The boys go back to the future to watch Neo battle Agent Smith in “The Matrix Reloaded”, then head back to the old west to see if those cow pokes can really defend theselves in Jon Favreau’s “Cowboys & Aliens”. They also review the trailer for “The Adventures of Tintin”, Steven Spielbergs first hack at a full-length animated movie. In movie news, there’s more about “Man of Steel”, Perry White is black?, a possible reboot for “Short Circuit”, and how about Snow White and the Seven Ninjas? Welcome to a brand new reel of COL Movies #64.

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News:

• First Look: Henry Cavill as Superman in ‘Man of Steel’
• It’s Fine For Perry White To Be Black, But Akira Must Always Be Asian
• “Short Circuit” reboot?
• Snow White and the Seven Ninjas?

The Past: The Matrix Reloaded
Rotten Tomatoes: 74% Fresh, 74% Audience

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Directors: Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne and Carrie-Anne Moss

Trivia:

• Eva Mendes, Samantha Mumba, Brandy Norwood and Tatyana Ali were all rumored to be possible replacements for the character of Zee, after the initial choice Aaliyah died in a plane crash on 25 August 2001. Nona Gaye (daughter of late Motown legend Marvin Gaye) was eventually cast in the role.
• There are twelve hoverships in Zion’s fleet, of which ten are shown or mentioned in the films and video game, Enter the Matrix, and whose names and captains are as follows: Osiris – Thadeus; Logos – Niobe; Nebuchadnezzar (Neb) – Morpheus; Mjolnir (Hammer) – Roland; Caduceus – Ballard; Gnosis – Ice; Vigilant – Soren; Icarus – Ajax; Brahma – Kali; Novalis – Tirant. Concept artwork reveals the names of the remaining two ships: the Ganesha and the Vishnu.
• The Matrix Revolutions, Enter the Matrix, and this film were shot back-to-back.
• It was reported that Keanu Reeves volunteered to give up a claim to a share of ticket sales amounting to around $38 million when producers feared that the film would never recoup the cost of the special effects.
• GM donated 300 cars for use in the production of the movie. All 300 were wrecked by the end.
• There were several injuries on the set: Carrie-Anne Moss broke her leg training for a wire stunt, Laurence Fishburne fractured an arm in another training incident and Hugo Weaving put out a disc in his neck while being pulled back on a wire.
• The film’s highway chase sequence took almost three months to shoot (longer than many films’ entire shooting schedule).
• Trinity uses a genuine hack to get into the Matrix. She uses Nmap version 2.54BETA25 (an actual port scanning tool) to find a vulnerable SSH server, and then proceeds to exploit it using the SSH1 CRC32 exploit from 2001.
• The red chair Morpheus is sitting in when he is expounding his plan to access the source is the same red chair he was sitting in when he offered Neo the red and blue pills in The Matrix and when he explained to Neo what the Matrix was.
• Only a few of the Smith clones were actually played by Hugo Weaving. Open casting calls for males with similar body shapes and structures took place, and Weaving’s head was superimposed on them later.
• The tractor-trailer used in the freeway chase scene has Big Endian Eggs written on it’s side. This is a reference to Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels: The Lilliputians, being very small, had correspondingly small political problems. The Big-Endian and Little-Endian parties debated over whether soft-boiled eggs should be opened at the big end or the little end, (Big-endian has also been adopted as computer terminology.)
• According to Oakland city officials who worked with the filmmakers on the downtown Oakland shots, all red and blue colors had to be removed, so sidewalk curbs were painted over. Also, there could be no greenery or other plant life, so filming was done over the winter before tree leaves sprouted in the spring.
• Lambert Wilson’s French accent as The Merovingian is intentionally exaggerated at the directors’ demand. Wilson speaks English very well and said it was his only deception towards the movie.
• It took Carrie-Anne Moss six months just to get the Scorpion Kick in the beginning of scene correctly.
• The fight sequence of Neo versus Smith and his clones (a.k.a. The Burly Brawl) took 27 days to shoot.
• The Matrix Reloaded promotional material was in such high demand, that distributors were extremely worried about it being stolen. To combat this, standees and banners were sent out with the code names of “Caddyshack 2” and “The Replacements”. Several cinemas thought they had not received the materials due to these names, and as such, did not display them until the last minute.
• The Matrix Reloaded is a highest grossing film in the series.
• The Keymaker, while explaining how Neo will reach the Architect, says they will have to knock out 27 blocks of power and they will have exactly 314 seconds before the power begins to reroute. In the Bible, the 27th book of the New Testament (Revelation) chapter 3, verse 14 speaks of being a witness to the source of creation (which in the Matrix is the Architect).
• Total Film magazine says this film contains “the worst line ever delivered in a mainstream Hollywood film.” The line of dialogue is: “Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of The Matrix.”

Talking Points:

• Wire work and fight scenes weren’t as crisp – looked fake
• What was the point of spending 5 minutes on the rave/dance/orgy scene?
• Was anyone expecting to be flying inside a virtual vagina?
• The Freeway scene
• The whole assimilation angle was cool…especially that people who went in the matrix could be.

What We’ve Learned:

• There’s no point in old men making points
• You do not truly know someone until you fight them (fight club?)
• You can never see past the choices we don’t understand
• Some things never change……and some things do.
• Swearing in french is like wiping your ass with silk
• Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without
• Denial is the most predictable of all human emotions

Trailer:

Recommendations:
Jeff: Fighting, Euphoric Orgy In A Cave, Bullet time. Love it. Good movie? Not really.
Ray: This was the one before we stepped completely out of wonderland… fortunately the philosophical babble doesn’t get ultra heavy until the last 20 minutes of the film. Contains one of the best car chase scenes ever filmed
Steve: I like the concept of this one. Definitely takes the original to the next level. Exciting and full of twists and turns.

The Present: Cowboys & Aliens
Rotten Tomatoes: 44% Fresh, 60% Audience

Director: Jon Favreau

Starring: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford and Olivia Wilde

Trivia:

• Robert Downey Jr. was set to play Jake Lonergan, but dropped out due to scheduling conflicts.
• Daniel Craig was chosen because of his distinct likeness to Yul Brynner, who starred in the cowboy epic The Magnificent Seven.
• Daniel Craig recommended Eva Green for the role of Ella after working with her in Casino Royale. However, Eva turned the role down and Olivia Wilde was cast.
• An early draft of the screenplay was written by Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer.
• This is DreamWorks’s third comic-book adaptation, after Road to Perdition and Over the Hedge.
• The filmmakers cite Alien and Predator as an influence on the look of aliens in the film.
• Screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman described the film as “Unforgiven with aliens landing.”
• Director Jon Favreau was constantly harassed with demands to shoot/convert the film in 3-D, but he held his ground, claiming Westerns should only be shot on film.
• Steven Spielberg screened The Searchers and Close Encounters of the Third Kind for Roberto Orci and Jon Favreau so that they could get the atmosphere of the film.
• Roberto Orci feels that the title, humorous as it may sound, will raise interest and put people off guard about the film, which will surprise them.
• Harrison Ford wanted to go bareheaded in the film and not wear a hat (he is most famous for his performance in Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones films, where Jones wore a fedora), but since it was a Western film he was convinced to wear a hat. In American Graffiti , Harrison Ford was asked to cut his hair (to go bareheaded with a period haircut) for the film. He refused, stating that his role was too short, and offered to wear a hat instead.
• Once again, with the involvement of Steven Spielberg, Harrison Ford is cast opposite a James Bond, in this case, Daniel Craig. The last time was when he worked opposite Sean Connery in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Craig has also appeared in ‘The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Daredevils of the Desert (1999)’.
• In the final scene of the movie, a “Southland Ice Company” ice wagon is shown. Southland Ice Company is the predecessor company to 7-11 stores.
• As with most films distributed by Universal Pictures, there is a brief promo after the end credits for Universal Studios. However, the promo used at the end of this movie uses the decidedly 1960s era ad to promote the Universal Studios back lot tour in Hollywood, California. This promo was replaced in 1990 when Universal Studios opened a second location in Orlando, Florida and changed its logo.

Talking Points:

• Did you buy the combination? True Grit meets Super 8?
• “Use the Glaive” (Film Sack Krull reference)
• Continuity error! When Jake was riding across the plain, no cuff…when he comes up the hill on close up, cuff!
• Point of taking the people? To learn weaknesses?
• Harrison Ford
• Olivia Wilde’s character
• What did you think of Jake?
• The aliens

What We Learned:

• Only 2 Kinds of men get shot, Criminals and Victims
• God Doesn’t care who you were, just who you are.
• Kissing makes you stop thinking.

Trailer:

Recommendations:
Jeff: I quite enjoyed this movie, but I could easily just watch this movie on DVD at home. See it in the theatres if you want, but okay to wait for the DVD.
Ray: I Liked it. I’m not sure why its getting all the bad word of mouth
Steve: I liked it. Wasn’t as exciting as I thought it would be, but I enjoyed it.

The Future: The Adventures of Tin Tin

Director: Steven Spielberg

Starring: Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis and Daniel Craig

Trivia:

• Thomas Brodie-Sangster was originally set to play the titular character, but had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts. Jamie Bell, who had worked with Peter Jackson on King Kong, then came aboard to play Tintin.
• The first animated film directed by Steven Spielberg.
• In the early 1980s, Steven Spielberg hired E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial writer Melissa Mathison to write a draft of the script. Her script featured a battle in Africa between Tintin and ivory poachers.
• After Simon Pegg had completed How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, Steven Spielberg invited him to the film’s set and offered him the role of Thomson.
• Originally, Steven Spielberg was going to do a live-action adaptation of Tintin, and called Peter Jackson to ask if his VFX company Weta Digital would work on the film, in particular creating a CGI Snowy. Jackson, as it turned out, was a longtime fan of Tintin, and convinced Spielberg that live action would not do justice to the comic books, and that motion capture was the best way of representing Hergé’s world of Tintin. However, Snowy would still be CGI.
• Steven Spielberg has always shot his films traditionally, but since he was going to film what he saw was an animated film he didn’t mind shooting it digitally.
• Claude Berri and Roman Polanski were interested in directing.
• Screenwriter Steven Moffat claims he was “love-bombed” by Steven Spielberg into writing the script for this film, with Spielberg promising to shield him from studio interference with his writing.
• Steven Moffat finished a draft of the script, but could not polish it because of the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America strike, and afterwards becoming executive producer of Doctor Who. Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson amiably allowed him to leave and fulfill his duty to the series (Jackson being a fan of the Doctor), and brought in Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish to rewrite Moffat’s draft.
• This is Steven Spielberg’s first comic-book adaptation. He had earlier been considered to do Superman.
• Steven Spielberg has been an avid fan of ‘The Adventures of Tintin’ comic books since 1981, when a review compared Raiders of the Lost Ark to Tintin. His secretary bought him French-language editions of each book, but Spielberg did not have to understand them: he immediately fell in love with its art. Meanwhile, ‘Tintin’ creator Hergé became a fan of Spielberg (reports say he “thought Spielberg was the only person who could ever do Tintin justice.”)
• When the film was in development in 1984, Steven Spielberg wanted Jack Nicholson to play Captain Haddock.
• This is Andy Serkis’s third collaboration with Peter Jackson, as well as his third motion-capture role (he had earlier played the creatures Gollum and King Kong in features directed by Jackson). Sometime after being cast, Serkis joked that he was worried Peter Jackson would cast him as Tintin’s dog Snowy.
• To prepare for his role as Captain Haddock, Andy Serkis read the majority of the “Tintin” comics. He later commented that they had a surreal quality, similar to the Monty Python films.
• ‘Danny deVito’ was considered for the role of Senor Oliveira de Figueira, but the character was cut from the script.
• Daniel Craig (Red Rackham) had collaborated with Toby Jones in Infamous and Jamie Bell in Defiance, and appeared in the Steven Spielberg film Munich.
• According to Steven Spielberg, when shooting he always keeps one eye closed when framing a shot, so that he can visualize the film in 2D (“the way viewers would”). But on this film he had both of his eyes open, as it was 3D and he wanted to treat the film like live-action.
• During filming, Guillermo del Toro, Stephen Daldry and David Fincher paid a visit to the set.
• Steven Spielberg’s cinematographer Janusz Kaminski was brought on to act as a lighting consultant for Weta, as Jackson wanted the film to look “film noir-ish, and very atmospheric.”
• Steven Spielberg shot his portion of the film in 32 days (taking up March 2009). Peter Jackson was present for the first week of filming, and supervised the rest of the shoot via a specially made iChat videoconferencing program. Simon Pegg said Jackson’s voice would “be coming over the Tannoy like God.”
• Steven Spielberg enjoyed working with the virtual camera so much, he did a lot of his own camera work in the movie.
• Michael Kahn has collaborated with Steven Spielberg as an editor for over 30 years. He has always cut his movies on a Moviola and KEM when working with Spielberg. This will be his first movie that he will cut digitally with Spielberg using Avid (though he has cut movies digitally before, such as Twister).

Talking Points:

• Who is this film for?

Summary:

Tintin and his friends discover directions to a sunken ship commanded by Capt. Haddock’s ancestor and go off on a treasure hunt.

Trailer:

Excitement:
Jeff: The film noir nostalgic aspect of this movie is making me want to see this.
Ray: Animated… Spielberg… Jackson… nuff said for me.
Steve: Looks interesting. I don’t know anything about Tin Tin, so I suppose I would need to in order to really grow interest.

Coming Attractions
The Past:

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The Present:

The Future:

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