I like suspense as much as the next person–maybe more so if the thing in question is highly anticpated.
Trailers, Teasers, Spoilers, Rumor Mongers–I’m into it all. But the reboot of Total Recall has taken it to the next level by releasing a teaser for the forthcoming TRAILER.
Srsly?
A preview for the yet-to-be-relased preview? If I didn’t think Hollywood was already out of it’s mind for calling movies that completely change the story lines from their namesakes (TMNT, Star Trek Conan and…Battleship?? to name a few), I certainly think it now.
Anyway, the film is due out August 3rd of this year and if you still need more convincing for the ludicrousness of reboots how about this: The Arnold is being replaced by Colin Farrell.
Prosecution rests.
Björg
Thanks, yet again, to Captain Disaster for taking time out of his busy work day to point me in a direction to take time out of mine to write a post. He’s either a bad influence or a guy that should be contributing to this blog himself.
The sweet 16 has come and gone with some surprise upsets and we are now on to the Elite 8.
Here are the standing so far.
H.G Smells:
Battlefield Earth
Batman & Robin
The LAst Airbender
Bjorg:
Superman IV
Catwoman
Matches:
Superman IV
Battlefield Earth
Dashawn:
Battlefield Earth
Yours truly has 3 horrible movies still vying it out for crappyness supremacy. Bjorg and Matches are tied with 2 each and DeShawn is almost out he he has the god awful Battlefield selected and that may be the clinches. The sweet 16 saw some great battles. Catwoman turned Transformers into kitty litter, Superman destroyed The Phantom Menace while Battlefield Earth continued it’s war of decency while Batman & Robin barely took out the Italian Plumbers.
Next weeks Final 4 promised to be good. Who will make it to the playoffs? Superman or Pluto Nash, The Last Airbender or The Highlander, or will the retarded child from outer-space Mac take all? Don’t hold your breath unless you smell Catwoman’s shit.
I plan on going to see the Hunger Games tonight and I must warn you I’ve already built up a biased review in my head. Let’s begin with a little story. A few years ago a fellow coworker of mine was telling me about a book she was reading called The Hunger Games. As she was describing it I immediately asked if she had seen Battle Royal? She said she hadn’t and the more she described the book the more similarities between the two were drawn. Young female protagonist, kids forced into a winner take all death match forced by the state, bag with weapons, etc… She let me borrow the book after she finished it and I actually enjoyed it and started doing a little online research here and there and after drawing the Battle Royal conclusion, I read that Suzanne Collins vehemently denies having seen or heard of it, I call Bull Shit. The similarities are too similar for me, also what kind of agent, PR rep, publisher, editor does she have that didn’t bring it up to her attention either? All of those should have a pulse on society and pop culture to know a rip off when they read it.
Now that I’ve gotten that little bit out of the way here are a few things I’m predicting about the movie. I’ll post a wrap up later to see if any of my predictions come true, and if they do you can all Nostradamus has risen and he goes by the name H.G. Smells. Oh, and BTW, a few spoiler alerts below.
1. The movie will play up the love triangle between Katniss, Peeta and Gale. There is some romantic tension in the books but it’s a small portion of the overall story. I think they will hype this up and it will just get confusing and not have the Twighlight effect they are going for.
2. The death scenes will be quick and not have any emotional impact. Lets face facts, 22 kids age 12 – 18 die. That’s a lot of killing going on and I have a feeling Hollywood will do it’s best to gloss over the death of innocent children.
3. Lenny Kravitz will be a lame ass Cinna. They should have got Chris Tucker to bring back his role as Ruby Rhod .
4. Although this isn’t really a prediction but I still called it years ago before they started filming, I said that almost all of the actors who will be portraying kids will be in their mid 20’s. Why can’t we have kids play kids? I’m so sick of Hollywood pushing a 30 year old as a high school kid, it looks so unrealistic.
Ok, so those are my predictions. I also have a feeling I will be re-watching Battle Royal again soon since they just released a box set. So if you like the Hunger Games books, please do yourself a favor and read or watch Battle Royal and draw your own conclusions.
On a side note, if you are into YA fiction, I highly recommend The Hungry City Chronicles; all this talk about hunger makes me want a burrito. Anyways, Peter Jackson and WETA have signed on for production and with that team together I thing it will be an awesome franchise. More on that to come.
I’m assuming that most people have heard of this most heinous crime, the news is everywhere. Social media, major news organizations, bloggers, and people on the streets are quickly spreading the word. There is a tyrant on the loose who shows no signs of stopping and only through the power of our voices can we even hope to put an end to the madness this one man is capable of, madness that affects millions of people. This man…is Michael Bay.
It is obvious that this menace has been on a mission to rape our childhood memories while we watch helplessly and it’s only getting worse. Somehow Michael Bay managed to get his hands on the rights to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles so he can make a live action movie which may (unless we can stop it) be released late in 2013. As if it weren’t already depressing enough that Michael Bay is planning to destroy another beloved franchise, this time he’s rubbing it in our faces long before we can be surprised in the theater.
While discussing his vision he mocked us all by saying that his new turtles will be “from an alien race, and they are going to be tough, edgy, funny and completely loveable.” I have read several stories on this subject and, unfortunately, not one of them went on to explain how someone curb stomped him before he spoke anymore. So, just to recap, instead of these being “teenage mutant ninja turtles” they will be ”seemingly adolescent extra-terrestrial fighting reptilian beings.” That has a nice ring to it. Bay found a way to make a story that is less believable than 4 turtles living in a sewer that happened upon a radioactive slime (Ooze) that mutated into turtle humanoids that were trained in ninjitsu by a rat who also happened upon the slime. Disclaimer: I love this origin story and I think it is the only one that should be associated with TMNT. In Bay’s universe there is a planet that is populated by giant bipedal turtles and at least one Japanese rat. On this planet the primary food source is pizza and they have an affinity for renaissance artists. At some point these creatures want to come to Earth, I’m guessing it’s because their planet ran out of pizza, so they fly here in their spaceships (oh yeah, they have spaceships because that’s what turtles do on this planet, they start space programs) on their epic search for pizza. I hate Michael Bay
So, there we have it. Michael Bay is the biggest troll in Hollywood, maybe the world. Are people actually going to just sit back and let this happen? Shouldn’t someone stop him? My hope is that all of the outrage will cause him to back off and realize what a mistake he is making. We can only hope that he has some compassion. Until then, cowabunga, dude! And don’t forget to hold the anchovies.
Syfy just released a trailer, heavily influenced by David Fincher’s Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, to promote Blood & Chrome, the Battlestar Galactica prequel series that follows William Adam through the first Cylon War. Syfy hasn’t decided if the pilot, featured in the trailer, will be aired later this year, or treated as a web series. Based on the effects and attitude this trailer has, lets hope that it finds it’s way onto TV.
Now, we’re pretty excited for Prometheus over here, but dammit, this trailer really eclipses my initial concept of the potential of this film. Gone are the desires that this is just a great return to form for Ridley Scott, and hello are the aspirations that this is the Sci-Fi film of this generation. This may be hyperbole, but…. just watch…
In general, I think a lot of members of the intellectual and socially awkward caste miss out on all the excitement, comraderie and general insanity that is March Madness.
Last year the Genius content managers at the sci-fi blog io9 made themselves personal heroes of mine when they created their own nerd-friendly version of the NCAA Basketball Tournament: a reader-driven vote-in tournament crowning the Best Sci-Fi Move Ever Made from a field of, you guessed it, 64.
The tournament had it all: astounding finishes (Galaxy Quest over Avatar), underdog victories over cinematic powerhouses (Serenity over Back to the Future) and a true David v. Goliath shock finish with Cinderella candidate Serenity beating out The Empire Strikes Back in the final round.
Two things about the io9 selection committee’s decisions instantly pleased me:
1.) NONE of the Star Trek films involving the original cast were listed as contenders, and;
2.) in the same year Georgie Boy has decided to torture a whole new generation of folks with episodes 1-3 on the big screen (and in 3-D no less), two of them found their way into this illustrious tournament (The Phantom Menace is a #1 seed; Attack of the Clones is a #5 seed).
Our brackets are posted behind the jump if anyone would like to take a look. I”m not sure what criteria everyone else used to fill theirs out, but I tried not to allow the expecetation/anticpation for the film versus my impression of the film once itw as released to cloud my judgement, but looking at the other brackets it seems like I might have been the only one that removed that from their decision making process.
As the tourney progresses we’ll be posting game highlights, player interviews and reporting back on all the anguish, glory and preposterous amounts of playing hooky that is the month of March in the USA.
If anyone else would care to get in on the action I’m sure we can wrestle up some type of nerdly prize to deliver unto the winner with the best record. So follow saunter throuhg the io9 link above, read their brilliant article about how Babylon 5 was a decade ahead of it’s time and then fill out your bracket and vote.
I’m looking at you Captain Disaster, Alex + Carling.
After two weeks off due to sickness, real world deadlines and celebrating the 100th Art Walk in downtown Jacksonville, Team Larry finally returned to their weekly trivia competition at Alphadog Grill.
We managed to eek out a top two finish, despite being the only team in the top tier that was unable to name five Bruce Springstein albums–worth three points each–for the Half Time question. I think Matches summed up the team’s opinion of that question pretty succinctly as the team adjacent to us celebrated: “That’s not my Boss.”
Our Team Motto
This Week’s Finish: 2nd
This Week’s Winnings: $15
YTD Winnings: $105
This Week’s Team:
-Jane Smith and her PBR Tall Boy
-Chris “I Wish Joe Acted Like This Over Coffee” Emery, appearing courtesy of Bold Bean
-Matches Malone
-Björg
And this week’s special guest star, she didn’t answer any questions but she did pour our beers and make Chris’ lady friend a necklace:
-Claire “I’m Just a Pretty Face” Buck
They didn’t have any particularly nerdy questions this week–so we’ll go with the final wager question, because Matches’ description of how he came to the correct answer is certainly nerdy; you’ll find it after the answers behind the jump.
This Week’s Question:
Put the following Tom Cruise movies in chronological order by release date, from oldest to most recent:
-Collateral
-Minority Report
-Last Samurai
-Vanilla Sky
I know we haven’t been posting much lately, but we’ve all been sick and/or pushing deadlines at work and the blog has kind of taken a back burner the last few weeks–not that all of us contribute regularly anyway–we haven’t even been taking our sorry behinds to weekly trivia. :-/
I did come across this little beauty of a Craig’s List ad today during my lunch break and I knew it was the perfect thing to deliver us back into your good graces.
How many days did I spend as a child wishing I had some kind of super power? I pretended to be almost every super hero I could think of. Even today something can spark that thought where I wonder what power I would choose. Never, EVER, in all my years have I once thought about how great it would be to have Aquaman’s powers. The only people who do wish they had Aquaman’s powers are those in the process of being drowned. I came across this today, which is why I had to share these thoughts:
The tournament had it all: astounding finishes (Galaxy Quest over Avatar), underdog victories over cinematic powerhouses (Serenity over Back to the Future) and a true David v. Goliath 
Björg
chadlandenberger
DaShawn Connery
Matches Malone
myglassesarereal
