This really has been a hell of a ride.

I started this Movie Blogging thing on the aptly named The Movie Blog with John Campea, and after about 6 years of that I wanted to strike out on my own. Thus, The Stub was born. The original plan I had with John was to build some content here with my posts, and eventually we would announce the spinoff and see what happened.

But then John started expanding into other ventures, and as always I was in full support mode and stepped up my involvement on the site from a few posts a day to becoming pretty much the only person to write on the site for the last year. The Movie Blog had “guest appearances” by John until he found himself named the Senior Editor over at AMC’s Script to Screen. John chose to move on exclusively with that venture leaving The Movie Blog in the hands of the financial owners.

The official launch of The Stub came sooner than I hoped and I was thrilled to see some of the loyal TMB crowd make the leap to join me here. But my grand opening was short lived as the owners of The Movie Blog contacted me and offered me the role as Senior Editor.

At first I was conflicted. I had this new site all up and running, all excited to be moving forward. And then here I was being handed the keys to the site I helped create and sustain for 6 years. It was a brief conflict and a new era for The Movie Blog has arrived as I accepted the title.

For the last few weeks I have been mirroring my content from The Movie Blog here, but things are moving forward with solid effort. We are making changes to the site and building TMB up to become the ultimate spot for your movie news and sharing opinions.

And that brings us to today. The Stub is mine and she only had a short presence online, and The Movie Blog will be my new home now.

From now on I will be at The Movie Blog

Thanks for being around. Come join me there!

I really liked Sherlock Holmes, and as expected the $90m budget compared to over $360m boxoffice draw so far, a sequel cannot be far behind.

Its a good thing they optioned a script already.

Movie Moron shares:

Warner Bros. actually commissioned a script for Sherlock Holmes 2 three months before the first movie was even released. It’s becoming increasingly common for studios to do this for movies with pre-release ‘buzz’ as it enables a sequel to get into production faster, for less cost.

Since they did that they’re now in the process of locking down the cast for a June start date. Downey Jr. recently passed on the lead role in Jon Favreau’s Cowboys And Aliens to free up that time.

While I really wanted to see RDJ take on some Aliens in a Cowboy era film, I really do want to see him reprise his quirky Sherlock Holmes and they have to fit this between his very busy Iron Man appearances and Avengers roles (as well as everything else they have him lined up for)

They laid enough groundwork incorporating the superior evil mastermind of Professor Moriarty in the first film, so I anticipate there will be some of that in the sequel.

As much as I always want to see more Rachel McAdams, I don’t anticipate her return. Her character is already established as a wanderer, so she might show up again, but maybe not in the sequel.

I liked how Moriarty was concealed in shadows in a less than subtle introduction, but not the main antagonist in the film. I hope to see more of that. It adds even more mystery if no one ever really knows what Moriarty will look like.

Its not known if the sequel will draw inspiration on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s work or if this will be an original story.

A new Universal family comedy shamelessly latching on to the Apple naming trends of putting an i in front of a word, and playing a bunny pun against the popular breakfast foods chain for a title that has only a vague connection to the plot, I Hop is coming with James Marsden and Russell Brand.

Obsessed with Film says:

Universal comedy that will star James Marsden as an unemployed slacker who accidentally runs over the Easter Bunny (voiced by Russell Brand) with his car, and takes him under his wing to nurses him back to full health.

Tthe movie will be part live-action/part CGI and it comes from the director who blended the two in Alvin and the Chipmunks

While this trend of mythical creature family friendly films is amusing if you are 12, I can’t stand them.

Oh who am I kidding! I love these family friendly light films. Not every film has to be The Dark Knight, and frankly I really like James Marsden, and I actually am one of the few who is not irritated by Russel Brand… so while I dont expect many to follow me, the kids and I will likely go see this.

I know. But some of you go to the Jackass films too and I still let you breathe.

A new poster for Benicio Del Toro’s Wolfman is out, and they figured the best way to improve it was to include a bevvy of floating airbrushed photoshopped heads.

Oh, and a wolfman. He’s there too.

The previous posters were as unremarkable, but at least they lacked photoshopped floating heads. That cliche needs to die.

I don’t like this poster at all. Thankfully for them I do like Del Toro, and Hopkins.

Via

Kurtzman and Orci were talking again about what they might do with the Star Trek sequel.

Will it have Khan? Orci has said bluntly “We would never do a remake…” so that appears to rule out Khan as a badguy, but they are not ignorant to the impact of a strong villain in the film.

FirstShowing quotes:

“I think our idea on this is that the first of any series is about them coming together or the formation. I couldn’t really tell you what Jeff Bridges was doing in Iron Man, but it doesn’t matter at all because it is all about Iron Man becoming Iron Man. Whereas I think sequels are very much about the villain. Because while [in the first one] the villain serves to bring the crew together, the second one I think has to be a true challenging of what that family is about. That is why Wrath of Khan was so amazing. Khan tested each one of them and ultimately asked for the [ultimate] sacrifice, and that is why that movie held up so well.”

I like how they are insistant that it will not be a remake of the sequel in the original film series. I really want them to go all fresh and new and NOT just recycle the old storylines with the new cast.

Hop ahead to where Kirk has become a phenom and the youngest Captain in Federation history. Have others challenge his sudden rise in ranks, have doubt and plenty of character interaction, but have his crew solidly behind him. Then bring in a villain worthy of the format.

Should it be Khan. No. We know in the timeline that he is out there, as are his genetically created superpeople. But will Kirk even cross paths with him now that will trigger the events of Wrath of Khan? Who says there is any wrath now?

I like how they illustrate how Nero was an unimportant villain. I felt that way, but they made it obvious as to why he wasn’t played up as a major presence. Its not what their film was about.

I look forward to seeing what they do with a villain in Star Trek 2. They seem to have their head in the right place here. Origin is over, now lets have a serious conflict!

I vote for a badass Klingon Warlord!

So very close!! The Boxoffice take for the weekend is in and Avatar still isn’t the #1 Worldwide seat filler of all time.

Avatar has far exceeded the boxoffice results that I had anticipated. All along I thought the movie was going to be as ground breaking as the rumours implied, but I honestly didn’t see it killing at the boxoffice this much.

And the excuse that it doesn’t deserve it considering the rise in prices, and the additional income brought on by the premium you pay to see it in 3D? I don’t think that takes anything at all away from the achievement.

The 3D added to the appeal of the movie to showcase the technology in a medium in which it truly shines. So that appeal earned it some extra money? Isn’t that what all films do? The appeal of a film makes you go when its not Cheap Tuesdays, and the appeal of the film makes you see it before its a cheap rental at the corner Blockbuster. The 3D made you go see it and the extra 25% premium some paid to see this would still put this film ahead of the previous #2 Worldwide (Lord of the Rings: Return of the King) assuming everyone paid for 3D.

Yes, those numbers are to be considered, but I think that it is the appeal that makes the difference. The only thing I am wondering (if anyone knows how to calculate it) is market value. How is the change of the value of a dollar impact this?

In other boxoffice news, Alvin And the Chipmunks the Squeakquel is sitting at $364m worldwide right now, which squeaks it just past Sherlock Holmes at $363m. Alvin is beating Sherlock. Go figure.

Via

The International (French subtitled) Trailer for Liam Neeson and Amanda Seyfried’s Chloe is online, and while I was waiting for one without the subtitles, this will have to do.

Oh, its also the redband trailer, but aside from a bare bum and some suggestive sexual acts, there is little “red” about it.

A woman thinks her husband is cheating on her, so she hires Chloe - an escort - to make advances on him to see what happens. Chloe goes too far and goes all single white female, causing more problems than they had before.

I really like Amanda Seyfried, and Julianne Moore with Liam Neeson too? Hell, they didn’t even have to throw in a lesbian romp with Seyfried and Moore to get me interested. But that helped.

Via

An adventurous fan has put together a fake poster for Captain America: The First Avenger, and its pretty damned good.

ThinkHero has it out for us to see:

I like the gritty edge to it. I don’t want a candy coated World War 2 picture so I hope that this reflects how it will go.

I am half anticipating that they might use the traditional kite shield shape, but seeing the perfectly round frisbee shield on Tony Stark’s workbench implies to me he uses it in dubdubtwo and that at the end of the film they might recover it (and somehow makes its way to Stark’s collection - he is a patriot, and people would know of the legend of Captain America). When Tony joins Fury in approaching the freshly thawed legendary hero in Avengers, it would be a proud moment for Tony to hand him his shield.

The tortured middleschool sterotypes have not been abused quite enough, so the bestselling book Diary of a Wimpy Kid was made into a film of the same name, and it actually looks pretty cute.

When Jonah Hill starts talking I can’t take him seriously. So when he said his adaptation of 21 Jump Street was not going to be a parody, I wanted to believe him. But somehow I didn’t fully buy into that until now.
Phil Lord and Chris Miller were caught chatting up the subject and confirmed it, and also dropped a bit about a possible Johnny Depp cameo.

I think it would be appropriate to have Johnny Depp do a cameo. Either as a completely unrelated character or even to tie this movie to the original series and have him appear as the character he played, who has moved on and perhaps now training young undercover cops.

I will be waiting to see how this all works. The nostalgia factor for the original show combined with an updated look is intriguing. I think Jonah Hill is the puzzle peice that refuses to fit in my head.

Via

Looks like that Conan remake will be headed up by Baywatch hunk Jason Momoa, and word has it Mickey Rourke might be playing his dad!

Dark Horizons

30-year-old Jason Momoa (”Baywatch Hawaii,” “Stargate: Atlantis”) has officially been picked to play the titular role in “Conan” for Lionsgate and Millenium Films says Deadline Hollywood.

Momoa is confirmed, but Rourke has just been in talks for the role. I could see Rourke playing the part of a seasoned beat up leathering warrior type that would be an intimidating old man in this, but I doubt he will have a big part.

Conan himself will obviously be the core of this film, and until I see Momoa in the loincloth made from the skin of a bear he killed with his bare hands, I will reserve judgment on whether he will make a better Conan than Arnie.

But if you think about it, Arnold was picked for physical ability and appearance and not his reputation as a thespian, so even this third stringer has a leg up on him there.

Time will tell.

Some new stills from The Season of the Witch are online, and I am digging it.

First, in case you hadn’t seen the trailer, check it out here.

I get so hit and miss with Nic Cage and I always hold out hope that he will be awesome.

Here is the new poster and a pile of images from the flick:

I am actually looking forward to this. Please Cage, don’t suck!!

You can visit the Official Season of the Witch website

Seems the quirky comedy Greenberg staring Ben Stiller has been bumped back two weeks and will now release on March 26th.

The official release didn’t give a reason for the shift, but it might be to put some distance between this and the release of Alice in Wonderland the previous week. But its out of the frying pan and into the fire coming out on the same week as Clash of the Titans and I Love you Phillip Morris.

I think they might have been better off where they were.

I am looking forward to this, but I worry that its going to get lost in the mix of some pretty impressive March releases.

We all know that more credibility is stacking up behind the rumoured forward movement on Ghostbusters, but this tip suggests that while the movie is a certainty, it will also be filmed for 3D presentation!

Marketsaw Shares:

Yes - I have word from one of my top sources that a friend of his at a certain well known effects house (I can’t say who it is, but their initials are ILM) said that GHOSTBUSTERS 3 is proceeding as planned - but - with the added benefit of stereoscopic 3D!

I am encouraged and a little saddened that the news that Ghostbusters3 is coming in 3D, and I am not as gleefully excited as I thought I would be.

Why? Well EVERYTHING seems to be coming out in 3D now, and the fanfare surrounding such announcements has become so commonplace that when you hear that a major franchise is going 3D instead of getting all snug in the froot of the looms, my automatic response is more “oh, okay.”

Look, I think its awesome that stuff is coming out in 3D and I cant wait to see all these movies with this staggering depth.

I am a little nostalgic of the 80s when the red/blue 3d craze started and it seemed every movie with a third chapter was toying with 3D making for fun titles like Jaws 3-D and now we get Piranha 3D and Ghostbusters 3D etc.

Everyone is suddenly a buzz about former popstar Tiffany appearing in the horror film Necrosis while we were talking about it last May Necrosis was called Blood Snow when it was accepted as a selection at the Cannes Film Festival last spring, but it got all of its attention because at the time, Debbie Gibson’s MegaShark vs Giant Octopuss was making a viral internet sensation.

Check out the trailer for Necrosis: (Its the same as the Blood Snow trailer, but now has the new market title on it)

Tiffany will also be staring in Asylum Film’s MegaPiranha (to be shamelessly released weeks after Piranha 3D) also due out in April.

Is this stunt casting? Or is Tiffany making a comeback as a horror scream queen?

Seems a doctor lays claim that the invigorating excitement caused by watching Avatar is responsible for a frail man’s stroke which lead to his death.

/Film shares

A 42-year-old Taiwanese man died of a stroke, which his doctor claims was likely triggered by “over-excitement” from watching James Cameron’s Avatar in 3D. According to News.com.au, the man began to feel sick during a screening earlier this month and was taken to hospital.

Its a bit of a stretch, but still morbidly amusing that they would place this man in such a high risk that the amusement of watching a visually stimulating movie was enough to trigger the events that lead to his death.

I mean if we are going to set this chain off saying Avatar killed him, shouldn’t we also look at his history of high blood pressure? Perhaps we should they say that a pig killed him because he ate too much bacon? Or say his father killed him for handing down a genetic likelyhood to heart disease?

I find this kind of story interesting, but at the same time it is sensationalism that attaches a very small picture to a life of conditions that all lead to this unfortunate circumstance.

So yeah, the movie was so awesome it caused his head to explode. That’s what happened.

Rumoured director Marc Webb will direct Sony’s reboot of the Spider-Man franchise.

Three times.

NYMag says:

Webb, whose (500) Days scored a Golden Globe nomination and whose name seems to have predestined him for this job, has long been a favorite of Columbia chairman Amy Pascal. We’re told that last year she very nearly hired him to direct the adaptation of Michael Lewis’s Moneyball after she pulled the plug on Steven Soderbergh three days before shooting. She ultimately chose Bennett Miller (Capote), thinking that Moneyball might be hurt by Webb’s whimsical style, but she views him as a latter-day Cameron Crowe for the economically and socially angsty Generation Y, and thinks he’d be perfect to explore the conflict within Parker.

The press release continues to illustrate how much they are paying Webb ($10m per film with bonus for hitting boxoffice milestones) instead of the percentage of the take like Raimi had. Maybe part of the falling out was that Sony was tired of Raimi and Maguire making so much money. It was reported that between the two of them, Spider-man 4 was going to owe them 25% of the rake.

It was also pointed out that ironicly the Agency that negotiated Webb’s deal and got him the coveted comfy chair was the same agency that pushed to get Maguire the role of Spidey himself.

I don’t mind Webb as a director for the social elements of Spiderman - that much we know he is capable of handling. But I wish they hired a director with some notion that he can handle the wit and action of a comedic comic book character.

Yesterday I posted an article about AskMen.com’s 2010 99 Most Desirable Women feature, which received 6million votes to tally up the list of the women with the most desirable qualities. Their list encompassed all of entertainment, while I was mostly sticking with movie stars and a couple tv stars.

Well today AskMen.com has the results of their list!

Rounding out the top three for 2010 are Victoria’s Secret model Marisa Miller and British actress Kate Beckinsale, respectively. Readers can also view the full “Top 99 Most Desirable Women” list, including profiles of each honoree, at www.AskMen.com. The top 99 most desirable women for 2010, in order, are:

1. Emmanuelle Chriqui
2. Marisa Miller
3. Kate Beckinsale
4. Alessandra Ambrosio
5. Jessica Alba
6. Beyonce
7. Penelope Cruz
8. Cheryl Cole
9. Eva Mendes
10. Miranda Kerr

Now I only posted the top 10, so if you want to see the rest you can go to AskMen.com and check out where your favourite hotties ranked.

I was surprised that only ONE of my Top 10 was the same as theirs, and that was my first runner up Kate Beckinsale.

Check it out before it gets jacked. A trailer for MacGruber is out and it was initially only released on Facebook (which you cannot embed) but its found its way to the Tubes of You.

Now I know it makes perfect sense to let Will Forte play MacGruber, but honestly this guy is channeling Owen Wilson (who my wife and I affectionately call Penisnose)

If Wilson was given this job, I don’t see how this movie would be any different.

It might not last long as studios tend to hate this free publicity thing we got going on here, but enjoy it while you can.

Lionsgate has released their final poster for the much anticipated Kick-Ass.

Check it out:

It looks too busy for me. I liked some of the previous posters that we have shared here, but this is just too much of a mess. If I am going to hang one of the posters on my wall it wont be this one.