Kevin Dillon by Claudette Barius/HBO
Victory! Entourage's Kevin Dillon has been tapped to play the title character in the 300-spoofing National Lampoon's 301: The Legend of Awesomest Maximus Wallace Leonidas.... Also per Variety, Natalie Portman joins Brothers' Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal in a love-triangle drama based on a 2004 Danish film.... Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen) will direct Twilight, an adaptation of the best-selling young-adult fantasy series.... Both Vin Diesel and Paul Walker are in talks to just suck it up and reunite for the fourth installment of the Fast and the Furious franchise.... Also per the Reporter, Wallace and Gromit will appear in a new half-hour short set at a bakery and titled Trouble at the Mill.... Music-video vet Sam Bayer will helm a remake of the 1987 vampire flick Near Dark.
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Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible III courtesy Paramount Pictures
Ask FlickChick The lowdown on movie cliches Jenny Wright is missing and more movie questionsQuestion Some friends and I were discussing movie clichs the other day and I was wondering which ones you hate the most Some of the ones we discussed were 149 The vehicle chases where they always end up near some train tracks and the pursued just makes it across ahead of the speeding train and eludes the pursuer I mean what are the odds 149 The girl or guy is running away from the axchainsawmachete-wielding maniac jumps in their vehicle and it doesnt start I mean my car almost always starts 149 All bombs are defused with less than 10 seconds to go Just once Id like to see a bomb that had 12 hours left so the hero has time to order a pizza call his girlfriend and then defuse it So which ones really make your eyes roll back into your head Steve Butthead MrossFlickChick 149 The dog that never dies not that I want the dog to die but half the p
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Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow courtesy Paramount Pictures
Question I saw and liked Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow but was wondering What was the source of Sir Laurence Oliviers performance Ive always wanted to know JayFlickChick The late Sir Laurence Oliviers performance as Professor Totenkopf dead head in German in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow 2004 was digitally built from archival BBC footage of Olivier giving a speech at some fund-raising event The movements of his mouth were manipulated to match the films dialogue and the footage was processed to look like a staticky video holograph The same basic technology was used to alter existing footage of Marlon Brando from Superman 1978 so he could speak new dialogue for Superman Returns 2006 But in Superman Returns the Brando footage looks as real as the rest so its another step toward being truly able to have a living actor appear alongside a dead one the way singers can now do thoroughly convincing duets by integrating their new tracks
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Near Dark courtesy Anchor Bay
Near Dark puts a bloody twist on vampire cliches and features a very young Adrian PasdarSend your movie questions to FlickChickSee Maitland McDonagh and Ken Fox review this weeks new flicks in Movie TalkA hero a big lover and three alien fighters walk into a bar and let me tell you all hell busts loose I love Near Dark 1987 the best vampire film never to use the V word ever made As I was watching the Heroes finale last week I thought this would be a fine time to acquaint or reacquaint DVD Tuesday readers with a very young Adrian Pasdar Heroes Nathan Petrelli a scorching hot Bill Paxton Big Loves Bill Henrickson and dynamite middle-aged murder junkies Lance Henriksen and Jenette Goldstein Paxton who was also in Aliens does double duty in my admittedly gimmicky lead forgive me please Not to mention Joshua Miller son of playwright and Exorcist star Jason Miller and hands down the creepiest movie kid ever Plus the underrated Tim Thomerson
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Masters of Horror creator and writer Mick Garris said that The V Word wouldn't be a romantic depiction of vampires, and that's definitely true. However, these vampires are not the breed found in cynical, doom-and-gloom existential metaphors like The Addiction or Habit, which is what I was anticipating. Instead, Garris himself wrote a pretty straightforward "teens explore crypts, get bit, get undead, get hungry, get gone" type of story. Michael Ironside, the ugly, angry vampire, was about as entertaining as Jack Nicholson in The Witches of Eastwick; too bad we didn't see more of him. I don't know why he carried a parasol in the graveyard, but what I don't know probably won't hurt me.Even though The V Word wasn't misted, shadowed and full of velvet and candelabras, Garris paid his respect to the romantic vampire by writing in some noticeable nods:— Ironside's character, "Mr. Chaney" (pretty obvious), is a nod to Lon Chaney, who was first considered for the role of Dracula (1931)...
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