It’s already been a crazy week with celebrities getting accused of doing things they haven’t or accused of not doing things they say they did. The most recent one was Jackie Chan who was accused of doing something he clearly did not do, which is die.
OTRC reported that one way or another, through gossip on social networking sites, the martial arts action star suffered a heart attack and died. This was until through his own Facebook, a status was left denying that Chan had any problems at all, and he was in fact busy filming his current movie.
I must be out of the loop because I hadn’t heard anything about Jackie Chan dying until the day it was reported that he wasn’t dead. I’m now more concerned about which movie he is currently working on. The last live action movies he appeared in were The Spy Next Door and The Karate Kid Played By Will Smith’s Son. (that was the full title right?) Maybe Rush Hour 4 or The Tuxedo 2? (Please God no!) [Ed. – I hear that movie was very very popular]
The next movie Chan will appear in through is Kung Fu Panda 2: The Kaboom of Doom as the voice of ‘Furious Five’ warrior Monkey. The film releases this Summer. Jean Claude Van Damme will also be in the movie as a Crocodile, but he should’ve been a Kung Fu Beaver. Van DAM, get it?
This isn’t the first, nor will it be the last celebrity death hoax, but with such a vast web of social networks out there, gossip is able to spread across the globe in a flash. Below is a small list of celebrity death hoaxes.
Taylor Lautner – Died of a cocaine overdose. Will Ferrell – Hang Gliding accident. (I picture his cameo in The Goods as how that would have carried out.) Adam Sandler – Snowboarding accident. Charlie Sheen – Died from an overdose of ‘Winning’, but was then resurrected by Vatican Assassin Warlocks. (I actually just made that up. But hopefully with everyones help it becomes the sweetest death hoax of all time.)
Oh my, you can never get enough of what I call ‘Monster Mash’ horror movies, where some sort of predator is oversized to the max, or even better when two predators are combined into a hybrid killing machine. In Mega Piranha the predators in this case are…. you guessed it: mega-sized piranha.
“Heyoooo!”
This crap-fest starts out like a cheaply made rap video. A bunch of hussies in bikinis and two fat dudes drinking champagne on a boat headed downriver. But these aren’t rappers my friends. It is none other than the Venezuelan Prime Minister, and a U.S. Ambassador. Amidst their inane babble, one of the chicks on the boat freaks out and points at something away from the boat, and soon all of the girls on board are freaking out (for no good reason at this point). It turns out to be an alligator’s severed head slowly bobbing up to the surface. One of the boat hussies even obviously states to all who will listen, and I quote – “Oh my God! What could do that to an alligator.” Then the very crappy looking CG Piranhas attack, looking not so mega at this point. They not only attack the bottom of the boat, but these little bastards are launching from the water into the boat to take people out. Inexplicably this causes people on the boat to jump into the water to their deaths.
Senor Feetch, played by Paul Logan
At this point, we are introduced to two characters. The first being our main hero Jason Fitch, who is only described as “being” special forces. (That’s right, the main character in a movie about killer fish is named Fitch). The other character is Secretary of State or Defense Bob Grady. I can’t remember which secretary he was because I was so thrown by the fact that it was the oldest kid from the Brady Bunch – Greg Brady. (aka Barry Williams). So Greg Brady is now Bob Grady…yeah. Anyhow he sends Fitch to Venezuela to investigate the U.S. ambassadors death.
Now we are introduced to possibly the three worst actors ever who play our scientists, and they are responsible for creating the mega piranha with their evil science and good intentions! Sarah the geneticist (played by 80’s Pop-Star/Has Been Playboy Model – Tiffany), Eli the marine biologist and Brian the microbiologist.
Right now I have to point out that this movie has some of the worst acting that I have ever seen, but I expected no less. A lot of it was to the point where I couldn’t help but laugh out loud, so this will actually help the movie get a better grizzly score at the end.
Sarah Played by Tiffany
According to the “scientists”, the piranha are getting bigger and bigger every few hours because of their genetic tampering. That also means they are becoming even more and more mega. (I’m trying to see how many times I can fit the word mega in this review. I think that makes it six so far.)
Once Fitch arrives in Venezuela he is introduced to ‘Colonel Diaz’ who is super bad ass and obviously hates Americans. I couldn’t help but chuckle every time he says Senor Feetch! throughout the movie. So from this point on, I will also call him Senor Feetch for the rest of the review.
Senor Feetch knows that Diaz doesn’t like him and is letting him stay on base to keep an eye on him. So Senor Feetch sneaks out of the army base in broad daylight, but still stealthy as Hell. The couple minutes of his sneakiness are run together shots of him ducking around corners, rolling under cars and walking cautiously past the backs of Venezuelan soldiers. Senor Feetch is obviously the best special forces guy ever, and it is proven a hundred-fold in the next scene.
Feetch goes scuba diving near the boat wreck site to check things out. What ensues is a knife fight between our boy and a slightly mega piranha. He manages to cut it and distract the others as they feed on their friend and he makes it ashore.
You can’t hide from the Mega Piranha Greg Brady!
By now I’m in desperate need of a horror movie kill and starting to grow bored with the movie until this happens:
Senor Feetch is on shore catching his breath. Cut to the water where a mega piranha shoots into the air in slow motion, almost twenty feet to the shore to attack Senor Feetch. Senor Feetch owns the piranha with his blade before calling Grady and saying exactly this over the phone:
“I’ve figured it out, sir. It wasn’t an explosion, it wasn’t terrorists. It was giant piranha.”
Seriously, who was the scriptwriter for this one? Improv would have been better.
So the scientists explain how it’s a good thing that a natural dam is blocking the piranha from spreading downriver, and it’s the only thing as well. Funny how that can stop the mega piranha when only five minutes before one jumped thirty feet out of the f–king water onto shore! Oh buddy, huge plot hole!
Colonel Diaz in the midst of spouting off a huge “SENOR FEETCH!” (David Labiosa)
In a stunning display of Venezuelan military power and terrible special effects, Colonel Diaz takes three helicopters in the middle of the night and randomly fires machine guns and missiles into the river, destroying mega piranha left and right. Surprisingly they are not all dead.
The movie has a couple of piranha kills that are pretty generic, with the pool of blood bubbling up from the water with a lot of screaming and splashing. Nothing too exciting. I was expecting some spectacular piranha chomping, but was left high and dry.
The movie trudges along and before we know it there are mega piranha the size of cars launching themselves out of the water into buildings and everything in sight, one even impaling itself on a telephone pole. It truly keeps getting better as Senor Feetch bicycle kicks the shit out of almost a dozen launching piranha, like so:
The length and music weren’t in the movie unfortunately but you get the gist of it.
Throughout the rest of the movie, we are introduced to even more mega-sized piranha who launch themselves into battleships, withstand nuclear bombardment, and eat people on the land whole. I will tell you so you can sleep tonight that eventually, the piranha are indeed defeated.
One of the best parts of Mega Piranha involved the epic death of Colonel Diaz. I only wished he had yelled “FEEEEEEEEETCH!” before biting the big one. Or the big one biting him I should say:
Well, that’s it for the Mega Piranha. If you don’t want to sit through an hour and a half of crappy deaths by fish then simply watch the short version in the video below:
Out of the three Craptastic movies I’ve watched this one was probably the most entertaining even if it wasn’t great.
– Generic Piranha death scenes – A letter “e” missing out of the subtitled word “Something” + Flare in the mouth leads to exploding head death scene + Terrible acting that made me laugh + Cheesy action music + Funny ass looking mega piranha launching from the water into buildings
For those reasons above I give this craptastic movie 2 and a half grizzlies.
Craptastic Bonus Fun Fact:A well-fired flare shot in the mouth can cause a man’s head to explode.
With all the comic book related movies coming up, there is a lot to keep track of. So periodically we figure it’s a good idea to check in on some of them and see what’s new…
Our first dose of Marvel Comics movie starts with the God of Thunder and his sweet look hammer Mjolnir. The cast includes veteran actor Sir Anthony Hopkins as Thor’s father Odin, the excellent and now Academy Award winning Natalie Portman, relative newcomer Chris Hemsworth as Thor himself, and Tom Hiddelston as the villainous brother Loki.
After numerous trailers, it keeps looking better and better. It almost looks like Masters of the Universe, but not total crap. My optimism is of course guarded because I hate disappointing myself. Here is the (still) most recent trailer:
The X-men have a slew of updates flooding the web. In case you’re not familiar with the story, the movie is about a young Professor Xavier and Magneto starting a school for gifted youngsters (Muties!) together.
X-Men: First Class will delve into their beginning friendship and perhaps its eventual implosion. Let’s start with some pictures that were recently released at SuperHeroHype:
The movie will star James McAvoy as Professor Xavier, Michael Fassbender as Magneto, January Jones as Emma Frost, and Kevin Bacon as Sebastian Shaw, the leader of the Hellfire Club.
We’ll also get a look at characters such as Havok, Mystique, Azazel, and The Beast.
If one X-men movie wasn’t enough, FSR reports that two more and a spin are still to come in the form of X-men 4, X-men 5 and Deadpool.
X4 and X5 will be direct sequels to X-Men 3: The Piece of Shit, because lord knows they need two movies to bury that monstrosity.
Deadpool on the other hand will completely ignore any connection to the Deadpool character from X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which is a fantastic move on their part. Though I do worry about Baraka not having a job.
I wasn’t very pumped for Green Lantern in the beginning because of the studio’s choice to cast Ryan Reynolds, but my interest is in high gear ever since I read Blackest Night and became a Green Lantern faithful.
I’ll give Reynolds and the movie a chance. The trailer actually looked pretty good, particularly the shots of Oa, Sinestro, Kilowog, and Abin Sur. The film will of course star Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan. But we will also see Blake Lively as love interest Carol Ferris, Mark Strong as Sinestro, Temuera Morrison as Abin Sur, and just recently announced Michael Clarke Duncan as the voice of Kilowog. Playing big-headed villain Hector Hammond is Peter Sarsgaard.
Also The Daily BLAM just posted new pics released by Warner Brothers…
This has been all over the internet for the past few days, so you might’ve already seen it, but there is the new trailer for Captain America: First Avenger:
Is it a reboot or a sequel? Like The Incredible Hulk (and, by the sound of things, the next Daredevil movie) it seems to be kind of both. “We’re just looking at it as an evolution,” explains Taylor. “The movie takes place years later. We’re not disowning the first movie but this Ghost Rider is an evolved form of the previous Ghost Rider. We basically completely re-envisioned the whole start of the character. The whole mythology behind the Ghost Rider that existed in the comic books never really made sense to me, so we sort of had to re-engineer the entire back-story into something new. That mythology never got delved into in the first movie, anyway, [but] we really get into that.”That enhanced focus on the demon Zarathos has involved a whole different approach to playing the character for returning star Nicolas Cage, who’s now playing Blaze and the Ghost Rider, instead of leaving the Flaming Skull up to the FX guys and the stuntmen. “Shooting action and car crashes and all that stuff is boring,” says Taylor, “but shooting a Nic Cage performance is a total adrenaline rush.”
The Avengers cast is all but assembled! Iron Man will of course be played Robert Downey Jr., while Chris Hemsworth fills the thunder god Thor‘s boots, and Chris Evans is our shield wielding patriot Captain America. The supporting Avengers are as follows: Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, Scarlett Johansson reprising her role as the Black Widow, Mark Ruffalo filling in as Bruce Banner with Lou Ferrigno doing the Hulk voice. Finally Sam Jackson will once again be our eye-patched Nick Fury. Recently it has been confirmed at DisFanReview that the villains of the Avengers film will be comprised of two alien races; the Kree and the Skrulls. Also joining the fray from Thor will be Loki, played by Tom Hiddleston.
After so much speculation on which pretty boy would be the new Peter Parker, the powers that be selected Andrew Garfield of recent The Social Network fame. The villain he will face off against played by Rhys Ifans, has recently been announced to be none other than Curt Conners; The Lizard. I would say this film has inspired the Man of Steel to cast the hero’s parental figures with veteran actors, because Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben will be played by Martin Sheen, and Aunt May by Sally Field. Emma Stone will play Peter Parker’s love interest Gwen Stacy, as her father Captain Stacy is played by Dennis Leary.
THE BIG ONE. This is my (Doc.) most anticipated movie on the list. By far. That may be why this is the movie on the list that we have done the most coverage on thus far. This is the 5th article to at least partially cover the movie (Jan. 19th, Feb. 2nd, Feb. 14th, March 22nd).
Well since that last update we have 2 more casting bits. First, actress Juno Temple has been confirmed as “street-smart Gotham girl”. Wtf that is I don’t know, but maybe she’s a budding Harleen Quinzel or a young Barbara Gordon, or maybe shes just a nobody. Who knows…
Secondly when have ‘Used to be Relevant’ actor Treat Williams, who is best known (at least to me) for Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead, and probably – more famously, for replacing Tom Berenger (Inception) in The Substitute sequels. Is that weird that he followed Berenger in those movies, and now he’s been offered a role in Nolan’s follow-up to Berenger’s last major role? Any way, this is news to…well, everyone. But Williams claims to have been offered a role in TDKR, as well as Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming western (more on that later), but will apparently turn down both films to do a TV show called Against the Wall. So this guy is choosing to do a Chicago set TV cop drama (because we don’t have enough of those), instead of what figures to be the last Nolan Bat-Movie and the next Tarantino flick. Good career move. This better be the best f–king show of all time…
ALSO – It would appear that Nolan is keeping the end of the movie SO closely guarded that he didn’t even put it in that script. He is instead verbally conveying it to the cast in hopes of keeping it secret. What it could be I don’t know, but it he kills off Batman…
There is also talk of rebooting the whole series after this installment to make a version of Batman who can better interact with the other superheroes. More on that at Moviephone.
For more on Batman, well…you can stay here. Batman is our territory.
Superman: Man of Steel – Opens December 2012
The newest incarnation of Superman directed by Zac Snyder is moving right along with almost the entire main cast selected. Newcomer Henry Cavill will play Clark Kent/Superman, with his Daily Planet partner Lois Lane just being announced to be played by The Fighter‘s Amy Adams. Ma and Pa Kent will be played by veterans Diane Lane and Kevin Costner respectively.
Now all that is left is the casting of a villain, which is still currently up in the air. Rumors right now are pointing furiously at Viggo Mortensen playing the villain Zod. EW is reporting that he has withdrawn from Snow White and The Huntsman to possibly star in the Man of Steel. This is undoubtedly the best decision he could have made in that regard.
Time will tell which Superman villain we shall see onscreen next and who will play them. We will of course keep a very close eye on any developments.
According to IGN, there has been word from Warner Bros. that they are set on re-inventing the Batman franchise after Nolan completes The Dark Knight Rises, and to also have a Justice League movie released by 2013. Let the speculation begin about how many JLAers will be in the movie!
I would expect to see an onslaught of DC movies coming out before 2013.
Iron Man 3 – With John Favreau leaving the Iron Man franchise, who knows if it will suffer greatly from the loss. They still have leading man Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man and the new director Shane Black has been announced as Favreau’s replacement [Ed. – A move I love]. This won’t be the first time Downey Jr. and Black have worked together, Black directed the 2005 cult classic Kiss Kiss, Bang Bangwhich Downey starred in.
Not much else has been revealed about Iron Man 3 except that it will not have any superhero crossovers, as Iron Man 2 did with War Machine and Nick Fury. The film will also thankfully take a different direction than the second film, so hopefully we won’t see Iron Downey Jr. drinking and laughing it up in his Iron Man suit at his party mansion.
Please give us the Mandarin in this one Marvel, his time has come.
WINNING!!!
The Wolverine – Oh what could have been Mr. Aronofsky. After the Black Swan director just recently bailed on the sequel to Wolverine: Origins, the obvious question is who shall replace him? Recent rumors say it could be David Slade, who is also reportedly attached to direct the Daredevil reboot. So will he ditch the ‘Man Without Fear’ for Wolvie, or can he do both?
Wolverine will be spending some time in Japan for this one although there are some delays at the moment due to the Earthquakes and Tsunamis that recently occurred there. If my expectations have dropped a little, they are still kept afloat by Hugh Jackman’s dedication to the character and the franchise. EW had a chance to catch up with the Wolvie actor who had this to say:
“So now we’re out looking for a director, We were pretty much ready to go. The script is fantastic — the best we’ve ever had, which is why it attracted Darren in the first place. His personal situation precludes him from doing it now, and I feel for him. But now we need to find a director.” Jackman wouldn’t cite any preference, but said the team is aiming for another prestige filmmaker, not just someone to yell “action” and “cut.” “We’re not going to settle. We’re going to find a director as good as Darren, if not better. Well, as good, Everyone is still pushing forward to getting it done.”
Wolverine audition reject
Daredevil – If there is any Marvel movie franchise besides Ghost Rider that is in desperate need of a reboot it’s ‘the Man Without Fear’. According to Screen Rant newly appointed director David Slade claims that the reboot will not have any connection to the Affleck Daredevil movie, and will be a “very strong character driven take” on the hero.
I suppose that’s better than an Evanescence driven take. Thankfully the rumors of possible Robert Pattinson casting interest was debunked by Slade, who explained that the DD reboot is only in its early development stages so at this point the possibilities of cast members and villains are wide open.
So there we have it for now. Was that enough for one post?
The Child’s Play movies were a big part of my adolescent youth…comically that is. Yes, I’ll admit that I was frightened of the first installment as a little kid, but once I re-watched it during my freshman year of high school I found it, and the sequels to be effing hilarious. After the first one, not only did the kills get more ridiculous (stabbing a lady with an air pump and then finishing her off with a meter stick?), but also, our old pal Chucky had a tendency to yell. He yelled when he was pissed. He yelled when killing people. He even yelled while chasing people.
Ahhhh, there’s nothing like a fresh dose of controversy to start your Monday off right. It’s even better when you can’t figure out why so many people or news outlets care enough to make it a controversy, and I can’t decide whether I’m helping or hindering it right now.
So here it is: Natalie Portman is being accused by her body double Sarah Lane, of not doing hardly any of the actual dancing in the ballet scenes of the movie Black Swan. According to an article on OTRC, Lane claims that Portman only did five percent of her dancing parts in the movie, while Portman’s fiancée Benjamin Milliepied said it was her 85 percent of the time. Darren Aronofsky and Mila Kunis both also back up Portman.
The biggest question that I pose however is; Who gives a crap?
As everyone probably knows by now, Natalie Portman won the ‘Best Actress Oscar’ this year for her performance in Black Swan. I thought the movie was okay, but critics everywhere have praised it as a masterpiece of cinema. And now it all comes down to this? She didn’t do her fair share of ballet dancing? I would hope Darren Aronofsky focused more on the story itself, and bringing out the best acting in his cast than on ballet dancing. Is everyone supposed to be surprised she had a body double for the dancing part? I was more interested in other parts of the film, you know, the parts where Natalie Portman is losing her mind and morphing into a f–king Swan. After watching the “scene” with Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis my first reaction is: what ballet?
Until they add in a best ballet dancer category at the Academy Awards maybe Sarah Lane should switch her face to the off position.
“I’m sorry? Did you say a Ballet? I wasn’t paying attention.”
I may be a bit biased because I’m a dude and think Natalie Portman is one of the best things to happen to geeks since the Star Wars prequels were announced. (Which sounded good at the time but turned out not so good.) After the Serena Williams controversy a couple of days ago (click her name for link.) it seems like highly successful women are coming under fire from some of the most ridiculous nonsense.
I for one could care less about Natalie’s dancing prowess at this point because I’m eagerly awaiting the upcoming comedy starring herself, James Franco and Danny McBride titled Your Highness, which comes out next Friday – April 8th. Swords, Sorcery and Natalie Portman in a thong anyone?
Last night was the season 1 finale of Showtime’s newest hit – Shameless. Now this show is based of a British program by the same name, which has been running since January 2004 and just wrapped its 8th season. I’ve never watched the original, but I love this American version. To preface my next statement, let me qualify something – I own over a 1000 DVDs, so what I’m about to say should bear weight.
A couple of years ago a friend was over and we trying to decide what movie to watch. I was told: “I want to watch something without any guns in it, and where no one is killed.”.
I thought that should be a pretty easy thing to work around, but was amazed how many of my DVDs were eliminated right away. It took me a bit of scouring the DVD racks to find something that both met the aforementioned criteria, and wasn’t a Christmas movie. Finally however, we settled on Heavy Weights, but I tell this story to make a point. My taste in films and television shows obviously lean a certain way. With that in mind, I can tell you the Shameless is without a doubt, currently my favorite show on TV that does not revolve around regular gunplay. That’s not to say Shameless is violence-free or anything, but unlike my favorite show overall right now, Justified, our principal character doesn’t shoot someone every week.
Now, I’ll be honest, a big reason I like this show so much is our lead character Fiona Gallagher, who is charged with taking care of her numerous younger siblings since their mother walked out. She is now the pseudo-patriarch of the family, and with a little help from her friends, takes care of her 4 brothers, as well as her sister.
Fiona is played by the gorgeous Emmy Rossum, who aside from being smoking hot, is also an ultra talented actress. I think she proved that in 2004 when she was the lead in The Phantom of the Opera.
And while her body has helped draw attention to the sultry side of the show, it’s her acting that makes it all believable.
The next oldest of the kids, also my next favorite character is ‘Lip’. At 17 he is really the person in the family Fiona most leans on. Lip is ever the smart-ass, an attitude which comes from knowing that he is in fact, almost always the smartest person in the room. While not a main focus early on, Lip’s story arcs are some of the most interesting towards the later end of the season.
As you may have noticed in the picture above there appears to be a father. That would be Frank Gallagher (William H. Macy), who is, in name, the father of the Gallagher clan. However, in name is about as far as it goes. As the season progresses it amazing to imagine how such a man could’ve even fathered 6 children, let alone stayed out of prison long enough to be their legal guardians.
Frank is the town drunk, the town being the south-side of Chicago, and everyone in the neighborhood knows him. Drunk pretty much 24/7 he offers no real help at all to Fiona in raising his own kids.
Those are the 3 characters who really make the show work for me. They are not however, the only characters. This show has an incredibly rich cast of characters. The other kids; Ian, who is almost always at Lip’s side is the ROTC kid who is secretly gay. Debbie is the entrepreneur of the group, always making sure that Fiona can put food on the table. Carl is the simple Gallagher, he likes to blow things up. And finally baby Liam, at 2 years old he was a parting gift from their mother just before she took off. There’s the neighbors Kev and Veronica, Kev also tends bar at Frank’s regular drinking hole. We also get a great comedic performance from Joan Cusack, who is Frank’s agoraphobic girlfriend.
And then there’s Steve. Steve is Fiona’s boyfriend, and represents the ‘chaos factor’ for her. While to use, her life appears to already be rather chaotic, she have been able to cope and adjust to it. Steve brings in a whole new set of circumstances which, while foreign to her, seem logical to us. Steve is the audience’s bridge into the world of the Gallaghers.
As the first season ended, I realized how attached I’ve become to the characters. Through 12 episodes I’ve really made a connection with this fictional family of degenerates, and that’s not something I can say about most shows. Also I love the opening song…
Without wanting to give away any major plot points, I will avoid telling you specific events, but I can tell you that this show is definitely worth your time. So if you’re time is valuable, and that puts restraints on the amount you watch, push this show to the top of you list.
If you’d like to check it out, you can see the first 20 minutes of the Pilot and judge for yourself at MOVIE WEB.
Grizzly Bomb 