More Wild Things and Mr Fox trailers

I am, as I'm sure you're all aware given the amount of coverage I've devoted to this particular film, just a little excited about Spike Jonze's adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are which opens in the US in just over a fortnight and the UK in December. Here's the latest trailer which, as with everything else I've seen so far, is beautiful and moving and sublime.



Fantastic Mr Fox, meanwhile, will open the London Film Festival in three weeks time. Apple has just posted a second trailer here.

Mapping the Lost Highway: New Perspectives on David Lynch

London's Tate Modern is holding a three-day event marking the work of David Lynch. Running from October 30-November 1, Mapping the Lost Highway: New Perspectives on David Lynch will bring together leading artists, academics and writers from around the world to offer a series of new perspectives on Lynch's films and discuss his work in a range of theoretical and artistic contexts, including psychoanalysis, philosophy, prosthetics and photography.

Speakers will include the visual artists Gregory Crewdson, Daria Martin, Louise Wilson, as well as author and filmmaker Chris Rodley (Lynch On Lynch). There will also be contributions from the writers and academics Parveen Adams, Sarah Churchwell, Simon Critchley, Roger Luckhurst, Tom McCarthy, and Jamieson Webster. A specially commissioned video interview with Lynch himself will be screened, and an accompanying film programme will take place at Tate Modern and the Birkbeck Cinema.

There will be a screening of Blue Velvet on Friday October 30 at 6.30pm and a screening of Inland Empire on Sunday November 1 at 2pm. Tickets can be booked for the symposium and the screenings at a special combined price of £30 (£19 concessions). Call 020 7887 8888 to book. Or click here for further details and to book online.

Wild Things photo fest

The Scouting Book For Boys

My third and final recommendation for films to watch out for at this year's London Film Festival is The Scouting Book For Boys, the debut feature from young British writer-director Tom Harper and starring Thomas Turgoose and Holly Grainger.

The LFF's Michael Hayden said:

The debut feature from Tom Harper, director of a number of acclaimed shorts, and written by playwright and Skins contributor Jack Thorne, The Scouting Book for Boys is an expertly constructed drama with deftly handled shifts in tone, depicting the anxieties, awkwardness and fears of being a teenager, without denying the occasional delights of being young or the possibility of fun and adventure during a hazy British summer.

ScreenDaily said:

The original Baden-Powell The Scouting Book for Boys extols the jolly campfire virtues of running, jumping, hidden dens, stalking, detection and concealment. Tom Harper’s directorial debut of the same name takes all of the above and subverts them with a series of shocking jolts in this grim tale of unarticulated and unrequited love.

Here, a humdrum, bittersweet coming-of-ager is twisted out of all recognition as the narrative takes a sudden turn into darker new territory. And while the getting there takes some effort on the part of the viewer, this is, nevertheless, a promising first feature.

Harper's director's diary can be found here. Below is his celebrated short Cubs.

A Nightmare On Elm Street teaser

A Nightmare on Elm Street in HD


Saw this at Movie-Con in the summer and I thought then that it seemed to be covering all the iconic bases stylishly and slavishly but it was hard to tell if it was going to be any good or not. Director Samuel Bayer has a great track record in commercials and promos and has been threatening to break through into features for a while now. (He directed the video for Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit which that brief shot in the classroom reminded me of.) And Jackie Earle Haley is a good choice as Freddy. Let's hope it's a marked improvement on the same company's Friday The 13th remake. Couldn't be any worse.

Rad Robots

Let's start the week with a shameless plug for my friend Simon (Transformers) Furman's book Rad Robots: A Celebration Of Awesome Automatons: The Mad, Bad And Dangerous To Know. The title maybe a mouthful but for anyone interested in robots and their presence in popular culture it's a must. Makes a great Christmas present, too.

The Book Of Eli

I've always had a soft spot for post-apocalyptic tales, be they in literature or on the big screen, and I really like the look of this one. It marks the return of the Hughes Brothers who I met several times while they were making From Hell and later interviewed for Premiere over an expensive and highly entertaining dinner at Mr Chow's in London. It's written by an ex-film journalist turned screenwriter by the name of Gary Whitta, a Brit who nows lives in the US. And it was through Whitta that talented British comic book artist Chris Weston became involved in the project, taking time out from illustrating The Twelve to storyboard the movie (see examples below). You can read about Weston's involvement on his blog here.

Not nice

Now that's what I call a messy and confused, we-don't-really-know-how-to-sell-this-new-Terry-Gilliam-film poster. Shame.

Source: Empire

You stinker

It's hard to make a good film, much less a great one, which is why so many terrible movies are released each year. Rotten Tomatoes has compiled a list of the Worst Of The Worst since 2000. It's a painfully funny list. Fortunately, I've only seen one film in the bottom ten, that being Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever which takes the top (or bottom) spot. Personally, I think Glitter (no. 99) is much, much, much worse. One of the worst films ever made, in fact.

Fingers crossed

While Puffball was, alas, something of a disappointment, I'd love to see Nicolas Roeg get the money to finally make this long-mooted project.

''Suicide is the night train, speeding your way to darkness… You buy your ticket and you climb on board. That ticket costs everything you have. But it's just a one-way.'' — Martin Amis.

No signal

The arrival of the cellphone has certainly made the job of scripting contemporary horror films and thrillers a tad trickier. The solution? Watch...

Nic Roeg interview

Regular readers will know of my love for the films of Nicolas Roeg, who turned 80 recently. Empire posted this interview with the great man the other day, but I forgot to link to it then, my brain being very much occupied by Alice related matters at present. I particularly liked this exchange:

Will you embrace new technology? Are you planning shoot Night Train in digital?
Yes, absolutely. I love film, but my great grandchildren will ask their parents “Why was it called film?”

Do you think you’d ever consider going 3-D?
Yes, of course I will. You’re a young man and you don’t understand the coming of sound. People actually didn’t like the coming of sound.

Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut

I've yet to see Watchmen: The Director's Cut because I was holding out for this four-disc version, with the Tales Of The Black Freighter storyline incorporated, along with the news vendor footage. The US Blu-ray arrives on November 3, although I have no idea when it will be released in the UK, since we haven't even got Zack Synder's Director's Cut on DVD yet.

Disc 1: Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut • Audio Commentary with Snyder and Dave Gibbons

Disc 2: The Phenomenon: The Comic that Changed Comics • Real Super Heroes, Real Vigilantes • Mechanics: Technologies of a Fantastic World • Watchmen: Video Journals • My Chemical Romance Desolation Row • Under The Hood • Story Within A Story: The Books of Watchmen

Disc 3: Digital Copy of the Theatrical Version

Disc 4: Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comics • BD-Live

I want one

Which is why I've already ordered a copy of this special "fur-covered" edition. You can pre-order one, too, by clicking here.

Tim Burton, fashion stylist

In celebration of Tim Burton's forthcoming MoMA exhibition, the editors at Harper's Bazaar magazine asked him to style a Halloween-themed fashion shoot, from which these two images are taken. To see the rest, click here.

Time out

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

I interviewed Oscar-winning screenwriter Julian Fellowes this morning and asked him what was the latest with his adaptation of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, an 800-page epic about two feuding magicians set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars which Neil Gaiman has called "unquestionably the finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last seventy years".

"It is at the moment a casualty of the collapse of New Line," Fellowes explained. "But I am quite optimistic that it’s about to be reborn. It’s a very good project. It’s a wonderful, wonderful book but it’s not one that you can make for thruppence on a housing estate in West Hartlepool, you need the whole thing behind it. But as a kind of fantasy story for all ages, for adults quite as much as anyone young, I think it’s very usual. Normally fantasy is incredibly boring for people over 30 and that isn’t. It’s got all sorts of interesting issues. I think it’s a kind of work of genius, actually, the novel."

Given the scale of the material, was it being planned as one movie or two?

"At the moment it’s one film. It’s a film, if it was made as written, which is a big if, of under two hours. But like every book of that scale there are many films you could make. it’s very visual. It would be a very beautiful film. Tremendously visual, in that society and Waterloo and Regency London, and all of that stuff, quite apart from the fantasy world. I have hopes that it will live and breathe again."

On this day

Herbert George Wells was born 143 years ago today in Bromley, Kent. A prolific writer, HG Wells, as he's better known, was responsible for numerous classic works of science fiction, including The Time Machine, The War Of The Worlds, The Invisible Man, The Island Of Doctor Moreau and The Shape Of Things To Come, all of which have been adapted for the cinema with varying degrees of success. My favourite Wells adaptation has always been George Pal's The Time Machine, although I'm also very partial to both the Claude Rains Invisible Man and Erle C. Kenton's 1932 version of Dr Moreau, Island Of Lost Souls.

Film review: Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs (****)

While maybe not as narratively rigorous as the best of Pixar but frequently as funny and as visually inventive, Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs works it charms from the opening credits, with the possessory card "A Film By" not given solely to directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller but to "A Lot Of People". Loosely based on a picture book by Judi and Ron Barrett, this stomach-centric comic adventure revolves around a water-into-food device cooked up by struggling inventor Flint (Bill Hader) that results in all manner of edible delights falling from the sky: be it steaks, spaghetti, pizza, snow ice cream. For the kids it all adds up to a winning mix of silly slapstick and food related gags. For the adults there's a dash of wry humour and a sprinkling of subtext regarding obesity and greed. The animation style is highly graphic and effective, the characters a real delight, particularly Flint's dad, voiced by James Caan, whose eyes are constantly covered by his eyebrows, except when he's surprised. I'd be happy to visit this bunch once again.

Here's an interview with directors Chris Miller and Phil Lord.

Cracks

Another of reel world matters' pick of the films to see at this year's LFF, Cracks marks the feature debut of Ridley Scott's daughter Jordan, previously an accomplished promo and commercials director. Adapted from a novel by Shelia Kohler and set in an elite British boarding school in 1934, Cracks is described as a Lord Of The Flies-style drama of adolescent obsession and innocence corrupted, with Eva Green as a free-spirited teacher determined to instill in her pupils a yearning for free thinking, late-night parties and diving lessons in the nearby lake. But the arrival of an exotic Spanish student (María Valverde) throws the school into disarray, bringing about the cracks of the title. Shot by Ridley regular John Mathieson, with dad and uncle Tony on board as executive producers, Cracks shows that, as far as directing talent is concerned, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Can. Not. Wait.

John Lasseter and the Pixar gang were in Venice earlier this month, picking up their Golden Lion for lifetime achievement and talking up Up and their forthcoming features. While I'm desperate to see Up (I'm holding out for the UK premiere), I'm just as keen to see Woody, Buzz and the rest of the Toy Story contingent on the big screen again. As a kid, I saw a lot of double bills and so this promises to be a nostalgia trip in more ways than one.

Visions Of Light

Last night I watched Visions Of Light: The Art Of Cinematography, and while the picture quality of many of the clips left much to be desired, the skill and artistry of all the work featured came through loud and clear. As a result, I found myself ordering a bunch of DVDs from Amazon today, as well as pulling from my shelves a dozen or so titles I now feel the need to watch again. Presenting a chronological history of cinematography from the silent era through to the late 1980s, this documentary is, quite simply, essential viewing for any film lover. Just be prepared to spend a small fortune on DVDs afterwards.

Harry Brown trailer

Seeing this, this week. Heard good things about it. With Michael Caine supposedly playing an elderly variation of Jack Carter.

Just because...

One shouldn't need a reason to run a photo of the lovely and talented Rebecca Hall. But if one is required, it's that the delightful young actress is to star in Richard Linklater's Liars (A-E) in which she'll play a girl dumped by her rock musician fiance the night before Barack Obama's election, who then takes a road trip with a friend (the fabulous Kat Dennings) to the Inauguration ceremony, stopping off with various ex-boyfriends along the way to pick up items she'd left with them.

Film review: Away We Go (**)

A marked change of pace for director Sam Mendes after the rigid formality of American Beauty, Road To Perdition, Jarhead and Revolutionary Road, this insufferably quirky indie road movie may represent both a loosening up in style and a move away from the "weightiness" of his first four movies, but, for me, brings to an end his near-perfect run. Still, the fault lies less with Mendes than with the humdrum script by Dave Eggars and his wife Vendela Vida which follows salesman Burt (John Krasinski) and his pregnant partner Verona (Maya Rudolph) as they pin across America looking for the perfect spot to settle down and raise their soon-to-be-born child, meeting with relatives and friends along the way, every one of whom turns out to be either kooky, zany, crazy, or just plain odd, a statistic that soon grates. And so by the time Maggie Gyllenhaal's hippie-mom shows up on screen, ranting about her three "S"s (don't ask), you want to scream. Loudly. Which is a shame because Krasinki and Rudolph are fun to spend time with, and the film works best during the quieter, tender moments when it's just them.

"It's my way or the highway"

There was a lot of love shown in the comments section earlier this week for Patrick Swayze's Roadhouse. As I said at the time, I've not seen it, but your enthusiasm has led me to order a copy. If the rest of the movie's as good as this scene, then I'm in for a treat.

The Disappearance Of Alice Creed

I had identified British writer-director J Blakeson's debut feature The Disappearance Of Alice Creed as one for me to see at this year's LFF and today's Variety review confirms that.

"Crisp handling, some clever twists and a welcome streak of dry humor hold attention throughout this indie Brit thriller. After meticulous preparations, Vic (Eddie Marsan) and Danny (Martin Compston) grab Alice (Gemma Arterton) off the street, hiding her in a well-fortified apartment in an abandoned building. They inform her rich father she'll be returned safely for E2 million. The victim's terror, and tensions between the two men — Vic a paranoid bully, Danny his younger, resentful subordinate — dominate the early stages. But the game shifts once one surprising secret connection between two protags is revealed; another soon follows. Multiple betrayals and reversals of fortune ensue. Perfs are good, packaging tersely efficient. Smart deployment of low-budget resources should get Blakeson more bigscreen work posthaste."

Fringe returns

The second season of Fringe starts on US TV tonight. While I missed a few of the early episodes of series one — I hope to catch up on them when the DVD box set is released later this month — the show's X Files meets Alias vibe had me hooked immediately, and the season finale took it into even more intriguing territory. The LA Times' Geoff Boucher visited the Fringe set and his report hints at some of the treats in store this season.

“The second year is much tighter,” says Blair Brown, who plays the mysterious Nina Sharp, who may or may not be the villain of the show. “The writing is wittier, more complicated but also there’s clarity to the stories and character. And we are all speaking with quite different voices. The rhythm of show is clear now.”

“Anytime you go back and look at the very first episode of almost any series there’s a charming incongruity to it,” explains the show's executive producer and co-creator JJ Abrams. “It’s not the show you’ve come to know. It’s all promise but no clear trajectory. It’s those next few episodes that kind of determine where it’s going. I think frankly those early episodes of first season we were on shakier ground. By the third, fourth, fifth episodes we began to find out footing. And now this season, we start running I think."

Micmacs

From the opening frames of their delicious debut, Delicatessen, I was a fan of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro. The City Of Lost Children affirmed that, and as Jeunet went solo with Alien: Resurrection, Amelie and A Very Long Engagement, his work continued to dazzle and delight and amaze. (I've yet to see Caro's solo effort Dante 01.) And so I've been eagerly awaiting Jeunet's latest, Micmacs, which screened at the TIFF recently, and which will be at the LFF next month.

Variety was impressed:

Turning the volume of his slapstick surreality down from 11 to 10, Gallic auteur Jean-Pierre Jeunet hits the sweet spot with Micmacs. The wacky tale of a brain-injured videostore clerk who brings down a pair of Parisian arms dealers with the help of some highly creative collectors of second-hand goods, "Micmacs" welds Jeunet's hyperactive imagination to the simpler structures of silent comedy and '40s-era studio capers, resulting in the director's most accessible work yet.

As was The Hollywood Reporter:

Jean-Pierre Jeunet is the last silent movie director. Of course, there is sound galore in such films as Delicatessen, the huge international hit Amelie, A Very Long Engagement and his latest film, Micmacs. But his comic instincts really do relate to the visual storytelling of Buster Keaton: Wry slapstick gags and chains of fateful events lead a feckless protagonist through the bewildering mysteries of life. With ingenious French comedian Dany Boon as his star, Jeunet should enjoy another worldwide success.

Allegory required

"The ambition for a sequel to Star Trek is to make a movie that's worthy of the audience and not just another movie, a second movie that feels tacked on," JJ Abrams has told the LA Times. "The first movie was so concerned with just setting up the characters, that in many ways a sequel will have a very different mission. It needs to do what [Trek creator Gene] Roddenberry did so well, which is allegory. It needs to tell a story that has connection to what is familiar and what is relevant. It also needs to tell it in a spectacular way that hides the machinery and in a primarily entertaining and hopefully moving story. There needs to be relevance, yes, and that doesn't mean it should be pretentious."

I liked Abrams' Trek, although I had some reservations. More allegory and less action would suit me fine.

Paranormal Activity trailer

Now that's what I call freaky.

Interesting

Following on from my When She's Good, She's Really Good post on Nicole Kidman comes today's news that the Aussie actress has signed Let The Right One In helmer Tomas Alfredson to direct her in The Danish Girl, based on David Ebershoff's novel about Danish painter Einar Wegener, who in 1931 became the first person to go through a sex-change operation to become a woman. Kidman will both play Wegener and produce, replacing Charlize Theron who was previously attached to star. Alfredson plans to film The Danish Girl before his tackles his Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy remake set up at Working Title.

The Men Who Stare At Goats poster

Well, it made me laugh. As did the film.

Directed by David Fincher

I wish Fincher would hurry up and make his next movie because he really is one of the best we've got. Nice ad, though.

Even more Wild Things

Patrick Swayze 1952-2009

He appeared in a few great films, and some mediocre ones, but whatever you think about Swayze the actor, 57 is too young, and pancreatic cancer is a dreadful way to go. RIP.

Entretiens avec Tim Burton

Entretiens avec Tim Burton de Mark Salisbury, a new French edition of Burton On Burton, will be published on November 5 by Sonatine Editions. Considering the previous edition, published by Le Cinéphage, has been out of print for a few years, I'm obviously delighted about this. It even features a new chapter on Sweeney Todd which isn't available in any other version as yet.

A Christmas Carol trailer

Rare and unseen Star Wars

I'm part of the Star Wars generation, one of those kids who was raised on George Lucas' original trilogy (although, I have to admit, I never liked Return Of The Jedi). I collected the toys, the trading cards, the poster magazines, and, later, the videos and laserdiscs. Then came Parts 1-3, and while I wasn't one of those who claimed that Lucas raped my childhood, I was profoundly disappointed by what the series had become, a disappointment that has, alas, slightly soured my attachment to both Star Wars and Empire, neither of which I haven't watched in years. TotalFilm.com has uncovered a series of behind-the-scenes images from both Star Wars and Empire, and looking through them I experienced a warm, nostalgic glow and was reminded just why I loved those two films so much.

Spike Jonze's Wild Things

Regular readers will be very aware of my ever increasing anticipation for director Spike Jonze's version of Maurice Sendak's classic children's book Where The Wild Things Are. As the US release date draws nearer, the press campaign has begun in earnest.

The LA Times' Chris Lee talked to Jonze about his take on Sendak's Wild Things.

When Spike Jonze set out to create live-action versions of the classic creatures from Where the Wild Things Are for his movie adaptation of the beloved children's book, the writer-director had a very clear image in mind — of what he didn't want.

In 2004, around the time he also started co-writing its script with novelist Dave Eggers, Jonze rejected a number of submissions from a Hollywood special-effects company for being, well, "too creature-y." Jonze thought they simply failed to capture a bestial je ne sais quoi found in Maurice Sendak's 1963 picture book about Max, a little boy in a wolf costume who misbehaves and imagines himself transported to a faraway land where he becomes the king of all Wild Things.

"I wanted the monsters to retain the strange design that Maurice had created," he said. "Weird, cuddly, charming. Looking at each other out of the corner of their eye. They'd be almost, like, conspiring. You don't know if Max has total control over them."

Meanwhile, the NY Times' Saki Knafo was shown an early cut and spoke to Jonze (pictured above with Max Richards who plays Max) during post-production.

"It is a fantasy film to some degree," Jonze acknowledged, "but the tone of it is its own tone. We wanted it all to feel true to a nine-year-old and not have some big movie speech where a nine-year-old is suddenly reciting the wisdom of a sage." He hadn't set out to make a children's movie, he said, so much as to accurately depict childhood. "Everything we did, all the decisions that we made, were to try and capture the feeling of what it is to be nine."

Lebanon wins at Venice

Now that's what I call a result. Samuel Maoz's dazzling debut Lebanon, which I raved about last week, today scooped the Golden Lion at the 66th Venice Film Festival.

"I dedicate this award to all those thousands of people all over the world who came back from the war, like me, safe and sound. Apparently they are fine. They walk; get married; have children. But inside them the memories will remain etched in their souls," said Maoz after receiving the prize from jury president Ang Lee.

The complete list of winners is as follows:

GOLDEN LION: Lebanon (Samuel Maoz, Israel-France-Germany)

SILVER LION: Women Without Men (Shirin Neshat, Germany-Austria-France)

GRAND JURY PRIZE: Soul Kitchen (Fatih Akin, Germany)

ACTOR: Colin Firth, A Single Man (Tom Ford, US)

ACTRESS: Ksenia Rappoport, The Double Hour, Giuseppe Capotondi, Italy)

MARCELLO MASTROIANNI PRIZE FOR YOUNG PERFORMER: Jasmine Trinca, The Big Dream, Michele Placido, Italy)

BEST SCREENPLAY: Todd Solondz, Life During Wartime (Todd Solondz, US)

TECHNICAL CONTRIBUTION: (Set Design) Sylvie Olive, Mr Nobody (Jaco Van Dormael, France)

LUIGI DE LAURENTIIS LION OF THE FUTURE: Engkwentro (Pepe Diokno, Philippines)

VENICE HORIZONS: Engkwentro (Pepe Diokno, Philippines)

VENICE HORIZONS DOCUMENTARY: 1428 (Du Haibin, (China)

VENICE HORIZONS SPECIAL MENTION: The Man’s Woman And Other Stories (Amit Dutta, India)

A Single Man trailer

I missed this at Venice because it screened after I'd left. The reviews, however, have been very good indeed, with Variety calling it an impressive helming debut for fashion designer Tom Ford, and others claiming the film has a shot of the Golden Lion. All will be revealed later today when the awards are announced. In the meantime, this has leaped to the top of my must-see list for the LFF.

Venice 2009: White Material

Set in an unnamed African country where Isabelle Huppert's coffee plantation owner struggles to harvest her crop and hold on to her land as a civil war rages around her, Claire Denis' complex, atmospheric film represents a return to the subject matter of her debut, Chocolat, namely French colonials in Africa. Headstrong and ruthlessly driven, Huppert's Maria doesn't exactly engender much sympathy as she ignores calls from the retreating French army to leave, putting her extended family at risk for the sake of the harvest and her dependence on the land, ultimately unable to prevent the inevitable tragedy as the plantation is overrun by child soldiers. Powerful stuff.

DC Entertainment

The recent news that Warner Bros. has taken complete control of DC Comics in order to better exploit its roster of cartoon characters was greeted most warmly in these parts. I've always leaned more towards DC than Marvel, and so while I loved Iron Man and the first two X-Men movies and Ang Lee's Hulk, it was galling to me to see how Marvel had gotten its act together in terms of creating movie versions of its characters. Now, there's a plan in place at DC, with Diane Nelson replacing Paul Levitz as DC President, and becoming the new point person for all DC's entertainment projects. All of which means they're in good hands. Not only did Nelson help steer the Harry Potter franchise at the studio, she previously ran the Warner Premiere label which was responsible for all those recent. terrific DC direct-to-DVD animated features.

D23 Expo

For the last couple of days, and continuing this weekend, the Walt Disney Company has been holding its inaugural D23 Expo at the Anaheim Convention Centre, California, front of 4,500 adoring fans. Among the highlights: Johnny Depp turned up in his Jack Sparrow clobber to announce the fourth movie, Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Strangers Tides, was due in 2011.

Tim Burton was there, too, to show some new footage and talk about Alice In Wonderland, and to officially announce Frankenweenie. Introduced by Disney Studios' chairman Dick Cook as a filmmaker who got his start at Disney as an animator, Burton corrected him by saying, "I was an in-betweener." Later, Cook asked why he wanted to adapt Alice and was told that it was his dissatisfaction with all previous movie versions. "Sorry," said Burton, "I know Disney did one."

Meanwhile, Cook announced that Disney and Guillermo Del Toro have formed a production company called Double Dare You to create "animated films with a spooky edge", with its first project called The Troll Hunters. "I love to take audiences into fantastic worlds and provide them with some anxious moments in the process," said Del Toro in a recorded presentation. "It is part of the Disney canon to create thrilling, unforgettable moments and villains in all their classic films. It is my privilege for Double Dare You to continue in this tradition."

When Batman met the Gremlins

Joe Dante told me to watch this when I spoke to him in Venice. And now I'm telling you...

"Let the wild rumpus start"

Individual character posters can be found here.