What is thought to be the world’s most valuable movie poster along with eight others sold to a film memorabilia collector for $1.2 million. The Metropolis poster by German Expressionist Heinz Schulz-Neudamm was purchased as part of a lot in a Los Angeles bankruptcy court Thursday.
Schulz-Neudamm created the poster in 1927 for the German Expressionist science-fiction film of the same title by Fritz Lang.
New Jersey resident Ralph DeLuca, who owns film memorabilia company Movie Archives Inc., won the bidding over three other bidders, Reuters reports. Bidding for the poster started at $700,000.
“I honestly feel that the ‘Metropolis’ poster is worth more than the whole lot,” DeLuca told Reuters. A collector bought the futuristic poster for a record $690,000 back in 2005, which had been a record. Some speculated when it was filed with the bankruptcy court last summer that it could fetch as much as $1 million.
“I think I’ll keep the poster unless I get overwhelmed with a ‘Guinness Book of Records’ offer,” said DeLuca. “I believe it will be the first to go past $1 million and even hit $2 million.”
Schulz-Neudamm’s painting of the artificial woman, or the Robot, is used by a mad scientist to seduce an race of workers in a totalitarian futuristic urban city. Made in Germany during the Weimar Period, Metropolis is set in the year 2026 in a dystopian society in which a wealthy elite rules from vast tower complexes, oppressing the workers who live in the depths below. The silent film was written by Lang and his wife Thea Von Harbou, and starred Brigitte Helm, Gustav Fröhlich, Alfred Abel and Rudolf Klein-Rogge.
In 2008, a print of Lang’s original cut of the film was found in Argentina.
[Source: Reuters]
Yesterday, the first trailer for Tom Cruise’s upcoming science fiction film Oblivion was released online, and if you’re anything like us (and the rest of the internet), you’ll immediately note that it has absolutely nothing whatsoever in common with Wall-E. No sir, nothing at all.
Oblivion follows Cruise’s Jack Harper (his second Jack-namedm character in a row? Uh oh, typecasting), a maintenance man assigned to clean up planet earth in the aftermath of some kind of terrible apocalyptic event. Jack apparently spends his days wallowing through the nostalgic remains of human civilization. No doubt he’ll end up singing ‘Hello Dolly’ right after the little speech about the Super Bowl he gives in the trailer. His mission is less than a fortnight away from completion when a beautiful – and yes, the official description uses the word “attractive” – stranger crash lands on Earth, drawing Jack into a conspiracy that pits him against the authority he serves, and a group of Leather fetishists led by noted kindness-and-gravitas dispenser Morgan Freeman.
Oblivion is helmed by Tron Legacy director Joseph Kosinski, which is about as neutral an indication of the movie’s overall quality as you can get. I’m guessing it’ll be yet another Logan’s Run ripoff, with the same kind of ridiculous ‘everything’s better and the revolution worked in like 5 minutes’ outcome, minus Michael York’s lithe frame and blond locks. Originally planned for June, 2013, it’s been moved up to April 12, 2013. Until then, Internet: please get to work on the recut Oblivion-as-Wall-E trailer the world desperately needs.
The Wachowskis are about to shoot their first film in 3D, which, after the complexity of Cloud Atlas, almost sounds like a comedown. FilmStage.com reports that the cinema siblings will utilize 3D for the first time to make their next science-fiction film, Jupiter Ascending, which begins shooting early next year.
The news is part of a Warner Bros. deal in which it plans to release up to 20 upcoming films, including Jupiter Ascending, in IMAX over the next three years.
Last May, Vulture reported that Jupiter Ascending is set in a universe where humans are quite low in the evolutionary hierarchy. There, Mila Kunis plays an immigrant cleaning lady who is targeted for assassination by the Queen of the Universe because she possesses the same genetic make-up and therefore poses a threat to the Queen’s rule. Sounds like a very specific variation on the Engineers hatred of the human race in Prometheus, no?
Word is Channing Tatum plays a bounty hunter sent to eliminate Kunis’ character, who instead falls in love with her. Just guessing here, but I bet that means more bounty hunters are dispatched to track down the lovebirds.
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German artist Heinz Schulz-Neudamm created the poster for the 1927 German Expressionist science-fiction film Metropolis by Fritz Lang. A collector bought the futuristic poster for a record $690,000 back in 2005, which is still a record.
The poster has been assigned a $250,000 value in a bankruptcy filing by its current owner Kenneth Schacter, according to The Guardian, but it went up for sale with an $850,000 list price in March and some say it could be the first poster to sell for $1 million.
Schulz-Neudamm’s painting of the artificial woman, or the Robot, is used by a mad scientist to seduce an race of workers in a totalitarian futuristic urban city. Made in Germany during the Weimar Period, Metropolis is set in the year 2026 in a dystopian society in which a wealthy elite rules from vast tower complexes, oppressing the workers who live in the depths below. The silent film was written by Lang and his wife Thea Von Harbou, and starred Brigitte Helm, Gustav Fröhlich, Alfred Abel and Rudolf Klein-Rogge. In 2008, a print of Lang’s original cut of the film was found in Argentina.
The poster is the film’s most familiar promotional image, though at the time others were used as well for its promotion.
[Source: The Guardian]
John Goodman is reportedly negotiating to join Ben Affleck’s Argo, the period political drama about a real-life covert operation to rescue six U.S. diplomats during the Iran hostage crisis in 1979. The kicker, and where Goodman comes in, is in the unusual circumstances of said rescue, in which the Canadian government enlisted Hollywood make-up and effects experts John Chambers and Bob Sidell to help the Americans escape in disguise as crew members of a fake science fiction film.
Goodman would play Chambers, the Oscar-winning effects veteran who worked on the Planet of the Apes films and created Spock’s pointed ears for Star Trek, reports Variety’s Showblitz. According to the 2007 Wired article that formed the basis of the film, Chambers and Sidell collaborated with the CIA’s Tony Mendez and worked up an elaborate faux production company, dusted off a defunct sci-fi film script and named it Argo, announced the start of filming in the trades, and created fake papers to smuggle the six Americans out of Tehran.
Alan Arkin has already been cast as spy-turned-producer Lester Siegel, while George Clooney and Grant Heslov will produce.
⢠Goodman good to go to ‘Argo’ [Showblitz]
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