Your jedi mind tricks won’t work on me

Orange are running orange wednesdays, and as such have a promo appearing before the start of films at the cinema. The latest one shows Darth Vader approaching the Orange Film Funding Board with a script about a Sith Lord, only to get completely knocked back by the marketing executive.

Ice Age 2

Ice Age 2: The Meltdown is being made! There’s currently a teaser available, a website (which doesn’t contain a great deal) and of course an IMDB page. Glad to see they kept the nut-chasing squirrel, though.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Last night, I went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with my friend Lou. I’m generally quite sceptical about remakes regardless of genre, time between films, persons involved, etc etc – with the exception of Starsky and Hutch (which I loved) and possibly the forthcoming Dukes of Hazzard (and there will be only one reason to see that one).

But Charlie and the Chocolate Factory joins that very prestigious (and very short) list. Tim Burton has managed to sign it with his trademark sinister side, while maintaining the magic of the original. Jonny Depp is somewhere between Dr. Evil and Michael Jackson (and a bit nasty at times), and Freddie Highmore is a brilliantly cheeky Charlie Bucket without being fucking annoying. And what’s more, my dad just rang to say he thought I used to look like Charlie.

Films I have to revisit #1

While reading Empire just now, I saw a picture of one of the alien ships from the original War of the Worlds, and had a genuine moment of fear, just for a second.

No-one would have believed in the early years of the twenty-first century, that our world was being watched by intelligences greater than our own. That as men busied themselves about their various concerns, they observed and studied.

With infinite complacency men went to and fro about the globe, confident of their empire over this world.

Yet, across the gulf of space, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded our planet with envious eyes. And slowly, and surely drew their plans against us.

The original used to scare the bejeesus out of me, and I’m very much looking forward to the this summers’ remake, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Cruise and Tim Robbins.

A Scanner Darkly

It’s not often I get excited about films in advance, but A Scanner Darkly, due for release December 31st, 2005, is nothing if not intriguing.

Written by Philip K. Dick (Bladerunner, Minority Report, the film stars Keanu Reeves as a cop planning a sting operation on a drug dealer. Unfortunately, Keanu is hooked on Substance D, a drug which splits the mind; and the other half of his mind is the dealer he is trying to snare.

Also starring Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr, A Scanner Darkly has been filmed using a technique called Rotoscopy. The process involves taking each frame of film and tracing over the detail, giving a ‘live animation’ effect to the final result. The technique was used to create the lightsabers in the original three Star Wars as well as the animated singer effect in the A-Ha video for the 1986 song Take On Me.

There is currently no official site for the film, but there is a trailer as well as, of course, an IMDB page, OsakaSteve has another picture on his flickr blog, and keanuette has published Empire magazines’ May 2005 article, along with another excellent picture.