FF:NSW That Haggis Thread

• Holy Catsuits!: Brace yourself for the new Halle Berry catwoman look - what little there is of it ... Superherohype
  



• 5-25-77: The first big budget star wars fan film? Richard Read Johnson has put together a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age film about the release of Star Wars on 25/5/1977 (danged american dates) - and includes appearances by some big names, including the gold bikini'd one herself, Carrie Fisher ... more info and a trailer availabe at Filmforce
  



• Bishop v Aliens v Predator: This time next year, Aliens v Predator: The Movie, will be released. Director is Paul Anderson (Resident Evil) and the star is Lance Henriksen (Bishop in the Aliens series) - but he's not playing Bishop ... plot spoilers: He plays a billionaire industrialist who finds a pyramid in antarctica where aliens and predators are fighting to the death ...
  

 

Catwoman - I saw the suit yesterday. It looks fine to me, despite the strong opnions of vocal internet nerds. I'm not going to judge the movie based on a costume.

5-25-77 - I've heard about this movie for YEARS, and at one point I thought they'd thrown in the towel and decided not to make it. I just downloaded the preview and it really does look like a fan film.

 

Is that a good thing or a bad thing, Ki?

• Indy v Batman: First there was Freddy v Jason. Now, Indiana Jones v Batman! Well ... from a certain point of view. Warner Bros has announced that the new Batman movie will be released on July 4, 2005. Which is the same release date as Indiana Jones 4 ...



• Porn boom: According to a recent study, the number of pornographic web pages on the net has grown from 14 million in 1998 to 260 million in 2003. That's a 1,800% growth rate in online pornography. Make of that what you will.



• Virii: not exactly news, but I found it interesting. When MS releases security patches for Windows or Internet Explorer, virus makers reverse engineer the patches to discover the security hole, then create a virus to attack it. But why create a virus for a flaw that's already been identified? Because most people don't download and install the latest security patches from MS, so the holes are left wide open for the viruses to attack ...

 

Is that a good thing or a bad thing, Ki?


Well it's not really a good thing.

Actually Kevin Smith did the same thing and released internet trailers of his own rather than studio trailers for J&SBSB, and those looked really fan film-ish. But I really enjoyed the movie, so here's hoping.

 

• Da Vinci Code: The Beautiful Mind team of Brian Grazer (producer), Ron Howard (director), and Akiva Goldsman (writer) have just begun adapting the book as their next film project.



• Alexander: Some sneak shots of Colin Farrell and Eric Bana on set in morocca, filming Oliver Stone's ALEXANDER can be seen ... here



• Cursed ... Recast: Wes Craven's CURSED, currently in limbo, will begin shoot again mid November - with a few changes, for example ... a new lead character. 'Some' of the story has been thrown out and other parts rewritten. Craven is apparently unhappy with the entire film, which he says he was forced into, and is keen to get it over with so he can move on.

 

• RIP Elia Kazan: Controversial director Elia Kazan (On the Waterfront, East of Eden, A Streetcar Named Desire), winner of 20 academy awards, died aged 94. He was infamous in Hollywood for "naming names" in the 1950s communist witch-hunt.



• RIP Donald O'Connor: O'Connor, famous for his solo musical number in Singin In The Rain (where he ran up the wall of a studio set to do a backflip), died aged 78.



• Rustboy: If you like 3d animated films, you have to see the site for the amazing labor-of-love (and work in progress) 3d animated film Rustboy being made by amateur Scottish artist Brian Taylor.



• MS Sued: Microsoft is facing a class action lawsuit in california. It's been accused of providing software that is vulnerable to security threats (such as viruses) that cause "massive, cascading failures." It also claims that MS security patches and reports are too technical to be understood by consumers, and are being used instead by hackers. The lawsuit is asking for unspecified damages, as well as an injunction against MS taking part in "unfair business practices" ...

 

• Hitchhiker's Guide: Disney's Touchstone pictures has given the green light for production of Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy to begin in London next year, to be written & directed by newbie Nick Jennings.



• Matrix: Remember when Neo was just Thomas Anderson, working for a company called Metacortex? Well, there's some interesting things going on over there ... Metacortex



• Being John Carpenter?: Bad pun. The team of Spike Jonze (director) and Charlie Kaufman (writer) - who brought us the weirdly wonderful Being John Malkovich & Adaptation - are now working on ... an untitled horror movie. One can only imagine what's in store ...

 

• Kill Bill: The french may be bastards, but they have 5 new clips of Kill Bill ... here



• Blade: Filming has begun, and the cast includes Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristofferson, Jessica Biel Ryan Reynolds, Dominic Pursell, Triple H, Parker Posey, James Remar, Callum Keith Rennie, Natasha Lyonne, John Michael Higgins, and Steve Braun.



• Big Fish: The trailer for the new Tim Burton weird fest (featuring Ewan McGregor, amongst other fine cast members) can be seen ... at yahoo movies



• Superman: The rumoured shortlist of stars up for the role of Superman is now: Josh Lucas, Scott Speedman, Brett Ratner, Matthew Boomer, Henry Cavill, and Brendan Fraser.



• The Village: M Night Shyamalan's new film, The Village (formerly The Woods) starts filming in Pennsylvania this month. Cast includes Joaquin Phoenix, Sigourney Weaver, Adrien Brody, and William Hurt.

 

• 3 Stooges: The Farrelly Bros start filming their 3 Stooges movie next year (2005 release), and word is they are planning to cast serious actors rather than comedy actors in the lead roles - they've reportedly said they would love to have Benicio Del Toro (Usual Suspects) playing a stooge ...



• Catwoman: For a sneak peek at the new Catwoman movie, check out the Hollywood Report pics ... here



• Starsky & Hutch: It appears Ben Stiller & Owen Wilson won't be the Dukes of Hazard - they just finished starring as Starsky (Stiller) & Hutch (Wilson) in a new film version of the cult tv show. Also features Snoop Dogg as HuggyBear and Vince Vaughn as the villain, Reese Feldman ...

 

• Student Sued Over Shift Key: First, BMG music installed new "anti-piracy" protection on a recently released cd by singer Anthony Hamilton. Then, a Princeton student announced on his website that the protection was simply an autorun program that could be circumvented by pressing the shift key when the cd was loaded. If that wasn't funny enough, now: BMG is planning to sue the student for maligning the company's reputation, and for violating copyright laws by publishing instructions for "hacking" digital protection ...

 

• Charlotte's Web: A live action version of Charlotte's Web is in pre-production. It's being adapted by screenwriter Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich).



• Die Hard 4: Apparently, in order to secure the rights of the name "Man of War" for one of his films, Bruce Willis traded Fox (who has "Man of War" registered as a title) for a deal to star in Die Hard 4.



• Riding The Bullet: The Stephen King short story is being adapted to the big screen - filming begins in November, with Mick Garris (The Stand) directing, and Jonathan Jackson, David Arquette, Charles Dunning, and Erika Christensen starring.



• UK Gov Goes Open Source: The British Government is trialling open source software in nine departments - including te office of the deputy PM - over the next year.



• RIP: eBooks: it appears the eBooks are another dotcom disaster - sales of ebooks have done so poorly that major booksellers, like Barnes & Noble, are deciding to end the sale of ebooks.



• RIP: Free Music Sharing: in an agreement with major record labels, p2p companies such as Kazaa and Morpheus are planning to introduce "billing" schemes for users swapping music files over their networks.

 

• RIP: Digital Downloads..?: A NY company, E-Data, is claming that it holds a patent on commercial transfers of digital products over the internet, based on a patent issued in 1985 that "covers the transmission of information to a remote point-of-sale location, where information is then transferred to a material object." So if you buy something and download it, such as an mp3, you are in violation of their patent. The company is suing Microsoft over MS's new music download service, MSN Music Club, and then plans to sue other pay-per-view download companies.



• Israel v MS: The Israeli government has declared MS a monopoly and has suspended all government contracts with MS and are now looking to open source software to replace their MS software.



• RIP: MSN Chat: As of Oct 14, MSN Chatrooms will close their doors to the general public. Access is by subscription only.



• Asimov: the new Tolkien..?: while Fox is busy making Asimov's I, Robot (starring Will Smith, directed by Alex Proyas), they are now planning to do a LOTR style production of Asimov's Foundation, to be shot back to back and released as a trilogy.

 

• Jamie Oliver: The Movie: Dustin Hoffman is apparently interested in making a biopic about British chef superstar Jamie Oliver.



• Spiderman 2 trailer: No, it's not available yet, but AICN has posted ... a description of it here

 

As a spoiler-free type person I'm too scared to visit AICN. Do they mention when the trailer might be coming out?

 

Sorry, Ki. No idea. It doesn't say.

• Microsoft #1: If you're looking for a job at Microsoft, make sure you have Internet Explorer - apparently you can't view the MS Job Vacancies pages with anything but IE.



• Microsoft #2: Creating the new Microsoft operating system (codename: Longhorn) will apparently cost MS as much as it cost the US government to send Neil Armstrong to the moon ...



• Microsoft #3: Added to the growing list of Microsoft Haters: the state of Massachusetts. The Massachusetts government is shifting away from MS software and towards open source software.



• Google Sued: A french court has fined Google 75,000 Euros for allowing advertisers to link their ads to trademarked search terms - which the court fund violeated the trademark owners' copyright. Google has 30 days to stop.

 

• Revolutions clips ahoy!: If you are really fast, you can catch some new Matrix tv spots posted here and then hurry on over to the website of our very own Today Tonight for even more Matrix videos and spoilers here



• Sylvester Stallone: Talk of another Rocky has been put on hold ... to make way for another Rambo. Rambo #4 to be precise. However, word is that Stallone may get someone else to play Rambo this time around. A prequel perhaps? Also, more word on the street (it's a big street...) is that Stallone will replace the new Governor of California in the remake of Westworld.



• Another day, another MS antitrust story: Federal and state authorities are investigating MS's new online music service - which invokes Internet Explorer, whether it is the default browser or not, which is in violation of MS's antitrust settlement ...

 

• More Pirates: While Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott are busy scribbling away a script for Pirates of the Caribbean 2 (Depp, Bloom & Knightley have all signed on), Disney is thinking of going the back-to-back sequels route and filming #2 & #3 together.



• Matrix Hermits: Read or seen any interviews with the Wachowski brothers recently? If you have, you're in luck. Apparently, they haven't given an interview in four years. And apparently they have deal with Warner Bros that guarrantees they never have to talk to the press. You can read about them at Wired



• PC Rage: According to a UK survey, the top 5 things most likely to cause "PC rage" are:
  1. Slow speed and crashing.
  2. Spam
  3. Pop-ups.
  4. Lost/deleted files.
  

 

• REVOLUTIONS REVIEWS: AICN has some reviews of the final Matrix film, all of which are very positive. If you don't mind spoilers, here's a direct link. Or if you want a spoiler free review, try this: "If 'The Matrix' was the brain of the series and 'Matrix Reloaded' the fat that should have (in hindsight) been trimmed from the trilogy, then 'Matrix Revolutions' is pure lean and mean muscle that serves up an astounding finale. It?s a sci-fi lover's wet dream."



• RIP: Elliott Smith: The singer/songwriter was found dead in his home, aged 34.



• Six Million Dollar Carrey: Jim Carrey has just gotten the stagnating Six Million Dollar Man film off the ground. The idea has been around for a while - even indie guru Kevin Smith wrote a script for it - but Carrey finally got it in gear ... as a parody. Oh, the humanity.

 

• MATRIX: A French Matrix site has posted four new clips (.asf) ...
  here.



• ROTK: Might be old news to some (I've been busy) but there's a gallery and a QT clip of the battle of Pelennor Fields at the official site, as part of the David Wenham interview ...
  here. The clip and gallery is about half way down the page.



• TROY: you can see the first teaser poster for the Pitt/Bloom/Bana epic ... here.

 

A few teaser posters ... (hosted by yours truly ... I'm paying for the space so I figured I'll use it)

• Spidey 2: Have a look at the teaser poster for Spiderman 2 ... here
  ... and a close-up of his eye ... here



• Punisher: The first poster for Punisher ... here



• Kill Bill 2: Sneak peaks at the UK posters for Kill Bill Vol.2 ... here ... and here ...

 

Spidey...

 

• TROY: The official site for what looks like a pretty damned fine romp of a film is up now ... here



• SHREK 2: The official site for Shrek 2 is also up ... here



• ROTK: The final ROTK poster, if you haven't seen it, can be seen here

 

Any news about The Bourne Supremacy or Oceans 12?

 

I hoe they don't screw up Ocean's 12. I really don't see the need for a sequel, I liked the open ending to Ocean's 11. And why anyone would want to steal more money after making $160M is beyond me. Either way, I'll probably still watch it.

EDIT: Shrek 2 trailer is also online.

 

• Ocean's 12: apparently going ahead - George Clooney & Steven Soderbergh have said they'll do it, and a script is being developed (and may even be done by now) - but that's about all that's known atm.



• Bourne 2: Tony Gilroy, who adapted the first one, is working on the second script atm - Matt Damon is waiting to see the script before he signs on.



• Scary Movie ... 4: Scarey Movie 3 writer Craig Martin has signed a deal with Miramax/Dimension to write a number of scripts - including SM 4, which will supposedly spoof superhero movies ... (which sounds scarey indeed)



• The Elf directs: Orlando Bloom will direct his first film, HAVEN, and will also star, along with Bill Paxton & Gabriel Byrne.

And last but by no means least - to help you get yer head around the movies, the good folks over at the Associated Press (via MSN) put together ...

THE MATRIX TIMELINE

2010-60 ? Humans create humanoid drone robots with Artificial Intelligence to fill jobs as construction laborers and servants.

2069 ? The hovercraft transport ship Nebuchadnezzar, later to be captained by Morpheus, is constructed in the United States.

2075 ? AI programs evolve and some robots began to resent their human overlords.

2077 ? In the first case of a machine rising up against its owners, the butler robot B166ER slaughters two humans, leading to B166ER's eradication and a backlash against robots and artificial intelligence.

2080-85 ? Rioting and violence against machines prompts robots to flee major cities and establish their own community ? known as Zero One ? in a remote part of the Middle East.

2085-2095 ? Zero One thrives, creating superior vehicles, computers and weaponry and decimating the economies of many human nations, which now lack the machine-based labor that made them strong.

2096 ? United Nations officials refuse to accept the robot civilization of Zero One as a sovereign nation. A trade blockade of robot goods leads to war.

2097 ? Zero One survives a nuclear attack ? its inhabitants are impervious to the heat and radiation and casualties are quickly replaced. Counterstrikes launched against humans.

2098 ? As cities fall beneath the might of mechanized forces, desperate military leaders attempt to block the main source of energy for the robot city: the sun. The plan destroys the atmosphere and fills the sky with choking black smoke ? but does not stop the machines.

2099 ? Machine forces overtake human armies and capture survivors and civilians for experimentation, determining that human bio-electricity can be harnessed to replace the sun's energy.

2100 ? Machines create the Matrix, a dream-like world set in 1999, to extend the lives of the comatose human batteries.

2105 ? The first human known as The One, locked in bondage inside the Matrix, learns he can manipulate the world through thought and manages to break free. Seeks sanctuary in the underground human stronghold of Zion.

2105-2150 ? Zion resistance movement created, although The One later dies under unexplained circumstances.

2161 ? Morpheus born in a Matrix womb; freed in childhood.

2167 ? Trinity born in a Matrix womb; freed in early childhood.

2175 ? The Oracle prophesizes that Morpheus will discover the second coming of The One.

2199 ? Trinity and Morpheus discover Neo, a hacker in the Matrix. They free him and do battle with Agent Smith, a program designed to rid the Matrix of humans who detect its flaws.

2201 ? The Osiris, another human rebellion ship, discovers machines drilling through the Earth above Zion. Crew members send a message through the Matrix to their compatriots shortly before being destroyed.

2201 ? Now living in Zion and working with the rebellion against the machines, Neo encounters The Architect, the artificial intelligence program that created the Matrix.

2201 ? The Architec