These Are Your GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY

There've been snaps from the SDCC trailer around for months, but this is the first official heroes-lineup still from James Gunn's GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY - the last new Marvel Studios movie before AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON and the first test of whether the Marvel brand can extend it's thus-far bulletproof box office credibility outside of the superhero genre; in this case, to a space-set scifi/action-comedy:

From left to right: Zoe Saldana as GAMORA, Chris Pratt as STARLORD, Bradley Cooper (voice) as ROCKET RACCOON, David Bautista as DRAX THE DESTROYER and Vin Diesel as GROOT.

In the SDCC footage, this scene (they're in a police lineup) served for irreverent tone-setting: following a big dump of action/FX footage, there's a hard-cut to this lineup, overseen by a pair of NOVA CORPS officers (including John C. Reilly!) who opine: "They call themselves 'The Guardians of The Galaxy..." [beat] "...what a bunch of A-Holes."

Big Picture: WORST MOVIES OF 2013

The Escapist : The Big Picture : MovieBob's Worst of 2013

THE RAID 2 Indonesian Trailer

In case you missed it: I'll be at MAGFest starting Thursday afternoon. Come say hi :)

Anyway, here's the first full trailer for THE RAID 2: BERENDAL, which supposedly takes place (or, at least, starts taking place) 2 hours after the end of the original. First thing I can say in it's favor: I'm glad they didn't try to contrive a way for this to all take place inside another fortified building. Instead, hero cop Rama (Iko Uwais) will be doing the Yojimbo/Dollars/Last Man Standing thing versus rival local and Yakuza-affiliated gangs in Jakarta. Director Gareth Evans also returns. Honestly, I don't need any reason to see this beyond that baseball-bat beatdown at 1:58...

Come See MOVIEBOB at MAGFEST 2014!

Hey guys! Just a quick FYI: I will be at MAGFest from Jan 2nd to Jan 5th this year, and should you see me on the floor your invited to come up and say hello (unless, y'know, you can tell I'm in the middle of something like or phonecall or whatever.)

Officially, I'm scheduled (you can see the whole MAGFest Schedule Map HERE) to appear at four panels on what they call the "MAGES" circuit:

"THE POLITICS OF GAMING" (Friday 1pm-2pm)

"ARE AAA STUDIOS STILL CREATIVELY RELEVANT" (Saturday 11:30am-12:30pm)

"PROMOTING GOOD GAMING COMMUNITY" (Saturday 5:30pm-6:30pm)

"GAMES AS A NARRATIVE MEDIUM" (8:30pm-9:30pm)

I'm also planning to bring copies of SMB3: BRICK BY BRICK with me to sell (probably cash only, but we'll see how my Square Reader is working) and sign on request, for anyone whose interested.

Look forward to seeing folks there!

ASM2 Blog Starts Teasing Venom. I Know, You're Shocked.

I called yesterday's rumor/speculation that, if Green Lantern turned up in JUSTICE LEAGUE he'd be the John Stewart version "one of the easiest" things to predict in genre film right now. THE easiest thing to predict? That Venom will turn up in the AMAZING SPIDER-MAN movies. Because it's always the mid-90s somewhere, and because Venom has always moved a shit-ton of merchandise for Marvel - so long as you don't include "comic books" as part of the merchandise.

Anyway, Sony has a Daily Bugle Tumblr running as cheezy viral marketing for the movie (attributed to Fredrick Foswell - heh) that basically blogs references to Spider-Man characters as fake news articles. he most recent update is a bit about Herman Schultz - aka The Shocker, but what jumped out at me was the name "NYPD Special Crimes Unit Detective Stan Carter."

Ah. Okay, then.

I'll err on the side of not totally spoiling what may or may not be a plot detail in the movies (go HERE and read the entry if you don't care), but Stan Carter figures prominently in a mid-80s storyline revolving around a serial shotgun-murderer called "Sin-Eater" (for awhile it was trendy for every "city" superhero to get at least one "what if he fought a real-life style killer?" story) that also involved Daredevil and the death of long-recurring character Captain Jeanne DeWolfe.

The main thrust of the Sin-Eater arc was that his identity was especially hard to suss out, with only Daredevil's recognition of his heartbeat to go on. The long-term ramifications come in when Daily Bugle reporter Eddie Brock lands what he believes is an exclusive interview with a guy who confesses to being Sin-Eater... and, suffice it to say, he's not the guy. Brock didn't so much lie as jump the gun, but he's disgraced and unemployable as a result; which is why/how he winds up contemplating suicide in a church that happens to contain the The Symbiote Suit and... you know the rest.

Here Comes MAN OF STEEL 2's Innevitable Stupid Racial Controversy

I was chatting with a good friend about the MAN OF STEEL sequel recently, and the one thing we could both agree on is that it feels very, very likely that Warner Bros. etc has no real binding plan for this thing (or that, at least, they don't have one anymore) and that the film is probably going to be one of those projects that goes into production without a final script. That's not necessarily a bad thing - IRON MAN was being shot while they were still figuring out the third act and who the villain was.

Maybe we're wrong. Maybe it's a complete misreading of the production stories. But right now, the image emerging is that something that went into pre-production (prior to the release of MAN OF STEEL, back when WB was sure that Nolan/Snyder/Goyer had delivered an AVENGERS-level game-changer or a TRANSFORMERS-level moneymaker) as a Superman sequel with maybe some "world-building" cameos from Batman etc morphed into a "Batman vs. Superman" movie, then a "Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman movie - possibly also featuring The Flash...

It's like we've blown right past the point where we could've been making "MAN OF STEEL PART II: SORRY ABOUT MAN OF STEEL PART I" jokes and the Cosmic Treadmill is rapidly taking us in the direction of "MAN OF STEEL 2: OKAY, WE FUCKED UP, WE'RE SORRY, HERE'S JUSTICE LEAGUE, PLEASE STOP YELLING AT US."

This weekend's gossip started out in the ever-fertile realm of race-swapping casting rumors, namely that DC was talking to prominent black A-list stars - Hollywood-to-English translation: "Denzel Washington" - for an important role in the film. The initial guesses were that they wanted him for Lex Luthor, but I don't see that happening. Not that he'd be bad casting, more that it's A.) just inviting more DAREDEVIL jokes in the press and B.) I can't imagine even Warner Bros. being dense enough to drop a "group of white superhumans beating up the ONE black guy in the movie, who is evil" tableau into a situation where the lack of diversity in the genre is already so widely criticized. But I did find it plausible, at least in one scenario, that Warners could be talking to "Denzel or Denzel-types" for the movie...

Now, gossip site "Nuke The Fridge" says maybe that scenario is correct. Their guess (and mine?) That if Warners is talking to "name" black stars for this project, it's for John Stewart - aka The Green Lantern.

Okay, quick bit of catch-up: In the comics there've been four "modern" (read: post-Silver Age) Green Lanterns: Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner and Kyle Rayner most prominently. But during the character's stint as part of DC's GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW double-act, Hal also had a "backup" in the form of John Stewart; an ex-Marine from Detroit who started out as an extension of GL/GA's recurring "Hal needs to get over his weird race issues" theme but proved popular enough that he started spending good chunks of time as "the" Green Lantern whenever Hal would be unavailable for this or that reason.

Honestly? That John Stewart would wind up being "the one" if Green Lantern ever turned up in a Justice League movie has been one of the easiest calls to make all along for two simple reasons: 1. a non-white face is the most visible way possible to immediately tell the entire world "This is NOT in any way the same as that terrible Ryan Reynolds movie you all hated;" and 2. while WB/DC has the advantage of the Justice League being a much more widely known entity in popular culture than The Avengers were prior to their movie, the "catch" is that very (VERY!) few audiences under 40 are primarily familiar with them from comics. If they know them, they know them from the DC Animated Universe JL/JLU cartoons. I don't think that's an exaggeration in the slightest: I'd bet that, if polled, there's a sizable part of the target-generation for this movie for whom Stewart - NOT Hal Jordan - is "the" Green Lantern.

If this turns out to be true (I'd say Denzel being considered is a 50/50 but Stewart being in the movie and/or JL is more like a 70/30), it would make him the biggest "name" on the team by far, with Affleck a close second as Batman. Maybe this is part of WB's overally strategy for this series: "We have the bigger-name heroes AND the bigger stars?"

UPDATE: Yes, I agree it's also possible that he could be reading for J'onn J'onzz, The Martian Manhunter. The reason I'd call that a remote possibility is that I seriously doubt even half of the people making decisions on this movie know that "Martian Manhunter" is a thing that exists.

Escape to The Movies: "THE WOLF OF WALL STREET"

The best movie of 2013.

...and also WALTER MITTY, which is not.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : The Wolf of Wall Street

Big Picture: BEST OF 2013

Here's a few minutes of distraction from The Holidays. Enjoy!

The Escapist : The Big Picture : MovieBob's Best of 2013

"TRANSCENDENCE" Gritty-Reboots "THE LAWNMOWER MAN."

This feels like the fastest we've gone from a teaser to a full trailer - literally a matter of days. I wonder if that has anything to do with the teaser essentially being a slow-reveal of Johnny Depp's face, and "Oh, it's Johnny Depp!" having gone from a boxoffice-benefit to a punchline over the last couple of years...




Anyway, this looks pretty damn good. Depp is a TED-Talky computer whiz with a mad on for The Singularity who gets assassinated by some kind of anti-technology terrorist group (the guy has "UNPLUG" tattooed on his writst), leading his colleagues to preserve his work by uploading his brain patterns into digital space which - spoiler alert for people who've never seen or read ONE other brain-uploaded-to-technology story - leads to him manifesting as a vaugely malevolent cyber-god.

Should be interesting, though I'm getting the sense I'll have to just accept that this is one of those stories where the back-asswards luddite guys wind up having been right all along or at least "had a point." Just once, I want to see one of these "tampering in God's domain!" movies where the visionary dudes trying to drag the damn species across the next goal-line of evolution are the heroes. For cinephiles, the main attraction is likely finding out if cinematographer Wally Pfister - making his directorial debut - is going to be the real deal. He's talked a lot of shit, and "Cinematographer of Great Movies Becomes Director of Middling-to-Bad Movies" is VERY common career story in this industry.

Does AGE OF ULTRON Have a Second Villain? (It Probably Does)

Latino Review has the best track-record of the independent movie gossip-hunting sites, even if they're by no means "always" on-target. But their big post-holiday (possible) "get" makes all kinds of sense. It doesn't sound like something that'd be a "spoiler" for the movie itself, but it does sound like it could be a spoiler for one of the other (by then previous) movies, so I'm putting it after the jump.

POSSIBLE SPOILER SPACE

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According to LR's sources (which a few other industry journos appear to be backing up) the secondary villain is BARON WOLFGANG VON STRUCKER, a perennial Captain America enemy and (traditionally) one of the surprisingly large number of immortal Nazis running around the Marvel Universe. In the comics he's technically the founder of HYDRA, but in practical terms he's become the guy you get when The Red Skull and Baron Zemo have been used too recently (or are dead.) 

According to Drew McWeeny at HitFix, the plan is for The Baron to be more of a guest-villain than a co-nemesis: He'll the threat The Avengers are dealing with as the film opens, and will primarily serve as a means by which the team encounters Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen). Even before McWeeny had jumped in, that's where my mind immediately went: The important things (character-wise) about Pietro and Wanda, in the books, are that they're siblings, they start out as villains and their father is a supervillain.

This is where it gets wonky: In the comcis, dad is Magneto and the twins are mutants (make no mistake, though - otherwise the pair are tied almost exclusively to The Avengers, they're not considered "X-Men characters"), which of course isn't going to work out because of movie studio business stuff i.e. only Fox can make X-Men movies. Strucker, meanwhile, traditionally has as lieutenants twin offspring of his own, Andrea and Andreas. McWeeny's story only says that Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch will be "working for" The Baron, but it's easy to imagine Whedon etc. wanting to preserve that crucial "kids of a villain" element by making them Strucker's children in this incarnation... though it's equally easy to imagine Marvel waiting until the last possible moment to decide that, shooting dialogue "both ways" or having them be adopted on the off chance that Fox wants to start playing ball on crossovers (remember: it was supposedly only a matter of logistics and time that kept "AMAZING SPIDER-MAN's" Oscorp Tower out of "AVENGERS'" New York skyline.)

All well and good, but we're still a ways out from the actual shooting of this movie, which makes this kind of early for Marvel to be casting around (and psuedo-secretly, no less) for what might be a cameo at best. Which leads me to wonder if we won't actually be seeing Strucker a lot sooner - like say just a few months from now. At least part of the plot of "CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER" looks to be that S.H.I.E.L.D is being influenced/overtaken by nefarious forces, and "AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D" has been teasing "The Agency is going bad" as a substory for awhile. That's typically the sort of thing The Baron can be found behind, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if whoever they end up casting (supposedly Marton Csoksas and Dougray Scott are on the shortlist) ends up shooting a quick cameo (or post-credits stinger) so as to be revealed as the real power behind the throne in "WINTER SOLDIER." 

Escape to The Movies: ANCHORMAN 2: THE LEGEND CONTINUES

Not as good as the first time, still good, might as well go see it.

Also some WOLF OF WALL STREET (not a review) because why not?

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Anchorman 2

Now You Don't Need To See EXPENDABLES 3

The "EXPENDABLES" movies are, objectively, awful - even by the incredibly low standards of the "Hey, remember when action movies sucked but sucked in a different way than they do now?" genre. The sole (and evidently sufficient) reason they have for existing are the handful of shots where a bunch of actors you remember from the 80s are standing together in the same shot and you can get 1/400th of the charge you might have gotten if someone had actually made "RAMBO VS. TERMINATOR" in the early-90s.

Outside of that, there's no reason to watch either of them. And now here's the trailer for Part The Third, which helpfully eliminates any further need to do so by simply having everybody stand a line and acknowledge that yes, they're in this. The "new" blood includes Antonio Banderas, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Wesley Snipes and Ronda Rousey as We Couldn't Get Gina Carano:

"The Only Chance For Salvation..."

At approximately 1:12, this red-band trailer for "BATTLE OF THE DAMNED" - initially framed as "Dolph Lundgren Versus The 28 Days Later Monsters," which would be entertaining enough as it its - becomes the Greatest Trailer EVER:

BRIAN FANTANA IS (PROBABLY) AN AVENGER!!!

So, uh... Yeah. Variety says Paul Rudd is Marvel's "ANT-MAN." He has the power to change his size, talk to ants and be considered an integral part of "Avengers" history mainly because he was there that day. No confirmation of whether Rudd will be playing either the Hank Pym or Scott Lang version of the character.

The Big Picture: "COPYWRONG"

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Copywrong

Wrong Note

Here's a trailer for "GRAND PIANO," in which Elijah Wood is a concert pianist who is informed mid-performance that a mysterious sniper is planning to shoot him if he misses a note. Really.

Where Did "WELCOME TO YESTERDAY" Come From?

Whoa. When was the last time the first 20 seconds of a trailer (for an original movie) immediately made you decide the movie had to be seen? Here's "WELCOME TO YESTERDAY," a Michael Bay produced scifi movie (which clearly owes more than a little to "CHRONICLE") which opens thusly: A teenager is watching a home movie of his seventh birthday and catches a glimpse of himself - as in his present-day teenage self - standing in the background.

Here's That Shia LaBeouf Movie Critic Short (UPDATED!)

UPDATE III: Un. Real. LaBeouf has taken to his official Twitter to apologize for not giving proper credit for having been "inspired" by Clowes' comic. One small problem with that: The film is effectively a shot-for-shot, word-for-word, panels-as-storyboards adaptation without credit. That's not inspiration, or even homage - it's straight-up plagiarism. LaBeouf is being more or less pilloried for this as we speak - which, since he's been wealthy and famous since his mid-teens will have no real career impact, but for now it's kind of amusing. I wonder if he actually does that "NoNONoNoNononononononoNoNONONOnoNo!" thing in real life?

UPDATE II: The video has been password-locked, in the wake of nobody being able to figure out if LaBeouf asked permission to film Clowes' comic (the author claims he doesn't know what's going on) and no one being able to answer if this is A.) a not-terribly-talented actor doing something idiotic or B.) a not terribly talented actor trying and failing at some kind of elaborate James Franco-style "life as comedy sketch" bit.

UPDATE I: The piece weirdly makes no mention of this, but it appears to be based on this Daniel Clowes comic:


I'll give the kid this: Making your "directoring debut" a short about how miserable, deluded and meaningless movie critics - online critics especially - are when you're best (exclusively?) known for "TRANSFORMERS" and "KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL" displays some serious "I don't care how I'm percieved" swagger. I mean... sure, that sort of thing is generally better reserved for when you've actually done something, but points for brass all the same.



Some of this is actually painfully well-observed in an "Okay, who blabbed?" sort of way - "roundtable" junket interviews really are singularly miserable, bizarre little pageants of feigned mutual non-resentment - which is why it's sort of dissapointing that it doesn't build to anything more interesting than "critics nitpick their betters because they're sad about their lives sucking."

INTERSTELLAR Trailer Teases Return of the Good Version of Christopher Nolan

It's been easy to forget - after the (legitimate) down-marks handed him by "THE DARK KNIGHT RISES" and "MAN OF STEEL" plus the (murkier) transformation of his name into a synonym for inappropriately-grim movie adaptations of... anything, really - why everybody got so excited about Christopher Nolan in the first place. Once upon a time, the "big deal" about "BATMAN BEGINS" was that a legitimately great, exciting new(ish) filmmaker was going to make a Batman movie.

This teaser for "INTERSTELLAR," though, serves as a big reminder of the other reason to be glad the Nolan Bros. are mostly getting out of the superhero business:



Show of hands on who would've thought, even five years ago, that Matthew McConaughey would "work" as a voice of sombre inspiration? I'm in love with this teaser, and not only because I'm SO onboard with the the idea that our semi-abandonment of space-exploration as a virtuous goal worth striving for being a goddamn disgrace - which seems to be the implicit them at play here, or at least one of them (it was also one of the dozen or so interesting thematic points raised but for no ultimately purpose in "MAN OF STEEL," so maybe this is a "thing" for these cats.)

Of note: The screenplay for this, by Johnathan Nolan, was originally developed with input/collaboration from Steven Spielberg for him (Spielberg) to direct. He bowed out, Christopher Nolan stepped in. So this is potentially sort of a reverse-"A.I." in as much as we've got a brilliant, anti-emotional, aesthetically-clinical grump taking over a Spielberg project as opposed to the reverse. That should be interesting...

Escape to The Movies: THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG

Relax, it's fine.

Also, "SAVING MR. BANKS"

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Within Five Years, Every Movie Sony Makes Will Be a SPIDER-MAN Movie

Do I still talk about how great "THE AVENGERS" was too much? Probably - but even I'd be doing it a lot less if the success of that particular film (and the Marvel Cinematic Universe) wasn't hovering so much of current Hollywood business-dealing like an omnipresent specter. In the same way that "HARRY POTTER" sent everyone with money to spend in the movie business scrambling to lock down a kids/YA fantasy franchise of their own, the mad rush now is to set up multi-film/cross-genre "worldbuilding" movie brands - preferably using superheroes but not exclusively, since Universal has been making some noise about bringing back the Universal Monsters for a "seperate-films-followed-by-a-team-up" project of their own.

Other than Marvel/Disney, the guys in the best shape in this regard are Fox; who're holding onto the comfortably expansive "X-MEN" franchise strong and hoping that second time will be the charm for "FANTASTIC FOUR." Warner Bros is approximately one Martian Manhunter away from throwing up it's hands and saying "Fuck it! "MAN OF STEEL 2" is now "JUSTICE LEAGUE 1." And Sony? Poor Sony has only James Bond - whom they are obliged to treat gently - and Spider-Man... whom they are demonstrably content to ride hard, put away wet, pass around the yard and rent out to visiting foriegn business associates over the weekend.

The studio has already set up dates for three sequels  to "THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN," one of which lands in just a few months. Meanwhile, they've invited five "superstar" writers - Alex Kurtzman (ew), Roberto Orci (eeeeeew), Jeff Pinker (eh), Drew Goddard (oh?) and Ed Solomon (didn't know he was still working) - to work out a "universe" built around the extended Spider-Man mythos. Currently on the docket: A solo "VENOM" feature (because I guess it must still be 1995 somewhere...) and a villain-centric "SINISTER SIX" movie (soooo... will they not be teaming up in the main series? What are these other three movies about, then?) The interesting name is Goddard, since he's also developing the "DAREDEVIL" project for Marvel's "DEFENDERS" run on Netflix.

I imagine the only reason no one is saying "BLACK CAT" yet is solely because they haven't bothered to write her into the movies yet, whereas Eddie "Venom" Brock is being namedropped in viral marketing already. After that, I look forward to seeing what kind of surefire masterpieces can be grown from fertile seeds like Man-Wolf, Rocket Racer, Prowler, Morbius: The Living Vampire (okay, that one could be good) or The Spider-Slingers. What a time to be alive.

EDGE OF TOMORROW trailer needs more Kill

"EDGE OF TOMORROW" is the hopelessly-generic, boring title given to this otherwise pretty damn good-looking Japanese light-novel adaptation in the belief that it's original moniker - "ALL YOU NEED IS KILL" - was just too damn awesome for the average audience to wrap it's brain around. Seriously, WTF? People would actually be talking about that title - "All You Need is KILL?' What is that? What does that even MEAN!??" They wouldn't be able to get it out of their heads. (And did no one suggest calling it "RESPAWN," which still sounds better and would "click" with it's intended audience?)



The premise is one of those "why didn't I think of that?" high-concepts: It's "GROUNDHOG DAY" meets "GEARS OF WAR." Tom Cruise is a green recruit in a war against alien invaders who gets killed in his first deployment... only to find himself somehow stuck in a "time loop" that causes him to wake up alive and well that same first-day of service every time he dies, able to use his gradually improving war skills and specific foreknowledge of what not to do to fight a bit better and progress a bit further each time. Emily Blunt's character (a fellow soldier who has become a wartime celebrity for having developed inexplicably superhuman combat skills "somehow") is called either "Full Metal Bitch" or "The Bitch of War" in translations of the original, which I assume won't be the case here.

The Big Picture: TOO MANY VILLAINS

"Bob, why won't you just stop talking about this movie based on stuff you're a huge fan of in an insanely popular genre in the medium that you make a living reporting on???"

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Too Many Villains

GODZILLA Teaser... teases

I really like the way this opens. The rest? I can go either way - with apologies to every other genre filmmaker on the planet, Spielberg only makes the "scenes of people looking in lieu of content" thing look easy. It doesn't look anything like director Gareth Edwards "MONSTERS," which I hated, so I'm thankful for that. Big overhanging question remains: Apart from the big-name main star, what is this going to offer that "PACIFIC RIM" didn't already deliver ten times over?



Interesting just how much this looks/feels like the buildup to the previous 1998 remake, minus the self-aware 90s humor. It's odd that two attempts to re-do "GODZILLA" for the U.S. now have (seemingly) focused exclusively on repurposing the original, which is really the extreme outlier of the franchise in terms of tone and focus. There was a period in my life when "Originally, Godzilla was meant to be DARK and SERIOUS BUSINESS!!!" was a really vital, noteworthy thing I wanted the world to know. These days? I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't be more pumped right now if this trailer (which does look good, don't get me wrong) featured a little less ominous portent and a little more giant-lobster punching.

We'll see.

JUPITER ASCENDING Teases Big Universe

The first teaser for The Wachowski's follow-up to "CLOUD ATLAS," which is alleged to be a more "conventional" (for The Wachowski's) sci-fi/space-opera narrative. Still closely-guarded story features Mila Kunis as a human woman targeted for assassination by an unknown-to-Earth interplanetary empire because she possesses a unique DNA signature that would allow her to usurp the current Queen of The Universe. She is protected by Channing Tatum, whose makeup and prosthetics are being downplayed by this trailer but is supposed to an albino human/wolf hybrid. Me, I want to know what's going on with the bulky winged-reptile guy at 1:29.

Escape to The Movies: OLDBOY

Oops. Forgot to post this Friday. Was preoccupied with the BOFCA Awards.

Intermission talks the soon-to-be new Wonder Woman.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Oldboy

What In Hell Is NURSE 3D?

Why, hello there, new most favorite movie I haven't seen yet ever...



h/t BAD

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 Trailer May Have Just Shown You ALL Of The Film's Teases For Part 3.

Seriosuly. I'm pretty sure I just saw the "To Be Continued in Part 3" in the trailer for Part 2.



Buzz on ASM2 is that it's another problematic production in terms of what was set out to be made versus what Sony now wants, and some of what I've seen/heard floating around in the ether is supported by this new trailer, in which Peter Parker continues to explore the shitty revised backstory nobody cared about from the first reboot. From the look/sound of things, Richard Parker was killed because he stumbled on Oscorp's nefarious plans to create boring, catch-all "unified" origins for uninspired versions of classic Spider-Man villains - THE FIENDS!!!

Short version (because I'm on my way to work) is that the film really was/is supposed to primarily be about Spider-Man versus Jamie Foxx's Electro, with worldbuilding subplots (and maybe a cliffhanger finale) laying track for an ambitious (in terms of scale) third movie that may or may not feature an Unpleasant Half-Dozen of some kind; but that Sony is hot to have more of that stuff in the forefront of the movie - or at least it's marketing. Apparently a lot of the "Oh shit, is that...??" stuff prominently on display here was actually written/shot to be late in the game reveals, background gags and possibly even post-credit easter-egg materials but is now being shown off to make it look like the main movie isn't just "Spider-Man versus Boring Robot & Hoodie Smurf."

I can't confirm any of that, but look at pretty-much all the stuff involving Oscorp's lab (like those SIX doors sliding open, or those two "appliances" in the background) and tell me you don't feel like you just saw most of this movie's version of Steve Rogers running out into present-day Times Square.

...Or Maybe Eclipso?

I'm a baaaaaad widdle boy...

New POMPEII Trailer Goes Big

Y'know what surprises me the most about Paul WS Anderson's upcoming disaster movie, other than that it took someone this long to make what is effectively "GLADIATOR" meets "TITANIC?" That they didn't call it something else to prevent the average American audience from thinking "Uh... hey, babe? Did we ever see 'POMPE I?"

Gal Gadot is WONDER WOMAN in "BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN"

The "big" value of Wonder Woman as a character and icon is that everyone has heard of her. They probably haven't heard anything else, but they know the name, the look, the basic idea and - most importantly - that she's supposed to be the female equal to Superman: THE female superhero. What that means in terms of this current age of comic-hero movies is that, whereas Marvel/Disney will actually have to make and release a full movie for somebody like Ms. Marvel, all Diana has to do is show up and DC/Warners gets a certain amount of credit/cultural-cache re: overtures to female fans.

And now, show up she will: Warner Bros. has officially announced that the Gal Gadot, the former fashion model best known as Miss Israel 2004 and as Gisele in the "FAST & FURIOUS" movies, will play Wonder Woman in the mad scrambling clusterfuck to do something, ANYTHING with the DC properties as-yet untitled sequel to "MAN OF STEEL."

This has been underway for awhile - it's been "known" that Wonder Woman was in this movie to some degree pretty much ever since Warners started casting around for actresses who can aquit themselves in action scenes and wouldn't confirm or deny that this was the role. For awhile, the steady gossip was that Wonder Woman and possibly The Flash (not the same one about to get his own TV show, because DC/Warners just isn't good at this stuff) would be showing up in the film as cameos in their "civilian" identities, with their true selves being revealed either late in the game, post-credits or in subsequent movies. Maybe that "intel" was always wrong... but it wouldn't surprise me at all that this is a pretty recent development.

The fact is, this is a movie being assembled in free-fall. Warners was caught completely off guard by the reception to "MAN OF STEEL." The studio went gaga for what Snyder/Nolan had gotten up to on the feature (particularly that massive, meaningless-carnage finale that's now the most criticized part of the fiilm) and went into this Summer convinced that not only did they have their "AVENGERS"-killer but that they had the new answer to "TRANSFORMERS." Instead, while the film was still a HUGE moneymaking hit, it failed to meet their (foolishly made-public) sky-high projections and is now best known for generating a year's worth of trend pieces about how badly the iconic hero was mangled and who in the production is most to blame.

So while I have no doubt in my mind that "the plan" was always to start laying track for "JUSTICE LEAGUE" by having Batman show up in the sequel, I absolutely believe the stories that they made the decision to make him a co-star (at least in terms of promotion/title/etc) literally just days before announcing it at comic-con. By the same token, it wouldn't surprise me at all that Wonder Woman's presence in this film started out as "easter egg," got bumped to "surprise cameo" as the bloom continued to come off the MOS-rose and became "role we're going to hastily expand announce a year in advance" when the "Female-Led Movies Set Thanksgiving Records" trend-pieces started hitting on monday morning.

Honestly? It's really difficult for me to get excited about any aspect of this production so long as everyone guilty of"MAN OF STEEL" is still at the wheel. There was a moment there, right after "WATCHMEN," that the notion of Zack Snyder putting the DC Trinity onscreen would have been the biggest, coolest, most-exciting news to hit this genre since "they're giving Spider-Man to Sam Raimi!" Now? Tainted goods, and I blame Goyer (who has never been good) and Nolan (who is good, just not at this) for the most part. Just for one example: Not that it's anywhere near the most important thing, but look at the overall visual/design aesthetic of "MAN OF STEEL" and try to imagine a Batman and Wonder Woman who would "fit" into that. Not terribly exciting, if you ask me.

I hope this is good. I hope this works out. I hope whatever lightning struck to make "THE DARK KNIGHT" happen amid Warner Bros. utter incompetence within this genre can hit again. I have no real opinion on Gadot's casting - she's very pretty and you can easily picture her in the part, which are exactly the same qualifications Henry Cavill had for Superman, and I don't think it's particularly noteworthy (good or bad) that she was a beauty pageant contestant before being an actress. It's tempting to start in with "it's too early to have an opinion at all," but since they seem to be making this one up on the fly in response to whatever is currently-trending at the boxoffice, I'm not sure when it won't be "too early."

One Weird Trick To See If This Title Thing Actually Makes An SEO Difference For This Post About BEAUTY & THE BEAST

Because none of you listened, "ALICE IN WONDERLAND" was a huge hit and Disney has decided that live-action do-overs of it's fairytale back catalogue is the new hotness; hence "MALIFICENT" next year and similar updates of "PETER PAN," "LITTLE MERMAID" and more in various stages of planning. They haven't actually announced it yet, but it goes without saying that a revisiting of "BEAUTY & THE BEAST" - widely considered to be the best film of the studio's 90s Renaissance if not their best film period - is likely in the offing.

But now, if they do, they'll have to get in line. Christophe Gans - France's answer to Michael Bay, best known in the U.S. for "SILENT HILL" and "BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF" - has put together a big-budget live-action version of "BELL ET LE BETTE." It looks... very much like a Christophe Gans movie (though apparently on the family-friendly side). There are worse things to look like.

Belle et La Bête

The Big Picture: PINK IS NOT THE PROBLEM

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Pink Is Not The Problem

Meanwhile, In Japan...

Presented without (much) further commentary, the trailer for NUIGURUMA Z: GOTHIC LOLITA BATTLE BEAR; the first feature film to star Shoko Nakagawa (she's kind of like Japan's Zooey Deschanel, except she didn't have to make movies first - she's just sort of... "professionally quirky"), directed by Noburu Iguchi - late of the magnificent (and very NSFW) TOKYO GORE POLICE.

The film, based on a book and novelty song by otaku musician Kenji Ohtsuki, finds "Shokotan" (Nakagawa's professional name) as a girl who becomes a superhero by merging with her magic teddy bear to battle an evil counterpart who has unleashed "the largest number of zombies ever featured in a Japanese film" on the populace: