Monday, July 20

• What Joel Silver Would Have Done With Watchmen

  Before Watchmen opened in theaters this March, the movie spent years in development, hopping from one movie studio to another, ultimately culminating in a lawsuit between Fox and Warner Bros. that split the movie's meager profits.

  At one point in the 1980s, Joel Silver, famed producer of the upcoming comic book adaptations Whiteout and The Losers, bought the rights to both Watchmen and another Alan Moore graphic novel, V For Vendetta. While Silver eventually made Vendetta, he lost the rights to Watchmen, something he regrets."When I read Watchmen, it changed my view of so many things. It was the first time I'd read a graphic novel really like that," Silver told Cinematical. He also would have made a different movie than eventual director Zack Snyder:

  I love Zack and I love his work, and I think he's very talented, but the script that we developed, I think was better than the movie they made. I don't want to say he was a slave to the material because he made changes anyway, but I think it could have been a little more satisfying movie. I think Zack made a great movie, though; I don't want to minimize what he did. But I think at the end of the day it was more kind of tuned to just the big kind of fanatics of Watchmen as opposed to a broader-based audience who didn't maybe know the original comic.

  Watchmen's poor box office seems to support Silver's accusations. However, it's possible the DVD release on July 21 of The Director's Cut may financially validate Snyder's version.

  
  

  Posted 07/20/2009 by Ryan

  Related: Joel Silver | Zack Snyder | Alan Moore | Watchmen

Tuesday, June 30

• Public Enemies Author Praises Mann's Film

  Readers are often disappointed by Hollywood's attempts to turn their favorite books into films. For every success — The Notebook — there are dozens of films that simply don't live up to the source material, such as most Stephen King adaptations. But, it's not just the fans that feel slighted when a poor film is made from a great book. From Alan Moore (Watchmen, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) to Ursala K. Le Guin (Earthsea), disappointed and disillusioned authors have been very vocal in condemning films they believe are not true to their source material.

  However, that is not the case with Michael Mann's latest film. Partially based on the book Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34 by Bryan Burrough, the film follows FBI Special Agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) and his attempt to capture the infamous bank-robber-turned Depression-era-hero John Dillinger (Johnny Depp). Burrough recently wrote an article praising Mann's adaptation and the historical accuracy of the film:

  This is the first Dillinger and the first gangster movie I'm aware of that takes great pains to get not only the details but the sites right. Mann not only shot at the actual scene of Dillinger's greatest jailbreak, the lockup in Crown Point, Ind., but at the actual scene of his greatest shootout, at the Little Bohemia lodge. Somehow he prevailed upon Chicago to hand over six entire blocks of North Lincoln Avenue, where Dillinger memorably met his fate outside the Biograph Theater one hot night in July 1934.

  Burrough went on to say:

  Yes, I know it's just a movie, and I know most in the audience won't especially care that the details are historically accurate, but I can vividly remember looking around and smiling nevertheless, happy that, in this one small case at least, Hollywood was getting it right.

  
  
  

  Public Enemies - Trailer

  Johnny Depp & Christian Bale Star - Releasing July 1, 2009

  Posted 06/30/2009 by BrentJS

  Related: Christian Bale | Johnny Depp | Michael Mann | Stephen King | Alan Moore | Watchmen | Tales From Earthsea | The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Friday, March 6

• Watchmen Review

  Watchmen opens today and is already opinions are flooding the world wide web over Zack Snyder's adaptation of Alan Moore's classic graphic novel. One conservative columnist was appalled by Watchmen, saying, "I haven't seen a more violent, depraved movie in years. There were so many disgusting, morbid, grisly scenes and acts of killing, I had to start writing them down."

  If that's not enough to get you into the theater, check out our review.

  
  

  Posted 03/06/2009 by reelz

  Related: Zack Snyder | Alan Moore | Watchmen

Monday, March 2

• Interview with Watchmen Artist Dave Gibbons

  Writer Alan Moore has been very vocal about not ever wanting to see Watchmen made. However, his partner in the venture, comic artist Dave Gibbons, has played an active role in bringing the comic series to the big screen. He served as an adviser to director Zack Snyder and even visited the set. In a recent interview, he told us:

  I was tremendously thrilled and energized by all of it -- to actually see these things that I just draw become solid and real. It's 3-D and tangible. You can smell the cigar smoke and everything. I actually felt like I was kind of -- I don't try to be religious about it but -- some kind of prophet that came down and looked at what the mortals were doing and blessed them. You know, "You have done well, my children." I was pleased to be able to do that because, really from the very beginning of meeting Zack and hearing what he had to say about it, I had a very strong gut feeling that it was going to be done properly. Everyone on the set had a copy of the graphic novel and was referring to it. Zack's storyboards have whole chunks of the graphic novel in them.

  For more on his impressions of the Watchmen movie, see our interview with Dave Gibbons.

  
  

  Posted 03/02/2009 by reelz

  Related: Zack Snyder | Alan Moore | Watchmen