Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Tops in DVD's + Hellboy comes to the shire.

Meh... it's the catchiest title I could think of at 5 am.

Anywho, as some of you may have heard two months ago, not only did Peter Jackson, writer/director/producer of the massively successful Lord of the Rings trilogy, settle his dispute with New Line Cinema concerning unpaid royalties, but New Line and MGM reached an agreement over the rights to J.R.R. Tolkien's Rings companion novel, The Hobbit. Unfortunately for us, visionary Jackson will not be helming the duo of films (yes, they're splitting it into two films) set for release in 2010 and 2011, pending resolution of the writer's strike.

Jackson has already been committed to direct an adaptation of Alice Sebold's bestseller The Lovely Bones, and to co-direct Tintin, with none-other than Mr. Steven Spielberg, both set for a 2009 release. Jackson will remain on board as producer and possibly a write.

So who is directing? Well, luckily for everyone who cares (and I'm guessing it's a lot of you), Mexican visual master Guillermo del Toro has been signed to cast, according to early reports. The director, who has masterfully brought us Hellboy (get the headline now?) and the wonderously beautiful El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth), will helm both installments of the Rings prequel films, set to be shot simultaneously.

No word on who will be cast in key roles, though I'm guessing Ian McKellen, Hugo Weaving and Andy Serkis will return as Gandalf, Elrond and Gollum, respectively. And knowing del Toro... Ron Perlman as Bilbo.

Oh, and now for something completely different.

And what the hell... a while back I decided why not figure who is best represented in my DVD collection. Which actor/actress/director had the most films in my collection. It was hard to determine these stats, for various reasons, but I stuck to the following rules.

For Boxed sets (trilogies and the like), each individual title will count, rather than Star Wars trilogy only counting as one mark for Harrison Ford.

For TV Shows, each individual season counts, as it is part of one title. So I have 5 seasons of 24 on DVD, that's 5 marks for Keifer Sutherland. It would not go by episode, then it would be like... 120 for Sutherland.

Cameos count. Cate Blanchett's cameo in Hott Fuzz counts as a mark toward her. These sort of things got harder when it was ensemble casts, but I tried to do my best with counting them all.

Those are the basic rules.

Top 5 Actors in my DVD collection (which currently stands at a count of 478)
1) Matt Damon - 15
2) Bruce Willis - 14
3) Brad Pitt - 13
* George Clooney -13
5) Al Pacino - 12
* Tom Cruise - 12

Top 5 Actresses
1) Cate Blanchett - 8
2) Kirsten Dunst - 7
3) Elizabeth Banks - 6
* Joan Allen - 6
* Keira Knightly - 6

Top 5 Directors
1) Steven Spielberg - 9
2) Oliver Stone - 7
3) Kevin Smith - 6
* Quentin Tarantino - 6
5) Robert Rodriguez - 5
* Sidney Lumet - 5
* Robert Zemeckis - 5
* Brian De Palma - 5
* Stephen Soderbergh - 5

It should be noted that some of those two come with the multiple films, same role, particularly Matt Damon, who has 6 films populated solely by the Bourne and Ocean's franchises.

Let it also be noted that while Spielberg may have 9 in my collection... Sofia Coppola could technically be considered the most prolific, as I own 100% of her films (which does stand at 3). Though of Tarantino's films that are strictly Tarantino (not counting Four Rooms which he co-directed with 3 others), I do own all of his films.


No comments: