Hidden camera – People pay $6.50 for a glass of water
People are offered an exclusive glass of water for $6.50. The water actually comes from a garden hose
FYI: “Agua de culo” means “water from the ass” in Spanish.
Pan’s Labyrinth Wins Three Oscars
Guillermo del Toro’s Spanish-language fantasy film Pan’s Labyrinth took home three Oscars on Feb. 25, making it the big winner among SF&F movies at the 79th Academy Awards ceremony broadcast live on ABC from Los Angeles. Pan, which was nominated for six awards, won for art direction, makeup and cinematography, but lost in the categories of original screenplay, score and foreign-language film.
Happy Feet won the Oscar for best animated feature film, beating out Cars and Monster House.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest won the Oscar for visual effects, but got shut out in three other technical categories. Dead Man’s Chest beat Superman Returns and Poseidon for the F/X Oscar.
The SF movie Children of Men lost in all three categories in which it was nominated: adapted screenplay, cinematography and film editing.
If you haven’t seen Pan’s Labyrinth.., do everything in your power to do so, it is amazing.
Graphic Novel Picks Up 28 Days Later
R. Eric Lieb, editor-in-chief of Fox Atomic Comics, revealed to SCI FI Wire that the company will release a graphic novel called 28 Days Later: The Aftermath that will serve to flesh out the time period between Danny Boyle’s cult hit film 28 Days Later and his upcoming sequel, 28 Weeks Later. “There’s a lot of fun things that aren’t covered in the movie, and the graphic novel takes the mythology of the film to flesh out some elements of it and expand it further into the realm of 28 Weeks Later,” Lieb said in an interview at New York City Comic Con over the weekend.
“28 Days Later has such a rich mythology,” Lieb added. “The first movie is so strong. It’s such a good and scary movie, and I’m not going to say the ‘Z’ word, because it’s a movie about the ‘infected,’ which gives it such a unique twist. But at the end of the first movie, it says [people] are infected with rage, and you never find out what exactly caused it or if the infected are in such a rage, why don’t they attack each other? We explore that in the graphic novel. So, therefore, the graphic novel isn’t just a bridge between 28 Days and 28 Weeks.”
Lieb said they were able to lure renowned horror scribe Steve Niles (30 Days of Night, Wake the Dead) to write the book. “He was my first choice, by far,” Lieb said. “We took it to him, and he accepted, because he is a very big fan of the first movie. People obviously know his pedigree in this world. He’s done horror like no other.”
Broken into four stories, 28 Days Later: The Aftermath follows the canon created by Boyle for the film franchise. “It involves the initial outbreak not shown in the first movie. It takes place at different stages throughout that first outbreak,” Lieb revealed. “The first stage explains the development of the virus with the scientists and ultimately the accident and the corruption that made it from a good thing into a very bad thing. The second stage takes place during the first days of the outbreak, so you see the chaos in London. The third stage takes place during the timeframe of the first movie. In the movie, the survivors, Jim [Cillian Murphy] and Selena [Naomie Harris], move out of London. This story stays in London and talks about a survivor who is actively fighting, and he honestly enjoys it. He’s the last person in London, and it’s his city now. The fourth story brings everything in the graphic novel together and provides a bridge to 28 Weeks through a subtle revelation about what is happening to the virus.” 28 Days Later: The Aftermath is available in bookstores April 3. The sequel film, 28 Weeks Later, opens in theaters May 11.
King Confirms Dark Tower News
Stephen King, the prolific best-selling horror author, confirmed to New York Comic Con fans that Lost co-creators J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof will adapt his epic multi-volume book series The Dark Tower for the screen. “I said no to everybody until recently, because I didn’t think much of the chances of it being a good movie,” King said in a panel discussion launching Marvel Comics’ new Dark Tower comic books at the New York City Comic Con on Feb. 24. “I mean, this is my life’s work, since the time I was 22 years old. It’s very important to me. Usually, with the other [books], I don’t give much of a s–t. My attitude is, ‘Go make a movie, and if it’s good, that’s terrific, and if it’s bad, then it will go to the video stores and back shelves of Blockbuster, and I still get royalties on the book.’”
King also revealed that he even turned down an offer from his longtime collaborator, writer/director Frank Darabont, who previously adapted The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile and is at work on other King adaptations. “Frank did come to me, and I know Frank from before either one of us had a pot to piss in,” King said. “Frank said, ‘Gee, I’d like to do Dark Tower.’ I said, ‘Frank, give me a break! You’ve got The Mist, The Monkey. You’ve got the prison stories. … Stop putting so much on your plate!’”
King, who is an avowed fan of Lost, only agreed to relinquish the film rights to The Dark Tower when Abrams (Mission: Impossible III) and Lindelof approached him. “I know J.J. Abrams’ work and Damon Lindelof, who is his collaborator on Lost,” King said. “Damon is just a total comic-book freak, and he loves the Dark Tower books. I trust those guys, and they have a lot on the ball. When they said they wanted to talk about doing this, I said, ‘You know what? Why don’t you buy the option on this and see what you can come up with.’ They asked, ‘How much do you want for an option?’ I said, ‘$19.’ [It's a key amount that comes up frequently in the books]. And that’s what they paid me, and that’s where it is.” Marvel and King’s Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born number one is available in stores now
Frank Miller: Sin 2 Is Ready To Go
Frank Miller, who wrote and co-directed Sin City based on his popular graphic novels, told SCI FI Wire that Sin City 2 is a go and that he hopes to be in Texas to shoot the film by late spring. Miller and Robert Rodriguez will again share directing duties on the sequel.
“The script is largely done, and now we’re in that limbo zone where we’re casting and making script adjustments as we go,” Miller said in an interview while promoting 300, which he executive-produced and which is also based on one of his graphic novels.
Miller added that the sequel will be based on A Dame to Kill for, the second Sin City tale and a prequel to The Hard Goodbye, which was the basis of one of the first film’s storylines. The sequel will also deal with “a couple of old stories and one brand-new one,” Miller said. “The old ones are a couple of ‘Blue Eyes’ stories, and there’s an ‘Old Town Girls’ story, and the new one features Nancy Callahan [played by Jessica Alba] in a very different, very scary role. I’m hoping we’ll start in late spring. It gets pretty hot in Austin, so there might be a summer’s interruption there, but both Robert and I really want to be shooting this thing as soon as possible.”
WB Eyeing Justice League Movie
Warner Bros. Pictures is looking to make a feature based on super team the Justice League of America, hiring writing duo Kiernan and Michele Mulroney to write the script, reports Variety. It’s the first major action the studio has taken on the project.
The feature film is bound to include some combination of DC’s most iconic superheroes, although the studio wouldn’t confirm which ones they might be. It’s unlikely that the studio and DC Comics, a division of Warner, would opt to feature second-tier characters.
Since its inception in 1960, JLA has featured almost every major hero in the DC Comics universe, although the core team has largely remained the same: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter.
The heroes typically band together to fight alien menaces or groups of supervillains.
“The Justice League of America has been a perennial favorite for generations of fans, and we believe their appeal to film audiences will be as strong and diverse as the characters themselves,” Warner president of production Jeff Robinov said in announcing the hiring of the Mulroneys.
The trade says that in taking on the ambitious project, Warner faces several conundrums.
Now that the Batman and Superman film franchises have been revived, does the studio go after Christian Bale (Batman Begins) and Brandon Routh (Superman Returns) to star in a Justice League pic? The studio is also trying hard to bring Wonder Woman to the big screen.
To a large degree, casting will depend upon the story arc for the JLA feature and at what point in the superheroes’ lives the plot takes place.
