Will Smith is making a Bible Movie... with Vampires

The Fresh Prince is now entering the "I've made A LOT of money for you motherfuckers so now I get to do whatever the FUCK I want!" phase of his career (his next big project: a father/son scifi action/epic with Jayden written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan); and if you need further proof of this The Wrap reports that he's gotten a greenlight to produce, star in and possibly even direct "The Legend of Cain" - which apparently retells the Old Testament tale of Cain and Able with "a vampire twist."

Okay, so... this sounds batshit insane as a film project ("what if Bible Character X was a VAMPIRE!!??" is almost a parody of controversy-bait movie pitches) but the disillusioned Catholic School student and Altar Boy in me can actually see how this might be an interesting premise.

If you're not up on your Ancient Jewish religious/folk traditions (though this particular story is also held as relevant/important by Christianity, Islam, Mormonism and other Abrahamic-offshoots), Cain and Abel are supposed to have been two brothers (twins in some tellings) sired by Adam and Eve at some point after they were expelled from the Garden of Eden. The specific circumstances vary from source to source, but the main point of their story is that Cain kills Abel in a jealous rage when God rejects Cain's burnt-offering of fruit but accepts Abel's sacrificial offering of a lamb - thus turning his brother into the First Martyr and himself (Cain) into the first human being to commit the sin of murder... and the subsequently the first human to be Cursed by God as punishment.

Here's where this gets interesting, to me: Given that this is an Antediluvian Biblical account (read: takes place prior to The Flood and Noah's Ark) the story of what happens to Cain AFTER the murder vary wildly from tradition to tradition, to the extent that even many "traditional" sects see it more as a symbolic account than a literal one. In any case, Cain's punishment takes different forms in every telling. Chiefly, he's supernaturally blocked from ever being able to farm or cultivate the earth again (having spilled his brother's blood there) and is commanded to wander the world ever-after as a scavenger. Moreover, he's branded (sometimes literally) with "The Mark of Cain" which has a troubling history as certain faiths decided that black (as in African) skin was evidence of said Mark and used it as pretense for racial segregation (most mainstream Christian faiths, however, held that whatever descendants Cain DID have were among those killed during The Flood.)

BUT! Some other, more mystical Judeo/Christian/Islamic traditions hold that Cain's "wander forever" curse meant forever as in immortality. Considering that, and considering how prominent the imagery of blood (the Bible describes the poisoning of Cain's land as the result of the earth having been "made to drink his brother's blood) is in the story it wouldn't be that far of a leap for this film to go with "The Curse and Mark of Cain was actually that he became the first Vampire" as it's big-idea twist.

Amusingly, if Smith does decide to play Cain himself and casts the remainder of the characters accordingly (how great would it be if Alfonso Ribeiro played Abel??), making it into a vampire movie is just about the ONLY thing that could distract from the innevitable firestorm of "I'm not a racist BUUUUUUUT...." protests at the idea of Biblical characters being portrayed by Black actors.

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Bandwagon, I Am Has Jumped On You

So... Clint Eastwood is this weekend's big social-media punching bag. Unfortunate, but what can ya do? Other than join in with one's own contribution, I mean:

Text free version after the jump, for all you meme-generating folks. Have at it.

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Escape to The Movies: "Lawless"

It's not bad.

"Intermission" concludes my mini-reviews of every Tony Scott movie.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Lawless

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That Just Happened

Having Clint Eastwood as Mitt Romney's "surprise" lead-in speaker at the RNC should've been a slam-dunk: Dirty Harry walks out onstage and lays down some gravely platitudes (ideally ones that ignore Mr. Eastwood happening to be pro-choice and pro-gay marriage) while the assembled crowd basks in the glow of just about the ONLY remotely-relevant right-wing actor who isn't a walking joke - or, rather, wasn't one yet..

Just one small problem. Apparently, Clint decided to ad-lib... and nobody (understandably) had the guts to tell him "no."

So, the night that was supposed to be all about introducing Mitt Romney to America... instead became all about an 82 year-old man performing a rambling, nigh-incoherent ventriloquism routine in which he conversed with an empty chair representing "Invisible Obama." Social media (re: "The Twittersphere") lit up immediately as the slow-motion train wreck unfolded... and even the Official Obama Twitter got in on the act...

The video is below. I warn you, it's cringe inducing. No, not because it's a Republican thing - it would be just as embarassing if, say, Michael Douglas did this at the DNC next week - because it's just awful all-around, an all-time low and probably the most embarassing thing Eastwood has ever been associated with. Ugh, what a shame.

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"The Iceman" Trailer WILL Kick Your Ass

Via Latino Review

2012/13 is the Year of Michael Shannon, and I've been waiting a long time for it - Shannon has been the best "very-possibly-a-genuine-out-and-out-insane-person" actor in Hollywood for years, but he kept being so in movies nobody saw. That changes this year: "Premium Rush" is a theatrical bomb, but it'll very, very soon be thriving on Redbox/Netflix/VOD where people will discover Shannon stealing the ENTIRE MOVIE with a over-the-top-and-then-some villain performance. And after that: He's General Zod in "The Man of Steel," which is garaunteed to at least open huge. So... welcome to being the new "guy fanboys want to play EVERY villain," Mr. Shannon - you've earned it.

BUT before that, he's also playing the title roll in "The Iceman," a true-story crime flick about an infamous mafia contract-killer who gets in trouble when he starts taking freelance work. The film now has a trailer, and... Holy. Fucking. SHIT. Have you been jonesing for hardcore balls-out nasty mob-movie action? If so, it looks like your fix is coming...



Film is currently without a solid U.S. release date, but is slated to hit the festival circuit at Venice this weekend followed by a TIFF appearance.

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This Scene Probably Should've Been Left In "The Avengers"

We're starting to see the "Avengers" deleted scenes turning up, and a pattern is starting to emerge: The "much longer" original cut of the film may also have been a "darker" cut, and what went out seems to have been anything that might've changed the "colorful romp" energy of the final film. Probably the right idea - they weren't going to out-gloom the summer's other big superhero epic, and to be perfectly honest the blatant 9/11 allusions in the "alternate opening" is cheesy in the wrong way and would've left a bad taste in people's mouths. "The Avengers" was when this genre stepped back into the light, and I'm more than fine with that.

That said, this bit re-introducing Captain America probably should've found a way to stay in. I can see how it would hurt the pacing (Act 1 is a touch on the long side as-is) but it's a really good piece that (hopefully) signals the sort of movie we might be getting from Cap 2.

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Appreciation

So... it sometimes seems like I have a contentious relationship with my own fanbase, particularly as concerns comments and feedback. It's my own doing, I know, in as much as I decided early on that my approach to being an online personality would be to A.) engage the audience and B.) give as good as I got, within reason.

But, without getting into specifics, I've had some instances happen recently in terms of fan-feedback and general appreciativeness that reminded me that I don't accentuate the positive nearly enough in that regard. In any case, in spite of a lot of general internet nonsense that often goes down around here, I really do have some of the best fans/readers/viewers in this business; and I want you to know it.

Thanks, and hope y'all keep watching/reading/etc :)

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New "Game OverThinker" is Live!

A few weeks ago, my colleague Jim Sterling did a video on what he so as the waning (or, at least, "water-treading") state of the Super Mario Bros. franchise which, along with a general sense of "I've gotta get to this at some point" regarding the matter, inspired me to undertake this episode... which is NOW SHOWING on ScrewAttack!

Embedded video (and SPOILER TALK) after the jump:



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So... "gotcha," I guess. The AntiThinker WAS back... for about five minutes. I've been planning this bit, broadly, since before shooting wrapped on "War of The Thinkers." AntiThinker was always going to go away for at least two "arcs," then come back but in an unexpected context. Not long after that, the notion of adding "evil robot" ("RoboThinker," who you'll probably see in the metallic flesh next episode time permitting) to the evolving bad guy character-roster (alongside "ninja" and "demon") and "Terminator parody" seemed like a logical way to go about doing it.

THEN it occured to me that A.) I hadn't really done a Dragonball Z parody yet, either, and it seemed like a natural fit for the show; B.) DBZ's Androids/Future-Trunks/Cell episodes WERE a Terminator riff and C.) a version of The OverThinker in Trunks' purple hair, blue coat and sword ensemble would (hopefully) be inherently funny... it was suddenly an obvious manuever: Let "OmegaThinker's" debut be taking out AntiThinker in a parody/recreation of the "Oh no not MORE Frieza epis-OH! Frieza's DEAD just like that!?" debut DBZ gave Trunks.

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Sony Making "Console Wars" Movie

Sony Pictures, you may have heard, has bought up a bunch of domain names relating to a movie project called "Console Wars." Yesterday, HitFix's Kris Tapley ambiguously tweeted that he'd heard of the project before and described it as "The Social Network" but for video-games.

So... a non-fiction drama about corporate-rivalry in the video game world? Interesting. But what would it be about - which "war" are we talking about?

It would be almost comically cynical and gauche for Sony to make a movie about a business they are one of the three major players IN - even in a "names changed" fictionalized version everyone would be able to tell which one is supposed to be Playstation, making it impossible not to be looking for moments of self-aggrandizement. Also, the movie would probably be current-gen because that's when the mainstream audience/press started caring about the games industry... and most of the "drama" in Generation 7 has involved Sony tripping over it's own shoes in some way.

I'll get called "biased" for this, but the only remotely movie-worthy console-biz story of Gen7 is the Wii: a company that used to be on top, now struggling on the verge of collapse, making a hail-mary pass that everyone says is insane and will fail based largely on the ideas of it's chief creative guy (Miyamoto as Billy Beane from "Moneyball," basically) ...only to see it become a giant restorative success. Like The Wii or not, that's the story.

The "Great" Console War, of course, was Nintendo vs Sega in the 80s and 90s (back when consoles actually had totally different sets of games and such) but I agree with Devin at BAD that it'd be hugely unlikely for Sony Pictures to be so gun-ho to make an 80s period piece featuring almost-exclusively Japanese actors.

That said, if Sony really does want to make a movie about the game business where their brand gets to be the underdog turned conquering hero, the "birth of the Playstation" would be the way to go: Screwed-over in a VERY public and humiliating way by the industry's top dogs, turning the remains of that screw-over into thier own brand, ultimately getting-over on aforementioned top-dog by innovating where they refused to? That's a movie. On the down side, there's no way Nintendo is going to agree to let their logos, names, products etc. be seen in that movie; which you'd kind of need...

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The Big Picture: "Depth of a Salesman"

In which we say goodbye to "Nintendo Power."

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Depth of a Salesman

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Michael Bay's Postponed TMNT Script Has (Maybe) Leaked

You may have already forgotten this, but Michael Bay was producing a "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" reboot for Nickelodeon (retitled to just "Ninja Turtles"), but the project got shitcanned - I'm sorry, postponed - earlier this Summer. Said postponement came shortly after alleged details about the screenplay (reportedly hated by the people financing the project) leaked to the web. The "big deal" detail was that the main characters' origins had been revised to make them aliens.

Well, now it seems like the full screenplay might have been leaked, according to the fan blog "TMNT, NOT TANT," which seems to have been dedicated wholly to railing against this particular project. The whole thing is online in a pdf which is linked from TANT; but just in case there's some kinda skullduggery going on here I won't directly link to it.

There's been absolutely zero confirmation of this yet, so this could all be an elaborate hoax. But I'll say this: if this is a forgery, it's a pretty damn good one - containing every detail that had previously "leaked" (even the non-outrage-inducing stuff) and reading like exactly what you'd expect from a Bay-produced "modernizing" of the franchise... but not in an overblown self-parody way.

Yeah, I read it. Yeah, I'll fill you in. And since this MAY actually be the real deal, and the thing MAY actually still get made, SPOILER WARNING for everything after the jump.

Okay. Overall? It's not good. The ritual-slaughter perpetrated on the mythos aside (lets be frank here: TMNT has already been drastically re-fitted and rebooted plenty of times before) it's just not a very good action script. Locations, characters, arcs and plot turns are generic, action scenes are uninspired and been-there/done-that.

Biggest numero-uno glaring problem from a strictly technical standpoint: The four Turtles just don't have any character "on the page." They all read the same - which is to say, they all read like the first live-action movie's version of Raphael. The character "details" are there (Leonardo is the pragmatic leader, Raphael is the sarcastic hothead, Donatello is the techie, Michaelangelo is the big kid, etc.) but they don't "read" any differently. Admittedly, it's the sort of thing good voice casting would go a long way toward fixing.

Either way, the Turtles aren't the main characters. Our lead is Casey Jones - here, a small-town teenage hockey goon whose girlfriend (April O'Neil) has left him to pursue a TV journalism career (at... CBS?) in The Big City. It's Casey who, by happenstance, discovers the Ninja Turtles, rescues them from a military experimentation facility, gives them their color-coded masks (they all look the same and he needs to tell them apart, haw haw) and offers to help them get back to Master Splinter in New York (exactly where April went - what are the odds!!??) Yup - it's Sam from "Transformers" all over again.

The "alien origin" is in there, but it's meant as a third-act surprise. The Turtles start out having been raised (by Splinter, as ever) under the impression that their origin was the same as the comics and the cartoon - i.e. ordinary turtles mutated by mysterious ooze. Speaking of which, the occasionally-stated dictum that this was going to be "closer to the Mirage comics?" Complete bunk - it's the 80s cartoon by way of Bayformers; with Bebop, Rocksteady, Dimension X, The Technodrome and Krang all present and accounted for.

But what about Shredder? Well... this is the stuff that initially made me think this still might be a parody: In this version, the main heavy is COLONEL SCHRADER, who runs a covert military squad codenamed "THE FOOT" that is hunting the Turtles and also bosses around Bebop and Rocksteady (who are more-or-less direct lifts from the cartoon, save that they actually use their guns.) Big second-act reveal: Schrader is also a mutant/alien/whatever disguised as a human who produces blade from his body like a mecha-porcupine. (Michaelangelo: "Schrader? More like SHREDDER!")

So what does Col. Schrader want? Well, he's an advance-man working for Krang (still a living brain, riding in a humanoid mecha-suit with four arms) who's waiting over in Dimension X to invade Earth (by merging the two dimensions) with The Technodrome (the Utroms, Neutrinos etc don't appear to exist.) What's been keeping him?

Well... the TMNT are Superman, basically. Humanoid Turtles are apparently an indigenous race to Dimension X (a generic jungle planet, incidentally), and the four we know are (what else?) THE CHOSEN ONES, spirited away to Earth via Splinter as newborns just as Krang was taking over and fated to return and use their predestined Ninja Weaponry (they seriously do not get their familiar weapons until the end of the movie!) to set things right. Also, there's some B.S. about magic orbs that had been hidden on Earth that were holding Krang back, but we're informed that he just got done tracking them all down offscreen.

The whole thing ends with the by-now expected "Return of The Jedi" pitched three-way battle: The Turtles fighting Krang on NYC rooftops while Casey and April try to short-circuit the dimensional merging aparatus (Casey single-handedly takes out Schrader, Bebop and Rocksteady. For real)as Splinter and The U.S. Military battle Krang's invasion force; culminating in a bizzare setup for more sequels: Turns out the Turtles "destiny" isn't to remain together and fight crime, but rather to split up to the four corners of the Earth and each guard one of those dimension-seperating magic orbs and to train their own individual squads of pre-teenage Ninja Turtles. In a final bit of fanservice, April ditches her go-nowhere "internship" at CBS (surprise! She's exaggerated her glamorous NY life to Casey and was really just an errand girl - betcha didn't see that coming!) and instead becomes an "underground webcam blogger" (oooh! How current!) for ChannelSix.com. Heh. Oh, and the "Turtles arriving at their orb-guarding posts" montage seems to set up a movie-verse version of Venus from "The Next Mutation," FWIW.

So... this reads like it could be the real thing to me, but it could just as easily be bullshit. If it is real, though, it feels like a bullet has been dodged. It doesn't even really read like a "Transformers"-style disaster, really more of a dull, standard-issue action dud. Despite how many franchise-friendly advances have been made in the fields of CGI and choreography, the script is shockingly light on the "Ninja" part of it's title: The Foot Soldiers are just generic Black Ops mooks with machine guns (the Turtle's shells are bulletproof) and most of the action scenes are just chases - until they get their weapons at the end, the extent of the Turtles' martial-arts prowess is limited to shuriken-throwing and improv-weapons. The big final fight with Krang is clearly meant to be the big payoff - at least, here are the guys as you recognize them - but too little, too late.

I actually really like the prospect of having Bebop, Rocksteady and Krang turn up in live-action, but the execution of them is pretty terrible. Krang, especially, is a boring "evil for the sake of it" heavy; which is a problem because he becomes the main threat in the third act. Schrader is a pretty dull bad guy in his own right, but at least if he was the "end boss" there'd be history with the various characters sort of paying off. One of Krang's (not-even-a-handful) lines is to trot out a version of the "Your father looked just like that when I..." lines; referring back to a (biological) father the Turtles and the audience never knew and just found out existed.

We'll probably find out shortly if this is indeed the real thing. Until then... whoa.

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Neil Armstrong: 1930 - 2012

Neil Alden Armstrong, the first human being to set foot on another world, a human achievement which has not yet been equaled (think about that for a minute - NO human being has done anything as monumental as that since) has died at the age of 82.

I'm having a little trouble processing that today, so instead I think I'll repost THIS:

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Once Upon a Time in The Future

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Thinkers and Believers

Below, Bill Nye handily explaining WHY it's important not to simply "let them be" regarding creationists, flat-earthers, etc.



There are two kinds of people in the world: Thinkers and Believers. The distinction has nothing to do with religion or "atheism" or even intelligence - it's about how you approach life on a day-to-day basis. Do you think for yourself, or do you let someone (or someTHING) else decide for you? Do you put your trust in "traditions" or do you apply logic? Do you "feel" or do you reason?

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Escape to The Movies: "Expendables 2"

I'm sure this will pass without incident.

Also, Tony Scott.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Expendables 2

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"Butter" Trailer Plays It Coy

A big conversation-piece last year on the festival circuit, "Butter" is a political satire - supposedly in the vein of "Election" - that uses a yearly butter-carving competition (yes, we are firmly in "Little Miss Sunshine" middle-america-as-quirktastic-museum-piece land) as a metaphor for "modern politics" (read: the 2008 presidential election.) Jennifer Garner is the deliberately Palin/Bachman-esque wife of the reigning champ who enters the contest herself in order to maintain her family's prestige after her husband is disgraced by being caught with a stripper/hooker (Olivia Wilde;) only to find her victory imperiled by the arrival of an adopted African-American girl (standing in for, well, GUESS) who turns out to be a natural prodigy at the "sport."

The first trailer, of course, is mostly downplaying that particular angle; which feels like a missed opportunity.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS after jump.



The film has had a good deal of ink already, mostly because Conservatives are getting better and better at mobilizing against stuff like this as though they were an ACTUAL persecuted minority, but the word from the critical press was pretty mixed otherwise: Heavy-handed, overly-broad/cute, etc.

Looks pretty funny to me, though, and naturally my interest perked up at the notion that Wilde's character (apparently) turns her romantic intentions on Ashley Greene - who I think is playing Garner's daughter. So... that ought to be something, at least. Though, it must be said, it's a little weird that Garner seems to still be playing every role with the same "13 year-old grownup" affect from "13 Goin On 30."

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Enough is Enough

I was just talking with a friend about remakes tonight, too...

I'm not "against" remakes. You can make a good movie out of anything, "anything" includes other movies, and so on. But there's a point where this just becomes nonsense. At this point the "remake cycle" is just that - a self-perpetuating corporate organism: You produce a remake of a known-quantity not only to hold on to any IP no matter what, but also to re-sell the original on Blu-Ray and because you know the outrage/intrigue generated by potentially desecrating a sacred cow will translate into massive coverage by a film press now dominated by I-watched-that-a-million-times VHS-generation movie geeks.

I get that, and I get why someone would want to remake "Total Recall" (wasn't good, but could've been) or even "Robocop" (DOOMED) from a business and even an artistic standpoint. But... remaking "VIDEODROME!?"

Okay, here's the problem with this:

A property like "Videodrome" neatly divides the entire spectrum of audiences into two camps: A relatively small number of people who adore it and will be immediately hostile to the idea of anyone touching it... and the vast majority of folks who have either never heard of it, never saw it or saw it and hated it. It's not "Robocop" where you're talking about a 'brand.' There is zero point in making this film - as opposed to an original film that "modernizes" the now-somewhat-dated "Videodrome" ideas - other than to feed The Cycle.



The original David Cronenberg film is technically a scifi mystery in which James Woods plays the boss of a UHF TV station (ask your parents) who starts broadcasting pirated signals of what he believes to be staged snuff-film footage originating in Malaysia but may actually be part of a government/corporate/mad-science experiment to alter the minds and bodies of viewers via TV signals; but the actual plot plays out almost like it's being invented by the film (or hallucinated by the characters) on the fly. The real focus is on the elaborate nightmare sequences, bio-mechanical transformation FX and weirdly-prescient philosophizing about real life being supplanted by video life - the film essentially pre-figured the logical extreme of, say, "Second Life" despite The Internet having not been invented yet.

The remake (which I'm going to assume will likely port the focus from television to The Web) is angling to be a "large scale sci-fi action thriller" (gag!) possibly involving "nanobots;" which sounds to me like they're going to try and explain the body-morph stuff whose surreal ambiguity was the point of the original film.

So... looks like we have this to look forward to - though, if recent trends are any indication folks will be lining up to tell me how wrong/biased/fanboy I am and how much better the original would be if only David Cronenberg had the foresight to make it as shitty as the new one. The director currently attached is Adam Berg, who has apparently been awarded a film career based wholly on a commercial for a now-defunct model of Philips TVs which was best described as a "Dark Knight"/Joker fan-film done in bullet-time.

Yeah, this totally has a chance in hell of being good...

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New GAME OVERTHINKER Announcement Trailer

Episode 74: "Rusty Pipes" - which will deal with whether or not the Super Mario Bros. series has overstayed it's welcome and that other thing that was revealed at the end of last episode - will make it's debut on Thursday 8/30. ScrewAttack Advantage members can get an early look on Monday 8/27.

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The End

It's been a long time coming, but now it's here: Nintendo Power Magazine is shutting down after 24 years. If nothing else, a lot of people's magazine collections are about to become really valuable.

I am feeling about as rotten about this as I did when Dr. Seuss and Jim Henson died. Yes, Nintendo Power was a nakedly commercial corporate thing - a singularly genius bit of marketing by Nintendo of America in realizing that there was going to be a "gamer culture" and getting in front of it with a big, glossy fan magazine of their own. (You can read the first issue in PDF format HERE.)

But it was a HUGE deal, legitimately, as well: Pre-internet, I don't think a lot of gamers (myself included) would've become gamers without NP to show them that there were others and that codes, strategies, maps, fan-art etc was meant to be shared. Having this magazine showing up at my house every month for a decade or so did more to make me a better reader than almost any book did, and I can say for a fact that there were a lot of NES/SNES games now considered benchmark classics that I don't think a lot of people would've connected with without NP "covering" them. A whole generation of (American) gamers were introduced to JRPGs when Nintendo Power gave away a free copy of DragonQuest (as "Dragon Warrior") as a re-subscription bonus. I myself got my first internet connection - and first exposure to the "medium" where I now make my living - in order to use the Nintendo Power AOL site. The AVGN once summed up the memories thusly:



I hadn't subscribed in years - like everyone else, The Internet replaced magazines for things like that for me - but it's still pretty sad to see it go. This is real end-of-an-era stuff - another huge part of the Golden Age of Gaming is gone. In my mind, this is as quietly-devastating a loss as when Sega abandoned consoles.

Rest in peace, old friend.

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Big Picture: "Sidekicks"

NOT talking about that awful Chuck Norris movie.

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Sidekicks

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Devastating

Tony Scott, younger brother of Ridley and easily one of the most important and influential action movie directors of the last several decades (an "of all time" case could absolutely be made,) is dead from an apparent suicide. Witnesses say he jumped to his death from the Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro, California, his body being later retrieved from the water by LAPD officers. What may have led to this fate is, at this time, unknown. Awful, awful news.


Like his brother, Scott had a quixotic career. Originally schooled as a painter, he became a sought-after director of commercials, documentary shorts and music-videos for Ridley's video production studio in England. He was in his forties before transitioning to features with the cult-fave modern-vampire piece "The Hunger;" but subsequently became known primarily for his action movies via collaborations with Jerry Bruckheimer. The best of these came out in an impressive run between 1986 and 1995: "Top Gun," "Beverly Hills Cop II," "Revenge," "Days of Thunder," "The Last Boy Scout," "True Romance" and "Crimson Tide."

Scott's filmography can be found HERE. If there's anything on there you've never seen, now would be the time.

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More Like It

What frustrates me most about "The Expendables" franchise (Part 2 is worse than Part 1, incidentally) - and mystifies me about people who're still furious at me for not liking the first one - is that I WANT stuff like that to be good. I'm as big a fan of the bloated 70s/80s action aesthetic as anyone; and I don't understand how this franchise built around the guys who invented that stuff gets it so profoundly wrong while the likes of "Hobo With a Shotgun" or "Machete" can make it work.

Case in point: This trailer for "Bullet In The Head" - Stallone's "other" action movie this year - looks more like what I was hoping for from "Expendables:" Hardcore macho bullshit with a clear sense of it's own genre and an emphasis on pumped-up style. The director is Walter Hill, a living legend of oldschool action ("The Warriors," "48 Hours," "Streets of Fire" and "Hard Times" among others,) and apart from the tiresome "LOL Rambo got OLD!" gags looks pretty choice:

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This Happened

Something to keep in mind the next time your thinking that this or that movie/story/whatever is just about the dumbest thing you've ever heard - the following actual panel from "Batman: A Death In The Family":

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Marvel Wants James Gunn For "Guardians"

This. This would be awesome.

THR reports that Marvel/Disney is seeking James Gunn, who most-recently gave the superhero genre a vicious dressing-down in "Super," to try his hand at the real thing as director of "Guardians of The Galaxy." Aside from how cool and "different" a move it would be to hand a big-budget space opera to a guy mostly known for niche genre flicks like "Slither" and some early Troma collaborations (and, yes, the two "Scooby Doo" movies;) I can think of some other reasons for fandom to get excited...

Gunn is simpatico with Joss Whedon, who just signed for "Avengers 2" in 2015 and is also "overseeing" the production of the other related Marvel films leading up to it. Among the things they share are recurring actor-buddies - specifically, one Mr. Nathan Fillion. So... do some math.

All just idle speculation, of course, since Gunn hasn't signed yet (though it would be a VERY in-character move for Marvel to leak this "looking at him" info to gauge fan reaction, as they did the same thing when Chris Evans and Joss Whedon were "on the shortlists"); though it will certianly not be lost of fans that Marvel's pitch for "Guardians" (a misfit crew of aliens having adventures on a starship) feels rather similar to "Firefly."

In fact, I'd say the only question is whether fans will be pleading for Fillion to show up as Star-Lord (team leader, human astronaut who teams up with aliens) or as the voice of Rocket Raccoon (exactly what it sounds like.)

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Escape to The Movies: "ParaNorman"

Go see "ParaNorman."

"Intermission" has interview quotes from the directors.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : ParaNorman

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Quickie

This week's "Escape to The Movies" will be up in a few hours, but for those of you making weekend movie plans now, let me shoot some quick takes at ya:

"ParaNorman" is my favorite movie of the year, so far. Yes, more than "Cabin in The Woods." Yes, more than "Avengers." Better than "Coraline." An absolutely perfect movie with great characters, great mystery, and it eats "Super 8's" lunch in terms of Amblin-throwback "kid adventure" movies. Destined to be a cult hit, and will mark the point where Laika Animation dethrones Pixar as the hardcore film-geek Western animation house of choice (Pixar being "still good but too mainstream.")

"The Odd Life of Timothy Green" is one of the most eye-poppingly bad, ill-concieved train wrecks I've seen in years. Well-intentioned, but legendarily-bad - destined for a future as a RiffTrax and/or Channel Awesome mainstay. Imagine an M. Night Shayamalan pitch re-concieved by Tommy Wiseau. The sort of bad movie where, halfway through, you realize with a shock that Nicholas Cage isn't in it.

"Expendables 2" was hidden from the eyes of film critics. "Green" was not. That probably tells you something.

If "Beyond The Black Rainbow" plays near you, and you have a VERY strong affection for early-80s David Cronenberg/Ken Russell scifi/horror mindfucks; seek it out.

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He Said He'd Be Zzzzz...

I wonder... Did any prescient movie journalists back during the "Arnold Era" of American action movies do any serious writing about the action stars of said era having a "bubble problem?" As in: So much of their appeal was bound up not in their performances but in their cartoonishly pumped-up "straight-dudes-can-be-gym-queens-too" physicality they were innevitably going to have much greater difficulty transitioning to the "aging hardcase" phase of their careers?

Case in point: The trailer for Arnold Schwarzenegger's (lead-role) post-Governorship comeback, "The Last Stand;" an apparent riff on "High Noon" wherein a very, very, very tired-looking Arnold plays a very, very, very tired-looking former big city cop living in very, very, very tired-looking semi-retirement as the very, very, very tired-looking Sherriff of a peaceful southwestern border town who must lead a team of local cops (plus some hastily-deputized local ruffians for comic-relief - why, hello there somehow-just-as-anachronistic-as-Arnold Johnny Knoxville!) in a last-ditch blockade against a Mexican Cartel Death-Squad looking to blow through their jurisdiction on the way back across the border.



I get the sense that "Border-Jumping Cartel Death Squads" are going to become the next omnipresent stock-villain for generic American action movies; partially because it sounds superficially relevant but mostly because it's an effective way to exploit Middle America's knee-jerk paranoia about the "browning" of America (aka "OH NOES! WE'RE BEIN' INVADED BY TEH HISPANICS!!!") without being explicitly racist or xenophobic about it.

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Big Picture: "Silly Billy"

I did a show about "The Beverly Hillbillies."

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Silly Billy

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Post-Movie Podcast: Many More Things

I am back on the Post-Movie Podcast again this week, as me and Bret Michel sit in for John Black alongside Steve Head. On the docket: ParaNorman, Jaws on Blu-ray, Bourne Legacy and some other things. Mild spoiler-warnings for just about everything, though not major in my estimation:

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Nostalgia Gifting

Wound up giving Time Life's big "Power Rangers" DVD set (on behalf of myself and my brother) to my kid sister as an overdue birthday/College Graduation present (good job, Catie!) shortly after it finally hit my mailbox today. I was just a little too old to be "into" MMPR when it was new (though Linkara's fantastic "history of" videos have made into something like an after-the-fact fan), but she was a massive fangirl for it and I figured this set would be a good bet - though I was a little nervous that maybe Gen-Y maybe wasn't as big on early-onset-nostalgia as my generation had been in it's twenties.

Worries for not, thankfully - she was psyched enough to immediately assemble the little figure that came with it and pose it for an Instagram (pictured right.) Good vibes, all around.

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"End of Watch"

Supposedly, the most-common advice given to screenwriters in present day Hollywood is: Don't specialize. Be good at something, fine, but get your name on as much of "everything else" as possible. Make sure they know you're available for action, comedy, scifi, whatever.

David Ayer's career stands out like a living rebuke to that advice - since 2000, Ayer has written (and more-recently directed) eight films: "U-571," "Training Day," "The Fast & The Furious," "Dark Blue," "S.W.A.T," "Harsh Times," "Street Kings" and now "End of Watch." Of those eight, seven are crime-action/dramas and all but one of them center on embattled, ethically-compromised LAPD cops.

His new joint, "End of Watch," stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena as two cops who get into a protracted scuffle with Cartel-backed LA drug gangs; the "hook" this time being that a supposedly-significant amount of the action is presented "found footage" style from security cameras and the cops' own dashboard-cam. A new red-band trailer has just been released:

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Puppet Master

Now that Christopher Nolan has effectively dashed Batman-fans' hopes of seeing any more favorite characters turn up in the "Dark Knight" universe; we're probably going to be seeing A LOT of fan-films popping up that mainly exist to imagine "Nolan-ized" versions of fan-filmmakers' favorite bad guys. Case in point: "Puppet Master" plays out as basically the first-act of a nonexistant "in-between-quel" centered around Riddler and The Ventriloquist. I dig it:


What I appreciate most about this is how plausible it is as an actual part of the series, warts and all - Edward Nygma as an obsessive FBI agent teaming up with "Mister Scarface" is a solid pitch, and everything from never calling either of them by their supervillain handles and giving Nygma's use of a cane an origin story absolutely nails the overly-expository "realism" of Nolan's Bat-films.

I would definitely rather watch the movie being suggested here than sit through TDKR again.

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"Red Dawn" Trailer Predictably Blows

From the looks of things, watching for seams-showing where FX and editing were employed to turn the "Red Dawn" remake's bad guys from China to North Korea will be a lot more interesting than the movie itself...

I'm making an effort to be more positive lately, so let's momentarily ignore the fact that this movie apparently sucks so profoundly that it's been sitting on a shelf for three years and focus on some stuff I actually LIKED in this trailer:

1. Shot with the snow-globe is a clever repurposing of the "Jurassic Park Effect."

2.) Thor being a returned-veteran is a potentially interesting twist - assuming he's either coming back from Iraq or Afghanistan (remember, this was actually made in 2009) he's essentially going from combating an insurgency to partcipating in one.

3.) The notion of North Korea being able to invade a Dennys, much less the United States, is still laughable on it's face; but an EMP weapon is a good-enough solution to handwaving how such an asymmetrical invasion might be at least attempted.

Also, it just occured to me: Since the goal of the re-edit was to stay on the Chinese market's good side (and let's be clear here: China invading the U.S. militarily is every bit as dumb as North Korea), will they bother to address the now-present plothole of why China doesn't bomb NK into the Stone Age for invading a country they've got billions of dollars invested in? Let's get real for a minute here - before the Wolverines would've even had time to gather ammo, wouldn't a Red Army detachment be in Pyonyang asking that they please stop touching their stuff?

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Escape to The Movies: "The Bourne Legacy"

Chems? Chems. Need more Chems.

"Intermission" is called Upside of Down.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Bourne Legacy

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Melmac Attack

It's not really being reported as a "major" entertainment story, but Seth MacFarlane's "Ted" is probably going to end up being one of the biggest hits of the year - it's actually doing bigger business than "The Dark Knight Rises" in a lot of Europe right now - even moreso given it cost so relatively little to actually make.

That kind of impact makes waves, and this is probably the first visible one: "ALF" is heading to the big screen.




If you're under the age of... I dunno, 20 maybe?, this is quite possibly (pardon the pun) totally alien to you: "ALF" ("Alien Life Form") was a sitcom in the 80s that was HUGE for about two years then pretty-much fell off the planet. Basic pitch: "What if E.T. was an obnoxious troublemaking goof and a whole family was hiding him instead of just a kid?" Pupeteer Paul Fusco voiced and performed the title character (he's supposedly being sought for the movie, though the charcter will probably be CGI), a child-sized furry alien who was the last-survivor of the recently-exploded planet Melmac and wound up living with a sitcom-standard suburban family: Exasperated/dweeby dad, nagging mom, teenaged daughter, precocious son, nosy neighbors, etc.

For the brief period that the show was the biggest thing in pop-culture, there was "Alf" merchandise everywhere and even an animated prequel-series set on Melmac. Today, the series is probably best remembered for it's notoriously dark, unresolved final episode: A running subplot in the series involved Alf being sought by nefarious government agents, and the fourth season ended on a cliffhanger wherein he was finally exposed and captured moments before he was to make contact with another crew of survivors. The creators believed they were getting one more season, but the show was canceled soon after that and they never got to; meaning that this heavily-kid targeted comedy series essentially ends with the main character and his surrogate family being dragged away by the Men In Black. (The story was "resolved" in the god-awful TV movie "Project A.L.F." a decade later.)

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Here's Your Dad's Next Favorite Movie

Let's get this out of the way, first: Yes, endorsing Mitt Romney for president does make Clint Eastwood significantly less cool - which is to say, still cooler than YOU... just not by as much.*

Anyway, here's the trailer for "Trouble With The Curve," aka "The Anti-Moneyball."




I could've sworn Clint had retired in front of the camera, but even without that it feels bizzare to see him acting in a movie he didn't direct. However, the director Robert Lorenz has been Clint's producing-partner and assistant director for a LONG time, so you can't help but wonder who's doing what day-to-day/scene-to-scene.

So... looks a little saccharine, to be sure, but hell of a cast: Timberlake has by now solidly proven himself the real-deal, Amy Adams, John Goodman, Robert Patrick, Matthew Lillard? Good lineup for something that will mainly be seen on constant replay at your local VFW Hall about six months after it comes out.

*It's not so much about Romney being a douchebag (he is, though, I had to suffer through him as Governor) or the Republican Party wholeheartedly embracing the villain-role in THE Civil Rights struggle of the 21st Century as it is that it's just so... boring. 90-something Hollywood legend pulling writer/director/star/composer duties on grim dramas like a 20-something indie kid? Atypical. Different. Cool. Aging crusty cowboy dude votes Republican? Expected. Cliche. Dull. Not cool.

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The Big Picture: "Holy Spoilers, Batman!"

Here's another show about TDKR, spoiler-warning kind of implicit in the title...

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Holy Spoilers Batman!

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"Zero Dark Thirty" First Trailer

Kathryn Bigelow's "Zero Dark Thirty" - previously known as "Killing Bin Laden" - has released it's first trailer.

The film, about the international covert manhunt undertaken to find the Al-Qaeda leader in the wake of 9-11, was in-production and shooting before the Navy SEAL raid actually brought Osama bin Laden down and was originally slated with an open-ended conclusion in mind; though that's obviously no longer the case...



Originall slated to open in October, it was moved to December (read: after the presidential election) in reaction to shameless charges of impropriety vis-a-vi the filmmakers knowledge of military plans from Republican Congressmen and political-hacks panicked at the thought of people being reminded of this American victory at a time when said reminder might help President Obama get re-elected.

Well, let me remind you anyway: Osama bin Laden is dead. Barack Obama gave the order to take him out. This trailer, at least, will probably be in theaters and on TV before the election; and it looks pretty damn good to me.

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Will The Avengers Battle GALACTUS?

Variety and others are reporting that there's big doin's in the world of Marvel movies once more: Supposedly, Marvel/Disney and Fox are in serious talks about swapping around some rights. See, while Fox is already going ahead with a "Fantastic Four" reboot from "Chronicle's" Josh Trank; their other Marvel franchise, "Daredevil," has been stalled after David Slade left the project, and Daredevil's contract is much closer to running out. So, evidently, the two studios are working out a deal: Fox can keep Daredevil (with JOE FUCKING CARNAHAN in talks to direct! Holy shit!) on an extended contract... and in exchange, Marvel Studios gets the movie-rights to bring both GALACTUS and THE SILVER SURFER to their shared-universe!

Gee, what could they possibly want to have a giant space-monster onhand for?

There's a school of thought emerging among comic fandom that people should be rooting/pulling for all Marvel movies not being produced BY Marvel Studios to fail so that Marvel/Disney will get the characters back and the Marvel Movieverse can officially add them to continuity. I'm not in that school - it'd be COOL, don't get me wrong, but I don't think that Marvel is the only studio capable of doing their characters justice and I do worry that the (at this stage) still more producer-driven, mandatory-schedule manner in which the Marvel Studios movies are being made could scare less "controllable" but otherwise well-matched directors away from certain projects. The idea that average "in-continuity" stories are preferable to good/great "non-continuity" stories because it's more fun for long-term fans to keep track of the links has been somewhat damaging to comics, I wouldn't want the same thing to become true of movies.

Besides, not every scenario is Sony/Spider-Man. Spider-Man is a HUGE property, and Sony is a massive corporate entity that regards Disney as a major economic rival; both reasons for them to fight tooth and nail to keep those rights. Fox, on the other hand, is a smaller studio that's only recently begun to turn around a losing record. It's entirely possible that they might be willing to ink a deal later, as BAD suggests, to "share" the characters - i.e. Fox gets to make "Fantastic Four," "Daredevil" and "X-Men" movies but they'd be officially "part" of the Marvel Movieverse via shared credit, profit-swaps, some references ("Hell's Kitchen hasn't been the same since Thor dropped a giant space-whale on it!") and maybe a cameo here or there.

Fox, really, would be crazy NOT to make that deal - whatever it'd cost them short-term would very likely be made up by having a comparitively minor fixture like Daredevil or the still-not-well-absorbed-by-non-fans Fantastic Four get the boxoffice-boost of being tied-in to the juggernaut that is now "The Avengers." Plus, getting rid of the whole "Fox owns all the mutants" thing would give Marvel/Disney live-action access to a lot of useful B and C-list characters... also, let's face it: Hugh Jackman would probably be more than happy to put his Logan claws back on for "The Avengers" or a cameo someplace else, since he needs that Wolverine money to support his less-profitable roles (aka any movie where he isn't Wolverine.)

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How Did This One Sneak By?

I've heard people joking about "Soldiers of Fortune," but this is the first time I've actually seen the trailer. My response: This is either going to be brilliant or brilliantly-horrible.

The premise, at least, is pretty killer: A rebel insurgency in a third-world dictatorship is looking to fun their revolution by partnering with a slimy "extreme vacation" outfit whose business is leading bored billionaires on safari-esque live-fire paramilitary "missions" in such hotspots. "Something goes wrong," and suddenly the group of weekend warriors (and their ex-military handlers) are stuck in a real war. The potential for satire is awesome, yes... but nowhere near as awesome as JAMES FUCKING CROMWELL WITH A MACHINE GUN!

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New OverThinker Debuts

FYI, the most recent episode of "The Game OverThinker" is now live on ScrewAttack and on The Other Blog.

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Still Happening

Entertainment Tonight running a trailer-preview for the "Red Dawn" remake is a geuine two-fer: I didn't think either of those things were still happening.

Chris Hemsworth and Josh Hutcherson are not, incidentally, aging backwards - this thing was shot about three years ago and has been shelved largely owing to the MGM crack-up and (reportedly) really, really sucking; then got delayed again to perform a villain-ectomy: Originally the film was about an armed Chinese (replacing the Soviet Union from the original) invasion of the United States; but someone realized that would probably make increasingly vital Chinese distribution/business-relations difficult and decided to digitally re-edit the invaders into North Korea.



The film is now set for a November 21st release date, which will make it only the second stupidest fantasy about expelling imaginary communists from the U.S. that plays out that month.

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Escape to The Movies: "Total Recall"

Forgettable.

"Intermission" is about criticism.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Total Recall

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The Bottom

Devin Faraci at BAD has dug up something pretty spectacularly awful - possibly the worst thing you'll see on the internet today. A confluence of awful things in the popular culture mixed together in such a way as to feel like a parody... except its all horribly, horribly real.

"Diggity Dave" - some kind of personality from "Pimp My Ride" - has apparently been making a Nolan-Batman fan-film and has taken to "talking it up" recently with an incredible claim: The Aurora Massacre shooter was "obsessed" with the project and contacted Mr. Diggity personally prior to his rampage. I... can't decide if it's worse if thats a lie or the truth. I'm not going to embed the video, go watch it on BAD b/c they deserve the traffic - those cats work hard.

The premise: Batman has been shot dead, and a random troubled street-punk pilfers his mask and armor to take up the mantle... only now, New Batman uses guns. Commenters at BAD have dubbed him "Emocore Juggalo Batman," which is wholly accurate but doesn't begin to describe just how terrible this thing looks - it's almost a parody of it's subgenre, right down to the clear influence of "Boondock Saints." Watch at your own risk...

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Funny Is Funny

Yes, I said I was done talking about [REDACTED]; and I think I've been pretty good about that. However, I never said anything about mentioning someone else talking about [REDACTED.]

Honestly, though, I'm mainly posting this short cartoon about [REDACTED] because it's creator is a fan, tweeted it to me and I thought it was fucking hysterical and deserved more views than it was getting. Enjoy!

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Christopher Eccleston Is (Probably) The Villain In "Thor 2"

"Thor 2" is subtitled "The Dark World," and now we may know part of what that's in reference to: Deadline reports that former Doctor Christopher Eccleston has been signed as the new main villain - Malekith. And in case you were thinking the "Thor" movies might be pulling back from the high-fantasy stuff after the character(s) turned out to be so memorable tearing up NYC in "The Avengers;" this fellow's full name and title is Malekith the Accursed: King of The Dark Elves of Svartalfheim.

Man, that's even fun just to type...

Unlike most of the supporting/villain cast from the first film, who mainly come from the Silver Age 60s/70s "Thor" stories, Malekith originated during Walt Simonson's legendary run on the book (considered by many to be the best era of "Thor" comics ever) in the 80s. His main "thing" is shape-shifting and illusion, but as the title implies he's also got a whole army and realm under his command.

It's going to be interesting to see how they handle his appearance, which is pretty bizzare even by the standards of Thor adversaries: Crimson Rennaissance Faire clothes, a half-blue/half-black face and a big white mane worn "Hair Metal" style. Done right, could look pretty cool. Done "wrong," could end up looking like "Cutie Honey's" Black Claw - who was cool in his own right, but maybe not what Marvel Studios is looking for in the sequel to their second most successful "solo" franchise...

Yes, this is a real movie. You can get the DVD in the U.S. and it's as great as it looks.

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Acknowledgement

A side-effect of reporting/commenting on the popular culture is that you become acutely aware of your own position in it; to the extent that I still get a little giddy when something I've done/said actually becomes a (tiny) part of the stuff I'm commenting upon or otherwise observing.

To wit, it's felt awfully... "vindicating," I guess, to get a shout-out from Hollywood-Elsewhere and a name-drop from "Zero Punctuation" within a span of about 10 hours. Kudos, gents.

The Escapist : Zero Punctuation : The Amazing Spider-Man

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Today Is #OtherChicken Day

I've been retweeting (when able) people's photos of themselves buying/eating lunch at any Chik-Fil-A rival today as a little counter-protest against "Chik-Fil-A Appreciation Day;" wherein Republican/Conservative politicians have been encouraging followers to patronize said restaurant chain to show their solidarity with bigotry and anti-gay discrimination.

So far, this is my favorite, tweeted by @laputanwmachine

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