Many people think that DreamWorks Animation is in a constant battle against Pixar. That’s because they are. However, the near-total domination from Disney’s arm means that DreamWorks gets a bit of leeway as the underdog, and they’ve capitalized on that standing with some offbeat and clever choices for production. It’s that mentality that must have given them license to bring Alma to life. The beautiful, unnerving short film from Pixar animator Rodrigo Blaas (which we featured on the site back in September) is going to grow into a feature length film under the tutelage of Guillermo del Toro and the team over at DreamWorks. With any luck, they’ll maintain the crawling sensibility featured prominently in the story of a young girl in a toy store. To that point, there’s an odds on chance that the feature will feel a lot like the short simply because DreamWorks has the brass buttons to do it. So is this reason to celebrate? Absolutely. Why? Watch the short for yourself and you tell me:

It’s been hyped up, hotly anticipated and pushed hard by the big name behind it, but at the end of the day Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is just not that scary. Sure, Troy Nixey’s haunted house movie — co-produced and co-scripted by Guillermo Del Toro — has the high end bonafides, revealed in the sumptuous wood-paneled mansion setting and the patient, operatic camera movements. It’s got the eerie historical aura, the tortured child and the expressionistic rendition of shadowy figures creeping through the darkness. But when this remake of a popular made-for-TV movie from 1973 finally shows all its cards, you wonder what you’ve missed. There’s a serious disconnect between the highfalutin atmospherics and the nitty- gritty sloppiness of the premise, a sort of People Under the Stairs for rich white New Englanders. Reliant on the timeless “boo” effect and the hint of something deeper and sinister, the film basically offers one long, drawn out exercise in scaring the pants off a pre-teen.

Acclaimed visual auteur Guillermo Del Toro recently sat down with MTV cameras to have a chat about a number of topics, and during the discussion talk turned to Children of Men director Alfonso Cuaron’s upcoming astronaut thriller Gravity. Whatever Cuaron is doing while filming this one seems to be the talk of the town, as he couldn’t help but gush at how blown away both he and big-time director and technophile James Cameron are with the technical aspects of Cuaron’s production. Keeping up with the stuttered sentence structure and charming accent is a little rough when trying for a transcript, but I think I’ve pulled most of the money quotes out of the interview. Del Toro starts by saying, “I think what is incredible about what they did is, they talked to David Fincher, they talked to Jim Cameron… I connected Jim and Alfonso for that… And what Alfonso is trying, is so insane. And Jim said, ‘Well look, what you’re trying is about five years into the future.’ When James said that it’s too early to try anything that crazy… they did it.”

I’m not the biggest Guillermo del Toro fan on the planet. I love Pan’s Labyrinth, but a lot of his more popcorny genre work doesn’t really resonate with me. If he said that he was swearing off horror movies and action franchises for the rest of his career in favor of focusing on dark dramas, I would be ecstatic. But that isn’t the sort of filmmaker he is, and we’re probably all lucky for that, because even I’m getting excited about how awesome his upcoming monster movie Pacific Rim sounds. Lately del Toro has been making all the right moves to turn me around and get me amped up for this project. First he hired Idris Elba to replace Tom Cruise in the starring role. Talk about a major upgrade. Then he went around town making comments about how big and unmodest this film was going to be, how he was approaching it like a big kid having fun, and how it was going to feature mankind creating mech suits to battle giant monsters that come out of the ocean. I don’t know what the best way to get a geek’s attention is, but promising monsters fighting mech suits just might be it. And now he’s in talks to cast Willem Dafoe in a high profile role.

Guy Pearce is really good at playing assholes. He can do the nice guy thing or the conflicted hero as well, but I love me some Pearce in a-hole mode. Earlier this year in the fantastic Mildred Pierce, he got to play one of the most charming emasculated men in recent screen history. In The King’s Speech, he was a snotty old brother all about having a good ‘ol time. So what does the smooth talker from Mildred Pierce and the jerk brother from The King’s Speech have in common? Humility. Pearce is not one to let a human character be a monster for no understandable reason. He’s also not interested in having pure distaste for the character’s skin he’s inhabiting. In the (finally) upcoming Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, he’s filling the shoes of the neglectful father. While Pearce doesn’t view him as an asshole, that’s the word that kept popping up in my head when the personable actor was describing him. Here’s what the actor had to say about playing un-nice guys, the Memento Effect, his banter with Nicolas Winding Refn, trusting directors, and working with hard-boiled dialog:

In one of the best panels in recent memory, Guillermo del Toro and Nicholas Winding Refn chose to combine their allotted time in Hall H (for Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark and Drive respectively). What resulted was a rare conversation from two unique filmmakers who transcended the normal marketing mechanism of Comic-Con to deliver some insight and information about their processes. There were many different facets to it, and they talked about their movies some of course, but ultimately it became a master class in making films. So here’s a little bit of free film school from two visionaries.

The Hall H floor at Comic-Con was an easy audience for it, and Morgan Spurlock took full use of the home field advantage when he introduced a trailer for his new documentary Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope. He’s partnered with Stan Lee, Joss Whedon and Harry Knowles from Aint It Cool to make a film about the event that offers fans the freedom to dust off their Ryuk costume and wear it without shame. The trailer was sleek and featured memories and observations from Whedon, Eli Roth (who brought up the first time he “took a piss next to a stormtrooper and a Klingon), Seth Rogen, Kevin Smith, Seth Green and Guillermo del Toro. All Con favorites, they were joined by a few fans as well as what appeared to be an aspiring artist getting his work reviewed from working comic book producers. The trailer itself was otherwise vague, but it looks like it will have the same humor and heart that Spurlock’s work is marked by, and with full access, there are a ton of great stories that might be told.

In a perfect world, projects like this would be handed all the money the need and shot out of a cannon toward the public. In the real world, producer Denise Di Novi still has a long way to go before the “Beauty and the Beast” project she’s working on with Guillermo del Toro will actually see the light of day (if it ever does see the light of day). But with del Toro’s creative involvement and the actor attached to the project, someone should really pick this ball up and run with it. According to Coming Soon, Emma Watson has signed on in what can only be a starring role (my guess is as the “Beauty” part of the equation, but I’ve been wrong many times before). This is a great combination, a concept that seems both commercial and satisfying on a story level, and could be a massive experience with the right director. Which is the next question. What director should take on a retelling of a pixie cut-owning Beauty who meets her Beast? Hint: Daniel Barnz isn’t it. Another great question: who will play the singing teapot? There’s gotta be a singing teapot, right?

Much has been made of the fact that this month’s Comic-Con in San Diego is looking to be a fairly empty one when it comes to upcoming blockbusters from the studios. Sure Tv shows like Game Of Thrones, True Blood, and The Vampire Diaries will be there, but Marvel, Pixar, and Warner Bros. are sitting it out this year and saving themselves a boatload of cash. This means fans won’t get a glimpse at hotly anticipated titles like Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, Joss Whedon’s The Avengers, or Andrew Stanton’s John Carter. But not everyone’s upset that the heavy hitters are absent this year… because now some of the lower profile films have a chance to make some noise and get noticed. Per Collider (and the press release they received) Legendary Pictures is leaping on the opportunity and has announced a panel featuring four of their upcoming films. Granted, none of the movies are due out until 2012/2013, but everyone loves seeing celebrities talk about future projects! The highlight is Guillermo del Toro who’ll be on-hand for his giant monster movie, Pacific Rim, and will be bringing his recently announced cast with him including Idris Elba, Charlie Hunnam, Charlie Day, and the lovely Rinko Kikuchi. Also along for the Comic-Con bump will be Alex Proyas and Bradley Cooper discussing their adaptation of Paradise Lost (and how Cooper dodged a bullet with Green Lantern), Jeff Bridges and friends to talk up their supernatural thriller Seventh Son, and Mass Effect creator [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Even though he’s currently looking to talk to the press about the upcoming horror film that he co-wrote and produced, Don’t be Afraid of the Dark, Shock till You Drop was able to ask director Guillermo del Toro some questions about his other projects as well; questions that have been floating around the movie blogosphere for a while now.

The last time Tom Cruise noticeably left a project, he passed on Salt to do Knight and Day. He was replaced by one of the biggest stars on the planet. This time around, he left Pacific Rim for reasons unknown, and he’s being replaced by a man who should be one of the biggest stars on the planet. Deadline Basin is reporting that Idris Elba will take on the role of Sensi for the project being directed by Guillermo del Toro. As you can imagine, since it was meant for Cruise, it’s a leading role, but there are very little details as to what type of role it is. My guess is forceful badass with a quietly complex soul. There’s no denying that Elba is a force. He’s also a far more exciting presence than Cruise, and this role will give him a shot at becoming a blockbusting leading man. Of course, this verifies earlier rumors that he was out of the running for Tarantino’s Dhango Unchained. For those keeping score, we’ve got an original sci-fi story being brought to life by a visionary director with a hell of a lead actor. Interested yet?

I can’t say that I had any fondness for the original Hellboy film that director Guillermo del Toro made, but I thought he picked things up quite a bit for Hellboy II: The Golden Army. It came off a lot less as a studio driven project and showed more of the imagination and scope of something like del Toro’s masterpiece Pan’s Labyrinth. It was enough to make me a fan of the series, and ever since, like a lot of people I’m sure, I’ve been waiting for word about del Toro doing a third. But, we film fans have grown accustomed to waiting for things when it comes to del Toro’s next project. Originally he was scheduled to be the director of The Hobbit, but then scheduling issues took him off of that film. Then we all got excited about him doing monster movie At the Mountains of Madness, but Universal decided they didn’t want to fund the project. Instead, they wanted him to do Pacific Rim, another monster movie about a creature coming out of the Pacific Ocean. But even that project got thrown into question once the horrific earthquakes took place in Japan. It’s beginning to feel like Guillermo del Toro might never direct another film. And now, just in case we were wondering, there’s confirmation of another project that the director will definitely not be doing. Hellboy creator Mike Mignola had some more than discouraging words to say about a possible Hellboy 3 when talking on a [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

This summer seems light on one thing: horror movies. While there is the surprisingly awesome looking Fright Night remake coming out, that looks to be far more interested in being fun and cool, rather than moody and intense. Where are the creepy horror films this season? There seems to be none this summer… except one that’s been flying under the radar for far too long: Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark. The Troy Nixey directed, Guillermo del Toro produced family vs. monsters film has taken its sweet time getting to the big screen, but come August, we’ll finally get a true horror film for the summer.

There’s nothing better than hearing news of Guillermo Del Toro getting a new movie off the ground, especially when it happens to involve giant monsters and regular-sized humans in giant robotic suits doing battle. Since he couldn’t make it all the way to the coldest part of the world with Lovecraft, Del Toro is, of course, heading to the Pacific Rim, and it looks like he’ll do it with Charlie Hunnam. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the star of Sons of Anarchy is signing on to star in the film as one of the pilots of a giant robot “who needs to climb back into the driver’s chair.” Why he’s fallen out is anyone’s guess, but it probably involves the safety regulations on those seat belts being pretty lax. Have you ever test-driven a Mecha-Bot 3000? Vinyl was a poor choice for seating. This is a break-out chance for a great actor to prove his salt with a big budget and a visionary director behind him. Not much more needs to be said than that. Hunnam crushes in Sons of Anarchy, and as long as the melodrama is reigned in for someone struggling to face his giant robot-driving past, he could truly take this opportunity and fly with it.

This week, on a very special episode of Reject Radio, we talk with sex symbol and film legend Angie Dickinson, discuss the parasitic relationship between studios and theaters, talk Bellflower‘s marketing strategy, and play a game we’re calling “Co-Directors.” Former assistant theater manager, massive film fan, and creative director at Rock Sauce Studios John Gholson explains how studios and theaters work together. He also makes a sex comedy featuring Andy Griffith seem just as enticing as it is in real life. Angie Dickinson has starred in over 50 films, played iconic roles from Rio Bravo to Ocean’s Eleven, and she was kind enough to spend some time talking to us about working with Sam Fuller and Frank Sinatra, creating her characters, and how movie-making has changed. FSR’s own Culture Warrior (and one of the Talking Heads) Landon Palmer braves a segment where we come up with directors we’d like to see work together, pitch a project for them, and figure out if it has a chance of getting made. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Murder sounds like it could be a massive hit. Plus, our very own Jeremy Kirk matches movie news wits with Peter Hall from Hollywood.com. Who will triumph at the sound of the correct answer bell and who will be forced to narfle the garthok? Loosen up your tie and stay a while. Listen Here: Download This Episode

It looks like everyone is throwing their hats into the ring. When the studios announced a plan to release movies in home theaters just 30 days after the theaters located outside the home (with a price tag of $30 per rental), the National Association of Theater Owners balked. Apparently their threat to boycott big blockbusters was a fake, but they haven’t kept secret their disgust for the new model that would limit their ability to make money showing movies (since studios take the 50%-100% lion’s share of the ticket split in the first weeks). Now, 23 directors and producers are speaking out against it. That list includes James Cameron, Michael Bay, Kathryn Bigelow, Guillermo del Toro, Roland Emmerich, Antoine Fuqua, Todd Garner, Lawrence Gordon, Stephen Gyllenhaal, Gale Anne Hurd, Peter Jackson, Karyn Kusama, Jon Landau, Shawn Levy, Michael Mann, Bill Mechanic, Jamie Patricof, Todd Phillips, Brett Ratner, Robert Rodriguez, Adam Shankman, Gore Verbinski, and Robert Zemeckis. The full, un-edited open letter is below:

Bloody Disgusting reports that sources have told them Guillermo Del Toro’s next project Pacific Rim will need to undergo rewrites. The movie is about giant monsters that come out of the Pacific and start attacking cities. Sounds kind of like Godzilla, but it’s not. With the recent devastation caused by the Japanese earthquake, you can see why this might cause quite a stir. Del Toro has apparently been told to rewrite any of the scenes where attacks take place in Japan so that they take place elsewhere. You know, because that’s acceptable. Scenes of cities getting destroyed and people dying are perfectly okay to have in a movie, unless the real thing just happened a couple days ago. What’s the grace period on when we can film Japan blowing up again? A year? Two? Not that I’m saying I don’t like movies with violence. I do. And I can understand that people don’t want to see Japan getting destroyed on screen when they just watched it happen in their living rooms for real. I just think it’s kind of strange how moving the fictional attacks in Pacific Rim is going to make devastation and body counts somehow acceptable. Psychologically, we’re a weird bunch.

Considering the complexities of a large corporation, the maze of impossibilities to get through on the way to getting a movie made, and the time lines at work here, this may seem unfair, but the buck has to stop at someone’s desk. What’s Playing (via /Film) is reporting that Universal might be in the earliest stages of prepping another Doom adaptation that would be in 3D and cost something around $175 million dollars. That number might as well be made up at this stage in development, but it seems reasonable to expect that doing a big action flick like Doom would require a big check book. This comes on the heels of Universal passing on Guillermo Del Toro’s At the Mountains of Madness project because the $150 million budget was too big to manage alongside an R-rating and source material that’s not super hot. But wait. Is Doom really all that hot?

What is Movie News After Dark? This is a question that I am almost never asked, but I will answer it for you anyway. Movie News After Dark is FSR’s newest late-night secretion, a column dedicated to all of the news stories that slip past our daytime editorial staff and make it into my curiously chubby RSS ‘flagged’ box. It will (but is not guaranteed to) include relevant movie news, links to insightful commentary and other film-related shenanigans. I may also throw in a link to something TV-related here or there. It will also serve as my place of record for being both charming and sharp-witted, but most likely I will be neither of the two. I write this stuff late at night, what do you expect?

Somewhere hidden away in the mid-1990s, there’s a young man reading a “Star Log” in his bedroom foaming at the mouth at the words on the glossy magazine page. There they are. The words “Watchmen” and “Terry Gilliam” right next to each other like a pair of star cross’d lovers finally exchanging vows. The iconic comic books that he grew up reading are finally going to be seen on the living, breathing, bloody brilliant big screen. Then it doesn’t happen. There are a lot of reasons why it doesn’t happen (too many to dive into right now), but that young man is eternally disappointed when those words he once reveled in start to fade away. With the announcement that Universal has passed on Guillermo Del Toro’s At The Mountains of Madness, a lot of fans might be finding themselves in a similar position, and it’s not just Lovecraft devotees. It’s movie fans of all stripes who see this as another defeat of the auteur in service of the bottom line. Is it Universal’s fault? Sure. Much in the same way that everyone shares a little blame. It does, however, shine its silver lining as a spotlight on the disease of the studio system that’s been picked at and mulled over and puzzled for the past few years. Luckily, it also exposes the solution: Failure.