Vimeo has posted captured footage of an actual Wall•E robot that has been manufactured by the good people at Disney (aka Globotech Industries). The life-size replica was spotted in L.A. trying to sight Eve at the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Along the way, he came across some curious bystanders on the street to study.

It’s Alive!

Many Wall-Es will be built (“They have the technology! Better! Stronger! Faster!”) to run amuck in Disneyland. They’ll entertain fun-lovin’ patrons and will sell them deep-fried, yet overpriced Ratagans-on-a-stick. The only concern scientists have is a repeat of the fiasco that took place with murderous robots at the Itchy and Scratchy Land fourteen years ago.

I want Wall•E for my birthday.

Warner Independent Pictures is releasing Towelhead, the theatrical debut of filmmaker Alan Ball, the creator of Six Feet Under, the upcoming True Blood series and is also the Academy Award Winning writer of American Beauty (1999). The film premiered in the Toronto Film Festival with the title Nothing Is Private. It has been named back in the US to Towelhead, the same title of the Alicia Erian novel that Ball has based his written adaptation on.

“Towelhead” Trailer

Set during the first Gulf War, a teenage Arab-American girl named Jasira whose new found and confused sexual awareness results in drastic measures by her mother (Maria Bello, The Cooler, 2003). She is sent away from New York to a small town in Texas to live with her strict, disciplinary Lebanese father, Rifat (Peter Macdissi, Three Kings, 1999). While the Middle Eastern war spreads prejudice at home, they struggle to be recognized as a respected Americans. Jasira is played by newcomer Summer Bishil who is running as fast as she can from children’s television programming to dramatic material more mature and respectable, much like Anne Hathaway did with Havoc (2005).

Director Ball is still testing the water with another plot about the adult male leaching after the underage girl. A bigoted Army revisionist played by Aaron Eckhart (Your Friends and Neighbors, 1998) is torn between his racism and his attraction for the minor. Eckhart, who exudes sliminess as well as James Spader (Secretary, 2002), says to girl in private: “You know what you do. You know what you do to men.” Ewww…

Watching the Towelhead trailer, the tampon sequence brings to mind a scene from Tamara Jenkin’s Slums of Beverley Hills (1998) where a well-meaning father (Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine, 2006) takes his mortified daughter (Natasha Lyonne, But I’m A Cheerleader, 1999) out bra shopping. I’m also reminded of the menstrual-minded Canadian werewolf-horror film Ginger Snaps (2000).

Towelhead also stars Toni Collette (Muriel’s Wedding, 1994 and Japanese Story, 2003) and Matt Letscher (Identity, 2003) as welcoming, sarcastic Liberal neighbors. Here’s hoping this daring American indie is sharp, poignant and uncompromising as Alan Ball’s previous efforts.

The release date is August 28th.

Columbia Pictures and Neal Moritz, the producer of Cruel Intentions (1999) and I am Legend (2007), have secured the rights with Scholastic Media’s Deborah Forte to make the R.L. Stine penned Goosebumps franchise into a theatrical feature. It’s like Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone targeted to kids. Executive Producer Andrea Giannetti (Vantage Point, 2008) will oversee the production. The release date is set at 2010.

The popular Goosebumps book series, much of it written and sold throughout the 1990s, holds second place as the most financially successful in the young adults demographic. It was published in over 32 languages and has sold more than 300 million copies worldwide. It was beaten by another youth-oriented serial written by some Brit named J.K. Rowling who specialized in wizards or something (supposedly 5 out of 8 blockbuster films were also adapted).

My reservations on an adapted Goosebumps movie is that it will be based on a Horrorland revision (unread by me) that includes many characters from previous plots. Between evil ventriloquist dummies, a preordained picture-taking camera, possessed Halloween masks, plant zombies, mutating green blood, and a summer camp that enslaves children to wash down a blob with teeth; I hope the filmmakers don’t bloat the film with too many creatures.

Why the invested interest? As a kid, I had difficulty being engaged by less than compelling material outside of Beverley Cleary’s Ramona serial. Unless the characters were personable and a real sense of doom was preordained, my mind drifted to more haunted thoughts of my imagining that proved more enticing. At the age of 7, I was introduced to the Goosebumps series, the closest in horror literature I could obtain at the time, by an antique dealer who I never saw again. As an early reader, I am in debt to R.L. Stine. Throughout grades four and seven, I read front to back over seventy Goosebumps novels. My father used to bribe me with a new Goosebumps book ($5.50 each) every week I completed all of my homework.

CONTINUE READING ►

“You either die a hero or…”

Wow! I saw this trailer before Jon Favreau’s Iron Man this weekend and I felt an exhilaration that removed me from all planes of reality and into a dimension that can only be described as heaven. I hope that Christopher Nolan not only has made The Dark Knight the best Batman movie ever (even better than Bruce W. Timm’s Mask of the Phantasm, 1993), but the best film of the year. I want this film to be so compelling that no drama or foreign film will compete for me. I can only dream.

Everyone here looks in top form: Christian Bale (American Psycho, 2000), Michael Caine (The Quiet American, 2002), Maggie Gyllenhaal (SherryBaby, 2006) – Thank Nolan they replaced Holmes!, Gary Oldman (Nil by Mouth, 1998), dual performing Aaron Eckhart (In the Company of Men, 1998) and the brilliant Heath Ledger (Monster’s Ball, 2001).

Quick Tidbit: When the Joker whips open his blade as he walks down the urban street with his back to us, you can spot a Starbucks shop on the right part of the frame. I know, I have to go on a trailer diet.

The release date is July 18th.

“And here we…GO!”

Wes Anderson, the director of Bottle Rocket (1996), the classic Rushmore (1998) and The Darjeeling Limited (2007), will helm the Fox Animation production based on the Roald Dahl novella The Fantastic Mr. Fox. The script has been adapted by Anderson and Noah Baumbach (Kicking and Screaming, 1995, The Squid and the Whale, 2005), who both collaborated on the screenplay of Anderson’s own The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) — “I’ve never seen a bond company stooge stick his neck out like that.”

The stop-motion animated film will closely observe the character designs of the illustrations by Donald Chaffin for the book released in 1970. Class act Scott Rudin, who has produced Mother (1996), The Truman Show (1998), The Hours (2002), and No Country for Old Men (2007) among others, will overlook the production.

When asked about the animation in the film, Wes Anderson responded that “(it’s) like The Nightmare Before Christmas (and) those (Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr. produced) Christmas specials. These [characters] have fur, so it’s not like claymation (like Nick Park’s Wallace and Gromit). The settings will be very natural. We want to use real trees and real sand, but it’s all miniature.”

That’s fantastic news when one remembers those strange and beautiful sea creatures that were rendered with stop-motion by animation director Henry Selick (James and the Giant Peach, 1996) for Life Aquatic. Selick was set to co-direct with Anderson in The Fantastic Mr. Fox, but left to pursue the direction of Neil Gaiman’s Caroline. Replacing Selick is Mark Gustafson, who has had extensive experience with stop-motion animation in short, experimental films.

The Roald Dahl tale is about a wily fox who outwits a group of farmers out of their produce. Just imagine Max Fischer with orange fur and a tail. Mr. Fox will be voiced by the equally wily George Clooney. There is confirmation that Wes Anderson alumni such as Cate Blanchett, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray (sound the trumpets!), and Anjelica Huston will lend their vocal talents as well.