Cinematical

• Where Are They Now? The Cast & Crew of Star Wars
  

  Filed under: Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Fandom, Geek Report, Comic/Superhero/Geek

  Would you believe us if we told you that David Prowse, the 6-foot-7 man who played Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy, now runs a nudist colony in the South of France? Or that Kenny Baker, the 3-foot-8 actor who played R2-D2, was recently arrested for drunk driving? Or that the 7-foot-2 Peter Mayhew (a.k.a. Chewbacca) has renounced his native Britain and officially considers himself a citizen of the planet Kashyyyk?

  One of these bits is actually true, and you can find which in Moviefone's Where Are They Now? feature, arriving...
  




• Columbia and David Koepp Are Discussing Spidey 4
  

  Filed under: Action, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Deals, Sony, RumorMonger, Fandom, Scripts, Geek Report, Newsstand, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Remakes and Sequels

  It looks like Sony is more serious than we thought about pressing ahead with their mega-bucks Spiderman franchise, whether Tobey, Kirsten, or Sam decide to return or not. Variety is reporting this morning that after seeing the first cut of Spiderman 3, Columbia execs have immediately conducted a sit-down with scribe David Koepp about penning the next installment. If Koepp, who is also in the news lately for having turned in an...
  




• Mark Beall's Geek Beat Welcomes 2007
  

  Filed under: Action, Fandom, Geek Report, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Remakes and Sequels, The Geek Beat

  

  Hey, 2007, nice to meet you. I hear you're really into movies -- what a surprise, so am I. Maybe we can be friends. I'll admit to you that I'm just a bit wary of really getting to know you, because your buddy 2006 wasn't so awesome in his geek movie credentials. I mean, dude talked a good game, but he didn't really come through.
  
  At first, I was very excited to meet him. He was all like "Holy crap, theX-Men rule. I just totally dig those mutants....
  




• Mark Beall's Geek Beat: Push the Reset Button
  

  Filed under: Action, Fandom, Scripts, Geek Report, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Remakes and Sequels

  
  When some studio announced its intent to turn Red Sonja into a film again, I got to thinking. We all know Red Sonja has been a film before, but the likelihood is of course very high the studio will ignore this previous (and very failed) attempt and start all over again, rather than pulling a direct sequel 20 years later. Everyone involved, especially the fans, are happy with this idea. We have no problem ignoring the first incarnation of the story on film and treating the new version as a...
  



• The Geek Beat: Let's be Friends
  

  Filed under: Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Fandom, Geek Report, Comic/Superhero/Geek

  Hi. It looks like you and I are going to be seeing a lot of each other, now that this snazzy new weekly column deal is happening. If that's the case, we've got to lay down some ground rules so we know where we stand. Here's how it is going to be:
  
  Rule 1 - The movie business is driven by opinion, not fact; and the geek business doubly so. I'm going to say some things you disagree with - and at some point I'll probably insult something you like. I'm an opinionated guy, and I tend to think I'm right about everything. But...
  



• Happy Birthday H.A.L.!
  

  Filed under: Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Fandom, Geek Report, Out of the Past, Celebrities Gone Wild!

  Everyone's favorite homicidal computer - Arthur C. Clarke's H.A.L. 9000 from his book 2001: A Space Odyssey - turns 9 years old today. A 2003 inductee into the Robot Hall Of Fame (along with R2-D2 from Star Wars), H.A.L. murdered the crew of the spaceship Discovery in Clarke's book and Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film (where a possible flubbed line had the maniacal machine born five years earlier). H.A.L. stands for "Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer", with "Heuristic" and "Algorithmic" being two primary processes of intelligence, as the RHF website notes.
  
  Everyone's second favorite homicidal computer - a...
  



• LotR Convention to Screen Outtakes
  

  Filed under: Action, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Fandom, Geek Report, Peter Jackson, Movie Marketing

  You know how every now and then all the geeks in a particular area gather together, often in costume, to celebrate their geekiness with one another while paying homage to some particular element of geekdom? They call them "conventions," typically. Well the official Lord of the Rings convention is having its way with Pasadena, California this month* (the 20th-22nd); and true to convention form, its got some pretty neat features lined up for the hobbit-clad fans that attend. The convention will feature appearances by actors  Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd, Miranda Otto and John...
  




• Star Wars goes massive in Beantown
  

  Filed under: Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Fandom, Tech Stuff, Geek Report, George Lucas

  
  
  After quietly mocking the droves of Lord of the Rings fans who turned out for the Boston Museum of Science's exhibit last year, this Star Wars fan is ready to sit down for a force-feeding of crow by any number of furry-footed, pointy-eared Middle-Earthlings who care to deride me for my own geekery. Feel free to taunt me with names like "scruffy-looking nerf-herder", "mange-ridden womprat" or "rut of a butt of a Hutt", but I just spent an entire evening dorking-out at the museum's brand-new Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination exhibit, and I had a great...
  



• 2006 IMAX Offerings Looming Large
  

  Filed under: Warner Brothers, Tech Stuff, Geek Report, Movie Marketing, Harry Potter

  It's no secret that I'm cuckoo for the Cocoa Puffs that are IMAX - the large-format movie experience that kicks your home theater's ass, no matter how much you spent on it. Originally, IMAX was a bit of a novelty serving a niche market. It used to be that all you could see was educational films...but 100 feet wide. Then came Everest, the dizzying 1998 docudrama that netted $76 million domestically and another $30 million overseas, and IMAX began to shed its bastard child image. Now, the major studios are tripping over each other to get their features converted...
  



• Google founders get the movie bug
  

  Filed under: Independent, Geek Report, DIY/Filmmaking, Newsstand, Cinematical Indie

  Just like the dot-com boom left an untold number of enterprising techies with more money than they knew what to do with (until the Crash, that is), so now have the latest crop of Internet pioneers cash to invest. Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have invested in a low-budget indie by their friend (and DreamWorks animator), Reid Gershbein. The film, Broken Arrows, about a hitman who faces an existential crisis after the death of his wife and unborn child, is expected to start test screening within about a month. The film, which judging from the trailer, has a bit of a Crow...