Guillermo Del Toro leaves the Hobbit

Very sad news... Guillermo Del Toro departs “The Hobbit”

 Source: theOnering.net

I really hated when studios screwed it up!!! The studios are still fighting over the right of the films and the movie is still not greenlight... So much work as been done already for the past 2 years it's very sad to see it come to this because of studio exec...

Guillermo Del Toro announced today that he is no longer directing the two movies based on J.R.R Tolkien’s “The Hobbit”, but will continue to co-write the screenplays.
“In light of ongoing delays in the setting of a start date for filming “The Hobbit,” I am faced with the hardest decision of my life”, says Guillermo. “After nearly two years of living, breathing and designing a world as rich as Tolkien’s Middle Earth, I must, with great regret, take leave from helming these wonderful pictures. I remain grateful to Peter, Fran and Philippa Boyens, New Line and Warner Brothers and to all my crew in New Zealand. I’ve been privileged to work in one of the greatest countries on earth with some of the best people ever in our craft and my life will be forever changed. The blessings have been plenty, but the mounting pressures of conflicting schedules have overwhelmed the time slot originally allocated for the project. Both as a co-writer and as a director, I wlsh the production nothing but the very best of luck and I will be first in line to see the finished product. I remain an ally to it and its makers, present and future, and fully support a smooth transition to a new director”.
“We feel very sad to see Guillermo leave the Hobbit, but he has kept us fully in the loop and we understand how the protracted development time on these two films, due to reasons beyond anyone’s control – has compromised his commitment to other long term projects”, says Executive Producer Peter Jackson. “The bottom line is that Guillermo just didn’t feel he could commit six years to living in New Zealand, exclusively making these films, when his original commitment was for three years. Guillermo is one of the most remarkable creative spirits I’ve ever encountered and it has been a complete joy working with him. Guillermo’s strong vision is engrained into the scripts and designs of these two films, which are extremely fortunate to be blessed with his creative DNA”.
“Guillermo is co-writing the Hobbit screenplays with Philippa Boyens, Fran Walsh and myself, and happily our writing partnership will continue for several more months, until the scripts are fine tuned and polished” says Jackson. “New Line and Warner Bros will sit down with us this week, to ensure a smooth and uneventful transition, as we secure a new director for the Hobbit. We do not anticipate any delay or disruption to ongoing pre-production work”.
The Hobbit is planned as two motion pictures, co-produced by New Line Cinema and MGM. They are scheduled for release in Dec 2012 and Dec 2013.

Dennis Hopper die today at the age of 74.1936-2010

Actor, director and artist Dennis Hopper died Saturday. Hopper had a long and tumultuous career that included such films as "Easy Rider," "Hoosiers," "Blue Velvet," and "Speed." His cancer was diagnosed last year.





Source: the Gazette full story
LOS ANGELES, May 29 (Reuters) - Hollywood actor Dennis Hopper, best known for directing and starring in the 1969 cult classic "Easy Rider," died on Saturday from complications of prostate cancer, a friend of the actor said. Hopper was 74.

The hard-living screen star died at his home in the coastal Los Angeles suburb of Venice at 8:15 a.m. PDT (1515 GMT), surrounded by family and friends, the friend, Alex Hitz, told Reuters.

In a wildly varied career spanning more than 50 years, Hopper appeared alongside his mentor James Dean in "Rebel Without a Cause" and "Giant" in the 1950s and played maniacs in such films as "Apocalypse Now," "Blue Velvet" and "Speed."

He received two Oscar nominations — for writing "Easy Rider" (with co-star Peter Fonda and Terry Southern), and for a rare heartwarming turn as an alcoholic high-school basketball coach in the 1986 drama "Hoosiers."

But his prodigious drug abuse, temper tantrums, propensity for domestic violence and poor choice of movie roles often made him a Hollywood pariah.

Hopper felt over-indulgence was a requirement for great artists. He once claimed he snorted lines of cocaine "as long as your arm every five minutes, just so I could carry on drinking ... gallons" of alcohol.

Still, his legacy rests securely on "Easy Rider." Regarded as one of the greatest films of American cinema, it helped usher in a new era in which the old Hollywood guard was forced to cede power to young filmmakers such as Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese.

The low-budget blockbuster, originally conceived by Fonda, introduced mainstream moviegoers to pot-smoking, cocaine-dealing, long-haired bikers.

"We’d gone through the whole ’60s and nobody had made a film about anybody smoking grass without going out and killing a bunch of nurses," Hopper told Entertainment Weekly in 2005. "I wanted ’Easy Rider’ to be a time capsule for people about that period."

Hopper and Fonda were joined on screen by a then-unknown Jack Nicholson as an alcoholic lawyer, but it was not a harmonious set. Hopper clashed violently with everyone and Fonda later described him as a "little fascist freak." Their friendship was destroyed.

Hopper’s 1971 directorial follow-up, "The Last Movie," shot amid what he later called "one long sex and drug orgy" in Peru, was a flop.

He was often gripped by paranoid delusions. In 1982, while filming "Jungle Warriors" in Mexico, he ran naked into the jungle, convinced World War Three had started. He was put on a plane home but jumped out onto the wing as it was about to take off, fearful that the plane was on fire. Upon his return, he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for three months.

He starred in bad movies just for the money, such as "Super Mario Bros." and "Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2," and turned down important projects that could have enhanced his legend, such as "Taxi Driver" and "Reservoir Dogs."

Hopper also found himself typecast as the psychotic villain thanks to such films as "Blue Velvet," in which he played a gas-huffing rapist, and the 1994 smash "Speed," in which his character rigged a city bus to explode.

Hopper mellowed somewhat in later years, becoming a Republican and a pitchman for the likes of Gap and Nike.

Outside of Hollywood, he was a noted photographer, painter, sculptor and art collector. He lived in a warehouse-style compound in the coastal suburb of Venice, in a neighborhood that was gang-infested until a decade ago.

Hopper fell ill last September. He continued working almost to the end, both on his cable TV series "Crash" and on a book showcasing his photography. But his final months were also consumed by a bitter divorce battle with his fifth wife, Victoria Duffy.

Indeed, his private life was never dull. His marriages included an eight-day union in 1970 with Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and Papas, who later told Vanity Fair that she was subjected to "excruciating" treatment.

Hopper is survived by four children. Funeral arrangements were pending.

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/Hollywood+hellraiser+Dennis+Hopper+dead/3087858/story.html#ixzz0pONSRiQ2

Celebrating 35 Years of ILM Magic

Wired Magazine has published a feature celebrating 35 years of Industrial Light & Magic. Arguably one of the most innovative visual effects studios of our time, ILM has contributed much this industry and inspired generations of visual artists.

Quote: Hollywood’s penchant for visual wizardry goes back to black-and-white classics like The Thief of Bagdad and Metropolis, but no single f/x house has lent more reality to make-believe than George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic. What started out as a ragtag cluster of artists cobbling together an epic space adventure has matured into a 15-time Oscar winner with some 250 film credits—the most recent being this summer’s Iron Man 2. To celebrate 35 years of ILM, let’s take a look back at some moments that have—ahem—”forced” their way into cinematic legend.

Full article

Iron Baby

Very cool little short film by PatrickBoivin An Iron Man movie parody starring his baby girl. The costume was created by her uncle STROB.

IRON BABY from Patrick Boivin on Vimeo.

Source: Time.com via cgchannel.com

Hollywood's VFX Shops: Trouble in Boom Times

By Rebeccca Keegan / Hollywood Monday, May. 31, 2010

Following Lee Stranahan’s “Open Letter to James Cameron”, various media outlets have caught on and done follow up stories. Most recent (and widespread given the circulation) is Time Magazine. Rebecca Keegan writes:

If you want to see the names driving Hollywood’s growth, you have to stay for the movie’s credits. The very end of the credits. After the actors and electricians — sometimes even after the people who serve the tacos on set — come the visual-effects artists. These are the people who make superheroes fly and cities fall into the ocean, and the effects-reliant films they work on, like Avatar and the Harry Potter franchise, are Hollywood’s biggest moneymakers.

“Fundamentally, visual effects is a crappy business,” James Cameron told me when I interviewed him for my book, The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron. “You don’t make much of a margin. A good year for us was 5%. Sure, we were doing huge volume but at a low margin.”

Full Article