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Tuesday, November 24
While 2008 was a high-profile year for movies adapted from comic books (Iron Man, The Dark Knight), 2009 had its own army of super properties arrayed on the big screen — nine notables all tallied, including the highly anticipated Watchmen.
So, how did this year's movies stack up? We take a look back, identifying the 2009 Comic Book Movies: Winners and Losers. And here's a bonus tip for studios that just can't be repeated enough: Don't turn an anime property into a live-action movie.
Posted 11/24/2009 by reelz
Related: X-Men Origins: Wolverine | Whiteout | Push | G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra | Dragonball Evolution | Watchmen | Astro Boy | Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen | Surrogates
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Sunday, October 4
Mandeville Films, the production company behind Bruce Willis' new near-future action movie, Surrogates, adapted the picture from a Top Shelf comic book and is apparently going back to the medium for more movie inspiration. Currently in production on director David O. Russell 'sThe Fighter, starring Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale, Mandeville is looking to make a live-action adaptation of the short-lived Com.x comic book Cla$$war. The comic is about a government-created superhero who fights back after discovering the truth about the program that created him.
Mandeville's David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman will co-produce Cla$$war with Alexander Content's Rick Alexander, much to the delight of Com.x publishers Eddie Deighton and Ben Shahrabani.
We're very excited to be partnering with a production company that has a solid grasp of the comic book market. This is such an important title for us that we wanted to ensure it's treated with the sensitivity the material and its fans deserve. I can't wait to see its heroes rocking the big screen.
The Cla$$war comic book was written by Rob Williams with art by Trevor Hairsine and Travel Foreman.
Posted 10/4/2009 by BrentJS
Related: David Hoberman | Todd Lieberman | Surrogates
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Saturday, September 26
Director Jonathan Mostow's live-action adaptation of the Top Shelf Productions comic book series by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele may appear on the surface to be another testosterone-fueled action film with Bruce Willis in the lead, but Mostow says that there's farmore to the plot than explosions and robots ... but there are those too.
This is not a bubble-gum movie. It's definitely got the stuff you'd expect from a Bruce Willis, sci-fi–action film. But it takes the subject matter seriously. There's nothing frivolous about it.
In the near-future world of the movie, people use idealized versions of themselves to interact with others in the form of human-looking androids or "surrogates."
I guess you could call it a robot movie and there have been a thousand of those. But I think this one is different. It just seemed to fit closely with how we live our lives today. What Surrogates is all about is how people retain their humanity in the face of relentless technology. I got that instantly from reading the script. It's about how people are tethered to their electronic devices such as mobile phones, Blackberrys, etc; how they do their shopping on the net; how you're not talking to a person you're talking to a piece of software when you call the customer service line.
Next Showing: Surrogates is in theaters now
Posted 9/26/2009 by BrentJS
Related: Bruce Willis | Jonathan Mostow | Surrogates
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Thursday, September 24
We're intrigued by the premise of this Bruce Willis sci-fi pic, and even more intrigued now that it's shaping up as one of the most polarizing movies of 2009.
"Fans of actual sci-fi literature will probably enjoy this more than fans of slam-bang action. But at less than 90 minutes, it's not long enough to bore the haters too badly."
— Luke Y. Thompson, E! Online
"...a smart, speculative suspenser..."
— Todd McCarthy, Variety
"...a serviceable sci-fi thriller..."
— Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly
"In this kind of industrial entertainment, particularly one that seems to be missing some connective narrative tissue, it's hard to know if the writers, John Brancato and Michael Ferris (working from the graphic novel by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele), or the director, Jonathan Mostow, can be credited or blamed for what's left on screen."
— Manohla Dargis, New York Times
"Lame science fiction about synthetic people that lacks for logic and drama."
— Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter
Posted 9/24/2009 by reelz
Related: Surrogates
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Friday, September 18
Boris Kodjoe, who appears in the upcoming Surrogates and spent four seasons on Showtime's Soul Food, is relatively unknown in horror circles, but that's all about to change. Kodjoe Tweeted about his latest gig:
In Toronto meeting with the director of my new movie Resident Evil: Afterlife. Very exciting!!! Lots of stunts, shooting guns, monsters...
What role Kodje is going to play is unknown. But after battling with Bruce Willis is Surrogates, not to mention giant alien bugs in Starship Troopers 3: Marauder, Kodjoe seems ready to the tackle the one, or possibly several, zombies that writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson surely has in store for him.
Next Showing: Resident Evil: Afterlife opens August 27, 2010
Posted 9/18/2009 by Ryan
Related: Paul W.S. Anderson | Boris Kodjoe | Surrogates | Resident Evil: Afterlife
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Monday, September 14
In the new trailer for Surrogates, the paranoid outlines of the plot are neatly laid out: Everyone has given up on real life for the vicarious experience of living through their beautiful robotic human surrogates. But now someone has died and no one with any authority is talking straight. Everyone just seems to want to protect the robotics company and the institution of surrogacy.
There are also two new clips, in which we see Bruce Willis slam up against more than a few blank walls (and at least one parked car) in his unwelcome pursuit of the truth. And he comes up against them real hard, no thanks to the company, which keeps insisting that there really is nothing to see here.
Posted 9/14/2009 by Bill
Related: Bruce Willis | Surrogates
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Monday, August 31
For most people in the future envisioned by Surrogates, it's all about better living through your prettied-up robot avatar. Not only do you get downloaded into a younger, idealized — and in the case of Bruce Willis, hairier — body, but you also get to fine tune what you feel. In one edit bay interview, Surrogates director Jonathan Mostow explains how to absorb the pleasures but avoid the pains of everyday life:
You can adjust your surrogate. We don't address this in the movie because there just wasn't time to get to all these things. You could theoretically just tune your surrogate not to smell unpleasant smells, and only to smell pleasant smells. That's what [is] so fantastic about this technology: it filters out whatever you don't like.
You can even filter out out the boring bits. In another interview, he points to a scene in which we see Willis going home on a subway that the other passengers have literally tuned out:
The subway is basically just populated by people who are shut off, because if you have to take your Surrogate from work back to your house, you can take the subway, walk onto the subway, sit down and get out of your chair, go eat a bagel and just come back before your stop is ready and your Surrogate can reactivate.
It's not all fun and games, though, as Willis' character discovers when he is called on to investigate what looks to be the murder of a person through his surrogate. And despite all the seductions, not everyone is sold on the concept. There are reservations filled with people the director describes as "the Whole Foods/Trader Joes crowd" who still like to do things the natural way.
Posted 8/31/2009 by Bill
Related: Bruce Willis | Jonathan Mostow | Surrogates
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Thursday, August 27
One of the key themes explored in Bruce Willis' sci-fi action flick Surrogates is how everyone is giving up their humanity to live vicariously in the seductive world of robot avatars. It's definitely not all fun and games in a new batch of photos from the movie, in which everyone is either zoned out, rubbery and deactivated, or showing way too much skeletal metal. But that doesn't mean the future doesn't rock.
Breaking Benjamin weaves all sorts of new footage from the movie into a music video for their single "I Will Not Bow." Lots of atmospheric shots of wandering through shiny corporate offices cut with scenes of mayhem and destruction. It's definitely fun watching Willis pummel his way to the truth in time with the music. Seeing him with a full head of hair is still pretty weird, though.
Posted 8/27/2009 by Bill
Related: Bruce Willis | Surrogates
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Monday, August 24
If you haven't heard of Bruce Willis's next movie Surrogates, the below featurette should clue you in. To give a short summary, it's a sci-fi thriller about a world where people who, from the comfort of their homes, live their lives vicariously through robots. The movie is based on a graphic novel written by Robert Venditti. It supposedly has a lot to say about how technology is affecting our lives, how we lose out on personal connections thanks to computers and cell phones. We're just hoping Willis finds a way to say something like "yippee-ki-yay, mother cyborg."
Next Showing: Surrogates opens September 25th, 2009
Posted 8/24/2009 by Jim
Related: Bruce Willis | Jonathan Mostow | Surrogates
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Wednesday, August 19
In the future, we will live our lives even more vicariously than we already do — that's the basic story behind Surrogates, a cinematic vision of a world in which living life through your robotic avatar is so compelling that no one really wants to live an ordinary life inside his or her own body anymore. It is a world of seemingly unlimited fantasy devoid of any consequences. You can be as attractive as you like. You can be a man, or a woman. You can even die and come back again. A lot like Second Life, but with much better graphics. And it all feels real.
The movie's cast and crew try to make this vision of the future as compelling as possible in a new featurette laced with an assortment of eye candy from the movie. It is, they contend, a cautionary tale about the de-humanizing direction online life seems to be heading. Along the way, we are treated to glimpses of telephone booths repurposed as avatar charging stations, a Terminator-like avatar assembly line, and Bruce Willis — or at least his avatar — engaged in all sorts of Die Hard-like action.
Posted 8/19/2009 by Bill
Related: Bruce Willis | Rosamund Pike | Radha Mitchell | Jonathan Mostow | Surrogates | James Ginty