This is the poster used in the German Democratic Republic when the movie came out behind the wall in 1987. It was the blockbuster no.1 in the GDR that year.

I'm speechless!

"What was that romantic comedy with Tom Hanks called again," the producer asked. "it must have made a gazillion dollars! Let's replace the E-Mail with one of those ultra-hip weblogs. Get us an aging old American idol. Let's say Henry Rollins. No, too macho! Make that Elvis Costello. And get us some hot new chicks with an attitude. What's the name of the redhead in 'Run, Lola, Run' again?"

Fact is that weblogging Helen Jane made out with the right guy in Hollywood and now she's got the first paid job as a weblog-columnist since I love your work has it's own weblog telling you about the production. It's strictly commercial. No naughty pictures of Franca Potente and Christina Ricci. Have a look to witness the decline of blogworld.

Some of the old school-veterans might remember what happened to UseNet and the grand old servers back when there were only a handful of tough cowboys exploring the digital frontier. Well...

Here's a trailer for an upcoming documentary about Robert Anton Wilson, the man behind the Illuminati and all that. Recently an old friend of me raved about the current world-situation. In the end he went:"what about the Illuminati? Why don't they interefere?" Oh, boy....

Why doesn't god do something, eh?

A first look is up on the X2-site. This looks like the X-Men in the 19th.century! This incredible little comic-series by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill is ready for the big screen. Sean Connery will be Alan Quartermain. Here is the Official Site. Nothing on there yet except for the trailer. Filmfreak managed to get his hands on a different trailer which is here

Never mind the American Godzilla which was a real shame. The real thing is back: Godzilla against Mechagodzilla

The story of Hitler's last secretary by Andre Heller is one of the most impressive documentaries ever banned on film. Certainly one of the most interesting films about the Third Reich. Now there is an international version, a Homepage and even a trailer for you to check out.

After all these years, Traudl Junge, who was Hilter's private secetary from 1942 to 1945 finally talked. Watching the film it seems like nobody had ever really asked her until Heller approached her. Seeing her talk about Hitler, you get the idea that she has waited all her life to tell the story. There are some scenes where she watches some of the first sequences on video and it seems like she has prepared these stories by hard. The film was finished before Frau Junge died.

Another trailer has to be withdrawn due to the crash of the Space Shuttle. After Spider-Man had to get rid o that scene with the Twon Towers, some cheesy movie called "The Core" is next. Hurry up if you wanna see that scene with the Shuttle in trouble down there since the trailers will be gone any minute!

Official Website: TheCoremovie.com
Trailers: QuickTime, Various
International Trailer: QuickTime, Hi-Res QuickTime, Lo-Re

Here is a movie about a guy who likes rats. After having been George McFly in "Back to the Future" and he villain in "Charlies Angels", Willard seems to be the role Crispin Glover has been waiting for. Wait a minute, isn't this just another remake of Ormero's movie from 1971?

"The stars are out in Hollywood, glamming up for the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards. We at AlterNet are not quite as impressed by the hype as we are by the incredible range and quality of films released last year.

In celebration of film and film culture, we bring you
The Alties, the 1st annual Alternative Movie Awards!

The Alties honor the vast diversity of movies and let you, the reader, nominate and vote for your favorite films. The Alties belong to you: this is your chance to
think about and discuss your favorite movies and what they really mean.

Find the Alties on our new content file, Movie Madness:
-nuggets of movie lore and highlights from the forums. -Some of the best film writing from the alternative press."

-> alternet.org

In his personal newsletter, Warren Ellis commented on George Clooney commenting on his part in Solaris

"He comments that SOLARIS is flopping domestically, though it'll probably make most of its money back in foreign markets. But that doesn't matter. What matters is that they did it. The film is there. And it is -- I realise this flies against the face of all critics everywhere -- a good film. I always hesitate to use the word "emotional" when discussing story, as I fear I sound like the wreckage of Francis Ford Coppola talking shit about the Godfather movies in the beginning of his twilight years. But SOLARIS has an unmannered, mature emotional complexity to it. It is, in fact, a Seventies art-film. It gets the best performance I've ever seen from Natasha McElhone, and Clooney is clearly fucking with his perceived star persona as the chilly, damaged psychiatrist. One of the character's friends calls him "a nihilist shrink."

I grabbed the original Soderbergh script down from script-o-rama.com, and there are some interesting cuts. Anything that added to the science- fictional tone of the film got cut. It's all in the inference in the finished film. It's genre deconstruction, concentrating on the thing the majority of sf doesn't do -- creating a real life in the relationships.

It may not be what anyone wanted to see, but it's the film they wanted to make."

Solaris-trailers and clips

You might rather prefer a new movie by Cheech & Chong, but Quentin Tarantino strikes back with his fourth movie and it looks really great. Kill Bill is an adaption of all movies of the Martial Arts-genre and some of the stuff in the trailer is just breathtaking. I mean, I don't see no wires here, but there must be wires somewhere! Another sort of definite look at an undead genre which has gotten a lot of attention lately with "Tiger & Dragon" and retro in general. Tarantino does it again. There's nothing cooler than Bruce Lee in "Enter the Dragon" or Jackie Chan doing what he does best and what films were invented for. Compared to things that have been done in Hong Kong-movies the past twenty years, a movie like "Spider-Man" is a complete joke. Or look at the cheesy "let's jump off a roof"-scenes in "Matrix"! It's all just plastic, popcorn, computer-gimmicks and action-figures jumping off roofs inside a computer. Yawn! Look at Jackie Chan, Andy Lau or Samo Hung? Do you think you could replace them easily with some CGI-action figure like you can replace Schwartzenegger with a piece of cardboard and nobody will know the difference? Do you really think so???

Asian cinema has always been filmmaking at it's very best. Sometimes they might lack the money Hollywood throws into a production like this, but asian cinema is a labour of love and not a sheme to sell a lot of toys.

You know what, Hollywood, take all the plush-dolls for the next couple of Star Wars-, Spider-Man- or Men in Black-movies and shove them up your asses really slow. Hmmm... Feels good, eh?

Kill Bill - see the trailer at the official website

"20th Century Fox and George Romero bring You DEAD RECKONING!!! That's right the 4th LIVING DEAD FILM!!!! Word has it that Romero has permission to shoot DEAD RECKONING as a hardcore NC-17 gore-a-thon, but must deliver a theatrical R-rated cut with the NC-17/unrated edition hitting on DVD..." -Harry over at aicn.com

Dead Reckoning - the official site still leads to the Fox-Homepage

Yes, yes, yes! I always loved these movies, especially "Day of the Dead". So, what's it gonna be like? I thought the zombies rule the world now? i hope this aint no remake! House of Horrors' zombie-page with clips, pictures and fun facts

Arnie's back in this real-life science fiction-drama about a bunch of robots exterminating all human life-forms. Sounds pretty real to me! Well, Arnie's always been good at playing a robot without emotions or facial movement...

T3 - Trailer T3 - Homepage

Hallelujah, the trailer for this rumble royale is finally here and the website is open (some nice wallpapers to scare your little sister!) This is another one I have to see even though it might suck. Make that "CAN'T WAIT TO SEE IT!" Jason Voorhees, everyone's favourite slasher from the Friday the 13th-movies teams up with Freddy Krueger, the king of nightmares and star of the "Nightmare on Elmstreet"-series. This project has been in the making for years and I don't know what took them so long, but the movie is in post-production (see link below for the first pictures) and it has Keley Rowland of Destiny's Child in it

This is gonna be the first movie which combines two succesful licenses which have gotten kind of lame. But seeing these guys kill each other is something no serious horror-fan can dare to miss. "Freddy vs.Jason" aka. "The Friday the 13th Nightmare" or whatever it's gonna be called might make way for more projects like that. "Superman/Batman" is on the way already and "Aliens vs.Predator" has been talked over and over after the comic-book and the video-game raised millions of dollars. We're living in a fan-culture after all and legions of nerds will bite their nails to see shit like "Vampirella vs. Blade" (hey, Hollywood, I just came up with that one, but doesn't it sound great? Gimme some money and go ahead with it!). I wonder if they do a sequel of "Freddy vs. Jason" and this movie is only the beginning of another long line of boring follow-ups. Then again you can still do "Nightmare on Halloween" first. You can't match "Friday the 13th" and "Halloween", eh? Too bad those guys are stuck with their special slasher-days!

But it sounds like "Freddy vs.Jason" is going to be a fun surreal movie. No official homepage yet, but Robert Englund who play old pizzaface has made a few remarks here and there.

"I always thought the real trick of 'Freddy vs. Jason' [is that] you had to get into Jason's nightmares. We've got to see what makes Jason tick. In this movie we get in there. And Freddy's walking around in there, getting his feet dirty. And it's pretty sick stuff...Freddy's at loose ends to get people afraid of him anymore, [because] if you don't dream, Freddy can't hurt you. Freddy's trying to regenerate himself and he's using Jason to instill fear in the relatives of the offspring of the original Elm Street vigilantes. Freddy needs to manipulate Jason, and when he's in the dreams he can. What happens is that Freddy creates a Frankenstein. ... Freddy kind of spoils him, gives him a little too much dog food and he kind of turns on his master. And that's the gist of the plot watching the carnage unfold as Freddy and Jason wreak havoc. Now it's [like the TV show] 'Millennium' - serial-killer creepy. It's Freddy's scrapbook. It's what Freddy was doing [in the boiler room] before they threw the Molotov cocktails. I'm also going to do this scene right when he gets off with the hung jury, when my lawyer gets me off"

That friendly weblog Joblo.com
also managed to get a short interview with Robert Englund. Here's an excerpt:

"It's like some gorgeous, twisted, violent Dutch comic book you know-- Asian, Cyber Japanese Cyber Punk, illustrated comic book with Scorsese camera angles, Orson Wells camera angles and film noir style...it's REALLY interesting! There's also lots of different colors plays, kind of like Paul Schrader's style. It's just really a great classy, violent popcorn movie. I've been calling it a gourmet popcorn that's spelled...G-O-R-E. Englund also dropped a hint about "Freddy meeting baby Jason" in the film, and when prodded about how many "old school" fans are afraid that the new film is basically gonna sell out to the new generation, Englund replied: "Freddy is less funny (here)...and there's more violence and more twisted shit in this film than in the last 4 Freddy movies."

full interview at Joblo.com
Freddy vs. Jason - First Production Pictures

MTV has also done a report:

"Lights are flashing, techno's pumping and girls are wearing very little. That familiar "choo-choo, ha-ha" whisper is heard as Jason appears — on the dance floor. Opting not to cut a rug, he cuts the rave party short instead, hacking apart the kids and halving the keg with his machete.

"Now it's [like the TV show] 'Millennium' — serial-killer creepy," he promised. "It's Freddy's scrapbook. It's what Freddy was doing [in the boiler room] before they threw the Molotov cocktails. I'm also going to do this scene right when he gets off with the hung jury, when my lawyer gets me off. I'm trying to get a suit for Freddy. I see him as being kind of like a rockabilly Lee Harvey Oswald." quoted from full story at mtv.com

New psyco-drama by that canadian director who is responsible of lovely classics like Scanners, Rabid and Dead Ringers. The trailer looks great

Great collection of really stupid atomic power propaganda celebrating it's 20th anniversary with a dvd. Looking for it, I found this Tribute Page at Conelrad - "an eerie, creepy look at Cold War Culture" (NY Times). Great site with incredible pictures! And you can also listen to some original sounds at Clay's Atomic Cafe Wav Page

aicn.com reports that Writer/director Michael J. Bassett has been asked by Wes Craven, creator of Freddy Krueger, whether he would be interested in doing a remake of the Craven-classic. "The hills have eyes" is fucking great! it scared me to death when I was a kid! Basically it's the story of the Manson Family having become mutants out in the woods!

Everything you ever wanted to know about writing, pitching and selling a script.

Script-o-rama - large collection of original scripts to learn from Scriptsales Scenariomag Writerscape Hollywoodlitsales Cinemedia WGA Scriptcity NY Screenwriter Scriptperfection Writers Block AWN HCD Online Hollywoodscriptwriter In Hollywood Focal Press Companion

Roman Polanski has produced the first movie about the Third Reich which is not sentimental. His hero who tries to escape the Warsaw-ghetto is not a hero. He doesn't try to fight the Nazis and the Nazis are not yelling "Sieg Heil" or "Heil Hitler" a single time all-through 148 gruesome minutes.
Instead of letting heroes and villains play their roles, Polanski gives us a realistic, disturbing potrait of life and death in Poland under the German occupation. A masterpiece.

All thumbs up for Michael Moore! Some people claim that he only made this movie to make America look even more stupid, but it's about time for some counter-propaganda.
Americans seem to be afraid of everything: communists, aliens, terrorists, black people, foreigners, liberals, gouvernments in general, rock-music, nudity, .... The movie deals with this national fear which is supported by a mayor-media which does everything to keep a constant level of paranoia in the country.
Since people are so scared of everything they consider "unamerican", they buy a lot of guns and constantly shoot each other for no reason. A very entertaining documentary you can't dare to miss. The movie raised 250000$ in only 8 theatres on the first week-end while "Swept away" with Madonna made only 375000$ in 196 theatres. Michael Moore

After Ronald Reagan was elected, the first thing he wanted to see was the "war room" underneath the White House. Since this room was only a movie-set from "Dr.Strangelove and how I learned to love the bomb", the president had to plan his dirty little wars somewhere else or build one on his own.
The war room is probably the most succesful creation production-designer Ken Adam has ever created, but basically he's known for designing the hyper-reality of the James Bond-movies and building the most expensive movie-set ever when he decided to build the villain's headquarters inside a volcano.
The German Filmmuseum in Frankfurt has put together an exihibition of around 300 sketches and a few models by Ken Adam. It's currently shown at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin until February the 24th 2003. It's not what you might expect since it's almost nothing but sketches, but it's okay to waste 4 € on a sunday-afternoon.

Exclusive new clips showing all new characters. There is already a first look at Bryan Singer's sequel which has already been shown at the Comic Con 2002. Regular trailer is here.
Entertainment Weekly has the X-Men 2 - Exclusive Advance Photos

Nothing special, but the first pics of the new mutants, including Colossus, aka Piotr Rasputin (played by 6'8'' Daniel Cudmore), John Allerdyce as Pyro, an X-Man who can manipulate fire and Kelly Hu who plays Lady Deathstryke, simply known as Yuriko Oyama in the movie. At least they kept her fingernails!

Here is a good site about the history of the cinema and movie-making

Lions Gate has released the first trailer for "Max", starring John Cusack, Noah Taylor, Leelee Sobieski and Molly Parker. The movie comes out in December.
Dutch director and writer Menno Meyjes who also wrote the scripts for "Indiana Jones III" and "The Colour Purple" had been talking to Steven Spielberg about the project, but the father of E.T. thought it was too controversial.
By now, the film has been attacked by everyone from the Jewish Defense League to the New York Times after it has been shown at the Toronto Film Festival.
Cusack plays the Jewish art-dealer Max Rothman from Munich who has to deal with a young and reckless student called Adolf Hitler. We see the dictator as a young man in 1918 and the movie tries to show us the "human" face of the "monster".
It looks like the early years of Hitler are ready to get manufactured by the mainstream. There are more movie like that in pre-production right now. It's about time to get rid of the historical roots and use the full potential of the historical figure for the entertainment-industry.

Hitler is still the arch-villain, but he has not been seen in as such in a mayor-production (except for comic-books like Captain America of course, but even Cap rather fights Hitler's henchman The Red Skull instead of Adolf himself. This reminds me that I wanted to write something on the potrayal of the Third Reich in World War II-comics like "The Invaders", "The Crusaders" etc...)
But, imagine Bruce Willis swinging through some window to rescue Kim Basinger who has been kidnapped by the Führer to breed new aryans or some shit like that. I mean, why didn't Indy kick his ass in "Indiana Jones Part III"?
Without Hitler there wouldn't have been a Superman or Lex Luthor or Dr.Doom or whatever they're called.

Salon.com - Was Hitler human? - an round-table-interview with John Cusack and others concerning "Max"

"Menno Meyjes: I think that Hitler was a new kind of man, who came from a little mountain village to the big city and picked up all these hatreds, and had this insane desire to be famous. And he understood fame in a very modern way, which very few people did in those days. Who was famous in those days? Hindenburg, generals were famous, politicians. I mean, Charlie Chaplin had barely been invented. But those pressures are very strong to this day -- people fear anonymity. He needed that kind of mass recognition in order to know himself.

Salon: So he was the first modern man in that sense?

Menno Meyjes: Absolutely.

Sidney Blumenthal: Hitler was such a nullity as a human being, a man filled with raw feelings of disgust and self-loathing. His genius, which was an evil one, was to have the capacity to articulate that in a way that appealed to those feelings in others, which in postwar Germany turned out to be a mass audience.

Salon:The film says that Hitler was a failure as an artist, but he succeeded in turning politics into art.

John Cusack: Yes, he ended up becoming a black artist, someone whose art was to set the world on fire."

MAX - Trailer Cusack for President!

good scans of covers of Anti-Hitler-Propaganda-Comics from the 1940s

"If we were to do (King) Kong - and we haven't had anything more than an initial expression of interest from the studio - we'd be looking at something like 2006. At this point in time, it's sort of out there as a possibility because (the original is) still my favourite film, and to go back into it would be fun," he said in an interview with "Fangoria".
Jackson also seems to have the rights to shoot "The Hobbit" as a prequel to "Lord of the Rings", but before all of that, the man who made "Brain Dead" and "Bad Taste" seems to wants to do another zombie-flick. Woo-hoo!
More in this article in The Dominion Post from New Zealand
Peter Jackson's script for King Kong
Peter Jackson Online

King Kong Online

House of 1000 corpses, starring Rob Zombie......

And I thought that splatter was so eighties that it would stay dead forever.....

The first scenes can be seen in the Filmforce-Featurettes as a free download. Ben Affleck and Mark Stephen Johnson talk about the movie

The Trailers and the suberbowl-spot are online here!

Heroes jumping off rooftops and fire escapes, isn't that what we've all been waiting for after those lame Batman-stunts? This movie will hopefully rock.
The script is supposed to be based on the classic stories dealing with the triangle of Daredevil, Elektra and Bullyeye and the producers keep talking about how important the charakters are comparted to the actors playing them. Ben Affleck can't play anything else after this one since everyone's gonna associate him with ole hornhead.
Did I say that the Kingpin looks great? Here are the pictures from the press-conference for the movie starring a certain man without fear

Es ist also kein Gerücht. Wolfgang Petersen arbeitet an Superman vs. Batman für die große Leinwand.

Entertainment Weekly published the 'short-list' for the roles of BATMAN and SUPERMAN for Wolfgang Petersen's SUPERMAN VS BATMAN written by Andrew Kevin Walker. This list was made up of 5 names. Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, James Franco, Jude Law and Paul Walker.