August 31, 2005

Airplane Movies are Back

Apparently the moratorium on airplane movies since 9/11 is over. Both Wes Craven's Red Eye and the upcoming Jodie Foster thriller Flightplan prey on panic in planes. That's quite a shift since 2001 when movies were altered left and right to avoid potential references to 9/11 (including prominent appearances of the World Trade Center in both Men in Black II and Spiderman).

But if scary airplane movies (or not so scary) are your cup of tea, MTV gives an overview of airplane disaster movies.

Posted by kevin at 2:05 PM | TrackBack

August 2, 2005

Joss Whedon Interview

Check out a very interesting interview with Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon, talking about his directorial debut, Serenity (based on the canceled TV series Firefly). He also talks about the process of writing a TV show or movie, and gets into his experiences writing for Toy Story, Speed, Alien Resurrection and X-Men.

The best line covers the changes to his Alien script:

I don't remember writing, "A withered, granny-lookin' Pumkinhead-kinda-thing makes out with Ripley." Pretty sure that stage direction never existed in any of my drafts.

For more on Joss Whedon, check out the Whedonesque blog.

While you're at it, check out the Serenity trailer (Spoiler warning: While trailer 1 is pretty sweet, I've heard trailer 2 gives a lot of the movie away). Serenity opens Sept. 30.

Posted by kevin at 7:25 PM | TrackBack

July 11, 2005

Producer Ralph Winter on Fantastic Four & Purpose-Driven Life

Ralph Winter, the producer behind such hits as X-Men and X2 talks about the continuing X-Men saga, the new Fantastic Four movie, and an upcoming project, a movie version of pastor Rick Warren's best-selling book, A Purpose-Driven Life.

Currently Winter is the development stage with A Purpose-Driven Life, trying to come up with a script loosely based on one or a few of the book's princples.

He also talks about the growing role of Christians in Hollywood and why some Christian efforts haven't worked:

[Christians] want to dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’ and make sure it’s uber-clear what’s happened by the end of the story. We’ve lost the ability to create mystery and wonder.

Movies are not good at giving answers. Movies are great at asking questions. Movies that do that are lasting.

Posted by kevin at 7:51 PM | TrackBack