The real problem with the first cinematic attempt at “Judge Dredd” was that they somehow managed to miss that the comics were supposed to be funny; a brutal satire of contemporary American culture and American action-hero archetypes as seen by Brits. It also wasn’t quite violent or nihilistic enough, sure, but without the sense of humor it didn’t matter either way – a proper “Judge Dredd” movie needs to be a celebration of “for-your-own-good” facism turned up to eleven in order to point out the inherent facism in “straight” versions of the no-nonsense supercop subgenre.

Below, the trailer for an attempted “reboot” of the franchise (now just called “Dredd”) with Karl Urban doing his best Christian Bale Growl in the lead. They’ve certainly got the grit and the violence down, and supposedly this version of Dredd is never going to remove his helmet… but it looks like they’ve once again missed the whole damn point, the trailer offering zero indication that any level of humor or satire is present. Pity…

The elephant in the room for action nuts will likely be that this seems to have the exact same premise as “The Raid” (the two films were in-production around roughly the same time) but I kind of like that about it. Too many franchise movies mistake a travelogue for worldbuilding, and I like the idea of Dredd as the hero of a very specific action-movie setup.

The buzz on this, incidentally, is exceptionally bad – it shot ages ago, and the studio was supposedly so unhappy with the result that the original director was shut-out of an extensive reworking/overhaul in post-production (the producers have downplayed these rumors, suggesting that an “unconventional” approach to authorship of the film was part of the project from the beginning.)

“Breaking Dawn” (the book) is probably one of the most dissapointing endings to a “saga” I’ve ever come across, regardless of the quality of the rest of it. After briefly taking the final “Twilight” on a hard left-turn into the kind of high-end batshit-insanity that bad genre-fiction ought to provide; the whole thing opts to climax in a manner that would get you flunked at a Community College creative-writing class.

Below, the trailer for the movie version. If nothing else, it looks like we’ll get a lot more Michael Sheen in this one, which is fine by me – he’s one of the only people in the franchise who seems to understand they’re making shit and has fun with it (unlike Stewart and Pattinson; who clearly know they’re making shit but always look like they’re attending their own career’s funerals.)

Via AICN

I think I’m embargoed against telling you what I thought of “Brave” until Friday, but I will say that I think their investors are probably extremely happy that their next scheduled release is a follow-up to an established mega-hit a’la “Toy Story 3.”

“Monster University” will be Pixar’s first stab at the prequel game, featuring as it does James P. Sullivan and Mike Wazowski of “Monsters Inc.” as college students. Admittedly, taking their ultimate “working class schmoe” characters and plunking them down into an Animal House/Revenge of The Nerds riff isn’t exactly “How’d they think of THAT!!??” territory, but funny is funny.

With shockingly little fanfare (as in, did anyone outside the UK actively know that “Amazing Spider-Man” was having it’s premiere there early?) “The Amazing Spider-Man” had it’s World Premiere in the UK last night, and the reviews have started to come in.

The good news? Mostly positive. Not the explosive enthusiam that hit after “Avengers” started showing, by any means; but also nowhere near the disasterous reactions that greeted “Green Lantern.”

The bad news? One of the MOST positive reviews (from The Telegraph) calls it “The superhero film for the ‘Twilight’ generation.” Which feels strange to read, given that I was told it was ridiculous of me to nickname the film “Spiderlight” during it’s production, even though turning the franchise into a “Twilight”-competitor was widely-reported to be Sony’s original pitch for the reboot. Oh, well…

io9 has a nice rundown of the other major UK Press reviews – one of which might have revealed something that probably shouldn’t considered a spoiler but which I’m going to put after the “jump” anyway…

POSSIBLE SPOILERS AFTER THIS POINT!

The Standard’s review (negative) is the first I’ve seen anywhere that seems to mentions Norman Osborn appearing in the film as a character. I think pretty-much everyone expected him to show up anyway, since his company plays such a big part in the new storyline, but this is the first time anyone has SAID it.

Interestingly, he’s refered to as “dying plutocrat” Norman Osborn, which gives me a really icky feeling. The original films monkeyed around with The Green Goblin’s origin, too, but at least preserved the original basic idea of a seemingly-decent corporate guy who unwittingly manifests his own Id “Jekyll & Hyde”-style. I don’t know that there’s a way to read “dying plutocrat” and not think that this won’t be “Osborn is funding the research that makes Spider-Man and Lizard in order to cure himself;” which would be SPECTACULARLY trite – especially if it means he’ll wind-up shooting-up with Spidey/Lizard-making-stuff and turning into some version of the shitty Ultimate-Universe Goblin in the all-but-innevitable “Batman Begins” Joker-tease stinger.

Below, another new trailer for “The Dark Knight Rises.” I’ve gotta say, it really is awesome to see a big studio like Warner Bros. doing both the right and smart thing by pouring all this advertising into small, offbeat, auteur fare like this that actually needs a big marketing push to make people aware of it; instead of blowing it all on some gigantic, bloated, pre-sold blockbuster that everyone on the planet already knows is coming out in a ridiculous scramble to assure that some sort of headline-grabbing-yet-ultimately-pointless boxoffice “record” either gets hit or broken, y’know?

A thing about things.

A brief announcement about the immediate-future of “The Game OverThinker.”

Remember, The Episode 72 “MAILBAG” show is only open to questions from ScrewAttack G1’s posted to THIS VIDEO. Thank you.

This is a few days old, but I’m a little surprised it hasn’t made more impact. The “Resident Evil” movies were the poster-children for bad-adaptations of video games (at least until we had “The Legend of Chun-Li” to kick around) but I’ve come to appreciate them as a B-movie institution unto themselves – not so much “films of the games” as they are working-holiday projects wherein director Paul W.S. Anderson photographs his unspeakably-beautiful wife in a series of increasingly-abstract scifi/martial-arts ballets with characters and monsters from the Resident Evil games as scenery.

The first film was terrible and boring – a rote “Aliens’ but with zombies” riff; but the second one was terrible in a funny way and the third and fourth were actually pretty solid. If that trend continues, this series could actually turn full-good if it makes it to the teens. As is, there’s some interesting-looking stuff in here…

It feels slightly-unnecessary for them to spoil what looks like it could’ve been a great “cold open” in the trailer, but the idea of Umbrella setting it’s enemies up in a virtual(?) alternate lives instead of just killing them fits in wonderfully with their “needlessly-elaborate-plans-with-no-clear-goal” operations from the rest of the franchise (what are they trying to accomplish in the games, again?) It’s a little odd that Chris and Claire Redfield aren’t back in this one considering the wink-wink fanfare their first (movie-universe) meetup with Wesker was given in the last one.

Supposedly the various previously-killed characters who’re back for this one are back with a twist: they’re clones, and there’s two of each – one good, one evil. You can’t say they aren’t trying in this series.

A few hours ago, Evangeline Chipman – my last surviving grandparent and one of the strongest best people I’ll ever know – passed away after having been in ill health for some time.

I’m not interested in getting into any more details than that. I share only because – while it’s my intention to not interupt the workflow of my sites and projects (if anything, I really need the focusing-effect of work-to-be-done right now) – I can’t say what sort of things arrangements and obligations will do to my schedules and output. So, if this blog or other venues seem to be either less active or less “upbeat” than usual, I ask your patience and understanding as to why that probably is.

This is going to be a very difficult period for me and for my family, and your support and understanding is deeply appreciated.

Crack the bubbly and break out the unconventional pizza toppings – Paramount has indefinitely shut-down production of the (awful-sounding) Michael Bay produced TMNT reboot! The reason? Apparently, the script is terrible – who could’ve guessed, huh?

This is almost-certainly good news for Turtles fandom, and even better news for film critics who’ll now have one less Michael Bay movie to endure next year (the film is still on Paramount’s “schedule,” in much the same way that Warner Bros. is still super suuuuper cereal about “Green Lantern 2;”) but it’s just the latest in what has been a spectacular slow-motion implosion at Paramount. Just last month, the studio was “forced” to yank it’s mega-hyped, highly-anticipated “G.I. Joe” sequel from the Summer schedule for massive (expensive) reshoots and retooling so close to ‘last minute” that the merchandise is already in stores. Last week, it was revealed that the already troubled production of the zombie-actioner “World War Z” now includes a ballooning budget and the shooting of an entirely new third-act.

It sucks to be Paramount right now – they had a huge few years in the blockbuster business, but it was for distributing movies made largely outside the studio itself i.e. the Marvel Studios films and the Spielberg/Bay/Hasbro-backed “Transformers” trilogy. When Marvel started being absorbed by Disney (the only reason your not seeing mass-layoffs at Paramount now is that a contract agreement entitled Paramount to a bigger-than-you’d-think share of “The Avengers” massive haul) and it briefly looked like Bay would bow-out of the robot business after “Dark of The Moon;” Paramount scrambled to get new tentpoles set up to take their place… and it looks like the haphazard results of that scrambling are now coming home to roost.

It’s likely that the film will still get made, though probably not in the form that was taking shape at this point: The project was set up principally by Paramount’s fellow Viacom-underling Nickelodeon, which paid a small fortune to buy the rights from multiple sources including Haim Saban (who, in turn, went and bought his “Power Rangers” baby back from Disney, who suddenly had other things to pay attention to in the “action figure farming” department, and round-and-round it goes…) and is still set to launch a new series this year.

Bay is still supposed to be making “Transformers 4” for the studio as part of a deal to get his Mark Whalberg/The Rock bodybuilder-crimespree project “Pain & Gain” released. I was getting the sense that TF4 was on it’s way to falling by the wayside, but at this point they kinda HAVE to make it – it’s the only sure thing they’ve got in the pipe now.