There's been overwhelming support for Bryan Singer in my recent poll asking whether he should return to the X-Men film series.
Thousands of people voted and 79 per cent picked 'yes', while 16 per cent said 'no' and 5 per cent were not sure.
Producers are keen to bring the director back in order to restore the 20th Century Fox franchise to the widely-received consistency and quality of his second film, X2: X-Men United.
X2 was written by Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris, and Dougherty recently revealed the ideas he had for X3 before they had all left to make Superman Returns instead.
Fox hired first Matthew Vaughn, and then Brett Ratner, to take the reins on the third movie.
There are welcome moves to try get Singer and his team on board for one or more future X-Men movies.
Several films are in the pipeline: a Wolverine sequel being penned by Singer »
- David Bentley

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Fans of the X-Men films have long been wanting to see the Sentinels - giant mutant-hunting robots - on the big screen.
The metal menaces were due to feature in X2 but had to be cut from the script because they would be too expensive. The head of a Sentinel was seen briefly in X-Men: The Last Stand, and the robots were rumoured to be part of an early script for X-Men Origins: Wolverine but never made it to the final draft. (There were Sentinels in the tie-in video game, though).
Whether Sentinels will ever be part of the X-Men movies is anyone's guess, but in the meantime Wolverine actor Hugh Jackman will be taking on robots in his next film.
Jackman is to star in sci-fi movie Real Steel, based on a short story by Richard Matheson in which a fighter has to reinvent himself when human boxers are replaced by machines. »
- David Bentley

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Of all the big films on the docket for next year, the one I’m most concerned about is The Wolfman. The second trailer for the film looked pretty badass, I’ll admit – but this movie has suffered a plagued production from the get-go. A change in directors, callbacks for reshoots and re-designs in the creature effects… It all points to a studio trying to turn lead into gold through the usual movie alchemy.
Well, the guys over at Slash Film must have magnifying glass eyes, because they spotted something deep-six buried in an article over at Variety, which names editors Mark Goldblatt and Walter Murch as the two guys hired to do a recut of The Wolfman!

 

This revelation comes without the usual fanfare from the blogosphere that goes with every little development on a major movie – suggesting that the studio is trying to keep the continuing problems with »
- Kofi Outlaw

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Everybody makes mistakes, even a three-time Super Bowl winning football coach like Bill Belichick. If a man like Belichick can cause a series of fatal game-changing events due to one bad coaching call — as he did during the fourth quarter of last night's game pitting his New England Patriots against the Indianapolis Colts — then you shouldn't feel too bad about breaking your mother's favorite vase or skipping out on "Drag Me To Hell" while it was in theaters. Alright, maybe you should feel bad about that last one.
But the Patriots head coach isn't alone in his ability to turn a single blunder into a catastrophic calamity — it's a storm that comes into port quite often in the hills of Hollywood. In fact, the following five film franchises have all seen similar collapses due to a fourth quarter fumble.
Batman & Robin
In 1997, the superhero movie genre almost died a dastardly death due to "Batman & Robin, »
- Josh Wigler

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For the record, I always link back to the source and cite everyone's tweets that I use from the Twitter-Wood follow list, including Edgar Wright. That's more than can be said for an edited version of an Edward Woodward memorial he wrote on his blog that showed up in edited form on the Times website, though, according to his posts today.
I do make a minimal number of edits, such as the f-bomb in Ice-t's Twitter Pic of the Day winner today, which was followed by yet another Brett Ratner/Michael Jackson pic. You need see that one for the giant wig along. Check it all out after the jump along with a "New Moon" cast shot from Gil Birmingham, Alyson Hannigan's musical Joss Whedon nostalgia and Jamie Campbell Bower's befuddlement over Justin Bieber. It's all in the Twitter-Wood report for November 19, 2009.
Twitter Pic of the Day:
@Finallevel http://twitpic. »
- Brian Warmoth

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Edward Woodward, the actor best remembered for his starring role in the TV series "The Equalizer" and his once-in-a-lifetime performance in the original pre-bees "Wicker Man," commanded a mountain of memorial tweets today. Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright and even Seth Meyers posted memories and favorite performances amid the news of his passing, and I join them. If you haven't seen him in 1973's "The Wicker Man," you're missing out on one of the all-time great horror/musical productions.
There were "New Moon" tweets today, too, of course. Peter Facinelli spent his pre-premiere morning getting his driver's license renewed, while Tinsel Korey posted a pic from outside and BooBoo Stewart prepped at the gym. Check out their tweets after the jump along with a Twitter Pic of the Day starring Michael Jackson and an "Iron Man 2" note from Jon Favreau. I'm @brianwarmoth, and this is the Twitter-Wood report for November »
- Brian Warmoth

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When Batman blockbuster The Dark Knight made a billion dollars at the global box office and became America's second highest-grossing movie of all time, several subsequent action-adventure releases used its dark formula but without the same success.
As everyone now realises, the Warner Bros release did not succeed because it was dark, as Marvel's studio boss Kevin Feige has pointed out.
As Feige rightly says, it succeeded because it respected the source material (and also made it accessible for the ordinary viewer). Admittedly, it was helped along by the interest generated by Heath Ledger's untimely demise.
But hardcore fans do tend to want more violence in films - on superhero fan forums the cry for an adult rating is commonplace. Studios, though, are more wary about shutting out the family market altogether, especially since Watchmen and even more especially in a shaky economy.

Blood, gore and brutal violence often has to be omitted, »
- David Bentley

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Few young actors are blessed with wildly eclectic bodies of work, but 29-year-old Ben Foster has utilized his trademark intensity to play a bisexual art-school student (TV's "Six Feet Under"), a drug-addicted hoodlum ("Alpha Dog"), a winged superhero ("X-Men: The Last Stand"), a Wild West sociopath ("3:10 to Yuma") and a wannabe vampire who steals the show in "30 Days of Night." In his juiciest role to date, the Boston-born actor stars in "I'm Not There" screenwriter Oren Moverman's terrific directorial debut, "The Messenger." Foster plays Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery, a jaded Army vet who has just returned to the homefront after being wounded in Iraq.
Paired up with the hard-nosed Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson), Will is assigned to be a Casualty Notification Officer, a job that, in its own way, may be more difficult than combat. It's an emotionally authentic story of friendship and coping with unexpected jolts of humor, »
- Aaron Hillis

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Director Brett Ratner has had no involvement with Quentin Tarantino's recent war thriller Inglourious Basterds or with the upcoming films Avatar, The Wolfman or Prince of Persia, but somehow he has managed to get a cameo appearance in all of them, courtesy of some spoof posters on a new website.
Ratnerfilms depicts the filmmaker digitally added to publicity images of Joe Johnston's The Wolfman, James Cameron's Avatar, Mike Newell's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Grant Heslov's comedy The Men Who Stare at Goats (or stare at Ratner in this case), as well as several other releases.
It's not the first time Ratner has popped up imitating other roles. X-Men fans will remember him donning mutton chops, fake metal claws and a leather suit to portray Wolverstein, his version of Jackman's Wolverine, in a spoof publicity shot for X-Men: The Last Stand.
Ratner »
- David Bentley

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Several fans have wondered what "X-Men: The Last Stand" would've looked like with Bryan Singer at the helm as opposed to eventual director Brett Ratner, particularly after the latter filmmaker's recent comments towards his detractors. Well, wonder no more.
In an interview with Slash Film (as transcribed by The Geek Files), "X2: X-Men United" screenwriter Michael Dougherty described his and Singer's unused plans for "X-Men 3."
According to the writer, the film would have focused on Jean Grey's transformation into the Phoenix, albeit much differently than the version ultimately seen in "The Last Stand."
"You found out was that Phoenix was going round the world taking things into her own hands and that she had basically returned as a god," described the screenwriter. "She had viewed herself as above the conflict, that she was here to end things on her terms, she was sick of the fighting and she was going »
- Josh Wigler

Read the full article on splashpage.mtv.com