Hello there :D i like poster art, films, graphic novels, vhs.........just loads of things really. if i list them all here then you will no doubt leave and no one wants that. Lets just say i like cool stuff and leave it at that ;)
Machete is back and according to the title, this time he kills (which is pretty much what he did in the first movie, but who am I to judge the film’s title). The first Machete film was a fun enough little romp through mexiploitation, with Machete getting framed for murder. Danny Trejo was however not the star in this film and he played the strong, semi silent type while the rest of the cast chewed up the scenery around him. Maybe now with Machete Kills it’s time for Danny to be let loose on the screen with wall to wall machete action. Here is the plot layout and again it seems a great and can we go so far as to say very cheesy OTT story that only Machete can sort out.
You can always trust Asia to come up with some truly inspired and incredible film ideas, and South Korea has come up with a potential classic called Mr Go 3D, or what people will no doubt be calling “ That baseball playing ape movie” (sort of like that AWESOME Matt LeBlanc movie). This has to be a first of some kind and it makes the new trailer that has just arrived that much more special. Though an English language trailer is not currently available at the moment we do have a brief plot summary, courtesy of Base Fount.
Based on a popular Korean comic, Mr. Go 3D is a sports comedy that tells the story of a troublemaker gorilla from a Chinese circus named “Zoo-Zoo” becomes a superstar for a professional baseball team after going through many complications. All the while, his keeper Mi-mi always has her hands full.
If that got your attention then look at this concept art and posters from Twitch Film which shows what potential this film could have.
So now we go straight to the foreign language trailer with at least an idea of the plot. The trailer is put together very well though and anything you were unsure of will no doubt become clear after watching it.
This film utilities motion capture and digital effects to create Korea’s most expensive film, costing over 20 million dollars to make. Luckily, the effects seem to have a story to back them up. The relationship between the Chinese/Korean girl and the ape seems quite touching and the film trailer makes the right decision in showing that this creature has a heart. Nothing wins an audience’s heart more than seeing an animal (even a CGI one) protecting humans. How do you top that? You put him in a baseball uniform! The CGI is quite good, not quite fluid enough to make me forget this is not CGI, but good enough that I can watch the film without this becoming an issue.
The whole concept of this movie seems fantastic; watching an ape playing baseball and taking his team to glory (which the trailer certainly suggests) could make this the feel good movie of the year for animal film lovers everywhere. As you can see I have a soft spot for this film, but it is only because it has so much going for it and I find it hard to believe that people would not want to see an ape take a big swing at a baseball. I love a feel good movie with heart and the nice touches of humor that pop up throughout this trailer (the ape nicking the guys hat for himself and sitting down on the ground before taking his swing made me chuckle) certainly make it more enticing for movie goers who may have been unsure from the start on whether to pay their hard-earned money for.
If you wondered what the artwork of the comic book that this film is based on looks like then feel free to check out the pictures below which showcase some of the comic’s art.
This movie is scheduled for summer 2013 release so we wont’ have to wait long to see how Mr Go really does go at the box office. If it’s successful then it’ll likely be only a matter of time till we hear Disney is doing a version of their own…
Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida just got even more amazing with the inclusion of a new Simpson area. Moe’s Tavern opened on June the 1st and is a working pub where you can purchase your very own Flaming Moe’s. Not only that you can buy a Krusty Burger, Cletus Chicken and pizza from Luigi’s pizza all from The Simpsons Fast Food Blvd.
This is just the first part of numerous Simpson related rides and attractions, a few of which we have images of here. For more information as it arrives check out the Universal Orlando website to see how the expansion is going. Here is the concept art for the theme park.
The estimated opening for all the areas is June 2014 so if you are a Simpsons fan and you have the money then set this date in your diary. Some of the more cynical readers will no doubt think this is just a not-so-subtle ploy to sell more Simpsons tat (and for the most part they would be right)[Note – tat: British English informal, things that are cheap and badly made], but the detail on everything looks so incredible that most Simpsons fans will be off like a rocket to see all that Universal has to offer. Heck, I am saving up right now and I live in the UK so I am guessing come June next year this place will be heaving with fans from far and wide. To keep you going until opening, here is a gallery of the up and coming attractions so you can see how great it looks. As you can see no expense has been spared in bringing Springfield to life.
A while back Grizzly Bomb covered a great short film made by Kaleb Lechowski called R’Ha, about an alien race at war against a robotic menace. The short had ultra realistic alien character and a tense interaction between it and a sinister robotic foe.
The great news is that one of the driving forces behind the Star Wars movies Rick McCallum is trying to get it developed into a feature film. Not only that he has brought on board Star Wars – Clone Wars producer Steve Tzirlin to be the producer. Fans of the short that are worried about Kaleb getting left out of this equivalent can relax because Kaleb is back as the director working from a script by Matthew Graham (who worked on the original Life on Mars series). This is exciting news because there is some seriously awesome talent getting behind this film. Rick seems excited. Here is a quote from him (from Geek Tyrant) showing why he decided to get behind the project.
[quote]What inspires me and our team is that there are no humans whatsoever in the film, and yet Kaleb has come up with a world that is so engaging and so alive and so real that it really is very different from anything else I have seen in the sci-fi world.[/quote]
I can see why Rick would be interested in this project. Aside from the fact that the original was amazing with some of the best CGI I have ever seen in a short it also feels like a lost scene from the Star Wars series. In its basic form Star Wars is the fight between good versus evil and this short scene from R’Ha encapsulates all of this. If done correctly this should be an incredible film as long as they keep true to the source material. The best thing about the short was the tension created between none human characters so hopefully we will have a fully alien movie experience with no humans in the film at all. I will leave you with a piece of art from Kalebs Deviant Art page which shows the alien in body armour standing over a very human looking foe. Could this be part of the new film? Keep checking with Grizzly Bomb for more information on the movie as it unfolds.
We here at Grizzly Bomb love a good horror flick and I have just heard news of a great creature feature raising funds on Kick Starter called Harbinger Down. Straight from the Kick Starter page here is the films plot.
A group of grad students have booked passage on the fishing trawler Harbinger to study the effects of global warming on a pod of Orcas in the Bering Sea. When the ship’s crew dredges up a recently thawed piece of old Soviet space wreckage, things get downright deadly. It seems that the Russians experimented with tardigrades, tiny resilient animals able to withstand the extremes of space radiation. The creatures survived, but not without mutation.
Now the crew is exposed to aggressively mutating organisms. And after being locked in ice for 3 decades, the creatures aren’t about to give up the warmth of human companionship.
Or for more information on the plot and tone of the movie you can watch these videos below with Alec Gillis talking about the Kick Starter project.
The really great thing about this project is the talent behind it. Lance Henriksen is on board and even though he has appeared in some utter tripe he is also one of the most versatile actors out there and is always entertaining in whatever he puts his hand to. Tom Woodruff Jr. you may not recognize but he is co-founder of ADI (amalgamated Dynamics INC) the company working on the movie. They have won academy awards and have done work on such classics as Alien vs. Predator, The Thing, Tremors, Pumpkinhead, Spider-Man and The Santa Clause 2…………Yeah so mostly amazing movies! Seriously if you do not know what these guys and gals do then check out there YouTube channel here. But Tom is also one of the most well-known suit performers and you will have seen his work on stuff like Aliens, Pumpkinhead and The MonsterSquad. The main force behind this project is Alec Gillis who has worked with top directors like James Cameron, Ridley Scott, Neil Blomkamp and many more as well as contributing the effects he has also done second unit work and TV work. There are so many more professionals working on this movie that I do not have the space to list them but this film will be packed with some of the best workers in the film industry today.
The thing that interested me about the project was the fact that it is only going to be using practical animatronics and make up effects for the monsters. None of this slightly dodgy CGI effects, this is going to be an old school affair. Many comparisons to The Thing are going to be drawn here (mutating organisms that like warmth, a crew stuck in the middle of nowhere, etc) but is that really a bad thing? The remake/prequel to the original thing was a bit of a wash out because of its reliance on obvious CGI and not prosthetics. It is about time we had an old-fashioned creature movie and I for one cannot wait. Look at some of the sketch designs to see some of the awesome stuff they have planned for the project, some of which has a H.P.Lovecraft feel to it.
If you enjoy what you have seen here then there is still time to contribute to the project through the Kick Starter link . It ends on Friday June the 7th at 1.45pm EDT so if you love the movies of the 80s where monsters felt real and not clunky CGI creation and you want to donate then now is the time. If this has not won you over then maybe you should listen to Lance himself tell you about his passion for the project. Fingers crossed this project gets off the ground because it looks incredible.
The Hollywood Reporter has put up some interesting news about the trailer presentations before movies at the cinema. The National Association of Theater Owners are trying to get a time cut of 30 seconds, dropping most trailers down to roughly 2 minutes. This proposal is meant to give exhibitors more control over the marketing of movies in their cinemas and to cut down on complaints from patrons who may think trailers are too long. It is also hoped that this move to shorter trailers could make the cinema a more attractive place to visit. Other plans include limiting movie promotion to just four months before the film’s release and all films must include their release date on promotional materials.
To help to see why this would be an issue we need to look at how the system works. How Stuff Works has an excellent article on how movie distribution works but here is the abridged version. Theatres lease films in two ways bidding and percentage. Now bidding is not used much anymore but essentially the theater pays a set fee to get the rights to play the film. This obviously has its pros and cons because if a film makes more at the box office than the cinema bid on it they make a profit. However if it gets little foot fall and does not make the amount they paid to show it then they are out-of-pocket. The second way is percentage. This is slightly more complicated but what happens is the theater and the distributor figure out the house allowance which will cover basic weekly expenses and then the percentage for the net box office and the percentage split for the gross box office is set. The distributor gets most of the money because they get the agreed open net box office or gross box office, whichever is higher. Look at this example from How Stuff Works to see how this works.
Consider this example. Theater A is negotiating with Distributor B over a new movie. The theater has figured that expenses are about $4,500 per week. The net percentage to go to the distributor is set at 95 percent for the first two weeks, 90 percent for week three and 85 percent for the final week. The gross percentage to go to the distributor is set at 70 percent for the first two weeks, 60 percent for week three and 50 percent for the final week.
You can see that during weeks one, two and three, the gross percentage is higher. The net percentage is higher for week four. So the distributor would take gross percentage on one through three then net for week four. The theater breaks even the first week, loses money the second and makes a profit on weeks three and four.
Here is a helpfull diagram from the same website about how the money is distributed.
This scheme has been waiting for studio’s input before going further, and obviously they are none too happy about it. Aside from the fact that their films will not be promoted as well (meaning the net money coming in could be lower, cutting the amount they could make) and less can be put in the trailers, there is also the chance that a trailer over this size would not be allowed to be played at the cinema. Exhibitors could also just put more of the shorter trailers on, getting more money from the studios that pay for this privilege. This is all in the planning stage at the moment and will be voluntary, but it would still cause a major headache for big budget studios if it goes ahead because upcoming films like the Man of Steel (which had a trailer that lasted for 3 minutes) would need a serious restructure. It would give the exhibitors slightly more power however in what they choose to show and they could in theory handpick trailers they want or come to a financial agreement to show longer trailers.
Ignoring the studios for a minute, we need to think about whether this is actually a good thing for the patrons of the cinemas. Well the cutting down of trailers will mean the film will come on quicker. It can be up to 20 minutes before a feature film comes on due to the amount of trailers on show. Movie trailers have had a tendency to be very spoiler like, giving away far too much of the plot. The studios would have to think outside the box a bit to make sure their films had an impact in the short time they have available which is obviously a good thing, people can work better when put in a corner.
Trailers before movies have been around forever and have become an integral part of the cinematic experience. When VHS became popular they even copied this style, having trailers in front of all of their features. Of course you could always fast forward past these trailers, an option not available at the present time to cinema patrons. Still cinema users know there is going to be 20 minutes of trailers and most utilize it to use the rest room if they need, or return to the concessions stand. Reducing cinema trailers is taking something special away from the cinema experience. But I am a guy who got annoyed because they removed the Pearl and Dean tune from the start of UK movies so who knows if I speak for the public as a whole.
What would help are some original trailers on each cinema release. If you go to the theater a lot you end up seeing the same trailers on each movie. Making sure each film had a different set of trailers would help prevent the boredom from setting in. I find it interesting that there is no mention of adverts here which are the most annoying thing about the cinema experience. The same old car, drink, and holiday adverts are paraded in front of us and we can do nothing to stop them. I do not mind paying for trailers as they are related to the film, but paying for adverts that appear on the TV and which I have no interest in whatsoever is more of an insult than anything. We all understand however that the climbing prices of popcorn and candy are there to offset fees paid back to the studios and are the main source of revenue for the theater. The sad fact is that with out this most theaters would struggle to stay in business.
This may just drift off if the studios cause too much of a fuss but it will be interesting to see what effect this has on cinemas in the future.
Grizzly Bomb 