Cinema Fusion assembled a list of 100 top movies from the online film community. Yes, I voted. This is a younger, and more male, set of voters than the other two lists I voted on, the AFI and (obviously) the Alliance of Women Film Journalists. So a lot of my fave screwball comedies and epic romances did not make it, in favor of more recent crowd-pleasers such as Ghostbusters, Leon, Ed Wood, and Groundhog Day. At the end of the list, but still. Jeez. Is this a club I want to be a member of? Higher still are surprising entries American History X (which I confess I have never seen) and This is Spinal Tap. After that the list is okay, although the paucity of older films, foreign films, and films by the late great Bergman and Antonioni is depressing.

The Online Film Community’s Top 100 Movies

100. Nosferatu (Murnau, 1922)
99. Cinema Paradiso (Tornatore, 1988)
98. On the Waterfront (Kazan, 1954)
97. Blue Velvet (Lynch, 1986)
96. Reservoir Dogs (Tarantino, 1992)
95. His Girl Friday (Hawks, 1940)
94. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Jackson, 2003)
93. Toy Story (Lasseter, 1995)
92. Notorious (Hitchcock, 1946)
91. The 400 Blows (Truffaut, 1959)

90. Ghostbusters (Reitman, 1984)
89. 8 ½ (Fellini, 1963)
88. Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Herzog, 1972)
87. Leon (Besson, 1994)
86. Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958)
85. Modern Times (Chaplin, 1936)
84. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Capra, 1939)
83. To Kill a Mockingbird (Mulligan, 1962)
82. The Manchurian Candidate (Frankenheimer, 1962)
81. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (Cameron, 1992)

80. North by Northwest (Hitchcock, 1959)
79. King Kong (Cooper/Shoedsack, 1933)
78. Manhattan (Allen, 1979)
77. Ed Wood (Burton, 1994)
76. American History X (Kaye, 1998)
75. The Maltese Falcon (Huston, 1941)
74. Groundhog Day (Ramis, 1993)
73. The Conversation (Coppola, 1974)
72. The Bicycle Thief (De Sica, 1948)
71. The Graduate (Nichols, 1967)

70. Network (Lumet, 1976)
69. Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)
68. The Rules of the Game (Renoir, 1939)
67. Do the Right Thing (S. Lee, 1989)
66. Heat (Mann, 1995)
65. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Jackson, 2001)
64. Aliens (Cameron, 1986)
63. Silence of the Lambs (Demme, 1991)
62. The Incredibles (Bird, 2004)
61. A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick, 1971)

60. The Apartment (Wilder, 1960)
59. The General (Keaton/Bruckman, 1927)
58. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1928)
57. Unforgiven (Eastwood, 1992)
56. L.A. Confidential (Hanson, 1997)
55. 12 Angry Men (Lumet, 1957)
54. The Shining (Kubrick, 1980)
53. M (Lang, 1931)
52. Memento (Nolan, 2000)
51. The Bridge on River Kwai (Lean, 1957)

50. Double Indemnity (Wilder, 1944)
49. The Big Lebowski (J. Coen, 1998)
48. Sunset Blvd. (Wilder, 1950)
47. This is Spinal Tap (Reiner, 1984)
46. Run Lola Run (Tykwer, 1998)
45. Goodfellas (Scorsese, 1990)
44. E.T. (Spielberg, 1982)
43. Singin’ in the Rain (Donen/Kelly, 1952)
42. The Searchers (Ford, 1956)
41. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Leone, 1966)

40. Raging Bull (Scorsese, 1980)
39. Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone, 1968)
38. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Forman, 1975)
37. The Princess Bride (Reiner, 1987)
36. The Usual Suspects (Singer, 1995)
35. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Gilliam/Jones, 1975)
34. Fight Club (Fincher, 1999)
33. Brazil (Gilliam, 1985)
32. Annie Hall (W. Allen, 1977)
31. Back to the Future (Zemeckis, 1985)

30. Die Hard (McTiernan, 1988)
29. The Third Man (Reed, 1949)
28. The Matrix (Wachowski/Wachowski, 1999)
27. The Wizard of Oz (Fleming, 1939)
26. Schindler’s List (Spielberg, 1993)
25. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry, 2004)
24. Lawrence of Arabia (Lean, 1962)
23. Fargo (Joel and Ethan Coen, 1996)
22. It’s a Wonderful Life (Capra, 1946)
21. Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979)

20. Seven Samurai (Kurosawa, 1954)
19. Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
18. Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)
17. Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954)
16. The Shawshank Redemption (Darabont, 1994)
15. Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976)
14. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)
13. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (Lucas, 1977)
12. Chinatown (Polanski, 1974)
11. Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994)

10. Alien (R. Scott, 1979)
9. Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner, 1980)
8. The Godfather Part II (Coppola, 1974)
7. Jaws (Spielberg, 1975)
6. Blade Runner (R. Scott, 1982)
5. Casablanca (Curtiz, 1942)
4. Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg, 1981)
3. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Kubrick, 1964)
2. Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
1. The Godfather (Coppola, 1972)

Participants are on the jump:

Amazon.com and Custom Flix will release old films from the National Archives:

The National Archives and Records Administration announced yesterday that it has reached a non-exclusive agreement with Amazon.com and one of its subsidiaries to reproduce and sell to the public copies of thousands of historic films and videotapes in the Archives' holdings.

The arrangement allows Amazon and a California subsidiary, CustomFlix Labs, to make digitized copies of some of history's most famous, and infamous, footage and make them available in DVD form for purchase via the Internet.

I wandered over to the Weta Workshop booth on the floor. Weta is of course working on the Narnia film Prince Caspian, as well as Peter Jackson's own Lovely Bones and James Cameron's Avatar. Weta Workshop has also created a Dr. Who Collectibles line.

Boffin Greg Broadmore, who is a conceptual designer for Weta, has also worked on Halo and Evangellian, which are now in limbo. But his passion project is Doctor Grordborts' Infallible Aether Oscillators and Rayguns, a line of high end collectible gadgets and gizmos he has assembled that look like antiques made of metal and glass. Richard Taylor, who co-owns Weta Digital with Jackson, has funded the Grordborts project.

Obviously Broadmore has ambitions for this world. A Dr. Grordborts Dark Horse comic book will come out in January, as well as an informercial ad. "I wasn't a writer, but I am now, as well as an illustrator," he said. "Being a conceptual designer is being a writer. There's a logic to everything you design. I'd love to make a movie."

Broadmore has also created a Sears Roebuck style catalogue full of ray guns, death rays and contraptions for adventurers. It's as if he's outfitting Indiana Jones.

I ran into producer/ Sidney Kimmel Entertainment exec William Horberg (right) on the Con exhibition floor. He introduced me to famed "From Hell" illustrator/graphic novelist Eddie Campbell (left), who was signing books. "From Hell," made into a memorable Hughes brothers movie, basically pays Campbell's bills. He jumped into the western genre with "The Black Diamond Detective Agency," which Horberg initiated years ago as a Charlie Mitchell screenplay at Paramount Pictures. Horberg eventually decided to turn the dormant script into a graphic novel via First Second Books.

It took Campbell more than a year to produce the lavishly illustrated picture novel, which hit bookstores and Comic-Con this month. In it, a violent guy who has renounced violence becomes a wanted man and infiltrates a detective agency. Campbell works with color, even painting over detailed photos of turn-of-the-century Chicago. "They gave me a lot of space," he said. "They let me contribute my own ideas to the script."

At this point, launching a costly Western movie epic is daunting at best, even with CGI technology. "The book world is a second hope for these projects," Horberg said. "As a book exists in pop culture, it can take on new momentum and come to life in the studio world."

While Comic-Cons past have heralded the advent of such future blockbusters as 300 and Superman Returns, this year only Jon Favreau’s new Marvel entry starring Robert Downey, Jr. as the mighty Iron Man roused the fan hordes in the 6000-seat Hall H to rise up and give a standing O. The crowds also responded well to Pixar's Wall-E, from Finding Nemo creator Andrew Stanton, about a robot trash compactor left behind on earth, who is being "voiced" by sound wizard Ben Burtt, who created the whistle-language for Star Wars' R2D2.

Many of the big fanboy titles had no footage to show because they were just heading into production, from 300 director Zach Snyder’s The Watchmen, an adaptation of the Alan Moore graphic classic, to Edward Norton’s page-one rewrite of Marvel’s latest iteration of The Hulk. Snyder, Norton and Favreau all promised fans to stay true to the spirit of the source material. "We're not going to make it accessible to teenyboppers for marketing reasons," said Snyder, who is setting “The Watchmen” in the R-rated 80s and drawing his way through the novel, shot by shot. "It doesn't feel PG-13. It makes sense that now it's a period film. It has resonance, it's separated from the Cold War, it's almost cool to go back."

Snyder had hoped to announce his Watchmen cast at the Con, but was scooped by the press by several days. "We have real actors for this movie," he said. "This movie has no stars in it! 300 had no stars in it either. A couple people saw it." The actors will start out young and evolve into old age with the help of CGI, he said. “Technology is on my side.” Billy Crudup, Patrick Wilson and Jason Patric didn’t show, but Jackie Earle Haley and Malin Akerman were on hand. The crowd in Hall H applauded when The Hulk producer Gale Ann Hurd assured them that this time--as opposed to Ang Lee’s 2003 Hulk, which did not score a bullseye with fans--The Hulk would remain the same size throughout the film. Marvel’s latest design for The Hulk seemed to play for fans.

Disney’s Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian panel promised a deeper, richer, more action-packed realistic take on the next installment of the fantasy series, which will now unspool at the rate of one a year. (It will be interesting to see how much interest there is in the lesser known books that don't feature the four kids.) Audiences were wowed by an well-paced animatic of the capture of a castle featuring airborne sword fights.

On the other hand, New Line Cinema’s bid for a new fantasy franchise, Chris Weitz’s adaptation of The Golden Compass, starring Nicole Kidman, Dakota Blue Richards and many CG polar bears, yielded a more muted response. Kidman keeps rolling her tongue around something called "the Aletheometer lethiometer." Like Stardust, The Golden Compass features flying ships and witches. But it also looks all too familiar...

While Twentieth Century Fox cancelled its show-and-tell, citing materials that were too hard-R for a family-friendly event (which nonetheless showed plenty of violent, edgy material), the studio did send a convoy of trucks to promote the movie Jumper emblazoned with black-and-white billboards reading “If you were a jumper you’d be home now.”

Short action clips from Shoot ‘Em Up, starring Clive Owen as a Chow Yun Fat-inspired gunfighter toting a baby amid blood-splattering mayhem, played well in Hall H; the full-length movie screened Thursday night to a wide range of reactions. The pic clearly plays best for hard-core action fans with a taste for a taboo-busting, hard-edged R. (A women gives birth during a gun battle; when the baby cries, Owen shoves the infant onto her breast to shut him up. And there's more.) Storyboard-artist-turned director Michael Davis thanked Angry Films for rescuing him from oblivion after 35 screenplays just as he was about to give up his filmmaking career. Owen thanked Davis "for making an original movie in a time of sequels," he said.
Here's Variety's review.

Neil Marshall’s viral thriller Doomsday generated some fan heat, along with Rob Zombie’s reimagining of Halloween, the graphic novel-based 30 Days of Night, a hard-R return to killer vampires who terrorize an isolated town in bleak midwinter, and writer-director Frank Darabont’s reunion with Stephen King on the $17-million “The Mist.” But many other horror titles fell flat, including Warners’ Japanese remake One Missed Call, the conclusion of Paul Anderson's zombie trilogy, Resident Evil: The Extinction, and Silver’s The Invasion, yet another version of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

“Comic-Con elder” Darabont, who started coming to The Con as a teenager in 1973 when it was held for 1000 people at the El Cortez Hotel, had a good time this trip. “Every year it’s gotten crazier and bigger.”

Time's Richard Corliss has always been very good on Ingmar Bergman; here's MCN's Larry Gross and Salon's Andrew O'Hehir.

And here are Michelangelo Antonioni obits from the AP, the NYT and Michael Wilmington. When I booked Antonioni's existential masterpiece L'Avventura at my college film society, only a few people came. Antonioni's La Notte, Red Desert, Blow-Up, Zabriskie Point, L'Eclisse, The Passenger: at NYU I read long treatises on what was going on in those long, languid shots. Never a populist whose films were easy to comprehend, Antonioni rewarded careful study and frequent viewing. Improbably, the director hit the pop culture zeitgeist in the 60s and 70s with the gorgeous English-language Blowup, starring Vanessa Redgrave and David Hemmings, the incomprehensible desert-wandering Zabriskie Point, which was a popular title to watch on acid, and The Passenger, starring Jack Nicholson, with its astonishing independent camera moves.

Irritatingly, Film Comment editor Gavin Smith has refused to post Matt Groening's Guilty Pleasures online. Nope, there's plenty of other stuff from the July/August issue at Film Comment's website (including a terrific piece on the must-see Kirk Douglas classic Lonely Are the Brave) but if you want to read the Groening story, you must hunt down a print edition. (New York Mag staffers found this link.)

Smith doesn't seem to appreciate that these days, film magazine publishing is not about newstand sales. It's about spreading awareness online and growing subscriptions (the model of EW's success). This Groening story could be a great way to build wider awareness of Film Comment, a high-quality magazine (mostly about indie and foreign fare) which can be narrow and arcane in its focus. (I worked as Associate Editor of Film Comment in the early 80s, for editor Richard Corliss, before moving to LA, where I served as West Coast Editor for some years.)

I met LAT writer Geoff Boucher at the Warner Animation party. A tall robust strong-looking fellow, Boucher's no slope-shouldered scribe. He could be a football player. And yet he was attacked outside the Convention Center in San Diego and went home with staples in his head.

That said, while the sheer scale of the confab can be overwhelming, as you walk around The Con, the vibe is fairly mellow, even Disneyland-like. These fans are having fun pursuing their faves and raves and filling their super-size Smallville bags with ccollectible loot. I want to thank the guy who put my $2.50 trolley car ticket on his expense account when the ticket machine wouldn't break a $20. The streets of downtown San Diego, well, that's another matter.

Variety Editor-At-Large Elizabeth Guider will be taking the role of editor at The Hollywood Reporter that has been left vacant since the departure of Cynthia Littleton last March. Over the past few months I have enjoyed working with Guider, who has been at this paper for 18 years. Let's put it this way: she's knows her stuff. The Hollywood Reporter is lucky to have her. Let's hope they supply her with the resources she needs to put out a good daily newspaper; there are some terrific people over there.

One of the greatest directors of all time, Ingmar Bergman, has died. Smiles of a Summer Night. Persona. Scenes from a Marriage. The Seventh Seal. Wild Strawberries. Autumn Sonata. Fanny and Alexander. Cries and Whispers. The Magic Flute. All are extraordinary in their own way. But the list is long. Here's the trailer for 1957's The Seventh Seal. I herewith commit to watching at least one Bergman film this week in honor of this monumental talent.

Here are some links:
The Variety obit
The NYT obit
Woody Allen on Bergman
Bergman's official site
Bergman clips
DVD Spindoctor has a status report on available DVDs and the hilarious Bergman parody, De Duva, starring Madeline Kahn as Ingrid Thulin: "Phallic un symbol?"

Judd Apatow's Superbad panel was one of the comedy highlights of a very comedic Comic-Con. Here's LAT writer Sheigh Crabtree's take.

While many folks were blogging from The Con, I found it strange that the LAT and EW insisted on editing their bloggers before posting them, with inevitable time delays. The writers were timely, but their posts were not. An edited blog is not a blog, in my view. That said, next year I humbly request a live-posting photographer. We had some terrific shooters at the Con from our online staff, but they didn't get the photos up until after the weekend. I'm going to take a badly needed digital photo course, but still, at one point after Nora left, I was sitting at one panel downloading photos into my laptop, then shooting pictures and taking notes at the same time, not to mention bleary-eyed editing into the wee hours. I have reams of material I have yet to post, because yesterday I was posting other folks' reports (with help from online staffer Erin Maxwell) and writing stories for the daily.

View Fan Photo Gallery: Part One and Part Two.

And then there are the fans roaming the floor of the great exhibit hall, where some of the outfits have to be seen to be believed. Many geeks also don't believe in deodorant. As Judd Apatow memorably told the room: "Just because you are dressed as a Storm Trooper doesn't mean you can fart at will."

  View Photo Gallery

First, there's Pixar's next toon, "Wall-E," from "Finding Nemo" director Andrew Stanton. "What if mankind had to evacuate earth and someone forgot to turn the last robot off?" he asked the crowd. "Overpopulation and runaway consumerism literally buried the world in trash." Stranded on a landfill planet, Wall-E is a rusty, 700-year-old trash-compacting robot who excavates the waste for clues about the humans that once lived there. His only companion is a cockroach (good thing Pixar made their last movie about rats — it should help prepare auds for more animated vermin), but it's not long before he's whisked aboard a starship, where he falls in love with a probe droid named Eve who doesn't return his affections.

Stanton shared a significant chunk of footage from the first act of the film and brought out Ben Burtt, the sound designer who brought R2-D2 to life through beeps and whirs. "One of the things I knew from the beginning is that I was not going to have dialogue in the traditional sense," Stanton said. Burtt developed a grammar of sound effects for each character, which the team is recording first (as they do with dialogue) so the artists have a performance from which to animate. "I was basically making 'R2-D2: The Movie,'" Burtt joked.

[Posted by Erin Maxwell]
Platinum Studios founder Scott Mitchell Rosenberg is a force to be reckoned with. Rosenberg first started turning heads when his company, Malibu Comics, produced and distributed a little comic known as "Men in Black." That small indie strip spawned a billion-dollar franchise that made Hollywood take notice.

In 1994, Rosenberg sold Malibu Comics to Marvel, and in 1997, he set up shop with Platinum Studios. Now ten years later, Rosenberg is flying high with fistfuls of projects in development for both TV and film. Platinum Studios holds a peculiar position in the comics game. Unlike its big brother counterparts, Platinum uses its immense collection of characters and acts as both content creator and distributor, thus eliminating the pesky middleman. This gives the studio the upper hand in all development deals and the freedom to wheel and deal for TV and film rights. "I don't think anyone else has a model like us," said Rosenberg. "We don't care if we create it or find it from the outside with first-timers. 'Men in Black' was created by a first timer. Right now, we probably have 60 or 70 feature projects that we are developing."

[Posted by Erin Maxwell]
Not many folks in the adult industry can claim A-list status. Despite the fact that the adult film market is a billion-dollar one, its only recently that H'wood moguls and the beautiful people have begun to acknowledge its presence. Most of this is due to the diligent efforts of Ms. Jenna Jameson.

Recently, the adult film star and New York Times best-selling author teamed with Virgin Comics for her latest endeavor, "Shadow Hunter," which follows the exploits of a risque superhero whose near death experience has her battling the forces of the evil on a daily basis. Making her first appearance at Comic-Con, Jameson talks about her upcoming foray into comics, as well as other mainstream projects in the pipeline:

So, this is your first Comic-Con. Are you excited to be here?
I talked to my friends a lot about it. For the past five or six years, my friends have been signing here and they will call me and say, Jenna, you have to come down here. It's like a world unto itself. And I guess it's really hard to fathom until you experience it. So, I'm pretty excited. Just driving down here to the convention, it's totally different. There were Chewbeccas on the road.

  View Photo Gallery

The new hour-long drama got its preem at Comic-Con on Saturday as part of the Peacock's push for its upcoming full schedule. Auds were treated to a 30-minute version of the new Jamie Sommers, a 24-year-old bartender, who between taking care of her deaf sister and finding fun time with her hottie doctor boyfriend, has to deal with an unexpected upgrade of new appendages.

Exec producers/scribes David Eick, Jason Smilovic and Glen Morgan were there to answer questions, as well as star Michelle Ryan. "I felt that strong female roles often go to older actresses," said former "EastEnder" Ryan.

"There is a real gap in the market for a strong female lead character. I'm privileged to have the role. "It's a journey of self discovery. It's a woman who finds out who she is as a hero while she discovers who she is as a woman," commented Smilovic.

"It's a story of a woman who is not cut out for this at all. She's learning as she goes along. King of like a female Peter Parker," said Eick.

In a time when many studios are rehashing old hits from the boob tube for the silver screen, the question came up why "The Bionic Woman" didn't go the way of "Dukes of Hazzard." "There is a lot more to explore and it requires the wide angle lens of television," said Smilovic. "There is so much more here than for a two-hour movie."

Considering the fanbase of the original series, there was talk on the panel about O.G. “Bionic Woman” Lindsay Wagner and a possible cameo for the new series. "It's a possibility," said Smilovic. "We are open to all options. But for other characters from the series to return, like Sasquash or those diplomat wives who were brainwashed with their shampoo, probably not."

Word spread through the Con that Robert Downey Jr. and Jon Favreau would sign Iron Man stuff for the fans at 1:30 PM Saturday after the unveiling of the new Iron Man costume (there are two looks in the clips we saw in Hall H, early first stage clunky iron armor and later flying suit, which this one resembles). There was a mob of onlookers as the director, star and FX master Stan Winston posed for photographers. Erin was close to the wooden crate; I was aiming my Nikon at a screen farther away.

[Posted by Erin Maxwell] Things I learned while trying to snap a pic of Iron Man:

1. Sometimes being only five feet tall kinda bites.

2. Most Comic-Con attendees will let you in at the front of the line if you ask nicely.

3. Camera phones can be more reliable than normal cameras.

I would like to thank the nice gentleman who helped me off the floor when the mad rush of Marvel fans knocked me to the ground. Thank you, sir. I have never met a finer man. And yes, I meant it when I said that I liked your outfit. You make that Punisher costume work for you.

[Posted by Brian Lowry]
As further proof that this is shaping up as the year of TV at Comic-Con, NBC's Heroes panel Saturday filled a 4,000-seat ballroom and turned hundreds if not thousands away. The show's "Vote Petrelli" buttons - referring to a politician character - appeared to be one of the more popular swag items at the event.

Here's a Heroes Comic-Con Photo Flickr Gallery.

[Posted by Peter Debruge]
OK, for the last 48 hours, I've been pretending like I'm not really a geek, that the guys in Stormtrooper costumes are the weird ones here at Comic-Con. But yesterday, I found myself clapping loudest on the "Mist" panel for Drew Struzan, poster artist extraordinaire — and yes, that makes me a geek.

Drew's having a good Con. Earlier this week, a friend and I were bemoaning the fact that Hollywood hardly ever uses the guy who designed the iconic hand-painted posters for "Star Wars," "Indiana Jones" and "Goonies" any more. We even decided that many of "Stardust's" marketing woes (Paramount doesn't seem to know how to pitch this incredible 21st-century "Princess Bride" to audiences) would disappear if they would only hire Drew to do their poster.

So imagine our delight when, on Thursday morning, the main goodie at the Paramount panel proved to be an 8-page booklet of Drew Struzan Indiana Jones art. Granted, the most recent painting was dated 2003, but it signifies that — after Harrison Ford, the bullwhip and the fedora — Spielberg and Lucas are bringing back the most important element of the franchise. (The new "Blade Runner" turbo edition will also feature Drew Struzan art.)

And the good news only got better at that panel for "The Mist," where Drew himself shared the dias with director Frank Darabont, actors Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden and Laurie Holden, and creature effects wizards Greg Nicotero and Everett Burell. Lately, Darabont's been the one keeping the Struzan tradition alive (he painted the special-edition DVD covers for "The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Green Mile"), and he arranged for Drew to design an exclusive Comic-Con painting.

Let this be a lesson to Hollywood: Yes, we know PhotoShop can solve all your one-sheet design problems, but nothing can breathe light and life into the very idea of a movie like Drew Struzan.

The Dark Night director director Chris Nolan is not a Comic-Con regular, nor was Christian Bale able to attend this year. But Warner Bros. wasn't about to pass up an opportunity to grab attention for its latest Batman sequel with the fans.

[Posted by Peter Debruge] Over the years, Comic-Con has trained fans that "Hall H" (the venue's largest room, with 6000+ seats) is the place to get sneak peeks of all their favorite genre movies, but not so for Batman. This year, the WB panel ignored "Dark Knight" altogether, while the real tease unfolded outdoors.

It all started at whysoserious.com, the movie's viral marketing site, with a scavenger-hunt challenge that would require fans on the ground to partner up with friends online to unlock an exclusive Joker photo (seen here) and teaser trailer (watch it).

The trick with Comic-Con, as Warner learned the hard way with "Batman Begins," is that the rabid audience thinks they're entitled to see exclusive footage first, and they get nasty when the filmmakers don't deliver. Come armed with something to show, or don't show up at all — and since Nolan didn't have a clip for the crowd, he dreamed up this scheme instead.

The first clue: a sky-written phone number (800-395-9646) outside the San Diego Convention Center, which sent participants hustling from location to location. As recruits to the Joker's cause, they had their faces painted bone white with hollowed-out eyes and a bright red gash across the mouth.

The details are still hazy, but the bottom line was a chance to see the new teaser released in front of "The Simpsons Movie," as well as a shot of Heath Ledger (as the Joker) holding a knife up to Maggie Gyllenhaal. Worth the trouble? I don't know, but it was a smart way to avoid being attacked for using Hall H to show the same teaser audiences all over the country are seeing today. And if word of mouth is what Comic-Con marketing is all about, this trick certainly delivered.

Here's more on the viral Dark Knight campaign at The Con.

And here's The Dark Knight teaser trailer:

Charles Ferguson's documentary No End in Sight (July 27) is a must-see for anyone who wants to see a blow-by-blow of how we ended up in such a mess on the ground in Iraq. The managerial incompetence of the George Bush government must be seen to be believed.

Here's the trailer:

And the website has an IM chat room that allows visitors to share their views and get feedback from the filmmaker. [Hat tip: Green Cine]

And here's the column I did back at Sundance.

[Posted by Marc Graser] Fanboys only want to know one thing when it comes to their favorite properties getting the big-screen treatment: That it's in good hands.

Alan Moore's The Watchmen has languished in development hell for years, so when Zack Snyder ("300") stepped on stage to talk about his plans for the pic at Warner Bros., you could almost hear a loud sigh of relief among geeks when he said it would be a faithful adaptation, down to its '80s setting. "The mistake (Hollywood makes is saying) that the movie knows better," he said. "We have this material. It's amazing. I have the utmost respect for it. I just want to make the best movie I can."

[photo by Nora Chute]

[Posted by Erin Maxwell]
Seth MacFarlane and the cast of "American Dad" took the time to address their fans at Comic-Con with a table reading of in upcoming episode of "The 42-Year-Old Virgin." The group read through the script, which was accented with clips from the episode and a good amount of humor from both the stars of the show and the audience. MacFarlane even handled the hecklers with ease: "You know you're not in your house, right?"

The animated skein began running on Fox in 2005, but it actually first got its start back during the last presidential election. "We hated Bush," said MacFarlane. "It was during the election that Mike (Barker), Matt (Weitzman) and I came up with the concept. It looked like he would win again and we were frustrated."

With "The Simpsons Movie" opening in theaters, auds wondered if either "Family Guy" or "American Dad' was far behind. "We've been talking about it, but the trick is finding the time to do both the series and the movie at the same time. That's why 'The Simpsons Movie' took so long."

MacFarlane began his career at Hanna-Barbera before he took root at Fox with two hit toons. But the beginning of the road began with a simple project he started as a newbie. "The pilot for 'Family Guy' came from a student film I made just to get laughs. For anyone to get laughs. For Fox execs to get laughs."

[Posted by Erin Maxwell]

Right after the massive WB exhibit of "Whiteout," Joel Silver jetted off to one of the Comic-Con meeting rooms to chat about his upcoming vampire cop show "Moonlight," which will make its fall debut on CBS. With him was the cast of the tongue-in-cheek drama, including star Alex O'Loughlin, who plays vamp-turned-detective Mick St. John.

Part "Remington Steele" and part "Dark Shadows," "Moonlight" is about a ne'er do well who was turned into a creature of the night by his blushing bride on his wedding night 60 years prior to the pilot. He has since turned his nocturnal nature to nighttime activities that help mankind. "He's a reluctant vamp," says O'Loughlin, "He finds a way to use his special skills to help. He's a humanist."
“Each character is balanced. It’s a sophisticated piece,” said O'Loughlin. “It’s based on human problems that we all struggle with.”

"Veronica Mars" fans were also at hand to show their love and devotion for Jason Dohring, who plays 400-year-old yuppie scum on the show.

Also on the panel was Shannyn Sossamon, who plays the lovely bride in question. The Eye drama also stars Sophia Myles ("Doctor Who") as in investigative reporter and Brian J. White ("Stomp the Yard") as her contact on the police force.

Silver chatted with the audience about recreating the vampire mythos, as well as redeveloping the usual crime drama. "This is an unusual way of dealing with a detective story. We are dealing with a man with issues," said Silver. "It's a weird world we are in."

The half-hour talk came to an end, leaving the audience with only a brief intro to the new characters, a teaser trailer and an outline to the upcoming Eye show. What else is to be expected? "We are figuring it out as we go along," said Silver.

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]

Leonard Nimoy will return to J.J. Abrams' Star Trek franchise, reports Variety; Marc Graser covered the Paramount panel on Iron Man, Indiana Jones 4 and Abrams' Cloverfield.

My cohort last year at Comic-Con, Sheigh Crabtree, is now covering The Con for the LAT. I got in Thursday night and will face the teeming hordes at the Convention Center this morning. Getting one's registration in a timely manner...nothing's guaranteed where 150,000 people are concerned.

It kills me that I missed Beowulf yesterday--I got in late Thursday night. I'll be posting coverage all weekend from our Variety team:

[Posted by Peter Debruge]
It’s been a long time since high school, so maybe I’m not remembering “Beowulf” correctly, but the footage touted in four separate screenings at Comic-Con this year implies that (a) Grendel is actually the love child of “corrupt” King Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins) and a “ruthlessly seductive” demon and (b) when sent to kill Grendel’s mother, Beowulf (Ray Winstone, He-Manned up for your viewing pleasure) gets it on with her instead.

It doesn’t hurt that she’s played by a very naked Angelina Jolie — or the computer-animated, gold-laminated equivalent of the actress, looking more Lara Croft than ever. Banish the primitive, hairy beasts of the Anglo-Saxon epic from your mind. As reimagined by screenwriters Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary, Grendel’s mother is a “Species”-like shape-shifter, a sex goddess with a serpent’s tail (see the trailer for yourself).

The footage unveiled at Comic-Con is an enigma, delivering photorealistic characters using director Robert Zemeckis’ “Polar Express”-style performance capture technique. The audience at Thursday’s Paramount panel seemed less than impressed, comparing the look to video games and the “Final Fantasy” movie, although a longer 20-minute clip screened in 3-D went over far better with the fans.

During the Q&A following the demo I attended, one impressed journalist volunteered, “The new ‘Star Trek’ would look great in 3-D,” to which Real D chairman-CEO Michael Lewis enigmatically replied, “Stay tuned.” Could J.J. Abrams’ upcoming “Star Trek” prequel be one of the dozen or so yet-to-be-announced 3-D projects Real D has in the works? “Let’s put it this way,” Lewis said, “it would be foolish for any major release not to be considering the possibility.”

Here's LAT's Beowulf takeout. Other responses to Beowulf are on AICN; here's one overheated AICN fanboy response:

The trailer for Robert Zemeckis' CGI-a-riffic BEOWULF is now online.

Some of it is "Oh...my...GOD!!!!" breathtaking.

Some of it looks like cut scene fodder still in need of TLC.

ALL of the characters look better than the glassy eyed zombies who populated
POLAR EXPRESS - whose technology was built upon to realize this project.
And, this looks a helluva lot better than that goofy Christopher Lambert
movie we got a few years back. (Duh!)

And, when all is said and done, they've CGId an Angelina who (here, at
least) appears every bit as bulge inducing as the real thing. No small
accomplishment there.

Click on Angelinabot's svelte, glistening, beckoning hotness to see for
yourself!!!

UPDATE: Sony Pictures Imageworks is developing three perf capture pics: producer Avi Arad's Maximum Ride, the James Patterson series; Neanderthals, a caveman comedy from Jon Favreau of Iron Man fame; and a mystical epic adventure from perf capture innovator Jerome Chen.

[Posted by Marc Graser]
Unique marketing play of the day goes to NBC and Warner Bros. TV for reminding potential audiences that its action comedy “Chuck” is bowing this fall. At the Marriott hotel, next to the San Diego Convention Center, room key cards are plastered with the lead pocket-protector-wearing character, proclaiming that he’s “saving the world for eleven bucks an hour.” That’s certainly cheaper than it costs to park your car in the hotel each day.

Lionsgate was hoping to get the Comic-Con crowd to start generating some buzz for its upcoming western “3:10 to Yuma.” Unfortunately, fanboys were interested in something else: “Lost.” The ABC series made its first trip to Comic-Con this year. And the timing of the event had 3,000 people get up and walk out of the Lionsgate presentation just as the pic’s stars Peter Fonda and Ben Foster were laboring on about their abilities at shooting guns.

Paramount should have rethought its panel for “The Spiderwick Chronicles.” Just as the latest Harry Potter book and movie are wowing auds, filmmakers behind the studio’s fantasy pic opted to focus on how several of the pic’s toadlike goblin characters were digitally created. Characters no one has seen yet. Presentation played out like an extra on a DVD. And that wasn’t lost on the audience, with one teen whining to his friend: “I feel like I’m trapped in a DVD!”

Studios should realize that geeks love their girls. Lionsgate does. Nothing got digital cameras flashing more than the presence of Jessica Alba, who co-presented Lionsgate’s comedy “Good Luck Chuck” with Dane Cook. Leslie Bibb, who co-stars in the company’s horror pic “Midnight Meat Train,” also had geeks salivating.

If audience reaction was any indication, the comedies “Hot Rod,” the first feature starring “Saturday Night Live’s” Andy Samberg, and “Drillbit Taylor,” with Owen Wilson, will be huge for Paramount, with the studio getting the last laugh at the box office.

IndianaJones.com isn't going to let Comic-Con go by without a few major announcements:

MARION RAVENWOOD RETURNS: Actress Karen Allen is joining the cast of the upcoming "Indiana Jones" movie, reprising her role as spirited Marion Ravenwood, it was announced today during Comic-Con International in San Diego. The new movie is in production under the direction of Steven Spielberg, who is pictured here with Allen during a break in shooting in Hawaii. The upcoming "Indiana Jones" adventure is a Lucasfilm Ltd. production and is being distributed by Paramount Pictures. Frank Marshall returns as producer, with Kathleen Kennedy joining George Lucas as executive producer. It is planned for worldwide release on May 22, 2008. (Photo by David James, courtesy Lucasfilm Ltd.)

This deal has been in the works for eight months and finally closed last night. I was talking to the principals about it in Cannes! I'm happy for Roadside, because they have terrific taste and marketing sense, and need some resources behind them. They will do fine. And Lionsgate, which hasn't had a big hit for a while, needs a strong specialty label, as some of the genres that have sustained them lose some steam. Here's Variety's story.

The press release is on the jump.

If I had Lindsay Lohan on an upcoming magazine cover, I would not be happy. She screams TABLOID FODDER at this point, not classy young beautiful movie star. She's a train wreck and people will check fastbreaking news online, dailies, radio, TV, and mag racks at the supermarket. But no one wants to read another glossy profile in a monthly which has long been superseded by current events. Meanwhile, Lohan insists she's innocent.

Edward Redstone doesn't like Newsweek's portrayal of his family's internal battles. Did he read the LA Times?

Here's the LA Times feature on how The Simpsons made the transition from TV to film, and here's Matt Groening in the LA Weekly, where he has contributed the cartoon strip Life in Hell for some 20 years.

Here are the Fandango ticket sales for this weekend:

Fandango Five – Ticket Sales (as of 7/26/07 9:00 a.m. PT)

Movie Fandango User Rating % of Fandango’s Sales

The Simpsons Movie “Must Go” 56%

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix “Go” 19%

Hairspray “Must Go” 8%

I Know Pronounce You Chuck and Larry “Go” 5%

Transformers “Must Go” 4%

Fandango Weekly Poll (as of 7/26/07 9:00 a.m. PT)

The Simpsons Movie opens this week. Who's your favorite character from the long-running T.V. series?

Homer Simpson 53%

Bart Simpson 25%

Apu 11%

Marge Simpson 4%

Mr. Burns 4%

Ned Flanders 3%

Popular Mechanics explores the science behind Danny Boyle's science-fiction adventure Sunshine.

For any indie filmmaker lacking a theatrical distributor who is eager to get their DVD reviewed, Last Night With Riviera knows a web critic who will review your film. Chris Gore at Film Threat will also review some indie pix.

Ulrich Muhe, the star of the Oscar-winning German film The Lives of Others, has died of stomach cancer. He was 53, and was suffering from the disease when he attended this year's Oscar ceremony. I sat next to him at a dinner thrown by Sony Pictures Classics at September's Toronto International Film Festival. As an East German, his English was not fluent, but we did fine. He was sensitive, sweet, lovely. He lived through many of the things that the movie depicts, and when he was a young man, was even posted as sentry guard at the Berlin Wall, a duty he hated.

Here's the story I did on The Lives of Others:

Shot in 38 days, the film stars top East German theater actor Ulrich Muhe as the Stasi listener who is changed by what he learns about relationships, art, love, deception, corruption, power and betrayal. According to Henckel von Donnersmarck, Muhe was one of the first East Germans to claim his own 500-page Stasi file, and the actor learned that he had been under tight Stasi surveillance from the time he was in high school.

"They knew he was going to be a big star before he knew it," Henckel von Donnersmarck says. "When he did military service, they positioned him on the Berlin Wall with orders to shoot. He collapsed on duty with stomach ulcers. They treated him, released him, and threatened him. He found out that his wife, a famous actress, was a Stasi informant. Playing the part was a journey of self-discovery for him."

What a loss. Did those stomach ulcers lead to the cancer that killed him?

[Photo: Sony Pictures Classics; Jeffrey Wells]

One of the most delicious things in Brett Ratner's breathlessly fun summer comedy "Rush Hour 3" is a cameo by film director Roman Polanski. The director plays a sadistic French cop who does unmentionable things to our hapless heroes, Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, that they will never forget. The fish-out-of-water theme that worked so well on the first two comedies works perfectly in Paris, where the city gave Ratner carte blanche on the locations, including the Champs Elysees and the Eiffel Tower. It opens August 10.

Polanski, who directed one of the only funny Chacun Son Cinema entries, is getting a mini Lincoln Center restrospective this summer. The Film Society is showing four classic thrillers by Polanski at the Walter Reade Theater on Monday, July 30, and Wednesday, Aug. 1. The series features the director’s cult favorite The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) and all three classics in his infamous Apartment Trilogy: Repulsion (1965), Rosemary’s Baby (1968), and The Tenant (1976).

Doc producer Gabriel Rotello (The Eyes of Tammy Faye) lays out the sad but true story of the late Tammy Faye Bakker Messner.

Amd here are the other producers, Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, on Salon.

Variety's Brian Lowry reviews The Simpsons Movie. I'm bummed because I was supposed to see it this morning and was chained to my desk, which seems to be my lot these days, as I cancel lunch dates right and left and forget what my friends look like. Sigh.

Ang Lee's period drama Lust, Caution looks sexy and dangerous. Adapted from a 1950 short story by Chinese author Eileen Chang, the movie is loosely based on an event that took place in Shanghai in 1939-1940. The film will open, after its fall fest debuts, on September 28.

It was brave to make it as a Chinese-language film. Will American audiences be willing to expand their horizons? When a movie is accessible and engaging enough, language is not an issue. Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth had genre elements that made it a hybrid crossover, more than a period art film. Pan's Labyrinth expanded its boxoffice by riding the award season waves, which Focus is banking on, needless to say.

This early trailer for Wes Anderson's road comedy The Darjeeling Limited, about three brothers on a train trip across the sensual and vibrant Indian landscape, made me laugh out loud. (This Apple link went live at 6 AM Tuesday.) Older brother Owen Wilson is on a quest to re-forge family bonds with his younger siblings Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman. En route they have various exotic adventures. The movie will make its European debut at the Venice Film Festival, I hear, before it opens the New York Fest in September.

As News Corp's Rupert Murdoch bears down on The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair's Michael Wolff examines the corporate baron's love of newsprint.

[Vanity Fair illo by Michael Elin; Murdoch photo by Peter Morgan/Reuter/Corbis]

Variety's Peter Bart talked to a number of the players at Viacom, DreamWorks and Paramount last week. At this point, obviously, the marriage isn't working. The DreamWorks founders chose to sell their studio and now must deal with new bosses. Things are not what they were when Universal's Ron Meyer treated them like gold.

That is not Viacom chief Sumner Redstone's way. This is the man who kicked Tom Cruise off the lot. He doesn't lavish much respect either on his own daughter Shari, the veteran National Amusements exhibitor who's on Viacom's board. Redstone does what Redstone wants to do and there's not a whole lot anyone can do about it.

Monday's LAT story detailing the Redstone family disputes is fascinating. As Bart suggests, these issues may all end up in court. Here's the NYT.

But what if the DreamWorks team did walk away with their brand and start over again? Their names are as stellar as ever--in fact they've just come off an amazing run. But those films didn't come into existence overnight. Stacey Snider was able to come in and capitalize on years of development, while Paramount ferried the completed projects into the marketplace. Does the DreamWorks team want to do the heavy lifting of building from scratch all over again? And what value would Paramount get for its $1.6 billion without Spielberg and Snider? Not much.

It's hard to figure what would make the DreamWorks troica happy, since boxoffice success seems only to have made things worse. The DreamWorks/Paramount impasse reveals yet again the risks of moving from one corporate culture to another. In ways that are hard to measure, you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.

Michael Ovitz was never quite the same separated from his power base at CAA. Tina Brown walked away from one of the great jobs on the planet as editor of The New Yorker because she heard the siren call of independence, Hollywood, money, fame...and has since struggled to find her new niche, emerging this year as Princess Diana's respected biographer. Similarly, Harvey Weinstein, who helped to lure Brown away to run the now defunct Talk Magazine, has worked hard with brother Bob to find his footing in the harsh reality outside a studio environment.

The DreamWorks folks are operating at rarified levels at the top of the studio pyramid. And they will want to continue to do so.

I don't like to read early reviews. Fox threw a press junket for The Simpsons Movie this weekend, so many American journos have seen it. Here's the early review from The London Times. I haven't read it yet and if you care about SPOILERS don't read it!!! The Times' James Bone covered it at the first screening of the movie, the premiere in Springfield, Vermont.

I will see the movie Tuesday morning, no guest allowed, to Nora's chagrin. She has a full set of Simpsons action figures given to her by Matt Groening when she was a baby. We have boxed sets of all the Simpsons seasons. It's a family thing.

The end of civilization is not upon us, as the Adam Sandler comedy I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry narrowly topped the weekend boxoffice. In the end, Chuck and Larry will drop off and Hairspray will have legs. It plays like gangbusters and even earned rave reviews, better than I expected: 97 % fresh! Ordinarily those reviews would make it a cinch for a raft of Globes and Oscar nominations at year's end. The Globes are a cinch. But will the Academy share the love? This is a commercial crowdpleaser for sure. But is it another Chicago?

Who wants a set of these action figures?

[Hat Tip: Awards Daily.]

Variety's Marc Graser will be my partner in crime next week at The Con. We'll be blogging live and filing online and in print; stay tuned for up-to-the-minute details from Hall H and beyond. TV critic Brian Lowry is also going, and various online folks will be covering for Bags and Boards as well.

Here's Graser's Comic-Con preview. (The Variety headline is a classic: Hollywood sneak peeks woo geeks.)

The Chicago Tribune's Michael Wilmington, one of the most erudite film critics working today, is moving on. These jobs tend to be career-long positions; after age 50 it's tough to land another full-time slot that pays as well. Plus, you build a local following and then what? Newspapers these days are always looking for a hip young voice to connect to the next generation.

I'll read anything Wilmington writes and wish him well. His book, John Ford (written with Joe McBride) remains one of the classic film texts. UPDATE: He will supply a DVD column for his old paper, the Madison Isthmus Weekly.

Here's his post to Poynter online:

From: Wilmington, Michael
Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2007 5:54 PM
To: zzCTC.ALLCHICAGOTRIBUNE
Subject: Goodbye

Dear Colleagues:

This is goodbye and thanks to the people with whom I've worked for the last 14 years. I'm leaving the Tribune, and I'll relax a little before starting some writing projects I've put off for too long. If you want to contact me, I'm at [his e-mail address].

I've appreciated the privilege of using the Tribune's pages to tell people about movies good and bad. I've also appreciated the vibrant Chicago film culture and audience that always made my work a pleasure.

I want to thank all of you who've helped and supported me. Goodbye
and here's looking at you.

Michael Wilmington

Writer-director-actor triple threat Steve Buscemi, who is always fun to watch no matter how he gets tortured or killed (in the case of his adaptation of Theo van Gogh's Interview, Sienna Miller does the torturing), delivers his top ten dvds.

There's a reason Neil Gaiman is the dominant figure at the upcoming Comic-Con convention. I had a lovely time trawling Barnes and Noble, boning up on Gaiman's books, graphic novels, and comics before our interview. We sat outdoors on the sunny Paramount lot Wednesday. He's charming, and fun to talk to--even if I barely scratched the surface in half an hour. When I have time, I'll try to post some of the Q &A.

In the meantime, check out his blog, a Publisher's Weekly round-up, and here's my column. I cannot wait to see the 20 minutes of Beowulf and five minutes of Coraline at Comic-Con.

Because I'm an Anglophile romantic, I enjoyed Stardust the movie; much of the charm of the original fairy tale is on-screen. But the movie isn't nearly as rich and satisfying. It doesn't take you off to another world in the same way, a place that has its own logic and is utterly believeable. Somehow in a live-action universe you find yourself asking the question, why did Claire Danes as the fallen star hurt her leg when she hit the earth? (I'm such a Narnia fan that I didn't like the movie, which was a success by any measure. On the other hand, I love the Harry Potter films. I'm not as invested in my idea of how those characters are supposed to be.)

My instinct is that Stardust won't take off in a big way. But if Gaiman's many fans show up, would that make it a hit? First, I think it will appeal mainly to women, which makes studio marketers crazy. Paramount's selling this movie like an action adventure to get the boys. They're not capturing the charm and sweetness of the movie in their materials. They're making it look like everything else. I asked Nora what she thought of the Robert DeNiro flying pirates billboard and she said it was "dumb."

While Stardust won't be a tiny art-flick like MirrorMask, it could wind up another cult flick like Serenity.

I suspect that Gaiman's unfettered imagination will fly free in the more stylized fantasy universe of the animated Beowulf and Coraline.

For iklipz's new Bridging the Gap video series, actor William Fichtner (Crash) shares the secrets of his craft with actor Bob Levitan.