Okay, I’m starting to get excited. Not TOO excited, mainly because the director is still Gareth Edwards and I really, really, really, REALLY HATED his previous giant-monster movie.
If I can just throw one tiny, futile sliver of advice/request to the filmmakers (or, rather the marketers) on this one: Just fucking show him already. We already did this “show the tail, show the foot, oooooh what does he look like??” thing on the previous movie, and look how that turned out. Besides, the whole point of doing “Godzilla” is that Godzilla is an ICON. Everyone knows what Godzilla looks like – even people who’ve never actually watched a Godzilla movie. The “hype” shouldn’t be about “what does he look like??”, it should be about how good you made him look.
Film is due out just under a year from now, apparently some kind of bigger reveal is due at some point during SDCC.
I can now confirm that I will be appearing at COMICAZI in Somerville Massachusetts (407 Highland Ave Somerville MA 02144, I believe Davis Square is the closest MBTA stop) to sell and autograph copies of my book “Super Mario Bros. 3 – Brick By Brick” (also still available online in print and ebook formats exclusively through Fangamer.net) from 11am to 2pm ET on Saturday July 27th.
I will also, of course, happily sign any copies that were purchased previously or really anything else you were to bring up (within reason.) The books themselves will cost $8.00 US, supplies are limited.
This will be the first time the book has been available for in-person sales and/or signing since SGC. I’m working on a few other (local) events for similar setups, but this will be the first – plus, Comicazi is a great local business and deserves the attention. Hope to see some of you there!
Every Movie Awards Season needs at least one “controversial” current-events film that receives reams of breathless coverage in the political media but that ultimately not even most “engaged” audiences actually bother to go see – regardless of whether or not it’s any good.
This year’s entry looks to be “The Fifth Estate” (trailer below), with Benedict Cumberbatch as WikiLeaks mouthpiece Julian Assange. Directed by Bill Condon, the film looks to be making a game effort toward balancing an apparent sympathy for WikiLeaks’ actions (or at least philosophy) and an acknowledgement that Assange is a pretty sketchy individual. For the record, Assange (currently in and Ecuadorian embassy ducking extradition for sexual-assault charges) has called the film’s script “a serious propaganda attack” and “a lie built upon a lie.”
“Huh. That’s a way more impressive voice-cast than you’d expect for “Call of Duty – Black Ops III: Man, That Harness Thingee In The Elysium Trailer Looks Cool.”
In reality, of course, that’s the first new poster for “Edge of Tomorrow,”which is the crushingly-generic title that replaces the infinitely catchier “All You Need Is Kill” on the eve of it’s big SDCC rollout. Based on a Japanese YA novel, the basic premise is either “Groundhog Day” in “Starship Troopers” or “What if you got infinite continues in real life??” Cruise is a future-war soldier (that’s presumably him in the suit) who dies in combat but finds himself stuck in a temporal loop – he keeps starting over from the beginning of the fight every time he dies, getting a little more skilled and making a little more progress each time.
Interestingly, Emily Blunt is playing Earth’s most-decorated super-soldier; a living-legend that Cruise’s character keeps meeting up with and (presumably) trying to measure up to. That’s a fun inversion, given Cruise’s propensity for playing omnicompetent supermen. We’ll presumably find out whether this looks any good when it breaks at Comic-Con.
“Dear Mr. Watterson” – which was just picked up for distribution by Gravitas Ventures – is not, unfortunately, a “Calvin & Hobbes” movie at least in the form many fans have been hoping to see. Instead, it’s a documentary about the strip, it’s influence on the comics medium (Bill Amend and Berkley Breathed feature prominently) and it’s enigmatic creator Bill Watterson. I don’t believe they ever got Watterson himself to be interviewed on camera – that would be a pretty big deal, as he’s notoriously reclusive and private.
As we inch ever closer to Oscar Season, here’s the first trailer for “Shame” director Steve McQueen’s “Twelve Years A Slave;” which stars Chiwetel Ejiofor as real-life figure Solomon Northup – a born-free black man from New York who, in 1841, was kidnapped and sold into slavery; a condition from which he spent twelve years attempting to free himself. Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Fassbender are two of Northup’s four known owners, while Brad Pitt is one of the good guys. Screenplay comes from John Ridley, story was filmed once before as a TV movie by Gordon Parks.
In the interest of keeping things straight, this would be the “black-themed” early-Fall Oscar Bait movie that doesn’t look like embarrassing schlock. If nothing else, good to see Ejiofor finally headlining a big movie.
Hypothetically speaking… exactly how bad do things in Florida have to get before it can be declared a failed state? Because right now, I would not have one single ethical, moral or even political issue with federal troops being deployed to occupy the damn place on the grounds that it’s leaders and citizenry have – by electing a government that ultimately includes this incompetent prosecution and corruption-infected police department – demonstrated themselves dangerously incapable of self-government. I’m aware that this is probably “un-Constitutional” (whatever that means anymore) – I just don’t think it would wrong at this point. And Texas? You’re gettin’ there, too.
Y’know… certain entities in the U.S. media (who, incidentally, arecelebratingtonight) like to bray on about how “urban” youth – mostly, but not all, “persons of color” – often go about with a reflexive, deeply-ingrained mistrust of the law, legal-authority and police in general. Well, let me ask you a question: When you demonstrate to people, time and time again, that the law will not protect them… that the law will favor, assume-just and ultimately allow the acquittal of those who would wrong them up to and including murder… what the FUCK do you expect they’re opinion of the law to be?
I’m aware that some people are worried about “rioting” over this verdict. Sadly, that’s a legitimate concern. Know what’s sadder? That while they (or I) might have to fear a riot after this or that few and far-apart court cases, there are many more people who have to fear the presence of gun-toting, race-profiling, vigilante dipshits like George Zimmerman (and the legal system that ignores and abets them) every day of their lives.
The Samurai/Cowboy remake dance hasn’t been done for awhile, mostly because the U.S. stopped making westerns with any real frequency. But now we’ve got a new entry: “Yurusarezaru mono”is a remake of Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven,” set during the waning days of the Samurai era with Ken Watanabe in the Eastwood role. The trailer (embedded below) doesn’t have English subtitles yet; but if you remember “Unforgiven” it’s pretty easy to pick out who is supposed to be who and what’s going on. Either way, looks GOOD.
On paper, Fox’s desire to hold onto the “X-Men” license no matter how iffy it’s boxoffice prospects get makes a certain amount of sense: Owning the “X” franchise gives them first-dibs on their own personal universe of hundreds of characters. In practicality, though, a huge swath of those characters are terrible. Really, really terrible. I’m not even kidding, there’s like maybe 20-25 “good” X-Men people. The rest are kind of a horror-show, conceived in that moment when Marvel could stick pretty much any overdesigned dipshit with an unfortunate haircut on a cover with an “X” in it’s title and it’d sell.
Case in point: They’re apparently going to go ahead and make a film of “X-Force,”at one point the most popular thing in the entire Marvel/Mutants cycle, today often regarded as an unofficial “patient-zero” for everything that went wrong in the 90s (mostly because it’s where Rob Liefeld made his big breakthrough.) The original team was the “all-grow’d-up” version of The New Mutants – who in turn were a teenage team of characters who didn’t quite rate the marquee lineup – organized into a more militarized version of an X-team by Cable, the poster-child for characters whose history is just convoluted enough to distract from how lame he is.
Cable’s origin involves time-travel, so one assumes that (unless Fox just plans to stick whichever marketable mutants they haven’t used yet in a movie and call it “X-Force”) this will tie into Bryan Singer’s “X-Men: Days of Future Past” next year.
Okay, I’m starting to get excited. Not TOO excited, mainly because the director is still Gareth Edwards and I really, really, really, REALLY HATED his previous giant-monster movie.
MOVIEBOB CENTRAL 