July
27
Comic-Con: Warners Presents Get Smart, Beckinsale Finally Shows
The Warners panel started off strong with some terrific footage from Get Smart (summer 2008). Director Peter Segal seems to be embracing a Rush-Hour mix of bumbling slapstick character comedy and rousing action. Steve Carell takes on the Don Adams/Inspector Clouseau role as Maxwell Smart, whose phone is in his shoe, while Anne Hathaway plays a chic Agent 99. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson (who got a great roar from the crowd in Hall H), plays a new character, Smart's mentor, agent 23. Alan Arkin is the Chief. And the villains are Terence Stamp and Ken Davitian, of Borat fame. Segal hinted at a Mel Brooks cameo. "This is like a another car in the garage next to a classic Corvette," he said.
Carell was shocked that he didn't have to audition for the role, but was offered it outright. "It was one of the most surreal moments of my life," he said. He did get ornery with one long-winded fan in Hall H, though: "We don't have all day!" Carell compares Get Smart to a comedic Bourne Identity. "These people live in a real world, a parallel reality. It's extremely funny but there's a sense of action and jeopardy."
Nicole Kidman sent a pro forma video greeting from the set of Baz Luhrmann's Australia, saying nice things about working with her fellow cast members Daniel Craig, Jeremy Northam and Jackson Bond. The movie is looks like yet another version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, virus-style, with reprogrammed people chasing after healthy ones. (It gets you during REM sleep.) Kidman is fiercely protecting her child.
That movie looked somewhat more intelligent than One Missed Call, based on the 2003 Japanese horror film, Chakushin Ari. Edward Burns and Shannyn Sassomon gamely presented themselves to the crowd. (She was pretty lame up there; isn't it part of the deal to learn how to do PAs?) The film's ad line: "What will it sound like when you die?" Its premise: An evil spirit travels through cell signals. If you get a call and listen to the message, you hear your own death, which takes place in a couple of days. "Each time you get a call," explained Burns, "it's a ticking clock to your own death."
When one fan asked Burns if he was planning a sequel to Confidence, he replied: "Like most of the films I'm in, Confidence died at the boxoffice. That put an end to that sequel." Warners gave out iPhones to the folks who asked questions.
10,000 B.C., the next Big Movie from Roland Emmerich, looks like a loud entertaining romp through the Dark Ages. There's pounding crushing mastodons, among many other things. "See what it's like to discover life death love hate good evil hope triumph betrayal and loss," proclaims the trailer.
Producer Joel Silver and director Dominic Sena waited not so patiently for the arrival of Whiteout star Kate Beckinsale. The movie is based on the Eisner-winning graphic novel by Greg Rucka. Silver eventually stormed off the stage to physically bring the actress onto the dais. She said she'd been stuck behind a freight train. The premise of the movie is that this isolated group of people in a place with no government and no permanent population in the dark of winter where it's 120 below zero discover the first murder in Antarctica.
Sena's trailer was terrific, his people skills, less so--when a little boy asked a question about Beckinsale, Sena started describing her colorfully sexy banter on set, including the word dildo. Not age appropriate!
Silver said he wanted Beckinsale, a star with "action credibility," for the film's lone femme role. "She's smart, she's tough, she gets it. She knows what it takes."
"I still got bruised and beat up," Beckinsale said. "And I liked it."
Sena loved the film's setting, as unpleasant as it was to shoot in Northern Manitoba. "It's an alien, inhospitable, unfriendly environment," he sad. "It asks a lot of you when every time you walk out the door, you take your life in your hands. It's tenfold more exciting than telling a story in a conventional environment."
The filmmakers wrapped principal photography a few weeks ago.
The Wachowskis are beavering away on Speed Racer, Silver said. They want to capture the feel of the old Japanese animation, he said, while taking it to a new place. Emil Hirsch is Speed and Christina Ricci is Trixi. "The races are unbelievable."
Trick R Treat is one WB horror pic that has been pushed back, and I can see why. Anna Paquin is dressed like Little Red Riding Hood and some horrible things are chasing her and various other hapless trick or treaters on Halloween night. Enough already!
I'll do a separate entry on the highlight of the Warners presentation: 300's Zack Snyder talking about his approach to adapting Alan Moore's classic comic The Watchmen for the big screen.
[Photos by Nora Chute]
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"The movie looks like yet another version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, virus-style,"
They've only been saying it is a newer version of the Body Snatchers since they started shooting it. I believe Kidman actually said the same thing in her introduction. So it doesn't look like another version, IT IS another version.
Posted by: IClavdivs | July 27, 2007 at 07:42 PM
WHITEOUT Director Dominic Sena held to a Double Standard? Did we see the same presentation? For what reason was director Dominc Sena singled out for having
"questionable people skills" for his telling of Kate Beckinsale "naughty" stories when Kate herself
told her own "naughty" stories . . . . and of course we know Kate will be on Conan when the film comes out
telling the dildo story her own self.
Bad enough for Comicon to start censoring itself to appeal to families but at least Variety could
spare us the misplaced outrage.
Posted by: Captain Celluloid | July 28, 2007 at 08:43 PM
you don't address off-color sexual remarks to a six year old kid!
Posted by: anne thompson | July 29, 2007 at 02:58 AM
"you don't address off-color sexual remarks to a six year old kid!"
Point taken . . . . My point, again, was for what reason was Miss Beckinsale not held to a similar standard
. . . . as that six year old was still in the audience. Criticize one, criticize both.
Posted by: Captain Celluloid | July 29, 2007 at 07:25 PM