Entertainment News

Very Entertaining

Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na BATMAN
So, much as The Animatrix was a collection of anime and anime inspired shorts that bridged the gap between The Matrix and its sequels, Warner Brothers has commissioned the same umbrella group to make a Batman anthology set between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. So far details are scant, but the pedigree is impressive.

As are the early PR stills.

I'm interested to see how the Japanese perspective on Batman will pan out. I already read Child of Dreams, the manga-style graphic novel by Kia Asamiya (most famous for doing Nadeisco, though he apparently also worked on the exquisitely old-school Project A-Ko). http://www.amazon.com/Batman-Child-Dreams-Comics-Paperback/dp/156389906X http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_A-ko

That was interesting, if a bit shallow. The art was very nice, it just needed a bit more oomph in the story department.

So I'll be waiting to see how the Batman-i-matrix works out.

Source: Animation Magazine

Another Memoir Hoax
So yet another highly improbable memoir has been exposed as a fraud, and an overly credulous publishing industry/reading audience as dupes.

Sigh.

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- A Belgian writer has admitted that she made up her best-selling "memoir" depicting how, as a Jewish child, she lived with a pack of wolves in the woods during the Holocaust, her lawyers said Friday.

Misha Defonseca's book, "Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years," was translated into 18 languages and made into a feature film in France.

Her two Brussels-based lawyers, siblings Nathalie and Marc Uyttendaele, said the author acknowledged her story was not autobiographical and that she did not trek 1,900 miles as a child across Europe with a pack of wolves in search of her deported parents during World War II.

Really.

People honestly believed, without evidence, that a small child was adopted by a pack of wolves, who she then convinced to act as her bodyguards on a 1900 mile trip across WWII Europe.

Seriously. They bought this.

Wow. People are so damn dumb.

Source: CNN.com

Well Now.
So Ellen Page, of Juno fame, has dropped out of Sam Rami's next horror movie project, written in the Army of Darkness era, titled "Drag Me to Hell".

Riiight.

Earlier this month we reported that Ellen Page had joined Sam Raimi's upcoming horror flick Drag Me to Hell. Although that was some of the most exciting casting news we've ever heard, Bloody Disgusting has confirmed that Page has dropped out of the film. The reason they were given is that "she didn't like the latest draft of the script", but as they speculate, that just seems like the public statement given in order to cover up the real story. Either way, this is sad news for Raimi's next flick.

So you have one hit indie film and you burn the biggest grossing director in Hollywood today, while passing up what may well be the next Evil Dead.

This does not seem like great decision-making to me.

Source: First Showing

PS: IMDB reminds me that she was Kitty Pryde in the ungodly terrible X-Men: The Last Stand, where, in a movie filled with cardboard cutout protagonists, she still set new records for bland.

Yeah. Raimi's better off.

Taxi to the Oscars
The Oscar-winning filmmaker who did Taxi to the Darkside has his sights set next on Jack Abrmoff and St. John McCain.

The filmmaker who won an Academy Award Sunday night for best documentary is next turning his attention to the Jack Abramoff scandal, including GOP presidential candidate John McCain’s role investigating the affair.

Alex Gibney, who made last year's "Taxi to the Dark Side," about the lethal interrogation of an Afghan taxicab driver by American military forces, told Politico his Abramoff film would be coming out later this year. Its tentative title: "Casino Jack and the United States of Money."

"The film should give viewers a greater understanding, in a blow-by-blow way, of how the political process works, particularly with regards to lobbying," Gibney says. "This movie will have it all: wild international intrigue, money changing hands in unexpected places, etc. It will be fun. As someone said about an earlier picture I made: 'It's a comedy that turns into farce and ends up in horror.'"

McCain "of course" comes up in the film, adds Gibney, who has "put the word out" to the Arizona senator’s presidential campaign for comment. "He certainly plays a role — he ran the [Abramoff] hearings, so he's unavoidably involved in the story. Then the questioning extends. Upon further investigation, one looks at his motives and things like that. I don't want to say much more than that, but he is a character in the story."

Since it's now been reported that McCain sat on emails implicating Abramoff in bribing the Republican governor of Alabama, it's not hard to see where this could be heading.

Poor St. John McCain.

Source: Politico

In The Basement
So it turns out Iran has one of the best and largest collections of modern art in the world, purchased with oil money by the Shah shortly before the Revolution. Who knew?

It's one of the finest collections of modern art anywhere in the world, but you won't find it in New York or Paris.

Dozens of works by the likes of Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock -- together valued at roughly $3 billion -- are locked in a basement in Tehran.

Only a handful of westerners have had an up-close look at the underground archives in Tehran's Museum of Contemporary Art. ABC News was granted exclusive access inside the vault that holds a priceless collection Iranian authorities choose to keep locked away.

What was revealed was astonishing: a series of paintings by Picasso; a wall's worth of pop art by Roy Lichtenstein; Warhol portraits of Jackie Onassis, Mick Jagger and Marilyn Monroe; a Diego Rivera self portrait; and a painting many consider to be the best Jackson Pollock outside of North America.

...

The collection was supposed to be a gift to the Iranian people. It was assembled by the Shah of Iran and his wife using public funds during the oil boom of the 1970s. Tehran's Museum of Contemporary Art was inaugurated in 1977, designed to be one of the world's landmark modern art institutions, with an international collection worthy of that ambition.

But just months later came the Islamic Revolution. The Shah was deposed, Ayatollah Khomeinei was became the country's leader, and in the Revolutionary, anti-American climate the museum's western art was banished to the basement.

Ah well. El Presidente will probably blow the collection to smithereens with a bunker-buster bomb anyway.

Source: ABC News