Iin the first movie Bella moves to Forks, Washington to stay with her father while her mum travels with her new husband, she falls for Edward, but soon learns he is in fact a vampire.

New Moon introduced us to a rival for Bella's love, Jacob Black, he is a werewolf, we were also introduced to Victoria who is seeking revenge for events that happened in Twilight and we get to see The Volturi who are a powerful vampire clan.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse follows on from the events of the first two movies, Victoria has created a newborn vampire army and is still seeking revenge against Edward Cullen, she intends to kill Bella, will she succeed! I certainly won't spoil things by revealing any more but fans of the novels already know the answer.

Regarding fans of the film series, some are unhappy about the movie versions and the adaptations of the books, there is an online petition asking for Breaking Dawn to be rated R.

The wording of the petition can be read below.

It is understood that not only is Breaking Dawn rated R in the book, the director should produce a film that mirrors it's book in original form that is greatly loved by females (and some males) all over the world. Losing major details of the movie will definitely hurt the release of Breaking Dawn and disappoint fans everywhere.

The problem here is that Stephenie Meyer's contract with Summit Entertainment decrees that the movies be released as PG-13 rated, she does not want these movies to be harder hitting and feels the novels have a young fan base and the movies should reflect this.

I feel the petition is pointless, these movies do great business because of the very fact they have a younger fans and because they are PG-13, an R would damage box office, it's true that Breaking Dawn has more mature themes but these can still be told in the confines of a PG-13 certificate.

Breaking Dawn is being split into two films despite the fact the novel barely has enough material to cover one.

This movie franchise is a cash cow for Summit and they wish to make a few more bucks before it finishes, thus two movies to finish the series are better to maximise profits.

Meanwhile The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is doing phenomenal box office business, it cost $68 million dollars to make and has currently taken over $450 million dollars at the worldwide box office, it still has a long way to go to catch up New Moon which took $709 million worldwide. The other thing a new cinema release does is promote the other films in the series and sales of Twilight and New Moon have been given a huge boost on DVD and Blu Ray.

Robert Pattinson seems to be under some pressure from being in a hit film franchise, he almost seems embarrassed by the success of the Twilight movies and has stated in interviews his desire to escape being typecast. He seems ill at ease with the fanbase of The Twilight Saga.

He should relax and enjoy the fame while it's there. In Hollywood you are only as big as your last movie and they treasure box office success more than anything else, you can have a successful movie career without worrying about box office but money talks in Hollywood and hit movies give you control of your future with the ability to choose film projects and have more creative control over scripts and the choice of directors, although Pattinson does not yet have this level of creative control it is there for actors who are fortunate enough to have box office appeal.

The Twilight movies are more of a love story than horror, they will disappoint you if you go in expecting full blooded horror, instead you should watch these movies as a love story set in a fantasy world.

The first Twilight film was mostly shot in and around Portland and Oregon with New Moon and Eclipse being shot in various locations around Vancouver, Canada.

Forks, Washington has seen a surge in tourist activity thanks to these movies.

After the Twilight movies end you can fully expect the usual extended editions of each film to hit the marketplace as the studio tries to make a bit more cash from the franchise, in the meantime you can enjoy The Twilight Saga: Eclipse playing at a cinema near you today.

© DarkRealmFox, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: edward cullen twilight, isabella swan twilight, romantic horror films, stephenie meyer and twilight, the twilight saga, twilight breaking dawn, twilight eclipse, twilight new moon, vampire films, werewolf films

MGM owns 50% of the rights to The Hobbit and have much debt and until a buyer for the studio can be found this debt is holding up many productions including the next Bond 007 movie.

Another reason that Del Toro is not going to direct The Hobbit is family reasons and other film commitments, he has already spent considerable time working on these movies and coupled with the frustration of the ongoing financial issues at MGM he may have felt the production could well be delayed yet again.

There will be many who will be pleased with the news that Peter Jackson could direct these prequels but i personally think that Guillermo Del Toro is a fabulous director with great vision, an eye for detail and an amazing imagination, Del Toro would have made these films special and very memorable, It is a loss to the production that he will not be directing anymore.

Bids for MGM have all been lower than necessary to complete the sale of the studio, one hope could be Warner Bros who may increase their bid, Warner bought many of the MGM back catalog back in the eighties and also own New Line who are one of the other studio's involved in the production of The Hobbit, if Warner does buy MGM this will not only ensure that The Hobbit starts filming this year but will also ensure the next Bond movie gets back on track.

Peter Jackson has with Del Toro, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens been putting the finishes touches to the script but he has a film deal with Universal which means in order to direct The Hobbit films he must now sit around the table and reach agreement with Universal to let him out of his movie deal and also reach a deal with New Line/MGM/Warner and that will not be easy, indeed these negotiations could be difficult as Jackson will surely want a percentage of the profits to direct and Universal may not want to release him from his contract.

If they go ahead with the film and start shooting before MGM is sold off then this could be a problem as the studio may face bankruptcy which would endanger the whole production and be a costly mistake.

The Hobbit has Bilbo Baggins being recruited by dwarves to defeat a dragon and recover treasure, there is a lot more going on which includes battles with trolls, elves and spiders, this being a Lord Of The Rings prequel you won't be surprised to hear there is a large scale battle called the battle of five armies, these films lead up to the start of Fellowship Of The Ring and will feature Gollum, the one ring and the cave scenes shown in flashback from the first and third movies.

Hopefully Warner or some other studio will buy MGM and this production will go ahead, any more delays could see these films pushed back to 2013/2014. Peter Jackson is hoping to release the first prequel in December 2012 and the second Hobbit movie in December 2013. 

© DarkRealmFox, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: lord of the rings prequels, mgm financial woes, peter jacksons the hobbit, the hobbit, the hobbit film news, the hobbit movie news

Returning from previous installments of the film series are Milla Jovovich as Alice, Ali Larter as Claire and Sienna Guillory makes a welcome return after last being seen in Resident Evil: Apocalypse, she plays the part of Jill Valentine.

The world has been infected by a deadly virus that was released by the Umbrella corporation, Alice meets up with her old friend Jill Valentine and along with Claire they go to Los Angeles only to find the city overrun by zombies and she might also be walking into a trap set for her by Umbrella!

This will be the first of the Resident Evil films to be released to IMAX screens, let's hope it's proper IMAX screens and not the low resolution screens currently masquerading as IMAX and literally fooling many into believing they are getting the true big screen IMAX experience. I am not a fan of IMAX as i believe the process films undergo in order to be converted for IMAX is very damaging to the original look of the movie.

I have enjoyed all the resident Evil movies to date and in particular the first and third ones, i think Resident Evil: Extinction is the best of the series to date, it had an entertaining script, good camerawork and direction and some very good action sequences, it also had some closeup scenes of Milla Jovovich's face being digitally smoothed out to hide spots, a strange decision since medium shots show these spots clearly and the digital airbrushing just doesn't work.

Paul W.S. Anderson returns as director, he was also at the helm of the first film, i hope he has resisted the urge to shoot for a PG-13 certificate, these type of movies should always be R certificate. Mr Anderson is from Newcastle in England and is married to the star of these films, Milla Jovovich.

The resident Evil film series is known as BioHazard in Japan and this will be the first movie based on a video game to be specifically shot in 3D.

Hopefully it will be entertaining and if it makes money you can expect a Resident Evil 5.

© DarkRealmFox, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 3d movies, imax films, movie news, resident evil 4 movie news, resident evil afterlife, resident evil afterlife 3d, resident evil afterlife film news, video game movie adaptations, zombie movies

When Predator 2 was released it had suffered from digital noise reduction and the image was less than optimal because of this. Many thought the reason for DNR on Predator 2 was because of the ignorant online reviews and complaints from a vocal minority.

Predators is being released in cinemas and so Fox have revisited Predator with the promise of a brand new digital restoration, many thought this meant the image quality was going to be dramatically improved upon the original release but this is not the case with early screencaps of Predator showing massive grain reduction and what appears to be some ringing and to my eyes a small amount of contrast boosting and colour changes.

To my eyes it does not look better but because it now looks clean and has a good amount of extra material it may sell very well as ignorant reviewers praise it from the hilltops.

If it sells well then Fox will think that clean grain free images are good and they may start to use DNR on other films in their back catalogue, this would be bad news for film fans.

The sad thing here is that many reviewers attacked the first release and are now praising this release and the casual person in the street will see the words ultimate edition and pick it up thinking it looks better, indeed many will consider the grain an issue and automatically think this new edition is better than the old release.

The problem with this sort of thing is that it may appease those who have their televisions set up wrongly and the film grain haters but it dimishes the whole point of high definition movie content which is to get as close as possible to the original filmed image, Predator was never meant to be clean looking like this and i love the texture a layer of film grain can add to a release.

For me one of the telltale signs of DNR is when you see an image with blur on it, other screencaps from the French release show this same blur effect and it stinks of digital noise reduction, you can read my glossary here for more info on DNR.

If your monitor is set up with the sharpness and contrast controls too high you will see unnatural heavy grain which indeed looks ugly as hell, reduce your sharpness and contrast and it will improve image quality, film grain should be preserved or you lose the finer detail.

Look at the first capture and note contrast levels in the new edition and check the treeline and rocks in both the releases and then look at the sea and the far off horizon, in the second image note the texture on the wood next to Arnie is now gone and it looks hideous to me.

Now the original release of Predator is not perfect and does suffer compression issues but this new edition looks to have gone too far in the opposite direction.

The use of DNR as seen on this release results in motion artifacts and the blur effect, the contrast boosting will also be an issue, if only Fox had went back to the original negatives and using the latest film scanners made a brand new master, doing this would have likely resulted in more detail and the best possible transfer. It's a pity Fox went cheap on this release.

Incidentally they have also used edge enhancement to artificially sharpen the image after the loss of detail from using DNR, you can see clear undisputable evidence of this in the first and fifth screencaps below, Twentieth Century Fox wants us to buy this rubbish, i think not.

It seems some people with their 40inch to 50inch sets who were brought up on smooth video games love this new release, they seem to think it has more detail than the old release, they are oblivious to edge enhancement and do not notice how processed things look even when you point it out to them, these people will eventually kill the film look stone dead as they have no understanding of what film grain is and are only interested in watching a super smooth image, they mistakenly believe they are getting more detail as they have not educated themselves on what DNR actually does to an image, such a shame really and i do wish people would take the time to learn and that way they might not be so quick to defend poor releases like this one.

Post now updated with new screencaps, its worse than i first thought, check out screencap 4 as an example of the smearing and blurry focus that DNR causes when used to excess, also check out screencap 5 which shows not only excessive DNR but you can see clear edge enhancement around Arnie's shoulders and all fine detail is now gone, Carl Weathers in screencap 3 would agree with me, this is a train wreck of a transfer, Twentieth Century Fox should be sacking the people responsible and recalling this release and giving people their money back.

You can see more information on the new Predators movie and view a Predators trailer here.

Check out the blu ray screencaps of Predator below – Click twice for the full DNR frame.

© DarkRealmFox, 2010. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cleaning up movie grain, dnr on blu ray, fox kisses the grain haters ass, its grain pa we better hide, movie grain reduction, predator dnr, predator ultimate dnr edition, predator ultimate edition dnr

The new version of Piranha changes the plot and instead of genetically modified piranha fish we now have a volcanic underwater tremor causing the earth to open up and large numbers of prehistoric piranha are unleashed into the waters around Lake Havascu in Arizona.

On the 4th of July the population explodes from 5000 to 50,000 as visitors descend for the annual festivities but this year the piranha are waiting for those that step in the water. The plot may be changed but the basic idea remains the same, the cast list is impressive with Elisabeth Shue playing Sheriff Julie Forester, others in the cast include Adam Scott, Christopher Lloyd, Eli Roth, Dina Meyer, Ving Rhames, Kelly Brook and Richard Dreyfus, the original movie came about after the success of Jaws so it's interesting to see Richard Dreyfus in the cast.

The film opens at the end of August in both the UK and North America and i feel this could be either a fun entertaining rollercoaster ride of a movie or a complete disaster, at this moment in time i'm thinking disaster although hopefully the film will surprise me and be good.

You can view some movie stills below. Double click to close an image.

View a Kelly Brook picture gallery Monday and a blu ray movie review of Hollow Man here.

© DarkRealmFox, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 3d movies, movie news, movie remakes, piranha 3d, piranha 3d movie news, piranha 3d movie pictures, piranha remake, piranha remake news