Out Of The Ether 3/8/10

What's new in the movie world? Well, there are a few things hitting the intrawebz this last week that seem worthy of passing on. The Academy Awards were broadcast last night, everyone and their brother are going to be writing about that, and some of them are probably going to be able to score interviews with winners, etc. So, I'm skipping that. If I can find the time, I might throw a separate post together which will just be about the Oscars, the winners and non-winners, and so on.

There is some other big news though. There's a new Iron man 2 trailer out and........... it looks bad ass. I'm more excited about this sequel now than I was prior to the original, and these days, I don't really get very excited for sequels. CHECK IT OUT!!!!!

In other news related to both sequels and trailers, there's a new trailer for George A. Romeo's Survival Of The Dead. I'm unfortunately underwhelmed. Severely underwhelmed would be the description. I might have high expectations from the man who created the modern zombie film, especially when it comes to zombie films, this is true. At the same time, Land Of The Dead was worse than just not good enough for Romero to have made. it was not good enough for Paul W. S. Anderson to have made, and I liked Resident Evil. Diary Of The Dead was a vast improvement over Land, but it certainly had it's flaws, especially in comparison to The Zombie Diaries, a film whose concept is almost exactly the same and was made a year earlier, but released a year later. If you can handle the disappointment, your bag of lifeless guts of zombie movie is here.

A late edition is the trailer for the Tron Legacy trailer. I haven't even watched it yet, and I'm excited. I loved Tron as a kid. I'm really interested to see what's going to come of this. Check it out here.

 I didn't realize how sequel intensive this edition of Out Of The Ether was going to be until now. But, since we're already at it, here's some more. Zombieland 2 is going to be 3D, but the good 3D. It's going to be filmed in 3D, with 3D projection in mind, not as post production. If you're not sure what I mean, the difference between the two is the difference between My Bloody Valentine 3D and Avatar 3D. One of them looks like the gimmick it is (which I enjoyed thoroughly) and the other looks like another storytelling tool to help create the illusion of an existning world. Of all the 3D projects I've heard or read whispers of lately, I think this one is most appropriate. Zombieland was the perfect kind of over the top, funny, silly to do some really fun things with a 3D image. I'll be looking for all the news I can grab on this one, and I'll pass it along to you all. Bloody Disgusting has the full story.

Here's one I have no clue what to think of, and figured maybe someone out there might be able to sway me one way or the other. The Green Lantern is apparently going to be 3D as well. There's some part of me that recognizes some potential for very cool things with Power Ring and 3D, and flight in 3D is pretty freaking cool, but this might just get silly too. Sucker Punch the film 300 and Watchmen's Zack Snyder is working on will be 3D as well. Whatever you have to say about Snyder's film, he definitely has a great visual style, so he might really make this cool. I'm interested in his Legends Of The Guardians kids fantasy film as well. The story is over at /film (accompanied by some very cool fan art).

Sequels and comic book movies, lots of both this week. For a number of years there's been word of Sam Raimi trying to put together a new film version of The  Shadow. I can't think of any Raimi film I've ever seen that I completely disliked (with the exception of Spiderman 3 which I consider a Sony Studios film), so the idea was always pretty cool. News now is that Raimi won't be directing, but will produce and hand the directing responsibilities off to David Slade, director of Hard Candy and 30 Days Of Night. I like this idea. Hard Candy was a gut punch of a little movie and 30 Days Of Night gave us bad ass vampires in a way we hadn't seen in a long time. Check out the details over at /film.

One of the films which got some good word of mouth at Sundance and sounds pretty interesting is Splice, starring Sarah Polley and Adrian Brody and directed by Cube genius, Vincenzo Natali. Warner Bros. is apparently planning a June release for this bad boy, which is about gene splicing and it's consequences. I'm interested. Find out if you are.

In news of the "What was that you just said?" Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov (director of the visually interesting, narratively handicapped Daywatch, Nightwatch and the recent 9), are going to co-direct Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer. The source material is a book written by Seth Grahame-Smith, who had success with "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" as well.. This could be an absolute blast, but it could be a steaming pile of annoying as well. Two directors who's visual senses are beyond reproach but can sometimes be light on character or story might drive this into the ground. Bloody Disgusting dishes it up for you.

The last bit of news I've got today relates to the Fright Night remake I've been hearing threats of for a few years already. /film has a story suggesting the newest version trying to make it to theaters has been written by Marti Noxon of Buffy The Vampire Slayer (the T.V series) and directed by Craig Gillespie, of Lars And The Real Girl. I have to say that if they're going to do a remake of this film (which I watched religiously as a teenager) this sounds like a good combination. Noxon's humor would capture the essence of the original, and Gillespie has certainly shown an affinity for creating characters he cares about and portraying them as believably human and sympathetic, even in unusual situations.