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CHICAGO – Warner Bros. on Friday launched the official Web site for “The Dark Knight Rises” at http://thedarkknightrises.warnerbros.com with an all-black screen and mysterious, tribal-like chanting.

Last update: 9:59 a.m. on May 20, 2011
CHICAGO – Warner Bros. on Thursday finally issued an official statement confirming that principal photography is under way for “The Dark Knight Rises”. That’s like telling a mom she’s a mom two weeks after she delivers. The press release contained 455 words – yes, we counted – and literally only one word in it is new. Everything else we’ve already reported.

CHICAGO – It’s easy to remember that the Pirates of the Caribbean movie series is on its fourth formulaic film, but harder to remember that it’s based on a freaking amusement park ride! Director Rob Marshall livens it up with “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.”

CHICAGO – Horror writers and directors have been afraid of the dark since the start of the genre. Sadly, that fear of blackness has never translated to film as successfully as one would hope. There’s an inherent problem in watching a movie about darkness in that it can never make that fear fully real unless it goes to complete black screen. The latest entry in this flawed subgenre is Brad Anderson’s “Vanishing on 7th Street,” a minor work from a major director.

CHICAGO – Music documentaries and concert films, by their very nature, are pieces of advertising and propaganda. They play to the fans…as they should. Wouldn’t it be much worse if they didn’t? What if you were a hardcore fan of an artist and paid your money to sit through something that didn’t put them on a high-enough pedestal for you? On those terms, “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never” completely works — it’s a movie made for fans of its famous star and I can’t imagine them not adoring it.

CHICAGO – Michael Goldbach’s little-seen quirk-fest is a feature filmmaking debut like many others. It feels less like a final draft than an overcrowded sketchpad. There seems to be no end to the amount of intriguing ideas that Goldbach wishes to tackle, but he has little idea of how to string them together. His various stylistic conceits distract from the narrative rather than enhance it, resulting in an ungainly picture.

CHICAGO – The CW announces a relatively aggressive Fall 2011 schedule with details on four new shows, one every night for the majority of the work week. With stars like Sarah Michelle Gellar, Rachel Bilson, and Mario Lopez making their way to the struggling network, perhaps this is the year that The CW turns it around.

CHICAGO – Every once in awhile there’s a relatively smaller studio that just does right by genre fans. It was Anchor Bay for a few years. Now it’s Blue Underground, who have been quietly releasing some horror classics. Two of their best releases hit this week and then again on May 31st in a pair of Dario Argento gems, “Deep Red” and “The Cat O’ Nine Tails.” If you call yourself a horror fan, you should own them both.

CHICAGO – What if you were running a drag race on the day the world ended? This is not your average set-up for a video game but “MotorStorm: Apocalypse” is not your average driving game. It’s not often that you look to your right as you drive across a breaking pier to see a tornado.

CHICAGO – With “The Dark Knight Rises” filming continuing today at the Farmiloe Building on St. John Street in London, a number of new developments have hit the Web.