I Am Link

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--- Animal Rites - A writer's been hired to adapt Beasts of Burden, a comic book series about a bunch of talking animals that fight witches and demons, for a CG-animated adaptation. I just read the first collection of this series a couple of weeks ago and they're a lot of fun and much darker than you might think from the description. This is no Scooby Doo. There's some real horror tucked up in here. Which is why I'm worried that it's a bunch of folks from Walden Media, the production house that's made an effort to create family-friendly spiritual-friendly entertainments like the Narnia series, that have their hands on the stories. There is a lot of room for error tone-wise here that could ruin the reason the series works in the first place.

--- Still Siggyless - Lost's Damon Lindelof is one of the screenwriters for Ridley Scott's not-an-Alien-prequel Prometheus and he gave up a bunch of details the other day on what this whole "not-a-prequel" business actually means. Sounds promising in theory, although all his praise of Ridley Scott's "genius" is undercut by the steady string of godawful movies Ridley Scott has been responsible for over the past 20 years. Anyway Fassy!

--- Dewey Sliced - I hope everyone's been keeping up with Glenn's "Scream to Scream, Scene by Scene" series! He's made it to what he calls his "favorite scene in the entire trilogy," and you know, now that he says it I think it could be mine too. I remember the way I felt in the theater watching this scene - so helpless and horrified. Courtney Cox is phenomenal here. Plus, the second scariest pizza of all time!

--- Fall Carnage - Slash rounds up some release date announcements of note: Steven Soderbergh's Contagion - his flick about a world-wide virus starring a cast of thousands! - will be out on Spetember 9th, a month and a half earlier than expected. Plus Roman Polanski's Carnage, his adaptation of the play God of Carnage with Kate Winslet and Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly and Christoph Waltz, is out in limited release on November 18th.

--- Miss July - I was just thinking the other day that it was about time for another installment of Low Resolution's Movie Preview, and poof a new one appears. I think perhaps I've got a mental clock devoted to them at this point. Never let me down, Joe. My sanity's built around these now. I mean, I'm linking over even though you diss Miranda July, which no.

--- Call It 301- There is a chance that the director of Orphan might be directing the sequel to 300, which is awesome! But the film is now retitled from Xerxes to 300: Battle of Artemisia, which is awful.

--- Dead Mission - I'm so conflicted about Mission Impossible 4. It is the first live-action movie movie directed by Brad "The Incredibles" Bird, and it stars Jeremy Renner! If I could pretend that was where it ended I would be so excited! But it really for real stars Tom Cruise and Renner's just his sidekick or whatever, ugh. If they build their advertising campaign upon promises of Cruise's brutal death with Renner taking over the film & franchise, I will make it over the hump. PopWrap has the first teaser trailer.

--- Whinny Whine - Listen, I grew up loving Steven Spielberg. I saw Jurassic Park in the theater 14 times. There aren't many movies that he's made that I dislike, even at this point. And perhaps my first impression will be misleading. Because this first trailer for War Horse is a pile of sentimental goo that I'm gonna be barfing up for a week. Maybe it's just the fact that I've never gotten "horse movies" - horse eyes creep me out. They're not as bad as cow's eyes, but they're up there. So mooning over a pet horse in movies always makes me sour.

--- Silent Snow - I'd mentioned awhile back that most of the cast of the original Silent Hill film - which is a bit of a curious mess but is genuinely creepy at times, as well as being visually spectacular and well-acted - were coming back for the sequel. What I hadn't noticed, since this was before HBO's A Game of Thrones had aired, was that Kit Harington, aka everybody's favorite emo-bastard Jon Snow, had joined the cast as well. He'll be co-starring with his TV papa Sean Bean! BD has a gallery of images from it.

--- Big Bad - I've avoided spoilers as well as I could but I could've sworn that who the villain is in Joss Whedon's The Avengers had leaked awhile back? Perhaps not, like I said I was trying not to notice. Maybe it was discredited. Anyway io9 is listing their top 10 picks for who the villain ought to be, is the point.

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