The Academy Awards will be presented tonight, 5PT/8ET, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, hosted by Ellen DeGeneres. We at X-Realms will be providing a live coverage of the event here on the site, discussing all the latest winners (and losers), their speeches, the surprises and scandals from the ceremony as it unfolds.

Which film from 2006 will be awarded the most prestigous prize in film business, the Best Picture Oscar? For a long time the chances in this most important category have not been as evenly spread (well, almost…) amongst the five nominees - Babel, The Departed, Letters from Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine, The Queen - as this time around. And will our personal favorite, Pan’s Labyrinth, be able to nab the Best Foreign Film Oscar?

Stick around tonight for our unique appraisal of the good and deserved, and our furious slander for the ill-choices and freak moments! And join our ongoing discussion thread on the X-Boards to share your own views with us and find transcripts of the winner’s speeches and all the latest photos from Hollywood’s most glamourous night-out!

Posted in Awards, Movies •

Frank Welker voiced Megatron in the original Generation 1 Transformers cartoon in the mid-eighties. Fans have been rooting for him to be cast to voice his old character in this year’s big budget film adaptation, but so far only his old colleague Peter Cullen (Optimus Prime) has been brought on board director Michael Bay’s team.

In spite of rumours suggesting Bay will go with an established Hollywood actor for the voice of Megatron, Welker wrote on his official website that he’s still in the running: ‘Everything you’ve read at this point has been rumor and misinformation. As of this moment, to my knowledge, they have not cast Megatron and I am still very much in the running.’ He also said: ‘I know I have been asked a lot about the movie, but at the present time I have not been offered any roles. That doesn’t mean it’s final, they are still doing voice casting.’

Discuss Transformers on the X-Boards 

Posted in Movies, Transformers •

While promoting Zack Snyder’s 300, which is based on one of his graphic novels, Sin City creator Frank Miller spoke to SCI-FI.com about the upcoming Sin City film sequel, which he will again co-direct with Robert Rodriguez:

‘The script is largely done, and now we’re in that limbo zone where we’re casting and making script adjustments as we go’. Miller also said that he hopes to start filming in Texas this spring. The sequel will be based on his Sin City story A Dame To Kill For, and will deal with ‘a couple of old stories and one brand-new one’. Miller elaborated: ‘The old ones are a couple of ‘Blue Eyes’ stories, and there’s an ‘Old Town Girls’ story, and the new one features Nancy Callahan [played by Jessica Alba] in a very different, very scary role. I’m hoping we’ll start in late spring. It gets pretty hot in Austin, so there might be a summer’s interruption there, but both Robert and I really want to be shooting this thing as soon as possible.’

Discuss Sin City 2 on the X-Boards

Posted in Movies •

Mark Steven Johnson’s very poor Ghost Rider surprisingly rode to the top of the box office last weekend. And from what we can tell much of that had to do with the fact that there were no press screenings for the movie until just a few hours before the film opened to the masses. So all the scathing reviews trying to keep you from wasting your money couldn’t be published until Saturday or even Monday.

So with Ghost Rider making the big buck, talk of a sequel was inevitable. Johnson seems up for it, telling iF Magazine: ‘I’d love to do another one. But that’s really up to Sony now. I’d like to see what Mephisto has in store for Johnny down the road. Safe to say, that things are going to get worse for Johnny before they get better.’ We predict that things will get worse for the audience, too, and not necessarily much better thereafter.

Discuss Ghost Rider on the X-Boards

Posted in Commentary, Movies •

Guillermo del Toro’s masterful film Pan’s Labyrinth has grossed over $30 million in the box office, making it the most financially successful Spanish language movie ever released in the United States.

An interesting Variety article discusses how the film has managed to break out of the art niche it was released in after del Toro refused big money to shoot Pan’s Labyrinth in English and went indie instead. It seems that major factors in the film’s surprising run are its appeal for varying audiences (genre fans, the arthouse crowd, the hispanic/latino community), its smart hyping at last year’s Comic Con, prime slots at multiple big film festivals, del Toro’s tireless promotion, and the fact that del Toro and director friend Alfonso Cuaron dug deep into their own pockets after financing collapsed twice. Read the full article here.

Discuss Pan’s Labyrinth on the X-Boards

Posted in Movies •