane, caveman-haired man is a street vagrant.
'Watchmen' director's cut to bigscreen [Variety]
Mar 9 2009 Who Made the 'Watchmen'? (The People in This Credits Sequence)
The Watchmen opening credits--notable for its innovative use of the same 3d-text-in-the-environment style as Fringe, the Pandorum trailer, and that one car commercial where the car keeps bumping into its reviews--is online at the Dave and Thomas blog. I have to say, the sequence does a great job setting up the film's basic premise of being set in a world of slow motion.
Mar 2 2009 Just Who Is This Professor Manhattan Character?
All this week, NBC will be posting a new video profile of a Watchmen character every day. By Friday, you'll know so much about these heroes that you won't even need Teen Beat's "Which Watchmen Do You Kiss Most Like?" quiz to discern that I definitely kiss like The Comedian (rough but funny and flirty).
Today's profile is Dr. Manhattan. It's not embeddable, so you'll have to click around here if you want at it. I'm sorry.
Feb 24 2009 The Rorschach Diary Reading Series
Go into Watchmen with prior knowledge of every scene--and not just because it's a decade-old book that anyone who cares at all about comics has read. Warner Bros. has released two more clips from the film, so now you can see Rorschach investigate things while reading from his journal. It's the best diary reading from a man in a ridiculous costume since Diary of a Mad Black Woman:
Feb 19 2009 Who Watches the 'Watchmen' 3 1/2 Hour DVD?
Let's fast forward a couple weeks. You're walking out a showing of Watchmen, thankful the movie met at least some of your expectations, and even more thankful to be free of the packed theater's body odor haze. You're thinking, "I'm the kind of guy or girl who buys movies on discs for home enjoyment. How many versions of this am I going to have to buy?" So let me tell you: Zack and Debbie Snyder told Collider the first release, which will likely contain the theatrical version and a 3:10 director's cut, will come out around Comic Con (late July, for non-nerds). Later in the fall, we'll get the Ultimate Edition--a three-hour twenty-five minute cut that includes the Tales of the Black Freighter story. Still no mention of a bulky, trinket-filled version that won't fit in your DVD shelf or a bare-bones, full-screen version for parents to buy for Christmas even though you specifically asked for the ephemera-filled box set.
(Thanks, Rick.)
Feb 18 2009 Rorschach and Nite Owl are Good Friends FOREVER
Have some Watchmen clips, everyone! See Nite Owl (not Rorschach like in the comic--ut oh!) visit Veidt and his hair wave. Revel in Rorschach being good friends with Nite Owl despite occasional arguments and accusations of insanity. Try not to worry that everything seems slightly stiff and unnatural--it should at least be better than the Joel Schumacher Batmen.
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Feb 9 2009 Rorchach's Mask is Made of Science
Empire has posted a new Watchmen behind-the-scenes video about the process behind making Rorschach's constantly-shifting mask. The secret: computers. They're not just for word processing anymore.
Also there are some never-before-seen Rorschach's youth scenes:
Feb 3 2009 Images of Tales of the Black Freighter
Director Zack Snyder was forced to cut Tales of the Black Freighter, the castaway comic within the Watchmen, from his adaptation of the comic--but it will not go unrealized! An animated DVD of the tale(s) goes on sale March 24, and JoBlo has some screenshots from it. I can already tell animation won't do the story the same justice as seeing extras strapped under a raft pretending to be bloated corpses, but I guess it will have to do.
Jan 7 2009 More Video Things of the 'Watchmen'
I wouldn't normally do this, but since you've been so good at keeping up with your chores lately, here's another Watchmen video. They're running out of featurette ideas, so this one is three minutes on how they dressed up some people in old-fashioney superhero clothes to take the above photo. Warning: it's probably a spoiler for the special features on disc 3 of the DVD set.
Jan 7 2009 Japan Has a 'Watchmen' Trailer Too
Guess what there is now. Another Watchmen trailer--this time from Japan, where tradition has dictated new footage must be included. Ignore that all of the characters have Hello Kitty faces. That's a cultural thing that won't be included in the film's U.S. cut.
Dec 31 2008 'Watchmen' Featurette: Hey, It's Moloch!
Seeing that it might be a bit longer than originally anticipated before you get to see that Watchmen movie everyone is talking about, curb your desire with this new footage-filled featurette. With Star Trek and this (hopefully) coming out in the coming months, 2009 is shaping up to be a big year for prosthetic pointed ears in films that can't possibly live up to their hype.
Continue Reading " 'Watchmen' Featurette: Hey, It's Moloch! "
Dec 10 2008 That Old 'Watchmen' Trailer from the Comic Convention
The Watchmen footage shown at the San Diego Comic Convention has finally been made a feature of the internet. iTunes is now hosting the trailer, which you can access by clicking here (via AICN) or searching "watchmen" in the iTunes program. If you go with the latter option, be careful to click the movie Watchmen and don't accidentally click The Prize Fighter Inferno's "Who Watched the Watchmen" song from their album My Brother's Blood Machine. That is a song you do not want to hear.
Dec 8 2008 'Watchmen' Video Journal #9: Art Direction Things
The official Warner Bros. Watchmen page has a new behind-the-scenes video journal, this one discussing the film's props and set decoration. You know all those objects on the walls, and that the actors wield, and those things the Comedian uses for his prop comedy? They don't make themselves. People are working hard to make sure all those extra details are just right.
I love that even though this is a huge budget movie, when those hard-working people need an actor to fly into the air, they still just attach a rope to an actor, drape it over a pulley, and have some set worker grab the other end and jump off a stool:
Continue Reading " 'Watchmen' Video Journal #9: Art Direction Things "
Nov 6 2008 'Watchmen' Video Diary: Grrrl Power Edition
Girls Kick Ass, the latest production diary from the set of Watchmen, has gone online at MySpace. As you might expect, it focuses on the stars that have ladyparts (Carla Gugino, Malin Akerman), the training they went through, and the relationship between their characters. Girls can be trained to throw punches too, dudes! Here's the proof!
If you only sit at your desk and discreetly masturbate to one production diary this year, make it this one:
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Oct 22 2008 More of That 'Watchmen' Movie
For those of you who missed the Scream Awards last night, first off, what were you thinking??? Secondly, here's the new trailer for Watchmen that debuted.
I forget, did the comic have this much slow motion and so many dramatic landings?
Oct 20 2008 Does 'Watchmen' End Differently Than You Remember It Ending?
Did someone (Zack Snyder) make the Watchmen movie ending different than the Watchmen comic ending? HE MIGHT HAVE. If you'd like to find out how, read this possible spoilers...
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Oct 6 2008 'Watchmen' Video Journal: Dr. Manhattan is Composed of Numerous Lights
Sci Fi Wire has the latest in the series of video journals documenting the making of Zack Snyder's Watchmen adaptation. This one is titled "Blue Monday," and covers how the special effects crew rigged a suit with a bunch of LED lights to simulate Dr. Manhattan's blue aura. Looks like someone should be getting a special thanks in the credits...
Aug 7 2008 'Watchmen' Video Blog Alleviates Concerns, Creates New Concerns
In this newest Watchmen set visit, director Zack Snyder shows you how him and his team looked at drawings of Nite Owl's ship in the comic, then built models of the ship based on those drawings. I guess the idea behind these videos is that fans will feel relieved to see most things look reasonably accurate, but all I can think every time I see Snyder sauntering around in his athletic pants and baseball cap, his unshaven face spewing "cools" and "awesomes" to describe nearly every aspect of production, is how one the most important comic works ever made is being adapted by someone who all evidence suggests is a total douche.
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