MOVIEBOB: Megan Fox is April O'Neil

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Friday, 17 May 2013

And Your Next Two AVENGERS Are...

Posted on 13:12 by rajrani
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 overhaul (everyone quit but Captain America, leaving him to train a new team of ex-villains.)

And now things get interesting...

Here's why this is kind of a big deal: Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, in the comcis, are Mutants. Supposedly, "all" of Marvel's Mutants are owned as part of the "X-Men Family" by Fox; so they can't show up in any non-Fox Marvel films. Normally, that shouldn't be a problem: "Mutant" in the Marvel Universe essentially means anyone who is a human born with an extra-human sense or ability, so it would not be tremendously difficult to augment them into some other variation on "born like this" (or just give them new origins) for "Avengers 2."

But these aren't just any two Mutants: Despite being overall more-associated with the Avengers franchise (which is why they can be in this at all, Mutant or not) Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch started out as members of The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants... and they're Magneto's children.

Now, sure - that can be written out just as easily as having them be capital-M Mutants, but it also negates most of what would make them novel as members of an ostensible good-guy team. And they're not exactly popular or novel enough for me to imagine Marvel insisting on their presence - nobody really cares about Quicksilver and there are many more-popular Marvel heroines than Scarlet Witch - so Joss Whedon or someone else on the creative side wanted them specifically for this. That's interesting.

Here's the thing: Fox would probably do anything (short of relinquishing the X-rights themselves) to have "their" X-Men franchise be "officially" connected to "Avengers," even tangentially. Suddenly, any random Mutant movie they crap out becomes much close to must-see because "hey, we might need to have seen this for the next 'Avengers' movie!" So the question isn't whether or not Fox would "go for" some kind of shared-custody of the Mutant characters (they probably would,) nor if Fox and Disney/Marvel have already talked about this (you'd best believe they have - everyone who owns a Marvel franchise has been talking about how to get in on the action, FX scheduling is supposedly the only reason you didn't see "Amazing Spider-Man's" OsCorp building in "Avengers.") The only question is whether Marvel is willing to "work something out" or would rather hold back until Fox has a bad year and needs to sell the X-characters back altogether.

I have a suspicion that there's another shoe or three yet to drop on this, especially since there's a LONG time between now and "Avengers 2." But for now, Fox has two "X-Men" movies set for this year alone, and if they're both hits that gives them a slightly stronger bargaining position assuming any bargaining is actively going on (I suspect there is, but you never know.)
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Escape to The Movies: "Star Trek Into Darkness"

Posted on 10:30 by rajrani
Second time is not the charm.
(Note: later-half of review has clearly-marked spoilers)

"Intermission" has some Blood Dragon for you.


The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Star Trek: Into Darkness
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Thursday, 16 May 2013

Final(?) "PACIFIC RIM" Trailer Hits

Posted on 12:42 by rajrani
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," it validates all the worst chickenshit instincts of the current studio-system. "Joe Popcorn" (or whatever the current euphemism is) probably doesn't deserve this movie... but I hope "he" shows up anyway. There's more riding on this than just this.


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Wednesday, 15 May 2013

"Riddick" Trailer

Posted on 11:33 by rajrani
In case you weren't aware, the reason Vin Diesel keeps agreeing to "Fast" sequels is because it's the only way to force Universal to make more movies featuring his "Riddick" character. The new film, simply titled "Riddick," now has a trailer:

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Tuesday, 14 May 2013

FULL Three Minute "S.H.I.E.L.D." Promo Hits!

Posted on 13:29 by rajrani
An extended version of the trailer for Marvel's "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." series has now hit the web HERE.

This follows the previous 30 second teaser, the 7 second teaser for THAT teaser, and the 2/12 hour teaser released to theaters last year as "The Avengers."


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Big Picture: "Mystery Bonks"

Posted on 11:40 by rajrani
This is sort-of about "Star Trek." It's that kinda week.

Also: NEW GAME OVERTHINKER today!

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Mystery Bonks
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Monday, 13 May 2013

Fox's "SLEEPY HOLLOW" TV series. Holy. Cow.

Posted on 16:28 by rajrani
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 BORE me.

With that in mind, the trailer for O/K's latest TV effort for Fox, "Sleepy Hollow;" in which Icabod Crane and the Headless Horseman are ressurrected in present-day New England to continue their battle anew. With Dan Brown-style historical conspiracy theories. And machine guns. And it looks AWESOMEly terrible.

Looks like these guys are finally heeding the sage advice of every assistant director on every porno ever: If you're gonna suck, at least suck well:



Sooooo many things I love about this - mostly ironically (because really, this looks soooo fucking stupid) but some genuinely:

Icabod Crane is now some kind of super-agent contracted by George Washington to kill the Hessian brute who becomes the Headless Horseman. LOVE IT... because it's so point-missingly dumb, like something out of an old "Spawn" comic.

"He described the man I saw in PERFECT DETAIL!" In that she saw a man without a head on a horse, and Crane apparently used the standard two-word description for that.

Orlando Jones is in it. Orlando Jones rules.

So is John Cho!

The decade-old "too many Starbucks" joke getting dragged out, again. Um... LA writers? Do your research. If they're in New England, 2/3rds of those are Dunkin Donuts.

Jones calling Icabod "Captain America."

"Turn around and put your hands on your... OH GOD!!!"

Treasure maps? Ancient good vs. evil Witch War conspiracy? "The secret is in Washington's Bible?" So dumb. So beautiful.

Icabod's mission: Thwart armageddon - apparently The Headless Horseman is also one of the Four Horseman of The Apocalypse. Because... that's two supernatural things that everyone knows has the word "Horseman" in them. That's the sort of thing you'd put into a parody of bad Alan Moore-wannabe literary-mashup stuff, and here it is as the hook of a real TV show. Perfection.

The Headless Horseman, wearing an ammo-belt over his Hessian war coat, firing a submachine gun at cops gangsta-style.

Icabod assumes his black female cop partner is a freed slave.

"HEADS! WILL! ROLL!" Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I would love this if it were just a "Funny Or Die" parody of someone's insane pitch for a "Once Upon A Time" bandwagon-jumper, but I think I'll love it even more as a somehow-meant-to-be-taken-seriously actual show. Bring it on.
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