Tag: Movies

A wee bit more gossip has emerged about director Michelle MacLaren departing the Wonder Woman movie, courtesy of Badass Digest:

With movies and TV shows based on comics unavoidable no matter where you turn, I've often wondered why there aren't more indie movies based on indie comics. Part of the reason is that it's just so darned hard to fund any indie movie any more. But it does happen. And if you had reminded me that Officer Downe, the one shot comic by Joe Casey and Chris Burnham was being actually made, with Slipnot's main clown Shawn Crahan directing, I would have said "oh yeah, April Fools." Not because it isn't good source material but it sounds so darned unlikely. <

Are superhero movies the only thing keeping young men going to the movies? Or are they doomed to soon crash and burn out? That and more are covered in this NYT piece on on how female fare is dominating 2015's box office. Insurgent (above), Cinderella and Fifty Shades of Grey have all been hits this year, while male focused films have mostly flopped. (One exception, The Kingsmen based on a you-know-what by Mark Millar, one of Hollywood's most reliable creators.) But other factors are at play including the numbing prevalence of endless special effects and male distraction by video games:

Over the weekend, he had a little spare time, and director James Gunn answered a bunch of question on FB, summarized here. The one...

After using the powers of social media to unlock a new trailer, we see the Avengers in a hopeless battle against Ultron! He's only one robot, what is the problem??? Nice character moments for the Black Widow and Cap, as we see the Avengers facing a host of CGI adversaries, and a ton of CGI building coming crashing down! And I nuanced take on the aqua/orange color scheme of all movies with a more roin's egg blue and light bisque patina.

Another Community director hops over to the big screen

But this year, The Diary of a Teenage girl, based on the hybrid novel/comic by Phoebe Gloeckner, and directed by Marielle Heller is getting very strong reviews. The film stars 22-year-old Bel Powley as Minnie Goetz, a teenage girl whose emerging sexuality finds an outlet in an affair with her mother's boyfriend. (Kristen Wiig and Alexander Skarsgaard play the mother and boyfriend.) Strong reviews have led the way to the film being picked up by Sony Classics already.

Just when you thought you had enough of 2014 year-end lists, it's now 2015 and time to begin everyone's "halfway through the decade" retrospective...

Today has been a day of Ant-Man related reveals...from the first poster for the film...   To the unveiling of Paul Rudd in full Ant-Man regalia...

There is a tower defense game I love to play on the iPad called Kingdom Rush. Not too long ago they released a new version called Kingdom Rush Frontiers which is the most imaginative and adorable version of the game yet. Like all fantasy games, it's completely tangled up in the vision of JRR Tolkien, with elves, dwarves, rangers and even in this version an ent. Each stage has many extras like little dragons, gnomes, fairies, magic mushrooms and even a game of Simon. It's adorable and a great way to pass the time. I found the first Hobbit movie two years ago to be similar to a tub of Cosy Shack rice pudding in that I never got sick of each and every bite, and I just liked watching people named Thorin and Elrond run around. Since then, while I have yet to tire of Cosy Shack, I have tired of Peter Jackson's Hobbit movies because they are nothing but a map in Kingdom Rsh blown up to IMAX size and length and noise. Maybe it's just me being 11 years older than when the Return of the King came out, or Peter Jackson being 11 years older, but The Battle of Five Armies seemed to take as much from Jackson's fanfic King Kong remake as it did the slim book it was based on. And that is not good.

In case you missed it, Sony Pictures has been forced to cancel the theatrical release of The Interview after hackers have released a catastrophic trove of private emails and scripts, and threatened to bomb theaters showing the film—and theater owners began saying they wouldn't carry it. The film follows a pair of bumbling journalists sent to North Korea to assassinate Kim Jong Un, and apparently, Supreme Leader did not like this plot line. The repercussions of this Hollywood disaster will be felt for years to come, but one piece of collateral damage was a planned adaptation of Pyongyang, Guy DeLisle's graphic novel about his two months spent in the North Korean capital working on an animation project. New Regency has pulled the plug on the project which was to have starred Steve Carrell and be directed by Gore Verbinski from a Steve Conrad script. However the log line for the movie bears little resemblance to the book that I read:

http://youtu.be/b443LL0vkT4 She Makes Comics, Marisa Stotter's documentary about women in comics, is now available. You can download it for $9.99 or pre-order a DVD...