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New Ninja Assassin Clips

12 November 2009 7:44 AM, PST | Reelzchannel.com | See recent ReelzChannel news »

Six new video clips have emerged for Ninja Assassin, the latest action spectacle from producer Joel Silver and his V for Vendetta and Speed Racer partners, Andy and Larry Wachowski (the creators of The Matrix trilogy). The trio of producers brought V for Vendetta's director, James McTeigue, in to helm the feature, which was shot in Berlin, Germany.

Starring Korean pop star Rain in his first featured role, Ninja Assassin tells the story of Raizo, a boy trained to kill in an orphanage that serves as an assassin factory for the Ozunu Clan, a secret society thought only to exist in myth and legend. When Raizo attempts to escape from the clan and start a new life, they track him down to exact their revenge.

Next Showing: Ninja Assassin opens November 25

Ninja Assassin - Trailer

This trailer follows the path of one person, from boy to man, who becomes »

- BrentJS Sprecher

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Ricci Shows Off New Boyfriend

2 November 2009 4:06 AM, PST | WENN | See recent WENN news »

Actress Christina Ricci has shown off her new lover in Florida - just months after splitting from fiance Owen Benjamin.

The Speed Racer star cuddled up to photographer boyfriend Curtis Buchanan on a day out at a Miami beach last week (ends01Nov09).

And she showed little sign of her heartbreak following her split from Benjamin in June - kissing and cuddling Buchanan as they played in the waves.

Ricci has been dating the snapper for three months, according to Britain's Daily Mail newspaper. »

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Brad Pitt and Josh Brolin May Hop in Some Race Cars and Go Like Hell

28 October 2009 2:52 PM, PDT | Collider.com | See recent Collider.com news »

On Adam Carolla’s podcast today, producer Lucas Foster, whose credits include “Law Abiding Citizen”, “Mr. & Mrs. Smith”, and “Man on Fire”, mentioned he wanted to make a movie based on A.J. Baime’s book “Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans” and that Brad Pitt and Josh Brolin have shown interest in starring  The story is about Henry Ford I,  Lee Iaccoa’s, and Carroll Shelby’s attempt to dethrone Enzo Ferrari in the 24 hour race at Le Mans.  Foster says that Brad Pitt and Josh Brolin have both expressed interest in hopping in the driver’s seat.  Hit the jump for details.

On Carolla’s show [via The Playlist] Foster said he wanted to focus more on the drivers than the behind-the-scenes politics.  While some may find the politics interesting, I find a focus on the drivers far more exciting for the »

- Matt Goldberg

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Watch This: Stunning Samurai Sci-Fi Trailer The Cup of Tears

26 October 2009 6:15 PM, PDT | firstshowing.net | See recent FirstShowing.net news »

I don't exactly know what's going on in this, but I must thank Quiet Earth for finding this beautiful trailer and sending it my way. Tonight I'm featuring the trailer for Gary Shore's The Cup of Tears, a gorgeous CGI hybrid samurai sci-fi movie being made in Ireland. This was shot on the Red camera in Slovenia and is simply referred to as a "visually rich modern fairytale." That's all you really need to know before watching this, just let the visuals take you in from there. It looks kind of like a stunning combination of Sin City, an anime, and Speed Racer, in a way I suppose. Really, I don't know what else to say, so just check this out! Watch the official trailer for Gary Shore's The Cup of Tears: Follows a scorned geisha who creates a magical cup made of tears that causes any man »

- Alex Billington

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'Astro Boy' And The Anime Adaptation Conundrum

23 October 2009 7:01 AM, PDT | MTV Splash Page | See recent MTV Splash Page news »

By John Constantine

Given every major film studio's propensity for pumping out big-screen adaptations, whether they be of comic books, novels, musicals, or theme park rides, it's strange that we haven't seen many anime flicks.

Discounting all but forgotten direct-to-video trash like 1991's "The Guyver," there have really only been three Western-made anime adaptations. I'm reluctant to even count last year's practically budget-less "Dragonball: Evolution", so that leaves the Wachowski siblings' hallucinogenic "Speed Racer" and this week's "Astro Boy".

It's fitting that those two are the first anime properties to receive a significant marketing push and budget from their respective studios considering that their cartoon inspirations were among the very first anime to reach America way back in the 1960s. It is, however, a miracle that they were released at all.

"Speed Racer" was relegated to development hell as far back as 1992 and "Astro Boy" had an original release date »

- Splash Page Team

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Viff 09: Review of James McTeigue’s Ninja Assassin

19 October 2009 3:09 PM, PDT | QuietEarth.us | See recent QuietEarth news »

Year: 2009

Directors: James McTeigue

Writers: J. Michael Straczynski / Matthew Sand

IMDb: link

Trailer: link

Review by: Marina Antunes

Rating: 6 out of 10

[Editor's note: Big ups to our gal-pal Marina of the famous Row Three crew for supplying this great review from Viff '09]

Big props to studios who make big budget B-movies: extravaganzas of sex, action and blood that titillate the senses, but keep the mind on the back burner while still managing to say something about our culture. Arguments that all Hollywood blockbusters are B-movies are somewhat valid, but few films achieve the coveted status of “good B-movie” and though Ninja Assassin certainly tries to get there and almost succeeds, it simply doesn’t manage to be as fun as needs to in order to succeed.

That’s not to say it doesn’t try. The opening sequence in James McTeigue’s V for Vendetta follow-up is a spectacular feast of darkness, blood and mind bending martial arts, a spectacle that starts the film off on great footing and which mixes »

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'Black Lightning' trailer: A boy and his car fight Russian crime

19 October 2009 1:19 PM, PDT | EW.com - PopWatch | See recent EW.com - PopWatch news »

When I first saw the phrase "Timur Bekmambetov's Black Lightning," I wondered to myself, "Did I miss the announcement that the director of Wanted was taking on one of DC Comics' most prominent African-American superheroes?" And then I watched the trailer. Now, while my Russian is a little rusty -- what little I know, I gleaned from Chris Claremont's X-Men comics and The Hunt for Red October -- I'm pretty sure I don't see any black people here: What I do see is a boy and his super-powered car righting wrongs and getting chicks. Kind of like »

- Marc Bernardin

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Viff 2009: 'Ninja Assassin'

14 October 2009 6:43 AM, PDT | CinemaSpy | See recent CinemaSpy news »

Ninjas used to be scarier. In the B-movies of the 1970s, the ninja was a mysterious and occult figure, cold and soulless, that was to be overcome by the likes of Chuck Norris.

But in the past thirty years, the ninja has become commodified. Chris Farley's Beverly Hills Ninja and the Ask a Ninja Web site are clever, but they are evidence that the ninja has become a joke.

Producers Andy and Larry Wachowski and director James McTeigue are trying to reappropriate the ninja character in Ninja Assassin. Starring Rain — who appeared in Speed Racer, also from the Wachowskis —  the film is both an attempt to put the fearsomeness back into the ninja, as well as an homage to those B-movies that made the ninja so iconic to western audiences.

And it almost works.

In Ninja Assassin the ninja is something to be feared. They are ghost-like, literally disappearing »

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Original anime TV series Astro Boy evolves into movie, game

14 October 2009 6:04 AM, PDT | AOL - TVSquad | See recent AOL - TVSquad news »

Before Speed Racer offered an anime slant to Saturday morning cartoons in the 1970s, and before G-Force or Voltron made kids rush home from school in the 1980s, there was Astro Boy.

Widely considered the original manga comic, Astro Boy was conceived and written by the recognized pioneer of the genre, Osamu Tezuka in 1952.

From the franchise's diminutive launch pad, the endless chain TV anime franchises took flight. Without Tezuka's creation, there's no Lupin III, no Golgo 13, no Ghost in the Machine, no Cowboy Bebop, etc. The strange thing is, some of those TV shows from different eras pack more U.S. pop culture recognition than the franchise that set the table.

Continue reading Original anime TV series Astro Boy evolves into movie, game

 

Filed under: TV on the Bigscreen, Animation, Children, Reality-Free, British TV

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- John Scott Lewinski

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Fox to Tell Moses Story with ‘300′ Visuals

13 October 2009 1:23 PM, PDT | newsinfilm.com | See recent newsinfilm news »

20th Century Fox is planning to re-tell the biblical story of Moses using the visual style and modern effects of Zack Snyder’s 300. This is the first major acquisition for new Fox chief Peter Chernin.

The story will start with Moses’ near death experience as an infant, his adoption into the Egyptian royal family, “defiance of the Pharaoh and deliverance of the Hebrews from enslavement.” I can’t wait for a Gerard Butler type to yell, “Let my people Gooooo!” Spartan style.

According to Variety, the idea was pitched by Adam Cooper and Bill Collage, who just completed the script for a “re-imagining” of Moby Dick for director Timur Bekmambetov. They’re going for a feel closer to Braveheart than Charlton Heston’s The Ten Commandments, though I doubt Mel Gibson will be involved with this one…

Since 2004’s Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, studios have been using »

- Jeff Leins

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New York Anime Festival 2009 Wrap-up

5 October 2009 9:57 AM, PDT | Comicmix.com | See recent Comicmix news »

Picture a world where people gather and interact in joy and harmony, where groups of gaily-clad youths break into spontaneous song and dance at regular intervals, where spontaneous conga lines of diverse peoples stretch for blocks and wind through the market stalls, where merchants sell and people buy with easy affability and business is brisk, where people debate the topics of the day with great thoughtfulness and passion and the powers-that-be listen to the people-at-large. The Twilight Zone? Are you some sort of philosopher, or something? Well…no and yes. I just spent a weekend at my first New York Anime Festival at the Javitz Center in Manhattan and I found myself intermittently amused, bemused, overwhelmed, and overjoyed.

Think about it. Everyone has watched an animated something in their lifetime, no matter how old. From Looney Tunes to Disney to Hanna-Barbera to Pixar, we’ve experienced this media and it »

- Alexandra Honigsberg

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Toonz Animation inks $50 mn deal with Liberation Ent.

28 September 2009 10:06 PM, PDT | BusinessofCinema | See recent BusinessofCinema news »

Indian animation company Toonz Animation India and Los Angeles-based Liberation Entertainment have entered into a strategic partnership agreement. Through the partnership, Liberation Entertainment will act as an exclusive distribution arm of Toonz properties across the world, beyond the Indian sub-continent (comprising of the Saarc countries).The projects include the second season of Wolverine and The X Men (co-production with Marvel), second season of Speed Racer - Next Generation (co-production with LionsGate), the original Speed Racer Classic series comprising 52 ... »

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Mirror/Mirror — “88 Miles Per Hour”

27 September 2009 6:25 PM, PDT | Atomic Popcorn | See recent Atomic Popcorn news »

This past week, I revisited the Back to the Future trilogy, directed by Robert Zemeckis. These films essentially laid the groundwork for Michael J. Fox’s career — the man is synonymous with Marty McFly. The movies are a mad dash, guaranteed to raise your stress level and blood pressure no matter how many times you see them. I swear, I always think Dr. Emmett Brown and Marty are going to miss their one lighting quick chance to send Marty back to the future in the first film, despite watching it happen probably hundreds of times.

They got me thinking though — do we have any young actors like Fox in these films, frantic but cool, likeable but authoritative? Do any young guys have a role that’s so synonymous with their name that they’ll never be able to part from it?

Shia LeBeouf, for example, is probably most closely associated with the Transformers movies. »

- John Cooper

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Gigantor - The Collection, Volume 2 (1964 - 68) (Short Ends and Leader)

25 September 2009 7:00 AM, PDT | PopMatters | See recent PopMatters news »

For most audiences in America, anime arrived in the '80s. In celebrated titles like Akira and Grave of the Fireflies, the new highly stylized animation taught unaware Westerners the value of the ethereal Eastern approach. It was an aesthetic carried over to popular cartoon series like G-Force and Robotech catching on quickly with the underage demo. But for those of us old enough to remember local kids shows and syndicated cartoon packages, our first exposure to the artform was probably the spunky Speed Racer. Arriving in the late '60s, the Mach 5's main man and his supportive family unit offered… »

- By Bill Gibron

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Ninja Assassin Movie Poster

24 September 2009 12:00 AM, PDT | toxicshock.tv | See recent toxicshock news »

Check out a brand new international movie poster for the upcoming film “Ninja Assassin” by director James McTeigue (X-Men Origins: Magneto, V for Vendetta) and starring Naomie Harris (Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End) and Rain (Speed Racer ). Synopsis: Ninja Assassin follows Raizo (Rain), one of the deadliest assassins in the world. Taken from the streets as a child, he was transformed into a trained killer by the Ozunu Clan, a secret society whose very existence is considered a myth. But haunted by the merciless execution of his friend by the Clan, Raizo breaks free from them and vanishes. Now he waits, preparing to exact his revenge. In Berlin, Europol [...] »

- Brian Corder

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Michael Sheen Gets Sucked Into the Game, Talks Tron Legacy

16 September 2009 1:23 PM, PDT | FilmSchoolRejects.com | See recent FilmSchoolRejects news »

Word from Coming Soon is that Michael Sheen, the numerator of Frost/Nixon, has been sucked into an arcade machine!  Sheen has been officially added to the cast of the upcoming Tron: Legacy as a night club owner in technosburgh.  The sequel to the 1982 geeksterpiece is set for release in December of next year.  For full details, including whether or not Sheen will fight for the users, check out the article here. Tron is backflippin' fantastic.  I saw it as a wee geek and longed for the day I would get sucked into Super Mario Brother's 3.  Because let's face it, the 80's were great and all, but there would be nothing cool about getting sucked into Asteroids; lots of spinning polygrams.  Tron was not only a showcase for innovative special effects, such as they were, but also added a great deal to the movie geek cannon.  The images and ideas of the film instantly took root with »

- Brian Salisbury

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[DVD Review] The Girl Next Door

13 September 2009 6:29 PM, PDT | JustPressPlay.net | See recent JustPressPlay news »

Before he lost himself in the wilderness or refueled Speed Racer, Hirsch played a frustrated high school senior upset with the boring legacy he’s leaving behind.

“What I’ll always remember about high school is…”

Unable to complete that sentence with anything exciting, Matthew Kidman (Emile Hirsch) turns his honor roll life upside down by involving himself in the world of porn. The Girl Next Door launched Hirsch’s career and made the movie-going public aware of a few other stars as well.  The Girl Next Door was an unexpected comedy in its time and remains a refreshing film full of breakout roles.

High school is hell. Let’s just put that out there. If you’re not a jock, then maybe you’re in band? If not on the football team, maybe you joined the math team? Matthew has a student record that would get him in to »

- Lex Walker

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New Clips: Ninja Assassin & Survival of the Dead

8 September 2009 7:41 AM, PDT | ScreenRant.com | See recent Screen Rant news »

Two new clips have appeared online for two upcoming films: Ninja Assassin and Survival of the Dead. Assassin hit theaters before the end of the year, while Survival is supposed to hit sometime this year, so thankfully there’s not that long left to wait until we get to see them. And Screen Rant has the two new clips to wet your appetite for both movies.

Ninja Assassin

This is one of those action movies that looks to fall back and rely on its kick-ass action (fighting) sequences to carry it when other elements may not be as strong (acting, for example). But that’s sometimes okay, if the action is good enough, that is. And going by this clip, as well as the official trailer, I don’t think that’s going to be a problem in the slightest. Check out the badass Ninja Assassin clip below:

 

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Wow, there »

- Ross Miller

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Gondry starts filming Green Hornet with Seth Rogen & Cameron Diaz

3 September 2009 1:45 PM, PDT | The Scorecard Review | See recent Scorecard Review news »

Nothing can spot Green Hornet now! Ok, there’s actually probably tons of things that could continue to interfere with this production going smoothly. At least it looks like Seth Rogen is keeping the weight off! One thing that is interesting is Nic Cage (who Variety reported was signed up …) is still in negotiating to be the villain.

Here’s the news release …

A classic character of film, television, radio and comic books returns to the big screen in Columbia Pictures’ feature film The Green Hornet, starring Seth Rogen (Superbad, Knocked Up) as the vigilante crime-fighter. Production is underway on the Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) helmed film, which is produced by Neal H. Moritz (I Am Legend, The Fast and the Furious) and executive produced by Michael Grillo (The Accidental Tourist), Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg (Superbad, Pineapple Express), Ori Marmur (Evan Almighty) and George W. Trendle, »

- Jeff Bayer

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Guy Ritchie To Direct Lobo

3 September 2009 12:12 PM, PDT | Filmofilia | See recent Filmofilia news »

Sherlock Holmes director Guy Ritchie has signed on to direct a live-action adaptation of DC Comics’ bad boy anti-hero Lobo, a character originated in 1983 in “Omega Men” by Roger Slifer and Keith Giffen.

Lobo is a alien interstellar bounty hunter. The seven-foot tall, blue-skinned, indestructible and heavily muscled anti-hero drives a pimped out motorcycle, and lands on Earth in search of four fugitives who are bent on wreaking havoc.

Don Payne will pen the script (The Simpsons, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, My Super Ex-Girlfriend) and Joel Silver (The Matrix, Speed Racer, RocknRolla, Ninja Assassin), Akiva Goldsman (Deep Blue Sea, Starsky & Hutch, I Am Legend), and Andrew Rona (The Brothers Grimm) are producing along with Warner Bros, who owns DC Comics and all of its characters.

Shooting kicks off early next year and is aiming for a PG-13 rating. [source: Variety]

Let us know what you think in the comments… »

- Allan Ford

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