Screenhead

Ridley Scott is one BUSY individual.  But let’s face facts–the man’s got like thirty hojillion projects in the works right now, so his announcement that he’s considering an Alien prequel needs to be taken with a grain of salt.  A grain of salt about, say, the size of a Buick.

But he’s clearly been thinking it over, and even has some possible strategies.  Dig the word:

“It’s a brand new box of tricks. We know what the road map is, and the screenplay is now being put on paper. The prequel will be a while ago. It’s very difficult to put a year on Alien, but [for example] if Alien was towards the end of this century, then the prequel story will take place thirty years prior.”

There are possibilities here.  After all, I seem to remember that one of the earliest parts of Alien described an alien ship that crash-landed on LV 426.  Checking Wikipedia confirms my scattered memories, so a great point for an Alien prequel would be, what is that ship, and how did it get jam-packed with xenomorphs?

Of course, it’s a fair bet that that’s a Predator ship that was seeding the planet for use as a hunting ground, so they may have already kinda sorta covered that already.  Still though, I find myself plenty interested in where they’re looking to go with this one.

For those of you hoping that there would be a Monsters Vs. Aliens sequel, bad news for you today.  It’s just not going to happen.  Sorry, that’s it, game over, at least for now.

Apparently despite the fact that this essentially decent cartoon cleared nearly two hundred million at the box office worldwide, and picked up who knows how much cash on DVD, that wasn’t enough for Dreamworks, who went on record with this:

“I’d like to tell you there’s a perfectly rational, clear and easy answer as to why not, but there isn’t,” studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg told a group of industry analysts on Tuesday. “There was enough of a consensus from our distribution and marketing folks in certain parts of the world that we would be pushing a boulder up a hill.”

They make some sense, actually–what were they going to do, have more monsters?  Bring back the rest of the aliens?  No, they probably pretty much did all they could here, and so they called it quits while they were very, very much ahead.  A prudent move for Katzenberg et al.

So okay, it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that, assuming the Earth doesn’t crash into the sun or something first, that there will be a sequel to James Cameron’s upcoming blockbuster Avatar.

And in order to stage Avatar 2, there’s whispers afoot that it may actually go out past the planet of Pandora and into other targets.  Check out this advance quote:

“What would you think if I told you that should a sequel to AVATAR happen, it might not even take place on Pandora? It’s all up the air as of now. But remember I’m telling you this. Pandora is not the be all and end all of the Consortium.”

Well, you know, everyone said G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra was going to be a monster hit too, but as of the weekend of October 18th, it STILL hasn’t made its shooting budget back yet that I can tell, despite having made nearly a hundred and fifty million bucks at the domestic box office.

I wonder if that won’t happen here too….

So here’s a chunk of news that feels like nothing so much as concentrated happy sauce–Hatchet 2 is looking to get started.

The big problem, of course, is scheduling.  Adam Green is a tough guy to catch these days, and Tony Todd, always a genre favorite, isn’t much better.

The teaser poster, which you can see at right, has been vetted and declared legit by no less a presence than Green himself, but it’s just a teaser poster.  Chances are we’ll be getting a whole new poster before things go too much farther.

The hope is that shooting will begin before the end of the year, but considering that the end of the year isn’t that much farther off  (seriously, folks, November is just a few days away), so hopefully we’ll get to see another installment of Hatchet–that sweet Old School American Horror–someime next year, possibly even summer if things go as planned.

On October 31, Nordstrom and Summit Entertainment invite Twilight fans to take advantage of a special opportunity to meet select cast members of The Twilight Saga: New Moon at select Nordstrom stores. The cast appearances are being held to celebrate the highly-anticipated November 20 release of the second movie in Summit’s Twilight film saga. Nordstrom launched an exclusive clothing and jewelry collection inspired by the mood and spirit of the film in early October.

Customers can visit nordstrom.com/newmoon for more details about how to acquire VIP access on Saturday, October 31, at 8:00 a.m., to be one of 75 customers to meet the cast.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon cast members will visit the following Nordstrom stores: 

    November 5- Topanga (Canoga Park, CA)**

    November 8- Park Meadows (Lone Tree, CO)*

    November 9- Natick Collection (Natick, MA)*

    November 10- The Galleria (Houston, TX)*

    November 11- Mall of America (Bloomington, MN)*

    November 11- Cherry Hill Mall (Philadelphia, PA)*

    November 11- Stonestown Galleria (San Francisco, CA)*

    November 12- Perimeter Mall (Atlanta, GA)

    November 12- Southcenter (Tukwila, WA)*

    November 13- Aventura Mall (Aventura, FL)

    November 13- Scottsdale Fashion Square (Phoenix, AZ)*

    November 14- Fashion Place (Murray, UT)*

* These malls will also host a talent question and answer forum in the mall which will be open to the public.

** 125 customer VIP packets will be available for the Topanga event only. The mall will not host a talent question and answer forum.

Select Nordstrom stores will also offer customers advanced movie screening passes as gifts with purchase (see nordstrom.com/newmoon for participating stores and details), and will host in-store styling parties on November 14 and 15. Customers can visit nordstrom.com/newmoon to learn what events are taking place at their nearest Nordstrom store and sign-up for email alerts.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon directed by Chris Weitz and starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner will be released November 20, 2009. In the film, the romance between mortal and vampire soars to a new level as Bella Swan (Stewart) delves deeper into the mysteries of the supernatural world she yearns to become part of–only to find herself in greater peril than ever before. Following Edward Cullen’s (Pattinson) departure from Forks, Wash., and Bella discovers his image comes to her whenever she puts herself in jeopardy. In time Bella’s frozen heart is gradually thawed by her budding relationship with Jacob Black (Lautner) who has a supernatural secret of his own.

Screenhead has TEN Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen to give away.

The American science fiction action film released on June 19, 2009 in the United Kingdom and June 24, 2009 in North America, and will release on DVD and Blu-Ray on October 20, 2009.

It is the sequel to 2007’s Transformers and the second film in the live action Transformers series. Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg return respectively as director and executive producer, while Shia LaBeouf reprises the role of Sam Witwicky, the human caught in the war between Autobots and Decepticons.

The film introduces many more robots and the scope has been expanded to numerous countries, most notably France, Jordan and Egypt. The plot revolves around Sam, who has been having visions of Cybertronian symbols, getting hunted by the evil Decepticons under the orders of their long-trapped leader, The Fallen. The Fallen seeks to get revenge on Earth by finding and activating a machine that would provide the Decepticons with an energon source, destroying all life on the planet in the process.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen – Own the #1 movie of the year on DVD & Blu-ray TODAY!

Post your name and Screenhead will pick the winners Thursday, November 13, 2009.

Well, this is it, kids.  Today the last week comes together in a magnificent culmination of lights, sound, screaming, and oh yes…there will be blood.

Today we’re talking Saw VI, most recent in the franchise, and ironically, by a large scale, BEST of the franchise.

With Jigsaw, Amanda, and Agent Strahm all pushing up daisies, the only one left to run Jigsaw’s grand games is none other than Detective Hoffman.  But is Hoffman nearly as alone as we think?  Someone else is waiting in the wings–someone else with a vested interest in executing Jigsaw’s final will.  Will Hoffman be able to run the games?  Or will Hoffman’s test leave him without a piece on the board?

I’ll be honest with you, I had big expectations for this one going in.  REALLY big.  One, Saw V was my personal favorite of the series thus far for the massive supergame it ran instead of branching off into smaller games or leaving one person mostly unscathed.  Two, it was directed by Kevin Greutert, whose short film Old Friends we reviewed here a while back.  Old Friends was an awesome piece of filmmaking that really left me on the edge of my computer chair (only place you could see it was YouTube), so hearing that he’d be running Saw VI left me pretty excited.

And sure enough, I enjoyed this one.  For those concerned that this would be a tired rehash of earlier events, no sir.  Saw has one great tendency to build up and kick off something that’ll need a whole new movie to resolve.  There’s more loose ends in here than a telephone switchboard, and it’s small wonder it looks to make nine before it finally ends.

Saw also has one truly ANNOYING tendency, too, and that’s to add details to its earlier canon as it sees fit, despite the fact that there’s no real indication that they ever should have happened.  For instance, when you find out who was with Cecil the night Jill lost her baby, you’ll probably wonder how the hell that actually could have happened, because nothing like that seemed to go on when we actually SAW it happening before.

But there will be something here for all the old fans–the traps we know and love are as awesome as ever–remember the automatic revolver in two?  They kind of did that here…only with a twelve-gauge.  There will be more blood than ever–this is probably why it’s rated like PORN in Spain.  Plus, they’ve kicked off one very important plot detail in the last three minutes of the movie that has me positively drooling over Saw VII.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, meanwhile, is patently blown away, but bothered by the series’ incredible propensity to cheat at every given opportunity.  It therefore hands over a full on eight out of ten for being probably the best Saw yet, both for what it does now and what it kicks off for the next.  We can only hope the remaining entries can live up to this kind of hype.

Look…Weinsteins…I know your company’s hurting.  I know the economy’s doing a number on pretty much everybody these days.  But do you really have to sink QUITE so low as to be planning a remake of Scary Movie, WHILE you’re planning the fourth sequel?

That’s right, folks, currently in concurrent development over at the soon to be dead Weinstein Company is the remake of Scary Movie, as well as Scary Movie 5.  Considering that the Scary Movie series has brought in more cash than the GDP of some entire countries–well over a whopping seven hundred twenty five million and change–it’s not really a surprise that Weinstein is looking frantically for the biggest cash cow it can milk.

This doesn’t make the news any more palatable, though….

Release dates on either title are still fairly sketchy, but look for them both on the order of pretty soon.  The Weinsteins can’t afford much delay….

Here is the New Moon film clip of the transformation of Jacob into a wolf looks awesome!  I suspect we will see more clips before the movie opens November 20, 2009.  By the way, New Moon pre-ticket sales for opening day has sold out at one of the major movie theaters  in my city.  It looks like the movie is going to be a big money maker.