Is this brilliant? Yes, this is brillia...
Friday, 31 May 2013
Thursday, 30 May 2013
The key to the original "Machete" - for me, at least - was that it was the first instance in a long while of a Robert Rodriguez movie actually being about something beyond the surface-level faux-grindhouse jokefest. I have no idea what Rodriguez politics are and thus no idea how strongly he "really" feels about the U.S. immigration debate; but whether authentic or just part of the winking 70s-exploitation pastiche it was the ferocity with which "Machete" engaged the subject that made it stand out: The wildly-applauding, predominantly Latino...
Wednesday, 29 May 2013
Here's all you need to know about Disney's "Cars" spinoff, "Planes." Pixar - which had no problem signing it's name to both of the wholly-disposable "Cars" movies, is letting Disney take sole credit for this one.Dane Cook stars as a cropduster who dreams of competing in an airplane race against an elite gathering of broad ethnic stereotyp...
Tuesday, 28 May 2013
Huh. Well, this will be interesting.The Hub, which is still looking for an original kids' series that people will watch other than "Friendship is Magic," thinks it's found a winner in an Australian animated series called "Shezow." I hadn't heard of it until the (week old) trailer for it's U.S. premier started making the rounds, but the premise is interesting: The (magical) mantle of a female superhero with decidedly female-gendered accoutremants (sparkly miniskirted costume, Barbie-esque pink car, etc) is accidentally passed to a teenaged...
Sunday, 26 May 2013
And we now have our customary first big Awards Season Frontrunner (for awhile anyway) as the voting concludes at the Cannes Film Festival. The jury - this year headed by none other than Steven Spielberg - awarded the Palm d'Or (top prize) to "Blue Is The Warmest Color" (aka "La vie de Adele Parts 1 &2"); a French romantic drama that was already one of the most buzzed-about and controversial entries in this year's festival.Based on a French graphic novel (apparently unavailable in the U.S.), the story follows a young woman's (Adele Exarchopoulos)...
Saturday, 25 May 2013
Below, the trailer for this year's movie the "endurance cinephile" in your life (the guy who prides himself on having "made it through" notoriously heavy/violent/controversial works) will be going on about this year: "The Act of Killing." The good news? It indeed looks/sounds kind of amazing.The premise? In Indonesia, the government that operated the country's notorious Death Squad killings of communists and suspected communists that are said to have numbered at least 1,000,000 is still effectively running the show, and while the vestiges...
Pop Quiz, hotshot.You've got a horror movie to sell. It's a remake of one of the genre's modern-day classics, a film that damn near everyone has either seen or at least is familiar with the plot and iconic moments thereof. One of the small handful of genuine horror (as opposed to "suspense" or "thriller") entries alongside "Exorcist" and "Rosemary's Baby" to be recognized as great, important films even outside their often-disregarded genre. Based on a book by easily the most famous living author of horror or anything else on the planet.What's...
Friday, 24 May 2013
We cannot stop Robin Williams, we can only contain Robin Williams.Below, the extended trailer for CBS's fall sitcom offering "The Crazy Ones," which appears to compress the entirety of it's pilot episode into five minutes. The premise? Somebody though "Y'know, people seem to love 'Mad Men,' but maybe they'd love it more as a wacky-father/serious-daughter workplace comedy with Robin Williams and Sarah Michelle Gella...
Thursday, 23 May 2013
So. A week after Joss Whedon surprisingly confirms that X-Men/Avengers shared-custody kids Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are being planned for "Avengers 2," apparently enabled by a contract loophole that lets them use these specific characters from the X-Men family (the movie rights to which are owned by Fox) so long as nobody says the words "Mutant" or "Magneto" (he's their dad); Fox and director Bryan Singer have now out-of-nowhere revealed that Evan Peters will be playing Quicksilver in the currently-shooting "X-Men: Days of Future Past."This...
Wednesday, 22 May 2013
Below, the trailer for Joseph Gordon Levitt's self-written/directed "Don Jon;" which casts him as a pornography addict who falls for Scarlett Johansson as a woman similarly-addicted... to shitty romantic comedies. Because Mars & Venus and reasons.In all seriousness, though, it looks REALLY good - I am so psyched for the idea of Tony Danza entering an "aging sought-after character actor" career-phase you have NO idea. I'm just going to assume that casting of two of the best looking people in Hollywood as having "addictions" more generally associated...
I finally know what date I'll be seeing "Man of Steel," which is a relief because the anticipation on this one has been killing me: Every new thing seen/heard from it has been alternately thrilling/terrifying: So much that looks like they "got it," so much that sounds like they might not have and nothing to change my concerns that while Zack Snyder is the perfect person to direct a Superman movie... the Nolan Bros. don't belong anywhere near the character.That sense continues with the new trailer, which is more-or-less the "introducing...
Monday, 20 May 2013
Saturday, 18 May 2013
The second half of my "Star Trek Into Darkness" review got into spoiler-territory in order to address what I see as some pretty serious flaws, but there's one in particular that I didn't fully discuss - partially because it would've taken too much time and the show ran long as it was, but mainly because I'm not 100% sure that I didn't "miss" some bit of dialogue that would've made this not the ginormous, baffling plot hole that it seems to be.Obviously, EVERYTHING after the jump is spoiler-territory, including the comments. So read/click through...
Friday, 17 May 2013
Long rumored but now seemingly confirmed by Joss Whedon to IGN, joining the team (or at least in the film to some capacity) will be Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, better known as The Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. He's basically The Flash if he was a Eurotrashy douchebag, she can manipulate probability - i.e. she can make pretty-much anything happen through "magic" handwaved with psuedo-science. They're fraternal twins, originally villains who reformed and joined The Avengers alongside fellow ex-baddie Hawkeye during the team's first major...
Thursday, 16 May 2013
I really, really hope that this marks the start of a much bigger push for this movie. Fairly or not, I feel like so much is riding on "Pacific Rim." An original (read: not a sequel, remake, reboot, adaptation, etc) big-budget genre movie? Guillermo Del Toro finally on the cusp of the blockbuster clout he should've had a decade ago? Giant monsters and robots up onscreen with no "apology" for their own existence or attempt to make them palatable to audiences that might turn their noses up otherwise?If something like this doesn't "succeed,"...
Wednesday, 15 May 2013
Tuesday, 14 May 2013
Monday, 13 May 2013
I'm an on-record eye-roller when it comes to the Orci/Kurtzman team, not because they so often make bad movies and TV shows but because the bad stuff they make is often so close to being awesome. So much of their output plays like a "sanitized" version of someone else's batshit-nuts brilliant idea; and as I continue to say: A crazy, unwieldy, unworkably ridiculous idea unleashed full-force - even and often especially if the result is spectacularly embarassing - is preferable to competently-executed mediocrity: Please me, horrify me, just don't...
Sunday, 12 May 2013
There's been fan-scripts and fans-becoming-writers, but this might be the first time in history that a TV series has opted to create a spin-off series and a theatrical movie... effectively based on it's own fan-art."Equestria Girls" is a spin-off movie (and apparently also a series pilot) from the rebooted surprise crossover-hit "My Little Pony" cartoon; built on the conceit of the main character dimension-jumping into the human world; where she and the other recurring characters appear as human versions of themselves. If we're going to start...
And now, here it is: The first teaser for "Agents of S.H.I.E.LD.," which effectively frames the show as "'The X-Files' But More Funny And With Those Guys From 'The Avengers.'" The mysterious-man sequence is now unblurred, and we can now clearly see that the unnamed superhuman in question is indeed a black man wearing a hoodie. I still say it's probably Luke Cage.Gotta chuckle at how they manage to work in ultra-short "cameos" for The Avengers without having to show (and thus pay) the actors associated with them - Thor's hammer,...
A moment ago I posted the "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." pre-tease, which opens with a motion-blurred action shot of an unidentified person(?) rescuing a woman from a burning building by jumping out the window and landing safely with enough force to crater the pavement on impact.Below the jump, some screencaps of the very brief action-shot for a clearer look and possible guesses as to who this might be:1. Basic window-jump shot, nothing too unusual looking...
A "teaser" for Joss Whedon's Marvel TV franchise "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." is set to air during tonight's season finale of "Once Upon A Time." For now, here's the - um... teaser for the teaser?Egh. Y'know what? There's still enough residual goodwill from "The Avengers" that I can't even be mad about this kind of marketing. Yes, Marvel (and Whedon) are allowed a pass on this - they did the impossible, they earned it.Previously, everybody's top question was: "How is Coulson alive again?" But now, I'm guessing it's either about to be equaled...
Saturday, 11 May 2013
The curse of being a "Venture Bros." fan is that a big part of the show's charm (at this point) is the way it's gradually turned making fun of the self-referential moebius-strip nature of comic books and "cult" genre series (OMG! This suddenly super-prominent character was in the background on that random flashback three seasons ago!) into a functioning continuity that's rewarding in it's own right... which becomes REALLY hard to keep track of since there are such lengthy breaks between seasons.Fortunately, since the break between seasons 4 and...
Friday, 10 May 2013
Thursday, 9 May 2013
I don't generally get professionally jealous of other people in my industry, but seeing James "AVGN" Rolfe getting to work with Troma founder and "Toxic Avenger" creator Lloyd Kaufman recently got me close - damn, that must have been awesome. But then, James has worked his ass off building his brand and more-or-less inventing a big slice of web video business - if anyone deserves to have things finally start paying off big-time, he does.In any case, Kaufman is still doing his thing as a vanguard of authentic, no-bullshit independent moviemaking....
Wednesday, 8 May 2013
Hey, Internet? You want borderline-obsessive, Zapruder-esque coverage of a likely-middling movie based on a bunch of toys from the mid-1980s!? Of course you do. Here's the first BTS video of the Michael Bay produced "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" movie, featuring our first glimpse of Megan Fox as April. Does this meaningless, masturbatory entertainment "journalism" puff-piece tell us anything useful about the movie?(with apologies for the wonky formatting caused by aol's shitty video embed) UPDATE: CBM has some higher-quality set pics: Hair...
The next year or so will find Tom Hanks back in American Hero mode in a big way: He's slated to form an Americana moebius-strip by playing Walt Disney in the making-of-"Mary-Poppins" drama "Saving Mr. Banks" soon enough, but first up he'll be "Captain Philips," the real-life captain of a freighter attacked by Somali pirates a few years ago. Directing duties went to Paul Greengrass, so... "United 93. But On A Boat. And With A Happy Endin...
The (perhaps unwitting) con-job Lee Daniels is running on the old guard movie press is kind of a joy to watch: His penchant for social-consciousness casts him as a helmer of Award Season middlebrow pablum, and the halo-effect of his Oprah connection seems to make many unable to discern that his films are actually sleazy, trashy, batshit-insane exploitation junk of the highest order. Seriously, go back and actually watch "Precious." The only question is whether Daniels himself is a subversive genius in on his own joke or if he thinks...
Tuesday, 7 May 2013
And so, the countdown begins: Orson Scott Card now just under six months to find his way in front of a camera, microphone or keyboard and create a "sugar tits"-level public-relations nightmare for Summit Entertainment. Smart money says he'll find a way...I'll admit, there's a certain incredible finality to finally seeing one of the more influential Young Adult scifi novels of the later 20th Century finally get its movie; but taken on it's own... wow this is kind of a bland, lifeless trailer, isn't it?Apart from fans of the book/series,...
Sunday, 5 May 2013
Holy. Shit.German filmmaker Uwe Boll made himself (in)famous via adaptations of video-games so bad they seemed deliberately provocative, then he took that fame and that provocateur attitude and used to it to transform himself into true dyed-in-the-wool modern exploitation filmmaker - i.e. he makes fast, cheap, nasty movies exploiting incendiary newsworthy subject matter to get the audience's attention (this actually seems to be his "real" passion - his actual debut feature was about a school-shooting.)The kick in the pants, though,...
Saturday, 4 May 2013
Gun industry lobbyist Wayne LaPierre had some things to say about my city at his recent fundraiser. I have some things I'd like to say in response. Yes, this will be political - don't want to read it, don't read it.To Wayne LaPierre and The NRA, First off, I don't hate you. I don't even really hate what you represent, because what you represent is actually a neutral concept. You do not, contrary to the bombastic language with which you pepper you speeches, represent The Second Amendment. Or The Constitution. Or even simply the nebulous concepts...
Thursday, 2 May 2013
Wednesday, 1 May 2013
I'm going to assume that you, dear reader, are among the majority of people who did not bother to watch (or even hear about) "The Impossible" earlier this year; a spectacularly awful disaster-melodrama about how a tsunami briefly interupts a middle-class white family's vacation - killing thousands, but these people got out okay and learned something about themselves so it all works out. Blegh.Nicolas Lopez's "Aftershock," a survival-horror flick set amid the Chilean Earthquake and guest-starring producer Eli Roth, looks like the exploitation-movie...
Snapped from the CinemaCon trailer, this is either Wolverine fighting Silver Samurai or Wolverine fighting some kind of robot presumably in the employ of Silver Samurai. Not sure which, but either way it's finally something cool-looking from this (still pretty dour-looking, overall) movie and almost by default the most visually interesting thing Wolverine has been involved in in the entirety of the "X-Men" movies so far (excepting, obviously,...
Well this looks... different, but not so different that it's not immediately identifiable as yet another "Quirky Indie Crime Movie," though this time fused with the burgeoning "Otherwise-Typical-Teen-Girls-In-Criminal-Scenarios" genre: Alexis Bledel and Saoirse Ronan are the titular hitwomen, James Gandolfini is the "Regular Mob Movie" street-cred, could be f...
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