Click the thumbnails to see larger versions of the posters.
"Pacific Rim" opens July 12th.
Apr 30, 2013
The Pan Pacific Defense Committee wants you!
These new viral posters for "Pacific Rim" reach back to hallowed antiquity for their graphic inspiration, exhorting the humans of a world under siege to join the war effort and fight the accurs-ed Kaiju. Guillermo del Toro has said he wanted "a very, very romantic look" for his modern day clash of the titans. With, as he told the LA Times; "a lot of crazy rain, wind, all the drama of an Emily Bronte movie in a high-tech movie.”
Click the thumbnails to see larger versions of the posters.
"Pacific Rim" opens July 12th.
Click the thumbnails to see larger versions of the posters.
"Pacific Rim" opens July 12th.
Trippy new TV spot for "The Great Gatsby"
I read F. Scott Fitzgerald's tale of post WWI decadence years ago but I don't remember it being quite the surreal, mind-expanding journey through an art director's brain that this film is looking like. Not that that's a bad thing. Just a little unexpected (though Lana Del Ray seems like a perfect fit).
"The Great Gatsby" starring Leonardo DiCaprio opens May 10th.
"The Great Gatsby" starring Leonardo DiCaprio opens May 10th.
Apr 29, 2013
New "Pacific Rim" Wondercon trailer
Guillermo del Toro's "Pacific Rim" is shaping up to be the monster movie of the year and maybe the best since "Cloverfield". The quality of the footage released so far has been consistently superb and in this trailer, initially screened at Wondercon, we get a more rounded sense of the narrative and scale of the action. I'm getting goosebumps.
"Pacific Rim" opens July 12th.
"Pacific Rim" opens July 12th.
The top 10 movies for the weekend of April 26 - April 28, 2013
| 1) Pain and Gain | $20 Million |
| 2) Oblivion | $17.8 Million |
| 3) 42 | $10.6 Million |
| 4) The Big Wedding | $7.5 Million |
| 5) The Croods | $6.7 Million |
| 6) G.I. Joe: Retaliation | $3.7 Million |
| 7) Scary Movie 5 | $3.4 Million |
| 8) Olympus Has Fallen | $2.8 Million |
| 9) The Place Beyond the Pines | $2.6 Million |
| 10) Jurassic Park 3D | $2.3 Million |
The number one movie a year ago this week was Screen Gems' "Think Like a Man" which held on to the top spot for a second week with a $17.6 million haul.
(Green indicates new release)
Apr 28, 2013
"Fast and Furious 6" trailer: hot rods save the world!
Tanks?
In this final trailer for the upcoming "Fast and Furious 6" the kids from the neighborhood are all over that international crime thing, working with the man to bring down G.I. Joe-type global threats. How did we get here? I have no idea but it looks like fun!
"Fast and Furious 6" is due in theaters May 24th.
In this final trailer for the upcoming "Fast and Furious 6" the kids from the neighborhood are all over that international crime thing, working with the man to bring down G.I. Joe-type global threats. How did we get here? I have no idea but it looks like fun!
"Fast and Furious 6" is due in theaters May 24th.
Apr 27, 2013
"Iron Man 3" - 2013 - movie review
"Iron Man 3" opens on New Years Eve 1999 in Switzerland. Tony's at a Y2K party and gets approached in an elevator by tech weirdo Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce, the rich man's Val Kilmer) who tries to convince him to get behind his hi-tech think tank. Tony basically blows him off and Aldrich spends the rest of the night doing his Phantom of the Opera meets the Joker routine on the building's roof. Something tells me we haven't seen the last of him.
Fast forward to the present where Tony narrates how he's a different man now. He's tinkering endlessly on some new technology, a suit that can be called from a distance. In what seems like a pretty forced piece of exposition Tony informs us that in the aftermath of "New York" he's desperate to protect the one thing he can't live without. That would be Pepper Potts (Gwenyth Paltrow), who listens dutifully. As a result he's not sleeping and begun to suffer anxiety attacks.
Meanwhile someone called The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) has suddenly become America's most wanted. He breaks into national TV broadcasts and sounds dire warnings about the end, sending the always day-late-and-a-dollar-short national security apparatus into full hissy-fit mode. Shortly afterward, over at Stark headquarters, our long lost pal from Switzerland suddenly shows up hocking his think tank's latest techno breakthrough "extremis" to CEO Potts. Pepper is amazed and more than a little turned on. Are you seeing this Tony?
At this point we're not exactly sure what "extremis" does but we're pretty sure it's not your standard iphone app. Shortly thereafter Tony's head of security Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) is seriously injured when a suspicious character he's been following suddenly turns into a human candle then explodes. It's a damn good thing Tony's been a-tinkering and managed to developed those 40+ Iron Man suits equipped with his latest "Come 'ere boy!" technology. Something tells me he's going to need them.
After his buddy is injured Tony gets personal and broadcasts his intention to take down the Mandarin and provides his address in case the bearded one is up for some old fashion fisticuffs. He's not really. What he does instead is send his minions in helicopters with air to ground missiles to take out Tony's Malibu house, sending it plunging into the ocean in a billion pieces. The worst part of the whole attack is watching poor Jarvis twitching in his mechanical patheticness as Tony and the Saucer Section slide into the ocean. Thankfully no one is hurt (miraculously it seems, not even Jarvis) though the world now believes Tony went down with the ship.
Though Tony survives the prototype suit he's wearing has more software glitches than windows Vista. He needs to regroup and so finds somebody's old workshop garage and settles in. Thing is those workshop garages tend to belong to people and it turns out this one is guarded by a local kid who the Disney marketing department told the producers the series badly needed.
From here the story becomes one of Tony getting back on his feet and facing down the menace, which he does with the help of those 40-odd spare suits, the moral support of the kid from marketing and some old-fashioned, Hollywood illogic (as in: arch villain captures hero but neglects to kill him after vowing repeatedly to do just that). Downey plays his role with his usual aplomb and the supporting characters - now comfortably familiar with the drill - all do their best to earn their enormous paychecks while shouldering the burden of the story's narrative twists (of which there are a couple of interesting ones and a couple you can see coming several miles away).
Make no mistake, Iron Man 3 is better than Iron Man 2 but it lacks the sense of surprise that made the original a must-see event for pop-culture vultures. It certainly kept my attention throughout (though it sagged noticeably in the middle) and devotees of the franchise will probably love it. Nonetheless it's become so incredibly predictable in spots and the writers have had to go to such absurd lengths to try and keep it fresh that it seems like we've reached the end of something with this film, and maybe we have. (Where do you go from 40+ suits?) Paltrow herself when asked about IM4 recently said “I don’t think there’s going to be [an Iron Man 4]. I think we’re done with Iron Man.” Iron man was never, after all, a top tier superhero character and in this film, with the sense of freshness just a fond memory, it's beginning to show. Left to his own devices IM cannot carry a story on his back like, say, Batman can. He needs help. In the case of this movie, lots of it. So much in fact that there are times during the film where Stark feels like a supporting character himself.
To at least some degree Iron Man 3 suffers as a direct result of the success of "The Avengers". While the character had a resurgence of sorts in that movie following the disappointing IM2, it was, it seems now, a false dawn. It worked because in that flm he was little more than a smart ass counter point to the rest of the cast: classic comic relief. Gimli. Here he's back in the spotlight alone and I'm left thinking; "The Avengers sure was a great flick."
Verdict: ★★★☆☆
Fast forward to the present where Tony narrates how he's a different man now. He's tinkering endlessly on some new technology, a suit that can be called from a distance. In what seems like a pretty forced piece of exposition Tony informs us that in the aftermath of "New York" he's desperate to protect the one thing he can't live without. That would be Pepper Potts (Gwenyth Paltrow), who listens dutifully. As a result he's not sleeping and begun to suffer anxiety attacks.
Meanwhile someone called The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) has suddenly become America's most wanted. He breaks into national TV broadcasts and sounds dire warnings about the end, sending the always day-late-and-a-dollar-short national security apparatus into full hissy-fit mode. Shortly afterward, over at Stark headquarters, our long lost pal from Switzerland suddenly shows up hocking his think tank's latest techno breakthrough "extremis" to CEO Potts. Pepper is amazed and more than a little turned on. Are you seeing this Tony?
At this point we're not exactly sure what "extremis" does but we're pretty sure it's not your standard iphone app. Shortly thereafter Tony's head of security Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) is seriously injured when a suspicious character he's been following suddenly turns into a human candle then explodes. It's a damn good thing Tony's been a-tinkering and managed to developed those 40+ Iron Man suits equipped with his latest "Come 'ere boy!" technology. Something tells me he's going to need them.
After his buddy is injured Tony gets personal and broadcasts his intention to take down the Mandarin and provides his address in case the bearded one is up for some old fashion fisticuffs. He's not really. What he does instead is send his minions in helicopters with air to ground missiles to take out Tony's Malibu house, sending it plunging into the ocean in a billion pieces. The worst part of the whole attack is watching poor Jarvis twitching in his mechanical patheticness as Tony and the Saucer Section slide into the ocean. Thankfully no one is hurt (miraculously it seems, not even Jarvis) though the world now believes Tony went down with the ship.
Though Tony survives the prototype suit he's wearing has more software glitches than windows Vista. He needs to regroup and so finds somebody's old workshop garage and settles in. Thing is those workshop garages tend to belong to people and it turns out this one is guarded by a local kid who the Disney marketing department told the producers the series badly needed.
From here the story becomes one of Tony getting back on his feet and facing down the menace, which he does with the help of those 40-odd spare suits, the moral support of the kid from marketing and some old-fashioned, Hollywood illogic (as in: arch villain captures hero but neglects to kill him after vowing repeatedly to do just that). Downey plays his role with his usual aplomb and the supporting characters - now comfortably familiar with the drill - all do their best to earn their enormous paychecks while shouldering the burden of the story's narrative twists (of which there are a couple of interesting ones and a couple you can see coming several miles away).
Make no mistake, Iron Man 3 is better than Iron Man 2 but it lacks the sense of surprise that made the original a must-see event for pop-culture vultures. It certainly kept my attention throughout (though it sagged noticeably in the middle) and devotees of the franchise will probably love it. Nonetheless it's become so incredibly predictable in spots and the writers have had to go to such absurd lengths to try and keep it fresh that it seems like we've reached the end of something with this film, and maybe we have. (Where do you go from 40+ suits?) Paltrow herself when asked about IM4 recently said “I don’t think there’s going to be [an Iron Man 4]. I think we’re done with Iron Man.” Iron man was never, after all, a top tier superhero character and in this film, with the sense of freshness just a fond memory, it's beginning to show. Left to his own devices IM cannot carry a story on his back like, say, Batman can. He needs help. In the case of this movie, lots of it. So much in fact that there are times during the film where Stark feels like a supporting character himself.
To at least some degree Iron Man 3 suffers as a direct result of the success of "The Avengers". While the character had a resurgence of sorts in that movie following the disappointing IM2, it was, it seems now, a false dawn. It worked because in that flm he was little more than a smart ass counter point to the rest of the cast: classic comic relief. Gimli. Here he's back in the spotlight alone and I'm left thinking; "The Avengers sure was a great flick."
Verdict: ★★★☆☆
Apr 26, 2013
New clip from "Iron Man 3"
Tony gets all vulnerable in this clip from the upcoming release, emoting toward Pepper (Commando) Potts about how his world has changed "since New York" and how he's really just "a man in a can". Gee, now that you put it that way...
Look for the canned man to hit theaters next weekend.
Look for the canned man to hit theaters next weekend.
Apr 25, 2013
Abrams says a few words about "Cloverfield 2"
One of the most one-sided conversations in movieland for the past few years has been between fans of "Cloverfield" and the film's maker, one J.J. Abrams. Fans have been clamoring for a sequel almost since the original hit the screens but Abrams himself has said virtually nothing on the subject, neither affirming nor denying that he wants/intends to make a sequel which leads fans to fill in the blanks themselves.
Well now in an interview with Playboy (NSFW) Abrams finally says something about a sequel for the ugly sucker from the deep.
“Part of me just wants to let ['Cloverfield 2'] go, though we’ve had a
couple of discussions about cool ways to do it. I’m looking forward to
seeing Pacific Rim this summer. It feels like there are some really big
monsters coming down the pike that could inspire something we do.”
"A couple of discussions..."? "...could inspire something..."? Not exactly words you can take to the bank. And with 2 gi-normous film franchises now set to occupy his time and energy for years to come it seems likely that Cloverfield will wind up one of the more intriguing on-offs in recent cinema history. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing. Not every film needs to become a franchise (though I wouldn't mind some day visiting the parallel universe where Cloverfield was the franchise and "Transformers" the one-off).
Well now in an interview with Playboy (NSFW) Abrams finally says something about a sequel for the ugly sucker from the deep.
 |
| seems we can safely return this head to its owner |
"A couple of discussions..."? "...could inspire something..."? Not exactly words you can take to the bank. And with 2 gi-normous film franchises now set to occupy his time and energy for years to come it seems likely that Cloverfield will wind up one of the more intriguing on-offs in recent cinema history. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing. Not every film needs to become a franchise (though I wouldn't mind some day visiting the parallel universe where Cloverfield was the franchise and "Transformers" the one-off).
Apr 24, 2013
New clip from "Star Trek Into Darkness" - UPDATED
The promo clips are flying out of Paramount's marketing department as we close in on the May 17th release date for "Star Trek Into Darkness". This clip is oozing with naughty overtones and reminds me just a bit of another scene from another sci-fi movie. Hmmmm...
UPDATE: After creating this post I found a Japanese teaser trailer (below) for "Into Darkness" that contains some previously unseen footage. Rather than create yet another "Into Darkness" post I'm adding it to this one. Enjoy!
UPDATE: After creating this post I found a Japanese teaser trailer (below) for "Into Darkness" that contains some previously unseen footage. Rather than create yet another "Into Darkness" post I'm adding it to this one. Enjoy!
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