New Videoblog site for the next 007, “Skyfall”…
Great interview with Sam Mendes, Director (see below)
Sony Pictures Imageworks Expands Vancouver Studio
Oscar-winning visual effects/digital character animation company, Sony Pictures Imageworks,reports it will expand its Vancouver, British Columbia capacity by opening an additional 16,000 square feet of space in the Yaletown area for work on the current productions “Men In Black 3”, “The Amazing Spider-Man”, “Oz The Great and Powerful” and Sony Pictures Animation’s “Hotel Transylvania”, currently in production.
“Imageworks growing presence builds on the Vancouver studio’s experience with ‘The Smurfs’ production for Sony Pictures Animation and the successful integration of the Canadian team with Imageworks’ Culver City workforce and infrastructure. The new office effectively doubles the floor space. The two Vancouver locations, two blocks apart, are fully connected to Imageworks’ Culver City data center. Imageworks Canada will occupy a total of 32,000 square feet of office space when the new location comes online in March…”
“Vancouver today is a vibrant digital production center that offers a strong talent base and significant government incentives vital to our ability to deliver exceptional quality and value to our clients,” said Randy Lake, executive vice-president and general manager of Sony Pictures Imageworks.
“Imageworks Canada here in Vancouver is a true extension of the Culver City studio,” says Rick Mischel, Imageworks’ Senior Vice President of Satellite Production, who is based in Vancouver. “Video conference, large-screen viewing suites that mirror the set-up in Culver City, and data transfer connect the artists here directly to our home base.” 
“To have Sony Pictures Imageworks Canada expand their studio space by an additional 16,000 square feet is a great vote of confidence in Vancouver,” said City of Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson. “We’ve worked hard to make our city a global destination for digital media talent, and are thrilled that Imageworks is putting down deeper roots in Vancouver.”
And THE “Annie Award” GOES TO …
“Rango” Wins Best Animated Feature @ 39th Annie Awards
Paramount Pictures $135 million budgeted, computer-animated feature “Rango” took top honors as ‘Best Animated Feature’ @ the 39th Annual “Annie Awards”, Saturday, February 4, 2012 in Los Angeles.
The 2011 Western comedy, directed by Gore Verbinski and produced by Graham King, follows a chameleon who winds up in the town of ‘Dirt’, an outpost in desperate need of a new town sheriff :
The 2011 Western comedy, directed by Gore Verbinski and produced by Graham King, follows a chameleon who winds up in the town of ‘Dirt’, an outpost in desperate need of a new town sheriff :
“…a pet chameleon (Johnny Depp) becomes accidentally stranded in the Mojave Desert after his terrarium falls from his owner’s car. After meeting an armadillo named ‘Roadkill’ (Alfred Molina), he narrowly avoids being eaten by a red-tailed hawk.
“The next day he meets desert iguana ‘Beans’ (Isla Fisher), a rancher’s daughter, who takes him to ‘Dirt’, an Old West town populated by desert animals.
“At the ‘Gas Can Saloon’, the chameleon, using bravado and improvisation, presents himself as ‘Rango’, a tough drifter, who quickly gets in the face of outlaw ‘Bad Bill’ (Ray Winstone), narrowly avoiding a shootout.
“When Rango kills the returning hawk, the Mayor (Ned Beatty) appoints him the new sheriff and has him start by investigating the criminal source of the town’s water problem…”
“Rango” screenplay is by John Logan, from a story by Verbinski and Logan. Music is by Hans Zimmer. Producers are Nickelodeon Movies, Blind Wink, GK Films and Industrial Light and Magic.
Super Bowl Ads 2012: Here Are The Winners And Losers
There’s fascinating disconnect between which advertisers the media thinks did well on last night’s Super Bowland what the research says was effective.
To hear the business press tell it, Clint Eastwood’s “Halftime in America” spot rocked the house. It was indeed a great spot from a creative point of view.
But it didn’t even show up in the Ace Metrix Top 10. Ace Metrix measures a panel of 500 consumers who watch ads and rate them for effectiveness. That research says Doritos’ sling baby ad won the night.
It was also a big night for dogs. Volkswagen’s much anticipated follow-up to its little Darth Vader spot from last year used an obese dog getting in shape to gets its revenge on a VW it wanted to chase down the street (and then somehow ended up in the Star Wars cantina scene).
Skechers used a dog — Mr. Quiggly — in a greyhound race.
As did Bud Light, whose appeal with Weego, a rescue dog, was heartwarming.
So did Doritos, in another comedic appeal revolving around the whole Dogs v. Cats war.
There weren’t any total disasters — last year both Groupon and HomeAway had to apologize for their ads — but there were some failures in the sense that clients ads bored people or went unnoticed.
Chase ran an ad that for the life of me I can’t recall even though I am paid to remember these things. And TaxACT’s ad, featuring a kid who urinates in a swmming pool, was disgusting.
Devil’s Knot Casting Announced…
Colin Firth has joined Reese Witherspoon in Atom Egoyan-directed drama about the West Memphis 3, Devil’s Knot.
The actor will play Ron Lax, a private investigator who was the first pro bono supporter of the defendents as they headed to trial in 1993. Lax built one of the most prominent private investigative firms in the Southeast, and offered his services for free to the defendants, who at the time were reviled because of the heinous nature of the crime and the sensationalized reports about devil worship and ritualistic sacrifice. All of that was later proven to be unfounded, after Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley were convicted despite not a shred of physical evidence. The detective was an unsung hero and helped find the DNA in the knots that bound one of the victims, that cast suspicion on Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of Steven Branch, one of the 8-year old murdered boys.
Reese Witherspoon will play Pam Hobbs, the mother of Branch. She initially believed the trio murdered her son, is eventually persuaded that the three suspects are innocent and wrongly accused.
The script is based on investigative reporter Mara Leveritt‘s 2003 book Devil’s Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three. The book is an in-depth chronicle of the trials that sent the three to prison for the murder of the three 8-year old boys who were found hog-tied in a drainage ditch.
The project begins filming next summer in Louisiana.
Devil’s Knot comes to theaters in 2013 and stars Reese Witherspoon, Colin Firth. The film is directed by Atom Egoyan.
Fox 2000 Steps Into “Deep Water”
Fox 2000 confirms that screenwriter Zach Helm (“Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium”) will adapt author Patricia Highsmith’s 1957 suspense thriller “Deep Water” into a feature, to be produced by Steve Zaillian, Guymon Casady and Mike Nichols :
“…set in the small town of ‘Little Wesley’, ‘Vic Meller’ and ‘Melinda Meller’ have a loveless marriage held together only by a precarious arrangement, To avoid the messiness of divorce, Melinda is allowed to take any number of lovers as long as she does not desert her family. Unfortunately, things don’t always work out as planned…..”
So, whatever happened to L.A. Noire, the brillant Video Game from 2011?
Rockstar and the now defunct Team Bondi’s brilliant L.A. Noire was troubled since the beginning, resulting in an agonizingly long seven year development cycle that promptly ended the bright developer’s business upon its release. Still, if a developer is going to release its final game, it might as well be as good as the absolutely sublime L.A. Noire. It spoke directly to the love of the detective genre with its investigations into heinous crimes and really impressed with its disturbingly life-like facial animations, resulting in an unforgettable experience that is begging for the franchise treatment. Let’s really hope that Rockstar gets it together to give this incredible framework the treatment it deserves before it becomes the gaming equivalent of the one that got away. Get on it, guys!
Pileggi Adapting “Goodfellas” Series For AMC
AMC is developing a “Goodfellas” TV series, set before the events of director Martin Scorsese’s 1990 film of the same name.
The “Goodfellas” TV series will focus on the early years of the characters growing up in the 1960’s, written by crime reporter Nicholas Pileggi, writer of the original film and author of the 1986 non-fiction book “Wiseguy” that the film was based on.
Pileggi will also produce the series with Jorge Zamacona and the original film’s producer Irwin Winkler.
Scorsese’s “Goodfellas” followed the rise and fall of ‘Lucchese’ crime family associates ‘Henry Hill’ and his friends over a period from 1955 to 1980. Characters include ‘Jimmy Conway’, ‘Tommy DeVito’, ‘Paulie Cicero’, ‘Frankie Carbone’, ‘Sonny Bunz’, ‘Billy Batts’ and ‘Morrie Kessler’.
The author of Wiseguy and Casino, Nick Pileggi the man who brought you Joe Pesci’s famous “How am I funny?” scene in Goodfellas. He’s also the husband of fellow screenwriter Nora Ephron.
‘AVATAR’ SEQUEL PROBABLY WON’T ARRIVE UNTIL 2016
Written by Jordan DeSaulnier
Back in 2009, a movie arrived in theaters that transported audiences to a lush, unpolluted alien world without acknowledging the irony of sitting in an air-conditioned theater for its nearly three-hour runtime. SinceAvatar became the biggest movie of all time (not adjusted for inflation), the world has patiently waited for the sequels that James Cameron, in his beneficence, has promised. The second and third Avatar movies have been consistently pegged for 2014 and 2015, but it looks like we might have to wait an additional two years before Avatar 2 brings Pandora back to Earth.
With Cameron’s Titanic getting a 3D rerelease in a few months, producer Jon Landau recently spoke at a screening of the previous biggest movie ever. According to Entertainmentwise, Landau casually dropped a new timetable for the science fiction trilogy, saying, “We are excitedly working on it as we speak and it will be four or so years before it will be out.”
To bust some basic arithmetic, that means we wouldn’t be seeing Avatar 2 until 2016. Given that Cameron’s plan has been to shoot both films simultaneously and release them a year apart, Avatar 3 would presumably arrive in 2017.
This makes a bagful of sense. Though the 2014 date has been bandied about plenty, star Sam Worthington revealed this week that he’s not sure Cameron’s even written the first sequel yet, and the actor was fairly in the dark about just when production would get underway. Besides, Cameron has never been a filmmaker overly concerned with meeting a release date, not at the expense of properly mind-melting spectacle.
Landau, being a producer, continued waxing enthusiastic and confirmed that design work on the sequels is indeed well underway. “We are excited,” he said. “And we have a lot of the same team working with us, some great design and ideas and some great themes hopefully.”
New “007” Website –
The new site for the 23rd Bond installment features the first footage from the film in a welcome video from co-producer Michael G. Wilson.
Let the countdown begin.
The website, 007.com, also provides the first official video about the film. Long-time Bond co-producer Michael G. Wilson hosts the slick video, which features images of men with guns in front of a blue-lit background.
While the sleek site doesn’t give much away about the top secret plot, it will feature production videos and stills, casting updates and also a look back at the history of Bond films. 2012 is the 50th anniversary of the James Bond genre, so the site should have plenty to celebrate.
studio systems group 