A pitch black (dark) website with ominous music from Warner Bros. launches the marketing campaign for The Dark Knight Rises, Chris Nolan’s hotly anticipated 2012 Batman flick. The music clip is 23 seconds long.

BONUS! Tom Hardy image as the villain Bane offered on a subpage of the site (also above).

And what would a marketing campaign be without a Twitter page? twitter.com@thefirerises saves us the trouble of answering that question. I’m amazed that less than 10,000 are following as of this moment. Expect hundreds of thousands shortly, a million plus before long, maybe more.

The Dark Knight Rises expected in theaters in 2012 with:

Christian Bale – Batman/Bruce Wayne
Anne Hathaway – Catwoman/Selina Kyle
Joseph Gordon-Levitt – John Blake
Tom Hardy – Bane
Marion Cotillard – Miranda Tate
Gary Oldman – Jim Gordon
Morgan Freeman – Lucius Fox
Michael Caine – Alfred

Festival Preview
By M.V. Moorhead/Less Hat, Moorhead

Film nuts in or within a day’s drive of Southern California, take note: May 12 through May 15 marks the eleventh annual Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival in Palm Springs at Camelot Theatres. I’ve attended for the past four years, and for my money it might just be the most enjoyable film festival around.

I’m sure that I feel that way, in part, because I’ve never much liked film festivals featuring new works. Especially when you’re a critic or a judge, as I often have been, and are obligated to watch most of the entries, the ratio of crap to good stuff is miserably high, and since so much of the crap is well-intentioned and lovingly labored-over, and offered to you with great optimism, you also feel guilty dismissing it as crap.

That’s part of what makes the Noir Festival so liberating—nobody’s trying to tell you that these movies are masterpieces. They’re just cool black-and-white crime melodramas from the ‘40s through the ‘60s, stuffed with wonderful character actors and uneven, highly improbable plots, but usually still supported by the impeccable craftsmanship that marked even B-level studio product in those days. Many of them are also captivating as wistful time-capsules, featuring location work in long-departed neighborhoods of L.A., New York, San Francisco or elsewhere.

In some ways, the sillier and more overwrought the movie, the more fun the audience has. Nothing’s at stake, so the mood is relaxed—it’s like getting caught up in some dumb but seductive old flick on TV, except that you’re seeing it in a theater, with a warmly appreciative crowd.

Indeed, it’s remarkable how these movies, by no means classics and far from the finest that Hollywood had to offer at the time, still have the power to pull an audience in emotionally in a way that I don’t think many movies nowadays can claim. I don’t believe this is nostalgia—or, at least, it isn’t only nostalgia. I really think that the model for popular moviemaking had an emotional robustness that we’ve lost in recent decades, in a haze of technology and an infantile idea of “irony” that really means embarrassment over genuine feeling.

Over the years, I’ve managed to catch such genuinely obscure capers as Port of Forty Thieves (1944), starring the forgotten beauty Stephanie Bachelor, Inside Job (1946), from a story by Tod Browning of Freaks (1932) fame, and No Questions Asked (1951), starring Barry Sullivan and the peerless Jean Hagen. If you’re a press-the-flesh sort, the Palm Springs locale also facilitates personal appearances by the old-movie luminaries of these films; I’ve gotten glimpses of favorites like Ernest Borgnine, Richard Anderson, Robert Loggia and June Lockhart. Guests this year include Stefanie Powers, Robert Wagner, Julie Adams, Jeanne Cooper, Norman Lloyd, Diane Baker and the fascinating Barrie Chase.

This year’s schedule features some dubiously familiar choices, like Cape Fear (1962), A Kiss Before Dying (1956) and even Hitchcock’s Saboteur (1942). But it also includes a number of mouth-watering obscurities like 99 River Street (1953) with John Payne and Evelyn Keyes, Plunder Road (1957) with Gene Raymond, Wayne Morris, Jeanne Cooper and Elisha Cook, Jr., and Crashout (1955), with a fantastic lineup of stars: William Bendix, Arthur Kennedy, Gene Evans, Luther Adler, Marshall Thompson, William Talman and Gloria Talbott. Chances to see this stuff don’t come along every day.

Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival: Schedule & Details

Camelot Theatres
2300 East Baristo Road
Palm Springs, California 92262
Tel: 760-325-6565

See also:

Howard Stern and Matt Drudge, two giants of the media world, both opened Twitter accounts for the first time this week and started tweeting to the world. This isn’t movie news but we couldn’t pass it up. It’s Super Bowl Sunday and there’s another Clash Of The Titans taking place, a battle joined a full day before the Packers-Steelers got it going in Texas for Super Bowl XLV.

The self-proclaimed King Of All Media, Howard Stern, got things started, offering his virgin tweet at 1:45 pm on February 3, 2011 from his verified Twitter account:

Backstage at letterman and im in the makeup chair.

Stern popped off 20 tweets by the time Drudge joined the battle two days later on Saturday February 5, 2011 at 10:58 AM, issuing the first missive from his verified account:

@HowardStern ok if howard’s finally going for tweets, I better, too. Always hated the name ‘twitter’, so bitter.

These media titans are now locked in a battle for Twitter supremacy. Will the radio ratings monster squash the online news king? Or will the man who broke the Monica Lewinsky story break the back of the sex-crazed foul-mouthed DJ?

The best metric for judging is the number of Followers each attracts on Twitter. Drudge gets more than 20 million visitors to his website each day, and Stern claims more than 10 million listeners, but who will dominate this new endeavor?

The score @ 10 pm EST, Super Bowl Sunday, February 5, 2011:

Howard Stern – 127,081 Followers
Matt Drudge – 12,974 Followers

Update
Stern 250,192 followers on 13 Feb 2011 @ 12:03 EST – 229 tweets
Drudge 18,368 followers on 13 Feb 2011 @ 12:02 EST – 82 tweets

Landslide for Stern, but he started earlier and seems to be on a personal quest to amass as many Followers as possible. Drudge, on the other hand, is tweeting less and seems content to let things run their natural course. Will Stern continue to leave Drudge in the dust, or will Drudge stage a comeback in the days and weeks ahead? Stay tuned!

Twitter Battle Of The Media Giants, Initial Snapshot:

Howard Stern
126,781 Followers as of 9:42 EST Super Bowl Sunday 06 Feb 2011
First Tweet:
“Backstage at letterman and im in the makeup chair.”
Sent 1:45 pm Feb 3 (used an Android device)
49 Total tweets as of 9:42 EST Super Bowl Sunday 06 Feb 2011

Matt Drudge
12,942 Followers as of 9:41 EST Super Bowl Sunday 06 Feb 2011
First Tweet:
“@HowardStern ok if howard’s finally going for tweets, I better, too. Always hated the name ‘twitter’, so bitter.”
Sent 10:58 am Feb 5 (used an iPad)
7 Total tweets as of 9:41 EST Super Bowl Sunday 06 Feb 2011

Brilliant play or desperate gamble? That’s what everyone is debating after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced earlier today that Oscar is going young this year. Very young.

No, Dakota Fanning won’t be hosting the show. Nor will Kristen Stewart be the emcee. But two actors who could be KStew’s older brother and sister will be on stage at the Kodak Theater to lead us through the festivities on 27 February 2011. Anne Hathaway (28) and James Franco (32) are the dynamic duo. Meet this year’s Oscar hosts.

In a move some will call inspired and others ludicrous, the producers of the telecast, realizing how bad last year’s show was (at least we can agree on that) decided to be bold (or just plain idiotic), opting for a duo out of left field. Long gone are the days of Johnny Carson and Bob Hope leading the way. Billy Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg are ancient memories.

After Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin fell flat on their faces last year, something had to be done. We chronicled the 2010 Oscar disaster in Worst Oscar Show Of The Modern Era: 2010 Oscar Lays A Giant Egg and Oscar Lays A Giant Egg: Best And Worst Moments from Oscars 2010.

Will this crazy and intriguing gambit work? Anne Hathaway has a winning personality and can sing and dance (witness her turn on stage with Hugh Jackman two years ago at Oscar). And James Franco is a talented guy. But, seriously, can he don a top hat and tap dance a tribute to Fred Astaire? Or glide through seven costume changes in six minutes, keeping us in stitches as he schmoozes through a musical-comedy routine that would make Billy Crystal proud?

Perhaps I’m missing the point. Maybe the producers will use Hathaway and Franco in new and different ways, playing to their strengths, ignoring precedent, fashioning a fresh distinctive show for a new era.

One thing I can tell you. If our new hosts appear on stage for the opening routine, and after thunderous applause launch into that old shtick from years past, pointing out all the glittering movie stars in the audience, making fun of them (but not too much fun) – “Look, there’s Matt Damon in the first row.” “Helen Mirren is here tonight.” “It’s George Clooney with his lovely girlfriend.” – I might just pull my hair out.

A slew of casting news on The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn from Summit Entertainment. 

Seventeen actors have been cast in various supporting roles, playing members of Covens and Nomads. The most well known is Lee Pace (of TV’s Pushing Daisies) a member of the American Nomads. Others who have been cast include Angela Sarafyan (Egyptian Coven), Marlane Barnes (Irish Coven) and Joe Anderson (European Nomads).

The Deadline Team over at Deadline | Hollywood has all the details of Summit Entertainment’s announcement here.

Eric Stolz was the original Marty McFly, before he was replaced by Michael J. Fox. Here’s footage of Eric in the role.

Deadline | Hollywood posted a teaser trailer for Hollywood Knights, an unsold script created by an unknown screenwriter, on October 6, 2010. This is the story of how it happened and what happened next. 

Plucked from obscurity by Nikki Finke, Founder and Editor In Chief of the widely-read and influential Deadline | Hollywood, screenwriter David W. Smith and his writing partner Kent Conrad were instantly catapulted from “lost in the shuffle” to “on radar” for many of Tinseltown’s power players. But did anyone nibble? Did anyone bite? Two days after Deadline | Hollywood first posted the trailer, David W. Smith updates us on how it all occurred, and what’s happened (or not happened) since, in this revealing interview with Jabcat On Movies.

Read interview after the trailer.

1. Why did you decide to create a teaser trailer for your unsold screenplay, Hollywood Knights? Was it a lark? An act of frustration? A drunken bet?

I’d never seen one for a screenplay, and no one was responding to all the queries I had sent out. It was a loud chorus of crickets. So I thought about YouTube as an avenue for getting the script at least talked about.

2. How did you create the trailer? Did you and your co-writer Kent Conrad make it together? Whose idea was it?

I sat down one night with a cocktail and threw it together in iMovie, got a few comments from Kent, and tweaked a few things, and voila.

3. The teaser trailer isn’t a trailer in the traditional sense. You didn’t film scenes from the script with actors, etc. Instead you use superimposed titles/text and still images with background music to get across the idea behind the script. Are you happy with the way it came out? Did you consider filming actual scenes and creating a more traditional trailer?

We thought about doing some comic book style panels with photographs and dialog, but I have a small child at home and basically no spare time, so it had to be pieced together without me leaving my chair.

4. Is your co-writer, Kent Conrad, the US Senator from North Dakota? Just kidding. They share the same name. Tell us a bit about Kent. How did you meet? How did you become writing partners? Is Hollywood Knights the only script you’ve written together?

I used to work with Kent and he’s a real solid novel writer. Written about five or so and he’s about to publish one on Kindle. He’s also a USC Film Theory grad. And a heck of a nice chap. We worked on two other scripts together that we need to go back and polish up. One is about a slasher with an 80′s hairstyle called “The Mad Mullet” and another horror flick about Shadow People called “In the Arms of Darkness.”

5. Tell us something interesting about yourself. Who is this guy with the strikingly unusual name of David Smith? Do you often get mistaken for other David Smith’s? How many of you are there out there?

When people ask my last name, I say, “Guess.” And they usually do. I’ve never really been fond of that name, but it makes it hard for people to find me on the internet and that is probably a good thing. I’m not that interesting really. I grew up in Orange County (CA) and followed in Steven Spielberg’s footsteps, dropping out of Cal State Long Beach’s film program and shortly thereafter met Lawrence Riggins, who is a great teacher and screenwriter. I’ve written quite a few things with Larry over the years, a few of those have won some small screenwriting awards, and several of these are still in play and in various stages of development.

6. How did you get your teaser trailer for Hollywood Knights to Nikki Finke at Deadline | Hollywood? Was it as simple as sending her an email? Do influential and powerful people actually read their email and respond to people they don’t know?

Yeah, I simply sent her an email saying, “Look at what screenwriters are resorting to to get their stuff read.” She apparently was amused enough to link it. It went from 68 views over a couple months to about 3000 in a couple of days.

7. How did you hear that Deadline | Hollywood wanted to post the trailer on its site? Did Nikki contact you? Someone else?

I think the last one answers that.

8. When you found out that Deadline | Hollywood was going to post your trailer, what did you think would happen? Were you jumping for joy? Did you think you’d just punched the winning lottery ticket? What was going through your head?

As people might have surmised, I don’t read a lot of these sites, I barely even knew who Nikki Finke was. I think I heard her call in to the Dennis Miller show once. I’m not that into the Hollywood pipeline for development stuff, hence I did not know about this “Roundtable” script already being sold. As I said, this story is about 8 years old for me. I simply emailed her, then a couple hours later, I saw that I had subscribers to my Tumblr blog. I thought, “That’s weird.” Then I went back and checked the YouTube views and I had an extra 1700 views, up from 68….this happened quite literally over the course of a few hours.

9. More than 40 people have left comments about your trailer on Deadline | Hollywood. You even left a couple of comments yourself, responding to others. Many of the comments are harsh and unkind to the trailer and the idea behind your script. It’s the Internet, after all! Do you think the comments are fair? How difficult is it to handle the negative feedback?

Yeah, that’s the internet for you. I was having fun responding to the rude people, but after a while I realized that this could consume all of my time, so forget that.

10. Have you received any requests to read your screenplay since Deadline | Hollywood posted your trailer? Have you been contacted by any agents, producers, studios or other Hollywood players?

Ha ha! Nope! Not a one. But lemme check my spam filter. Nope. I’m not really expecting any because of those other scripts that are out there. Even if they are interested they probably figure they’d have legal trouble. Can’t say I blame them.

11. Are you happy with the teaser trailer? Do you think it’s an effective marketing piece for your script?

I just wanted to get the basic point across — and that is that I believe today more than ever we live in a society where celebrity and acclaim are often not earned. This has been exacerbated by the advent of the Reality TV show. The idea of being Knighted for acting sounds kind of funny to me. Winston Churchill, a man who quite literally saved Europe and perhaps the world from Hitler, published more words than most authors, sold more paintings than most painters, and saw action and was decorated for his participation in many battles, is known as Sir Winston Churchill, and we also have Sir Bob Geldoff. Nuff said? Nothing against Bob Geldoff, I’m sure he’ a nice fellow. It’s just that the “silicon chip inside my head gets switched to overload” when I think of the term “Sir” and what it means these days.

12 Speaking of your script, how is the screenplay different than the content or impression left by the teaser trailer? Any misconceptions about the project, based on the trailer, that you’d like to clear up?

Only that the people I use in the teaser are not the characters in the script. We have five made-up people that resemble these folks. That was just an oversimplification to get the point across.

13. You’ve been involved with a couple of other films, one that’s been produced, one that’s in post. How did you get started in the industry?

I’ve been pretty lucky. I’m quite lazy, and my relationship with Lawrence Riggins has helped, because he is the opposite of lazy. And luckily he has liked my ideas enough to work with me on several of them.

14. What was your first break as a screenwriter and how did you get it?

I guess that would be Replicant, but I’m the uncredited guy. We’ll see how Serpent Rising goes. It’s a small film though and really aimed at the Korean market.

15. Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party? Kidding. What I really want to know is, are you now, or have you ever been represented by an agent or manager? Are you hoping this experience helps you find one . . . or a better one?

I am currently not represented but Riggins and I are looking for someone to rep us to pitch a TV series around Replicant. At one time Caren Bohrman loved one of my older scripts but we didn’t get any action on that one because it involves infanticide. We had a meeting with Brad Luff (now at Sony Pictures I think) about that one, he dug it but could not envision what a poster would look like for a movie that involved a serial killer who killed infants. Heh heh, can’t say I blame him either. He’s a nice chap though and I still run things past him once in a while although he has not pulled the trigger on any of them. There have been a few other agents and managers here and there but they usually drop like flies at the first “no” they hear.

16. Based on what’s occurred so far, are you glad your teaser trailer got posted on Deadline | Hollywood?

Sure. I quoted PT Barnum in my comments (and we also quote him in Hollywood Knights): The only bad publicity is your obituary.

17. And finally, based on your experience with the trailer, Deadline | Hollywood and everything that’s followed, what advice do you have for other screenwriters trying to get noticed and succeed in Hollywood?

The biggest bummer is, I was too late in finishing this script. If you have an idea that you know is good, and sellable (obviously this idea is) gitter done fast. The competition is fierce out there, baby.

Visit Dave and Kent’s Tumblr page here.

When it comes to breaking movie news there are Leaders, Followers and No Shows. This weekend’s breaking news that Emma Stone is about to be offered the role of Mary Jane in the new Spiderman film (starring Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker/Spidey) was covered by many but not all movie sites-blogs of note. How did they do? 

LEADER OF THE PACK

Deadline | Hollywood
‘SPIDER-MAN’ UPDATE: Emma Stone To Be Offered Role Of Mary Jane Watson
Posted: Sat October 2, 2010 @ 11:30am EDT
Author: Mike Fleming – Broke the news. Sourced story directly from studio. Bravo!
UPDATE: Upon closer reading, Deadline story mentions studio, but does not name studio as source of the information.
Note: Deadline is primarily an entertainment news site.

FOLLOWERS

/Film (Slash Film)
Emma Stone Reportedly to Be Offered Mary Jane Watson Role in ‘Spider-Man’
Author: Russ Fischer – Gives the nod to Deadline as his source. Well done, even if you didn’t break the news.
Posted: Sat October 2, 2010

Chud.com
WILL EMMA STONE BE MARY JANE?
Author: Jeremy G. Butler – Lists JoBlo as his source. JoBlo credits Deadline in his story.
Posted: Sat October 2, 2010

Cinema Blend
Emma Stone Offered The Role Of Mary Jane Watson In Spider-Man Reboot
Author: Eric Eisenberg – Eric credits Deadline as his source.
Posted: Sat October 2, 2010 – 12:02:16

Gordon And The Whale
UPDATE: Emma Stone officially being offered role of MJ in SPIDER-MAN?
Author: James Wallace – Lists Deadline as his source.
Posted: Sat Oct 2, 2010

Cinematical
Not sure this counts. Mentions female casting of Spiderman in one brief sentence in a paragraph that’s about Philip Seymour Hoffman being considered for the role of Venom. The paragraph doesn’t list Emma’s name, but does link to the Deadline article about Stone’s expected offer. Actually, it linked to the original Deadline article before the update with Emma’s expected offer. But since Deadline updated the original story (rather than publishing a new post) the Cinematical link now takes you to the latest news.
Movie News Quick Hits: Is There Venom in Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Future? ‘Titanic 3D’ in 2012
Author: Harley W. Lond
Posted: Sat October 2, 2010 12:34 am

Obsessed With Film
Mary Jane casting is just a ‘Stone’s’ throw-away
Author: Matt Holmes – Gives Deadline the nod as his source.
Extra Credit: Story title/headline (above) gets nod as best of bunch. Congrats! Well done! It pays to obsess.
Posted: Sun October 3, 2010 11:08 am

Ain’t It Cool News
Sony Is Offering Mary Jane Watson To EASY A Girl Emma Stone!!
Author: H.T. Strong (Hercules) – Hercules may be mighty, but he gives credit where due, listing Deadline as his source.
Posted: Sun October 3, 2010 – 12:17am (Austin, TX time?)

NO SHOWS

HitFix
No coverage of story as of 1:00 am EDT Mon October 4, 2010.
Moriarty, where art thou? Perhaps Drew doesn’t consider it news until Emma actually gets the offer or signs the deal?
Maybe we should be following his lead.
HitFix remains a highly recommended site.

FilmDrunk
No coverage of story as of 1:00 am EDT Mon October 4, 2010.
Posted a story about casting the other female lead in the film here, back on Aug 20, 2010.
FilmDrunk remains a highly recommended site.

Don’t see your movie blog listed above? Email Jabcat at jabcat@jabcatmovies.com and maybe you’ll make the next edition of: Movie Blogs: Who Got It Right? Who Posted First?

Now get back to work and break some news! Can’t let Deadline have all the glory.

Watch Steve Rogers chase a car down the street!

UPDATE 21 July 2010: Jabcat has ended coverage of movie box office futures now that the Wall Street Reform Bill has been signed into law. For previous coverage of movie box office futures . . .

Visit Jabcat’s Box Office Futures Page, which has links to news reports and regulatory happenings related to Cantor Exchange, Trend Exchange and movie futures.

Jabcat’s Box Office Futures Page is separate and distinct from Jabcat’s Box Office Futures Category.

The Movie Box Office Futures Deathwatch/Resurrection Checklist!, posted briefly here, would have duplicated many of the ongoing links found at Jabcat’s Box Office Futures Page. Rather than duplicate effort, you can follow the progress and/or death of movie box office futures there.