#but they are in no way the same as Hollywood rebooting 10 different franchises from the 80s

[lookwhatilost]

I think a very revealing line in The Force Awakens is Han Solo’s first line, when he enters the Millennium Falcon: “Chewy, we’re home.”

That’s the thing with these types of movies, what I’ll call “legacy franchises” – the new Halloween movies are guilty of this, same with Ghostbusters Afterlife – the original source material and the cultural impact and the fandom around them have proxies in the universe of the movie. Within the new Star Wars universe, Han Solo is a legend, and the Millennium Falcon is a legend, and Luke Skywalker is a legend, and all these characters have heard of them and are fans of them and they’re so important in their legacy. It’s just become Star Wars about Star Wars. Ghostbusters about Ghostbusters. Who the fuck wants that? We’re watching a movie about how much we liked the previous movie. What the fuck is that? I know I liked the previous movie! I could just watch the previous movie! It’s really irritating and it’s really sad because I’m not strictly anti-nostalgia. It’s nice to go back and revisit the things you love, and the distance between you now and you then, it’s all good. But this is wallowing and refusing to do anything else. And it’s this reverence for these key elements of the past, that were so in awe of them that we don’t want to do anything different or better. We can imagine tweaking or correcting them, or putting more lesbians in them, but we can’t imagine surpassing them. We can’t imagine a better Star Wars and we definitely can’t imagine doing something that’s not Star Wars that’s better than Star Wars. We’re so in awe that we can’t get out from under its shadow and do our own thing culturally.

In a reboot, you’re trying to appease the people who want a sequel and trying to appease the people who think they want something different, and trying to do both at the same time. Or, appearing to do both at the same time, but just doing the former. The Thing reboot was released as Thing in 2011, which functionally worked as a remake but was also canonical to the first movie. I guess they call those “soft reboots”. It’s not even driven by markets per se, because with enough money and cultural influence you can decide what the market it. People will watch what you give them if it’s adequately entertaining. I don’t want to say that this is what people want, it’s a matter of what people will accept. These are very different things. They can’t consume anything better. Maybe they would, but they’re not really being given an informed choice. Studios are so afraid of it that they won’t do promotion. There’s a very conservative and risk averse mindset among the capitalist class making decisions, at least in this instance.

2015 and 2016 were very pivotal years in the popular culture landscape, especially the one that I’ve been posting about for the past… 2 and a half hours? Oh god. There were two other reboots of IP franchises at around the same time – Mad Max: Fury Road came out earlier in 2015 and Shin Godzilla in 2016. I think those are both great movies. But the interesting difference between them, and I’m kind of curious how this happened in that era of Hollywood, is that Fury Road was a passion project driven by George Miller. An actual movie by a guy who wanted to make movies, who made the original movies. He was looking not to cash in on what he’d done before, but thematically add to the level of spectacle and scope and outdo what he’d done in the 70s and 80s… Like an actual artist! And he did! It’s a perfect movie! And Shin Godzilla, it’s not the same guy, but that’s the same impulse driving it to a large extent. You watch the first episode of Evangelion, and it’s obvious that Anno is a huge Godzilla fan. He wants to do what the first Godzilla was to the post-WWII atomic bombings, which is an important thing to keep in mind with the original Godzilla. It’s an allegory for an atomic bomb in an abstract way, but it came out less than 10 years after those bombings. All the people in the theater watching the first Godzilla, watching those buildings falling, lived not just through the atomic bombings, but the harrowing convection and napalm bombings that leveled the whole cities before they dropped the a-bombs. Shin Godzilla is that, but for the post-Fukushima moment. It’s not in a cynical way, the going through the checklist of the discourse way, but a genuine response to the period way. Modernizing something in the sense of a difference product line for new sensibilities, versus reinterpreting a text artistically for a new context. The new Star Wars is the former. Fury Road and Shin Godzilla aren’t devoid of commercial influence, but they’re much more so the second direction. Truly great older blockbusters have some counterbalancing the commercial side with sincere artistic influence. Take this against things that are so lopsidedly commercial that whatever creative impulse and craftsmanship is there is drowned out, or filtered, or banded, or never present in the first place.

[everythingnumbs]

“Books that involve retellings of things from mythology are destroying the literary world in the same way remaking the same movie every 20 years is destroying film” was not the cold take I was expecting to hear today but here we are!

#like fam? #you don’t have to like books that interpret myth into story #but they are in no way the same as Hollywood rebooting 10 different franchises from the 80s #booklr

[i-do-unimportant-things]

*clap clap* Movie review

So yeah, Charlie’s Angels, the 2019 reboot of the TV show. A  feminist movie but really just a clichè action movie with a mediocre plotline, relying on it’s ‘woke points’ to be watchable.

First, let’s talk about the movie itself and why it did so badly.

The 2019 Charlie’s angels is an action comedy movie about three female super spies trying to retrieve a weapon of mass destruction from the wrong hands directed by Elizabeth banks, the guardian calls this a ‘weaponised feminist frenzy’. This movie hit the theatres at the start of the year and went on to fail so badly, the financial loss can only be explained by claiming there’s a wage gap. Charlie’s angels is originally a TV show from the mid 70s, but nowadays, no one would consider the show ‘feminist’. The entire plot of the TV show existed around the three main female characters being hot, and near naked. Nevertheless this sleazy show was successful and had a few movies coming out in the years 2000 and 2003. And on November 15 2019, the latest Charlie’s angels came out from Sony studios. Sony, the same company that has brought you: Ghostbusters 2016 and the Emoji movie. Now don’t get me wrong lots of movie companies use nostalgia to try and sell tickets, but no one does it quite as poorly as Sony. The movie tries too hard to be some sort of woke feminist statement, but it ends up just being really forced. One of the main actresses, Kristen Stewart has commented that this movie is ‘taking down the patriarchy’ Ah yes, this feminist reboot of a non-feminist show, is taking on the patriarchy head on! C’mon, no one will believe that this mediocre action film is making is making any kind of significant social impact. It would have made a much bigger impact if the movie was not only made by women, but also, enjoyable to watch. The movie was, unsurprisingly, a massive flop shattering Elizabeth Banks dream of turning it into a franchise. It had a budget of $50 million and ended up making $8 million in it’s opening weekend. No one cared to see it, and for those who did, they hated it. Like, seriously despised it, 4/10 on IMDB? Even shark tale is rated better than that. But Elizabeth Banks wasn’t ready to admit that maybe, just maybe, her movie wasn’t that good. No, instead she was bracing herself for a box-office flop, by blaming men.  Prior to the movie’s disastrous opening weekend, she had said that if the movie didn’t do well, it would reinforce a stereotype in Hollywood that men don’t go to see women do action movies. Here’s a little thinker for ya, if people don’t go and see your movie, it may not be because all men are sexist pigs, but people would rather watch a good movie. Regardless of whether or not there’s a female character in it. Not to mention other medias with female leads have gone on to be extremely successful.  Alien? Kill Bill? Tomb Raider? Both Frozen’s? Metroid series? Mulan? Wonder women? Bank’s counters this by saying that the female comic superhero movies are only successful because they are tied into a larger, male genre of movies. Wait so, the successful movies starring women are successful because men are sexist, but your movie isn’t successful because men are sexist? What are you babbling about? Look, I understand it sucks to see a movie you directed, produced and acted in fail, but this weak finger pointing is not going to help.

Now let’s analyse the movie and see why people hated it so much.

Above all, Charlie’s angels is a comedy spy action movie that doesn’t work as a comedy, spy or an action movie. The plot is basically this high-stakes mission about retrieving weapons of mass destruction. But the problem is that the movie never bothers to actually visually establish as dangerous or as anything really. All we see is one of those devices killing one guy right beside it and then being automatically self-destructed. Then there’s the “action”. It’s mostly just noise without any meaningful character moments or choices or obstacles or any real sense of danger. Most of the time the action sequences don’t even serve any purpose plot-wise. On top of it the physics of it are so illogical they just make no sense. Like just watch the car falling out scene. But all that aside what I wanna focus on is the aspect of Charlie’s angels that is probably the main cause of it’s downfall more that anything else; it’s relentless obsession with gender. There’s a difference between a good female-led movie and a movie so blindly obsessed with the feminist agenda that it gets to the point of being destructive to itself. A lot of times with a certain agenda of gender or social class or whatever they tend to feature a core theme that empowers the group or demographic that it’s about. And with Charlie’s angels the care theme is obviously female empowerment which is made very clear from even the first line in the movie “I think women can do anything”. Basically the core theme of Charlie’s angels is that women, by nature, can do anything. In itself, it’s a great message for younger female audiences. The problem is that the movie quickly grows so obsessed with this theme that instead of it being positively empowering, it actually becomes negatively degrading. Because when Charlie’s angels claims that women by nature can do anything, it doesn’t mean that women can do a certain specific set of things they set their minds to, it means that women, by nature, can do literally everything. And before you say that I’m saying it’s a problem because I hate women, hold on. There’s actually a major character issue that comes with this obsession; it makes every female character and main hero shallow and superficial and takes away their individual uniqueness that’s supposed to make them who they are. To show what I mean let’s look at our three main angels; one of them is this tall angel who initially is established as the physical brawler of the team, she’s powerful and likes to solve obstacles by running straight at it and punching them until their no longer obstacles. And that’s great that’s something that gives her character individuality and can delve much deeper into the movie. Thats who she is but then, she makes this smart science trap using chemicals, then all of a sudden this physical brawler turns out also to be a super-smart chemist, and to be clear; she doesn’t become that, she doesn’t learn to be that she already is that because again, women by nature, can do and be anything. So what exactly is the issue with this?  Well at first she is this one specific thing, but then turns out to be an entirely other thing and suddenly, we don’t really know who she is anymore. To build on this example look at the Kristen Stewart’s angel, the way the movie tries to establish her is that she’s this confident improvisor of the team who uses her wits to gain an advantage over others. But the movie also presents her as just as competent of a physical brawler aa the tall angel, which not only makes her witty hustler personality kind of pointless, it also destroys her individuality it’s hard to know who Kristen Stewart is as a person when she can do and be the exact same as the person right next to her, and if we don’t know who she is it’s hard to get into or develop her as a character when we’re not even sure what it is we’re getting into or developing. The only character difference seems to be that Kristen Stewart says what ever haha ‘funny’ she has on her mind. Then we have princess Jasmin’s angel who is this super smart technology nerd thrust into this world she doesn’t belong in. And she could be a pretty Interesting character, if not for the fact that the movie has already presented the tall angel as super-smart as well, and the fact that Jasmin seems to be able to handle herself in a fight too. So, what makes her different? Who is she compared to the others? Who is she as an individual person? And pretty much with every female character the movie is so unhealthy obsessed with this agenda of female empowerment that it just ends up being a weakness. The characters don’t struggle, they don’t have any flaws or depth they don’t have anything that would make them individual people that the audience can care about and watch grow because in a world where everyone is special, no one is. When women by nature can do or be everything, the one thing they can’t do is be unique.

In addition to empowering the group their about, the other thing these movies with social agendas often do is villainise the demographic opposite them and show how they need to struggle to overcome obstacles set by this opposite demographic. And since Charlie’s angels is about women, obviously here the point is to showcase men and the evil they’re capable of. Which again, is made very clear, even from the very beginning. Basically, all male characters in Charlie’s angels are in some way douchebags who treat women in a derogatory sense. There’s a total of three good guy men in this movie. One of them dies, another one is cleansed of his whatever sins by a women beauty, and the last is like the perfect man from a dystopian world where women have enslaved men. So the message is that men can be a bit of an annoying obstacle to women. I personally don’t like this message, but it has potential to explore some really deep themes with it. But the problem again, is that this movie is so blindly obsessed with it’s agenda of having men be evil that it inadvertently destroys the very message it’s trying to explore. Firstly, just like the female side, all the males are diluted down to unrealistic caricatures nobody can take seriously. The security guard for example, his character is supposed to portray men abusing power against women, and it could have been a very powerful message, but the reason that moment doesn’t work whatsoever is because we’ve never even seen the security guard before, and so we have no perception of why he would do this. He’s not being evil because he’s jealous of Jasmin’s career, he’s not being evil because he’s hurt inside or anything, the movie is saying he’s being evil just because he’s a man. All men in this movie are being evil just because their men and that’s all there is to it.The movie doesn’t give us any reasons or explanations, no explored internal fears or flaws or motive or anything under the surface and that’s not how real life people function, that’s not how to get anything done with your message other than it being scoffed off as shallow and dumb. Secondly, this men are evil obsession creates a big narrative problem. In the sense that the plot of the movie quickly becomes very one-dimensional and easy to predict. For example, near the midpoint of the movie there’s a twist that Elizabeth Banks, who is the leader of the angels, might be evil, she might have some evil plan that involves  tracking Patrick Stewart’s good guy character. But then you remember that this movie has just spent it’s entire runtime  proposing that all men are evil just because their men which would then mean that OH WOW WHAT A SURPRISE THE MAN IN A FEMINIST MOVIE IS EVIL. The problem is that it’s really not that much of a surprise to anyone because from the start the film has done everything in it’s power to condition the audience to believe that women are all good and that men are all evil. Having a message criticising men or a whole demographic can be great and powerful. But you can’t let yourself be so blindly obsessed with it that you don’t even bother delving deeper into it.You can’t have women be good just because women are good and men be bad just because men are bad. That’s not realistic, that’s not how the world works, that’s not a message that will get anyone to listen and above all, it’s not good writing.

Another danger that can very easily come true in movies with social agendas is that the message they’re pushing becomes very one-sided. To the point of alienating a certain section of the audience. And with Charlie’s angels, wether the filmmakers intended it or not, the fact is that the movie altogether as a whole is very anti-male. I’ve already commented about all male characters being portrayed as shallow evildoers, but there’s also an underlying theme that men as people are objectively sinful creatures who deserve bad things to happen to them. It docent matter who they are or what they have or haven’t done, if something bad happens to them, it’s okay because they deserve it. For example, there’s a long-running ‘joke’ where the angels continuously injure a bunch of guys and then make quips about wether or not they’re gonna wake up. But there’s nothing inherently wrong with this, when your making a movie,  you are allowed to portray any group of people or entities in whatever positive or negative way you want. So if you want to make a blatantly obvious movie where a specific gender as a whole is portrayed as the worst possible thing in the universe, that’s fine. But you also need to understand is that there’s also gonna be financial consequences from that specific audience. See, before Charlie’s angels hit theatres, it was clear it was gonna be a flop. And knowing this, director Elizabeth Banks had said what I had put above: “if the movie didn’t do well, it would reinforce a stereotype in Hollywood that men don’t go to see women do action movies” and wether or not the statement has truth(which it doesn’t) is irrelevant. The importance of the statement is the implications that Elizabeth Banks doesn’t understand the concept of biting the hand that feeds. Now I don’t really like the anti-male stuff in Charlie’s angels, but as I’ve said, you’re allowed to do whatever you want in your show. So I understand why male audiences didn’t go out of their way to pay money to see their own gender be continuously criticised and called evil. For example if you make a whole movie ridiculing females and calling them the scum of the earth in a very on-the-nose way, you can’t just expect females to swarm in and support it. Thats not how it works. Whatever message your movie has, you have to be smart about how you deliver it. Don’t just say ‘Women good, men bad’ find a way to imply what it is you wanna say through metaphors. As a filmmaker, you would want everyone to enjoy the film, regardless of gender or race or whatever. I’m not criticising Charlie’s angels because I hate female-led movies. I’m being critical of Charlie’s angels because superficial agenda movies like Charlie’s angels are the reason why we still have so relatively few female led movies. And I’d like to think that by now we’re past one-dimensional messages like this.

[temmaha1996]

The Grudge (2020)

The Grudge (2020) is a 2020 horror film directed by Nicolas Pesce. It stars Andrea Riseborough, Jon Cho and Betty Giplin. The film is about a curse that is given to anyone who dares step foot in a haunted house as a police officer becomes the latest victim.

The Grudge is one of the fewer franchises that I am actually scared of. Something about pale, long-haired ghostly women just freak the hell out of me. The film has been rebooted once already by Hollywood, and here it is again. So, is The Grudge (2020) any good? Nope, not at all. This film is American horror at it’s worst. Taking a perfectly fine and creepy property and turning it to something else entirely. The Grudge (2020) does not feel like part of the Ju-On franchise. The mythology of the franchise is spat on and instead is turned into a 90 minute gorefest and jump-scare-party for the sake of shock value. The characters aren’t worth caring about and the movie’s direction and storytelling is way less intelligent than it thinks it is.

Let’s begin with the positives.

Mainly, sound design. Some of the sound design moments in this film were pretty good. In particular, the death crackle from The Grudge whenever she decides to appear is pretty decent.

However, here come the negatives.

Firstly, scares. I just found myself jumping again and again because the film is so reliant on cheap jump scares for the sake of shock value. It isn’t cool and it won’t make your film any smarter or scarier. The over-reliance on these as well as gore is just the beginning of this film’s problems. What made The Grudge so effective was it’s eerie atmosphere and reliance on one sole ghost, not 3 or 4 zombie-looking beasts.

Also, storytelling. By god, I don’t understand the decision to tell around 4 stories at once in a 90 minute film. I just didn’t care for any of the characters. It was so disjointed that I began to think that the director must have been laughing in his editing seat, thinking how smart this storytelling technique would be, but it isn’t. It just felt jumbled and messy. Jon Cho, Betty Giplin, Lin Shay and Jacki Weaver are wasted and killed off for shock value. Not to mention, some of the dialogue in this film is so horrifically and hilariously bad.

To conclude, despite some decent sound design, The Grudge suffers from the same formulaic problems that preceeded other Hollywood reboots before it. This film isn’t anything new, but even then, it decided to take it’s decent source material and turn it into a whole different thing entirely and I am not so sure that was a wise decision from both the director and the studio. I hope to god that there aren’t any more sequels to this film. The Grudge (2020) receives an 5.0/10.

#movie #movies #film #films #film review #film reviews #film critic #2020 #corona #coronavirus #covid19 #grudge #the grudge

[wazafam]

The actors in the MCU may have dominated with their big-screen characters, but many of them are also talented voice actors. Some MCU actors are well known for voicing popular roles in animated superhero movies, like Samuel L. Jackson in The Incredibles movies, otherwise known as Nick Fury. Even Doctor Strange's Benedict Cumberbatch has voiced a version of everyone's favorite Christmas character, The Grinch.

RELATED: Batman: Soul Of The Dragon: 10 Familiar Voices Behind The Diverse Cast

The funny thing about voice acting, though, is that those in the audience may not immediately catch on to what actor is voicing a character. Paul Rudd, for example, was one of the many Hollywood actors who took part in the adult dark comedy, Sausage Party, and many might be surprised that quite a few other MCU actors have voiced characters on the small and big screen.

10 Chris Pratt: Emmet (The Lego Movie)

Legos have, for a long time, been a favorite childhood toy. The toys range from many themes and even popular movies. In 2014, The Lego Movie was a computer-animated comedy based on the Lego line of construction toys and it centered around a Lego character named Emmett.

The role was voiced by actor, Chris Pratt. Pratt's character is mistaken for "the Special" from a prophecy and gets tangled in a resistance movement. Emmett aids the resistance in stopping a tyrannical villain from gluing the city to his perfect image.

9 Paul Rudd: Derek Dietl (Monsters Vs. Aliens)

Paul Rudd has an extensive filmography, from being well known as Mike from Friends to Ant-Man in the MCU. Amongst his long list of accolades is a voice role in the 2009 computer-animated movie, Monsters Vs. Aliens. Rudd played a supporting role as Derek Dietl, a local weatherman.

His role was also the ex-fiancé of the main character Susan, voiced by Reese Witherspoon. Derek takes any opportunity to further his career, even if it strains his relationship. On their wedding day, Susan is struck by a meteorite, causing her to grow big. She and a group of misfit monsters have to fight off an alien invasion.

8 Tessa Thompson: Lady (Lady And The Tramp)

One of Disney's classic movies, Lady and the Tramp, from 1955, got a makeover in 2019 when the movie of the same name was recreated into an alive-action/CGI hybrid. An upper-class Cocker Spaniel named Lady becomes friends with a homeless Schnauzer-mutt named Tramp (Justin Theroux).

Lady was voiced by MCU actor Tessa Thompson. The movie was sweet, as two dogs of different social classes fall in love, all while in the midst of a misunderstanding, as Lady believes her owner will abandon her after the birth of their baby. The movie even kept the famous pasta scene from the original animated film.

7 Tom Hiddleston: James Hook (The Pirate Fairy)

Tom Hiddleston took part in a direct-to-video feature-length animated movie that is part of Disney's Tinker Bell franchise. In The Pirate Fairy, Hiddleston voiced a different yet similar version of the most despicable pirate from the fairytales, Hook, James Hook to be exact.

RELATED: Disney: Ranking All Of The Tinker Bell Movies, According To IMDb Score

The character disguises himself as a cabin boy, while Zarina (Christina Hendricks), a fairy, takes control of the crew after promising to make the ship fly using fairy dust. In true Hook fashion, he double-crosses Zarina and reveals he's the leader of the pirate crew.

6 Robert Downey Jr.: Patrick Pewterschmidt (Family Guy)

Robert Downey Jr. is coveted as being the best and only portrayal of the MCU character, Iron Man. While Downey also became well known for his on-screen portrayal of Sherlock Holmes, he also did one voice role on television. In the fourth season of Family Guy, Lois learns that she has a brother.

Voiced by Downey, Patrick was sent to a psychiatric hospital after walking in on his mother's affair as a child. Lois, who is actually his long-lost sister, goes to visit him and deems him mentally fit and has him released, unaware that Patrick really is mentally unwell and a serial killer.

5 Samuel L. Jackson: Lucius (The Incredibles)

There have been countless memes made of the comical moment in The Incredibles when Lucius can't find his super suit. The superhero character was voiced by none other than Samuel L. Jackson. Jackson is well-known for lending his impressive voice for television and animated movies.

His role as Lucius is almost more recognizable than some of his other roles in Quentin Tarantino movies or as Nick Fury in the MCU. It's comical to realize that the voice role is also that of a superhero, but this one has the real power to freeze water.

4 Tom Holland: Walter Beckett (Spies In Disguise)

The animated spy-comedy movie, Spies in Disguise, not only had Tom Holland voicing the main character of Walter, but also Karen Gillan as Eyes. Holland played the socially inept super-scientist who gets entangled with the worlds' best spy. After a fluke accident, the spy gets turned into a pigeon.

RELATED: Tom Holland's Best Movies That Aren't MCU, Ranked (According To IMDb)

It's up to Walter to help the spy stop a major villain while also looking for the antidote to turn the spy human again. Shortly after Holland's role, he would again voice another character in the remake Dolittle, as Jip, with Robert Downey Jr. in the lead role.

3 Scarlett Johansson: Princess Mindy (The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie)

Scarlett Johansson has been a part of the MCU since her debut in the second Iron Man movie in 2010. But before MCU stardom, she also voiced a character in a movie about a yellow sponge when the acclaimed children's animated show, SpongeBob SquarePants got its first movie in 2004.

It's up to SpongeBob and Patrick to save the Krabby Patty formula and stop Plankton, who stole King Neptune's crown and framed the crime on Mr. Krabb's. Along the way, SpongeBob meets Princess Mindy who gives them encouragement and tricks them by making them think she's "turned them into men" so that they have the guts to continue their journey. Mindy was voiced by Johansson.

2 Benedict Cumberbatch: Grinch (The Grinch)

Jim Carrey's famed holiday movie and character in How the Grinch Stole Christmas got a reboot in 2018. There were some differences and similarities between both versions and instead of Carrey, the green and grumpy character was voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch.

The animated version followed a similar idea to the original. The Grinch becomes increasingly grumpy as Whoville is ready to celebrate Christmas. To get some peace and quiet, the Grinch hatches a plan to steal Christmas and all of Whoville's holiday joy.

1 Zoe Saldana: María Posada (The Book Of Life)

In 2014, Guillermo Del Toro produced a new 3D animated movie, The Book of Life, centered around the colorful and heartfelt storyline of a Mexican bullfighter. The story starts with a fight between Manolo Sánchez (Diego Luna) and Joaquín Mondragon (Channing Tatum), wagering on who will get to love María, voiced by Zeo Saldana.

When Maria and Manolo confess their love, they are interrupted and Maria is bitten by a snake. Manolo thinks she's dead and dies as well, hoping to be reconnected in the afterlife. Once he learns that she is alive, he fights for a way to leave the afterlife and return to his love.

NEXT: 10 Non-Studio Ghibli Movies To Watch If You Love Their Films

10 Animated Characters Voiced By MCU Actors | ScreenRant from https://ift.tt/39lUJNG

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[nightmareonfilmstreet]

Will There Ever Be Another FRIDAY THE 13TH Film?

Between 1980 and 1989, Paramount Pictures released eight Friday the 13th movies, a rate of almost one per year. Such a schedule for a horror film franchise is hardly extraordinary; the first seven Saw movies came out annually between 2004 and 2010, and a Paranormal Activity movie came out every year between 2009 and 2015, only skipping over 2013. So, why has it been almost 10 years since the last time we saw Jason Voorhees on the big screen? Is it really so hard to find a big stuntman to put on a hockey mask and chase a bunch of teenagers around a desolate camp ground?

Theoretically, no, but there are reasons. Let’s look at them step-by-step.

  Friday the 13th Part 1: A Series of Unfortunate Events

For the record, work has been ongoing on some sort of Friday the 13th script since shortly after the release of the 2009 reboot. A horror hit collecting $94.1 million at the worldwide box office on a $19 million budget, a sequel was put swiftly in development, and a release date of August 13, 2010 scheduled. August 2010 came and went though with no sequel, which producer Brad Fuller blamed on the economic climate at the time with the two studios that owned the rights to Friday – Paramount and New Line Cinema – looking to streamline their release slate.

It would be a couple of years before Friday fans would get another bite of the apple. In 2013, it was announced that the rights for Friday the 13th had reverted back to Paramount in a deal with New Line parent company Warner Bros. Basically, in exchange for the option to co-produce Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, Warner gave up their portion of the rights to Friday as well as a potential South Park movie follow-up to Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, for five years. According to Derek Mears, the man who played Jason in the 2009 reboot, it seemed like a new Friday was a foregone conclusion.

But then there was the game of musical release dates. Paramount marked May 13, 2016 as the release date for the Friday the 13th follow-up. Then it was moved to January 13, 2017. And then October 13, 2017. Obviously, there was no release of a Friday the 13th movie on either of the Friday the 13ths last year, and to anyone reasonable skilled at arithmetic knows, that window of sole ownership of the Friday rights is about to come to an end for Paramount.

And now, there’s a new wrinkle.

    Friday the 13th Part 2: Too Many Lawyers

According to Friday the 13th lore, producer/director Sean S. Cunningham wanted to make something in the vein of John Carpenter’s Halloween, and all he had in mind was a title: Friday the 13th. It was Victor Miller who wrote a script called A Long Night at Camp Blood, a working title for what eventually would be the first Friday, about a group of camp counselors murdered by a grieved mother seeking revenge for son’s unfortunate drowning. His name was Jason, and the movie takes place on his unfortunately timed birthday.

Miller didn’t have much to do with any of the Friday the 13th sequels, but his name is very much in the news now with a matter before the courts that could either see a new Friday movie go forward, or see the franchise broken down for parts. Miller is looking to reclaim the rights to Friday the 13th using an amendment to the Copyright Act in 1976 that allows authors, or their heirs, to terminate a grant of rights and reclaim ownership of their written work. If successful, Miller would get the rights to Friday, and could pursue another deal and another direction for the franchise.

But not so fast, says Cunningham’s legal team. Papers they’ve filed in federal court says that it was the producer that came up with the idea for Friday the 13th, as well as the name, and having a hands on role in developing the script with Miller. This would essentially mean that Miller was a writer-for-hire on the project, and while he does enjoy residuals and payments from sequels, he has no rights on the intellectual property of the film in the same way if Friday the 13th was bought on spec. If Cunningham wins, that means everything stays the same and a new Friday can proceed, likely with Paramount and New Live co-producing again.

There is, however, a wrinkle. A potential third option could see the court allow the Friday series to move forward without a few key elements. Here’s how Bonnie Eskenazi, a lawyer representing the producers, explained it to The Hollywood Reporter last June:

“Miller’s purported rights could only extend to those elements of the screenplays that he actually created. Here, it is undisputed that Miller did not create either the title ‘Friday the 13th’ or the ‘Jason’ character as a living adult monster who is the villainous killer in all of the eleven (11) sequels. Instead, Cunningham created the title ‘Friday the 13th’ and Miller created a ‘Jason’ character that died as a young boy due to the negligence of his camp counselors. Accordingly, Miller cannot claim any right to the title ‘Friday the 13th,’ or the ongoing ‘Jason’ character, or Jason’s iconic look of a man in a hockey mask carrying a machete.”

  Millers lawyers disagree, obviously, and are making the argument that while Miller developed the treatment with Cunningham, he completed the screenplay as a freelancer without input, and his benefits have not been as generous the producers are alleging. Either way, you’re not going to get another Friday the 13th until a judge rules.

    Friday the 13th Part 3: What Might Have Been

While those legal and financial issues were keeping the camera from rolling on a new Friday the 13th, a couple of different writers and directors have been waiting in the wings to let Jason free again to terrorize young people at Crystal Lake. The writers of Friday 2009, Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, had completed work on a script creatively entitled Friday the 13th Part 2. Not much is known about it, but as was the style of the time, it was going to be released in 3D.

When production was back on a few years later, the 3D aspect of the film had been promoted from gimmick to title card. Nick Antosca, who has since created Syfy’s Channel Zero, is the credited writer of Friday the 13th 3D, which did not end up going in the direction of found footage as had been rumoured. The Signal’s David Bruckner was going to direct, and for fans of Stranger Things and IT, you’ll like this part, he was going to take us back to Camp Crystal Lake… in the 80s.

Set in August 1988 on the last day of summer camp, Antosca’s script introduces us to a murderer’s row of teen character stereotypes including jock Greg, stoner Weezer, summer lovers Brad and Amber, Vanessa the hot chick, the religious Kirby, and our final girl Sloane. In what’s a bit of a retcon, we hear about the killing spree of Pamela Voorhees in the 1960s at the old campsite, and when our heroes visit, they make the mistake of taunting and insulting the memory of Mrs. Voorhees. Someone doesn’t like that…

The script follows a typical Friday plot where Jason begins the process of methodically eliminating all the teen campers, while appearing himself to be rather invincible. To the credit of the screenplay, the victims don’t just lie down and take, they put in a concerted effort to fight back against the hockey mask-clad swamp monster. Indeed it’s implied that Jason is sustained by the restorative waters of Crystal Lake if he should happen to take too much punishment in the killing fields.

  “..you can’t kill someone that’s already dead.”

  Interestingly, the movie ends with the surviving teens seemingly triumphant over Jason, a coroner van even arrives to pick up the cadaver, but any good Friday fan knows that Jason doesn’t stay dead. Indeed, the film ends with Jason laying waste to the local police force, and Sloane and Vanessa getting away in a police care after two shotgun blasts to Jason’s face. As they speed away, they look in the rearview and see Jason get up again. As the script succinctly points out, you can’t kill someone that’s already dead.

Sadly, this straightforward but energizing chapter in the Friday series was not meant to be. Instead, the producers looked to Aaron Guzikowski, who’s best known for writing the script for Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners. In the director’s chair, meanwhile, would be Breck Eisner, perhaps best known for one of the better horror remakes, The Crazies, not to mention The Last Witch Hunter. Under the tight deadline of October 2017, and the reversion of rights back to New Line, this was the team that was under the gun to make Friday the 13th Part 13.

Billed as “a unique retelling of the origin story,” this Friday goes further back in time to the summer of 1977, where the Voorhees family has made a nice life for themselves at Crystal Lake: park ranger Elias, camp cook Pamela, and their 16-year-old son Jason who hides his facial deformities with a surgical mask. Although our main characters are two sisters who are the daughters of the owner of Camp Crystal Lake, Friday Part 13 is really about the messed up family dynamics of the Voorheeses.

In this script, Guzikowski takes the unusual step of giving the audience not just one, but three killers. Elias, Pamela and Jason make up a trilogy of slaughter: Elias is a sack-wearing killer in act one, Pamela gets payback for Jason’s apparent drowning and Elias’ crimes in act two, and Jason returns in act three to kill the sisters after the accidental decapitation of Pamela as she’s chasing them around Crystal Lake. In this Friday, Jason isn’t quite the indestructible monster man that he is in other Fridays, but it is suggested that he has some kind of Shining-like ability where he can bring out the evil in people. It’s inferred that this is why Elias was killing camp counselors in act one.

For Fuller, missing the window to make Guzikowski’s script was particularly disappointing. “One of the biggest heartbreaks of the last couple years was that we were about to make that movie and it fell apart. That still hurts,” Fuller told Arrow in the Head in a recent interview.

  Friday the 13th Part 4: Just Give Us Our Jason Back!

Despite all the production drama, Fuller is still willing to get back to Crystal Lake. “[T]he question is, do they want to make the movie with us? If they want to make that movie with us, we will drop what we’re doing to make that movie,” he added in that JoBlo interview.

“We had such a great experience making Friday the 13th, it was a dream come true to watch those movies as a kid and then be a part of it. So I don’t really have a clear answer.”

  Fans, meanwhile, have made it through 10 chapters of the original Friday series. They saw Jason go to Hell, they saw him go to space, and they saw him fight Freddy and survive (ish). With the original masked slasher, Michael Myers, returning this fall, many fans might be itching for further exploits of other iconic killers, and they’ll be looking for Jason. And given his attitude towards camp counselors, you can just imagine the use that he has for lawyers and studio suits.

    The post Will There Ever Be Another FRIDAY THE 13TH Film? appeared first on Nightmare on Film Street - Horror Movie Podcast, News and Reviews.

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How The Animaniacs Reboot Will Be Both Fresh and Timeless

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Ever since getting the role of Snow Job in the ’80s GI Joe animated series, Rob Paulsen realized that his future was not in a local rock band or appearing in commercials, but in the realm of voice acting. Through the decades, Paulsen has taken on many iconic roles, such as Raphael from the ’80s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Donatello from the 2012 reboot, Carl Wheezer from Jimmy Neutron, Mighty Max, Major Glory from Dexter’s Lab, PJ from Goof Troop, Steelbeak from Darkwing Duck, Buck Tuddrussel from Time Squad, and hundreds more.

He’s also a survivor of throat cancer and recently wrote a book about it called Voice Lessons.

Of course, two of his biggest roles that come to mind are Yakko Warner, Pinky, and Dr. Scratchansniff characters from the beloved animated series Animaniacs. Wouldn’t you know it, that series will be coming back this November!

We got an opportunity to talk with Rob about the show’s big return, his book, and what it’s like to be the voice of so many childhoods.

Den of Geek: My first question is about the Animaniacs reboot. So it’s on its way back, which I think we all collectively need right now.

Rob Paulsen: Amen, my friend.

The characters are, by design, timeless. But it’s been a couple decades, so it’s a new show. What is new to the table? What’s being brought in that’s kind of like, “This is the new show.”

Well, it’s… Here’s a little inside baseball. I saw the opening title scene yesterday for the first time. The “It’s time for Animaniacs…” the little song, right?

Never heard of it.

Right. And it’s so cool because it starts out with what everybody knows. You will watch it. As soon as you hear the first downbeat, you’ll go, “Oh my God. I’m 11. I’m 15,” whatever you were. And then it morphs into this appropriate acknowledgement of the zeitgeist, that is to say, the lyrics already tell you right off the bat that we’re in a different time. The lyrics… and it will take people a few times to listen to because we blow through them pretty quick. I’m not going to give it away because I want you to be surprised, but the lyrics in the opening title scene, they let you know that they’re self-aware. They get that the time we’re in is now, and the Animaniacs understand that.

So right away, it, in my view, dispels any fears of them not being hip or getting it. Right away. It’s just, “Okay. Here’s where we are. We know this was a while ago, but here’s… this is the time it is now, and off we go.” And so you already know, and the episodes do not deviate from that. They are appropriately lampooning with currently sacred cows. And it’s a freaking hoot. I was telling folks yesterday that I’m a little bit concerned when things go so well. It’s crazy how humans react. We’re always… And I understand why, because of the nature of what we’re going through. But that show, when we did it, from a clean sheet of paper, turned out to be what you and I are talking about 25 years later and there are, I don’t even know, tens of millions of fans of Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain. I know how important this is to Spielberg, which alone makes it a big deal.

I’m used to things where whatever you’re working on was a big deal, was a lot of money, lot of music. Well, we got some things back, and they got to tweak them, and they might push the release back. You’re used to that. Doesn’t mean the shows going to be a piece of junk.

We got the first stuff back, and everybody’s flipping out.

“What did Steven say?”

“Oh, he couldn’t stop laughing.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No. Look at the video.”

I mean, it’s just… It’s going SO WELL. Everybody, from Steven on down… And trust me, these guys are spending a lot of money, pal. And so if they want to have their input, and they’re going “Oh, no, no, no, no. I don’t really like the way Yakko’s head looks.” Trust me. They’ll stop you. Because it’s a shit ton of money! Not mine, but you’re talking about spending 60 million or whatever. It’s a lot of money, and so they’re not going to just say-

“Good enough.”

Right? None of that is happening. Everybody gets it. I think it’s because the people who are making it are your age, within a few years, and they know how high the bar is. And they were inspired to do this gig because of Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain. So now in the studio, I’ve got to tell you, I’ve seen more than once, men and women writers on the show who will come in and be there when we’re recording, and they sort of get tearful because they think, “Oh my God. I wrote those words, and I hear them coming out of Pinky and the Brain.” That blows my mind, and it’s really cool to watch because it just doesn’t get a representation of how seminal this show was to so many people who are now in creative arts. It’s a wonderful thing to be a part of.

We haven’t seen any of the real footage of the show’s return, so in the meantime, can you give us any completely fake spoilers? Stuff that’s absolutely not going to happen on the show?

Yes. It is absolutely not going to happen that Dolly Parton will sing in the opening title.

Crap.

That will not happen. Dolly Parton, as much as a lovely woman she seems to be, has nothing to do with the opening theme song of Animaniacs. I can guarantee you that. Let’s see. I can tell you this, that so far, there don’t appear to be as many of the secondary characters as there were in the original show. The original show is a variety/magazine type show, which is where Pinky and the Brain obviously got their foothold and turned out to be their own franchise. So right now, we don’t have Rita and Runt, Mindy and Buttons, Katie Ka-Boom, all those other secondary characters. But there are new ones and other ones.

The ethos that Mr. Spielberg and Tom Ruegger created 25 years ago remains, and that is that Yakko, Wakko, and Dot are the ringleaders. Pinky and the Brain, one could argue, could have their own show without Yakko, Wakko, and Dot. They’re a big deal on their own. And so it wouldn’t have made sense to exclude Pinky and the Brain and Yakko, Wakko, and Dot. In other words, they couldn’t redo the whole thing and say, “We’re going to have Gakko, Kakko, and Smakko,” or whatever. It had to be Yakko, Wakko, and Dot. And frankly, it had to be all three voice actors according to Steven because this is Hollywood, and often in animated shows, you’ll see now that they’ll bring in celebrity talent for their celebrity.

And I mean, I’m an old dog in Hollywood. I know how celebrity works. I accept it. All of that. But it is yet another testament to the experience and the heart of a guy like Steven Spielberg who literally can call any actor in the world and say, “We’re redoing Animaniacs.”

“Oh God, I love that show.”

“Yeah. Me too. We just thought that Liam Neeson should be—”

Hahahaha! Oh God. Can you in the Yakko voice say the line, “I have certain skills…”

(Yakko voice) “Oh, yeah. I have certain skills. Yeah, that’s right. I have… ‘certain’ ‘skills’.”

But you see my point. You’re laughing about it, and it’s true. We laugh about it all the time. Check this out. Maurice’s take on it, because he’s been having dreams at night, because there had been rumors for a reboot for a couple years before it happened. And it’s Hollywood. Shit happens and does happen all the time. And so Maurice said, “My worst fear is that they’re going to hire Peter Dinklage as the Brain and Russell Brand as Pinky.”

*cracks up*

Yeah. And I did what you’re doing. I couldn’t stop laughing. I just thought, (Pinky voice) “Egad! You really are a short fellow!”

I’m just imagining the two of them doing live-action cosplay.

Oh, yeah. Right?! No kidding! It’d be fantastic! But again– Isn’t it great that all we’re talking about is making us laugh? That the bottom line is that the unchallenged King of Hollywood chose, and he said it was never a question, never a question of, “How can we make this here work? Should we hire…” I don’t know, give me a famous young female popstar, “to be the voice of Dot. Cross-promote. She’s already got eight million Twitter followers.” All that stuff. That never entered into the equation. It was all about the reason these characters are beloved is for many reasons, and not the least of which are the actors who all can still do it at the same level, and they want to. And so, okay, that’s taken care of. That’s a big deal. Do you know what I mean?

That in and of itself tells you a lot about how important Steven views this property because it was not about who can sell the most merchandise, who’s got the most Twitter followers. It was about this show is a show that’s successful for its own sake. You’re talking to 50% of the Ninja Turtles, pal. I know all about action figures. And I’m very proud of that show still. It will go on and inspire artists for decades to come. But Animaniacs is not about that. And when you have a piece of art for the sake of the art, and Mr. Spielberg utterly gets that, it’s being done for the right reasons. Obviously, there’ll be merchandise. Great. But it’s not about who’s famous enough to bring 10 million extra followers to the show. It’s not about that. And I’m so proud of the whole experience, man. It’s really something.

So “Yakko’s World” is a “Stairway to Heaven” of Animaniacs songs.

Right. And I’ve used that line my own self. You’ve got excellent taste. That’s exactly what I say. When we do Animaniacs Live with orchestras and stuff around the country, it’s just incredible. Really fun.

Around where I live, there’s a rock station that always does the best classic rock songs, but the joke is, “We all know what number one is.”

Right. It’s got to be “Stairway.” It’s got to be. Yeah. And so I tell people all the time, it’s like, “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much. It’s been a wonderful evening, and before we finish tonight, we just want to let you know that to the extent that you spent this money and waited an hour and a half for this song, here’s our ‘Stairway to Heaven.’” Everybody flips out, and it’s fantastic. And that song… And again, I’m good at my job, but in Hollywood, you could throw a dart and hit a good singer. They may not like getting hit with a dart, but you see my point. I’m really good at my job, but Jesus Christ, I ought to be. I’ve been doing it for 40 years. But what you cannot do in Hollywood or New York or Nashville is hit someone who could write that type of music over and over and over again. And Randy Rogel is a uniquely gifted individual and profoundly overachieving. I mean, the guy is… He’s a West Point grad. He’s a graduate of Boston University. He was a huge success in corporate American. Then he thought, “No. I’m really about music and comedy,” and got a gig on Batman: The Animated Series and won an Emmy. And then he heard about this fun cartoon music show called Animaniacs. He banged on that door. And check this out:

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His audition piece to get the gig on Animaniacs, which ultimately won him three more Emmy’s because he’d already won one on Batman… But the song that he wrote and he had in his back pocket to get him the gig was “Yakko’s World.” Now, that’s pretty freaking remarkable, that you’re going like, “Wait a minute. This is where we’re STARTING? This is what you got to say what do you think?” That’s just outrageous. And he has not disappointed. He’s written a bunch of new songs for the new show. But I have to tell you that every single time we do “Yakko’s World,” it gets a standing ovation. And people have heard it. I mean I can do it backwards and forwards and all that. But I’ve don’t it a zillion times. And it’s not… Randy and I are the ones getting the accolades. It’s very wonderful, but it’s not about us. And we know that. It’s that fucking song. It’s so wonderful and so unique and it’s just a privilege to be able to perform it. It’s wonderful.

But what’s the second place? What’s you’re second favorite of all of all time?

Favorite of Randy’s? Oh God. That’s a tough call. But we do, in the show, the live show, we do probably 20 songs, 25 songs including songs that didn’t make it and a bunch of songs from a follow-up show with that crew called Histeria!. There was some brilliant songs in that. But my second favorite I think has to be… Well, there are two that really come to mind. One is called “I’m Mad” in which Yakko, Wakko, and Dot go on a day trip with Dr. Scratchansniff, who I also played that character as well. And the kids get into a fight in the car, and it’s a really wonderful song and an excellent cartoon pattern, back and forth. It’s just great. I love “I’m Mad.”

And also, Randy wrote a song. He was charged with responsibility of trying to teach young folks the concept of time, and he wrote a song called “When You’re Traveling from Nantucket.” And I love that song. Just a little bit of it goes,

“When you’re traveling from Nantucket through Chicago to St. Paul, And you’re standing at an airport and you look upon the wall, There’s a clock for every city and a different time for all, From Asia through Malaysia to Peru. Did you ever wonder why that when it’s six o’clock in Maine, At precisely the same moment it is eight AM in Spain? When it’s breakfast time in Rome, they’re having lunch in the Ukraine, And it’s supper up in upper Kathmandu. If the Earth is spinning faster while the sun is moving past her, then a day might only be an hour long. And school, when they begin it, would only last a minute, and everybody’d have to run along. If the Earth were the planet that was closest to the sun, A year would be much shorter, and you’d have a lot of fun. Because the time you’re in first grade, you’d be over 21, And you’d live to be 903 or 4.”

I mean, that’s genius!

I think I just went cross-eyed right there…

Right? And what he’s saying is true. But it’s presented in such a way that it’s whimsical, it’s entertaining, it’s a little mind-blowing. It makes you go, “Whoa, whoa, wait, what?” And it’s all true because it’s all physics. It’s all science. We know that all of that stuff is true. We just look at a clock. But he explains in two minutes and change about the concept of why that works.

He says,

“The international date line is an imaginary cleft. Today is on the right side, tomorrow on the left. So when you cross it, do you then arrive the day before you left? That’s how it’d work. It’s quite berserk, you see? So if you were born in China, while I’m born in Carolina, Then you’re ahead of me, you see? But the way I’ve got it reckoned, if we’re born in the same second, Then why should you be a day older than me?”

And it’s exactly the sort of thing that you go how does he… What the… Wow. Wait a minute. I’m going to Australia, and it’s tomorrow? What? So that’s my second favorite song for precisely the same rambling reason I gave you. I know I have a tendency to talk too much, but hell, I’m Yakko, so that’s what I do.

About a year ago, you released your autobiography Voice Lessons where you discuss some of your biggest roles, your bout with throat cancer, Bob Seger being awesome, Mel Brooks being less than awesome, and so on. What was the impetus that made you want to write the book?

Thank you for asking and mentioning the book. It was a big deal for me.

I had had many very well meaning fans, very kind, generous fans say to me, “Dude, you should write a book,” kind of in the same thing of what you were so kind to say at the beginning of our chat, my prodigious IMDB page, whatever. Well, look at Frank Welker’s, look at Maurice’s, look at Tress MacNeille. Jesus. All of them. Danny Castellaneta, Hank Azaria, all of us, because of animation can knock out two or three episodes in a day, and after 20, 30 years, it looks a lot more impressive than it is. Nonetheless, I had a lot of characters in my wheelhouse that had a profound effect on millions of people. And I started to meet these fans, and they were very kindly suggesting, “Oh my God, Mr. Paulsen. You really should write a book.” And I accepted the compliment and the spirit in which it was delivered, and I’m very grateful. But I honest to God…

Look, I’ve grown up in Hollywood. I was 22 when I moved here. And I understand celebrity, and I understand the relative nature of celebrity and it’s power. But again, like I said, I didn’t really understand the power of the characters because I’m not recognized walking down the street. Now, I get it. But in those days, this is probably 8, 10 years ago, I said, “Man, that’s really sweet, but the last thing the world needs is another celebrity memoir from a non-celebrity.” And it’s not false modesty. I am not Brad Pitt. I am not George Clooney. I am not George Hamilton. I’m Rob Paulsen. I’m good at my job, but the characters are famous. I don’t draw them. I don’t write them. And I could never do that. It is a deeply collaborative effort that makes me come across like a freaking rockstar. So there was no reason for me to write a self-aggrandizing book. My ego doesn’t work that way.

BUT, a big giant but, then I got throat cancer. And while I never freaked out, I never said, “Oh my God! I have throat cancer! I’m a voice actor! Why couldn’t it be hair cancer?!” I didn’t do that because what I had learned in the interim between when nice people said I should write a book and my cancer was, as I had mentioned, the extent to which these characters have. Their words sometimes saved their lives. Their words. Over and over again. That’s at the… the most powerful end. At the very least, it’s, “You have no idea how much joy this brought to me and my father,” or, “I didn’t get along with my dad on anything. In fact, we hated each other. Then he introduced me to Pinky and the Brain, and we bonded. My dad passed away a year ago. I’m fine with it. But you have got to know…” Okay. So all that stuff, and it was countless times that it happened.

And when I got diagnosed with throat cancer and people found out after the fact, because my wife and I didn’t put it out there. We didn’t want sympathy, we didn’t need… I was 59 years old when I was diagnosed. Even if the doctors had said, “Dude, you’re on your way out. You better go home and get your shit in order,” I had nothing, nothing about which to be sad. Nothing. But what happened was, I made it. The treatment was absolutely brutal for obvious reasons. Mouth, throat, can’t eat, can’t swallow. It’s rough. It is for everybody. But you know what? It’s not as rough as your eight year old boy not making it through leukemia or your six year old girl who talked to Pinky and then six days later, parents call and say, “Tiffany passed away, but thank God she got to talk to Pinky.” And that stuff happens all the time. All the time. I have boxes of letters that are personally just unbelievable compelling.

That is the story, that my experience with throat cancer taught me through these characters and hundreds of children that Yakko, Raphael, Donatello, Carl, you name it have spoken to. And we all do it, not just me. But in my case, I had a very unique cancer because of what I do. And that story was powerful because not only did I make it through, but I learned the real power of those characters. They helped me get through THE most difficult year of my life. I mean, it was rough. But the people out there whose children passed away years before I got my cancer, they got ahold of me and said, “Hey, here’s the last picture of you talking to Jordan before he died of lung disease. Remember this? We heard about your struggle, Mr. Paulsen. Please know how much those characters meant to our son who’s been gone now for 10 years. But we have this picture on our wall, and it’s you talking to him. And you probably don’t remember.” And often I didn’t.

But they sought me out to tell me how powerful these characters were. Then I thought, now the book is worth it. I’m not going to sell a million copies of that book. Doesn’t matter. It was an appropriate thing to do, and it’s a clear example and a compendium of how powerful joy is, how powerful laughter is, and that courage, empathy, kindness, joy, laughter, like love, often come from the most unexpected places. And in my case, it was from a bunch of freaking cartoon characters that people say saved their lives in some respects or made their children’s deaths more tolerable. And if they say that to me, it’s got to be the same for Kevin Conroy. It’s got to be the same for Mark Hamill. It’s got to be the same for Maurice, Tom Kenny. So that’s what this was about. It’s just, I’ve learned so much about all of them from these parents and their children. And that’s why the book is important to me.

Well, for the last question, going back to the book, I want to take something from it and just kind of flip it around back at you. You got to work with Russell Johnson, the Professor from Gilligan’s Island. And the question you asked him is the question I’m going to ask you right now:

What’s it like to be part of television history?

Oh, bless your heart. It is a bigger privilege than I could have ever imagined. Thank you very much, firstly, for suggesting that I am. And I’m not going to be so coy and so silly as to suggest that I am not because I am. And it doesn’t have to be… It’s one of those things. I am. When you’ve done this much work, you are, like it or not. I love it because it means that I’ve fulfilled my dream. I’ve made it. I’ve been rich, and I’ve been poor. Rich is better. I am not independently wealthy. I am still going to try to make as much money as I can. But if I die at this moment, apart from the fact that it would be inconvenient for you and probably leave my car stranded in the middle of the street, I’ve made it. I’ve done what I set out to do. And I don’t have a star on the Walk of Fame. I don’t have an Oscar. I have an Emmy and a couple of Peabody’s and a bunch of other things, and I’m very proud of those. But I really do know, especially because I’m not a celebrity, that that is not what it’s about. The Emmy and five bucks will get you a Frappuccino. I’m not going to give it back, but it’s not about that. It’s about the relationships. It’s about the characters, their timelessness.

Russell Johnson, I don’t know if it’s in the book because I frankly don’t remember, but what Mr. Johnson told me when I… I asked him that question. You’re right. And he could not have been more gracious, though he’d probably been asked a zillion times. I mean, Jesus Christ. He’s the freaking Professor! And you don’t even have to qualify him. You go, “The Professor? Oh, yeah. Gilligan’s Island. Okay.” Pop culture icon. And he said essentially the same thing I’m saying, “You know. Didn’t make a lot of money on the show. I made 1500 bucks a week at the top of the show.” Now, 1500 bucks a week in the 60s was a good living, but not even close to… Okay.

But he said, “You know what, Rob? My wife and I had a six weeks tour of Europe, and even when we were staying at monasteries with brothers who were almost sworn to silence, celibacy and silence, every single person knew who I was. And every single time, they wanted to hug me, embrace me, show me that they once dressed up like the Professor for Halloween.” And he said, “I don’t even… When I’m dead, that will still be going on.” And he’s right. Gilligan’s Island is playing all over the world.

And when I’m dead and gone, hopefully a little later because I’m definitely closer to the end than the beginning, but because of my incredible good fortune, working with the best of the best… All of them, by the way, are lovely people. That’s what this is about. The joy of the people to create joy that translates to hundreds of millions of others is what it’s all about. We were paid well, and that’s all true. But you spend the money, and ultimately, as they say, you can’t take it with you. And what I’m leaving behind, and what all these… Seriously. I’m dead freaking serious. I would have to work really hard to come up with one person who you would know and their work, who is anything but not only professional but just delightful, including celebrities with whom I know with work and know very well. Really nice, nice, nice people. That’s what it’s about. Nice people, talented people with the best of the best.

And I got to work with Steven… Now, this my sixth time. And as a result of all of that, my legacy is nothing but joy. Period. How much better can one’s life be? I don’t know. Maybe things will change, but I’m not going to be able to write a check for eight million bucks to open a hospital wing. But I don’t need to. I got paid to do what used to get me in trouble in high school, and after 40 years of it, and maybe another 10 or 12 to go, I will have fulfilled my dream way, way, way more than I ever could have imagined. And when I’m dust, you will be talking to maybe you’re grandkids, “I talked to, oh what was his name? Ron? Ron Paulmen? Yeah. He seemed like a pretty decent guy. He didn’t shut up for a whole freaking hour, but he seemed like a decent guy. Oh, yeah. Oh my God. This is the second version of Pinky and the Brain. Yeah this is from 2021. Yeah check this out.” And that’s what it’ll be. Bugs is 80 years old, and people still love Bugs. So anyway. That’s my story, and I sadly am not able to be more concise. But I hope you understand how much I appreciate my circumstances, moreover, nice people like you giving me so much time to talk about it.

It’s been nothing but a pleasure.

Thank you, buddy.

And that was a hell of an answer.

Thank you. It’s the freaking truth. It happens every day. Every day. Now it’s because I’m wearing a mask that a fan might have made for me of Ninja Turtles or Raphael or whatever. I’ve got a bunch of them, and they’re really sending them to me. So I’ll wear a mask. I had an Animaniacs one on the other day at Trader Joe’s. And a person said, “Oh my God. I love your mask. Where did you buy that?” And I explained what I did, who I was. The blood drained out of the guy’s face. He said, “Are you kidding me?” He said, “Wait a minute. Are you Rob?”

And I said, (Yakko voice) “Yes I am. Here’s my driver’s license.” And the guy started shaking. I mean, it was… You would have thought he met one of the Beatles. But it was just happy. It was just joy.

And I know he’s going to call his buddies, and it’s going to be, “Oh my God. This old guy walked into and he’s got gray hair, but as soon as he said, (Pinky voice) ‘Egad! Poit! Narf!’ it didn’t matter!”

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

And that’s what this is about.

The post How The Animaniacs Reboot Will Be Both Fresh and Timeless appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[ramajmedia]

10 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Super 8 | ScreenRant

J.J. Abrams has had an incredible career in Hollywood, known for creating Alias, co-creating Lost, and producing dozens of movies and TV shows. Abrams has also directed two of the sequel trilogy’s Star Wars films, two Star Trek films, and the third Mission Impossible.

In 2011, he directed the only film of his career that isn’t a sequel to an ongoing franchise: Super 8. This film pays homage to Sci-Fi flicks of the ‘70s, while also telling a heartwarming tale about a group of kids with a passion for filmmaking. Super 8 came out eight years ago, but there are some things you may not know about the monster flick. Here are 10 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Super 8.

Related: 10 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Cloverfield

10 Several Of The Crew Members Made Super 8 Films

In the featurette “The Dream Behind Super 8” several of the crew members talked about memories of making Super 8 films when they were kids. When J.J. Abrams discovered filmmaking, he was fascinated with making his own films. The director of photography Larry Fong also made Super 8 films and lived across the street for Abrams.

Even composer Michael Giacchino revealed that he made Super 8 and 8mm films when he was young. When J.J. Abrams met Matt Reeves when he was 14, they entered a film festival and got the attention of Steven Spielberg. Spielberg produced Super 8, but when Abrams was 14, he sent him and Reeves a box of his old Super 8 movies for them to restore.

9 They Interviewed 5,000 Kids

When it came time to casting the main group of kids in the movie, J.J. Abrams wanted to cast fresh faces that were relatively unknown actors. Joel Courtney (Joe), Ryan Lee (Cary), Zach Mills (Preston), Riley Griffiths (Charles), Gabriel Basso (Martin), and Elle Fanning (Alice) fill out the core cast, but that was only after they interviewed 5,000 kids.

The casting agents April Webster and Alyssa Weisberg explained in the featurette “The Search for New Faces” that they interviewed thousands of kids for the roles and even watched auditions on YouTube.

8 Joel Courtney Even Had To Audition 14 Times

The casting department had their hands full with Super 8, but they still worked hard to get the right actor for the lead role of Joe Lamb. Joel Courtney was chosen for the role, which was his first-ever acting gig. Courtney didn’t have an easy time getting the role though, as the featurette “The Search for New Faces” revealed he had to audition 14 times before he got the role.

Related: 10 Ways The J.J. Abrams Reboot Made Star Trek Better

Courtney also mentioned that it was his first audition ever and recalled once when he left school to fly to LA for an interview. Turns out that interview however wasn’t actually an interview, but a surprise from J.J. Abrams to reveal that he got the part.

7 They Got To Keep Their Bikes

Bad Robot and Paramount Pictures did everything they could to capture the essence of the late ‘70s. Everything from the sets to the costumes and props were made to look like the ‘70s. The company also rented bicycles that looked like bikes from 1979, which the cast got to keep at the end of the shoot.

Joel Courtney even mentioned in an on-set video how cool it would be to keep their bikes and Abrams was so impressed with the cast that he ended up buying all of the bikes that they rented for the kids.

6 Citizens Of Weirton Actually Appeared In The Town Meeting Scene

Most movie buffs would love to have a summer blockbuster film in their hometown and that was the case for Super 8. Super 8 was filmed in Weirton, Ohio and it was revealed in the featurette “Rediscovering Steel Town” how thrilled the citizens were to have Abrams and company film in their town.

In the town meeting scene, the citizens of Weirton actually make up most of the extras. After a plan to fly back to LA fell through, Abrams simply decided to stay in Ohio and film the scene with the actual people who lived there. The actor who voices Homer Simpson (Dan Castellaneta) was also in this scene, although he was born in Chicago not Weirton.

5 Neville Page Created The Monster

Besides Steven Spielberg and J.J. Abrams both being attached to Super 8, the promise of another creature feature is something that attracted people to the film. Famous creature and concept designer Neville Page created the Super 8 monster, which was known as Cooper (motion-captured by Bruce Greenwood) on set. Page is known for creating creatures in films like Cloverfield, Avatar, and Star Trek.

There were several different designs that Page created for Cooper, but he took Abrams and Spielberg’s input for the final design. In the featurette “The Monster Lives” it was also revealed that in order to make the monster emote more emotions, Page designed eye slits that would reveal the monsters true eyes that were similar to Joe’s mother’s.

4 The Filmmakers Paid Tribute To Weirton Ohio’s Legacy

After location scouts went around the country photographing different towns, J.J. Abrams showed interest in Weirton Ohio. Despite the name being changed to Lillian Ohio, Super 8 pays tribute to the steel town’s history. The city of Weirton was actually built up around the giant steel mill, which saw hardships in the ‘70s because of foreign commerce.

The mill had to be shut down soon after, but in 1983, the employees of Weirton Steel bought stock ownership of the plant. 20 years later they had to file bankruptcy and massively downsize their employees. Weirton Steel was at one point one of the biggest steel manufacturers in the world, and Super 8 was able to bring that legacy to life.

3 The Cinematographer Doubled As An On-Set Magician

Larry Fong was the director of photography for Super 8, but he also doubled as an on-set magician. Fong was so impressive with his magic, that he even made it into the special features of the Super 8 Blu-ray in a featurette called “Do You Believe in Magic?”.

Related: 10 BTS Facts About 10 Cloverfield Lane

The featurette shows several of his magic tricks and even showed him impressing Tom Cruise when he visited the set. Joel Courtney said his favorite trick was a soda can trick where Fong would set two cans at the opposite side of a street. He would shake one up and then open them, only the can he shook up didn’t explode. Somehow, he was able to transfer the fizz to the other soda can.

2 There Was An ARG For The Film

Much like the Cloverfield films, Super 8 had an extensive ARG (alternate reality game). When the trailer for Super 8 was released, the final shot showed a film reel with the phrase “Scariest Thing I Ever Saw”. People then found the website “ScariestThingIEverSaw.com” which introduced a fake company called Rocket Poppeteers and allowed people to print off two pages of a newspaper.

People decoded the paper and it led them to a website that was a chat room between a man named Josh and a mystery man talking about Josh’s father’s work on a secret government project. Clips could be found around the internet which when put together made a three-minute video from Area 51, part of which is seen in the film. In the end, Josh’s father is revealed to be Dr. Woodward in the film and the ARG ends with Josh finding out that his father was buried in Lillian Ohio.

1 There’s A Meaning Behind Operation Walking Distance

Near the middle of the film, the US Air Force creates a project called Operation Walking Distance. The point of this was to set fire to Lillian Ohio so that they could evacuate the city and hunt the monster while keeping the citizens safe. The that being said, the code-name “Walking Distance” is a shout-out to an episode of The Twilight Zone by the same name.

This episode deals with a man time-traveling back to his childhood. J.J. Abrams once said this was one of his favorite episodes of the series and with Super 8 being inspired by his childhood, it’s like Abrams went back in time to create a movie that was meaningful to him.

Next: J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Nearing $500M Deal With WarnerMedia

source https://screenrant.com/10-things-probably-didnt-know-super-8/

#screenrant

[furederiko]

Sheeesh!!! It's happening again. All these huge news came out just a day after I posted the last Random-News-Digest. I could've included them in that post instead!!! Personal ranting aside, let's get right through the news then... PS: Yeah, this one arrives a little early than usual, because I have to go off the grid for a while. At least until I return from embarking another exploration to the far off galaxy this week... ;D

Disney Live Action

Guy Ritchie is doing the live action adaptation for "Aladdin"? I'm sure you've already heard about that. The movie is going to be an action musical with Middle Eastern leads who have natural talents in singing and dancing? You've heard this before early last month? Well, it's a first for me, but of course... hell yes! That's GREAT news. But did you know which actor Ritchie is currently approaching to play the magical Genie? The answer is... much to everyone's surprise: Will Smith!

Okay, this casting? I'm not too sure about. The last time we had an African-American as a geenie was Shaquille O'Neal in "Kazaam", and that was... uhm, how do I put it? ODD? Not saying I don't like the idea, or that Smith's a bad actor, nor that I'm being racist or anything. I guess I just can't see the "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" in this role. And if we're indeed going about race, why couldn't we get another Middle Eastern actor, or at least an Indian for the job? Someone who's more 'racially appropriate'. Of course Smith's appeal is understandable. He's an actual singer so he'll nail the musical part nicely, a natural Oscar-darling for dramatic moments, and has comedic chops that might rival the late Robin Williams. Even if I feel Williams is pretty much irreplacable in this role.

The problem with Smith however, is that he has turned down Tim Burton's "Dumbo" before. That was due to scheduling issue with "Bad Boys 3". That Michael Bay movie had just lost its director, thus putting it on an uncertain delay, yet Smith hasn't walked back to "Dumbo". Thus suggesting that he's probably just not 'keen on' the project. If that's any indication, could we even expect Smith to take a higher coveted role like the Genie instead? Many seems to doubt it. Beside, the current situation is, he's just in "early talks" for this role, and we know that in Hollywood, that means 'nothing is yet set in stone'. Or legal papers, if you prefer to be more modernly accurate. LOL.

If I have a voice in this movie's production, I say just let Genie become a fully CG character. You know, like those household members in "Beauty and the Beast"? Thus they can get practically anyone who's NOT Will Smith to voice the role. Someone who has strong comedic timing, and is equally masterful at singing. Hmmm... why am I suddenly reminded of Seth McFarlane? Perhaps, because he was a standout in Illumination's "Sing!" last year? He can even be a prolific Broadway actor. What about Jamie Fox, Hugh Jackman, Nathan Lane, or... LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA? I think those names are much better choices than Smith. Here's a completely random suggestion though: Timothy Omundson, or Ben Presley from "Galavant"!!! They live in UK, have worked with Alan Menken before, for a Disney's ABC series, and CAN totally sing. Anyway, we can expect confirmation to this pretty soon, because apparently the casting call explicitly stated that: "Rehearsals begin April 2017. Shooting July 2017-January 2018 in the UK.". And April is about to end pretty soon! LOL.

DC Films

Here's a quick one from Warner Bros and DC! Because as we all should understand by now, they won't ever let Marvel take the whole week of spotlight onto themselves, right? They just need to sneak a completely random news of development here and there. This time, it's from Joss Whedon, whose name has been kindly talked about recently thanks to Kevin Feige kindly mentioning him during Marvel Studios' open house. And this news came from a very ironic place too: The red carpet premiere of the new Guardians movie! LOL to that.

The news was, well, Whedon is NOT looking for a big name to fill in her lead actress for "Batgirl". He said clearly, "I don’t have my eye on anyone. I’m creating this character, I’m in a dialogue with her, and then we’ll see who joins that later on. I doubt it’ll be a name.", which means she can be anyone. Whedon had a soft spot for Oscar-nominee Saoirse Ronan before ended up going with Elizabeth Olsen for Wanda Maximoff in "Avengers: Age of Ultron". And his TV works have always involved a strong female lead, like Sarah Michelle-Gellar in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". So he can practically choose any actress for the character, including a relatively unknown. The big question though, how does WB feel about this? And considering the studio's really BAD habbit of pointlessly putting reference, will this actress debuted in "The Batman" before her solo movie? Which means she needs to be cast right away. We'll have to wait and see how this develops.

Wait a sec... turns out this news didn't really come from WB after all. But due to Variety asking Whedon about the project, when they bumped into him at the premiere. So not WB's intentional spotlight-hogging trick this time around. LOL. Sorry WB, my bad. This is why you shouldn't do that to other studios, as people would easily assume you're doing it again and again eventhough you're guilty of charge. Ahahahaha... *sigh*.

Fast and Furious

"The Fate of the Furious", which is a dumb title albeit a nice little twist on 'F8', raced through the box office and conquered the winning lane ever since it debuted. It has even amassed a record breaking global opening of all time, beating 2015's "Star Wars: The Force Awakens"! But with the franchise started getting a little... tiring, the question is, for how much longer it has the engine to keep on running? If the latest statement by producer Neal Moritz is to be believed, we're going to see this drug race-inspired movie - at least - up to "Fast and Furious 10". Which might be dumbly named "Fasten Your Seatbelt". Get it? LOL. That's already one more than the previously reported "Fast and Furious 9" by the way. Remember when Lucas Black was approached to do it until 9, but ended up a no-show in 8?

It certainly ain't stopping anytime soon though. Why? Because already, a plan is in motion for a... spinoff. Yikes! Yes, because apparently, due to the much publicized rift (is it real or fake? That has been settled though, I think... *sigh*) between lead actor Vin Diesel, and new regular Dwayne Johnson, it seems fans are now shipping Johnson's Luke Hobbs with Jason Statham's Deckard Shaw. Yep, the bad guy who killed Sung Kang's Han Seoul-Oh. Seriously, will Han's death ever be avenged? I haven't seen the eighth movie yet, but it sounded like Hobbs and big bro Shaw (while lil bro Shaw was singing his way in "Beauty and the Beast") actually had... great chemistry together?

It's currently 'in talks' stage for now, but I can already see it happening. Particularly considering The Rock would do any film, while Statham is in need of another franchise after his participation in "The Expendables 4" is put into question. Chris Morgan is expected to write, and the timeline would put it between the 8th and 9th movie. I'm not too sure about this idea, but perhaps, somewhere along the line we might be seeing a Han and Gal Gadot's Giselle "Mr & Mrs Smith"-esque movie along the way? Especially after Gadot's profile will get another significant boost following this year's "Wonder Woman". I'd certainly would watch that.

X-Men Universe

Now here's what I consider a rather 'dumb' report serving the headlines for "Deadpool 2". Actress Leslie Uggams is set to reprise her role as Blind Al in the sequel. Why is that dumb? Duh... because she's an important element of the first movie, stealing scene every single time she showed up. It would be a crime to not have her back! Not to mention, he's Wade's roommate. What I'm curious to know however, is whether Morena Baccarin will indeed reprise her role as Vanessa as well. I sure hope she will, otherwise it would mess up continuity... not that FOX have actually cared about it. Then again, Deadpool could've gotten away with it by turning it as a mockery excuse towards FOX. While at the same time, punching jabs towards Marvel Studios' case of Pepper Potts and Jane Foster. Ain't that a good idea, right?

Oh yeah, by the way, FOX has announced the official release date for the movie! Eventhough the first movie opened in February, its success has apparently warranted this sequel to change gears into a Summer movie. Yes, it will now open in June 1st, 2018. Which is a rather crowded spot, since Disney has "Han Solo: A Star Wars Movie" to open in the previous week, and the following week has WB's all-female "Ocean's 8" and Paramount's "Bumblebee" movie. Is this a wise move, then? I doubt. That's the way it is with FOX though, they don't give a damn about things like this. They've also set up Josh Boone's "New Mutants" to arrive on April 13th, 2018. Which is, a few months... AHEAD. Huh?

And a little movie called "X-Men: Dark Phoenix" that will arrive in November 2nd, 2018. Squaring off directly against Disney's "Mulan" live action revisit, this news just came in several hours ago (thank Jesus I can add it before this post goes up *sigh*)! Nope, don't be mistaken, it's not "X-Men: The Last Stand" that practically ruined the franchise the first time. It's a... reboot of said movie? Meaning it has the ultimate potential (same story, same WRITER) to do the same? LOL. Need I remind you, these are 3 different movies, set in an entirely 3 different timeline/universe, right? Once again, LOL to that.

Aaaaanyway. With the uncertainty of WB to produce any DC Films earlier than December's "Aquaman", looks like FOX is snatching all the empty superhero slots, eh? The only empty space is in January, March, and August to October, with SONY's "Venom" already dated in the last one. So NICE move to FOX....!!! I guess? *sigh*

Avatar

This is a direct follow up to the above paragraph. Remember the James Cameron's sequel that was supposed to open on December 2018, but got delayed and thus became occupied by "Aquaman"? Yep, I know what you're thinking. This whole release date business already sounds like a confusing game of chess! Well, brace yourself, because "Avatar 2", the sequel we never even asked, will now open on December 18th, 2020. Eeeeh? Not kidding. But what took Cameron so long to get one done? The answer is, because he's doing all FOUR sequels altogether. Yes, "Avatar 3" has been scheduled to open on December 17th, 2021, while "Avatar 4" and "Avatar 5" are coming in December 20th, 2024 and December 19th, 2025 respectively. Ain't that a mouthful to write! Those, if there's any among you, who are waiting for these... sequels, should be really happy to hear this news. You have 5 years of Avatar-time! You've got to hand it to Cameron though. This here is risky business. VERY risky. I can't even imagine what would happen if the 2nd movie is a bomb.

Marvel Studios

Let's start with the juiciest part! Just last week, I speculated that Marvel Studios will announce the female director for "Captain Marvel" when they return to Hall H of this year's San Diego Comic Con. Well, this is Marvel Studios, a studio known for catching people off guard, and they've done it again. Not just for one, but a double surprise at the same time.

Yes, the director for their first female-led female-centric movie has indeed been selected. And it's not one, but TWO of them! Marvel Studios officially announced (first reported by Variety) that Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck have been assigned to helm the project. So to you who wanted a female director, you get one. And those who prefer a male director, also get one. Fair and square!!! Intriguingly, their names weren't even part of the frontrunners list, so it certainly caught almost everyone by surprise. According to The Hollywood Reporter, apparently Marvel Studios met with several female directors since last summer; from Niki Caro (who has been hired to do "Mulan" instead), Lesli Linka Glatter, Lorene Scafaria, to Lucia Aniello, and Quicksilver's real life wife Sam Taylor-Johnson, with Jennifer Kent and Jennifer Yuh also in the early mix; before ultimately settling in on this "Mississippi Grind" duo. Turns out, they've managed to impress the studio with their vision for the movie, which put focus on elevating character's journey beneath all the spectacle. Sounds like something right up on Marvel Studios' alley, huh?

Just like the Russo Brothers, Boden and Fleck have done more TV based project, instead of big features. Does the similarity to Anthony and Joe feels more than mere coincidence? Clearly Marvel is taking their first female-led superhero VERY seriously. I wouldn't be surprised if Carol Danvers will be taking Steve Rogers' important role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe going forward. To be honest, I'm not at all familiar with the duo's work, not on movies ("It's Kind of a Funny Story", "Sugar", "Half Nelson"), nor TV ("The Affair", "Billions"). But I'm hearing good things about them, and considering Marvel Studios has a powerful knack in choosing who they partnered with (particularly ever since they no longer serve under Ike Perlmutter), I've completely put my trust in their decision. Lest we forget, people doubted that Joss Whedon, James Gunn, and also the Russos would deliver before. And now their movies are considered among MCU's best. With the smart and loveable Oscar-winner Brie Larson more than excited to front, a script currently in progress by Nicole Perlman and Meg LeFauve, and an official production targetting a February 2018 start, "Captain Marvel" will arrive on March 8th, 2019.

After debuting their first worldwide tour in Tokyo, Japan, the Los Angeles Red Carpet Premiere for "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" has been held on Friday. As always, the glamorous event took place at the El Capitan Theatre. Unlike previous movies, I couldn't catch the live stream of this premiere, because I'm running out of data charge on my internet! After all, when you're saving up money to watch the movie (tickets' pre-ordered by the way, yaaaay! XD), you have no choice but to wait until early next month to get it reinvigorated. Whoops, let's get back on track. Most of the cast attended the celebration. Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige, co-president Louis D'Esposito, VFX producer Victoria Alonso, and director James Gunn were obviously leading the pack. They were joined by returning actors Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Karen Gillan, Michael Rooker, and Sean Gunn, as well as new cast members Pom Klementieff, Chris Sullivan, Elizabeth Debicki, and Tommy Flanagan. Veteran actors Kurt Russel and Sylvester Stallone were also in attendance, with a surprise appearance of one David Hasselfhoff! Okay, I didn't even know he has a part in this movie. I thought his name in the recently released Original Soundtrack was just pure coincidence. By the way, said album's tracklist could potentially be considered spoilerish, so you might want to avoid it the way I do.

Another press junket was held following the premiere, and the folks behind this movie has been spilling additional details here and there. The kind of information that you would want to steer away and avoid, if like me, you don't want to be spoiled ahead of the game. This could range from the simplest bit like: - Various critics' reviews as well as the first accumulated RottenTomatoes score can be expected to arrive very soon. So check your favorite entertainment sites in the next 24 hours or more, to see what their journalists have to say about this movie. I'm personally avoiding the internet after this to avoid spoilers, and will get back once I've seen the movie. 3 days from now! YAAASSS!!! \(^o^)/ - The fact that the movie's core theme is about family. Sean Gerber of Modern Myth Media, even said that the movie was "pure love", and something that should be watched together with their family. Gunn even dedicated this movie to his parents during the LA premiere. - That baby Groot is the star of the movie! Even fellow Marvel Studios director Peyton Reed thought he could win an Oscar! - New official images released on Entertainment Weekly that hinted towards various plot points. - A supposed Nathan Fillion's cameo that got edited out. Complete with proof by the actor himself, that turned out to nothing but a... prank? LOL. Though it's possible he's indeed the actor that Gunn openly admitted had to cut during post production. - About "the collector’s museum"-level Easter-Eggs-filled scene that went out in the cutting room... and might not be available as the Deleted Scenes. - About a surprise pop star cameo. - To the more complex one, like the removal of one character by the name of... *drumrolls* Adam Warlock!

Yes, turns out the Warlock was originally a major part of "Vol. 2"! Confirming that it was indeed his cocoon we saw in the first movie, but was decided to be saved for later movies. Once again, Gunn has been pretty open about this before, as he said that the script originally had 'one other' member of the team that he unfortunately had to let go. Yes, he WAS talking about Warlock, as the decision to omit him was because "it was one character too many and I didn’t want to lose Mantis and Mantis was more organically part of the movie anyway. So I decided to save him for later.". Gunn expressed his love for him though, eventhough we also shouldn't expect to see Warlock in "Avengers: Infinity War" as well, much to fans dismay. Nevertheless, Feige gave assurance that we will definitely see this important cosmic being in future movies.

By future, I believe we can expect this important character to show up later in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3", or even earlier in the UNTITLED 2019's Avengers movie. As I've always said, Adam Warlock is an amazing character because he's basically serving as both protagonist and antagonist due to his alter-ego Magus. And the prospect of having him playing a crucial role in future Marvel cosmic universe is enough as an excuse for me. Gunn stated to EW, that the "the three movies work together as a whole, they’re going to tell one story,". Which is exactly the reason why he agreed and excited to continue with "Vol. 3". Don't forget, we're getting Warlock's comic-book's 'sister' Ayesha and her golden-skinned race in this second movie. It would be very obvious, if Warlock will indeed take the follow up spotlight on "Vol. 3". One more thing, Gunn's collaboration with Marvel Studios won't be stopping after "Vol. 3". Birth.Movies.Death speculated, that Gunn is basically the architect of Marvel Studios' future cosmic universe, and I'm inclined to agree on that. Which his role important going forward. After all, Feige himself stated that Gunn "could easily oversee additional stories beyond Vol. 3.". I honestly can't wait to see what we can expect next in the massive galactic side of MCU, considering some of its more popular properties like Galactus, or Silver Surfer, are owned by FOX.

With one movie of 2017 out of the way, when can we expect the 2nd one then? The Los Angeles premiere for "Spider-Man: Homecoming" has been set for June 28th, 2017. Similar to the case of "Vol. 2", we can expect first screening reactions, critics reviews, and all the information dump related to Tom Holland's solo movie, beginning on early June. Or perhaps, much earlier? Yep, L.A. Times shared a new official photo of Spidey inside a pipe, accompanied by a breakdown of what his VERY convenient suit can do. After all, it's Tony Stark's creation! LOL. There's another one from EW, included in an article that focused on director Jon Watts' and Holland's experience with the production, considering the two "were in the same boat". In case you forget, "Homecoming" is the only MCU movie this year that takes place on Earth! So in that sense, it could be considered an important movie, because it's one of two that will directly lead up towards "Infinity War".

The other one is of course, Ryan Coogler's "Black Panther" that will arrive February 16th next year. A movie that had just wrapped production in Atlanta, but already sounds stunningly promising in many delicate ways: first female cinematographer in Rachel Morrison, dashing 'tribal-modern fusion' costumes by Oscar nominee Ruth E. Carter, fully imaginative high-tech metropolitan Wakanda, and stellar supporting cast, among others. Both Holland's Peter Parker and Chadwick Boseman's T'Challa debuted in "Captain America: Civil War" to critical acclaimed last year. We know that the two has officially joined the MCU's shirtless club, that even the bigwigs at Marvel Studios thought as something brag-worthy (LOL!!!). Yet the biggest question for them, is whether their stand-alone features will perform as good, or even better as the hype. Whether the directorial visions of Watts and Coogler are the right ones to catapult each solo title into their own franchises. Because if they are, then they will be joining the likes of Peyton Reed and Scott Derrickson who are moving forward with their second MCU movie.

Meanwhile, production for "Infinity War" is still ongoing in Scotland. And the latest sighting will make fans of the comics glee with joy. Why? Actor Paul Bettany was seen filming a romantic scene with Elizabeth Olsen, confirming that the relationship of his Victor Sha... I mean Vision and her Wanda Maximoff actually have progressed significantly since their encounter in "Avengers: Age of Ultron". There's something more to the scene though, because Bettany is NOT in his thick Vision makeup! Thus many have been assuming this could be either a dream-scene, or an alternate reality caused by one of the Infinity Stones. In fact, it makes sense to be the movie's happy ending too.

Speaking of 'happy ending', don't assume that this scene is part of the 2019's UNTITLED Avengers movie. Why? Eventhough the Russos DID plan to film both movies concurrently, apparently what might have sounded possible in theory, didn't work out so well in practice. Feige revealed to Collider, that the studio has decided to change course, and film both movies as back-to-back but entirely separate productions. "It became too complicated to cross-board them like that, and we found ourselves—again, something would always pay the price", he admitted, which might point out various issues like technical requirements of making sure both movie would be different from one another, actor's scheduling, and others. Which means, every behind the scenes candid images we've seen so far, are all part of "Infinity War". Feige then confirmed that they expect filming for the first movie to wrap in July, before moving on with the next one in August. Think of it like how Peter Jackson worked on his "The Lord of the Rings" or "The Hobbit" trilogies.

Last but not least, Feige also teased that while they are focusing on the seven ongoing tasks at hand, the MCU might be 'evolving' into a different form/route beginning in Phase 4. If... it can even be called that way, of course. "Certainly as we get to Infinity War there is a sense of a climax if not a conclusion to, by the time we’re at untitled Avengers 4, the 22 movies that will have encompassed the first three phases of the MCU. And what happens after that will be very different. I don’t know if it’s Phase 4, it might be a new thing.", he openly said to Collider. Intriguing, because if we observe closer, two of the confirmed titles ("Vol. 3" and "Homecoming 2") have their own separate and unique timelines; one probably mere months apart, while the other taking the "Harry Potter" yearly approach. A third that has been unofficially confirmed, the next chapter to "Doctor Strange", isn't likely to be bound by time and space either. Feige summed up that after 2019's Avengers movie, the MCU is "gonna be very, very different.". Hmmm... let's just say, I won't be at all surprised if the official title for Avengers 4 is called... "AVENGERS: SECRET WARS"! *wink*

Marvel TV

As Marvel's "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." closing in on its 4th season finale, the fate of this ABC network series remains a huge question. Will it be renewed for a 5th year? And will it serve as the final season, as Entertainment Weekly has predicted before? Fans of the show, however small and numbered it might be, are anxious to find out. But while we're waiting for the answer, Marvel TV isn't stopping anytime soon. Instead, they are moving forward with their two Freeform projects.

The first one is Marvel's "New Warriors", as the former ABC family network officially announced its main roster! As speculated, it's a combination of actual "New Warriors" members from the comics, as well as ones from "Great Lake Avengers". The characters were revealed last week, complete with a catchy comic book art to accompany the announcement. They are (in list, because I love one): - Doreen Green, or Squirrel Girl. Well, duh? Obviously she's part of the show! Because it's the character that Freeform has always wanted to get from the beginning. According to Freeform, Doreen is an empowered girl, and a natural leader. Fitting to her power of acrobatic, and as such, she is bouncy and energetic. She will be accompanied by her pet squirrel Tippy Toe, everywhere she goes. - Craig Hollis, or Mister Immortal. True to his superhero alias, he's practically unable to die. Problem is, the lazy guy hasn't made use of this ability at all, and tends to be cocky and grumpy instead. Freeform calls him as the team's troublemaker. Or as I would see it... the jerk whom I would easily hate. - Dwayne Taylor, or Night Thrasher. He doesn't have any super ability, but he's a... Youtube artist? Huh? Ain't that something that the millenials would dig, right? He's rich kid who's pretending he's not, because he's a local celebrity 'hero' who is... shamelessly full of himself. Wow, our first two guys both sound annoying already. - Robbie Baldwin, or Speedball. His ability is to launch kinetic balls of energy, which of course would require CG work. His character description is kind of important, because it confirms that the show takes place in the MCU. Yes, because he's a fan of the Avengers Tower. Unfortunately, he's "impulsive and immature people-pleaser with a misplaced sense of confidence". My oh my, why do all the guys are characterized like this? - Zack Smith, or Microbe. This guy might already be my favorite, because he's a shy and sweet big guy who... talks to germs? Huh? Yep, his ability practically turns him into some kind of telepath, as he can tell everything from the millions germs scattering in the planet. Considering the MCU has very few people who can be categorized as an actual telepath (Scarlet Witch, and Mantis?), this is a good excuse to make Zack be another one. Judging from the character design, it seems like an Asian-American is going to be cast for this character. - Deborah Fields, or Debrii. This lesbian African-American is proud, and has a sharp tongue. Always unafraid to say what she thinks, and calls out people on their BS. Sounds like an amazing frenemy to either Craig, Dwayne, or Robbie, right? She has the power of telekinesis, and also acts as some sort of trickster.

If you ask me, I think these characters are good, and also wise choices because they represent diversity. No actor has been announced just yet because the casting process is said to commence very soon. But considering how fast this show is moving forward since it was greenlit, I wouldn't be surprised if we're getting cast announcement next week! I'm still not sure if I can see this show, considering it's airing on Freeform, but the idea of a 30-minutes 10-episodes only live-action comedy is too good for me to miss out. Obviously, if there's one main concern I have for it, is whether they can nail the VFX for show or not. And how much practical effects that will be utilized. Like the case of Tippy Toe, will an actual squirrel plays the rodent? Or a completely CG character? Of course, having characters like Mister Immortal, Night Thrasher, and Microbe is a beneficial cheat, considering their abilities can all be done practically. Even Debrii's power can also be done through simple camera tricks. The biggest challenge would be Speedball's, and the appearance of Squirrel Girl. Let's hope showrunner Kevin Biegel, and Marvel TV can work these out. Marvel's "New Warriors" is expected to arrive in 2018, which means, plenty of time to get the VFX done.

The first trailer for Marvel's "Cloak and Dagger" has been released! I did NOT see this coming. After all, the series won't premiere until Winter 2018, right? Unless, that literally means January or February, since both months are still regarded as winter. Hmmmm. Anyway, as soon as I'm done with the trailer, I'm 100% certain that this show is NOT for me. Not saying it's bad, because the whole teenage romance thing is, well, certainly new for Marvel. So a 'good job' for them is at hand? I don't know why, it just doesn't work for me. The lack of special effects, perhaps (that practical one looks... weak, and fake)? Too soap-opera for my taste, probably? Or is it because a conservative soul like me and some others just couldn't get the charm of it. Maaaaan, I feel old *sigh*. As I said before, as much as I liked the characters in the comics, I'm going to give this series a pass. It's definitely a no go for me. The only thing I liked about this is the logo... and that's saying much.

I can't help but wonder if these lovers would somehow, in some way, have a crossover with the "New Warriors". Both are running in the same network, and the age gap between their characters aren't too big. Of course, we must not forget that "Cloak and Dagger" takes place in New Orleans, while "New Warriors" will be in... hold on, they haven't mentioned where the setting will be, huh? Character description for Speedball mentioned 'Avengers Tower' though, so it likely takes place in New York. If that's the case, now I'm wondering if Squirrel Girl and her friends will bump into any of the Defenders, or Doctor Strange, or even Spider-Man? Aaargh.... this whole #itsallconnected thing is confusing.

Netflix

Would you look at that! Marvel's "Luke Cage" has... begun production for its 2nd season? Wowzers... Marvel is certainly firing on all cylinders, attacking on all front last week, huh? However, just like Marvel's "Jessica Jones", this report didn't arrive from Marvel, who usually posted an official announcement for a start of production. Instead, this silently came into public's attention through some keen-eyed fans who spotted the working title of "Luke Cage" being set up in Port Washington, New York. Add to that, Simone Missick's tweet about her training for the new season, and many can easily come into the same deduction.

Intriguingly, assuming this report IS true, "Luke Cage" going into production at the same time as "Jessica Jones" feels a little suspicious, eh? If I recall correctly, "Jessica Jones" showrunner Melissa Rosenberg did teased about Mike Colter's Luke's appearance in the series. So I'm secretly wishing this is the case, because his presence did wonder in the 1st season. Don't forget, Colter was cast due to his chemistry with Krysten Ritter! As for "Luke Cage", we need to remember that showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker actually wanted to do a "Heroes for Hire" show. But we all know how it turned out right? He was hired to do the solo series instead. With Scott Buck being occupied with Marvel's "The Inhumans", and the uncertainty of his Marvel's "Iron Fist" getting another season (sad to say, it's Netflix and Marvel TV's worst-reviewed show so far), could we be seeing Finn Jones' Danny Rand and Jessica Henwick's Colleen Wing entering the world of Luke Cage instead? I certainly hope so, because that would be the WISEST decision for both series. Coker would get what he have always wanted, and Marvel fans can finally see these two lead characters turning into that charming best buddies we've always seen in various other medias. Not to mention, Missick's Misty Knight can pair up with Henwick's Colleen as well. Once again, just like in the comics! To be honest, I don't have any interest to see new season for both series at this moment, but a pleasant twist like that would totally alter said plan completely... XD

Of course, that's merely a random speculation on my part. And a wishful thinking too. If the recent exclusive on MCU Exchange is also true, then well, such fantastic crossover already sounds unlikely. Which means, there goes my excitement level...

As for Marvel's "The Punisher", Tyler Bates who has done work for James Gunn's MCU movies, will be lending his hand to score the series. Possibly hinting towards a more rock and roll, or heavy metal vibe to the music. One more thing, actress Rosario Dawson had openly stated that she won't be showing in the series. Not really a surprise, because her Claire Temple never really interacted with Jon Bernthal's Frank Castle before. I think her role will specifically be taken over by Deborah Ann Woll's Karen Page this time. She did remark that she would love to be in it, but scheduling conflict somehow prevented her from doing so. Marvel's "The Punisher" is expected to premiere this Fall.

Kamen Rider Shally

Tokusatsu scooper Dukemon, posted some reports regarding the next Kamen Rider season following "Kamen Rider Ex-Aid". According to him, the rumored title will be "Kamen Rider Shally", and as previously hinted before, is a SUSHI-themed. Shally will be using the Shally Driver, and Neta Units to transform. He added that Shally will have three forms, obtained through the Neta units: Maguro, Ika, and Tamago. These are all obviously named after variants of Sushi that uses tuna, squid, and roll-egg respectively. For now, we need to consider this rumor with a huge grain of salt. But Dukemon is reliable, as many report he posted ended up becoming a fact. So I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Persona

"Persona 5" is still taking the main attention of many Persona-fans until now, but it seems Atlus is already moving forward with new projects for the franchise. According to Gematsu, Ryu's Office, the company who worked with Atlus to register domain names, has submited several Persona-related ones on April 18th. These names include: P3D, P5AG, P5D, P5R, P5U, Persona-Dance, PQ2. Three more were submitted on April 4: Persona8, Persona9, and Persona10.

Since they have created a crossover title between "Persona 4" and "Persona 3" before in form of "Persona 4 Arena", it seems likely that one of said domain might be a continuation to said title. Perhaps, the P5U one stands for "Persona 5 Ultimax/Arena"? I hope that's the case, because the possibility of the Phantom Thieves of Heart crossing path with the Inaba Investigation Team is too good to ignore. The notion of a Persona title from 8 to 10 is also intriguing. I don't recall we have heard any rumble of a "Persona 6" just yet, but they already book the spot up to 10! That's... WOW, right? Nevertheless, if Atlus can continue building better and better game like what they have done with P5, I don't see why there can't be a "Persona 10" somewhere in the franchise's bright future...

#Random-News-Digest #random thoughts #news #movie #Disney #Aladdin #dc #deadpool #new mutants #avatar #fast and furious #Marvel Studios #Captain Marvel #guardians of the galaxy vol. 2 #black panther #Spider-Man: Homecoming #Avengers #infinity war #TV show #marvel #New Warriors #cloak and dagger #netflix #Luke Cage #the punisher #game #persona 5 #tokusatsu #kamen rider

[zhumeimv]

This Is How Jay And Silent Bob Could Join The MCU

This Is How Jay And Silent Bob Could Join The MCU

Date: 2019-10-14 14:00:07

[aoa id=’0′][dn_wp_yt_youtube_source type=”101″ id=”dMSJ67Iw_64″][/aoa]

Jay and Silent Bob are coming back to spoof comic book movies, Hollywood, and more once again in Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. But what if Jason Mewes’ and Kevin Smith’s iconic stoner duo did more than just smoke herb and spoof superheroes? What if they actually went out and joined the superheroes’…

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[biofunmy]

As ‘Dark Phoenix’ ends the X-Men movie era, we rank all 12 films from worst to best

There was a time when X marked the spot when it came to superhero movies.

The X-Men are the founding fathers of the current era of superpowers and capes that now dominates theaters not just in the summer but year-round. These films have gone through reboots and unlikely discoveries (an R-rated Deadpool movie works? Who knew?) and have managed to produce a dozen films in almost 20 years.

Although they aren’t the cultural force they once were — especially compared with Marvel Studios, which didn’t exist when “X-Men” arrived in theaters in 2000 — there is no denying their place in history as the beginning of a geek awakening at the movies.

Here is our ranking of all 12 X-Men films.

12. “X-Men: The Last Stand” (2006)

This film was doomed the moment Bryan Singer, who helmed the first two “X-Men” films, abandoned the franchise to make “Superman Returns.” (Unfortunately, that Supes movie wasn’t the return to relevance Warner Bros. was hoping for.) Once Brett Ratner took over the director’s chair, a rushed production led to X3 losing all of the good vibes the first two films earned from fans. And a long, red coat does not a Dark Phoenix make.

11. “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” (2009)

Hugh Jackman as Wolverine is one of the most beloved superhero performances ever, right up there with Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man and Heath Ledger’s Joker. That wasn’t enough to save this movie, however: It botched the adaptation of Wolverine’s incredible origin tale from the comics, which takes place in Canada in the late 1800s. The film reduces the story of his adolescence to a few flashbacks and spends the rest of the movie building toward the debut of a mute Deadpool. (Ryan Reynolds would go on to redeem this decision on the Merc with a Mouth a few years later.)

10. “X-Men: Apocalypse” (2016)

If you’re going to name a movie after an all-time supervillain, your take on said villain better be on point. That didn’t happen here when it was decided that Apocalypse, a fan-favorite X-Men antagonist, would be portrayed by Oscar Isaac caked in makeup instead of the Josh Brolin-as-Thanos CGI approach that would have made more visual sense. You didn’t need the mind of Professor X to realize that wasn’t going to look good on film.

9. “Dark Phoenix” (2019)

The decision to reboot the story line from “X-Men: The Last Stand” wasn’t the most original way to say goodbye to this franchise and added to the feeling of irrelevance surrounding this movie. The writing was already on the wall that Marvel Studios, after Twentieth Century Fox’s deal with Disney, had a better X-Men story — even if it hadn’t come up with one yet.

8. “The Wolverine” (2013)

Stories about Wolverine’s time in Japan, from the dramatic to the romantic, always worked well in the comics and do in this film as well. Jackman gives his second-best performance ever as the indestructible mutant Logan. The final-act battle with the Silver Samurai is a bit over the top and clashes with the overall tone of the film, but we get a key hint — in the form of a mutant who can see the future — of the fate that awaits Wolverine in a later, well-received movie that ranks higher on this list.

[Why Robert Pattinson — yes, the former vampire — is a promising pick to play Batman]

7. “X-Men: First Class” (2011)

The start of the X-Men movie reboot gave us a different timeline (the 1960s) and new actors in key roles. The Professor X (James McAvoy)/Magneto (Michael Fassbender) dynamic was as intense as ever, thanks to Fassbender’s grinding teeth. And Mystique became an unlikely leader thanks to the relatively newfound star presence of Jennifer Lawrence.

6. “Deadpool 2” (2018)

The sequel followed the same formula of the first film: dirty humor and lots of guns and swords. And Reynolds and company gave us the guy who played Thanos as the popular mutant Cable, and an X-Force twist no one saw coming.

5. “Deadpool” (2016)

The first “Deadpool” movie cracks the top five for being the one X-Men movie made after 2008 that didn’t have fans clamoring for Marvel Studios to take over. That’s partially because Marvel Studios and its permanently PG-13 world just couldn’t “go there” with the assist of an R rating. The movie was a brutal and unforgiving mix of comedy, violence, sex and profanity that paved the way for another X-character on our list to go the R-rated route as well.

4. “X-Men: Days of Future Past” (2014)

Merging the rebooted X-Men franchise with the actors from the original trilogy while following one of the comic book’s most popular tales worked surprisingly well in this future doom adventure. We also finally a got a fully formed Iceman in this film — a victory within itself.

3. “X-Men” (2000)

The year 2000 was the big bang of comic-book-inspired superhero cinema, which still thrives at the box office two decades later. There might not have been a Marvel Studios at all had “X-Men” not proved to Hollywood that superheroes were a trend worth revisiting.

2. “X2: X-Men United” (2003)

Widely regarded as the most satisfying X-Men film — and aided by a 2003 release date that would hold off Marvel Studios comparisons for another five years — X2 is now a classic in the age it helped create. Perfectly cast, it was a true superhero team effort almost a decade before the Avengers would arrive at the box office, and far and away the best of the original trilogy.

1. “Logan” (2017)

James Mangold’s “Logan” was an emotional and gritty goodbye, both on-screen and off, for Jackman’s one-of-a-kind performance as the legendary comic-book character. And Dafne Keen gives a rage-filled and emotional performance as Wolverine clone/his daughter Laura, a.k.a. X23. After well over a century of life, Wolverine sadly learns that even his story eventually comes to a bitter end.

Read more:

The reign of Marvel Studios makes Fox’s ‘Dark Phoenix’ irrelevant, whether it’s good or not

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[purple-pen-reviews]

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)

Rating: 8.3/10

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a 2011 sci-fi action movie directed by Rupert Wyatt. It stars James Franco, Freida Pinto, John Lithgow, Brian Cox, Tom Felton, and Andy Serkis, along with David Oyelowo, Karin Konoval, Terry Notary, Tyler Labine, and Richard Ridings. The film is a second reboot of the Planet of the Apes franchise, based on the premise presented in the French novel La Planète des Singes (Planet of the Apes or Monkey Planet in English), and is similar in premise to the fourth movie in the original Planet of the Apes series, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. The film is about a doctor (Franco’s character) researching a cure for Alzheimer’s using apes as test subject, whose cure accidentally makes one of the test chimpanzee’s children, Caesar, much smarter than average apes, to the point where he begins to question his own existence, among other things. 

Much like the series it rebooted, Rise of the Planet of the Apes shines as well as innovates as a visual production. Though at times the CGI does not pass very well, there are certain scenes that work, particularly action scenes and scenes that emphasize Caesar’s facial expressions. Speaking of, Serkis’ performance as Caesar is absolutely stellar. Just as the original Planet of the Apes made waves in Hollywood for its makeup and visual effects, Rise of the Planet of the Apes proved to the movie-making community that motion-capture actors deserve as much commendation for their work as their non-computer-generated counterparts. Though other performances, such as Lithgow’s and Felton’s, were noteworthy, it is Andy Serkis as Caesar who truly stands above the rest in this movie. 

The only thing holding this movie back from getting a higher score is that its plot at times can become a little far-fetched. This is not a major problem - only at certain times did the events of the movie make me lose my suspension of disbelief. However, I’ve seen worse plots for better premises, and the story isn’t completely appalling. Though the plot isn’t super great, the focus is taken off of it by its action scenes. In particular, the scene on the Golden Gate Bridge stands out to me as one of the best in the movie. There are also a few dramatic scenes that kept me looking past the plot holes. So, in the end, even though the story could use work, the other aspects of the movie outshine it well enough to ignore it. 

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a worthy reboot to the sci-fi classic. Its action and dramatic scenes are great, being extremely noteworthy in that they were mostly created through computer-generated imagery. Though certain events in the story are hard to believe, the plot is not completely outlandish for a sci-fi film. Andy Serkis’ performance is outstanding, eclipsing any of the other actors in this film by a wide margin, an especially commendable statement considering his entire performance was done in motion-capture. I would personally recommend seeing this movie for its excellent imagery, if not necessarily for its story.

I cannot heap enough praise upon Andy Serkis for his role in this film. Though the effects have not aged terribly well - even for a movie that came out less than a decade ago - it did something more than put on a visually stunning show. It proved to Hollywood that a motion-capture performance is just as viable as a normal performance. Honestly, I thought this would’ve been proven already by Serkis’ portrayal of Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but I suppose Hollywood needed a little more. Serkis wasn’t the only good performance in the movie though - John Lithgow’s portrayal of a man in the increasingly destructive late stages of Alzheimer’s was emotionally reminiscent of my own grandfather, who suffers from Alzheimer’s as well. I can’t say the same about Franco’s performance however. It wasn’t terrible, I’ll grant him that, and I commend him for showing his range, however he didn’t necessarily give a stand-out performance, and is in many ways outshined by Serkis. One of the scenes that stands out in my mind is when he attacks one of his neighbors to defend Lithgow’s character, who he perceived was in danger, but soon realizes his mistake, the way Caesar’s eyes and face move is actually moving. You can see the visible regret on his face - a chimpanzee’s face. In this moment, the CGI does not enhance Serkis’ performance, but rather Serkis enhances the CGI with his performance. It’s honestly amazing. 

Another scene I liked was the skirmish on the Golden Gate Bridge - it was just really cool. The way Caesar used the different species of apes’ different abilities to strategize how best to defeat the humans was really fun to watch. That’s the best I can say about this movie’s third act - it’s definitely fun to watch. Though the story leading up to it has some holes, its worth suspending your disbelief to get to the final product - all-out ape action. 

My favorite scene in the movie comes at the turning point of the film, when Tom Felton’s character begins tormenting Caesar, and Caesar grabs his hand and yells “NO!” It gave me goosebumps. The silence following it, along with the shocked expressions on the faces of both apes and men alike make it an almost perfect scene - almost. Only one thing keeps this scene from being absolutely perfect, and that is the way Felton delivers the line, “get your paws off me, you damn dirty ape!” It’s a reference to the first Planet of the Apes movie, but within the context of the scene, quoting it verbatim doesn't really work. It sounds awkward, and forced. This is not Felton’s fault, however, it has more to do with the way the dialogue was originally written. When the original Planet of the Apes movie came out, Hollywood tended to favor the grandiose over the realistic. The way Charlton Heston was supposed to deliver the dialogue is different than what would have made sense for Felton to deliver it as. It just doesn’t work in this context - which is a hard-to-ignore blemish on an otherwise incredible scene.

I also commend the film for its messages about animal rights. It presents its morals in a way that doesn’t beat the viewer over the head, yet at the same time makes sure it gets its message across.

Overall, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a great movie. Not a perfect movie, but a great movie. It has its ups, as well as its downs, but it’s definitely worth the price of whatever you usually pay to watch movies, if not more.

#Rise of the Planet of the Apes #Planet of the Apes #2011 Movies #movies #sci-fi films #action films #Rupert Wyatt #James Franco #Freida Pinto #John Lithgow #Brian Cox #Tom Felton #Andy Serkis #David Oyelowo #Karin Konoval #Terry Notary #Tyler Labine #Richard Ridings #entertainment

[wazafam]

The COVID pandemic has thrown a lot of plans into question, and it has impacted millions of jobs around the world. The movie industry is no different. Everything was shut down back in March, and while some productions continue to be delayed, many more have resumed under strict COVID protocols.

RELATED: 10 Pandemic Movies That Are Actually Reassuring

The movie industry is certainly a resilient beast, and while its entire future may have been thrown into question by the COVID pandemic and resulting lockdowns, it has found a way to survive and thrive. Many major Hollywood films have been filmed - or are currently filming - through the pandemic, including these.

10 Mission: Impossible 7

Perhaps the biggest and most expensive movie currently filming through the pandemic is Mission: Impossible 7. Serving as the follow-up to the widely acclaimed Fallout, Mission: Impossible 7 will reunite much of the major cast, including Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, and Rebecca Ferguson.

Filming began in September but halted in October after twelve different people contracted COVID. The filming process made headlines in late December 2020, as the media got hold of some leaked audio that saw an irritated Cruise yelling at some crew members for disobeying COVID safety protocols.

9 Uncharted

Based on the popular video game series of the same name, Uncharted will star Tom Holland as Nathan Drake and Mark Wahlberg as Sully. Filming on the movie began on March 16, but shut down just a few days later owing to the worldwide COVID lockdowns.

Filming officially resumed in Germany throughout the summer before moving to Italy in the fall. Filming officially wrapped at the end of October, with Antonio Banderas being the only major cast member to test positive throughout the filming process.

8 Avatar 2

It seems as if Avatar 2 has been in the works for years. James Cameron has been talking about a sequel for the last ten years, but nothing much ever came to fruition. That is, until the late 2010s, when talk of filming finally got underway.

Principal photography on performance capture began in September 2017, with live action filming following a few years later. Filming began in New Zealand in May of 2020 following a two week hotel quarantine undergone by the cast and crew. Cameron concluded the New Zealand filming the following September.

7 Jurassic World: Dominion

Serving as the sixth installment in the incredibly popular Jurassic Park franchise, Dominion will serve as a direct sequel to 2018's Fallen Kingdom. Many Jurassic Park veterans will be returning for the film, including Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, and Laura Dern.

RELATED: 10 Pandemic Movies To Stream While Quarantined With Coronavirus

Filming was put on indefinite hiatus in March of 2020, but it officially resumed on July 6 with the cast and crew living in a rented-out hotel. Following further delays for positive COVID tests, filming on the movie officially wrapped on November 7, 2020.

6 Elvis

The world is finally getting a movie about Elvis Presley. Co-written and directed by stylish director Baz Luhrmann, Elvis is scheduled for release on November 5, 2021 and will star Austin Butler as the iconic rock and roll legend. Tom Hanks will also appear as Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker.

Hanks tested positive for COVID on March 12, 2020, making him one of the first major movie stars to test positive for the virus. He luckily recovered, and filming on the movie resumed in September.

5 The Batman

Serving as yet another reboot of the Batman franchise, Matt Reeves' The Batman will cover Bruce Wayne's second year of professional crime fighting. Playing Batman is Robert Pattinson, who will star alongside Paul Dano as The Riddler, Jeffrey Wright as James Gordon, and Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman.

Filming on the movie resumed in September but quickly halted again after Pattinson tested positive for COVID. Like Hanks, Pattinson luckily recovered and filming was allowed to resume. It is expected to continue until February 2021.

4 The Little Mermaid

Disney looks to continue its tradition of live-action remakes with The Little Mermaid. Serving as a remake of the iconic 1989 original, this will feature Javier Bardem as King Triton, Melissa McCarthy as Ursula, and Halle Bailey as Ariel.

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It will also feature new songs by Hamilton's Lin-Manuel Miranda (who also did the music for Moana). Some actors started recording their lines by the end of July, and in November 2020, Disney's CEO Bob Chapek announced that every movie that had been delayed due to COVID had resumed filming.

3 The Harder They Fall

The Harder They Fall is shaping up to be a good, old fashioned traditional Western - only with a hint of truth behind it. Distributed exclusively by Netflix, The Harder They Fall will star Jonathan Majors as Nat Love, a real-life African-American cowboy who seeks revenge for his parents' murder. Idris Elba will also star as a character named Rufus Buck.

The COVID lockdowns hit right before The Harder They Fall could begin filming, and they eventually started up in September. Filming was briefly paused in mid-October after one of the actors had tested positive.

2 We Need To Do Something

We Need to Do Something is an upcoming psychological horror, and it will serve as the first movie from production company Spin a Black Yarn. The movie will star Sierra McCormick as Melissa, a woman who is trapped inside of a bathroom with her family during a fierce and destructive tornado.

The movie will also star Vinessa Shaw and Pat Healy. The movie was completely filmed throughout the fall of 2020, spanning four weeks throughout September and October.

1 Don't Worry Darling

While mostly known for her acting, Olivia Wilde directed the widely acclaimed Booksmart in 2019. Her anticipated follow-up is Don't Worry Darling, which is set to star Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Chris Pine, and Wilde herself.

The plot of the movie remains relatively unknown, aside from the fact that it will follow a 1950s housewife who discovers some type of secret. Pre-production occurred throughout much of the fall, and filming finally commenced on October 20. However, it was temporarily halted just a few days later after a crew member contracted COVID.

NEXT: 10 Best Movies Released During The Pandemic, Ranked Via IMDB

10 Major Hollywood Movies That Are Currently Filming Through The Pandemic from https://ift.tt/3bRAx8z

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[tune-collective]

Ludacris to Host MTV's 'Fear Factor' Revival

Ludacris to Host MTV's 'Fear Factor' Revival

The rapper/actor also signed an overall deal with the Viacom-owned network.

MTV is putting a new spin on Fear Factor.

The younger-skewing Viacom network has revived Fear Factor with an order for a 12-episode reboot to be hosted and exec produced by Ludacris, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. The revival, which will premiere Tuesday, May 30, at 10 p.m., is the first project to stem from a new overall deal MTV inked with Ludacris.

The new incarnation will flip the script on its targeted Generation Z audience and instead of gross-out challenges (like eating worms), will be more playful with the hope of providing a cathartic tension release along the way. The newly designed stunts are geared at tapping into visceral fears of today’s anxious youth — such as couch surfing at 300 feet and waterlogging personal cellphones.

Inspired by urban legends, scary movies and online videos from the zeitgeist, contestants will be pushed beyond their comfort zones where their body’s physiological responses will take over. Each hourlong episode will feature eight contestants pairing up in four teams of two — think siblings, college rivalries, roommates, best friends, co-workers and exes — and facing off for a cash prize.

The MTV reboot hails from Endemol Shine North America, which produced the original series. Original exec producers Anthony Carbone and Kevin Wehrenberg are returning to serve in the same capacity. They will be joined by Charles Wachter (American Gladiators), Rob Smith and Robin Feinberg for Endemol. MTV head of unscripted Nina L. Diaz will oversee for the network alongside Pamela Post and Tim Palazzola.

“MTV is about celebrating youth culture, and with the reinvented Fear Factor, we are putting the power in our audience’s hands to face and overcome their biggest fears,” MTV, VH1 and Logo president Chris McCarthy said. “We are thrilled to partner with Ludacris, one of the biggest global stars who has a rich history with MTV, to energize this franchise for a whole new generation.”

Fear Factor first launched on NBC in 2001 and ran for six seasons where it is said to have generated $600 million in ad revenue. The series was the first reality competition show to be sold in syndication, with repeats airing on NBCUniversal’s horror and suspense network Chiller. NBC revived the series in 2011 with original host Joe Rogan returning for the one-season run.

  Fear Factor was based on a Dutch format called Now or Neverland, with NBC and Endemol changing the franchise’s name for U.S. audiences. It has been adapted all over the world.

Ludacris will take over as host, previously Rogan’s role. Fear Factor comes at a busy time for the singer-actor, who recently released the first single from his forthcoming studio album. He also has been busy doing press ahead of the April 14 debut of The Fate of the Furious, in which he reprises his role as Tej. He next voices a role in the animated feature Show Dogs. Fear Factor will be his largest TV commitment to date. He’s repped by CAA and Fox Rothschild.

“I am excited to kick off my partnership with MTV, starting with the relaunch of Fear Factor, which will be even more insane and ludicrous than what you remember,” he said. “This will be the first of many great projects together.”

Fear Factor becomes the latest unscripted show to get a revival as the reality space returns to its roots as new concepts — and hits — become increasingly challenging to find. ABC is bringing back Battle of the Network Stars as the Disney-owned network has found success with other retro shows like Celebrity Family Feud and Match Game as well as the upcoming Love Connection and Gong Show.

For MTV, Fear Factor joins a roster of reality competition series including veteran The Challenge and recent launch Stranded With a Million Dollars. The decision to revive Fear Factor comes as MTV president Chris McCarthy has stressed his plan to reinvigorate the network focus on “everything it is to be young” with universal moments similar to those seen on staples The Hills, Jersey Shore and Laguna Beach. Below, McCarthy talks with The Hollywood Reporter about what to expect from the new Fear Factor and how it fits in with his vision for MTV.

Talk us through the decision to reboot Fear Factor. What made that franchise appealing for MTV?

Fear Factor is one of the iconic franchises that people still talk about, and it continues to resonate within culture. With so much change in the world, young people have a rising sense of anxiety. Our reinvented Fear Factor was designed to directly tackle this, and empower the audience to face their fears head on and overcome them in a fun, spirited way.

The original series had its share of controversy for gross and inhumane challenges. How will you avoid that?

We are updating the challenges that will include fresh physical stunts and mental challenges, relevant to today’s culture. Each episode will provide contestants the platform to test their physical, emotional and mental strength, as well as the opportunity to overcome their biggest fears.  No two episodes will be alike. We’re not about grossing out for gross out sake. This is an adrenaline-filled show that is about testing physical, mental and emotional strength, as well as the ability to overcome our biggest fears. 

How much is the cash prize?

There will be a $50,000 per episode cash prize.

Will Joe Rogan be involved at all?

No, but you never know who may pop up.

In success, is this a renewable series or a one-off?

We have the highest hopes for this franchise and believe it has a long road ahead of it.

How does Fear Factor speak to the types of programming that the new MTV is looking for?

MTV is at its best when we are celebrating the spirit of youth culture from escapism to activism. We have many more series soon to be announced including a return to live programming, coming of age docuseries and of course scripted and one-of-a-kind music tentpoles that have made MTV one of the most iconic youth culture brands in the world.

What does having Fear Factor mean for The Challenge? Can both shows coexist?  

The Challenge and Fear Factor can absolutely coexist — in fact they are complementary. Fear Factor has different contestants from episode to episode, empowering our audience in self-contained challenges and episodes. The Challenge is an investment in characters and the tensions between them in a serialized format.

This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.

This article originally appeared on Billboard.

http://tunecollective.com/2017/04/16/ludacris-host-mtvs-fear-factor-revival/

#factor #fear #host #ludacris #mtvs #revival