Deep Inside Hollywood - On the Web

By Greg Norman

Did you know that James Cameron, director of Titanic, has been fighting to make Spider-Man for years? Or that a new Star Wars film is in full production? You're about to find out.

The web has become a great medium for seeking out information on another great medium- movies. There are many sites online that provide official information, rumors, video trailers and even secrets about tightly-guarded films. Here we will showcase a few of them, and give a brief rundown of the best sites to visit.

Rumors/News sites The best:

Ain't-It-Cool-News, the leader of the pack, is run by Harry Knowles, movie lover and self-proclaimed Geek. He has a loyal following of Geeks, who provide movie rumors, early reviews and hearsay. The site is usually updated a couple times a day and is fun to read. It's poorly organized, though, and doesn't have any way to look up past info.

Coming Attractions is very well-organized site. It isn't updated but in short spurts, for two days, then not for a week, but they have a consistently high-volume of information. Also, the site is organized in such a way that you can find the most recent info on a movie, then look through a listing of every movie they've ever covered, which contains all the information on each film. They also provide listings organized by stage of development and by genre. Finally, one of the funnest listings is the film archives, a list of movies that have been released, complete with all the rumors that ran during development (did you know that Julia Roberts was considered- supposedly- for Batman and Robin either as Poison Ivy or Batgirl? or that David Schwimmer and Keanu Reeves were rumored to be front-runners for Will Smith's role in Men in Black?)

A couple of others:

Dark Horizons is another pretty good source of info. From what I've seen, it often relies on the other sites for information, though.

Zentertainment, another decent site, uses mostly official, announced info, and is therefore probably more reliable.

Official Sites

A major part of marketing a film these days is to create a web site. These sites, maintained by the studios themselves, usually offer a good peak at an upcoming film, but usually don't give as much information as unofficial sites, surprisingly. A few are listed here:

Starwars, Episode-One - The official site for what is probably the most anticipated film in history, due in 1999. A great site with a great design. The Episode-One site uses actual concept sketches from the new movie to make up the site, pictures from the production, interviews with the filmakers, designs and information on the cast. A fan can't help but get excited seeing designs and images from a new Star Wars film.

Godzilla - A decent but overall disappointing site for the monster movie of the summer. The last update was in November. On last check, the bulletin board feature was unavailable. There is a G-peg of the day (a play on words on the J-peg graphics standard), but it also hasn't changed in months (G-peg of the year?). One has to wonder if they've abandoned the site. They also have a nice way of putting up a trailer to the movie once, then taking it back down and saying "You missed it!" Makes us anxious to see, huh?

Armageddon - Features a live countdown to the release of the Bruce Willis disaster film by the makers of The Rock. Also has two trailers, but the rest of the site seems to be unavailable.

Lost in Space - One of the more inventive addresses has Shockwave that on last check didn't work. Also features movie stills and a trailer for download.

Hint:

Often the very best sites can be found by either typing in a movie's name, such as www.starwars.com, or by doing a search on any popular search engine.