The son of J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien, has been working on another unfinished work by the author who passed away when it was unfinished titled “The Children of Hurin”, which includes the elves and hobbits of the LOTR and The Hobbit stories.  Does this mean Peter Jackson may be directing another installment? 

Lets not jump that far ahead yet, but at least we do know another book is coming out.  This is exciting news for the growing legion of LOTR fans, especially since the trilogy of movies directed by Peter Jackson become so popular, as well as commercial hits (and cult hits, an unusual combination today).  Here’s to hoping Jackson is inspired to do one more – especially since King Kong was pretty average.

Zombie horror movie originator George Romero, of the famed ” Dawn of the Dead” and Day of the Dead series, only one of which was actually watchable in my opinion, has signed on to make a movie that’s reportedly a cross between “Blair Witch Project” and the famous Day and Dawn of the Dead series. 

They convinced a small movie maker to make the film for 5 million dollars or under.  Shouldn’t be too hard, considering that the others have all been typically low budget since he started making the zombie series years and years ago. 

I’m not too anxious to see this, I’m sorry to say, after I switched off Romero’s latest foray into the horror world “Day of the Dead” which had horrible dialogue and a laughable plot and script.  Oh yeah, the acting sucked too.  Maybe I’ll netflix it when it comes out, who knows!

Early buzz on the movie which opened Wednesday August 9th, Oliver Stone’s newest vehicle starring Nicolas Cage as the main character and “Crash” ‘s Michael Pena as his partner in the rubble is not bad, but also not glowing.  The movie which chronicles the lives of two officers who were trapped beneath the rubble of the WTC on 9/11, shows the lives of these two brave men who went into the burning mess to try to save people, and ended up trapped for hours themselves, being two of the only twenty people who ended up being pulled out of the rubble alive. 

Stone reportedly tried to keep it real by having the actors consult with their real life counterparts, but in the end it seems he really handled the situation cautiously, which isn’t necessarily like the controversial film maker who usually makes strong political statements in his movies. 

The new Kevin Smith movie Clerks II, a continuation of his tale of two loser friends who work in a convenience store, reportedly just missed getting an NC17 rating, which is the toughest rating to get, even worse than an R by the MPAA. He said that he was “shocked” that the movie got an R rating, adding that some of the content is unlike anything ever shown on screen in cinematic history.

Fantasia Barrino, the third season’s American Idol winner, is set to play herself in a TV movie called “Life is Not a Fairy Tale”, about her rough life up to the point of winning the American Idol singing competition.  It will detail her life, including a rape scene (I guess Fantasia was raped when she was younger), as well as her early motherhood as a single mother at the age of 17.

Fantasia said it was tough to go back and relive some of the more trying times in her life, but she’s glad she was able to share it with the world now.  Barrino actually had to be talked in to the movie, since she didn’t even want to do it at first.

She released her first album called “Free Yourself” in 2004, to a decent response, but has not seen nearly the kind of success as first season’s winner Kelly Clarkson. 

Rumor has it that there will indeed be a 4th installment in the popular Indiana Jones adventure movie series with Harrison Ford as Indiana himself. The series started off with my personal favorite of all “Raiders of the Lost Ark”.

I haven’t seen this movie yet, with Jack Black and directed by the same guy who directed “Napoleon Dynamite” Jared Hess, one of my favorite dopy movies of all time, but the buzz so far is that if you liked “Napoleon” you will like “Nacho”. When I saw the previews, although the dialogue in itself wasn’t all that funny, just the mere sight of the out of shape Jack Black in leotards made me laugh, and the sheer ridiculousness of his hispanic accent.

I have to disagree with the bad reviews that seem to be pouring in for X-Men 3 The Last Stand.  Everyone seems to be complaining about the plot and character development, so I went in to this movie today thinking I was going to hate it, or be extremely disappointed after being pleasantly surprised by the first two.

I like X-Men one and two.  And I really liked the final installment too.  It had everything.  I think the story was good, the character development was fine, and the special effects as usual, were excellently done.  Many fans complained that the new additions to the story, The Beast (Kelsey Grammer), Juggernaut, Kitty Pride, Colossus (although he was in the last one, but had a bigger part in this one), Angel, and the morphed and evil Jean Grey, now called the more powerful Phoenix were not fleshed out enough.  But did they really have enough time in two hours to adequately show the existing XMen character’s stories, and flesh out new characters as well?  I don’t think so.

The decline of Jean Grey into a power hungry psychic with unparalleled powers was actually kind of sad, and we see the longing between her and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) quickly evolve into full blown lust. 

I don’t want to give the story away, but unless you are an anal comic book fan, you WILL enjoy this movie, and not have a problem with it’s comic book inaccuracies.  Go see it, don’t believe the bad reviews. 

This June 30th one of the most anticipated “Summer Blockbusters” is coming to theaters – Superman.  The virtually unknown actor Brandon Routh plays the man of steal – and from the looks of the previews, he’s a dead ringer for the superhero – at least the younger version of him in the comic books.

I’m pretty excited to see this movie, especially since Bryan Singer will be directing – although I am kind of bummed he’s not still directing the X Men series, so I’m not as excited to see the new X Men movie now.  I do have to say, I’m not so sure about Kevin Spacey as Lex Luther since his acting seems a little over the top per the extended preview I saw online the other day. 

I’m also not a big fan of Kate Bosworth (Blue Crush, Wonderland – both so-so performances in my opinion).  So that’s two strikes against it, but I still have faith that the newcomer as Superman will lend some creidbility to the innovativeness of the new movie.  I’ll be reviewing the movie as soon as I see it, which should be opening weekend.

Jeez, there is so much buzz surrounding this Thursday’s release of “The DaVinci Code”, I hope it lives up to the bestselling novel’s expectations.  Under the direction of Ron Howard, I think this movie is going to be a pretty enjoyable experience.  I LOVED the DaVinci code book – so much so that I read the entire book in two days while visiting my sister in California!

With so much controversy to be stirred up over the controversial religious message, and the recent poll showing that many readers believe the claims that are made as the basis for the DaVinci Code story, including the Opus Dei and the Secret sect that are meant to protect the “truth” about Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ.

I will be having a review of the new movie soon, since I’m going to see it this weekend.