When you’re talking about a series of films based on a wildly popular series of books which, when the producers ran out of books to make films of, decided to simply split the final book into two films, complaining about their decision to also screen these final two films in 3D is perhaps being a bit rich. I won’t let that stop me however.

Warner Brothers has released a trailer for the final two Harry Potter films, and it looks great. They seem to really be sticking to their cover story for the two-film trick, and including as much of the book’s set-pieces as they can. Though this is the first I’m hearing of it (also the first I’m paying the slightest amount of attention to it), the announcement that the films would be in 3D came in January, as Hollywood was shitting itself over the insane amount of money Avatar was pulling in.

While I enjoyed that film (less so the headache it gave me), it was a native 3D production. Unless they were just sitting on the announcement throughout the two films’ 54-week shoot, it seems a safe bet that Deathly Hallows will be a victim of the 3D conversion process that studios are going nuts over at the moment. So while I hate 3D exactly as much as I hate month-long headaches, there remains the strong possibility that when I go to see it in its original (correct) 2D presentation, I won’t be subjected to shots that serve little purpose but to show off a 3D effect.

I repeat the acknowledgement that yes, I am complaining that a couple of films that are already incredibly commercial are falling victim to more crass commercialism. But barring the first two lifeless efforts from Chris Columbus, it has been a very enjoyable (if highly nonsensical) series of commercial products.

The trailer for Michael Mann’s new movie Public Enemies starring Christian Bale, Johnny Depp, and the batshit-insane Marion Cotillard. It is truly bizarre seeing a period of history that has in the past been so well filmed be given the digital video treatment. IMDB says a Sony CineAlta F23 was used. It’ll be very interesting to see how the film (can we still call them that?) looks on the big screen.

UPDATE: I’m hearing now that while most of the movie was shot on the F23, a small amount was shot on the smaller EX1. Cool.

Drew Struzan has retired. (via)

Drew has provided artwork for over 150 film posters as well as many classic album covers, advertising, and book covers. He is best knows by his poster illustrations for the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises and can count film makers George Lucas and Steven Spielberg among his biggest fans.

It’s inevitable given the reduction in cost and production time, that the Photoshop hack-jobs will usurp the old illustrated posters. It’d be nice though to see the style return to use, outside of deliberate attempts to invoke nostalgia.

The porn industry continues to churn out material funnier and more entertaining than 95% of Australian films:

But here’s something I hadn’t actually seen before: Kubrick porn. In The Sexxxing, a 2005 quickie from Danni.com, a young woman named Miss Torrent applies to be the winter manager of a porn company’s offices—and the place turns out to be haunted by horny, fake-breasted lesbians. Orgasms ensue.

Roger Ebert tears into the 3D movies. Actual 3D movies that is, like the recent Journey to the Center of the Earth, and not “3D animated” movies like Wall*E. Which is good, because if he disliked Wall*E I’d question the existence of his soul.

There seems to be a belief that 3-D films are not getting their money’s worth unless they hurtle objects or body parts at the audience. Every time that happens, it creates a fatal break in the illusion of the film.

A short film I edited in 2007. Shot on 16mm film. Written by Karl Phillips, directed by Matt Vesely.

Fox has won a small victory in their suit against Warners concerning the rights to Watchmen, currently in production.

Ruling is potentially a huge victory for Fox, which could wind up as a profit participant in the film, and could cost Warners millions considering the film’s box office prospects. However, Fox’s legal team says it isn’t looking for monetary compensation and instead wants to prevent the big-budget film from being released altogether.

Yeah, bullshit.

After a month at the top, The Dark Knight slips down both the box office and IMDB Top 250 lists. Too bad.

In related news, this is the greatest page on the web.

The Dark Knight holds the #1 position at the US box-office for the 4th week in a row, the first film to do so since Return of the King in 2004.

Slashfilm has some scans from the Art of The Dark Knight book, showing early concepts for the Joker design. The first two in particular are even more disturbing than the final design, but I do like where they ended up.

I could rattle on for a few hundred words about how sick I am of the political attitude that conjures up such bullshit as 2009: A True Story, but I haven’t watched past the first two minutes of the first episode, and I don’t want to watch past the first two minutes of the first episode, so I’ll try to maintain a little intellectual honesty and just leave it at this:

Everybody, just stop it with the “scanlines = video!” bullshit. We all know what video looks like. We all know what TV looks like. We all see it every day. It does not look like that.

US box office for The Dark Knight continues strong, beating out the new Mummy film to hold #1 for the third week running. It’s now a day or so away from breaking $400 million.

On a related note, there’s been some bleating on the Internet from people arguing that The Dark Knight could wind up overtaking Titanic’s domestic gross. Set aside for a moment my paranoid belief that Titanic’s numbers are fraudulent, I still don’t see it happening. James Berardinelli over at Reelviews has done a piece going in to the numbers, explaining exactly why Titanic will never be beaten, and why it isn’t even the big goal people think it is anyway.

Following from the trailer played at Comic-Con comes the news that John Lasseter is producing the new TRON film. No doubt his opinions on the story of the first film won’t go over well with the Internet’s seething masses, but every other detail looks pretty interesting. The film is being penned by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz from Lost (but I won’t hold that against them), and directed by first-timer Joseph Kosinski. He’s worked previously in commercials.

The Guardian asks a silly question: Is The Dark Knight the greatest movie of all time? Well past 100,000 votes now, the film remains atop the IMDB Top 250 list, as judged by the site’s users and moderated by an algorithm the site keeps secret. It’s a good list, typically free from temporary whims and new releases. Obviously it failed in this instance though and I wouldn’t be surprised if the algorithm were adjusted accordingly. The Guardian is wrong, however, to suggest that it was ever “the greatest movie chart of all time”.

It turns out that The Dark Knight is the greatest movie ever made. Cool.

Maxim Gorky’s most famous play, The Lower Depths, had been brought to film twice already before Akira Kurosawa’s 1957 adaptation. Jean Renoir had in 1936 brought the story to France, and in 1946 Indian director Chetan Anand had produced a version in Hindi. Of these it is Kurosawa’s film, which transposes the story to Edo-period Japan, that is most faithful to the bleak, character-driven play.

A shuttle breaks up in the atmosphere while attempting a landing, scattering debris across the United States and, as it turns out, planting the seeds of a mind-controlling virus why not. The virus quickly spreads to the highest levels of power in the country as the infected institute nation-wide flu vaccinations which are in fact just a means of spreading the virus. In no time at all our hero Nicole Kidman discovers what’s happening and also discovers that her son is immune to the virus, a condition the infected are none-too-happy with. It’s an action-packed race against time as Kidman tries to get her son to safety before she falls asleep.

How ironic.

Take an old 70’s animated kid’s show about a boy who becomes an android, pass it through Shakespeare’s Hamlet by way of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and bring it to today’s somewhat paranoid climate of endless war, eternal occupation, and reprisal after reprisal. Whack on a coat of steampunk and set it in a dystopia teetering on the brink of the apocalypse, and you have Casshern.

The final film I saw at the Festival was this documentary, directed by Sophie Fiennes and starring the bizarre but fascinating Slavoj Zizek - sociologist, philosopher, film theorist. Although the title of the film alone would be enough to draw me in, I was thrilled to see a film about Zizek in the Festival line-up. His essays were regular readings in my Hitchcock class last semester, and they were always interesting, even if they did often go way over my head.

“The Pervert’s Guide” clocks in at over 150 minutes, and if you’re not already interested in people reading a lot into films, this won’t convert you. If you are in to film analysis, and Zizek’s politics don’t turn you off, then this is a lot of fun. Constructed as an extended overview of Zizek’s theories, Fiennes inserts the boisterous Slovenian into the various films he is discussing, either by actually visiting the locations (in the case of The Birds, Vertigo and The Conversation), or by shooting from within recreated sets (The Matrix, Mulholland Drive). It makes for an incredibly visually interesting journey through the world of cinema.

I am obviously partial to the content of this documentary. I am a huge fan of Hitchcock & Lynch, and Zizek’s theories find a welcome home in the films of those two directors. Hell, Zizek even manages to bring “The Revenge of the Sith” into the same discussion as “Blue Velvet”. What’s not to enjoy?

For anyone at all versed in film theory and analysis, and especially for anyone familiar with Zizek’s previous writing, there will doubtful be anything new here. What Fiennes succeeds at is presenting an incredibly interesting, effective, and fairly easy-to-follow overview of Zizek’s theories and opinions on cinema. I look forward to seeing this one again.