Someone fly me to Toronto!

Cause their festival is gonnabe kick-ass this year! They're getting Synecdoche, New York, The Brothers Bloom, The Wrestler, AND Zach and Miri Make a Porno.

Let's go through the list (in the order mentioned above). You've got Charlie Kaufmann's directorial debut starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Catherine Keener, so um, fuckin duh. Then you've got Rian Johnson's follow-up to Brick, which as I said the other day was one of my favorite films of 2005, and if you haven't seen the trailer for this, you've got to check it out. It's got an interesting cast and could be a real winner.

Then there's Aranofsky's latest, and while I said the other day that the new photos that dropped really didn't leave me yearning to get to the theater, he hasn't disappointed me yet, and I really love his visual sense. I suppose I'm kind of excited to see how that translates with this kind of material. And then there's the movie I'm probably most excited to see this year, and it's only cause I'm a fucking huge Kevin Smith fanboy. Oh and also cause I'm a huge Rogen fanboy, and I think working of a Smith script is going to be like the perfect comedy storm.

Also of note are Danny Boyle and Richard Linklater's latest, Slumdog Millionare and Me and Orsen Welles respectively. I know nothing about either of these, but both are exciting filmmakers who I really enjoy, so I'm gonna include them anyhow. If you have any info, send it our way! Anyone else excited about any of these?

Newsmania!

Well I didn't get to a computer in time to do a bunch of updates, so I'm going to do one big news update that I'm gonna call Newsmania! I'm just gonna rant about what I'm excited about and point you in the direction of the original articles. Beginning with...

Rian Johnson, writer/director of Brick is gearing up to do a sci-fi film called Looper. He says its gonna be in the vein of the first Terminator (ie, character driven, time-travel plot device) which made me drool all over the keyboard here at work. Brick was definately one of my favorite films from 2005. It is overwhelmingly impressive. He seems to know exactly what story he wants to tell and exactly how he wants to tell it. And some new sci-fi from a new director with that kind of vision which he is calling similar to Terminator? Save me a seat, please.

Aranofsky's The Wrestler (pictured above) finally got some stills online, and they're... underwhelming. I want to be really excited about this movie, but if it wasn't for Aranofsky's name being attatched, I really would not give two shits about this movie. However, the fact that his name is attatched gives me hope that this will be the kind of edgy, dark fare that has made Aranofsky an essential part of my DVD collection. It's just that a story about a wrestler... I dunno... didn't David Arquette try that once?

Holy fanboy meltdown Batman! I've only recently been turned onto the genius of Joss Whedon (and by recently I mean Dr. Horrible recently) and I am rapidly becoming an avid fan. I am so damn excited to watch Firefly, as well as Buffy. Apparantly, Whedon was developing his own idea for a Batman reboot at the same time Batman Begins was being developed. It would've dealt with a villain that he created. While I love the villains in the Batman universe, I think it would be super awesome to see what Whedon had in mind for a villain. And we may get that oppertunity, as he drops a hint to the comic industry at the end of his quote "Maybe I'll get to do it as a comic one day." Please call him tonight DC! Interrupt his family dinner and get you some Whedonized Batmanliness!






Speaking of awesome people working on awesome stories, how about Henry Selick (Nightmare before Christmas!) adapting Neil Gaiman's (Sandman!) Coraline? (see the orininal article here) How fuckin awesome is that? They posted a production video from the set today, and it looks fantastic. I'm not familiar with the source material here at all, but Selick has yet to disapoint for me, and Gaiman knows exactly how to tell a fairytale. I love getting new fairytells, and i'd venture to say there's no one better than Gaiman when it comes to that.

So is anyone as excited as I am for this stuff? Huh? Anyone!?