I'm not a fan and it's four hours long, but I really want to see this: "The two-part film, directed by Martin Scorsese, focuses on Dylan’s life and music from 1961-66 and includes never-seen footage from the Bob Dylan Archives and interviews with Allen Ginsberg, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez and other artists and musicians whose lives intertwined with Dylan’s during that time. A DVD version of the documentary, featuring additional never-before-seen footage, will be released on September 20. Apple will present the DVD and international version of “No Direction Home: Bob Dylan,” and is the corporate underwriter of the PBS broadcast. The Soundtrack CD will be released by Columbia Records on August 30th."

"What is it that we love about the mad scientists in our movies and history? Is it because their probing of the unknown piques our curiosity? Is it their seeming superiority to the common herd? Or is it that they -- at least for a while -- get away with more than we can?"

strangemag.com has all the answers.

"A persistent media myth is that Hollywood earns most of it money in foreign lands and that this is what accounts for dumbed-down movies. For example, a recent Wall Street Journal article blithely explained, "It's the foreign box office, stupid. While movie attendance has been stalling in the U.S., it's growing in other parts of the world, making Prague as much a bellwether for Hollywood as Peoria." The problem here is that the entire Czech Republic, including Prague, provided Hollywood studios with less than three-tenths of 1 percent of their foreign movie revenues in 2005. The place where the studios look for their profits is not that elusive: It is America." "Send in the Aliens" by Edward Jay Epstein in "the hollywood economist" at Slate

Movies and games merge and become one big fat promotion-package for the whatever property in general. The film might suck, but it's promoting the game and the other way around. Get the name from a popular game, give "the Rock" a gun and let him kill everything that moves. The trailer looks very much like the popular ego-shooter. Story? What story? This movie doesn't even have to hide the fact that the plot is about as dull as in any other action-film because that's what the people want. And I thought, "Tomb Raider" was a bad idea for a movie.... Apropos, Lara Croft, the biggest pop-icon in gaming-history, is working on a comeback. over at computerandvideogames.com "Producer Morgan W Gray tells of a legend reborn, new Lara, new gameplay and hottest of all, Ms Croft's untold origins"

When the Marx Brothers were about to make a movie called "A Night in Casablanca," there were threats of legal action from the Warner Brothers, who, five years before, had made a picture called, simply, "Casablanca" (with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman as stars). Whereupon Groucho, speaking for his brothers and himself, immediately dispatched the following letters:

"Dear Warner Brothers:

Apparently there is more than one way of conquering a city and holding it as your own. For example, up to the time that we contemplated making this picture, I had no idea that the city of Casablanca belonged exclusively to Warner Brothers. However, it was only a few days after our announcement appeared that we received your long, ominous legal document warning us not to use the name Casablanca.

It seems that in 1471, Ferdinand Balboa Warner, your great-great-grandfather, while looking for a shortcut to the city of Burbank, had stumbled on the shores of Africa and, raising his alpenstock (which he later turned in for a hundred shares of the common), named it Casablanca.

I just don't understand your attitude. Even if you plan on re-releasing your picture, I am sure that the average movie fan could learn in time to distinguish between Ingrid Bergman and Harpo. I don't know whether I could, but I certainly would like to try.

You claim you own Casablanca and that no one else can use that name without your permission. What about "Warner Brothers"? Do you own that, too? You probably have the right to use the name Warner, but what about Brothers? Professionally, we were brothers long before you were."

READ ON.... (From THE BEST OF MODERN HUMOUR, edited by Mordecai Richler)

Incredibly poetic tale from the gritty underground. One of the biggest surprises from Europe in a long time. Don't miss this tough gang of ticket controllers from Budapest competing with a rival gang of ticket controllers, hunting "Bootsie" and playing suicidal games while a strange killer is running around. It was everyones fave at the Fantasy Filmfest Berlin 2004, it won "Le Prix de la Jeunesse" in Cannes plus tons of other awards and it should be a total sleeper-hit on dvd. Check the short trailer (various formats). The german version is slightly longer than the original for some reason. Deutsche Website International Website

"The new film from Canadian director John Fawcett, a veteran of a great deal of television work who was also behind the indie Canadian werewolf film Ginger Snaps." Twitchfilm.net, an excellent site about indie-movies, has the first trailer. Unfortunately it's in German since Constantin Films is in charge of this flick. Looks like another great addition to the new wave of intelligent horror-thrillers. They also host three clips from Terry Gilliams Brothers Grimm.

This has to be be the worst movie ever, ever made! This film is sooooo bad...! I mean, "Fantastic Four" is obviously the worst movie of this year, but "War of the Worlds" is a class on it's own! This is the most expensive movie ever made and it opens a new category for bad movies. This isn't just a waste a time and money. It's serious brain-damage on a big scale!

Iraq can be so much fun!

One of these topics I wanna write some long text about, but I never find the time.... I found tons of stuff labelled "banned cartoons" on Limewire and rotten.com has an interesting article with some general info. On Disneys "Story of one of 'Hitlers children as adopted from Mein Kampf": "Topping the eye-poppingly outrageous charts of historical cartoon propaganda is without a doubt Disney's regrettable vignette, Education For Death, which graphically details the life and times of Hitler youth. The narrator solemnly intones the distorted text of Gregor Ziemer's The Making of The Nazi. German adults are portrayed in classic Disney "sinister bulldog" style: barrel chest, small rear end, bowed legs, and no neck. The bellowing, red-faced instructor's jowls flop around like coattails as he berates a kindergarten classroom full of Bambi-eyed waifs in lederhosen, whose pluckish heads are delightfully oversized.

The military professor's singular goal: get these scatterbrained kids to appreciate Hitler's way of thinking.

The lesson plan is presented at the blackboard. Chalk drawings of a fox eating a rabbit illustrate nature's intended course: the weaker species (i.e. Jews and bunnies) are justly but inevitably devoured without mercy by superior forces.

As Education For Death descends toward its bloody climax, the animation is bathed in murky red tones. The viewer is urged to "listen closely to the fanatic cry" of the German people. What follows is a pounding orchestral soundtrack and a relentless montage punctuating all things fire and brimstone. Classic hardbound volumes of literature and philosophy are piled high, fanned at the spine and set ablaze. Flaming torches cast violent, flickering shadows as the Holy Bible morphs into a limited first-edition Mein Kampf. Crucifixes hung by the chimney with care are zapped by swift arcs of lightening from the heavens, and transformed into unfurling Swastikian flags or bladed Iron Crosses.

Delicate, stained glass church windows are smashed out during drunken antisemetic protests - and endless squadrons of squat, pear-shaped children in silhouette are seen goosestepping in grids for miles across the globe, arms outstretched toward the sky as they Heil Hitler over and over. Today Germany - tomorrow the world!

Nine times out of ten, a person won't even notice racist or hateful overtones in a cartoon unless the idea is planted firmly in head. By refusing to unearth and revive historical artifacts, societies sustain immeasurably more damage than brief exposure to racial toxins from old-timey cartoon doodles. Novelist Kurt Andersen (Turn of the Century, 1999) muses, 'If we don't know our history in all of its complicated detail, how are we supposed to understand the present?'

To allow ourselves only a bland, repackaged version of the past is - how do you say - kind of a Mickey Mouse approach."

Nonstick.com has some Public Domain Cartoons Online including "Daffy The Commando" (1943), one of the funniest Anti-Hitler-Cartoons produced back then.

dvdtoons.com: The Cinema and World War II
dvdtoons.com: Walt Disney On The Front Lines (dvd-review)

"ABC announced Friday that it has begun production on its Pope John Paul II telepic in Lithuania. CBS was first to announce a John Paul II longform soon after the pope's death in April, but ABC quickly started developing its own project. Since then, it's been a race to see which of the dueling papal pics would hit the air first.

Eye's version, to be shot in Poland and Italy, will commence principal photography Thursday in John Paul II's hometown of Krakow, Poland.

ABC's telepic, "Have No Fear: The Life of Pope John Paul II," stars Thomas Kretschmann ("The Pianist"). The movie will follow Karol Wojtyla as he lives through German-occupied Poland; joins the priesthood soon after WWII; becomes the country's youngest bishop; and rapidly ascends through the Catholic church ranks to be elected pope.

Exec producers Lorenzo Minoli and Judd Parkin ("Jesus") are behind the TV movie. Michael Hirst and Judd Parkin wrote the teleplay, to be directed by Jeff Bleckner ("Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story").

Bruno Ganz ("Wings of Desire") also stars in "Have No Fear" as Cardinal Wyszynski, the primate of Poland, while Joachim de Almeida ("24") will play assassinated Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero.

As previously announced, CBS' four-hour mini "Pope John Paul II" stars Ian Holm as the pope, with Cary Elwes portraying the younger Wojtyla. Eye Entertainment prexy Nina Tassler called it a "papal page-turner."

The competition between the two projects extends behind the scenes, as Minoli and Parkin broke with Ettore Bernabei, whose Italian production company is behind CBS' pope project. The three worked together on CBS' 2000 longform "Jesus" -- which, coincidentally, they screened for Pope John Paul II as he met with them at the Vatican.

The Hallmark Channel actually has both ABC and CBS beat, having acquired rights to the four-hour Italian mini "A Man Who Became Pope," which bows on the channel Aug. 15"

Stolen from (Daily Variety, July 12)

Nicholas Cage is a big comic-fan and he was supposed to play Superman a while ago. Now he can finally play a minor Marvel-character at least. get ready for Ghost Rider (Quick Time 7 only!). I think, the trailer is not supposed to be there, so, hurry up! What's next? The Silver Surfer? Are they gonna paint an actor silver and put him on a wakeboard or is that gonna be some lame CGI-jesus-in-space kind of thing? What I really wanna see is another "Marvel Character Live Action TV Projects in Development" which has just been announced: Brother Voodoo. Eh, Hollywood, that's a joke, right? You're not really gonna do a series about this guy, right? Sounds like a job for Dr. Snakeskin!

The best new movie you will see this summer! Nice website too! "Short Cuts" with an edge, yeah, awesome! This was a big hit at the Munich Filmfest and the rest of Germany will definetely love it too! Probably the most interesting way to look at rascism for quite a while. Yep, we're all in it! Here are the trailers, but they are not very helpful. Matt Dillon is the new Harvey Keitel!

Yeah, V is on the run! We've seen a lot of comic-movies lately, but this is the only one which might be fun (besides "Watchmen" , the other masterpiece by Alan Moore which Paramount just dropped).

The trailer is also available for download with crisp hd-quality and a 5.1.-soundtrack, but you will need Quick Time 7.

It had to happen and it's a great idea! The third episode is out there. Watch the Muppets trash "War of the Worlds", "Fantastic Four" and crap like that. This is not a cartoon, this is the return of the best TV-show ever!

The trailer is out! "The Hollywood studios have passed on the opportunity to distribute this film. It is really the movie that Hollywood doesn’t want you to see! But, emboldened by you, our fans, we have decided to do it on our own! That’s right, on September 9, 2005 in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, we, Odd Lot Entertainment, the producers of HOOLIGANS, are independently releasing in theatres without the traditional Hollywood machine behind us. And so, we need you now more then ever! Who needs fancy billboards and flat advertisement when we have your word-of-mouth, which can rumble and quake in the streets, spreading through the population to get the word out on this important movie.(...) If you want to bring the film to your city and help to make it happen, send us an e-mail to let us know and you can join our team. We’ll send you special materials and work with you directly to get your local theatres to book the film."
more at AICN.com Hey, it's the new film by Mannheim's famous son Lexi Alexander and Elijah Wood is in it!

Teaser-trailer for "Lost - Season 2", anyone?

"If you're one of the fans who thinks the Lost finale didn't give much bang with its season-ending blasts, try this on for size: A Website Easter egg planted by the producers that gives you a glimpse of what they're planning for the second season.

Here's what you do:

1. Go to the "official" Oceanic Airlines Website.
2. At the bottom, where it says "Travellers," enter Hurley's unlucky lottery numbers: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42.
3. Click the "Find" button.
4. Click on the row numbers on the flight's seating chart that match Hurley's numbers.
5. Don't blink.
6. Change shorts.
7. Figure out what the hell it all means.
8. Email me.
9. Keep digging. The site has much more to spill." -found at tv.com Wait for the trailer to end and you will get to another site...

More stuff like the "Oceanic Air Commercial" at lostlinks.net SPOILER: page from a script

Elvis Presley and John F. Kennedy fighting an undead mummy from egypt! What may sound like a really dumb idea, turns out to be one of the biggest surprises in a while. It's Bruce Campbells ("Evil Dead") best performance yet and Ossie Davis, who died early this year, makes a terrific president. The movie didn't get a single bad review yet and it won "best screenplay" at the US Comedy Arts Film Festival. The story is based on a short-story by everyone favourite mojo storyteller Joe R. Lansdale, master of Shen Chuan, Martial Science. Wonderful movie, really! Thanks for recommending it!

By the way, Bruce Campbell wants to do a movie about himself!

Often billed as the worst movie ever made, and not entirely undeserving of the title, this is a masterpiece of Ed Wood's making. Download your copy here!

archive.org has hundreds of feature films up there. Mostly classic stuff like Hemp for Victory (1942) or Killers From Space (1954) for example. Also get that classic flick Reefer Madness, "THE archetypal sensationalized anti-drug movie"

Für eine handvoll Euros bald auf DVD. Von TLEFIlms meisterlich restauriert und all das!

Weird comedy by David O. Russell ("Three Kings") starring Dustin Hoffman, Isabelle Huppert, Jude Law, Jason Schwartzman, Mark Wahlberg and Naomi Watts. Another good production out of the "New New Hollywood".
The movie got some nice internet-promotion as well. Also visit Jaffe & Jaffe - The psychic detectives and the website for The Open Spaces Coalition. The weblog by Tommy Corn seems to be dead by now though