X-cellent: Both Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen will reprise…
X-cellent: Both Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen will reprise their roles as Professor X and Magneto in X-Men: Days of Future Past. Back to the Future’s got nothing on these time-travel hijinks.
Read MoreJames McAvoy and Jamie Bell Are Getting ‘Filth’-y
James McAvoy and Jamie Bell are preparing for extreme depravity as they take on the lead roles in the adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s underground novel, “Filth,” according to The Playlist.
“Filth” follows the misadventures of Bruce Robertson (McAvoy), a sex-obsessed, drug-addicted and bigoted Scottish police officer whose latest murder investigation is continually sidetracked by his own bizarre and subversive shenanigans.
Robertson is (somewhat) watched over by his sidekick of sorts, Ray Lennox (Bell), and his boss, Bob Toal (Alan Cumming).
Sounds like a tale from the man who brought us “Trainspotting,” for sure!
The long-gestating project, which has been through a constantly revolving door of different producers and directors over the past few years, looks to be finally coming together with Welsh on board as a co-producer and Jon S. Baird (“Cass”) set to direct. Filming will commence in Jan. 2012.
James McAvoy will next be seen (heard) as the voice of the title role in the animated feature, “Arthur Christmas,” opening Nov. 23. He’s currently filming the crime thriller, “Welcome to the Punch,” and will appear in Danny Boyle’s art heist movie, “Trance.”
Jamie Bell was recently seen in “Jane Eyre” and “The Eagle” and will next be seen in the title role of Steven Spielberg’s “The Adventures of Tintin,” opening Dec. 23.
Read MoreVincent Cassel and Rosario Dawson Join James McAvoy in Danny Boyle’s TRANCE
Danny Boyle has found two more leads for his heist-thriller Trance. Deadline reports that Rosario Dawson and Vincent Cassel will join James McAvoy in the film which centers on an art heist that goes sideways when its mastermind (McAvoy) gets amnesia and can’t remember where he stashed the loot. Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson were previously rumored for the other lead roles, but now it looks like Cassel will play the leader of the heist team while Dawson will play the hypnotist tasked with recovering the mastermind’s memories. The modestly-budgeted and harder-edged picture will be more in line with Boyle’s earlier films Trainspotting and Shallow Grave.
Filming on Trance is set to begin in September and then will be put on a shelf while Boyle directs the summer Olympics. He’ll pick it back up again in August 2012 for editing and then release it in March 2013. Both Dawson and Cassel will next be seen at the Toronto International Film Festival with Ten Year and A Dangerous Method, respectively.
Read MoreWhich Side Will You Choose?
X-Men: First Class DVD/Blu Ray Gets a Release Date and Covers and some Comic Con Goodies
Following a fantastic fan response earlier this summer, X-Men: First Class is headed to DVD and Blu-ray on September 9th (a special Friday release). CraveOnline scored the exclusive debut of the cover art for the Blu-ray release, which you can check out below alongside two promotional t-shirts that will be available for those preordering the title at Comic-Con.
Available with either a Professor Xavier (James McAvoy) or Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender) cover, the set includes a digital copy along with hours of special features, ten X-Men digital comics (including a never-before-seen backstory comic) and a “Cerebro Mutant Tracker”, which includes an interactive video database of all mutants featured in the X-Men films.
To promote the release, 20th Century Fox will be distributing “Team Erik” or “Team Charles” t-shirts to the first 1,000 fans to pre-order the Blu-ray or DVD at this week’s comic-con.
I don’t buy blu-rays so I hope the DVD covers are similar and go the same route of kind splitting the Xavier side and the Magneto side. I think it’s kind of fun. Better marketing than they gave the movie before it released, tbh.
No mention of commentaries or bloopers in the special features. FOREVER CRYING.
"X-Men: FC" and "Thor" screenwriters discuss their movies (and the beautiful people in them)
Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz, the two main screenwriters of the tasty "Thor" and "X-Men: First Class" films that have made such a sexy mark on Marvel Movie Summer 2011, sat down with Steve Weintraub over at Collider.com to discuss said movies (and said sexiness of said movies).
Apparently it was stressful and rushed as hale getting XMFC out on time and maybe that’s why the promotional stuff was so sloppy and cheap-looking? A theory, a theory…
~*~VERY GROOVY HIGHLIGHTS MOST RELEVANT TO OUR INTERESTS~*~
On the X-Men: First Class cast:
"Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy are getting the praise they absolutely deserve for this movie, but I think Jennifer Lawrence is right up there with them."
On their disappointment at a lot of Moira scenes being cut:
"She’s structurally important [...] There’s still a line in the movie where Erik says to Charles something to the equivalent of ‘Your problem is you think all humans are like Moira.’" And it’s like ‘… the person that we haven’t seen for half an hour?’"
On possible bonus scenes on the DVD/Blu-Ray:
"I don’t know if they’re going to that, or if everyone involved has so much PTSD that the last thing they want to do is go back into the editing room with more ‘X-Men’ footage."
WUT, THEY HAD BETTER GET THEIR ASSES BACK IN THE EDITING ROOM WITH MORE X-MEN FOOTAGE D:<
Okay so it’s clear where my own interests lie w/r/t this interview, BUT since 80% of it is, after all, about Thor (and possible sequels), THOR FANS ARE OFFICIALLY INVITED TO THIS PARTY POST
Together, our helmeted hotnesses could rule the cosmos
Making Mutants for X-Men: First Class
Ian Failes over at fxguide.com writes an actually really fascinating article about the special effects used in XM:FC, which I’m sure we will all read thoroughly. David Bentley sums it up…
"X-Men: First Class, Matthew Vaughn’s prequel to the existing X-Men films, takes place in 1962 and brings together Professor Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr, later to become Magneto, and a band of young mutants. The film contains over 1000 visual effects shots created under the helm of visual effects designer John Dykstra. "
"Special effects company Rhythm & Hues worked on Emma Frost, Mystique and Angel as well as scenes with the X-Jet, the Lincoln Memorial and a CIA facility.
The team first had to come up with an interesting and visually convincing concept for how Emma’s diamond power worked: "We went through a bit of a design process to work out what is the effect that happens as she goes from flesh to diamond shape – was it heat based, facets flipping over or would her skin be slightly transparent and melt out? We honed in on one with frost tendrils that grow out across her body and that shifts into a diamond form, and it evolved from there."
Cinesite worked on Azazel and Cerebro, as well as a sequence showing Moscow’s Red Square which involved a week-long photography trip to the city before the digital work began.
On Azazel’s teleportation effect, the explanation was: "We took a different approach from X2′s Nightcrawler [which had a] squash-and-stretch disappearing technique… so that the body would ripple out from the centre of the effect to make it feel like he came through the portal as opposed to a Star Trek style dissolve teleport effect."
Luma worked on Banshee, Havok and Darwin. If you were wondering what was happening to Darwin when Shaw makes him swallow a ball of Havok’s plasma energy, here’s the explanation: "He’s trying to contain this energy from within so he’s reactively swapping between all these different material properties," explains Payam Shohadai, executive VFX supervisor.
"He goes from human to metal, which starts to heat up. And then he transitions into stone thinking that will contain it. There’s a beat in there when he transforms almost back into human state and you think he’s going to be OK, but not for long." Finally, artists painted in veining crack maps on Darwin’s surface, exposing hot magma seen through fissures in the stone surface, with animated textures used to suggest fire underneath.
MPC worked on Beast, Riptide and Magneto’s destruction of the yacht with an anchor. So was there a real yacht and a real submarine launched from it? How much of that scene was digital and how much was actually there in front of the camera? The article has the answers. [Spoiler: NO, it was actually all a completely CGI yacht! Isn't that cool?]
Meanwhile, Digital Domain was tasked with bringing to life Sebastian Shaw’s ‘kinetic echo’, created when he releases the energy he has absorbed. I was impressed to read that Magneto’s confrontation with Shaw in the mirrored room was shot against greenscreen and then filled in later, including all the multiple reflections.
Then there is the final showdown set just off Cuba. The beach that doubled for the Cuban coastline was Jekyll Island in Georgia, USA, where up to 500 palm trees were brought in by truck and planted in the sand to create the right tropical look. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But unseasonably cold temperatures meant the trees went brown or died just days into filming so Weta Digital had to correct all the colouring and foliage in post-production. [Sounds like a metaphor for the tragic scene that took place there tbh. ;___;]
Then, of course, there’s the climax of the film with fleets of US and Soviet ships, the sequence where Magneto raises Shaw’s submarine and the missile launch towards the beach and its subsequent reversal. So how much of that was real and physical? For details of what Weta had to do to bring all that to life so amazingly, head over to FX Guide to read the full report."
That’s really cool to hear about the ending sequence with Shaw, actually. My CGI senses were definitely not pinging at all during that scene. Also I think I think January Jones is more expressive in diamond form.
oh and
