Film Raider

Movie News - Jessica Alba Didn't Pose For Playboy

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 19:37:00 +0000

Actress Jessica Alba is threatening to sue Playboy Magazine over an appearance on their cover. Alba was apparently approached by Playboy to do a photo shoot for their cover. Alba claims when she turned them down, Playboy then went to Sony Pictures, who produced Alba's movie Into The Blue to get a publicity photo. Alba and Sony allege that Playboy told Sony she had given them permission to use her photo, so Sony provided Playboy with a publicity shot of her in a bikini. That photo ended up on Playboy's cover this month. The lovely Ms. Alba is annoyed that Playboy may be causing people who see her on the cover of the magazine to assume that she is also inside of the magazine wearing less than a bikini. (We could only hope…) Alba wants Playboy to pull the issue featuring her from newsstands and she wants unspecified monetary damages. Sony wants Playboy to apologize for their "outrageous, unethical behavior", although Sony has not taken any legal action up to this point. E! Online is one of many news outlets covering the story. Even CNN is following this one. (Apparently, even the thought of Jessica Alba naked has piqued everyone's interest.) The Smoking Gun has Jessica's attorney's opening legal shot directed at Playboy, as well as Sony's letter sent to the magazine.

TV News - Dennis Weaver Dies At Age 81

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 21:25:00 +0000

Dennis Weaver, died Friday at the age of 81 at his home in Colorado. Two of Weaver's most memorable roles were in the TV series McCloud and Gunsmoke. CNN has an obituary.

TV News - Drew Lachey Wins Dancing Competition

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 13:35:00 +0000

Drew Lachey, Nick's even less talented brother, won ABC's Dancing With The Stars competition. He beat out former football player Jerry Rice and wrestling hottie Stacy Keibler - even though Keibler was much better looking and clearly far more talented. (Not that I'm bitter…) But seriously, how does a guy with that goofy looking beat out a girl whose legs should be declared a national treasure? Something is seriously wrong here…

Movie News - Darren McGavin Dead At 83

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 00:14:00 +0000

Darren McGavin died Saturday of natural causes in Los Angeles surrounded by his family. His career included many memorable TV and movie roles, including a role in A Christmas Story. Canoe.ca has an obituary.

TV News - Don Knotts Dies

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 19:08:00 +0000

Don Knotts, the man known best as TV's Barney Fife and Ralph Furley died Friday at the age of 81. Canoe.ca takes a look at his career, which spanned more than 50 years.

Movie News - Batman And Superman Sequels Coming

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 23:47:00 +0000

Variety suggests (the link goes to E! Online's recap) that sequels to both Batman Begins and Superman Returns are in the works. The Batman sequel has been pretty well assumed given that the movie made more than $200 million during its theatrical release. The Superman Returns sequel seems a bit dicier given that Superman Returns doesn't even open until June. Variety notes that the actors playing Superman (Brandon Routh) and Batman (Christian Bale) are already under contract for sequels; although Batman director Christopher Nolan and Superman director Bryan Singer are not. And on a completely unrelated note, and am I the only one who thinks this Brandon Routh character looks just plain goofy as Superman?

Movie News - Bond Protest Site Launched

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 21:02:00 +0000

A group of fans annoyed by the choice of Daniel Craig as the new James Bond have launched a website in protest. In addition to pointing out the reasons why they think that he is a bad choice for the role, they are also asking for fans of the Bond movies to boycott the new film in protest. This latest rumbling from Bond fans comes just days after Craig suffered an injury while filming a fight scene for the new Bond movie, Casino Royale.

Rants - More Good High Definition DVD News

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 20:42:00 +0000

This has been known for quite some time, but this is a good article explaining how early buyers of HDTV's aren't going to be able to benefit from either of the new high definition DVD formats. In a nutshell, the early adopters of HDTV, presumably the same people who would have been early adopters of the new high definition DVD formats, are being left out in the cold. Since older HDTVs don't have the "new improved" outputs (read outputs that prevent you from doing anything Hollywood hasn't dreamed up themselves) their HDTVs that they paid thousands of dollars for won't be able to display the high definition DVDs at full quality. Yep, that’s a wonderful idea. Screw over the people who are most likely to buy your product in its early days. Sounds like a sure-fire marketing technique to me. The more I hear about Blu-ray and HD-DVD, the more I'm rooting for both formats to fall flat on their faces. Hollywood deserves to loose because they are the ones who are insisting on the new draconian security features that the next generation of DVDs will include. The consumer electronics industry deserves to take a hit given that they've rolled over and let the movie industry tell them how to run their businesses. Sorry chumps, the current generation of DVDs are just fine by me. I won't be making a switch until you all get your collective heads out of your asses. I suspect that I'm not alone in that sentiment. Maybe some good old financial hemorrhaging as a result of these goofy products might wise Hollywood and the consumer electronics industry up. It's time they started asking their customers what they want instead of presuming to know what is best for them.

Movie News - Batman Sequel Rumors

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 22:12:00 +0000

According to the latest rumors circulating the internet, Hugo Weaving and Hugh Jackman are the latest favorites to play The Joker and Harvey Dent (AKA Two Face) respectively in the next Batman movie. Again, these are just rumors, but if it turns out to be more than that, it will be great casting.

Movie News - Indy 4 Is Spielberg's Next Project

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 21:54:00 +0000

Steven Spielberg has told an Israeli newspaper that his next project will be Indiana Jones 4. Here's hoping that he is able to stick to that plan. Although, since we've been hearing about Indiana Jones 4 since 1989 (when Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade opened), it's probably safe to say that you shouldn't start lining up to buy your ticket just yet.

Movie News - New Bond Girl Cast

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 13:30:00 +0000

Just hours after Mads Mikkelsen was announced as the new Bond villain in Casino Royale, Eva Green was confirmed as playing Vesper Lynd. Jeffrey Wright has also been announced as Felix Leiter, the CIA agent who frequently pops up in Bond movies. Wright appeared most recently in Syriana. Eva Green last appeared in Kingdom Of Heaven, although she is probably best known (at least on the internet) for her fairly explicit nude scenes in The Dreamers. Well, say what you want about these additions to Casino Royale, at least there is no doubt Ms. Green looks the part.

Rants - Are High Definition DVDs Doomed?

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 21:38:00 +0000

As if the upcoming format war wasn't going to be enough, News.com has yet another in a long list of reasons that HD-DVD and Blu-ray are looking more and more like they are dead on arrival.

Movie News - Casino Royale Gets Bad Guy

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 15:08:00 +0000

Mads Mikkelsen has been cast as Le Chiffre, the villain in the next James Bond movie. You can read the fully story at CNN. Now I think that the casting of Daniel Craig as Bond will make the George Lazenby fiasco look like a good move, but I had held out some hope for the other roles. At least they could have cast somebody with at least some name recognition to fill the chief bad guy role. Zero name recognition in either of the two leads isn't going to help ticket sales. As an aside, the CNN article also confirms Judi Dench as M. Now maybe the producers slept through the last few movies, but the rest of us should remember that Dench was introduced as the "new" M in GoldenEye. In fact, there was a scene between M and Bond referring to her predecessor, someone whom Bond had obviously worked with for a while. Now since this movie is being billed as a prequel of sorts to all of the other Bond films, how can Dench's M already be on the job when Bond is just beginning his career, when she has been previously introduced as taking over as M long after Bond has been on the job? Anybody want to bet that before the month of November is over (Casino Royale opens November 17) some folks at MGM/Sony are going to be wishing that they had brought Pierce Brosnan back again?

Movie News - Another Friday The 13th

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 23:48:00 +0000

According to E! Online, Michael Bay has been hired to get yet another Friday The 13th movie into theaters. According to the report, the new movie will be a prequel to the earlier films. So while the E! website story prominently features everybody's favorite goalie mask-wearing psycho, Jason Vorhees, it's a little unclear whether he will actually be in this movie. For those with short memories, Jason didn't really enter the picture until the very end of the first movie, so it's hard to see him as the central character in a prequel. Of course, this is the same series that once resurrected Jason using lighting, and in a later movie teamed him up with a guy that kills people from within their dreams, so presumably anything is possible.

Movie News - MovieBeam

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 20:47:00 +0000

Digital Home Canada has a good description of the new MovieBeam on demand system that Disney, Intel and Cisco have launched. It looks interesting, but one has to wonder if it will it be able to compete with the on demand service offered by cable companies. Judging by both the Digital Home article and MovieBeam's own website, they will only be offering 100 movies at a time. That doesn't seem to be substantially different number from what most cable on demand services are offering. In some cases, it may even be lower. If you already own a digital cable box, why would you want to shell out another $250 bucks for another box, which appears to do pretty much the same thing? Given that the service uses an indoor antenna, it seems likely that only the largest of urban areas are going to get access to this service for the foreseeable future. It's an interesting idea, but that seems to be about as far as it goes.

Movie News - German Mr. & Mrs. Smith DVD Extras

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 20:17:00 +0000

eWeek has a story on how the German release of Mr. & Mrs. Smith uses a very questionable copy protection method. Scary.

Fun Stuff - Brokeback Parody

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 02:58:00 +0000

If you haven't already seen it, here's a link to that great Brokeback Mountain parody trailer that has been making the rounds on the web - Brokeback To The Future.

Movie News - Ask For Quiet And Get Arrested

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 00:16:00 +0000

During a screening of Brokeback Mountain, a woman asked another theater patron to tone down her cell phone conversation. When the dumbass refused, the situation turned nasty, and the police were called in. At least the police were apologetic about having to charge the woman. The incident happened in Texas, so I guess the woman should just be happy she isn't facing the death penalty. (Just kidding Texas.) If you ask me, people who talk on cell phones should be tossed out and permanently banned from the theater. Although, I'm not sure if I'd be completely opposed to death row…

Movie News - Jaws Author Dies

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 00:01:00 +0000

Peter Benchley died Saturday night at the age of 65. It was his 1974 novel Jaws, which became the basis for the Steven Spielberg blockbuster movie. CNN has an obituary detailing his literary and conservation achievements.

Movie News - When A Stranger Calls Trailer

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 00:04:00 +0000

Apple has the trailer up for the remake of When A Stranger Calls. The movie opens on February 3.

TV News - Don Adams Dies

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Mon, 26 Sep 2005 19:09:00 +0000

Don Adams, best known for his role as Maxwell Smart, in the 1960’s TV series Get Smart, died on Sunday at the age of 82. According to Adams’ former agent, Bruce Tufeld, the actor died of a lung infection following a year of poor health. Newsday has the full Associated Press story on Adams’ passing.

Movie News - Major Movie Studios Form MovieLabs

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 22:01:00 +0000

The major movie studios have formed a new organization, to be called Motion Picture Laboratories, or MovieLabs, to help fight film piracy. According to The New York Times, more than $30 million has been budgeted to run the operation for its first two years. Among the problems MovieLabs is supposed to tackle will be fighting movie swapping on P2P networks and finding a way to prevent people from using camcorders in theaters to record films. News.com has the full New York Times story.

Site Updates - Firefox Issues

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 23:52:00 +0000

Yes, the site has an issue when using Firefox. Hopefully it will be corrected in the very near future. Until then, please try to ignore the large gaping space that appears between the first and second posts. If you can’t ignore the endless expanse of blue nothingness, you can always use Internet Explorer, the site seems to display as intended when using that browser. Please accept my apologies for any inconvenience, or for insulting anyone’s aesthetic sensibilities.

Movie News - Director Robert Wise Dies

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 22:32:00 +0000

He passed away Wednesday, only a few days after celebrating his 91st birthday. Canoe has the AP story.

TV News - Supernatural Online

noreply@blogger.com (Joe) — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 23:42:00 +0000

The WB is allowing viewers to get a sneak peak at its new show, Supernatural, which begins airing next week. The entire premiere episode will be available online at Yahoo! for viewers to watch until the show airs on Tuesday. It’s nice to see more networks embracing the idea of putting content online. Sci Fi also made an entire episode of Battlestar Galactica available on their website during that show’s first season and it certainly didn’t hurt their ratings. Hopefully, this sneak peek will pay off for The WB and will encourage more networks to follow suit. My only beef? The episode is only available to US residents. Oh well, I guess it’s better than nothing.