Four Minute ‘John Carter’ Clip – v.s. the White Apes of Mars!

I swear I’m not being paid to promote this movie, but seriously it is shaping up to be pretty damned awesome as is evidenced by the following clip which shows John Carter in action against some crazy looking beasts in an alien gladiatorial arena that is reminiscent of the Geonosian arena on Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones (John Carter came first though):

This movie just looks better and better every time I see a new trailer or clip from it. The visual landscapes are beautiful and the CG aliens and spaceships as good as anything to come out of Star Wars and Avatar. It remains to be seen if the story and acting are up to snuff, but it looks to me from the many glimpses of the movie that it will fare just fine.

Not to mention Michael Giancchino’s score seems absolutely brilliant during the presented scene. This guy is well on his way to becoming the next John Williams who is by far my favorite composer in regards to movie soundtracks. Giancchino has been able to capture the spirit of pretty much every project he has worked on since his days as the Lost composer, none more so thus far than 2009’s Stark Trek which had one of the most invigorating soundtracks I’ve heard in almost the last ten years. I can’t wait until March 9th to see this movie!

New ‘Robocop’ Lead Offered to Star of ‘The Killing’

The reboot of the Robocop franchise has been on and off again for quite some time. There was news that Darren Aronofsky was attached to direct the movie and filming was continually rumored to be imminent. Well now the film has it’s director in the form of Jose Padilha, but the bigger news is that they may have finally found the right actor to play the title role of cyborg law enforcer, Robocop. Or Murphy as his friends call him. As for who is playing Robocop, look no further than Joel Kinnaman off of AMC’s The Killing, which according to the reviews done up by Dr. Kronner is one of the best shows on that network, behind Walking Dead of course.

Theater wise, he was most recently in the sci-fi alien invasion flick called The Darkest Hour and Safe House also starring Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds.

If anyone out there is worried about the guy’s acting skills then it’s all for naught because how hard could it be for an actor to mutter some choppy and slowly articulated words and one liners throughout the movie. I don’t remember Robocop in the movie dishing out any Oscar worthy performances. That’s not to say that the Robocop in this reboot will be exactly, I’m actually hoping for the opposite. I don’t want a drastic change in his look and demeanor but the franchise needs a little change for sure. I’ll tell you one thing, it had better still take place in Detroit!

Rant and rave in the comments section below and let us know what all of you Robocop fans think of this casting choice if it comes to fruition! Is this Kinnaman fellow worthy of the role?
Robocop

Movie Trailer #2 – Wrath of the Titans

Clash of the Titans was a decent enough movie. I went into the theater to see it, knowing to only expect a dumb action movie, and I was well satisfied by it upon leaving. It wasn’t a movie that got better the second time you watch, but you just have to take it for what it was. The next installment entitled Wrath of the Titans looks to outdo it’s predecessor in every way. Even though we saw Medusa and the Kraken in Clash, now we get to see the titans whom the Gods imprisoned as they are breaking free to wreak havoc on the world, and Perseus seems to be the only one who can stop them. He’ll fight a hydra, the cyclops, a minotaur and many other mythological beasts in this one and the action throughout the trailer looks pretty phenomenal compared to the first one.

Much of the cast returns including Sam Worthington (now with more hair!), Liam Neeson as Zeus and Ralph Fiennes as Hades. I’ve noticed in the trailers that Hades has lost his raspy voice which so vexed me in the first one. Did they hear complaints about this or is it just the fact in the movie that Hades is growing stronger through everyone’s mistrust and dissent? Among those returning are also a few new faces to grace the Titans scene. The obviously beautiful and terribly underutilized Rosamund Pike will play warrior Queen Andromeda  and Billy Nighy takes a turn at Godhood as Hephaestus.

 

The movie promises at least to be entertaining due to the crazy amount of action and visuals shown in all of the trailers up to this point. But do we really just want another dumb, action popcorn flick out of the filmmakers? The first movie was entertaining but lacked the heart and soul of a movie you care to watch more than once. I’m hoping they do a little better job with story and character development in this movie rather than waste time with 3D conversion and constant mindless action.

Transformers 4: A More Serious Approach on Mass Robot Mayhem

It would seem that Michael Bay may be seeing the error of his ways. I remember by the time that Revenge of the Fallen had found it’s way out of theaters that I would ask questions like- “Why do we need the human characters?” “Can we just have a movie with only Transformers in it?” “Why all the forced toilet humor?” And even though it seemed like Bay had started to tone it down a little and just focus on his craft of blowing shit up, Dark of the Moon still had that wasted human element to it. I liked the character of Sam Witwicky and think that Shia LaBoeuf is a great actor, but after three movies of the character, his parents and his girlfriends, I’m kind of ready for a Transformers movie just about…. Transformers. It seems like the movies are at least 70% CGI with the Autobots and Decepticons onscreen for the majority of the movie so why not just have a movie focusing on their war against one another? I don’t mind the human characters acting as support but I don’t need a lovesick kid running around trying to prove his self worth to everyone.

Now come reports that the next Tranformers movie will still indeed be a sequel to Dark of the Moon, but will feature less comedy and not so many human characters. Josh Duhamel has been pretty candid about the fact that neither himself nor any other actors have been contacted in regards to the fourth Tranformers movie, courtesy of E! Online:

“I don’t think anybody’s doing it,” Josh Duhamel told us last night at the launch party for Sony PlayStation’s new PS Vita portable entertainment system. “I know Shia [LaBoeuf]’s not doing it. I don’t think Tyrese or Rosie [Huntington-Whiteley] or anybody else is doing it.”

“Whenever these movies make that much money they’re going to make as many as they can,” he said. “[But] I haven’t heard anything about it. They haven’t called me.”

 If there were human characters that I didn’t mind, it would have been the soldiers including those played by Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson because they were all business about killing Decepticons and not how their girlfriend thought about their socioeconomic status.

I’d love to see the Autobots engaging the Decepticons on different planets throughout the galaxy as they did on the cartoon and the Transformers animated movie in the 80’s. I honestly doubt that the budget would be affected by having less “real” shooting locations, especially with how much money the studio knows that it’s going to make off the franchise. They could make the fourth movie about Optimus Prime trying to find his inner human whilst also looking for a female Transformer to settle down with and the movie would still gross almost a billion dollars worldwide. We can only hope that Michael Bay remains serious about toning down the cheesiness and five year old humor in his Transformer movies until the movie is finished. Am I expecting some sort of Academy Award winning performance from Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime? No. Nor am I looking for a deadly serious movie with the complexity of something like Inception because we all know that Transformers is a popcorn summer action flick. Just give us something true to the Transformers mythos and we’ll be happy.

John Carter Sequel Already in the Works: Too Soo

As it goes with many of Hollywood’s potential blockbuster films, Disney hopes to make John Carter (of Mars) a very successful trilogy that will fill up their coffers even more. After the success of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise took off and started murdering box office records, Disney began developing new movies to add similar success to their name as Pirates and even National Treasure. Tron: Legacy was one of those movies, which despite underperforming for Disney is still on it’s way to sequel-dom. Prince of Persia didn’t fair so well and will more than likely not garner a sequel.

Continue reading John Carter Sequel Already in the Works: Too Soo

Star Trek 2 Set Photos: Benedict Cumberbatch!

So here’s a couple of quick little glimpses of Benedict Cumberbatch on the set of Star Trek 2, as he is playing the new supposed mystery villain in the forthcoming (And eagerly anticipated) sci-fi sequel. But then again maybe it won’t be such a mystery once his name is revealed. I’m sure some mindless Trekkies will blurt out a dozen theories about which character he is supposed to be from the old show. Check out the first picture with Cumberbatch feeling the wrath of the Vulcan Death Grip:

Our next photo shows him being held at phaser point by the beautiful Zoe Saldana who plays Uhura in the new Trek films:

One can only hope that we’ll soon have a trailer for this bad lad. 2009’s Star Trek was by far one of the best movies that year. It re-invigorated that franchise and brought in tons of new fans, myself included. I always hated Star Trek, but absolutely loved the new one. Not to mention Benedict Cumberbatch from BBC’s Sherlock is in it to play the newest villain. I’ve not watched any of Sherlock, but Dr. Kronner talks like he would totally make out with Buttercup Cumberbatch because the show is so amazingly awesome. I’m sure in the coming days more and more set photos will begin hitting the web and eventually plot details. Stay tuned for more info as we get it!