Sometimes even when everything goes right, it still turns out wrong. Even though we were cautiously excited over NBC’s decision to renew Community for a fifth season, and were downright elated about the return of Dan Harmon, it appears as if it won’t be the same. Donald Glover, one half of the amazing show Troy and Abed in the Morning, will only be appearing in five episodes in the upcoming fifth season.
He says it is so he can focus on his music career as Childish Gambrino, which I understand and respect, but would one more year really make or break his chance at hip-hop success?
It seems more so that Glover might have made plans as if Community‘a cancellation was a sure thing and now he’s just decided to go through with them. As a fan of the show, a show that relies so heavily on its ensemble nature, this is disheartening. What makes Community work is the relationships between each of these characters that should not have much in common yet they end up being a type of family.
Now another one of the family members is leaving (along with Chevy Chase) and it just doesn’t sit right. Hopefully the writers are in a place in their preparation of the season that they can make Troy’s absence and departure happen organically. Otherwise not even the return of Dan Harmon will likely save the show and it will be canceled for good come next May.
Such a shame, we were so close to #sixseasonsandamovie
With July in full swing and The Last of Us behind us, Grand Theft Auto 5 (GTA V) is arguably the most anticipated game for the remainder of this console generation. Developer Rockstar Games has been parcelling out information about the game in little chunks here and there, but today they released a whopping 5-minute gameplay trailer. This is the first time the new world of Los Santos has been expansively detailed and described for the player without pre-rendered cutscenes, and it looks gorgeous. Take a look:
Rather than leave the focal points and important features of GTA V up to the player to find and dissect as Rockstar is wont to do, this trailer is concisely narrated to make sure you’re noticing exactly how huge this game is going to be. No bombastic Stevie Wonder lead-ins or goofy asides here, they have five minutes to show you the largest world map the team has ever created. Eyes front and center kiddies, there’s a lot of content to introduce.
Just a few of the activities you’ll be able to enjoy include scuba diving, skydiving, shopping, yoga, golf, stock trading, hunting, bounty hunting, tennis and bike racing, but those are relatively simple distractions to enjoy amidst all the crime-sprees, missions and major heists that comprise the bulk of Grand Theft Auto V’s campaign. GTA V will also allow for a huge amount of customization for each of your players: cars, clothes, tattoos, guns and maybe more can be tailored to your personal liking.
The trailer finally shows us exactly how switching between the three main characters will work, and at least within the trailer, it looks extremely fluid and seamless. I wonder if it will play as organically when I’m shooting out the passenger window of my Escalade and realize my other me is about to drive headlong into a building, but there’s no way to know just how well it works until the game’s released.
Jumping from character to character looks fun and flashy outside of missions too, but again, I’m curious to see how it works with real player spontaneity. Each of the examples in the trailer shows characters midway through some interesting activity (Michael ending a bike ride with his son and Trevor in a chaotic car chase with the cops); will I always catch my partners in some kind of crazy situation or will I find Trevor asleep on the couch from time to time? Also I’m curious to know if that switch to satellite view, which admittedly looks cool in the video, will become tedious after 10-15 hours of playing the game.
Finally, the trailer boasts that all the mechanics, from shooting to driving, have been fine-tuned to be more responsive. I’m all for that. Despite all of GTA‘s untouchable achievements, for a game all about crime and underworld shenanigans, combat has always been a messy affair. The gunplay shown in this trailer looks far more immediate than GTA IV, though again, there’s no way to know without playing the game ourselves.
Only Rockstar can set the internet ablaze with a video (Okay, maybe Deep Silver did it once), and they seem to outdo themselves with every one they release. This reintroduction to Los Santos just makes the wait for September 17th that much more unbearable.
What do you think of the released gameplay footage? Has it amped up your excitement or cooled you off a bit? Sound off in the comments section below!
With the up and coming documentary about poster artist Drew Struzan coming to cinema screens soon, it seems that more and more people are interested in the movie poster as a valid and exciting part of the cinema going experience. Back in the 80s, poster art reigned supreme with some of the greatest examples becoming not only popular with fans, but iconic for film goers. Who can forget the posters for movies like Star Wars,The Goonies, Back to the Future, Big Trouble in Little China, and how these images bombarded our senses when we went to see a movie? It seems in the last few years that interest in the fine art of poster making has picked up again with some truly stunning pieces of art coming out for mainstream blockbusters. There has also been an interest in the 80s style of poster making. It has a very distinct quality with brass colors, fully loaded designs filling the screen with outlandish characters from the movie, or in some cases just posing down. Here are some eye catching examples, most of which are official alternative posters for mainstream films that have come out in the last few years.
So without further ado, let’s brace ourselves for neon lights and over the top action with ten of the best 80’s inspired posters…
10) Drive (2011)
Drive, with its thumping 80s soundtrack and gritty feel really caught the imagination of many cinema goers, and the original artwork for it is incredible. This early promotional piece gave us the cool factor that Ryan Gosling exuded in this film, but it also gives off a MiamiVice vibe with its bright, but not over powering, use of color and the sun back rising up from behind the cast.
9) Hobo with a Shotgun (2011)
The poster that really started the ball rolling with a return to the grindhouse style of artwork found in cinema houses and video shops back in the early 80s. Sure the Grindhouse movies by Tarantino and Rodriguez (which spawned this film) did a great job of bringing this particular style back to the masses, but it was this gritty poster art that really got a lot of viewers’ attention. This poster just makes you take notice, even with its muted color scheme, it still manages to elicit a response. Many 80s posters had guns shoved into the viewer’s face and this is following in that long tradition. Below is one of my favorite examples of this style from an actual 80s movie…
8 & 7) V/H/S and V/H/S/2
On first glance the poster for the great horror throwback V/H/S does not seem incredibly 80s, but when compared to the poster below for the 1982 William Shatner and Micheal Ironside horror thriller Visiting Hours, you can see they share a striking resemblance.
Now for V/H/S/2 they have gone over board with the poster art. There are tons of great promotional pieces out for this movie, but the key one was in the incredibly gory cover by ex-WalkingDead artist Tony Moore. It encapsulates the gory covers VHS stores used to use to grab viewers into to the store. It also bears a resemble to one of the most notorious horror covers of all time, the cult movie Cannibal Holocaust. Not an exact copy, but the style is very similar.
6) The Heat (2013)
Now the more popular and incredibly generic posters that have come out for this movie in cinemas recently has come under tons of controversy due to the abuse of Photoshop to enhance one of the co-stars features. This could have all been avoided if the advertising department had decided to go for the more action packed poster shown above. I had no interest in this movie up until I saw this poster that basically just told me that everything explodes in this film. Whether it does or not hardly matters because this is a great example of how to advertise a mainstream movie using poster art. Here is another great example of how the 80s action flick used to use this very same method of presentation.
5) Rewind This (2013)
We have mentioned Adjust Your Tracking on Grizzly Bomb before and also Plastic Movies Rewound, but we have never really looked at the other recent VHS related documentary Rewind This, and it gives me great pleasure to present it here. It covers a mix of those other two documentaries and will definitely be one to look out for VHS fans. The cover is amazing and it looks exactly how I remember the 80s movie art. Horror pictures especially always had a hand sticking out the front. Look at this one for example.
Another great retro poster though not based on any film is this one for Video Nasties which I just threw in here as a companion piece for Rewind This just because it look to good not to include it.
4) The Last Stand (2013)
The film may have been a bit of a damp squib in the action department, feeling like a cross between Knightrider and Jackass in places, it did give us this great late 70s-early 80s style action poster which seems to follow the motif we have seen for many action movies past and present, the bomb exploding! It’s a great way to grab an audience’s attention and certainly got me to watch the movie.
3) Wreck-It Ralph (2012)
Now it is easy to put a poster about video games into this article because of how many of the classic (and not so classic) 80s sprites popped up within this heart-warming tale, but what really caught my attention was this great poster actually showcasing Wreck It Ralph as a real life computer game coming soon to your local arcade. It’s the attention to detail which I found fantastic, and it reminded me of my childhood and seeing similar poster advertisements in issue of Crash magazine.
2) The Expendables 2 (2012)
The Expendables posters have always been full of testosterone, but this cover really gives off that macho 80s action movie vibe, with its collage of armored killers ready for action. This cover looks so much like a 80s action flick that someone decided to create a VHS cover and 80s style trailer for it!
Shame the film did not deliver on the action goods but it does not take any power away from the extreme cover which is an amalgamation of several different types of 80s poster. [Ed. Note – I disagree. Obviously.]
1) Manborg (2011)
By far the best cover on this list is for retro film Manborg, which takes the best elements of 80s cheese and rolls them up into a tiny package for a new audience. The cover reminded me of so many other covers from the dawn of the video shop era. Just look at some of the VHS sleeves for TheEliminators and Rotor and you can see where this cover got its inspiration. Absolutely stunning.
That was just a small taste of what’s around at the moment and websites like Mondoand The Alamo Draft House are making superb posters like this all the time. It has never been such a great time to be a fan of poster art. Here is hoping we get more and more examples of this type of art popping up in the near future.
So last week’s Sunday night shows were so good we decided that they needed to be recognized, and I had planned to make this a weekly feature. The problem now though, there was a noticeable dip in quality from last week to this week.
What follows were my top 5 TV moments from Sunday night…
Grizzly Bomb 