"Frankenstein" Live, More or Less

I'd never been to one of those "one night only" Fathom Events screenings before, but when I heard that my local art house was going to show an encore of their live filming and transmission of the UK's National Theatre production of "Frankenstein," I was in. I had actually tried to get tickets last March, but they were sold out almost immediately for my area. This time, with expanded theaters and playdates, it was much easier to find an available screening. I couldn't do both nights, so I picked the version where Benedict Cumberbatch plays the Creature, and Jonny Lee Miller plays Victor Frankenstein. That's two Sherlock Holmes for the price of one.

The pre-show material was mercifully limited. Instead of the usual "First Look" commercials package, we got sounds of a murmuring audience and the screen cycling through black-and-white stills from "Frankenstein" rehearsals. In the place of previews, however, there were a couple of schmaltzy ads for Broadway shows, a PSA for screening sponsor Aviva to push their charity work, and of course Fathom Events and the National Theater plugging similar events. Then there was another intro from a female presenter, and a short making-of segment that felt like I'd accidentally clicked into the DVD extras, before the main event got underway.

Now the conceit of the play being filmed live was something that sounded fine in theory, but I wasn't sure how it would actually come off in practice. It took me about fifteen minutes or so to adjust to the fact that I actually was watching a play and not a film in a movie theater setting. The the editing and pacing were entirely driven by what was happening on stage, but with the multiple cameras providing coverage and often jarring cutting between different shots, initially it felt like the action should have been moving along a little quicker. the fun of live theater is being there in the moment, but the filmed version was too obviously planned out to capture that spontaneity. I'd also have liked more wide shots to show off more of the impressive stagecraft on display, and less of the distracting overhead camera, which was slightly too far from the stage.

Once I got caught up in the play, most of these distractions faded into the background. Though the Creature and Victor Frankenstein are given equal billing, this is really the Creature's show. The first act of "Frankestein" deals entirely with the Creature's birth into the world and early education. Cumberbatch is phenomenal in the role, with one of the best introductions I've ever seen. He first emerges from a womblike structure a howling mass of newly conscious flesh, and then learns to use arms and legs, to crawl, to stand, to walk across an empty stage, all in the space of a few minutes. He writhes and spasms, but gradually gains control over his malformed, stitched-together body. We see his growing self-awareness, his struggle to learn, to live. Most importantly, we see signs of a keen intelligence in the swiftness of his improvement, missing from most filmed versions of "Frankenstein."

The play hews closely to the content of the Mary Shelley novel, if not its form. Instead of the nested flashbacks, the narrative is linear, following the Creature's point of view as he explores the world, and has his first unfortunate encounters with human society. Several minor characters are nicely fleshed out, including De Lacy, played by Karl Johnson, the old blind man who becomes the Creature's friend and tutor. Instead of merely taking instruction, the Creature debates with him after learning to speak, challenges him, and displays early signs of alienation and anger. Also greatly improved is the role of Elizabeth, Frankenstein's fiancée. She's played with considerable charm by Naomie Harris, one of several colorblind casting choices in the production, who we meet once the Creature arrives in Geneva to confront Frankenstein directly.

Now Victor Frankenstein has always been an arrogant, prideful encapsulation of everything scientific ethics review boards exist to prevent. Jonny Lee Miller nails that, but he also makes the man a little sympathetic, a tragic figure whose downfall is painful to watch. His scenes with the Cumberbatch are the heart of the story, and the two are much better matched than I was expecting. The play treats them as equals, really two sides of the same person, to underline the obvious subtext. Cumberbatch is the stronger actor here, and he's has the meatier role for the performance I saw, but Miller does his share of heavy lifting. By the climax, he's become the play's second protagonist, despite having less time onstage. His awkward affections for Elizabeth are convincing, as are his struggles to contain and mollify a ravenous scientific curiosity.

It makes me curious about Miller's take on the Creature, and how it might differ from Cumberbatch's performance, which was the clear highlight of "Frankenstein" for me. I've never seen anything else quite like this, where the actor is juggling impeded speech, sometimes shambling and sometimes frenetic movement (or both at once), and a massive amount of make-up and prosthetics, all in the name of making the Creature look properly inhuman. The physical stuff is damned impressive, but it pales in comparison to the way Cumberbatch gets across the Creature's moral and intellectual development, that fuels the inner torments of his existence that inevitably consume him. He seethes at the injustice of being abandoned and condemned to loneliness. He becomes cruel and vicious, and even something of a bitter wit, but there's never a doubt that he has the capacity for goodness.

The production by Danny Boyle is eye-catching. A star field of dangling incandescent light bulbs stand in for thunder, lighting, electrical activity, and perhaps other things. The rotating stage occasionally reveals hidden sets, and more complex structures build up over time, but early on there's a nice minimalism to the staging. Sun and moon are simple illuminated images, and a strip of turf and illusory flights of birds stand in for all of nature. It was difficult to get a sense of the space without actually being there, and I'm sure that some of the effect didn't come across as intended. For instance, a miniature locomotive traverses the stage at one point, but the cameras did a terrible job of conveying the size and the speed of the thing, which would have been easy to see if I were actually seated in the audience.

Ultimately, I don't think that the filmed transmission "Frankenstein" is a great substitute for the real live play. But given the extremely limited ability that most of us have to access these highly acclaimed productions, it's damn well good enough. And I have to say that it was nice to be in a screening situation where you know it's perfectly okay to clap at the end, as the theater was full of the sound of the National Theater audience cheering on the performers as the play ended. I cheered with them.
---

Read More

To Ray Bradbury

My favorite author is dead. Perhaps this is not such a sad thing, as Ray Bradbury lived a very long and full life, was much beloved and respected, and created many, many enduring works of fiction. My first major encounter with his writing was when I was about twelve, and borrowed the audiobook, "The Fantastic Tales of Ray Bradbury," from the library to help pass the time during a long car trip. I spent most of that trip becoming increasing entranced with Bradbury's stories. Each of the eight cassette tapes had a short story or two on each side, narrated by Bradbury himself. One of them, containing "The Illustrated Man" and "Marionettes, Inc," refused to play on my Walkman. However, after trying every other option in the house when we got home, it was coaxed to play correctly on my father's hefty old 70s era portable cassette player, about the size of a briefcase. I just had to keep holding down the Play button to counter one of the cassette spools being a bit stuck, which I did for the entire length of both stories, not minding a bit.

Bradbury wrote about October circuses and robot grandmothers and the terrible beauty of the planet Mars and its inhabitants. He wrote about being a boy in a small Midwestern town, about nightmare visions of the future, about monsters of every conceivable shape and size, from red-faced babies to totalitarian societies that would criminalize the act of taking an evening walk or owning a book. He's best known for his fantasy, horror, and science-fiction, but he also wrote nostalgic stories about American life and childhood. What made much of his work so distinctive was his ability to make any setting, any place feel wondrous and terrifying and full of unseen mystery. His short stories were anthologized in dozens of collections with titles like "R is for Rocket," "S is for Space," "The October Country," "The Illustrated Man," and of course, "The Martian Chronicles." The city library had several of these, but my junior high library actually had more of the older, more obscure volumes, which I happily devoured, along with "Something Wicked This Way Comes," "Fahrenheit 451," and "The Halloween Tree." Many of the short stories became the basis of the anthology series "The Ray Bradbury Chronicles," which was produced for television in the mid-80s.

As this is a media blog, I should talk about Bradbury's multiple brushes with Hollywood. He wrote for "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and he wrote a single installment of "The Twilight Zone," though his own stories often seemed to embody the spirit of that show better than many of the actual episodes. Bradbury also wrote for movies, including the first treatment of "It Came from Outer Space," John Huston's "Moby Dick," and an unproduced sequel to "The Day the Earth Stood Still." There were several adaptations of his work, including "Something Wicked This Way Comes," François Truffaut's deeply troubled "Fahrenheit 451," "The Illustrated Man," the "Martian Chronicles" miniseries, "The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit," "A Sound of Thunder," and an animated version of "The Halloween Tree," which I try to watch every year. None of the adaptations ever lived up to the books and the short stories, as it has proven very difficult to translate the richness of Bradbury's writing to the screen. Filmmakers keep trying, though. Remakes of two films, "Fahrenheit 451" and "The Illustrated Man," have been in various states of development for ages.

I regret that I never quite managed to meet the man. In the mid-90s, I remember reading about his yearly appearances at the Los Angeles Festival of Books, but the events were always hours of driving away, and Bradbury's appearances were so popular that there was no hope of getting tickets. By stupendous luck, I was in the audience for his final appearance at Comic-Con, but missed him at the book signing afterwards. I can't imagine what I would have said to him. Probably thank you. Thank you for Margot in the rain on Venus, and Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud, and the dark Martians with their golden eyes, and every single member of the Elliott family, but especially Cecy and Timothy. Thank you for the catacombs of Mexico, the dandelions in Illinois, the African veldt in the nursery, and the empty mechanical house in the year 2026. And thank you for inspiring me to try writing myself, though it never amounted to much. Once I got into the habit, though, it proved very hard to stop.

Hail and farewell, my dear old friend. And rest assured that the best of you will surely live forever.
---

Read More

Canon v. Fanfiction

There's a Slate article that was posted yesterday about Before Watchmen, a series of prequel comics about the origins of the major players in Alan Moore's "Watchmen" universe. Alan Moore has made it clear that he does not approve of this, and while some fans are rejecting the new stories sight unseen, most have been fairly ambivalent. Everyone agrees that the move is a cash grab by DC, meant to capitalize on the higher profile of "Watchmen" after the recent movie version. Not many particularly care.

What caught my eye were the comments about fanfiction, first comparing a "Before Watchmen" cover image to "fan fiction detritus," and then suggesting that fanfiction was a more suitable avenue for this brand of derivative works than the "official" comics, and noting that Moore essentially wrote fanfiction himself with "Lost Girls." Cue multiple comments in the discussion section arguing the proper use of the term fanfiction, which I'm not going to reiterate here, because I've already had that argument and written those posts. Instead, I'm going to try to answer the question nobody quite managed to ask here - what makes a derivative work, a piece of intellectual property based off of a previous piece of intellectual property, a legitimate extension of the original? Where is the border between the canon work and the fanfiction? And what is the mechanism for granting that authority?

Well, you start with the original author first as the prime authority on their own work. If J.K. Rowling says that Dumbledore is gay, even though it was never stated anywhere in the "Harry Potter" books, then Dumbledore is gay. If she decides to anoint a new author to continue the adventures of the Potter kids, her word carries more weight than anyone else's. Film and television series, which are more collaborative mediums, often depend on a creator incorporating the work of others. There are only a handful television creators, for instance, who will write every episode of a show themselves, but if they retain creative oversight over the finished product, the show is still considered their work to a large degree.

However, you can't call something a derivative work until the original author is out of the picture. These days that's very common, as many creators of popular media don't have the rights to their creations. Legally, whoever controls the rights to the property controls the official canon, the right to add or change a story as their see fit. So DC can hire other creative talent to write "Before Watchmen" comics without paying any attention to the wishes of Alan Moore. When Bryan Singer made "Superman Returns," he chose to ignore the third and fourth theatrical "Superman" films and pick up the story after "Superman II," with Warner Bros' backing. In the case of comic book characters, they’re often passed around between so many different writers and artists, each making their own contribution, it’s hard to say who really was really the primary creator.

When most people think of fan fiction, they think of the amateur stories passed around online by hobbyists. However, what professional writers do when they work in one of these existing universes isn't any different, except for the money and the legalities. They're using existing characters and concepts to tell new stories. However, what the money and the legalities give them is immediate legitimacy because they also get the right to profit by the work's association with he original. Anything written for profit is taken more seriously than the stuff written for fun and self-indulgence, and the involvement of whoever is holding the rights, even if it's as licensor for a bad tie-in novel, will at least give the appearance of oversight. Something "official" suggests that there's quality control at work somewhere, that there is a protective gatekeeper acting in the best interest of your favorite franchise, Of course, most of the time it's really about exploiting a piece of IP to the fullest extent possible. Do you really think most "Spider-man" fans are all that excited about the new reboot?

Now when the rights holder and the original author clash over the canon, who wins? It depends in each case. J.K. Rowling’s reputation is such that she’d easily win out in the court of public opinion over any company that managed to wrest the “Potter” rights away from her, and try to launch additional sequels with a different writer. Her writing is so integral to those books, she is irreplaceable. However, there's hardly any fuss when Marvel plays musical chairs with the writers and directors of its "Avengers" universe movies, or make decisions about their content that any previous creative talent would disagree with. In the television world, fans raised a fuss when Dan Harmon was fired from "Community," but nobody blinked an eye when "Whitney" got a new showrunner.

The final arbiter is really the audience. They're the ones who draw a lot of the lines between what is considered canon and what isn't, who will challenge the authority of the people who control a beloved media property, and sometimes even the original authors. They're the ones who ignore lesser movie sequels, who pretend that "After MASH" and the third season of "Gargoyles" never happened, and are quick to remind you that Han Solo shot first, despite what George Lucas thinks. No amount of hype or marketing was enough to convince them that George Lazenby was meant to be James Bond, or that Halle Berry was Catwoman. The fans are the ones who care the most about what is and isn't canon, so it makes sense that they often have the most say over the matter in the end.

There are very few instances of something originating purely from the fans being incorporated into canon, because the amateurs and the professionals exist in separate universes to everyone's benefit. but it does happen once in a while. There's Derpy from the "My Little Pony" cartoon, "Figwit" in "Lord of the Rings," and Lt Uhura's first name. And of course that's not counting the number of fans who ended up writing for "Dr. Who" or "Batman" or "Star Trek" officially, with all the money and the legalities. You'll hear writers for many of these properties touting fan credentials these days, and for good reason. If the original author is out of the picture, and the motives of the rights holders are suspect, sometimes a derivative work can still be good and worthwhile if the new creator is significantly invested in it.

In the case of "Before Watchman," DC did one thing right. They put some of their best talent on the project, including J. Michael Straczynski and Brian Azzarello. You can argue that DC is disrespecting Alan Moore and that they're only doing this for the money, but nobody can say whether or not the miniseries are actually going to be any good. If the quality is up to par, and they're accepted by the fans, they'll become a part of the "Watchmen" canon whether Moore likes it or not. And if they're terrible, then the fans will reject them, like the "Psycho" sequels no one remembers, or "The Blues Brothers 2000," and we can all move on.
---

Read More

FOX Kids and "Escaflowne"

Ready for a little anime history lesson? This week marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the FOX network, which will be airing a special this Sunday to remind us of all the good times, and their best shows like "The X-Files" and "24" and "Arrested Development." However, one corner of FOX's television history I'm sure they're going to ignore is what happened to FOX Kids, which had the top rated children's programming in the country for most of the 1990s, before it and most network children's television was scrapped or farmed out in the early 2000s. And there's no chance that they'll acknowledge what remains the worst thing I ever saw them put on television: the FOX Kids edit of the Bandai anime series "A Vision of Escaflowne."

First, some context. Anime series have been acquired and edited for American cartoon viewers for decades. However, starting in the mid-90s, we had a significant boom. "Pokemon" got huge, and then the Cartoon Network started Toonami in 1997, their afternoon action block that started bringing in the anime titles that skewed a little older and little more risky than the shows that ran on the networks. The emerging young otaku population, which was starting to get their anime unedited and unfiltered through smaller distributors and the internet, made the Toonami block a hit. In the year 2000, they attracted a lot of attention with the success of shows like "Gundam Wing" and "Tenchi Muyo." The big networks, namely Kids' WB and FOX Kids, got interested. This resulted in a brief arms race as the different channels went after popular anime series. That fall, Kids' WB nabbed "Cardcaptor Sakura," renamed "Cardcaptors," and "Yu-Gi-Oh!" Fox Kids had "Monster Rancher," "Flint the Time Detective," and "A Vision of Escaflowne," a fantasy series Toonami had previously expressed interest in.

It became very obvious very quickly that FOX had no idea what they were doing with "A Vision of Escaflowne," retitled "Escaflowne." The original version was an adventure serial made for older children and teenagers. Its protagonists were a girl, Hitomi, and a boy, Van, both about fourteen years old. The story was mostly told from Hitomi's point of view, a girl from Earth mysteriously swept away to Van's world, the fantastic planet Gaea. FOX wanted an action show that would appeal to its target demographic of 6-12 year old boys, and edited "Escaflowne" to fit. They deleted the entire first episode, deemed too slow, and too focused on Hitomi, opting to insert parts of it into later episodes as flashbacks to fill in any story gaps. Poor Hitomi, like Sakura in "Cardcaptors" the same year, was heavily de-emphasized in favor of the male lead. All the romantic storylines were cut or minimized. Episodes were edited for time and inappropriate content, but also to speed up slower scenes, to provide more blatant exposition, and to make the action sequences more prominent.

Imagine "Game of Thrones," edited for the time and content constraints of network television. Now imagine that it's edited so that the child characters in the ensemble are now positioned as the lead characters. Now imagine that it's also edited to appeal to the sensibilities of teenage "Twilight" fans. You get my drift. "Escaflowne," ironically, didn't have all that much objectionable content. There wasn't nearly the amount of violence as something like "Gundam Wing." However, the show had mature elements like an ongoing war, missing and illegitimate children, arranged marriages, and lot of the story revolved around romantic relationships. "Escaflowne" was a terrible fit for FOX Kids from day one, and the going theory at the time was that the show had been acquired by the network solely to spite its competitors.

Existing fans were already bracing for the worst when the promotional material started being released, but nobody was really prepared for how bad FOX's "Escaflowne" would turn out to be, or the unusual strength of the backlash. In the end, only ten episodes of "Escaflowne" aired on FOX Kids before it was cancelled and replaced with "NASCAR Racers." The entire run aired in Canada on YTV, where it came to light that the series had been shortened to 23 episodes from the original 26, due to the extensive cuts. So much material was removed, that several episodes ran short, and had to be supplemented by adding scenes from the next episode. This resulted in a string of installments that were actually the back half of one episode grafted to the first half of the next. This played havoc on the show's existing story structure. And by removing all the slower-moving incidental and character building scenes, and relentlessly focusing on the action and spectacle, the result was a severely simplified and dumbed down "Escaflowne" that was practically unwatchable.

There had been badly localized anime before, but the notoriety of this particular adaptation was fueled by a couple of other contributing factors. One was access. This was one of the first cases where you had a significant number of fans who were already familiar with the original anime and understood how severe the changes were. Bandai, through the AnimeVillage label, had already released the entire series with English subtitles on VHS tapes in 1998. I had rented my way through the whole set the summer before the English language version premiered. Also, as the FOX edit was being broadcast, one of the story editors who had worked on it, using the pseudonym "TVGuy", was posting about the adaptation process to one of the Usenet anime groups. He was very forthcoming, and clearly very frustrated by the situation, detailing a constant struggle behind the scenes to keep the edits from being worse than they already were. He attracted a lot of debate and discussion that otherwise might not have happened.

TVGuy not only provided an insider POV, but he also confirmed the existence of a lot of the lousy network practices that had only been suspected up to that point. For instance, acquired programs had their existing scores replaced by music composed in-house, to make the editing easier. This meant that "Escaflowne's" highly praised orchestral score, composed by Yoko Kanno, was replaced in many places by a new techno-heavy one. Kanno's score would have been replaced entirely, but Bandai fought to keep it. However, the surviving pieces, rearranged and credited as "additional music," didn't mesh particularly well with the new themes. And thanks to a network rule that no cartoon was allowed to have silence for more than 90 seconds, the new "Escaflowne" was terribly overscored. All the quieter moments were remixed to add music, changing the tone and atmosphere considerably.

"Escaflowne" got a happy ending, though. The original Japanese series was already a worldwide hit, and when the unedited version was released on DVD later in 2001, it sold well. The kids who saw "Escaflowne" on FOX and were curious about it could easily get a hold of the originals, which was rare in those days. As for FOX Kids, they were part of the Fox Family acquisition by ABC, and ceased to exist after 2002. The FOX version of "Escaflowne" also had a home video release, but it was quickly cancelled after only four volumes.

Oh, and there was an "Escaflowne" movie, released in Japan in 2000. It had a limited run in 2002 in the US, and aired on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim in 2005, with no apparent edits.
---

Read More

Are We Ready for 2012?

As I'm sure you've heard, there's going to be a new "Batman" movie this summer. And an "Avengers" movie. And a new non-"Cars" PIXAR movies. And in December, a little flick called "The Hobbit" will grace our theater screens. And James Bond will return in "Skyfall." And the "Twilight" saga will finally end with "Breaking Dawn Part 2." 2012 will soon be upon us, and some long-awaited films are just around the corner. As with every year, there's bound to be plenty of bad mixed in with the good, but for now, with everything yet unseen, it's a good time to just sit back and enjoy the speculation and anticipation. Consider the possibilities, if you will.

Release slates are still very much a work in progress, but most of the big studio titles have been scheduled, and we have a pretty good idea of which in-progress projects are expected to reach theaters by the end of next December. Here's some of the upcoming titles I'm looking forward to, that haven't gotten quite as much media attention as "The Hunger Games" and "Men in Black III" and their ilk yet:

John Carter - The marketing so far has been horrific. Absolutely awful. However, if you look at the film's pedigree, there is a lot to get excited about. This is the live action debut of "Finding Nemo" director Andrew Stanton, with a script written by PIXAR alum Mark Andrews, with an assist by Michael Chabon. A crummy title and a clueless marketing might be hiding something really interesting here.

Moonrise Kingdom - The next film by Wes Anderson. We know it's set in the 60s, we know that it was shooting in New England, and we know it's about a group of townsfolk chasing a pair of eloping love-birds. And the cast includes Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand, Jason Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton, Harvey Keitel, and of course, the one and only Bill Murray.

Gravity - A year ago, everyone wanted to know who would land the lead female role in Alfonso Cuaron's latest science fiction feature, and the part finally went to Sandra Bullock. George Clooney will co-star, replacing Robert Downey Jr. This is Cuaron's first directorial effort since "Children of Men," and there have been whispers and rumors that it may be the most daring thing he's attempted yet.

Django Unchained - Quentin Tarantino is making another revenge movie, this time about a former slave, played by Jamie Foxx, settling the score with his former master, played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson, Kerry Washington, and Kurt Russell will be along for the ride. I'm a little scared of how far Tarantino is going to take this, but I wouldn't miss is for the world.

The Master - This one may not be completed before the end of the year, but after a lot of false starts and cast shuffling, I'm just glad that Paul Thomas Anderson's period film, about a man who starts a new religion played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, is finally getting made. Anderson is one of the major American auteurs, and it has been far too long since his last feature, "There Will Be Blood."

Prometheus - Ridley Scott's recent films haven't been great, so I have very mixed feelings about the prospects of "Prometheus," which is not a sequel to "Alien," apparently, but a story from the same universe. Then again, Scott's never gone wrong on a science-fiction film, and with Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender as the leads, I'm certainly willing to give "Prometheus" the benefit of the doubt.

Life of Pi - I know I've talked up this film before, but I find it such an intriguing one. Based on the beloved novel by Yann Martel, "Life of Pi" will follow the adventures of a young Indian boy, stranded in a boat with a Bengal tiger and other animals after a shipwreck. Ang Lee is directing, after a parade of other directors came and went, and here's hoping that he can do the book justice.

The We and the I - Not much is known about Michel Gondry's next film, except that it involves a group of kids from the Bronx and inadvertent time travel. Anyway, here's hoping it'll be a return to form for Gondry after the disappointment of "The Green Hornet." The superhero flick was much too straight-laced an exercise for his talents, and it'll be good to see him fully unleashed again.

Seven Psychopaths - This will be the second film directed by Martin McDonagh, who is best known for "In Bruges," and writing a string of gory, violent, darkly humorous plays about murderers, hit-men, maniacs, and very, very bad people. I adore his work, and relish the thought of him working with a slew of screen badasses, including Woody Harrelson, Christopher Walken and Tom Waits.

Cloud Atlas - There isn't the space to go into the complexities of the multi-universe story that Tom Tykwer and the Wachowskis siblings are attempting to bring to the screen, or the incredible lengths they've gone to in order to finance and film it. For more details, see this NY Times article. But one thing is certain. I have absolutely got to see what the end result. Whether failure or triumph, it's going to be spectacular.

And a few more to look out for:

* Steven Spielberg is directing Lincoln with Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role.
* Spike Lee will reportedly reprise the role of Mookie from "Do the Right Thing" in Red Hook Summer, which will premiere at Sundance.
* Woody Allen's European tour continues with a stop in Italy for Nero Fiddled, with Jesse Eisenberg and Ellen Page.
* Park Chan Wook, director of the Vengeance Trilogy, will be making his English language debut with Stoker, a thriller starring Nicole Kidman and Mia Wasikowska.
* Tim Burton is making a movie where Johnny Depp is a vampire, called Dark Shadows, and no one is the least bit surprised.
* I've been hearing about Rian Johnson's new science film Looper for ages, and I hope it turned out well.
* Finally, David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis will be my first Robert Pattinson film. Hope the kid can act.

Happy watching!
---

Read More