In some surprising casting news, Bryan Singer has announced that Evan Peters has been cast as Quicksilver in X-Men: Days of Future Past. If the name Quicksilver seems familiar from recent news, it’s because his inclusion in The Avengers 2 was recently confirmed by Joss Whedon. Singer revealed his news on Twitter, as he has grown quite accustomed to lately, revealing looks at Halle Berry As Storm, makeup for both Nicholous Hoult as Beast and Jennifer Lawrence As Mystique, Peter Dinklage’s first day on set, and pretty much every other piece of news we’ve seen over the last few months. Below is the edited tweet:
Category Archives: Movie News & Opinions
Empires of the Deep: The New Waterworld or How to Lose $130 Million…
Hollywood has quite the history of movies that have thrown their money away in an attempt to give us an entertaining night out at the cinema. Films like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Waterworld (for whatever reason) all went over budget and crashed and burned when it came to release day. Now it looks like we have yet another massive waste of money with Empires of the Deep, a Chinese-American co-production starring ex Bond girl Olga Kurylenko. Don’t worry if you have never heard of this film, no one has which is frightening for a film that has had a hundred and thirty million dollars pumped into it over the course of 3 years.
Twitch Film has been kind enough to put together a brief rundown of what this film actually entails. It is the brain child of Chinese real estate tycoon Jon Jiang who wrote the script himself and helped finance it. Already a sense of foreboding is setting in for most of us reading this, but still the project kept circulating with director Pitof involved and Irvin Kershner (Empire Strikes Back) as a producer but both of them dropped out of the project. Pitof’s only claim to fame is the overwhelming turd that was Catwoman. Now if the man who directed Catwoman declined this movie it does not bode well. It changed hands numerous times until settling with director Michael French (who is mostly famous for TV projects like Taming the Dragon) finishing the film up with the already mentioned Olga starring. The problem (among many this production has had) seems to be they had no real producer presence on this movie what so ever. Harrison Liang and Kevin Jiang are the two people credited, but they are CGI guys on the movie. No producers on board means no budget control which leads you to over spending.
After all this it has still managed to rear its ugly head and now has an internet presence with this trailer, which we can now share with you, but be warned it’s not the aquatic setting that is making this seem a bit fishy, it is just because it is rubbish.
Plenty of comparison can be made here. It looks to me like a mix of Avatar and Dune set underwater which is not inherently a bad thing if the cinematography did not look so bad. It looks like a bad TV movie, poorly shot and acted. The cast with fish fins on top of their heads look as if they auditioned for the Adam West Batman as the villain of the week. This makeup does not look organic and oozes cheesy. Now I am afraid we have to look at the special effects which all look on the level of classic such as Giant Piranha or Shark Night. Dire. This would not be such a bad thing in itself as these films are a good laugh, but you expect that as they were made for peanuts. These level of effects are not what I expect to see from a film with this much money spent on it.
All that said, I will still be buying it when it comes out on DVD, as I am guessing I will not have to wait long before it ends up in the bargain basement sale section. But there is no way I am seeing this movie in the cinema. If the next trailer isn’t considerably better, the film is going to be in for a very rough time when it finally arrives on the big screen sometime later this year.
Aniston and Sudeikis team up for ‘We’re The Millers’ – Red Band Trailer
Jason Sudeikis may not have himself officially announced that he is leaving SNL (Jay Pharoah tweeted about his departure but it has since been taken down), but he is returning to the big screen with Jennifer Aniston in We’re the Millers. At first glance, it might seem like this is just a rip off of Robin Williams’ movie RV but one look at the trailer and you quickly realize, it is not.
Sometimes summer comedy movies can be rather hit or miss, but I think this might be a winner. It looks good from the green band trailer but, unsurprisingly, it looks amazing from the red band trailer.
I’ll go ahead and vocalize what everyone is thinking – Jennifer Aniston is hot! I don’t know if this is a new development or if I just haven’t noticed it before but damn.
Of course Jennifer Aniston isn’t the only draw here. Nick Offerman married to Kathryn Hahn? That’s damn near as good a combination as Nick Offerman married to Megan Mullalley. Nick Offerman, Kathryn Hahn, Jennifer Aniston, and Jason Sudeikis in a swinging foursome? This is shaping up to be a great movie!
If my time enjoying Jason Sudeikis on the small screen is over, I rest easy knowing that he is still getting decent enough roles in Hollywood even if that means smuggling pot for Andy Bernard.
It’s Time for a Timecop Reboot!
I often get ripped on for one of my favorite time travel movies being the Jean-Claude Van Damme starrer Timecop. Sure it’s not on the same level as a time travel masterpiece like Back to the Future or The Terminator, but I like the concept of people using the technology for financial and personal gain. Timecop was cheesy, but it starred Van Damme so what did you expect? It was almost like a less intelligent version of Looper.
The story is about… well Timecops. Law enforcement agents who travel through time to stop those with rogue technology trying to get rich and gain influence for political gain. The time travel tech began in the government’s hands but soon enough was used by the wrong people. Of course Van Damme’s character, Agent Walker, runs afoul of a crooked senator and goes after him for more personal reasons than the guy just wanting to be President. Various one liners and splits ensue throughout. The most interesting concept in the movie was the whole “The same matter cannot occupy the same space” where if you so much as touch your past or future self while on the same temporal plane you merge and are effectively reduced into… nothingness.
According to Heat Vision, Universal is in the initial steps of rebooting Timecop and it will be a “reimaging” of the concept from the old movie. Also, Jean-Claude will not be involved in the reboot of the movie so take that as you will. I can understand them not using Van Damme, his time has sort of come and gone. (That pun was not intended but it sure did work.) I look forward to them rebooting a movie I thoroughly enjoyed and can’t wait to see what they do with the concept. The closest thing that I can think of to compare Timecop with is The One, that involved agents traveling through a multiverse to stop criminals… but it was god awful. Cheers and good luck to Universal on their latest venture.
Is anyone upset that Jean-Claude won’t be returning for the reboot? Spout off below in the comments section!
Riddick: New Trailer for the Franchise’s 3rd Installment
Pitch Black was the sci-fi/action/horror movie that introduced us to the always on the run convict, Riddick. who aside from being a total bad ass also has surgically enhanced eyes that can see in the dark. It was a wonderfully done movie with a simple premise and then based on Riddick’s popularity and Vin Diesel’s rising star at the time, they did a sequel based solely on Riddick which was aptly named Chronicles of Riddick. Summarily, that movie sucked super-duper bad. It was like they had to get away from the lower budget and simplistic story of Pitch Black just because Vin Diesel was involved and the movie suffered greatly for it.
Fast forward almost 8 years later. Vin Diesel’s star power had been waning until the inclusion of the Rock into the Fast and Furious franchise and it becoming a half billion dollar juggernaut. Now apparently Vin Diesel is back to being able to carry a franchise on his own without the help of Dwayne Johnson, although another ex-wrestler, Dave Bautista will be joining him in this outing of Riddick. Bautista has been on a bit of a role lately. He was most recently in The Man With the Iron Fists, he’ll be starring in Riddick and has snagged a role as Drax the Destroyer in Marvel’s upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy. Anywho, back to the Diesel. Check out his latest turn as Riddick in the trailer below:
Looks entertaining enough to me. It looks like they’re going with the simplicity of Pitch Black. Basically Riddick is stranded on a barren planet with some ugly predatory life whilst the only humans posing a way off the planet are there to imprison or kill him. Aside from Bautista, the film will also feature Karl Urban, Katee Sackhoff, Bokeem Woodbine, and Jordi Mollà.
I’ll be giving the movie a go once it hits theaters. How about the rest of you? Is Riddick old news or are you excited for his newest adventure? Sound off below!
New Poltergeist Movie: Reboot or Sequel?
This is news that will no doubt split the options of horror fans completely down the middle, but word is that the casting for the new Poltergeist film is well underway. The director is Gil Kenan (Monster House, City of Ambers) with Rob Tapert, Roy Lee and Sam Raimi on the production side of things (Raimi at the moment just seems like he will produce any horror film he can get his hands on!). The screenplay is in the hands of writer David Lindsay-Abaire (with previous work from Juliet Snowden and Stiles White among others). No news on who has been cast so far, but filming will start in Autumn 2013 and will take place in Toronto. Monster House is a fun little children’s movie, but not very scary while the original Poltergeist in places made kids jump out of their seats. Can Gil get the right balance of fun and fear that the great Spielberg and Hooper managed to do?
In this slightly different story Eric Bowen and his family move to a new town after Eric loses his job. Madison, his daughter is abducted and Eric comes to the realization that nothing is more important than his family. Eric’s wife Amy has the ability to communicate with the dead, and Carrigan Burke; host of the TV show ‘Haunted House Cleaners’ is brought in to help out. The movie will also feature Carrigan’s ex who just so happens to work as a parapsychologist at the local university and pops up to look into Madison’s disappearance.
Now let’s turn the movie on its head; it would seem the plan is not for a straight reboot, but in fact more of a sequel, much like the new Evil Dead was. It will take place years after the Feeling’s left town. One key scene in this new vision of the Poltergeist universe has the children finding that classic cinematic tool a sliding panel. Guess what they find? Loads of stuff from the Freeling’s which includes the Star Wars bed sheets, Christmas decorations and that classic black and white TV. Personally, I would have just burned all this stuff after their traumatic events, but that’s Hollywood thinking for you. So like the Evil Dead remake we are getting a new set of characters mixed with the old style of movie we expect from this series including the killer tree, the clown and the unseen ghost people Madison talks to in the original.
I appreciate the fact that these changes are meant to give a fresh look to the 1982 movie, but I am unclear on if this is for the better. The girl in the Poltergeist is the thing that most people remember from the original, so reaction may depend on how much we actually see or hear of her in the movie. If the film focuses on the parent’s tribulations and they have no chemistry together then we may have a film devoid of emotional content. Nice inclusion of a Most Haunted style TV host, but it seems like we have already seen this type of post modern twist before with the Fright Night remake (I know he was an illusionist in that, but it is the same type of cocky character I am expecting to see here to). Will we see a happy ending here? I doubt it Hollywood hates happy endings in horror at the moment. Will we see the house get sucked into limbo? Will it look as good with CGI effects or is the movie going to employ physical effects to create the ghosts? The look of the ghosts in the original movie were superb and even today are fun to watch. Can the new movie live up to these spectres?
The final question we need to ask ourselves here is do we even need another variation on Poltergeist? Recently film goers have had remakes, reboots and sequels thrown at them from every possible genre and it seems like no film is safe from getting taken off the shelf and given a cinematic new lick of paint. With the amount of ghost and demon possession movies already out there now and all of them seeming very similar, what is Poltergeist the remake going to offer that we have not already seen? Still this approach seems to have worked for the new Evil Dead movie, giving us a new set of characters and new Deadites to enjoy, so there is no reason why this sequel will not have the same success. If nothing else it will bring in new audience to this classic movie and the established fans will no doubt be interested to see how this new movie plays out. It is early days yet and it will be interesting to see where this project goes. More news when it arrives.
Sources: Bloody Disgusting, Beware the Horror, and Moviehole
Grizzly Bomb 