Category Archives: Movie News & Opinions

Alex Garland’s ‘Ex Machina’ Sounds Fascinating, Looks Sexy

I’ve long had a love/hate relationship with robots. On one hand I love them, I want them around to serve and accomplish the menial tasks around me that I don’t want to physically perform. They’re helpful in that way, and at their best they’re probably the most beneficial thing to humanity there could be. On the other hand, they tend to always run into that whole creator vs created, synthetic/organic problem as is so often encountered and philosophized about in Science Fiction.

It gets weirder when you start thinking about them as actual things with wants and needs of their own, and thus comes the REAL dilemma with robots. Basically, it’s never a good idea to make them sexy. The second you make a sexy, human-like F***-Bot capable of doing things a human never could or would, you’re enabling the darkest aspects of man, and more or less encouraging the death of all humanity. What man wouldn’t rather spend all of his life with his immortal, eternally beautiful sex-bot in a holodeck of his dreams, having basically every possible desire fulfilled at his whim?

I know I would.

Ahem, so that’s why I think robots shouldn’t be sexy, but moreso it’s why the recent announcement of Ex Machina has me intrigued.

[box_light]“A billionaire programmer who handpicks a young employee to spend a week at his remote estate and participate in a test involving his latest invention: an artificially intelligent female robot.”[/box_light]

via [Bloody-Disgusting]

Ex Machina
A sexy robot?

So maybe now you see where I was getting at, and not being just a weirdly delusional pervert. I mean, I am a weirdly delusional pervert, but f*** you for judging me. Sorry. Anyhow, the movie itself is an interesting concept made even more interesting by the fact that it’s written and going to be directed by Alex Garland, who you may know from his previous work on 28 Days Later and recently Dredd. The guy’s also behind one of my favorite SF films of all time, Sunshine; a movie so underrated and under appreciated I recommend you go out and watch it right now without knowing anything else about it.Ex Machina

This being Garland’s first time directing I’m pretty stoked to see how he’ll handle his own material for the first time. If his scripts for everything else he’s been a part of are any indication, it’ll be pretty damned amazing. The film itself is gonna be shot either this summer or fall, and is budgeted for about $15 million dollars, and has no relation to the Brian K. Vaughn comic or the anime series of the same name. Now you know everything everyone else does about the movie so far. Except for sex bots. Sex bots are such an interesting thing.

Then again I could be projecting this entire sex bot thing and it’s all actually just about a thriller about the meaning of what it is to be human and have consciousness. But just look at that picture and tell me you wouldn’t at least TRY to f*** that thing! I guarantee you leave any man in a room with a warm hole long enough and he’ll try to f*** it. Whether or not the movie is a spine tingling thriller or 90 minutes of a pathetic man trying to not violate an animatronic sex bot  is still technically up in the air, but when there’s an update rest assured we’ll let you know.

Two Ant-Man Teasers! One Imaginary, The Other Real! *UPDATED*

Whenever teaser footage is “leaked” there’s always this infinite battle between the internet and movie companies. They for some reason don’t want everyone to see the teaser, and talk about the teaser, and share the teaser and generally do their PR jobs for them. Or maybe they DO, and by hiding it from us like it’s a weird reverse double bluff situation, we’re playing right into their hands? Which is silly, since this footage that was released is from a test reel that was premiered at SDCC last year, and not even technically a teaser. Regardless, the outcome of the studio censorship is it tends to make sharing and viewing these leaked teasers difficult, and sometimes that can lead to a disparity from your expectations and what actually happens. For instance, I thought the teaser was going to be something totally amazing and mind-blowing.

In fact, if I was to describe my imaginary teaser for Ant Man, I would say my favorite scenes were definitely the parts where Ant-Man finally, finally did what we all thought he would do, and shrunk down and crawled up a guard’s pants.

Then as the guard was trying to take off his pants, he ran up his leg and dove into the guard’s penis through his pee hole, and then rapidly expanded himself while in his urethra, tearing the guard’s dick open horribly, then kicking him through the groin out his butthole, in a fantastic display of gore worthy of an old Giallo film! The next few scenes were of him running around inside the other guards inner ear canal, using the harmonic balance and special lower hertz frequencies to sort of “puppeteer” the guard, making the guard punch himself repeatedly in the face over and over before ripping out his own eyes, in what I thought was a great homage to the work of Lucio Fulci. Then Ant-Man expanded inside the man’s head, creating a head explosion that possibly tops the infamous one from Scanners.

Ant-Man
This one.

It all ended pretty perfectly when Ant-Man then turned to the camera, pointed his fingers and said his new catch phrase: “It aint easy being cheesy!”, which I found a bit gauche, but I supposed we’ll get used to it.

Right. Well that’s NOT what the Ant-Man teaser was. Here it is as long as it’ll stay up, which probably isn’t long.

VIDEO REMOVED BY VIMEO

Marvel’s Ant-Man Trailer from Anthony Green on Vimeo.

See? Instead of my imaginary awesomeness,  it was a fairly interesting fight scene of Ant-Man clearing a hallway with two guards in it, and instead of ripping their dicks or heads open from the inside, he just kinda punches them in the teeth maybe? It was more interesting than it sounds, but only just so. I think my version is a lot better, but for SOME REASON Hollywood has yet to take any of my ideas or use any of the scripts I send their offices detailing my outlandish plans to fix the movie business. I think it’s all a conspiracy against me. Anyway, here’s some screen caps, and gifs courtesy of [Buzzfeed]:

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Those are some pretty neat GIFs, but these stills give you a better look at the actual Ant-Man suit, albeit a blurry one. Keep in mind these images are only from a test reel, so the final costume will probably look a lot different.

Ant-Man Ant-Man

So all in all, that’s pretty cool, but as always my version is better. But I have trust in Edgar Wright and I presume when the flick rolls by in 2015 it’ll still be pretty great.

‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ Casts Drax the Destroyer!

We sure didn’t have to wait very long to hear of the next cast member announced for James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy, following the casting of Chris Pratt as Peter Quill/ Star-Lord. The second member of the team has been announced, with Dave Bautista joining the film as Drax the Destroyer!

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All Signs Point to Veronica Mars on the Big Screen…With a Little Help

It’s been almost 6 years since Veronica Mars was canceled by the then still new CW in favor of shows about vampires and other such nonsense. Over that time star Kristen Bell has become a much bigger name in the industry and it appears as though she and show creator Rob Thomas have finally convinced Warner Brothers to let them make a movie. The only catch is, they have to prove fan interest still exists (which is does) and they will do so by raising $2 million in 30 day via Kickstarter. If this goal is achieved the WB has agreed to handle the distribution and marketing for the film.

Continue reading All Signs Point to Veronica Mars on the Big Screen…With a Little Help

The Conjuring: Amazing New Trailer!

Modern horror is in a weird rut right now. It seems like it’s stuck in a bizarre middle place between being eternally popular with teens, and simultaneously bashed and ignored by the masses as trash. Sadly they’re really not always wrong to do so, because a lot of horror films are total s**t. It’s easy to write a quick story about zombies or radioactive mutants, film it on a cheap digital camera and label it a “found footage” movie these days and watch it rake in the dough. That’s why I vastly prefer the work that’s been coming out from Jason Wan lately. He’s the guy who started big with Saw, which everyone loved and then watched turn into the royal crapfest of sequels that it inevitably became. But he went on to make some excellent movies, coming to a head with his masterpiece from two years ago, Insidious. A movie that if you haven’t seen, I highly recommend going to go see because it’s the first film in years that’s creeped me out to the point where I didn’t want to be home alone for a while. With the turnaround of praise from that we go Sinister, I movie I only found disappointing due to my own heightened expectations from its AMAZING trailer, but still worthy a view on its own.

Continue reading The Conjuring: Amazing New Trailer!

Update on ‘Evil Dead’ Remake, News on ‘Evil Dead 2’ Remake?

The verdict is in from SXSW, and all of you horror nerds can breathe a sigh of relief, because the remake of The Evil Dead is damned awesome, as reviewed by THR. They’re kinda spoiler heavy with their review but it’s pretty glowing and a good indication that every whiny little jerk who thought this was “raping” the franchise is a pedantic little baby who refuses to embrace change. While I won’t quote the THR review due to said spoilers, I can say it certainly does spell out the major touchstones of the film, showing that it’s very faithful to the original. While I know it’s a bit silly to go on saying that a remake of a cult classic could be “spoiled” by a review, the case is still so with the THR review, so be warned if you do check it out you’ll know plot details. Suffice to say the plot details are pretty much the same from the original, but the details and whatnot are there and could ruin some of the experience for fans looking to be surprised by what’s new or the same, or newbies who aren’t familiar with the classic Evil Dead experience.

Continue reading Update on ‘Evil Dead’ Remake, News on ‘Evil Dead 2’ Remake?