The second episode is here! Today some news about:

• Saw 10, uh.. 5
• Spider-Man 4 with Kirsten Durnst
• Benjamin Button trailer with Brad Pitt
• Madonna’s Filth
• Inglorious Bastards by Tarantino
• Keira Knightley about the new Pirates
• Transformers’ IMAX scenes
• Iron Man 2 as well
• And Sam Mendes reunites Kate Winslet and Leonardo Dicaprio

Farlanders

Release date: TBA, 2009
Budget: unknown

Director: Sam Mendes
Actors: John Krasinski, Maya Rudolph, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jeff Daniels
Produced by: Big Beach Films, Neal Street and Edward Saxon Productions
Filming location: Connecticut

There isn’t as much info on ‘Farlanders’ as in our last ‘In production’ post about ‘Bunraku,’ but I’ll work with what I’ve got here. ‘Farlanders’ is Sam Mendes’ sixth movie since he made it big with ‘American Beauty’ in 1999. Yes, it’s almost ten years since you first saw ‘American Beauty,’ which got no less than 5 Oscars.

Continue reading In production: ‘Farlanders’

No, stars aren’t wearing headsets on the red carpet (yet), but Skype (http://www.skype.com) is making an interesting move in this direction. The company is using its video conferencing program to connect the Cannes Film Festival to the stars who sadly couldn’t be there. American Pavilion will be using Skype in their ‘In Conversation’ and ‘Industry In Focus’ series, in which filmmakers have daily discussions about different aspects of the film industry. They can practically give an interview from the set they’re currently filming on.

Director James Cameron will be one of the people using Skype for the interviews at Cannes. I reckon he’s busy enough with post-production on ‘Avatar’ as it is, so I assume this is why he opted for a little video call. Or he’s just lazy, but I wouldn’t dare to call a man with the highest grossing movie of all time (’Titanic’) lazy. By using Skype, he will be able to talk to the audience on a big screen at Cannes, which I imagine would be just as impressive as the real thing.

It’s good to see the film industry embracing the internet. Not only are they creating ways to get legal content out there, but they’re also connecting to their audience in a new way. Like Guillermo del Toro’s internet chat session about ‘The Hobbit’ next weekend. Or all the movie production blogs in recent years. It seems like moderated video chats with the big stars are just around the corner. Instead of traveling all over the world to promote their movie, they could just take a couple of video calls. Where do I sign up?