Yeah, I’m still somewhat bitter about how Frank Darabont was relieved of his showrunner duties on AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” though obviously not bitter enough to stop watching.
In my defense, if you’re in the desert and the only potable water you have is a bit murky and smelly, I suspect that you’ll drink deep just the same.
Anyway, The Wrap has an interview with Glen Mazzara, the current show runner, who replaced Frank Darabont. He reveals–in a spoiler-free fashion–some of what he expects of the upcoming third season.
Speaking of which, when are they going to get George Romero to direct an episode or two? It would be so cool to have the spiritual father of all movie zombies at the helm, if only for a little while.
First, Sam Raimi is forced to cram too many villains (by which I mean Venom, who he didn’t want to use) into Spider-Man 3; then Sony (essentially) cans him, as well as his cast and crew, rebooting the franchise and handing the directoral reins to Marc Webb, who’s prior film was “500 Days Of Summer,” which was well-done and entertaining, though hardly what I would call an audition for something as massive as Spider-Man.
Webb’s “The Amazing Spider-Man” cost somewhere north of $200 million to produce, so you’d think that Sony–which isn’t doing too well in electronics (its core business), and a weaker-than-expected showing for Men In Black 3–would want to optimize how well a tent pole like that does at the box office.
Assuming that to be the case, why would you release your film on July 3, a Tuesday and a work day for most of us, when the next is a national holiday?
Now, I fully expect that there will be people who catch showings later that day, but I wouldn’t be surprised if viewership tapers off.
Let me start by saying that Ryan Reynolds seems to be an affable, charismatic actor, whom I enjoyed watching in films like 2005′s “Just Friends” or the more recent “Safe House.”
Heck, he even was interesting in last year’s “Green Lantern.”
The problem is that I am not entirely sure that Reynolds can headline a movie, primarily because he hasn’t been too successful at it yet (which is not to say that he shouldn’t be given the opportunity to do so, but I suspect that he doesn’t want to get into a Taylor Kitsch-type situation, where you headline one, or even two, big multi-million dollar films that both end up as failures (To be fair to Taylor Kitsch, “Battleship” and “John Carter” failed for reasons that had little to do with him–one was too silly to make a movie about in the first place, the other too obscure–but it doesn’t change that he probably will not be offered any tentpoles anytime soon).
After all, Reynolds already has “Green Lantern,” which while not as spectacular a box office failure as “John Carter,” was still a failure.
The image to the right is the one of the last from the trailer for Pete Travis‘ “Dredd,” and it looks like Karl Urban has nailed the look, though in the comics he generally appears thinner, almost gaunt, though other than that, he looks good.
What Danny Cannon’s 1995 version did right–for the most part–was the vision of Mega City One, which was very grand and sprawling.
In the trailer part of it looks like a modern slum by way of South Africa, which doesn’t quite work from what I recall of the comic series.
He even says, “I am the Law,” though I didn’t cringe when I heard it, which is a very good sign.
And in other matters, “The Amazing Spider-Man” is tracking toward $125 million over it’s first six days? Admittedly it’s an event film, but at the same time, it doesn’t appear to be doing anything significantly different from Sam Raimi’s first trilogy (other than the introduction of the Lizard.)
So, while I expect there to be little in the way of blockbuster competition, that figures seems a bit grandiose.
For me, not quite the event that was “The Avengers,” but a must-see nonetheless (plus, I always go to these things with the hope that I appear for a second on screen–I was an extra on this film–as unlikely as that is in this particular case).
It’s a relatively slow news day.
On the homefront (does anyone else, when you put the word ‘home’ in front of another, get vaguely Nazi-ish associations? Homeland Security? The phrase ‘homeland’ itself? Doesn’t work with ‘home fries,’ though). Cthulhu summoning still not going too well. Perhaps I am concentrating on the wrong Great Old One. Maybe I need to look into Hastur, Nyarlathotep, or even the Hounds of Tindalos (though admittedly I am not too keen on the ‘Hounds.’ It’s mainly the whole relentlessly hunting down their prey, even through time, that bothers me).
Anyway, I found this trailer over at Superherohype.com, and there’s a teaser for “Dredd,” based upon the character from 2000 A.D. and 1995′s “Judge Dredd” (the character that Sylvester Stallone hated so much that he had to go make a movie starring him).
Today has been a rough day. First, the only new horror film on Netflix is “Alligator X”–which sucks even more since I saw the very entertaining “Occupant” yesterday and my standards and expectations are a bit higher than usual. Prior to that I had an argument with a colleague at work over their problem with Apple’s lack of willingness to repair a MacBook monitor under AppleCare that he broke.
Yeah, I should have just ignored him, but I don’t brook fools well.
Then, there’s my attempted summoning of Cthulhu, which is not quite as easy as you’d think. I mean, if you’ve read as many tales of the Cthulhu Mythos as I have, you’d probably have reached the impression that all you’d need are the addition of a few common household items, and there you go, one alien, malevolent deity to go.
I was ready to just kiss off the rest of the day when a bright spot appeared: Paul Verhoeven, director of “Spetters,” “Hollow Man,” Starship Troopers, “Showgirls, among others, is preparing a movie based upon the life of Jesus Christ, though what’s even more interesting is that he’s doing so based upon a book that he actually co-wrote.
Verhoeven is a kinetic, clever, and perceptive director; he also happens–if his finished projects are any indicator–to be apeshite crazy, which makes me really, really curious about what he could do with material like this.
The story comes courtesy of Deadline.
Damn it! I thought as I threw the Necronomicon down in irritation. Why is summoning Satan so (relatively) easy, yet the Ancient Ones are such a pain in the arse?
The book hit the floor with a odd-sounding thud, which was strange–in hindsight–because it wasn’t that heavy, being a paperback.
“I just don’t get it,” I said aloud, which I often do when I am either alone, or when I am not, I am so irritated that I can care less what other people think.
“I must being doing something wrong,” I picked up the book again, and thumbed through it. “How can I summon Cthulhu to convince Guillermo Del Toro to make “At The Mountains Of Madness” if I can’t make heads or tails out of Abdul Alhazrad’s so-called “accursed” text?”
“Heh. I’d be a cursing too if I had to read through this stuff.”
I’ll try again later.
Lately, when I am not attempting to summon deities from another reality, I have been playing “Prey.” This game has cool visuals, and has a very Gigerish feel to it as you proceed further in the game.
There’s something about how Denzel Washington plies his craft. He’s been at it awhile, and appears to have arrived at the point where he doesn’t have anything to prove. His roles he takes tend to be varied; he may be a villain here, or a hero there, but the majority of his films seem to feature ordinary men caught up in extraordinary circumstances.
He also manages oftentimes to be the best thing in the films that he’s in. “The Book Of Eli” being a good example. The film, about a man, a very special book, and the fall of civilization, was pretty ludicrous, but Washington grounded it, and made it watchable.
The poster is also kinda neat. It’s also worth nothing that Washington doesn’t appear anywhere on it. I suspect that that’s because the film makers know that they can sell it on the strength of his name alone.
Real-Life ‘Captain America’ Story
image courtesy of the National Museum of the US Air Force.
This story amazed me when I first found it. According to Yahoo! News an airplane that had vanished for 60 years has been found on an Alaska glacier. The plane, a US Air Force Globemaster, similar to the one pictured on the left, disappeared sometime in 1952, with a crew of 52 servicemen.
The remains were eventually enveloped by ice, and vanished from sight.
To those of us familiar with Captain America’s origin, his plane also crashed into the Arctic, and was recovered after about 65 years. Despite the similarities, the stories don’t end the same. In the comics, Captain America is preserved (somehow) by the extreme cold as well as the Super-Soldier Serum he had taken to become one of the greatest heroes of World War II.
The crew of the Globemaster were not able to avail themselves of such a serum–which existed only on the pages of Captain America comics and prior to that, the minds of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby–because unlike the Captain, who was eventually found and thawed out, remains of the Globemaster are still being uncovered, while those of the crew have yet to be found.
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