Abe Lincoln Role Stirs Studios To Flood Market With New Vampire Pics

Despite the less-than-stellar opening box office, and disastrous reviews, of the new film,‘Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter’, major Hollywood studios are red-lining, and rushing into production, a wave of new vampire projects, a source tells The Garlic.



“They can’t get them out fast enough,’ said the movie industry insider, adding that “my clients are badgering to get me to land them something.”

The plan calls for issuing new projects with original stories, many of them with A-List actors, for serial stories that will offer multiple sequels and franchises.
Also, for the studios with deep archives, some classic films will be reworked, with CGI, and other state-of-the-art techniques, integrating in new stars, and turning movie legends into vampire fighters.

Scheduled for release by the Christmas rush include;

The Vampire World of Suzie Wong

William Holden’s Robert Lomax doesn’t move into the Nam Kok Hotel just to become a painter.

He teams up with Nancy Kwan’s Suzie Wong, and the other prostitutes, to do battle with the Vampires of Hong Kong, offering pulsating martial arts action on the teeming streets.

Look for Steve Buscemi in a cameo role as a kung fu rickshaw driver


Rain Man, Vampire Slayer

Raymond Babbitt may be autistic, but when he and brother Charlie hit Las Vegas, it’s not for blackjack, and Raymond shows the vampires who’s on first.

The pair does battle with the towns Vampires, tearing up and down the strip, rampaging through casinos, with the climatic fight coming on top of the Luxor Hotel’s pyramid.

Steve Buscemi has a role here, as a Craps Table dealer who rolls snake eyes for the vampires


A Vampire Affair To Remember

Cary Grant’s Nickie Ferrante and Deborah Kerr’s Terry McKay take on the Vampires, both on land and at sea.

With the ship anchored on the scenic Mediterranean coast, Ferrante and McKay clean the ocean liner of the stowaway vampires.

Back in New York, McKay isn’t hit by an automobile on the way to meet Ferrante, she’s abducted by the Vampires, leading to the final battle, at the top of the Empire State building.

Steve Buscemi pops up here, as the elevator operator who aids the pair.

Other works in the pipeline include ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Vampire’, ‘Three Vampires in the Fountain’ and ‘No Country for Old Vampires’.

“This is like found money,” gushed the Hollywood insider.

“I mean, we could dress someone up like Bela Lugosi, film him reading the phone book, and laugh all the way to the bank.”


 

Bonus Links

Review: Bloody Serious Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter Isn’t as Fun as It Sounds

Vampires of Television and Film

Day Three of Swank Thank You's; No End In Sight

The Oscars ... "Perfectly awful!"

Movie Industry Titan, and LBJ Lackey, Rolls His Final Credits - Jack Valenti Obit

Dennis Hopper Had Duende

I suppose, it was expected, the MSM obits would highlight the thing of "rebel" and, of course 'Easy Rider'.

That would be for actor Dennis Hopper, who passed away from his battle with cancer.

Why couldn't they just highlight, and dwell on, he was one fine, motherf'ing actor, and a whole bevy of turns.

Dennis Hopper had duende.



Here's the NYT Obit;

Dennis Hopper, 74, Hollywood Rebel, Dies

And, one from Yahoo and the AP;

Dennis Hopper, creator of hit 'Easy Rider,' dies (AP)

If you want the best read, check out Edward Copeland's "Dennis Hopper (1936-2010)";

How many odd turns can one man's life and career take? There's probably no limit, but Dennis Hopper, who died at 74 after a long battle with cancer, took a lot of them: From young actor of film and TV in the 1950s to counterculture icon of the 1960s and '70s (while adding director to his resume and still working with the likes of John Wayne); from nearly unemployable because of drugs to a career comeback in the mid-1980s before frequent returns to TV. On the side, he managed to find time to be a prolific photographer, painter and sculptor. His later years also brought the strangest twist for the hippie hero: he became a Republican. Still, it's his film and TV work that will be his legacy.

And, though he only had a small role, and not a great deal of screen time, his turn in 'True Romance' was perfect, a role only he could have played, it fit the film exquisitely.

True Romance - Sicilians

Dances With Oil

Hey, why not?

BP (Better Profits) is so fucked, I mean they don't know whether to piss, or wind their watches, and the Obama people keep patting them on the back, rather than putting them in handcuffs and getting them as far away from the crime scene as possible.



Especially so, being that Better Profits has been low-balling the amount of oil flooding into the Gulf, so they can mitigate, and lower losses in future court cases.

So, whether this works, or not, it isn't anything worse than what these Oil Criminals have been doing;

Kevin Costner may hold key to oil spill cleanup

So reads the LA Times headline, adding "Costner has invested 15 years and about $24 million in a novel way of sifting oil spills that he began working on while making his own maritime film, "Waterworld," released in 1995."

Waterworld?



Scott Weinberg in his post "Kevin Costner Defends Waterworld" noted;

"But there seems to be a small fistful of movies that are "generally" accepted as big-time garbage -- and as this amusing Sydney Herald story points out, Kevin Costner's Waterworld is pretty much one of 'em."

[snip]

Kev, stop. You've got a better chance at making a Sizzle Beach U.S.A. sequel than you would at convincing people that Waterworld doesn't stink to high heaven. Sure, there are varying degress of movie suckitude, and Waterworld may have earned a little extra abuse because of its ridiculous production problems ... but the thing's a turkey, man.

Back to the LA Times;

Costner has invested 15 years and about $24 million in a novel way of sifting oil spills that he began working on while making his own maritime film, "Waterworld," released in 1995.

Two decades later, BP and the U.S. Coast Guard plan to test six of his massive, stainless steel centrifugal oil separators next week. Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser welcomed the effort, even as he and Louisiana officials blasted the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for delays in approving an emergency plan to build sand "islands" to protect the bayous of his parish.

[snip]

"The machines are essentially like big vacuum cleaners, which sit on barges and suck up oily water and spin it around at high speed," Houghtaling said. "On one side, it spits out pure oil, which can be recovered. The other side spits out 99% pure water."

If all goes according to plan, he said, "We could have as many as 26 machines dispatched throughout the gulf. Our largest machine is 112 inches high, weighs 2 ½ tons and cleans 210,000 gallons a day of oily water. We are hoping to have 10 machines that size out there — meaning we could potentially clean 2 million gallons of oil water a day."

Oh My!

Giant water Hoovers - Brilliant!

The Right Wing Freak Show Flying Monkeys are going to be flinging their feces around over this one.

Big, bad commie-filled Hollywood riding to rescue?

Better, they will likely adopt our Ran Kan Kan man, Rand Paul's take, channeling Donald Rumsfeld with his "Sometimes Accidents Happen."

But wait, there's more!

This isn't the first time Hollywood has rode, not just cinematically, to the rescue;

Meanwhile, "Avatar" director James Cameron has said that he would make his underwater vessels available, and actor-director Robert Redford appeared in a commercial, sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council, that uses the spill as a clarion call to move forward on clean energy.

It is not the first time Hollywood has come to the rescue with cutting-edge technology. Paul Winchell, a versatile ventriloquist and the voice of Tigger in " Winnie the Pooh," was also an inventor who patented an early artificial heart in the 1960s. In 1940, glamorous movie star Hedy Lamarr helped design an un-jammable communications system for use against Nazi Germany.

So, perhaps there's a good vibe there for Costner, something other than 'Waterworld', and, maybe, maybe he can squeeze out a sequel, along the lines of "Sea of Dreams";

If you spill it, he will come ...

CSI Metropolis

This was some bonus news, that came out yesterday;

Footage Restored to Fritz Lang's ‘Metropolis’

For fans and scholars of the silent-film era, the search for a copy of the original version of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” has become a sort of holy grail. One of the most celebrated movies in cinema history, “Metropolis” had not been viewed at its full length — roughly two and a half hours — since shortly after its premiere in Berlin in 1927, when it was withdrawn from circulation and about an hour of its footage was amputated and presumed destroyed.

But on Friday Film Forum in Manhattan will begin showing what is being billed as “The Complete Metropolis,” with a DVD scheduled to follow later this year, after screenings in theaters around the country. So an 80-year quest that ranged over three continents seems finally to be over, thanks in large part to the curiosity and perseverance of one man, an Argentine film archivist named Fernando Peña.

And why is this a big deal?

Made at a time of hyperinflation in Germany, “Metropolis” offered a grandiose version — of a father and son fighting for the soul of a futuristic city — that nearly bankrupted the studio that commissioned it, UFA. After lukewarm reviews and initial box office results in Europe, Paramount Pictures, the American partner brought in toward the end of the shoot, took control of the film and made drastic excisions, arguing that Lang’s cut was too complicated and unwieldy for American audiences to understand.

[snip]

That a copy of the original print of “Metropolis” even existed in Buenos Aires was the result of another piece of serendipity. An Argentine film distributor, Adolfo Wilson, happened to be in Berlin when the film had its premiere, liked what he saw so much that he immediately purchased rights, and returned to Argentina with the reels in his luggage.

For too long, all these decades, 'Metropolis' was thought to be a science fiction movie.

From Wikipedia;

Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist film in the science-fiction genre directed by Fritz Lang. Produced in Germany during a stable period of the Weimar Republic, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and makes use of the science fiction context to explore a political theme of the day: the social crisis between workers and owners in capitalism.

The full-cut version now straightens that out;

The cumulative result is a version of “Metropolis” whose tone and focus have been changed. “It’s no longer a science-fiction film,” said Martin Koerber, a German film archivist and historian who supervised the latest restoration and the earlier one in 2001. “The balance of the story has been given back. It’s now a film that encompasses many genres, an epic about conflicts that are ages old. The science-fiction disguise is now very, very thin.”

When it comes out, and if 'Metropolis' is in a city near you, go check it out

Yet ...

While I have seen 'Metropolis' a few times, I was more partial, and liked better, Lang's "M", the riveting thriller, starring Peter Lorre, that "has become a classic which Lang himself considered his finest work."


Bonus Riffs

Ohhhh ... That's What Avatar Is About ...

One For The Film Buffs ... Max Ophuls

Rififi Director, Jules Dassin, Blacklisted, Dies at 96

Swedish Film Icon Ingmar Bergman Dead at 89 ; Police Depressed, Working Through Emptiness, Not Ruling Out Foul Play

Paging Norma Desmond

She was the greatest of them all. You wouldn't know, you're too young. In one week she received 17,000 fan letters. Men bribed her hairdresser to get a lock of her hair. There was a maharajah who came all the way from India to beg one of her silk stockings. Later he strangled himself with it!

Max Von Mayerling, in 'Sunset Boulevard'

There will, soon, be a generation, that will have graduated from watching movies on tiny cellphones, or downloading DVD's, onto the next great, must-have, electronic fly-trap, that will have absolutely no direct knowledge, or contact, with the incredible, glorious old movie palaces.



They will be left to peruse articles, like the one today, in 'The Boston Globe';

Now showing - Movie theaters used to be even more of a show than the movies were

During Hollywood’s golden age — the 1920s through 1940s — nearly every American city and town had its own movie palace. Whether an extravagant, neon-clad jewel or a more modest structure, the neighborhood theater was a center of community life. Designed in a wide range of flamboyant architectural styles, America’s historic theaters have entertained millions, first as vaudeville houses and later as movie theaters.

[snip]

Some of these architectural treasures have been saved, finding new life as performing-arts centers, but most are lost forever. In 2001, the National Trust for Historic Preservation placed the single-screen historic theater atop its Most Endangered Historic Places list.

(See more photos here)

The author of the article, photographer Stefanie Klavens, has an exhibition of his movie palace photos at the National Heritage Museum, Lexington, Massachusetts, through May.

Must See 140-Character TV

Sorry, Garlic Fans, for the lack-of-posting this weekend, as we were, a bit, under-the-weather.

We had this in our crosshairs, despite the disbelieving shaking of our heads.

In the long history of Hollywood (both movies, and television), an overwhelming amount of their product has been based on "material from another source", verses original content.

Theatre, books, magazine articles, foreign movies and television shows (see 'The Office', or, say, "Three Men and A Baby")

You know, something else made money, so we can exploit it, and squeeze something out of it, too.

And, now, we have a new frontier, the New Millennium, the Digital Age;

Twitter user 'Shit My Dad Says' gets CBS deal

Twitter sensation Shit My Dad Says is headed to television.

CBS has picked up a comedy project based on the Twitter account, which has enlisted more than 700,000 followers since launching in August and has made its creator, Justin Halpern, an Internet star.

"Will & Grace" creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick are on board to executive produce and supervise the writing for the multicamera family comedy, which Halpern will co-pen with Patrick Schumacker. Halpern and Schumacker will also co-exec produce the Warner Bros. TV-produced project, which has received a script commitment.

That's right, Twitter will now be foraged, for all sorts of programs, reality shows, and the like, especially if can offer cheap production values, and, of course, the standard exploiting, and humiliation of its' cast.

And, there was this little caveat;

The comedy's title will change if it gets on the air.

The kid should have held out for HBO, or Showtime, to keep the full ambiance in it.



But wait, there's more!

Captain Kirk, William Shatner, has signed on to play the shit-spouting dad.

Halperin's shitmydadsays Twitter account is hysterical, so it's going to be very interesting to see how they build the narrative around it, though, being on the mainstream CBS network, you can see that it will, in all likelihood, fall into the standard sit-com format, with Dad's language cleaned up, naturally.

With Shatner aboard, it could be funny-funny, or it could be dreadful, Mr. Tambourine Man-funny.

Well have to wait to see what Dad says about it.

Top Ten Cloves: Other Ways SouthWest Airlines Thought of Telling Kevin Smith He Was Fat

News Item: Kevin Smith: Too fat to fly? ...The director gets grounded by Southwest but proves the supersonic power of social media

10. Not sure of their inventory, ask Smith if he would be bothered sharing food cart with other passengers

9. Since flight was going to Burbank, ask Smith if he was contestant on "Biggest Loser"

8. Rather than board plane by sections, or rows, call boarding by height and weight

7. Keep calling him Dom DeLuise

6. Make pointed apology to Smith, that the In-Flight movie was 'La 'Grande Bouffe'

5. Advise Smith, In case they had a Captain Sullenberger moment, he would have to stand on other wing, alone, to balance weight of plane

4. Ask him if he was related to Chef Paul Prudhomme

3. Inquire if his real name was "Tuesday" and did he come from New Orleans

2. Jet tire ... Smith standing next to it ... Ask boarding passengers to vote which one was slimmer

1. Have him get on moving sidewalk in terminal lobby, and see if it still moved


Bonus Kevin Smith Riffs

Kate Harding: Kevin Smith Kicked off Southwest Flight for Being Fat

Menachem Kaiser: Twitter Wars: Kevin Smith vs. Southwest Airlines

Foster Kamer: Update: The Kevin Smith Southwest Airlines Fat-Flight Tweakout of Epic Proportion

Show your support, or follow Kevin Smith, on his Twitter Account

What If It Was Your Daughter?

Maybe it's the new Starbucks Instant Coffee, of some other beverage out there.

This story has been percolating all week, and it is, simply, astounding, so many of allegedly intelligent people are, suddenly, swilling down gallons of "stupid juice".

We're going to have to rent a handful of double-decker buses, to bring in this many Ignorant Dolts to pick up their inglorious hardware.



Release Polanski, demands petition by film industry luminaries

Woody Allen, David Lynch and Martin Scorsese today added their names to a petition demanding the immediate release of Roman Polanski from detention in Zurich. The director was arrested on Saturday over a three-decade-old underage sex case when he arrived to receive a lifetime achievement award at the city's film festival.

[snip]

The petition has now been signed by more than 70 film industry luminaries, including Polanski's fellow directors Michael Mann, Wim Wenders, Pedro Almodóvar, Darren Aronofsky, Terry Gilliam, Julian Schnabel, the Dardenne brothers, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Wong Kar-Wai, Walter Salles and Jonathan Demme. Actors Tilda Swinton, Monica Bellucci and Asia Argento, as well as producer Harvey Weinstein, have also put their names on the petition. Yesterday, Weinstein stated he was "calling on every film-maker we can to help fix this terrible situation".

The five members of the jury at the Zurich film festival, headed by the actor Debra Winger, yesterday released a statement protesting that the event "had been exploited in an unfair fashion".

We can take Woody Allen out of the equation right away, we know where his take is, but I wonder how Wim Wenders, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Harvey Weinstein, Michael Mann, Pedro Almodóvar, Terry Gilliam, Jonathan Demme, Debra Winger, and all the other nitwits, would feel, with Roman Polanski being who he is, making the films he has made, if it was their daughter that Polanski, drugged, and raped.

Would they still protest, and sign a petition to get him out of jail?

Read this, from Kate Harding, at Salon, the other day;

Reminder: Roman Polanski raped a child

Wow, OK, let's break that down. First, as blogger Jeff Fecke says, "Fun fact: the age of consent in 1977 in California was 16. It's now 18. But of course, the age of consent isn't like horseshoes or global thermonuclear war; close doesn't count. Even if the age of consent had been 14, the girl wasn't 14." Also, even if the girl had been old enough to consent, she testified that she did not consent. There's that. Though of course everyone makes a bigger deal of her age than her testimony that she did not consent, because if she'd been 18 and kept saying no while he kissed her, licked her, screwed her and sodomized her, this would almost certainly be a whole different story -- most likely one about her past sexual experiences and drug and alcohol use, about her desire to be famous, about what she was wearing, about how easy it would be for Roman Polanski to get consensual sex, so hey, why would he need to rape anyone? It would quite possibly be a story about a wealthy and famous director who pled not guilty to sexual assault, was acquitted on "she wanted it" grounds, and continued to live and work happily in the U.S. Which is to say that 30 years on, it would not be a story at all. So it's much safer to focus on the victim's age removing any legal question of consent than to get tied up in that thorny "he said, she said" stuff about her begging Polanski to stop and being terrified of him.

And there's Whoopi Goldberg.

This sister needs to get a new act, or, at least wake up, pull her head out of her ass;

Goldberg, star of The Color Purple and Sister Act, said: "I know it wasn't rape-rape. I think it was something else, but I don't believe it was rape-rape.

"Don't believe it was rape-rape"?

WTF!

What kind of rape was it Whoopi?

Why don't you enumerate the vast numbers of different kinds rape, so we all can know, how you know, that it wasn't "rape-rape".

Actually, Whoopi may be correct.

When you read the Grand Jury testimony, it wasn't "rape-rape", it was "rape-rape-rape".

And there's Harvey Weinstein, the co-founder of Miramax Films, whose Ignorant Doltness dwarfs his suit size;

"Whatever you think about the so-called crime, Polanski has served his time," Weinstein wrote.

"So-called crime"?

Oh that's right, I almost forgot what we wrote above.

I guess something that is not really "rape-rape" gets classified as a "so-called crime".

I guess the news reports, and court records, are wrong, and that Pedophile Polanski pleaded "so-called guilty" to a plea-bargain deal for having only "so-called sex" with a "so-called 13-year-old girl"

And, I'm not privy to the new DOJ Sentencing Guidelines, that call living a life of luxury in Europe, for over 30-years, can be counted as "serving time".

There's numerous petitions floating around, to free the Pedophile Polanski, to demand that the Swiss do not extradite him back for his Los Angeles judgment day.

How about a new petition?

Maybe, one like, say, how many of those listed above, Debra Winger, Whoopie "Not Rape-Rape" Goldberg, Harvey "So-Called" Weinstein, will rush to sign on to.

"We the undersigned would be perfectly fine with Pedophile Polanski being alone in a room with our own 13-year-old daughters, or nieces"

C'mon there, let's see those hands raised high.

After all, whatever happens, it won't be "rape-rape", or some other "so-called" crime.

Pedophile Polanski "served his time", remember, so he must have a piece of paper that says he's not a pedophile any longer.


Bonus Pedophile Polanski Links

Lauren: Getting Over It

Michael Stickings: Defending Polanski; or, how the Hollywood left has completely lost its marbles

Amanda Hess: Common Roman Polanski Defenses, Refuted

Katha Pollitt: Roman Polanski Has a Lot of Friends

Glenn Greenwald: Post editors should read their own columnists

Kate Dailey: Roman Polanski Raped a Child: A Primer

Gabe: Roman Polanski Might Use Documentary To Continue To Prove That He Raped A 13-Year-Old

Top Ten Cloves: Ways To Liven Up The Democrats' Debate This Evening

News Item: Obama, Clinton set for one-on-one face off

10. Set new rules - Since the debate is in Hollywood, make Hillary and Obama give their answers in David Mamet dialogue

9. Announce ahead of time to the audience, a secret word and then, when Hillary or Obama says it, a cartoon of a duck with a cigar drops from the ceiling with $100 bill for them

8. With work slowed down due to the Writer's Strike, pitch in and allow stand-ins and stunt-doubles during the debate

7. Make it interactive, since it's at the Kodak Theatre, and allow regular people on stage during the debate, to snap photos, capturing their "Kodak Moment"

6. If the debate is close, as a tie-breaker, announce whoever can name the most stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame will be declared the winner

5. To ensure a bevy of YouTube posts, have them take hits of helium before, and during, the debate

4. Being that both going to do a lot of spinning, instead of chairs, tables or podiums, place Hillary and Obama for the debate in one of those giant teacups from Disneyland

3. Hire a couple of seat-fillers from the Academy Awards and toss a few questions at them

2. To eliminate the bickering, set it up like the gameshow "Twenty-One", and put Hillary and Obama in soundproofs booths so they can't hear each others answers

1. Get things settled this evening - Have them arm-wrestle for the delegates from Florida and Michigan


Bonus Debate Riffs

Riding The Woody Allen Train To Last Night's MSNBC Democrat Debate

Top Ten Cloves: Things Overheard At Democratic Candidates Debate

Barry Crimmins Is Rolling ... Snake Eyes!














To eliminate the bickering, set it up like the gameshow "Twenty-One", and put Hillary and Obama in soundproofs booths so they can't hear each others answers

Good Post Alert - Barry Crimmins' "Good stories, told well"

While most of the press is concentrating on which celebrity delivered donuts to the picket line, or, that celebrity who is carrying a picket sign, you might come away from these reports without realizing that a real life struggle is taking place.

We talk, of course, about the Writer's Guild of America's strike, against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.

Another attempt to screw the television and movie writers out of hard-earned income, the people who, historically, have continually had their employment roles firmly written to the bottom of the money pile.

Well, fear not, there is an article of substance out there, and it's Barry Crimmins, in true Hollywood fashion, riding in on the white steed to slap down the bad guys.

"As bad as television seems, what's good about it hinges on quality writers. Writing has always been hard work but it's become much more difficult over the last twelve years because the networks now own big chunks of all the shows they air. Nitwit suits are leaving their greasy paw prints on every phase of production. If these useless parasites were eliminated from the workforce, things would only get better and plenty of cost would be cut."

Check out his Good stories, told well

And, whether is is financial, baked goods, a cold drink, or honking your car horn as you pass the picket lines, throw your support to the writers.

You'll feel good about it, especially when you see - hopefully - less moronic reality shows on the boob tube in the coming future.

Visit Barry Crimmin's website

Other Barry Crimmins on The Garlic


Bonus Strike Links

Gabriel Spitzer: Ouch! Remembering the 1988 writers' strike; Nasty set-to from which TV never recovered

Scott Collins: A writers' strike nobody wants

Richard Verrier and Claudia Eller/Los Angeles Times : Countdown to a walkout; A fateful e-mail from the union's East Coast branch abruptly halts a final attempt to broker a deal.