Tuesday, October 21, was an amazing day if you're a fan of the James Bond movies; MGM, through their distributor Fox, released 6 of the 20 "true" Bond movies in their catalog on Blu-ray for the first time. The discs feature stunning high definition transfers of the movies alongside great bonus material. All the bonus material from the Special Edition DVDs, released 5 or 6 years ago, appear on these "Ultimate Editions," along with new bonus material.
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Last summer, fans of the movies based on Tom Clancy's popular books were thrilled to hear that Paramount Home Entertainment was announcing new cinema-quality high definition releases of all four films in The Jack Ryan Collection. These Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD sets would include Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin in The Hunt for Red October, Harrison Ford in Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger, and Ben Affleck with Morgan Freeman in The Sum of All Fears. The releases were all to be the "Special Collector's Edition" versions, incorporating all the bonus material found on the similarly titled DVDs... but with 1080p quality video!People, myself included, were excited, and this was certainly high on most want lists. The release date for versions in both formats was going to be Sept. 25th. But then, in August, Paramount announced that they would no longer support the Blu-ray format, and that effective immediately all future hi-def releases would be HD DVD only. A "BD" version of The Jac...
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George Lucas is feeling good about television. In his life post-Star Wars franchise, the legendary writer, director, producer, special-effects czar and mega-mogul is still embracing his legacy — the far-far-away galaxy he created for six films that changed the cinematic universe and became a part of world pop culture. But now a new medium will bear the message. In a conversation with TV Guide executive editor Steve Sonsky that began with a discussion of Fog City Mavericks, a Starz documentary (premiering Monday, Sept. 24, at 9 pm/ET) about the history of San Francisco-based filmmakers like himself, Francis Ford Coppola and Clint Eastwood, Lucas also held forth on the status of his two
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The fourth (and final, whispers Harrison Ford's back) Indiana Jones film, scheduled to start shooting this month, will not revisit the father-son relationship introduced in Last Crusade, if only because Sean Connery simply isn't up to it. "I thought long and hard about it, and if anything could have pulled me out of retirement, it would have been an Indiana Jones film," the 76-year-old actor says in a statement. "I love working with Steven [Spielberg] and George [Lucas], and it goes without saying that it is an honor to have Harrison as my son. But in the end, retirement is just too damned much fun."And just like that, craft services' Metamucil budget gets reduced by half.
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The Hollywood Reporter's fifth-annual accounting of the biz's best-paid actresses names Nicole Kidman this year's biggest breadwinner, earning as much as $17 million per film. This marks the first time that Julia Roberts, MIA from the live-action circuit this year, didn’t top the list. Rounding out the top 10 were Reese Witherspoon, Renée Zellweger, Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz (at $15 million each), Halle Berry ($14 mil), Charlize Theron and Angelina Jolie ($10 mil), Kirsten Dunst ($8 to 10 mil), and Jennifer Aniston ($8 million).Meanwhile, I'm reading in the Post that Sean Connery turned down hundreds of millions to play Gandalf in the LOTR trilogy. Someone alert NOW.
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