Christopher Nolan and Hans Zimmer explain the thought process behind the music of The Dark Knight and how the music was built around capturing a reflection of the insanity that is Heath Ledger’s Joker.
This video was made available some six weeks ago, however it seems timely to post it following Hans Zimmer’s (and James Newton Howard’s) Grammy Award for Best Score at the 51st Annual Grammy Awards and as we approach the possibility of a Heath Ledger oscar.
If you haven’t seen it before, enjoy. If you have, enjoy it again.
Transformers 2 - Filming on location at the Pyramids
Avatar - Total Film have posted an exclusive interview with James Cameron where he gives you a gazillion reasons why you should be watering at the mouth over his upcoming sci fi blockbuster, Avatar. At the start of the year I voted Avatar as the most anticipated movie of 2009 and although you’re not seeing mass marketing information about it like you are Terminator: Salvation or Transformers 2, read this interview and you might just share my view.
X Men Origins: Wolverine - A cameo with Storm was shot for the movie but, alas, its not going to find its way into the movie. But we should still see it on the DVD when it finally makes it there. How do I know? Widscreen have posted an exclusive video interview with the film’s producer Lauren Shuler Donner here.
X Men: First Class – Yes, this is an all new live-action X Men movie that’s in development with a scheduled release date of 2010. Josh Schwartz is writing the script but given that there’s no director on board as yet it’s not looking 2010 likely. Recently Schwartz told MTV that he wasn’t allowed to divulge anything regarding the script, saying only that it’s exciting and going to be huge.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen – As we anticipate a little more footage from the new movie (new trailer to be released Monday), Michael Bay has told the guys at Collider that Transformers 2 is “Epic in Scale” and that he has made it darker and given the Transformers more personality. At present the film, which is still being edited, will run almost two and a half hours. Additionally Transformers 2 has been shot using IMAX cameras, and Bay is quoted as saying that the IMAX version of the film is very different to watch than the standard cinema, citing the IMAX footage as “Awesome.” Read the rest of this entry »
The Dark Knight – The Grammy Award for the best movie score has gone to James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer for The Dark Knight. It’s about time and this win is a nice consolation prize after the Academy Award nominations failed to give The Dark Knight soundtrack a mention. In more Dark Knight news, Heath Ledger has won a British Academy Film Award (BAFTA) for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of the Joker.
Wall-E – Wall-E has won the Grammy Award for best motion picture song ‘Down to Earth’.
Watchmen – UGO have interview Zack Snyder and gained some insight into his thoughts on Watchmen. It’s a lengthy interview so fill up your coffee and go learn a heap of stuff that you’d never have imagined (can anyone say ‘wooden R2D2′). If that didn’t tweak your interest, I’m not sure what will.
The Cross – Andrew Niccol is the director behind Gattaca and Lord of War. If like me you thought both of these films were excellent (especially Gattaca), then you’ll be interested to know that Niccol has started production on a new sci fi movie titled The Cross. The storyline on this is a bit secretive it seems. What we know is that it stars Orlando Bloom as a man attempting to cross the ‘border’, whilst he a guard (Vincent Cassel) attempts to stop him. And that’s all we know so far.
Surrogates – The new Bruce Willis sci fi flick from Jonathan Mostow was presented at New York’s Comic-Con on Saturday to a bit of a mixed reception – but it’s early days yet so I wouldn’t make much of that. To coincide with Comic Con, a website has been released which is very cool. It sports an enticing opening intro from ‘Virtual Self Industries’ that I imagine sets the tone for the movie and a very cool ‘choose your surrogate’ function (where you can upload your photo and make changes to your very own ’surrogate’). Check it out here at www.chooseyoursurrogate.com. Read the rest of this entry »
Here’s the sci fi news for the last few days that never made it to a full article, all in a nice neat summarized nutshell. As usual, there’s no spoilers so read on safely:
Day One – NBC have given the green-light to a new pilot titled Day One. Day One is sci-fi drama creation of Jesse Alexander (Heroes/ Alias / Lost). The pilot will follow a group of survivors as they struggle in a post-apocalyptic Earth to both survive and discover the cause of the catastrophic event that has decimated the planet. Sounds similar to Jericho on face value, but since there’s very little information available at this time, we’ll have to wait and cross our fingers for some originality.
Stargate Universe – Michael Shanks, aka Dr. Daniel Jackson from Stargate SG-1 looks set to make a cameo in Stargate Universe. In an exclusive interview with SCI FI Wire he said, “I talked to [executive producer] Brad Wright a couple of weeks ago, and he asked me if I’d be interested in doing a cameo in the Universe pilot, and I of course said I would be. And there’s a great deal of talk about [it]. … They’ve got a script going and everything like that.” However according to Gateworld it will most likely be a small part early on in the pilot given that there has been no indication that Daniel Jackson will join the crew of the ancient ship Destiny. Makes sense.
Forbidden Planet - A remake of the popular 1956 film is on its way from Warner Brothers and the latest news is James Cameron (Aliens / The Abyss/ Terminator) has his eyes on the directors chair. This would put Cameron in collaboration with J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5 / Changeling) who has written the story for the film. Read the rest of this entry »
Well it’s that time of the year again – the Academy Awards are upon us and the nominees are finally out. How has the sci fi genre scored this time around? Well, to be honest, I don’t have that many criticisms this time around. Yes there’s some questionable decisions but there’s also some fairly good decisions by the Academy when it comes to the sci-fi genre. Let’s take a look.
It’s exactly one year to the day since 28 year old Heath Ledger died from an accidental drug overdose – but he hasn’t been forgotten by a long shot. Since winning his posthumous Golden Globe expectation has been strong for his portrayal of The Joker in The Dark Knight to net him a posthumous Academy Award. Today this expectation moved one step closer to realization as he received a formal best supporting actor nomination.
Few people would argue Ledger doesn’t deserve it, and typically a Golden Globe win almost guarantees the Oscar. His toughest competition is probably Philip Seymour Hoffman for Doubt or perhaps Josh Brolin for Milk. He’s also up against Robert Downey Jr. for Tropic Thunder, but to that I simply say, erm, what? Downey Jr. was hilarious in the role, but seriously, an Oscar? No, I think Ledger is a shoe-in and this will be one award The Dark Knight takes home on the night. Read the rest of this entry »
A couple of days ago I wrote a single post covering all the sci fi related news of the day. That seemed to work well from both a writing and reading perspective. What I might try from hereon is writing one post to cover the bulk of the news of the day and individual posts for specific, mind blowing news. That way you’ll know if it’s a post on Sci Fi Scoop it’s of value because it will either contain a decent summary of the day’s sci fi news or something big and worthy of its own post.
Hugo Awards – Nominations for the 2009 Hugo Awards of 2009 are now open. The Hugo Awards are the Academy Awards of science fiction. If you don’t know what a Hugo is, take a look at this page where you can see the official definitions of what the Hugo Awards are, including the types of ‘best of’ categories available for nomination. Anyone can vote, but it’ll cost you US $50 for a membership to get the rights. Want to have your say? Go here. Read the rest of this entry »
If you haven’t already heard, The Dark Knight has destroyed its competition to win every award category it was nominated for in the 35th Annual People’s Choice Awards. It won five awards in total, including Best Movie, Best Action Movie, Favourite Cast, Best On-Screen-Matchup (Christian Bale/Heath Ledger), and Best Superhero (Christian Bale as Batman).
When accepting his award, Christian Bale paid tribute to the late Heath Ledger: “On behalf of all of the cast from the movie, thank you very much to the fans. Here’s to Heath.”
Hot on the heels of this win comes an announcement of the top five films likely to snare the top Director’s Guild of America prize. If you don’t know much about what this means, basically it means this: whoever wins the nod for Best Director by the Guild is the 99.99% shoe in to take home the Oscar. Read the rest of this entry »
There’s no doubt that the phenomenal success of The Dark Knight was in large part due to the brilliant portrayal of The Joker by Heath Ledger. So much so that although having passed on (sadly), Ledger is widely considered a high possibility to win a post-humus Academy Award for his work.
It may surprise you to learn that despite his death, Heath Ledger’s screen time is not yet done – The Dark Knight was not his final movie. Enter ‘The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus‘.
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a $30M Terry Gilliam film with Ledger playing the lead character Tony. Billed as an adventure/fantasy/mystery movie, the story follows a 1000 year old immortal (Christopher PLummer) who, through a deal with the devil, operates a travelling theatre that takes its audience through a magical portal into their imaginations. Read the rest of this entry »
The Dark Knight has totaled $919 million worldwide to become only the 10th movie to go past $900 million dollars in revenue. It is the second best performing movie in international markets, trailing only Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull which has amassed $466 million in international markets compared to The Dark Knights $416.7 million. Expectations are that The Dark Knight will surpass IndiannaJones in the coming weeks.
Here’s the sci fi news for the last few days that never made it to a full article, all in a nice neat summarized nutshell. As usual, there’s no spoilers so read on safely:
Well it’s that time of the year again – the Academy Awards are upon us and the nominees are finally out. How has the sci fi genre scored this time around? Well, to be honest, I don’t have that many criticisms this time around. Yes there’s some questionable decisions but there’s also some fairly good decisions by the Academy when it comes to the sci-fi genre. Let’s take a look. 
A couple of days ago I wrote a single post covering all the sci fi related news of the day. That seemed to work well from both a writing and reading perspective. What I might try from hereon is writing one post to cover the bulk of the news of the day and individual posts for specific, mind blowing news. That way you’ll know if it’s a post on Sci Fi Scoop it’s of value because it will either contain a decent summary of the day’s sci fi news or something big and worthy of its own post.
If you haven’t already heard, 
