So, since it's Halloween... lets talk about this red band trailer for "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters," which looks about as agood as these "stupid on purpose" genre riffs get. Specifically... is it at all "weird" that I find this in somewhat bad taste?What I mean is... I totally "get" that they're just riffing on the familiar fairytale (LOVE the gag with the milk bottles) and that 0.00000% of this is meant to be taken seriously, but... they MUST be aware that "Witch" isn't strictly a fictional, made-up thing like vampires or zombies...
Wednesday, 31 October 2012
Tuesday, 30 October 2012
And then everything changed.It's being reported that Disney has purchased Lucasfilm and the rights to all of it's properties from George Lucas, placing the entirety of the "Star Wars" universe under the Walt Disney umbrella. Evidently, this must have been in the works (how the HELL did they keep everyone quiet!?) for awhile, because they've simultaneously announced that they're moving ahead on "Star Wars: Episode VII" for 2015.SO many conflicting...
Monday, 29 October 2012
Sunday, 28 October 2012
Friday, 26 October 2012
Thursday, 25 October 2012
BREAKING: Arnold Schwarzenegger will play "Conan The Barbarian" one more time.Honestly? If he can get into the best possible shape and they play it as "old Conan" either way, this makes a lot more sense than another "Terminator." I just hope they don't make the mistake of assuming that forgoing a PG-13 was what "went wrong" with last year's awful attempt at a reboot...
Bryan Singer's original two "X-Men" movies (you know, the ones that still technically happened) are both very solid examples of their genre... for their time. The costumes are almost universally awful, the aesthetic is inappropriately drab and sterile, everyone looks a little too much like models up on the catwalk at a superhero-themed fashion show, but there's some great performances and both films have good screenplays that "get" the material and most of the characters. Made before Raimi's "Spider-Man," "Batman Begins" and especially...
Below, the Red Band trailer for "Evil Dead," which looks about like you'd expect: New kids, new cabin, same basic "Deadites" (though they were called that in the original and I don't expect they'll be called that here) and a modern-looking horror aesthetic...Thus far, I like it. It's continuing to look like a smart decision to not necessarily make someone "The Ash" in the direct sense - remember, Ash in the first movie wasn't really "Ash" as we've come to remember him.Honestly, my biggest worry about this and any other "serious" kids-in-the-woods...
Wednesday, 24 October 2012
On the right, a high-res still from yesterday's "Iron Man 3" trailer; depicting what seems to be The Mandarin taking off his hood. Glimpsed for a split second is a tattoo on the back of his neck, the design of which appears to be Captain America's shield with an "Anarchist A" replacing the star:So what does it mean? It's obviously there to be seen and get fans talking, and it seems unlikely that Marvel would let something that looks this much like...
Tuesday, 23 October 2012
Had totally forgotten that this was supposed to exist until this trailer popped up today on Dark Horizons."Empires of The Deep" is being referred to as the biggest U.S./Chinese co-production ever at a $100 Million budget, but supposedly the "Chinese" side of that is almost-entirely from a single China-based Real Estate billionaire. I like how nobody even bats an eye anymore at the idea of a supposedly-"communist" country having billionaires, incidentally...The pitch? It's "Avatar" meets "The Little Mermaid," with a human hero traveling...
Holy. Fucking. Shit."Iron Man 3's" first trailer is, without a doubt, the most immediately excellent "debut" trailer a Marvel movie has ever had - dramatic, big, good sense of story and a sense that they fully "get" that this thing has to live-up to "Avengers," not just trump the first two. Get watching, kids:I'll probably write more in depth about this later, but for now the main things jumping out at me are that The Mandarin DOES seem to be wearing the Ten Rings of Power and that I'll be curious to see what mainstream audiences make...
Monday, 22 October 2012
I get asked to do the "what do you think about _______?" regarding my personal politics from time to time, more so now because it's an election year, but I also get a lot of feedback that I keep such things off the mainpage. I don't really see why - everything has a political dimension, so the idea of having some expectation of an apolitical presentation simply because a site is "about" movies instead of a live feed from congress or whatnot seems silly to me - but let it never be said I'm not accomodating: If you don't want the discussion of anything...
Sunday, 21 October 2012
Marvel has been running a Facebook "like us!" campaign for the last week or so, promising to debut an early look at "Iron Man 3." At this point you kind of HAVE to know it was just going to be one of those "trailer for the trailer" things, but whatever - it worked, and now the 18 second "pre-preview" is here. Highlights include Tony Stark dealing with reporters, Pepper Potts in trouble, the new gold armor in motion and Iron Man facing down what...
Friday, 19 October 2012
Remember "Left Behind?" It's a series of Christian-fundamentlist scifi novels involving The Rapture; a supposedly pre-apocalyptic event (short version: Christians in good-standing are whisked off to Heaven in advance of the rest of us sinners having to suffer through the wars and tyranny launched by The AntiChrist prior to the big Final Battle of Armageddon) that has zero basis in any kind of legitimate Biblical scholarship (it seems to have been invented whole-cloth by fringe preachers around the 1800s) but is fervently...
Thursday, 18 October 2012
Two days ago, Warner Bros. won the most-recent (and most precarious) case brought against them by the heirs of "Superman's" creators seeking 50% control of certain aspects of the character's mythology said to have been created "apart" from what he was when their (crummy) original deal was struck (it's complicated.) Meaning that WB can now proceed to greenlight and start pre-production on any further "Superman"-related movie projects they choose. And they've wasted no time in making it official that they plan to have the "Justice League" movie out...
Dank Aykroyd and Ivan Reitman have been trying to get "Ghostbusters 3" happening for so long that Generation X has already gone through the anticipation, denial, acceptance and "over it" stages of the "let's sequelize everything we always wanted another of in the 80s!" mini-mania during the entirety of its "planning."But, whatever - it looks like it's finally really happening. For years, the hold-up was trying to convince the original cast (well, okay, trying to convince Bill Murray) to star again; but now that it doesn't look like that's...
Wednesday, 17 October 2012
UPDATE: Reports are now coming that Raimi is NOT directing the film yet, but is still onboard to produce. This is my sad face.ORIGINAL POST: ...okay, this just feels weird to type. I'm used to thinking of remakes as generational things - "new" talents doing an update of movies made by the father's and grandfather's era of filmmakers. Raimi is a few years younger than Tobe Hooper, but they were both coming up and into their own as "name" horror directors in roughly the same decade. I mean... it's like if James Cameron said he was going...
Everything about "Jack Reacher" looks good... except Tom Cruise. He's not a bad actor, he's not an actor I dislike... it's just that his whole "aura" - scrappy, intense, perpetually-youthful - seems like bad casting for a character they're essentially selling as John Rambo: Consulting Detective.Still, this new trailer makes the film a must-see by revealing Werner FUCKING Herzog as the villain(?) For a guy who's spent so long being a movie maverick, it's fun to see how enthusiastically Herzog has embraced present-day Hollywood's...
Take ten minutes and watch this video clip of "Prehistoric Beast," a 1984 homemade stop-motion short film from FX dynamo Phil Tippet and one of my favorite dinosaur-related things EVER. As you watch it, keep in mind that '84 means this was done the old-fashioned way - frame-by-frame with NO computer effects... even those "hand-held camera" shots are artificially executed bit by bit.I first encountered the short as incorporated into "Dinosaur!", a 1985 "everything you wanted to know" documentary hosted by Christopher Reeve that...
Tuesday, 16 October 2012
Busy night. May or may not post a longer debate-related thing, but in brief: Obama won but Romney still standing, Fox News will now spend a years trying to ruin Candy Crowley, Obama saying that low-skill jobs that've gone to China "aren't coming back" and that high-end, high-skill tech and science careers are the future of the American economy is the first time a politician with something to lose has told the HARD TRUTH about...
This is one of those "remake of a classic" first-trailers whose first, last and only mission is to A.) "surprise" audiences with the reveal of what it is (even people who haven't seen "Carrie" have "seen 'Carrie" and B.) let lovers of the original know that this one is bigger but that they know their iconography (re: "don't worry, we're still going to dump blood on her and start a fire.")Fair or not, I think they're kind of wasting their time if they think classic-horror fans are coming at this one with anything other than knives...
Monday, 15 October 2012
Sandwiched amid the expected announcements today that "Iron Man 3" and "Thor: The Dark World" will be in 3D comes official confirmation that Marvel/Disney are making it official for Edgar Wright's long-gestating "Ant-Man" movie... and that it's now dated to come out in November of 2015 - after "Avengers 2;" meaning that they're already setting "Phase III" in motion before "Phase II" even officially gets underway.What's fun about this is that by announcing "You'll see Ant-Man in 2015," they're making it feel VERY likely that we'll in fact...
Just about the only thing I can sort-of agree with the current Republican party about is that they consider the Space Program to be one of those government programs that, like the military, "doesn't count" for some reason in their no-government-programs rhetoric. I don't buy for a second that they're actually "committed" to it, of course - there's no way the party of Creationism and Climate Change-Denial is really devoted to the idea of expanding human knowledge of space, and with private space-travel companies coming into their...
Sunday, 14 October 2012
NOTE: No, the headline is not spoiling a surprise... which in and of itself is surprising, since this sounds like something that could've made for a killer reveal.For me, what continues to be the most interesting part of the Marvel Films experiment is that they keep making decisions that feel like conscious, deliberate challenges to every "that won't work in a movie" part of their material. Prior to this, every superhero movie was approached from a perspective of "what has to be done to this comic for it to work as a movie?"... but they've been...
Friday, 12 October 2012
The image on the right (no pun intended) comes courtesy Getty Images via Buzzfeed and is alleged to have been snapped at a Romney/Ryan event earlier today. Speaking for the campaign, a spokesperson was quoted as calling it "reprehensible;" which I imagine would be the sincere opinion of both men running. Whatever else I can say about either Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan, I don't think it's likely that outright racism is a motivation...
Since apparently visitors can't not get on about this in other posts...1.) Biden won, plain and simple. Not a "knockout" or a "curbstomp," but he wins on points and wins on "TV-friendliness." Down side is that the laughing/grinning/"can-you-BELIEVE-this-kid??" schtick that the base is currently loving and pop-culture will almost-certainly process as "lovable curmudgeon" will be presented as "unbecoming" by FoxNews, Talk Radio, etc which'll keep their base suitably angry and engaged. Also, he didn't make enough of a fool of Ryan to cripple him from...
Wednesday, 10 October 2012
Here's the new trailer for Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained," which was infamous as a screenplay and now notorious as a supposedly out-of-control production (not necessarily "troubled," though, since the studio has thus far been enthusiastic about the results coming back) has a new trailer that shows off more of it's scope and incendiary approach to its own "slavery revenge" narrative. Getting more screentime in this new look is Samuel L. Jackson as co-villain "Stephen," a character who's "unique" viewpoint on his own enslavement...
I get the sense that there's going to be a lot of unease and divisiveness with "Hitchcock" (the breezy-looking "making of 'Psycho'" Alfred Hitchcock movie that now has an official trailer) and "The Girl" (the dark "Hitch stalked, tormented and probably sabotaged the career of Tippi Hedren" Alfred Hitchcock movie from HBO) coming out around the same time. Hitchcock is God to three and counting generations of film buffs, and "cinephile culture" has always had a hard time reconciling "Hitch the lovable oddball genius" with "Hitch the petty, domineering...
Tuesday, 9 October 2012
Sunday, 7 October 2012
Bruce Willis generally puts out at least one big, servicable action movie wherein he plays Bruce Willis: Unflappable Actio Hero of a Certain Age amid whatever pyrotechnic scenario the filmmakers have opted to place him in. Sometimes, they decide to call his character John McClane so it can qualify as a "Die Hard" sequel (both "Hostage" and "Tears of The Sun" were at one point supposed to be "Die Hards," for example.) Here's another one:Eh, look okay. The thing you can't deny is that Willis is just GOOD at this schtick: Stunt/weary "seriously?"...
Probably, yeah. Though not necessarily because of THIS or any other rumors about to be referenced - it's just kind of an easy call. If and when Carol Danvers eventually turns up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it'll be the least surprising "surprise" for fans since Captain America turning up in the present day.Marvel, on the comics side, has had a decade-long obsession (coupled with very successful execution) with turning Danvers, aka "Ms. Marvel," into one of it's A-list heroes ever since someone figured out that she could easily be...
Friday, 5 October 2012
Below, the trailer for Rob Zombie's long-promised 70s-style Satanic Cult movie "Lord of Salem," which for some reason did NOT get picked up for release by this Halloween (it's due next year.)I'll defend Zombie to the end. He's a remarkably gifted filmmaker, if not necessarily as gifted a storyteller yet, and even his "bad" movies are more interesting than many people's good on...
Wednesday, 3 October 2012
Very briefly, because I have work to do:1.) Neither guy got knocked out, which means Romney did "better" by default because as the challenger he's the one who only needed to prove stamina. This will move the needle - not enough to "save" Romney outright, but it moves it.2.) Jim Leher should have been given the power to cut mics - dude got run over all the time by both guys, and it's bullshit. The debate moderator is the guy who holds the participants accountable to the audience which in this case is the voters. He should've put them in their respective...
Here's a surprisingly pleasant example of a major corporation coming out explicitly for equality, in this case travel-booking outfit Expedia.Good on them.And now, before you start having too nice of a day, here's Breitbart stooge and repellant excuse for a human being (check the DATE he published that headline) Ben Shapiro taking issue with the ad for featuring attractive gay women, which he seems to consider suspe...
Hoo-boy.Armie Hammer stopped by the Jay Leno show tonight and brought with him the trailer for Disney's new "Lone Ranger" movie, in which he plays the title role opposite "real star" Johnny Depp as Tonto. You might recall that the script and budget for this were considered such a disaster-in-waiting that the whole thing was scrapped for awhile, but they decided it was too big to fail and threw more money at it.E! has the online version of it (there's no embedable version yet) in case you want to see what America's 50-and-over sports bar patrons...
Tuesday, 2 October 2012
Monday, 1 October 2012
Seth MacFarlane, creator of "Family Guy" and newly-minted theatrical heavy hitter in the wake of "Ted," has been chosen to host this year's Oscars. Everybody take a moment to get some snotty digs at "Manatee Jokes" out of your system......done? Good, because the more I think on it the more he sounds like a great choice.The problem The Academy has had for years in terms of hosting (and, to be frank, audiences) is the unending generational gap. Old comics playing it safe is one thing (a "prestige" show generally won't have cutting-edge material)...
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