Entertainment WeeklyNEW YORK – This week’s Entertainment Weekly names District 9, a film with no big names and a small budget, the must see movie of the summer. While many have yet to hear of it, by next week it may be all moviegoers talk about.

It has no stars, it was made for relatively little money ($30 million) by a 29-year-old South African-born director whom nobody’s ever heard of, Neill Blomkamp, and its action-packed plot is tinged with a surprising moral intelligence, but it may turn out to be the most unlikely sci-fi blockbuster of the season. It’s the most satisfying sci-fi thrill ride of the summer, but it also turns out to be sort of an apartheid allegory. R20;ItR17;s an utterly original film,” says District 9’s single A-list name, producer Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings). R20;In an industry that’s looking to make movies out of every obscure TV show, or sequels, or videogames, you look at District 9 and it’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.” Continue reading “EW Names ‘District 9’ The Must-See Movie of the Summer”

The Lovely BonesThanks to Diane and Justin for sending word that the first trailer for Peter Jackson’s “The Lovely Bones,” is now available. Jackson’s adaptation of Alice Sebold’s novel is due to hit theaters December 11, just in time for Oscar season. It is the first feature he has directed since “King Kong,” in 2005. Jackson introduced the clip looking pretty much exactly like he did at the Comic-Con geek summit. Our guess is he filmed the intro while in California last week. Watch it right here.

The Lovely Bones Entertainment Tonight will air the first trailer for Peter Jackson’s ‘The Lovely Bones’ in a few days, meanwhile a teaser of the full trailer has been aired and is now on YouTube, take a look! More…

Peter JacksonThe plan was to be impartial and emotionless in the printed word and provide interested parties (hopefully you dear reader) all the facts and information from Peter Jackson’s un-press conference in San Diego as possible.

After all, he had 40 or so of us delighted to be trapped in a room with him in a small but luxurious hotel a few hundred meters from the convention center where the world’s biggest celebration of popular culture was taking place. It was the end of the first day of the four-day event and Jackson had swooped into town, showed off his first ever public screening of “District 9,” and then convened Geek Court. Continue reading “Peter Jackson speaks”

WETA logoSpecial effects wizards Weta Digital have scored $5.8 million in Government funding for a research partnership. Science and Technology Minister Wayne Mapp said Weta’s investment would be on a basis of at least two-for-one. “It’s about growing new products and processes for export.” The joint partnership with TechNZ – the business investment programme of the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology – is intended to accelerate the growth of New Zealand’s strong creative digital industry. More..

district_nineIn the docu-style, sci-fi thriller “District 9,” which arrives in theaters Aug. 14, hundreds of thousands of aliens become stranded in South Africa after their massive spaceship comes to a standstill above downtown Johannesburg. Unable to fix the craft, this massive population of tentacle-waving, exoskeleton-sheathed aliens eventually outstays its welcome; they become reviled by humans for burdening the country’s welfare system even though all they really want to do is go home. Corralled into District 9 — a rubbish-strewn refugee camp that calls to mind Mumbai’s septic squalor, captured to striking effect in “Slumdog Millionaire” — they are segregated from the general populace by barbed wire. There, the film’s sentient yet excitable aliens are denied such basic necessities as running water and are denigrated by native earthlings as “prawns” for their resemblance to Sasquatch-sized shellfish. More..