In this morning’s roundup of movie news ‘n’ notes from around the web, “Inception” is defiantly 2D, and Best Buy wants you to pull out your cellphone during the movie.
Here today, gone tomorrow … or here for the first film, gone for the sequel. Michael Rechtshaffen surveys the recent spate of actors who’ve been replaced in recent months: Megan Fox out after two “Transformers” movies, Terrence Howard replaced by Don Cheadle for the second “Iron Man,” Tobey Maguire and Sam Raimi out of the “Spider-Man” franchise after three films … “[U]nless you happen to go by the name of Pattinson, Lautner or Stewart, these days there are very few instances where an actor is indispensable to the vehicle that shot him or her to the top of the box-office charts,” he says. And in devastating news, it turns out that even the dog voices have changed between “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” and its upcoming sequel. (Jam! Showbiz)
At the 3DNext Summit on Monday, IMAX Filmed Entertainment’s chairman and president, Greg Foster, pointed to Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” as an example of a summer film that doesn’t need 3D to be one of the season’s must-sees. And it turns out that there’s a reason for that: Nolan told the audience at the weekend’s Hero Complex Film Festival, “I’m not a huge fan of 3D.” He also resents the implication that cinema is flat if it’s not in the stereoscopic 3D format, and he finds the inevitable dimming of the image “extremely alienating.” (Hero Complex)
Xavier Dolan’s “I Killed My Mother” and Leanne Pooley’s “The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls” won the top honors over the weekend at the NewFest, the New York-based film festival devoted to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender films. Dolan’s film, about the stormy relationship between a gay teenager (played by the director) and his mother (photo right), was Canada’s official submission for the 2009 Foreign-Language Film category at the Oscars; Pooley’s deals with New Zealand’s “finest lesbian country and western singers.” Brian Brooks rounds up all the festival winners. (indieWIRE)
Talking on a cellphone during a movie is seriously bad form, but texting and checking messages shouldn’t be on any theatergoers’ to-do lists either. Which is why the new Best Buy movie app for cellphones is so strange: according to Roy Furchgott, Best Buy Movie Mode has a feature that will translate nonsense words spoken by characters in the upcoming animated film “Despicable Me.” The feature will apparently only work during the closing credits in theaters, though it’ll be active throughout the film when the movie hits Blu-Ray. It’ll also tell users where “Despicable Me” is playing and where to find Best Buy stores, and the retailer says it’ll be used for other films as well. But if it encourages moviegoers to start checking those little glowing screens during the movie, Best Buy will have some ‘splainin’ to do. (The New York Times)
We knew that Pixar has the best batting average in Hollywood (10 movies, 10 critical favorites, 10 hits), but are they also the nicest people in the movie business? Will LeBlanc runs across some evidence in favor of that proposition: a letter that “Up” director Pete Docter wrote to a young, aspiring filmmaker who’d asked for an autographed photo. Claiming he didn’t have a photo (“not being famous”), Docter instead hand-wrote a two-page letter covered with drawings, including a self-portrait. I can testify that this is not out-of-character for Docter: when I interviewed him last year and mentioned that my son was a huge Pixar fan, he immediately took my pen and paper and drew my son a picture. I guess nice guys finish first sometimes … (Cinematical; the original is on Letters of Note)
