Thursday, November 22, 2007

Hitman Paintball Challenge

The Hitman Paintball Challenge a huge success!

The National Professional Paintball League (NPPL) in association with Twenty Century Fox is proud to announce the overwhelming success of the HITMAN PAINTBALL CHALLENGE. Over 30 paintball fields across the United States participated in this simultaneous mini-themed paintball game.

“Feedback is still rolling in and everyone is excited. I keep getting asked by fields “When is the next game?” says NPPL President Shawn Walker. “It is great to see our industry rally together and support a project like this. Now everyone needs to go out and see the movie, it’s awesome!”

“Working with the National Professional Paintball League on the HITMAN PAINTBALL CHALLENGE has been a great experience! All of the fields who participated did a fantastic job executing the game, and we feel privileged to have been able to work with the fields, players, and the NPPL on this promotion. We look forward to working together to integrate our films into promotions with the NPPL in the future.” said Erin Pargas, Western Field Manager, 20th Century Fox Filmed Entertainment.

With so many fields participating it was hard to choose winners. Every field put their unique spin on the script. At Silver Spur Splat field in Princeton Indiana, Russian Mikhail Belicoff arrived via helicopter; during the event at Jungle Island Paintball Park in Lake Elsinore California celebrity players from the Psycho Clown Posse, LA Hitmen and even Pro teams Infamous and Bad Company participated side by side with all players.

Hundreds of Hitman movie t-shirts, barcode tattoos, posters and other giveaways were awarded to every field that participated. Since so many fields and players qualified to win the larger prizes it had to be decided randomly who was going to take home the Xbox360’s, gift certificates and Hitman video games. Also the Grand Prize of a private screening for the winning fields was also decided at random amongst the qualifying fields.

The following fields are recognized as “Honorable Mention Participating Fields”
Silver Spur Splat Paintball – Princeton, Indiana
Battlefront Paintball – Hubbard, Ohio
Camp Pendleton Paintball Park – Oceanside, California
Warpaint International – Salem, Oregon
Jungle Island / Triple Tap Paintball – Lake Elsinore, California
Alpha Paintball – Mesa, Arizona
Splat Tag Paintball – Hudson, Wisconsin

The Grand Prize winning fields who received a private advanced screening of the Hitman movie, an Xbox 360 and Hitman video game are:
Velocity Paintball Park – Bonita, California
Fox 4 Paintball – Upton, Massachusetts

The individual winners each winning an Xbox 360, Hitman video game and gift card are:
Yvonne Truong – playing as Niki at Jungle Island
Hunter Uselton – playing as an Agent at Warpaint International
Malic Bedford – playing as an Agent at Camp Pendleton Paintball Park
Danielle Sylak – playing as Niki at Battlefront Paintball
Brian Knepp – playing as Agent 47 at Alpha Paintball

Thanks to all those who participated. Don’t miss Hitman the movie in theaters today.

Spyder is one of sponsors of NPPL Super Seven world series 2007. Spyder paintball gun

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

The Incredible Hulk: Back With a Reboo

2008 will give us a new Hulk incarnation as opposed to Hulk of 2003 directed by Ang Lee. "The Incredible Hulk" is neither a sequel nor a remake of its predecessor. It is generally referred to as a reboot of the franchise, which totally ignores Ang Lee's work, all because of 2003 Hulk being poorly received by the critics and – alas! — the audience. Hulk was a disaster in the box-office, so the producers decided that the new crew should give new life to it.

This time Bruce Banner/Hulk is played by... bet you didn’t see it coming… by Edward Norton! Eric Bana's depiction was okay, I believe, but the whole movie just sucked, so someone smart opted for Norton. Hulk's girlfriend was changed from Jennifer Connelly to… bet you didn't see it impending… Lyv Tyler! Abomination – Hulk's arch-nemesis – is portrayed by Tim Roth, bet you didn't... well, you know.

This new installment is directed by Louis Leterrier, best known for making two parts of The Transporter. This guy definitely knows how to shoot action flicks.

The plot goes as this: Bruce Banner is exposed to the radiation rays, mutates into big green monster and charges off seeking for cure. He is being hunted down by military forces and a CIA agent, who eventually becomes The Abomination under the influence of the said cure. Big bad-a-boom, thank you very much. Now. THAT one you could definitely see coming.

The Incredible Hulk will be released on 13 June 2008.

Sunday, November 4, 2007

Iron Man Strikes Groin

First of all, Iron Man is coming... in 2008. Now, after The Transformers have demonstrated than modern CGI is capable of making some giant robots agile enough to make pranks of all kinds, Marvel Comics is ready to make a flick about Iron Man.

Iron Man — in case someone doesn't know — is a guy named Tony Stark, a billionaire and a weapon monger. While working for the government, he was captured by an enemy and forced to produce weapons for killing good guys (as opposed to killing bad guys, which happens a lot if one's working for the government). Killing good guys made Stark go slightly nuts, so he made a huge armor and became an Iron Man — an avenger of a kind, you know...

The movie features Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark//Iron Man, Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts, Stark's secretary, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury and Terence Howard as War Machine. Jeff Bridges plays the villainous Obadiah Stane, while the movie's supervillain is Mandarin who actually never appears on-screen being more of a Sauron, according to the director Jon Favreau. He will have another chance, actually, for Iron Man is planned as a trilogy (at least for now). So, the guys are in for a tough time.

The feel of the movie is expected to lay between Batman Begins, Tom Clancy's novels, James Bond franchise and RoboCop — that is how Favreau describes it. It could've been worse, I uses, because we really were facing a chance for Iron Man to be directed by no other that Quentin Tarantino. Back in 1999. Luckily, that didn't work out.

As for the character of Tony Stark, Robert Downey Jr. looks like not the worst deal too? Considering that both Tom Cruise and Nicholas Cage expressed interest in portraying Iron Man. Luckily again, that didn't came to being either.

Here you can watch Iron Man's official trailer.

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

The sixth installment of Harry Potter franchise

The sixth installment of Harry Potter franchise — though I personally am not a huge fan of Boy-with-a-Wand — definitely makes it to the list of most awaited openings of 2008.

It is still being filmed, not having entered even a post-production stage, so the rumors still boil around it. Get me right — there are no rumors on the movie plot (that'd be weird), but as for the cast — there’s something to muse upon.

But let's get to the plot first. So, shortly: as Lord Voldemort is playing Joker (see The Dark Knight) on the United Kingdom, Harry is busy with a potions book with a "Half-Blood Prince" bookplate on it. He also practices some magic privately with Dumbledore (which is all too weird now, for we know now that Dumbledore was as gay as it gets). Luckily, Harry is totally straight, so he falls in sexual interest with Ginny Weasley. All the rest — magical wars, Voldemort's plans for the new world order, China’s growing influence and Teheran nuclear research — is so unimportant compared to puberty, you know…

So, the cast... Some thing never change (if the contract says so, of course), hence Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson are still here as Harry, Ron and Hermione. The was a lot of buff that Watson will be leaving the franchise after the fifth movie, but she eventually decided that "the pluses outweighed the minuses", so we can be sure she’ll stay with us for Harry Potter 7 as well.

Jim Broadbent plays Horace Slughorn, blondy Tom Felton is again Draco Malfoy, Bonnie Wright plays Ginny Weasley. Other notables are David Thewlis as Remus Lupin and Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange.

There were reports that both Naomi Watts and Joseph Fiennes would be appearing in the movie too, but their representatives denied the reports completely. It is being still buzzed that Naomi Watts would be playing Narcissa Malfoy, Draco’s mother. Cthulhu-like Bill Nighy had expressed an interest in appearing in the film. The director David Yates said that if the part of Minister for Magic Rufus Scrimgeour makes it to the final screenplay, then Nighy will be his first choice for the role.

Yates, by the way, who directed the previous Potter movie, could be substituted in his chair by Terry Gilliam, M. Night Shyamalan or Guillermo del Toro, but they all just turned down the chance to direct something like "Harry Potter and whatever".



The movie is opening on November, 21 in the United States and is destined to become a box-office hit. You know, the five Harry Potter films together have already out-grossed all 22 James Bond films, so Potter is the biggest movie franchise ever! Potter's $4.47 billion worldwide is nothing to sneeze at.

Friday, October 26, 2007

Hello, guys!

From now on and, hopefully, a couple of times a week, I'll be spending some time here, at this page, to dwell upon some upcoming movie openings.

Now, if you're reading the blog's title, then you should know one thing — we're blatantly lying to you, ha-ha! We're not going post any movie reviews here — well, may be from time to time — only movie previews — based on rumors, news, leaks and so on. But those previews will be pretty far from bad. At least, that’s what I hope for. May my hopes be not disappointed.

Now, having tattooed my motto across my chest, I should start off. And the motto goes as: "Rumors are my food, trivia is my dessert". Clunky, but true.

Well, I guess I should begin with summing up all we got to know about The Dark Knight — a sequel to Batman Begins, that had managed to totally reboot the whole Batman series — the later being on it's way down due to some sordid Joel Schumacher efforts.

Batman:The Dark Knight
So, Christian Bale is again Batman, Sir Michael Caine is Alfred, Gary Oldman is Lt. Gordon and Morgan Freeman is Lucius Fox. There are also some newcomers, as we already know that this time Batman will cross his ways with the Joker. The giggling sinister is played by the Brokeback Mountain star Heath Ledger. Heath was chosen to play Joker after Sean Penn, Adrian Brody, Robin Williams and Paul Bettany proved to be not... err... weird enough. Will Ledger's specific Brokeback talents help him to overpower the winged black latex guy? Scarcely likely...

Another new guy Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent/Two-Face. Mr. Eckhart was two-face enough to win the casting race against Hugh Jackman and Ryan Philippe.

We have casualties, though. Katie Holmes is out, having turned down almost a $2 million salary. Is it due to marriage or Ron Hubbard that her brain suffers an oxygen shortage? Anyways, she's substituted as Rachel Dawes by Maggie Gyllenhaal. The presence of Cillian Murphy (Scarecrow in Batman Begins) is also rumored.

Despite having one death on the filming site in Chicago (an unnamed special effects expert died following Batmobile in his car), The Dark Knight should collect a nice box office. Death of a crew member is a bad sign, but the absence of "Batman" in the title might be a good one. The movie is due to hit cinemas on July 18, 2008.


I only long for one thing — Mr. Bale should definitely work on his Batman voice. After all, the Dark Knight needs to sound intimidating, not constipated, doesn't he?