The first trailer for Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain is here. The movie stars Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Anthony Mackie, Tony Shaloub and Ed Harris. Wahlberg and Johnson star as a pair of bodybuilders in Miami that concoct a kidnapping scheme that goes terribly wrong.
Pain & Gain releases on April 26, 2013.
http://youtu.be/2aKDwLpX0Ms
Vin Diesel’s Riddick is now set to return to theaters next year. The third film in the series will release on September 6, 2013 in theaters and IMAX.
The movie has been a labor of love for Diesel and director David Twohy, who directed Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick, who have been trying to get the movie made since 2006.
A plot synopsis has the film having a very different tone than The Chronicles of Riddick sounding more like Pitch Black.
“The infamous Riddick has been left for dead on a sun-scorched planet that appears to be lifeless. Soon, however, he finds himself fighting for survival against alien predators more lethal than any human he’s encountered. The only way off is for Riddick to activate an emergency beacon and alert mercenaries who rapidly descend to the planet in search of their bounty.
The first ship to arrive carries a new breed of merc, more lethal and violent, while the second is captained by a man whose pursuit of Riddick is more personal. With time running out and a storm on the horizon that no one could survive, his hunters won’t leave the planet without Riddick’s head as their trophy.”
Along with Diesel, Karl Urban is returning as Vaako and will be joined by Katee Sackhoff and Dave Bautista.
Rejoice Game of Thrones fans! While the wait for the new season of HBO’s hit show may seem like an eternity, today’s news may make the wait a little easier.
David Benioff and Dan Weiss, who write and produce the show, have revealed that episodes for Season 3 will run around 5-6 minutes longer with most being around 56-57 minutes long.
Weiss praised HBO for giving them the time,
“There’s almost another full episode’s worth of extra minutes spread across the season. One of the great liberties with HBO is we’re not forced to come in at a specific time. We can’t be under 50 minutes or over 60, but that gives us a lot of flexibility.”
They have also petitioned the network to have the Season 3 finale run well over an hour. I for one am all for this because as anyone that has read A Storm of Swords will tell you this should be the season when the stuff really hits the fan and they need all the extra time they can get to show it.
Game of Thrones returns to HBO on March 31, 2013.
If you didn’t get a chance to see the nine minute preview of Star Trek Into Darkness over the weekend before viewings of The Hobbit (one word: amazeballs) then here is the brand spanking new trailer for the followup to the 2009 reboot.
Not to be confused with the trailer shown a couple of weeks back this trailer begins with Bruce Greenwood’s Christopher Pike giving Kirk some harsh advice which then segues into the Benedict Cumberbatch voiceover from the previous trailer. The preview ends with the scene from the Japanese trailer that looks to have a bit of foreshadowing or it could just be JJ Abrams keeping us on the hook.
Star Trek Into Darkness releases on May 17, 2013.
*This review is based off of the 24fps IMAX 3D viewing of The Hobbit*
J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic tale The Hobbit has had a more than difficult road getting to the big screen. I’m sure Peter Jackson never envisioned that making this would possibly be a more difficult task than making his The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The movie was originally planned to be released in two parts but was split into three either by Jackson’s doing or the studio is not known. Jackson also chose to shoot the film in 48fps which is dividing moviegoers from “it’s the future of cinema” all the way to “the most expensive looking home movie ever made”.
But for right now let’s wade through all the minutia and get down to what ultimately matters. Is The Hobbit a great movie? No, it is not. But it is a very good movie that could be the beginning of something great.
The Hobbit is probably the greatest fantasy book ever written. For 75 years it has enchanted readers of all ages but let’s face it, the book is only 300 pages so stretching it into three movies is going to take a little bit of Hollywood magic as well as taking what Gandalf says in the movie to heart.
“All good stories deserve embellishment.”
The plot for The Hobbit is not exactly deep. Gandalf the Grey shows up on an unsuspecting hobbit’s doorstep one morning asking if he would like to partake in an adventure. The hobbit in question, Bilbo Baggins, declines but is nevertheless visited by thirteen dwarves that night who kindly eat him out of house and home while discussing how to take back their lost gold (for the film it is changed to the dwarves wanting their homeland back, not just a greedy attempt at gold) from Smaug the dragon. All the while Bilbo is wondering why has his house been invaded by these dwarves and a wizard. He finds out that Gandalf has elected him to be the burglar of the group that is heading for The Lonely Mountain. After sleeping on it he joins the group and is on his first adventure.
Now one of the more difficult things for Jackson to try and accomplish is having thirteen dwarves each with their own unique personality. Everyone ready? OK, here’s the rundown: Fili, Kili, Oin, Gloin, Dwalin, Balin, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Dori, Nori, Ori and Thorin Oakenshield, who is the leader of the group. Luckily readers of the book will connect easily with the characters right off the bat but where the film really helps matters is that even moviegoers who are going into the movie as Hobbit virgins will not be lost in the shuffle because every dwarf character really does come across as their own not just a xerox copy of other party members.
As far as character performances are concerned I really saw no weak points. Ian McKellan could play Gandalf in his sleep and everyone should be glad that he came back to play the role because anyone else would be a pale comparison to the wizard we know on film. Martin Freeman (who is in a race with his Sherlock co-star Benedict Cumberbatch to see who can be the bigger star of the show) plays Bilbo with affable whimsy and while he may not be pudgy in belly as Tolkien had described Bilbo and most hobbits to be, Freeman latches onto the role and make it wholly his own. With that said, the real star of this first film has to be Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakenshield. In the Tolkien book Thorin was more of a greedy hoarder that wanted lost gold but in Jackson’s movie he is transformed into the heir to the lost dwarven throne who is seeking to reclaim the home that was stolen from his people. And with this (welcome) change in character, Thorin has to be played in a different way and Armitage breathes an indomitable spirit into the role.
The first part of this trilogy covers roughly a little over the first third of the book and at a runtime of two hours and forty minutes there is a whole lot of scenes that have been stretched out from two pages into twenty minutes of film but to me this never seemed to drag as some have complained. Now if you are looking for an exact re-telling of the novel then you are going to be sorely disappointed. Peter Jackson made plenty of changes to his The Lord of the Rings trilogy (Tom Bombadil, MIA) and you are going to get plenty of them here. Radagast the Brown, who is only spoken of in The Hobbit, is a fully fleshed out character with his own scenes complete with mushroom trips and hair filled with bird crap. His scene where he leads orcs on a chase through the open fields is used as a segue in getting Bilbo and company to Rivendell.
Moreover, the Necromancer appears to play an overall bigger role in Jackson’s trilogy. Mentioned in the book this Necromancer, a foretelling of Sauron’s return, looks to be a character of bigger import. Azog the Defiler has also been made into Thorin’s main antagonist. He was only a part of Thorin’s backstory who died long ago by another dwarf’s hand but in the film he is made into the face of the enemy that hunts the party along their travels. The addition of Azog certainly has me intrigued as to how he will be used in the follow up films. Like I said, don’t expect a book to film transfer but the additions made are forgivable and, in some cases, make the movie more interesting.
If there is one thing no one can argue about it is that Peter Jackson has the look of Middle-Earth down to a science. A lot of cynical people have called the sweeping camera shots a tourism video for New Zealand and all I can say to that is “where do I sign up to go?”. The cinematography is second to none and is accompanied perfectly by Howard Shore returning to score and compose the music. You will get hints of music from LOTR like the music of The Shire along with a stirring rendition of Far Over the Misty Mountain Cold that becomes the theme of the dwarves in the film and is interwoven throughout the soundtrack. I dare anyone not to be humming this for days after seeing the movie.
As I said earlier, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is a very good movie. It goes without saying that there is slim chance that The Hobbit can recapture the magic of The Lord of the Rings trilogy but the source material should have already had you expecting that. I still have some worries about how this will be stretched into three full movies but I easily welcome the first part as a good setup for the journey into the Mirkwood and the fight with Smaug that is coming in the future.
The movie moves at its own pace and is unapologetic about it. This is fine by me. With strong performances, beautiful set pieces and a new yet familiar soundtrack I enjoyed my time being taken back to Middle-Earth. The plot changes are major in places but serve their purpose well and don’t feel like fluff meant to extend the runtime. Let’s just all be glad Peter Jackson and company decided to come back and make this movie a reality instead of leaving all of us to wonder “what if?”.
Artist Miguel Lokia has done the world a great service and created Game of Thrones family banners for some of pop cultures greatest characters. Let’s just state the obvious, pick your favorites and enjoy your new phone background.
Check out Miguel’s work here
Logan sure does look like a sad samurai in the newest poster for The Wolverine. Let’s hope being based off of Chris Claremont’s classic Wolvie story can get people to forget about X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
Nevermind, let’s be honest it can’t be forgotten, let’s say forgiven.
The Wolverine releases on July 26, 2013.
The first trailer for Guillermo Del Toro’s sci-fi flick Pacific Rim has just gone online and it is certainly the most…unique trailer of the big summer movies. A cynical part of me wants to pre-judge this movie but yet when I watch it there is the kid in me that said it is giant robots fighting giant monsters just shut up and have fun. Is anyone else getting an adult Power Rangers vibe off of the preview?
Pacific Rim releases on July 12, 2013.
Here is a good way to pass the time while waiting on The Walking Dead to return in February. Order yourself this insanely awesome shirt mash-up from Shirtoid.com. I gotta hand it to whoever made it, this is one great design for a shirt, poster, keychain, underwear. Heck, put this design on a coffee mug and I would think about buying it and I hate coffee.
The new trailer for Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel has just gone online and say what you will but the movie looks nothing short of beautiful. I am always one that grows tired of origin stories in comic movies but I could not help but watch this and want to go see it now. Let’s hope that Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder are guiding this character into movie relevance again.
Man of Steel releases on June 14, 2013.