MOVIEGENJES

BREAKING: Stacker Pentecost to be only SECOND Most Badass Idris Elba performance of 2013

Dust off both of your "best" jokes about which series has overstayed it's welcome by longer. EW is reporting that The Simpsons and The Griffins will (finally?) meet in a 2014 crossover episode (of "Family Guy") titled "Simpsons Guy." ...eh, y'know what? I'm a sucker for a crossover. It'll be like "Cartoon Wars" - except official, andnot sanctimoniously self-righteous.

Thus far the details are scarce (as expected, it sounds like there'll be concurrent Peter/Homer, Marge/Lois, Bart/Stewie, Lisa/Mega storylines,) but since it's technically a "Family Guy" episode one imagines there'll be a lot of glib commentary about Springfield being perpetually stuck in an early-90s vision of early-60s TV sitcoms, and I'll be dissapointed if there isn't a "whoa, that's not cool..."/uncomfortable-silence bit involving Homer strangling Bart... though even better would be seeing McFarlane (via Brian) trade some oldschool lounge-lizard schtick with similarly unstuck-in-time Krusty. I'll settle for Brian getting hammered at Moe's, though.

Okay, I'm starting to get excited. Not TOO excited, mainly because the director is still Gareth Edwards and I really, really, really, REALLY HATED his previous giant-monster movie.

If I can just throw one tiny, futile sliver of advice/request to the filmmakers (or, rather the marketers) on this one: Just fucking show him already. We already did this "show the tail, show the foot, oooooh what does he look like??" thing on the previous movie, and look how that turned out. Besides, the whole point of doing "Godzilla" is that Godzilla is an ICON. Everyone knows what Godzilla looks like - even people who've never actually watched a Godzilla movie. The "hype" shouldn't be about "what does he look like??", it should be about how good you made him look.

Film is due out just under a year from now, apparently some kind of bigger reveal is due at some point during SDCC.

MOVIEBOB BOOK SIGNING ANNOUNCEMENT

OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT:

I can now confirm that I will be appearing at COMICAZI in Somerville Massachusetts (407 Highland Ave Somerville MA 02144, I believe Davis Square is the closest MBTA stop) to sell and autograph copies of my book "Super Mario Bros. 3 - Brick By Brick" (also still available online in print and ebook formats exclusively through Fangamer.net) from 11am to 2pm ET on Saturday July 27th.

I will also, of course, happily sign any copies that were purchased previously or really anything else you were to bring up (within reason.) The books themselves will cost $8.00 US, supplies are limited.

This will be the first time the book has been available for in-person sales and/or signing since SGC. I'm working on a few other (local) events for similar setups, but this will be the first - plus, Comicazi is a great local business and deserves the attention. Hope to see some of you there!

"The Fifth Estate"

Every Movie Awards Season needs at least one "controversial" current-events film that receives reams of breathless coverage in the political media but that ultimately not even most "engaged" audiences actually bother to go see - regardless of whether or not it's any good.

This year's entry looks to be "The Fifth Estate" (trailer below), with Benedict Cumberbatch as WikiLeaks mouthpiece Julian Assange. Directed by Bill Condon, the film looks to be making a game effort toward balancing an apparent sympathy for WikiLeaks' actions (or at least philosophy) and an acknowledgement that Assange is a pretty sketchy individual. For the record, Assange (currently in and Ecuadorian embassy ducking extradition for sexual-assault charges) has called the film's script "a serious propaganda attack" and "a lie built upon a lie."

"Huh. That's a way more impressive voice-cast than you'd expect for "Call of Duty - Black Ops III: Man, That Harness Thingee In The Elysium Trailer Looks Cool."

In reality, of course, that's the first new poster for "Edge of Tomorrow," which is the crushingly-generic title that replaces the infinitely catchier "All You Need Is Kill" on the eve of it's big SDCC rollout. Based on a Japanese YA novel, the basic premise is either "Groundhog Day" in "Starship Troopers" or "What if you got infinite continues in real life??" Cruise is a future-war soldier (that's presumably him in the suit) who dies in combat but finds himself stuck in a temporal loop - he keeps starting over from the beginning of the fight every time he dies, getting a little more skilled and making a little more progress each time.

Interestingly, Emily Blunt is playing Earth's most-decorated super-soldier; a living-legend that Cruise's character keeps meeting up with and (presumably) trying to measure up to. That's a fun inversion, given Cruise's propensity for playing omnicompetent supermen. We'll presumably find out whether this looks any good when it breaks at Comic-Con.

Big Picture: "The Lone Ranger - What Happened?"

Pretty-much what you'd expect...

The Escapist : The Big Picture : The Lone Ranger: What Happened?

Probably as close as we're going to get...

"Dear Mr. Watterson" - which was just picked up for distribution by Gravitas Ventures - is not, unfortunately, a "Calvin & Hobbes" movie at least in the form many fans have been hoping to see. Instead, it's a documentary about the strip, it's influence on the comics medium (Bill Amend and Berkley Breathed feature prominently) and it's enigmatic creator Bill Watterson. I don't believe they ever got Watterson himself to be interviewed on camera - that would be a pretty big deal, as he's notoriously reclusive and private.

"12 Years A Slave"

As we inch ever closer to Oscar Season, here's the first trailer for "Shame" director Steve McQueen's "Twelve Years A Slave;" which stars Chiwetel Ejiofor as real-life figure Solomon Northup - a born-free black man from New York who, in 1841, was kidnapped and sold into slavery; a condition from which he spent twelve years attempting to free himself. Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Fassbender are two of Northup's four known owners, while Brad Pitt is one of the good guys. Screenplay comes from John Ridley, story was filmed once before as a TV movie by Gordon Parks.

In the interest of keeping things straight, this would be the "black-themed" early-Fall Oscar Bait movie that doesn't look like embarrassing schlock. If nothing else, good to see Ejiofor finally headlining a big movie.

System Failure

George Zimmerman, found not guilty of the murder of Trayvon Martin. Take it away, Bugs...

Hypothetically speaking... exactly how bad do things in Florida have to get before it can be declared a failed state? Because right now, I would not have one single ethical, moral or even political issue with federal troops being deployed to occupy the damn place on the grounds that it's leaders and citizenry have - by electing a government that ultimately includes this incompetent prosecution and corruption-infected police department - demonstrated themselves dangerously incapable of self-government. I'm aware that this is probably "un-Constitutional" (whatever that means anymore) - I just don't think it would wrong at this point. And Texas? You're gettin' there, too.

Y'know... certain entities in the U.S. media (who, incidentally, are celebrating tonight) like to bray on about how "urban" youth - mostly, but not all, "persons of color" - often go about with a reflexive, deeply-ingrained mistrust of the law, legal-authority and police in general. Well, let me ask you a question: When you demonstrate to people, time and time again, that the law will not protect them... that the law will favor, assume-just and ultimately allow the acquittal of those who would wrong them up to and including murder... what the FUCK do you expect they're opinion of the law to be?

I'm aware that some people are worried about "rioting" over this verdict. Sadly, that's a legitimate concern. Know what's sadder? That while they (or I) might have to fear a riot after this or that few and far-apart court cases, there are many more people who have to fear the presence of gun-toting, race-profiling, vigilante dipshits like George Zimmerman (and the legal system that ignores and abets them) every day of their lives.

Time To Revise Your "Most-Anticipated" List

The Samurai/Cowboy remake dance hasn't been done for awhile, mostly because the U.S. stopped making westerns with any real frequency. But now we've got a new entry: "Yurusarezaru mono" is a remake of Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven," set during the waning days of the Samurai era with Ken Watanabe in the Eastwood role. The trailer (embedded below) doesn't have English subtitles yet; but if you remember "Unforgiven" it's pretty easy to pick out who is supposed to be who and what's going on. Either way, looks GOOD.

On paper, Fox's desire to hold onto the "X-Men" license no matter how iffy it's boxoffice prospects get makes a certain amount of sense: Owning the "X" franchise gives them first-dibs on their own personal universe of hundreds of characters. In practicality, though, a huge swath of those characters are terrible. Really, really terrible. I'm not even kidding, there's like maybe 20-25 "good" X-Men people. The rest are kind of a horror-show, conceived in that moment when Marvel could stick pretty much any overdesigned dipshit with an unfortunate haircut on a cover with an "X" in it's title and it'd sell.

Case in point: They're apparently going to go ahead and make a film of "X-Force," at one point the most popular thing in the entire Marvel/Mutants cycle, today often regarded as an unofficial "patient-zero" for everything that went wrong in the 90s (mostly because it's where Rob Liefeld made his big breakthrough.) The original team was the "all-grow'd-up" version of The New Mutants - who in turn were a teenage team of characters who didn't quite rate the marquee lineup - organized into a more militarized version of an X-team by Cable, the poster-child for characters whose history is just convoluted enough to distract from how lame he is.

Cable's origin involves time-travel, so one assumes that (unless Fox just plans to stick whichever marketable mutants they haven't used yet in a movie and call it "X-Force") this will tie into Bryan Singer's "X-Men: Days of Future Past" next year.

Sticks And Stones

I have it on good authority that "I Declare War" is awesome. The premise, at least, is head-slappingly brilliant in that "Why didn't I think of that??" way: Film follows a group of kids "playing war" in the woods, and uses editing and FX to show their sticks and balloons turning into the guns and grenades they imagine them to be. I'll be interested to see how it's received, since even though this is all supposed to be imaginary the sight of moppets swinging around automatic weapons has become incendiary in and of itself.

Escape to The Movies: "PACIFIC RIM"

Remember: This weekend is your chance to support original filmmaking at theaters.

("Intermission" is down right now for unknown reasons, will re-post when it re-appears)

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Pacific Rim

Bank On It

Below, the trailer for "Saving Mr. Banks," the "making of 'Mary Poppins" movie with Tom Hanks as Walt Disney and Emma Thompson as author P.L. Travers. Looks pretty good to me - obviously leaning on a fairly fictionalized version of the story (the real events didn't exactly have a cinematic arc, and neither character would come out particularly likable) but the basic idea of Walt having to realize that this isn't just one more fairytale to monetize vs. Travers possibly coming out of her own shell a bit re: the personal trauma that informed the book (Travers' father was a banker who died young, leaving her and her sisters in the care of their mentally-unwell, suicidal mother.) There doesn't appear to be anyone in the cast playing Madge Burnand, who is believed to have been Travers' partner at the time.

Unless there's a film I'm forgetting, this is the first time Walt Disney as a "real" figure has been the central character of a film, which is sort of incredible given... well, that he's Walt Disney. The Disney company put the money behind the production, but the screenplay wasn't developed in-house, it's a Black List pickup. I assume they'll probably end the film at or around the conclusion of Travers' actual collaborations with the production - Walt slightly cowed by having come up against an underestimated "children's entertainer" as headstrong as himself, Travers headed back to England having experienced some sort of self-purging catharsis - and sidestep the less-than-amicable way they ultimately split: Travers turned up at the L.A. premiere uninvited, accosted Disney at the after-party with demands to get rid of the the animated sequence (she hated cartoons) and was told matter-of-factly that "the ship has sailed;" hence why there were never any sequels even though Walt tried for them.

"Seventh Son" Trailer

"Seventh Son" is apparently an adaptation of yet another YA Fantasy franchise I've never once heard anyone talk about, and looks more-or-less like the rest of them save that halfway through I started getting a strong sense that the "Castlevania" logo was about to pop up.

But whatever. It's got Jeff Bridges as some kind of wizard/paladin/whatever and Julianne Moore as a... witch, I assume? That's enough.

Via Bleeding Cool

Tom Hanks is Walt Disney. Emma Thompson is "Mary Poppins" creator P.L. Travers. The movie is "Saving Mr. Banks," a dramatization of the contemptuous relationship that developed between the two (both notorious egomaniacs known publicly for children's entertainment) during the lengthy process of Disney trying to secure film rights (and then an actual film) to her books.

Stop. Hammer Time.

Here's the first (red-band) trailer for Spike Lee's version of "Oldboy," which does a decent enough job of laying out the basic story while also making sure to pre-warn fans of the Chan Wook-Park film that no, they probably aren't going to bother with that last plot-twist (which wasn't in the Manga both films are based on) ...but that they are apparently going to try and do the hammer fight.

PfffffFFFFFF... BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Ahem...

...HEH. HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE HA HA!

Laughter is not technically a comment.

Eerie

On the one hand, this Chinese Johnnie Walker commercial featuring a CGI Bruce Lee (from "Torque" amd "Detention" director Joseph Khan) is creepy in the way that dead people "endorsing" products generally are. On the other hand, if there's any celebrity living or dead for whom it can be argued that their cultural presence as a "mythic figure" has so transcended their actual existence that something like this isn't really that much more "offensive" than Santa Claus selling Coca-Cola... I guess Bruce Lee would be it.

Either way, it can't be denied that the effects used to pull this stuff of, while still not "there," are really close to getting "there." I wonder who the first celebrity will be to "star" in an (otherwise live-action) film as their own years-younger self? It's not that far outside the realm of possibility for a studio to say "Y'know who would've been good in this? Bruce Willis, but like ten years ago Bruce Willis..." and for Bruce Willis (or whoever) to just do the mocap and voice work for that.

Big Picture: "The New Originals"

Let's support new things.

Incidentally, as of recording this I had not yet seen "Pacific Rim." I now have. Review will be up as-scheduled on Friday, but don't wait for my review: It's awesome, go see it.

The Escapist : The Big Picture : The New Originals

Girl On A Bike

via Jezebel

Here's the interesting-looking trailer for "Wadjda," notable for being the first full-length movie ever directed by a woman in Saudi Arabia, currently booked for a U.S. opening later this year. Story concerns a 10 year-old girl, Wadjda, doing anything she can think of (including entering her school's Koran-memorization competition) to cobble together enough money to buy a bicycle. For cultural context: The bike is kind of a big deal because it has only been legal for women to ride bikes in The Kingdom since April - as in, this past April.

Chucky Lives!

Yeah, it'll be fun to see "classic" lets-pretend-this-is-actually-scary Chucky again; but I think I'll end up in the minority that REALLY misses Glen and Tiffany...

The Official Canonizing of Steve Jobs Begins

Y'know, guys? I understand we're all very, very fond of our tablets and phones and such and there's an innate tragic irony to a man of vision dying young... but do we really need to be in a rush to enshrine the legacy of Steve Jobs? I mean, it's not like he was President. Or some kind of great humanitarian (or great villain, for that matter). He didn't CURE something, and "invent" is kind of the wrong word for his (still exceptionally substantial) contribution to the tech field. Given, couldn't we have waited for the distance necessary to get a full picture of the man's life before we churned out the glamorous movie-star biopic version ready for the pedestal?

It's not so much that "Jobs" (with Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs and Josh Gad as Steve Wozniak) looks "bad," but that it looks so depressingly expected - the Legend of Jobs (offbeat hippie visionary revolutionizes home computing, exiled for being too awesome for square colleagues, returns like Gandalf The White and CHANGES THE WORLD, MAN!!!) meticulously maintained by the iCult solidified into a "Social Network" wannabe. This is actually one of TWO Jobs bios we'll be getting, incidentally.

"The Engine is Sacred!"

Were you feeling, perhaps, that the "Earth = Third World, Space-Station = America" border-control/immigration/class-uprising allegory in "Elysium" didn't look quite on the nose enough? Well, here are two trailers for Bong Joon-ho's (of "The Host" and "Mother") upcoming "Snowpiercer," in which an ice age has so blighted the planet that the remainders of human society now exist entirely on a gigantic train that travels constantly on a globe-circling track - the richer you are, the closer you live to the engine and get to run the show, while the progressively-poorer live further and further back into the tail. Chris Evans is guy who leads a rebel-uprising among the poor to storm the engines.

The Weinsteins have U.S. distribution on this one, so you'll probably see it sometime between tomorrow and never.

Escape to The Movies: "The Lone Ranger"

Worse than you've heard.

Intermission looks ahead to Fall.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : The Lone Ranger

Sharks. Tornado. "Sharknado."

I don't necessarily believe that all things in the world have a purpose - a reason that they come into existence. But, if I did, I would probably conclude that Syfy's purpose has now been served.

One More "Pacific Rim" Trailer

Depressingly (both in content and because I haaaaaaate "tracking numbers" bullshit being part of the film discussion, but such is life) the "story" of "Pacific Rim's" impending release has turned toward suspense because it's tracking numbers (of likely domestic boxoffice) aren't anywhere near what the people who paid $200 Million+ to make it wanted to see (it's currently projected to open behind "Grown-Ups 2.") But I'm still pulling for it and "Elysium" as the champions of original studio genre-movies this year, and this epic new (final?) trailer is a good reminder WHY:

I can't say that I'm shocked by the tracking though - it feels like the massive ad push that Warner Bros. threw behind making sure "Man of Steel" didn't disappoint (which, incidentally, thanks to the studio's own sky-high projects it still somewhat has) sucked all the oxygen out of their schedule. The press for this thing should've been choking the airwaves (especially on the kiddie networks) and overflowing the toy-aisles to the point that every parent of a school-aged child should be sick to death of hearing about it by now; but it still feels like they're only really pitching to an audience that was already sold back when they greenlit it based simply on the name "Guillermo Del Toro." I'm glad Warner Bros. likes seeing guys like me go nuts for their SDCC rollouts, but guys like me were going to see this anyway - your job is to making my mom want to see your robot movie.

The film is still unlikely to "bomb" given the fact that basically none of this Summer's tentpoles other than "Iron Man 3" have had strong legs for the long-haul; "The Lone Ranger" is almost-certainly DOA, "Man of Steel" will be on its way out of the top-ten by then. And it's all-but garaunteed to do extended, long-term, gangbusters business in the now-vital Chinese/Asia market. But "optics" still count, and the spectacle of one of Summer 2013's few non-sequel/reboot/franchise blockbusters opening second (or worse) to Adam Sandler's yearly "my comedian friends have bills to pay" make-work project is a persuasive-looking argument for turning down good original scripts in favor of "what the hell can we make out of 'Knight Rider'??"

In the background of all of this, by the way, are the substories that A.) Warners and "Rim" co-producers Legendary Films are in the midst of a nasty break-up and B.) WB is supposedly devoting the vast majority of it's attention to turning the post-"MoS" DCU movies into another decade-spanning corporate safety-net a'la "Harry Potter." Such is the way of things.

Big Picture: "With Great Power"

...you know the rest.

BTW, did you buy my book? Because you can do that now :)

The Escapist : The Big Picture : With Great Power

BUY MY BOOK

You can now buy you're very own copy (in print or ebook) of "SUPER MARIO BROS 3: BRICK BY BRICK" from Fangamer. So, please, won't you kindly think about doing so?