So. Here’s a trailer for a movie called “ZOMBEAVERS,” about killer undead(?) beavers:
Here’s one of my “stupid movies I wanted to make, then didn’t” columns from The Escapist. Yeah.
There’s a lesson in all of this, and it’s that whoever told me to think my decisions through and not just go with whatever instinct pops into my head at a given moment was completely fucking full of shit.
Well, good to see some things don’t change. Unfortunately, one of those things is that “AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2” looks awful. Enthusiastically awful, yes, but awful all the same. This new “sizzle reel” trailer basically gives us Electro in a nutshell: He’s Jim Carrey’s Riddler from “BATMAN FOREVER,” (overlooked science dweeb with a stalker-crush on the hero) and he gets his powers from being bitten by radioactive electric eels.
Poor Emma Stone is stuck right in the middle of this mess, putting on a brave face while she waits for a chance to head back to her trailer and shove more pins into that voodoo doll of Jennifer Lawrence.
It occurs to me that “CAPTAIN AMERICA,” as his own franchise and as part of “THE AVENGERS,” is pretty-much the central 21st century presence of American pride/patriotism on the world stage. I’m pretty okay with that:
Aaaaand the expectations come back down to Earth.
For awhile the buzz on “AGE OF EXTINCTION” was that it was going to be some kind of serious departure from the previous installments: Not just a whole new cast (only Optimus Prime and Bumblebee are returning) but a different tone and storyline that may or may not involve time-travel and The Dinobots. But eventually, it became a little clearer that the motif here is less “fresh start” and more “we should do one of these, but partially set in China because for whatever reason China looooooooooves the TRANSFORMERS movies:”
I’ve observed before that the Disney Company, despite being founded by (and named for!) the guy who practically invented comodifying nostalgia, has been slow to the party in trading on the nostalgia-market for it’s own properties. But they’re making up for lost time now, with a specific focus on icons especially prized by now-grown Gen-X/Y fans (see: live-action “Sleeping Beauty” focused on fan-fave baddie Maleficent). Now, they’ve innevitably cast their gaze on the other cash-cow of their legendary 90s Renaissance: “The Disney Afternoon.”
90s kids? You’re getting a live-action “RESCUE RANGERS” movie.
For those born post-90s, Disney’s big weekday/after-school TV “thing” in that era was reworking old characters into then-modern genre frameworks a’la “DUCKTALES.” “RANGERS” (which started out as a “RESCUERS” update) was a mystery/action/cop riff built around a team of rodent crimefighters led by the chipmunk duo who’d originated as B-listers in the original Mickey etc. shorts. The new project is an origin story (the series had a feature-length multi-episode pilot) based on a pitch from director Robert Rugan, a commercial director most famous for a Durex Condoms viral ad.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go find out which god I have to please and how to get a “DARKWING DUCK” movie out of this…
Had to pull down the earlier “leaked” TMNT images because people were getting C&D’s from Paramount (which is stupid – you can’t fight this stuff getting out, the era of non-plot-related movie “secrets” is dead); but now ComicBookTherapy has a snap up of a merchandise standee that let’s the new turtles out of the bag pretty definitively.
Verdict? Same as before: Like `em, with reservations. The differing body-types work (Leo and Raph are bruisers, Mike is small, Donatello is slimmer) and the personalized gear/clothes/etc are a good idea – I even like Don wearing glasses over his mask. A detail I like: Leo and Raph’s weapons are actually kind of small for them, proportionally, implying that their using “actual” katanas/sais that would’ve been designed for humans. I imagine this won’t be the case for Mike and Don, since nunchucks and staffs can be more easily made from scratch.
Leo and Don have better looking heads, because the more humanoid nose/palate don’t look right at all on Raphael and Michaelangelo. I’ve never understood the modern creature-animation conceit of giving nonhuman characters human-like lips. I understand the “logic” behind it, i.e. in reality they’d need human lips to form human syllables when speaking, I’ve just never really heard from anyone who cared. Movie-monsters spoke “muppet style” (mouth open for any sound, closed otherwise) for decades and I don’t recall that ever being a widespread complaint.
We may or may not see them moving around and talking in a Super Bowl ad, though right now Paramount is onlying officially touting a TRANSFORMERS 4 spot.
Super Bowl ads for movies that already have proper trailers generally feel kind of pointless, since they’re just short action-beat reels, but this one features what looks very much like a shot of Captain America being back in his proper costume at some point in the present day so I’m glad to have seen that. Also really like how “wing-shaped” Falcon’s wings are:
I think I’ve figured out what it is that makes Seth MacFarlane “hard to take” as a persona. I mean “overall,” of course – whether he’s not your cup of tea because of the subject matter of his humor (or choice of target) is another matter entirely. I’m talking more about why even I, as someone who thinks he’s a real comic talent, can agree that a little of him goes a long way:
He’s just a little too conventionally-handsome, a little too well spoken and a little too outwardly-confident about it for a comedian.
A modern comedian, anyway. His only semi-ironic affection for the Rat Pack era of lounge-act emcees makes an alarming amount of sense when you consider how well his look, delivery and sensibility would fit in that milieu; i.e. in the era where The Entertainer was The Alpha of the room, with the audience and (especially) “The Other” as his lessers to be humorously judged. The main difference is target: Frank & Dean basked in their superiority over both “squares” and (explicitly at first, implicitly later) the “lower” classes/races, while MacFarlane works basically the same act (right down to the “you think I’m smug now, just wait till I back it up with these pipes!” shift to songman) but with Middle America and/or religious-conservatives as the targets of choice. He’s a completely different animal from the self-effacing post-60s face of modern comedy, for better or worse, save that he shares their penchant for self-hate… it’s just that he seems to hate his advantages instead of his foibles.
Case in point: The new trailer for “A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST,” his Western-spoof follow-up feature to “TED,” which features MacFarlane as his own lead in full-on Brian Griffin only-smart-man-in-a-world-of-morons smug mode and also in full-on Brian Griffin douchebag-who’s-too-happy-about-being-the-only-smart-man smarmy mode; but here as a snarky Eastern transplant in The Old West cursed with a modern eye-view of the horrible shittiness behind the myth of the Cowboy Era. Looks funny, but I also remember how “WAGONS EAST” failed to stretch the same basic joke to feature-length…
MOVIEBOB CENTRAL 