Regal Cinemas Think You're All Idiots - Playing Sharknado at Midnight Next Week

Nothing wrong with enjoying a movie in So Bad, It's Good fashion. We have all done it and sometimes pointing out the flaws is the best way to justify the money and more importantly time wasted watching such crap. But paying money to see it at midnight when said movie was made for television and hence never intended for such format is different.

Regal Cinema is hoping that li'l factoid won't stop you from shelling out cash to Sharknardo, the recent disaster creature-feature produced by SyFy. All the attention and hype it got online, and resulting piss-poor ratings, showed once again the divide from us dorks online and everyone else in real life.

If your local cinema is one of the 200 selected and you're an idiot, you can enjoy Sharknardo next Friday (August 2) at midnight.

Third Gravity Trailer Screams, "Take My Money NOW!"

Even if Gravity commercially fails this October, they get an A for effort. Two gripping trailers released in less than 12 hours. And you guessed it, here is a third. There is truly nothing else to add.

Besides how I can't wait to see what Alfonso Cuarón hath wroth.

Larry David's Clear History Premiering August 10

Every time a new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm ends, the "Is this it?" question is posed not just by our media colleagues aloud but because myself and Peter. I always insist that this is it, and Larry David will off-handedly comment of its end months later at some unrelated function. Peter points out I say this every time (It's true) and eventually David and HBO say in their nonchalant way Curb is coming back.

This time it's different. Slightly. David went off to direct the comedy Clear History during the usual "It's up to Larry if there is more" downtime. One look at him in that get-up and I was hooked. The trailer left a different feeling. That, unfortunately, does not appear to be David for the telefilm's duration but the first act. And even then he’s playing Larry David. You delayed another season of Curb just to do Curb: the Movie?

I'll watch but I don't know, Larry. It won't be too much longer to reach a verdict as HBO announced this morning the comedy will premiere August 10. You be the judge if I'm being overly critical. Check out the trailer below:

Writer & Director Mitch Cohen Raises Over $10,000 At SDCC Towards "Super Zero" Kickstarter

After raising 10,000.00 towards the Kickstarter campaign by feverishly working the crowds at last week's Comic Con, there is one week left to contribute to the Kickstarter campain for zombie film Super Zero.

Mitch is hoping that the horror buffs and the film aficionados across the interwebs will come together to support the project and help him to reach their goal.

If fervor and preparedness were enough to make a film in Hollywood, viewers in movie theaters across the country would already be enjoying Mitch Cohen’s original film, “Super Zero.” However, since the one thing it does take to make a film is money, Cohen, a 36-year-old L.A.-based writer and director, recently launched a Kickstarter.com campaign – http://kck.st/15dN7BX – to make his vision for a new kind of zombie movie a reality. The production team will head to Comic-con to rally the community.

Cohen, a father to two-year-old twins, who over the last few years has been responsible for some of the industry’s most recognizable video game campaigns, conceived the unconventional “geek culture” film years ago, but was forced to put his passion project on hold with the arrival of his children. Now, with a little help from friends and strangers alike, Cohen and his team are hoping to raise $34,500 by July 31, 2013 to get the project off the ground.

An original take on a popular genre, Super Zero is described as the story of a geeky, shy and terminally ill teen, who rises from utter insignificance to become a zombie assassin and mankind's last hope for survival. In traditional zombie films, by definition, the end of the world is the worst possible scenario for all characters. In Cohen’s Super Zero, the film’s protagonist finally finds the purpose in his life while the rest of the world scrambles to save theirs.

"Super Zero is really an epic win for the average guy,” said Cohen of his film. “The movie celebrates the overlooked, the eccentric and the powerless, combining sci-fi/horror with comic book-inspired action, irreverent comedy and a totally relatable and ultimately awesome average guy lead character. Plus there are zombies…lots and lots of zombies!"

Cohen, a self-confessed lover of all things geek, further describes Super Zero as his personal love letter to the community. He is hopeful that all those out there that may resemble him, or perhaps more aptly may identify with Super Zero’s protagonist, who is the everyday gamer/comic book kid, will be inspired to join his team and support the project. Cohen also hopes he may strike a chord with other visionaries out there that understand the struggle to balance family and career.

"Kickstarter is an amazing tool for identifying and connecting with audiences that share your passion and vision, even before you’re able to bring it to the screen,” said Cohen. “And much like the story behind Super Zero, it allows average folks to be a part of something extraordinary."

Interested contributors can select pledge categories from $1 to $10,000+ and receive varying rewards for joining the Super Zero production team, including signed scripts, cameos in the film, set visits and on-screen production credits.

Additionally, Cohen's vision for Super Zero merely starts with the short film. He hopes it’s just the first step on what he's designed as a complete new franchise. "There are so many great things planned for this world and stories within it to tell. And the most exciting aspect of it is that it’s perfect as a transmedia vehicle," said Cohen. “The short feeds the feature film, which will be augmented by web content and even a video game. I see it as an ecosystem of cool things to explore."

Cohen, the film’s writer and director, is joined on Super Zero by Producer Shane Spiegel and Cinematographer Idan Menin. For more information on Super Zero, the filmmakers and the Kickstarter campaign, please visit http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/811236299/super-zero-0?ref=live.

Movie Review: The Wolverine

Remember X-Men Origins: Wolverine?  Good, because neither does The Wolverine.

Four years after everyone's favorite adamantium-clawed mutant sputtered a bit (ok, a lot) with his first solo film, Wolverine gets a worthy do-over, courtesy of director James Mangold, a frighteningly intense Hugh Jackman, a talented supporting cast, and with a screenplay by Mark Bomback and Scott Frank. 

Welcome back, Wolverine.  We've missed you.

The Wolverine manages to find a nice balance between the Japanese saga told in the 1982 Chris Claremont/Frank Miller comics and the established film universe.  Opening with a flashback of Logan as a POW in a Nagasaki prison camp during World War II, he saves a young soldier named Yashida (Ken Yamamura) from a nuclear blast, suffering and healing from gruesome injuries in the process.  In the present day, Logan is a mess.  Distraught, and haunted by nightmares since having to kill Jean Grey during the events at the end of X-Men: The Last Stand, he's gone all scraggly and has retreated to the mountains of Canada.  He's friends with a bear, but even that ends badly.

But then he's visited by a mysterious woman called Yukio (Rila Fukushima). She's been tasked to bring Wolverine to Japan to visit his old friend Yashida, who became a successful businessman after his life was saved at Nagasaki, but who is now dying of cancer.  Yashida doesn't want to die.  Obsessed with Logan's healing factor, he claims that a way has been found to transfer the mutation to him, which would save his life and release Logan from his own long-suffering, seemingly endless lifespan.

Logan may be depressed, but he's not interested in giving up his healing factor.  Does he lose it anyway?  Yup.  And of course there are more sinister things at work - like Yashida's scheming son Shingen (Hiroyuki Sanada), who's not happy at all that the family business will be left to his daughter Mariko (Tao Okamoto) instead of him, and there are dealings with the Yakuza and other unsavory characters from the Japanese criminal underworld.  Then there's Viper (Svetlana Khodchenkova), the scientist who's as venomous as her name. 

The trailers we've seen for The Wolverine have been a bit misleading.  Yes, there are some really cool action sequences, like a fight scene on a bullet train, and Wolverine taking on scores of assassins at a funeral.  But there are long stretches of good story in here, and the movie plays less like a traditional superhero movie and more like a crime drama that just happens to have a guy with claws who heals really fast in the middle of everything.

This is definitely Hugh Jackman's best performance as Wolverine since the first two X-Men movies (and even his First Class cameo).  Where in Origins, he seemed far too polite, this Wolverine swears, has no patience for anyone, gets into fights, and he really, really doesn't want to be forced to take a bath.  For the first time, we see what it's like for him to deal with the terrible losses that come with living such a long life.  And after he's deprived of his healing factor, we get to see him deal with a different kind of fear for the first time.

Much credit also has to go to the women in this film, particularly Rila Fukushima and Tao Okamoto, who are both making their film debut.  Fukushima is quite a badass, and a sidekick for Wolverine that I'd love to see in more X-Men films.  Wolverine spends a good part of the film on the run with Okamoto's Mariko, and they not only have great chemistry in their scenes together, which are both touching and at times actually very funny.  Famke Janssen also returns in flashback form as Jean Grey, mainly to torment Wolverine, but it's nice to have her back in this series too.

There's also Svetlana Khodchenkova as Viper, who at times seems the odd one out.  She's the catalyst for a lot of the things that go wrong for Wolverine in the movie, but at times her character seems a bit out of place.  At least, a lot more comic-bookish than any of the other elements of the film, especially in the third act, which has the biggest CGI-action spectacle of the film.  I've heard complaints that the final act goes a bit overboard in that respect, but I enjoyed it, since it had a few surprises that I wasn't expecting (and not the obvious one).

Major props have to go James Mangold, who picked our flailing Wolverine solo film series back up from adamantium bullets and painfully-obvious CGI claws, and gave us just a beautifully-shot Wolverine movie that respects both the comics and the films.  The Wolverine is nastier and darker than what we've seen in the previous X-Men films, it's violent without being gratuitous about it, there's a bit of romance, it's funny as hell, and has characters that we actually care about - particularly Wolverine himself.

I can't end this review without mentioning the infamous end-credits scene.  Yes, it's awesome.  No, I'm not giving away what it is.  Just make sure you don't miss it.  Going by the audience response I saw (and participated in) last night to The Wolverine, and their reaction at seeing what's to come...let's just say next summer...there is an overall sense that the X-Men movies are finally back, and that is an amazing thing.

Trailer for A Thousand Kisses Deep

Now here is a clever, li'l concept. What if you witnessed your own death, unbeknownst to you at first, and had the chance to prevent it? That is the driving force the new time-travel thriller A Thousand Kisses Deep. It hits DVD and Digital on August 6.

But in the meantime, here's the trailer:

"Returning home from work, Mia (Jodie Whittaker) witnesses an aged woman leap from a window.  Scattered around the old woman’s broken, lifeless body Mia discovers shredded pieces from a beloved photograph of herself and her former lover Ludwig (Dougray Scott). Highly unnerved, Mia begs Max (David Warner), the buildings’ all knowing custodian, to let her into the deceased woman's flat.  While inside this strangely familiar place, Mia recognizes the contents as her own. Confused and disturbed by what lies before her, she bolts back and forth in time where she is forced to realize it was her very own life that ended before her.  Now, the only way to safeguard her future is to go back to her past and confront the man she loves deeply but dreads most."

RUMOR MILL: Leonardo DiCaprio Up For ROBOTECH?

 

Well I guess at this point he's like "If I can't get that Oscar, fuck it, I'll do giant robot movies" 

From the same Latino Review article we got the Star Wars Episode VII news from, apparently Leo DiGatsbyo passed on nerd shit like Star Wars so he could do nerd shit like... ROBOTECH...?

As I mentioned before Leonardo DiCaprio was up for a role in Star Wars but passed.  He passed because he wants to do a project that is being developed and that project is…

“Robotech”

Based on the sprawling sci-fi epic, “Robotech” takes place at a time when Earth has developed giant robots from the technology on an alien spacecraft that crashed on a South Pacific isle. Mankind is forced to use the technology to fend off three successive waves of alien invasions. The first invasion concerns a battle with a race of giant warriors who seek to retrieve their flagship’s energy source known as “protoculture,” and the planet’s survival ends up in the hands of two young pilots.

With Pacific Rim having all the ingredients of a mega-blockbuster, it kind of did poorly in the good ol' USA; but with a star like Leonardo DiCaprio, who's recently gotten big again with the upcoming The Wolf of Wall-Street and The Great Gatsby, which was a surprising money maker for WB, I think people would watch something that is both rich in a GOOD story, with an A-Lister like Caprio. 

I've never played the games or watched the anime; but the suits look cool and who knows, maybe THIS is what it'll finally take to make mecha-films a big deal. 

Keep in mind though, this is all just RUMOR and NOTHING is confirmed. Latino Review has broken a few "scoops" this year, none of which have turned out true; so take this with a grain of salt. 

ComicBook Movie had some insight on the project's on/off again history:

Back in January, newcomer Nic Mathieu was hired by Warner Bros. to direct the picture so it appears that development on the film is highly active. Back in 2007, actor Tobey Maguire, at the height of his "Spider-Man" fame tried to get a live-action Robotech film off the ground but it sputtered and flamed out before it could take off. British television writer and novelist Tom Rob Smith (Child 44) was the last person on a long list of writer to take a shot at the script. 

RUMOR MILL: Ryan "I Drive" Gosling and Zac "Eh" Efron in STAR WARS: EPISODE VII?

 

Well things are heating up in a galaxy far, far away.

According to the scoop-heavy boys at Latino Review, Ryan Gosling (DRIVE, The Notebook) and Zac Efron (17 Again, Charlie St. Cloud) have apparently been tested or looked at for roles in J.J. Abrams' Star Wars: Episode VII.

As for what role Efron would be playing, we don’t know. He could be a Solo kid. But what I was told for sure is the Gosling went in for Skywalker’s son. Yes, that’s right Luke’s kid.

Interesting thing is that Episode 7 is taking place thirty years after Return of the Jedi.

Things are going to start heating up in the next month. And no way is J.J. Abrams leaving Episode 7 for Star Trek 3. Its very possible though he does just one movie in the new trilogy.

Well, I'm sure some Extended Universe nerds and the 'Star Wars'-elite will be throwing a fit; but it's definitely a good move on Disney's part to get some sexy heart-throbs like these two for the women to get in seats.

Not to mention they're both pretty good actors; but don't go around saying that to too many people who still think "LOL ZAC EFRON HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL".

Keep in mind though, this is all just RUMOR and NOTHING is confirmed. Latino Review has broken a few "scoops" this year, none of which have turned out true; so take this with a grain of salt. 

Get Ready For Erotic Car Action In GRAN TURISMO

 

According to TheWrap, Sony wants to make a movie off the video-game that makes them a lot of money. 

Sony is looking to team up with Fifty Shades of Grey producers Dana Brunetti and Mike De Luca to make the film. 

"Gran Turismo" is the single biggest franchise for PlayStation, having sold 70 million copies worldwide. Sony execs Elizabeth Cantillon, DeVon Franklin and Hannah Minghella will oversee the project for the studio.

No word on plot, characters, directors, writers, or really anything; but i'm sure that will be made available quickly depending on how well Need for Speed does. And, like Need For Speed, you'll ask "how did they make this into a movie?"

Thoughts on New 'Rocky' Spinoff Film, 'Creed'

I think I can speak for every Rocky fan known to man that when they woke up this morning, the last thing they expected to hear about was a new Rocky film, more so, a Rocky 'spinoff' film.

Though here we are, roughly 6 1/2 years since the release of what was thought to be the last Rocky movie, Rocky Balboa, and we get an announcement that a new one is in the works.  A film (to be appropriately titled, Creed) that will center on the grandson of Rocky's most famous foe turned best friend, Apollo Creed.

As a die-hard Rocky fan who has seen every film in the series numerous times (even Rocky V), I have to say, I can't help but be both a little annoyed and intrigued at the same time.

Annoyed mostly because I felt 2006's Rocky Balboa was a wonderful ending for the character that made Sylvester Stallone a legend.  It wrapped up Rocky's life perfectly and left you with a good, satisfied feeling at the end that you had seen the last of the Italian Stallion.

However, I must say I am intrigued at the prospect of this new film as well because - for the first time in the Rocky series - Rocky will not be the lead character, but a supporting one.

Fruitvale Station director, Ryan Coogler (who has earned critical acclaim for his debut film), had this 'dream project' of telling the story of Apollo Creed's grandson (to be played by Michael B. Jordan), a young man who grew up in a wealthy household due to his grandfather's boxing accomplishments, yet was forbidden to partake in the sport himself by his family even though he possesses raw, natural talent.

It is only when he finally decides go against his family's wishes and give boxing a chance that he seeks out a trainer in the form of a man that not only fought his famous grandfather, but was best friend's with him as well: Rocky Balboa.

The fact that this project got the 'OK' from not only Sly himself, but those over at MGM and the original Rocky producers - Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff - makes me think they must feel this is a worthy story to bring back the world of Rocky Balboa.

I also like the fact that they will reportedly touch on both Apollo Creed's famous fights with Rocky as well as his fatal bout with Ivan Drago; a nostalgic ploy to tell the story then bring it forward to the present day.

It would be great to see if we can catch up with Rocky's life post-Rocky Balboa such as how his restaurant, Adrian's, is doing, his son (played by Milo Ventimiglia) and what looked to be his new love, Marie (Geraldine Hughes) along with her son, Steps (James Francis Kelly III).  Oh and how can we forget good ol' Paulie (Burt Young)!

So to wrap things up, while I understand why many authentic Rocky fans might feel this is a slap in the face to the series, give it a chance.  It has passionate talent both behind and in-front of the camera as well as approval from every man involved in making the original film that won a Best Picture Oscar.

Now who wants to bet Rock slaps back on those gloves just one more time?