The Films Of George Simmons

Source: Official Site

If you don’t know who George Simmons is, don’t worry. Adam Sandler isn’t pulling a Garth Brooks. George Simmons is the character Sandler plays in Judd Apatow’s upcoming Funny People. His official site recently went live and has clips and posters from his backlog of films. The above collage comes from /Film. I highly recommend checking out the site and the synopsis for the films. I’d pay to see Adam Sandler do these ridiculous movies for real.

‘Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen’ Fun Facts

Source: Shoot For The Edit

Michael Bay has posted some interesting facts from ILM about the effects in the upcoming Transformers sequel. Pretty cool stuff.

Robots

• 14 robots last time, 46 robots this time (ILM only)
• If you had all the gold ever mined in the history of man, you could build a little more than half of Devastator.
• Optimus Prime will be life size on IMAX screens in many forest fight shots.
• Devastator’s hand is traveling 390 miles per hour when he punches the pyramid.
• The pyramid destruction simulation was 8 times bigger than the old rigid simulation all-time record holder at ILM.
• All robot parts laid out end to end would stretch from one side of California to the other, about 180 miles
• Devastator’s parts stacked tip to tip would be as tall as 58 empire state buildings.
• If all the texture maps on the show were printed on 1 square yard sheets, they would cover 13 football fields.

Disk space

• TF1 took 20 Terabytes of disk space. Trans2 took 145 Terabytes. Seven times bigger!
• 145 terabytes would fill 35,000 DVDs. Stacked one on top of the other without storage cases, they would be 145 feet tall.

Rendering times

• If you rendered the entire movie on a modern home PC, you would have had to start the renders 16,000 years ago (when cave paintings like the Hall of Bulls were being made) to finish for this year’s premiere!
• A single imax shot in the movie (df250) would have taken almost 3 years to render on a top of the line home PC running nonstop.
• IMAX frame render times: As high as 72 hours per frame!

Imax

• Optimus Prime will be life size on IMAX screens in many forest fight shots.
• Imax frames take about 6 times longer than anamorphic to render.
• IMAX frame render times: As high as 72 hours per frame!

ILM screen time

ILM Screen Time is about 51 minutes.

Devastator

• Devastator is as tall as a 10 story building.
• Devastator has more than 10 times the number of individual parts found in an average car.
• Laid out end to end, Devastator’s parts would be almost 14 miles long.

Devastator totals

• Number of geom pieces: 52632
• The total number of polygons: 11,716,127
• The total length of all pieces: 73090 feet
• The total length of all pieces: 13.84 miles

Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen opens one week from today.

‘Akira’ Adaptation Dead

Source: Bloody-Disgusting

It seems that the epic adaptation of legendary anime film, Akira, is dead. Ruairi Robinson would have been making his directorial debut on the massive two-part apocalypse story that was being produced by Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way and Warner Bros. Pictures. BD reports that the film is “dead as a doornail” which is definitely sad news to hear.

Akira originated in 1988 as a manga and then as an animated film co-written and directed by Katsuhiro Otomo. The story was set in a neon-lit futuristic post-nuclear war “New Tokyo” in 2019 where a teen biker gang member is subjected to a government experiment which unleashes his latent powers. The gang’s leader must find a way to stop the ensuing swathe of destruction. The new story was to move the action to “New Manhattan,” a city rebuilt by Japanese money and was to hit theaters this summer.

With its mature themes and cutting-edge animation, the film was a milestone in anime and even animation circles, and led the way for anime making inroads into Western pop culture in the 1990s.

T.R. Knight Officially Exits ‘Grey’s Anatomy’

Source: Ausiello Files

After months and months of rumors about actor, TR Knight, asking to be released from his contract three years early finally some confirmation. Sources confirm to Michael Ausiello exclusively that TR Knight is being granted leave from the show. “The official decision, I’m told, came down in the past few days, just as many of his castmates began receiving their formal pickup letters from ABC,” he says.

The show has been riddled with behind the scenes controversy and melodrama, and culminated last season with Knight claiming he’d be underwritten because of a clash with show creator, Shonda Rhimes. Knight became so fed up, he asked to be released from his contract. While Rhimes claimed that his lack of storyline was part of “the ebbs and flows of ensemble television”, it all seems a litle shifty. The show has been falling apart as of late, and while it may have regained a little steam lately it’s still not the beast it was a few years ago. An insider says that Knight, a theatrically-trained thespian, is in talks to start 2010 by headlining a Broadway revival of Lend Me a Tenor, the classic farce he recently did a reading of with Alfred Molina, Tony Shalhoub, and Marian Selde.

Frank Marshall Talks ‘Bourne 4’, ‘Jurassic 4’, and ‘Neverending Story’

Source: SciFi Wire

Frank Marshall, Hollywood producer and pretty avid Twitter updater, recently spoke with SciFi Wire about a few projects currently in development. Marshall told reporters that he currently has about ten projects in development, including Bourne 4. “I’m moving it forward. We’d like to shoot next year, but it’s trying to get everyone’s schedules in the right place and getting the script right,” Marshall said. “We’ve done pretty well with these scripts that are loosely put together, but I would like the script to be really solid this time before we go forward, so we are spending a lot of time on story.”

When asked about a fourth installment of Jurassic Park, Marshall simply responded: “We’ll have to see if they can come up with a story,” Marshall said. “We don’t have a story yet.” I don’t see that as a flat out denial. Anything is possible, and if a really good script came across his desk I’m sure there’d at least be a bit of consideration. The Neverending Story update seems to be more a rights issue than anything else. “We love the book,” he said. “We’ve always thought there was an opportunity there to tell a lot of elements that were in the book that weren’t in the [original] movie. It’s another one where we are still working on the rights. Once we get that, we’ll bring on a writer. But it’s off in the distance, but it’s a great story.”

Marshall said a new deal with Sony will soon be another resource for development ideas. “It’s been very exciting, because we are looking at their old libraries and looking at things they have that have stalled out and we may get back on track,” he said. He’s currently in production on M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender, then in July he’ll be off to Europe spend some time with Lance Armstrong in prep for their upcoming biopic,  before starting work on Peter Morgan’s directorial debut The Special Relationship about the relationship between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former U.S. President Bill Clinton, as played by Michael Sheen and Dennis Quaid. Talisman is percolating, too,” he said about the proposed TV mini-series based on the Stephen King/Peter Straub novel, though he was concerned about the recent reports of certain studios not having development money.

The trailer for The Last Airbender premieres next week with prints of Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen.

Catherine Hardwicke On Her ‘Hamlet’ Update

Source: Movieline

Moveline recently caught up with Catherine Hardwicke, the woman responsible for bringing Twilight to the screen to the joy of tweens everywhere, to talk about about plans for her update of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet with Emile Hirsch. Facts gleaned from the short interview: the film will be a bit of a supernatural thriller, a bit more violent, and a shorter tighter version than the Ethan Hawke update that was released awhile back.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Hey, as long as the movie doesn’t have a goddamn intermission I’m there. Kenneth Branagh, I’m looking at you.

Clips: Two New Scenes From ‘Transformers 2’

Source: MovieFone / Trailer Addict

We’re seven days out from a whole frak-load of robot mayhem and to celebrate, here’s a couple of new clips from the film. Look, I know the humor sucks and it sounds like Linkin Park did the entire damn score, but it looks SO DAMN COOL. I’m gonna go shut up now. Just watch.

International ‘Inglourious Basterds’ Poster

Source: AICN

I don’t think I have to say anything at this point. I can’t wait for this friggin’ movie!

Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds hits theaters August 21st.

CW, Fox Announce Fall Line-Up

Source: THR [2]

Apparently all seasons are behind a bit this year. The CW is actually only starting a week later leading off with remakes of 90210 and Melrose Place. The midseason premiere date for the drama Life Unexpected will be announced later. Fox, on the other hand, is set to launch in mid-to-late September alongside most other channels.

Here’s the CW’s fall premiere schedule:

Tuesday, Sept. 8
8:00-9:00 p.m. “90210” (Season Premiere)
9:00-10:00 p.m. “Melrose Place” (Series Premiere)

Wednesday, Sept. 9
8:00-10:00 p.m. “America’s Next Top Model” (2-Hour Season Premiere)

Thursday, Sept. 10
8:00-9:00 p.m. “The Vampire Diaries” (Series Premiere)
9:00-10:00 p.m. “Supernatural” (Season Premiere)

Monday, Sept. 14
8:00-9:00 p.m. “One Tree Hill” (Season Premiere)
9:00-10:00 p.m. “Gossip Girl” (Season Premiere)

Wednesday, Sept. 16
9:00-10:00 p.m. “The Beautiful Life: TBL” (Series Premiere)

Friday, Sept. 25
8:00-9:00 p.m. “Smallville” (Season Premiere)

Here’s Fox’s fall premiere schedule:

Saturday, Sept. 12
8-8:30 p.m. “Cops” (Season premiere)
8:30-9 p.m. “Cops” (All-new episode)
9-10 p.m. “America’s Most Wanted” (Season premiere)

Wednesday, Sept. 16
8-9 p.m. “So You Think You Can Dance” (Season premiere)
9-10 p.m. “Glee” (Series premiere)

Thursday, Sept. 17
8-9 p.m. “Bones” (Season premiere)
9-10 p.m. “Fringe” (Season premiere)

Friday, Sept. 18
8-8:30 p.m. “Brothers” (Series premiere)
8:30-9 p.m. ” ‘Til Death” (Season premiere)
9-10 p.m. “Dollhouse” (Season premiere)

Monday, Sept. 21
8-10 p.m. “House” (2-hour season premiere)

Sunday, Sept. 27
8-8:30 p.m. “The Simpsons” (Season premiere)
8:30-9 p.m. “The Cleveland Show” (Series premiere)
9-9:30 p.m. “Family Guy” (Season premiere)
9:30-10 p.m. “American Dad” (Season premiere)

Monday, Sept. 28
9-10 p.m. “Lie to Me” (Season premiere)

Tuesday, Sept. 29
8-9 p.m. “Hell’s Kitchen” (All-new episode)
9-10 p.m. “So You Think You Can Dance” (Time period premiere)

Tuesday, Oct. 27
8-10 p.m. “So You Think You Can Dance” (Time period premiere)

Saturday, Nov. 7
11 p.m.-midnight “The Wanda Sykes Show” (Series premiere)

Why is Fringe on Thursday nights? Why do I have to wait two more days? Why can’t you just show Lie To Me on Thursday? I can watch Tim Roth be a dick some other time. Come to think of it, most lead characters on Fox are complete dicks: Peter Griffin, House, the upcoming Human Target‘s Christopher Chance, Al Bundy. Hm. A metaphor for Tom Rothman? Only time will tell.

Trailers: ‘Shorts’

Source: SciFi Wire

Say all you want about Robert Rodriguez and his Spy Kids trilogy, Sharkboy & Lavagirl, or even his newest kids film Shorts — he’s built Troublemaker Studios from the ground-up, and financed all those wacky uber-violent films you love so much off his kid movies. How many directors can honestly claim to have kids and adults go bonkers for their respective films? We all flock to Sin City and Grindhouse, but the kids, god bless ’em, they pour out in masses for these films and give Rodriguez enough to indulge his craziest ideas. Here’s both a new poster and a second trailer for the aforementioned, Shorts.

So take the hit, you’re getting Machete next year. You’re probably getting Predators next year aswell, and he’s already working on ideas for The Jetsons. And hey, the guy literally makes films FOR his kids. It’s like going out in the backyard with the video camera, except the video camera is a film crew. How can you rag on him for that? Shorts is set in the suburb of Black Falls, where all the houses look the same and everyone works for Black Box Unlimited Worldwide Industries Inc. Eleven-year-old Toe Thompson just wants to make a few friends, until a mysterious rainbow-colored rock falls from the sky, hits him in the head and changes everything: It grants wishes to anyone who holds it. It hits theaters August 21st.