As a kid, I was a big fan of the Eastman and Laird TMNT comics. As a youngster who grew up in the Star Wars and Karate Kid era, and who loved science fiction and RPGs, my love of this franchise was pretty much a given from the get go. And over the years, I and many other adolescents were excited to see these characters adapted to television and the big screen, with mixed results. And now, true to form, Michael Bay has chosen to tap into this latest reservoir of nostalgic energy for the sake of profit.
And after a few years of development and lots or preliminary hype (mainly that the script sucked and Bay claiming it wasn’t his fault), Paramount Pictures has announced the movie’s release. It will be premiering on August 8th, 2014 (just in time for the summer blockbuster season) and will star Alan Ritchson, Jeremy Howard, Pete Ploszek, Noel Fisher, Will Arnett, Danny Woodburn, William Fichtner, and Megan Fox in the role of investigative reporter April O’Neil.
Rather than direct, Bay has chosen to produce this baby and the leave the behind-the-camera work to Jonathan Liebesman, who brought us such action porn movies as Battle: Los Angeles, Clash of the Titans, and Bay’s reboot of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And between Fox, the eye-candy cinematography, and the slow-motion/fast-motion action shots, it looks to me like this is yet another campy action flick on par with Bay’s Transformer series.
And I’m just assuming (based on past experience with Bay movies) that the turtles themselves will all be terribly cheesy and borderline racist caricatures, with at least one sounding very much like a punchy, sass-talking black dude. Also, is anyone surprised to see Fox here? Didn’t she burn all her bridges with Bay after she compared him to a Nazi? Just saying… Enjoy the trailer:
Here is the latest trailer from 20th Century Fox for the fifth and latest installment in the X-Men franchise. Set in the future, this movie is essentially a sequel that bridges with the prequel First Class, with the X-Men’s future selves teaming up with their past selves in order to prevent an all-out war between mutants and humanity that will lead to a big ol’ apocalyptic clusterf#$@! It’s a novel idea, and one which allows the cast to incorporate both the old cast with the new.
This includes Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, and Sir Ian McKellen reprising their roles as Wolverine, Professor Xavier and Magneto in the future; and James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, and Michael Fassbender playing Xavier, Mystique and Magneto in the past. New to the cast is Peter Dinklage (of Game of Thrones fame), who plays the character of Bolivar Task, the new villain for this movie. But as usual, the top billing appears to be going to Jackman and Wolverine… again!
Even though I don’t much care for prequels, one of the things that was nice about X-Men First Class was the fact that it wasn’t all about that guy, as opposed to the other five movies in the franchise. I mean, there are other characters in this series, right? And as expected, the movie is set to be released just in time for the summer blockbuster season – on May 23rd, 2014. Enjoy the trailer, it’s really quite action-packed:
Behold, the latest bit of Star Wars-related spoofery! Inspired by the Pharrell Williams song “Happy”, this little mash up was produced by the STAR WARS TUNISIA fan club. The aim of this group is to gather and inform Tunisian Star Wars fans, and communicate with others all over the world. And in this case, that involved getting into Star Wars costume and doing a scene for scene reenactment of the original music video.
And they did it all in the actual location used to simulate the Tatooine moisture farm where Luke grew up. Enjoy!
You know me, I’m not really in the habit of reviewing television shows that don’t involve a science fiction plot or zombies. But Community is one of my favorite shows currently on TV, and this past week they did an episode that I found absolutely brilliant. Starting with the premise of a new social utility app that let’s people rank others, it then got into some serious dystopian lit territory!
To break it down, the setting of the show – Greendale Community College – becomes the beta testing ground for an app called MeowMeow Beenz. This gives people the chance to rate each other the same way they would a movie or product online, and it becomes a big hit on the campus. Quickly, people realize that ratings made by people with five beenz (five kitty faces) carry more weight, and a social hierarchy is formed!
That’s when all the dystopian imagery comes into play. The school is then rezoned based on people’s rating and everyone is forced to dress accordingly. The fives live in pastel covered room, wear white robes and futuristic looking devices, and are waited on hand and foot. Four’s dress like something out of Logan’s Run and live in the halls adjacent to them, where they aspire to become fives.
Threes and Two live in the “common area” where things are darkly lit, everyone dresses in grey coveralls, and the voice of dean informs them over the PA that “tranquility is advancement… a happy three is a future four”. And one’s are banished to the “outland”, which is the campus grounds that have now been redecorated with barbed wire, search lights, and fires in metal drums.
Eventually, the Fives try to appease the masses by holding a talent contest where the winner will receive Five status. Jeff and Britta, two of the show’s MCs plot to bring it down by getting Jeff to win and then denounce the rating system. But after he wins the contest – which is a clear allusion to American Idol and so many other reality TV tropes – he joins the Fives and tries to become its new leader.
Meanwhile, Britta – disillusioned by his betrayal – goes amongst the Twos and Threes and foments a revolution, replacing the rule of the Fives with a system of revolutionary justice where the Ones run things. As the leader, she is called “the Mother of Ones”, and judges all the fives by “reducing them to Oneness” – i.e. reducing their status to make them the same as everyone else.
But in the end, Jeff points out the cruel irony that the app developers have played on them. It asks people to rate each other, but the beta test ended days ago and the app itself is already available and rated FIVE STARS. He tells everyone that they must rate this “unregistered Five” by erasing it, and they all do. Realizing it’s Saturday, everyone then leaves school and goes home to sleep.
I tell ya, it was brilliant! Not only did it capture the essence of so many 20th century dystopian epics – showing how a hierarchical system based on fear, greed, the promise of advancement and propaganda can so easily take over. It also captured the very dangers of a revolutionary movement which seeks to replace such a system with one of forced equality, led by a tyrannical mother/father figure.
It also managed to provide some fitting satire on reality TV, the very way it conforms to some of our earlier dystopian predictions, and how the drive to be popular and famous is responsible for a great deal of angst in America and the world. Top all that off with some stabs at Zuckerberg, Facebook, and social utility apps in general, and you’ve got yourself a kickass episode!
And at one point, there’s was even a subtle reference to Yevgeny Zamyatin’s WE, the classic novel that inspired Orwell to write 1984 and presumably, Huxley to write Brave New World (though he denied it). At one point, two of the show’s characters are hiding in an office, and label that reads D-503 is on the door. This just happens to be the designation of the main character in WE, as no one in the One State has actual names anymore.
This is the reason I love this show. Dan Harmon, the show’s producer, knows great television, has great writers, and loves being all meta! In fact, that’s something they repeatedly say in the show: “that’s meta!” If you haven’t caught this show yet, then do so. It stars Chevy Chase (until the most recent season), is on Netflix (Canada, but not in the US), and makes hundreds of clever movie and television references.
It seems I’m always behind on these things! Yesterday, I came across this video entirely by accident, and realized it was one of the many movie shorts that certain parties had used to create a fan trailer for the upcoming Star Wars VII movie. Basically, its the intro movie for the MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic, and is a whole lot of eye-popping action porn!
A trailer which included all three SWTOR movies – The Return, Hope, and Deceived – it has all the Star Wars action staples. These include Jedis and Sith battling it out with lighstabers, the smuggler with a Corellian ship, droids and armored soldiers fighting it out with blasters and detonators, and space-borne dogfights. And of course, the entire thing takes place to a classic John Williams score. Enjoy the movie!
Fans of Star Wars are often able to pride themselves on their ability to recount the entire story, scene for scene and even word for word. But artist Aled Lewis took it step further and hand-stitched a continuous tapestry. The creation process took six months, involved creating each scene on his laptop, and then transferring it in pixel format onto cloth and cross-stitching it in detail.
It is called “The Coruscant Tapestry”, a hand-stitched, 30 foot cotton thread illustration printed on Klostern fabric. The tapestry depicts the memorable moments from the “Star Wars” movies – from “A New Hope” to the way to “Revenge of the Sith” – in a way that is similar in style to that of The Bayeux Tapestry, which tells of the events that led to the Norman conquest of England.
Click on the image above to get a closer look at the tapestry. And if you are in the area the awe-inspiring artwork is on display at Gallery 1988 in Los Angeles, and available to buy for just $20,000. I know, seems like a lot to spend on something pop-culture related; but then again, I’m not a collector!
Remember that scene in the Disney Pixar’s Up, where the old man and the little boy discover a dog who, thanks to a special collar, is able to talk to them? As it stands, that movie may have proven to be more prophetic than anyone would have thought. Thanks to improvements in wearable tech and affordable EEG monitors, it may finally be possible to read your dog’s mind and translate it into speech.
This is not the first case of commercial technology being used to monitor an animal’s habits. In recent years, wearable devices have been made available that an track the exercise, sleeping and eating patterns of a dog. But now, thanks to EEG devices like the “No More Woof”, it might be possible to track their thoughts, learning exactly what they think of that new couch, their new dry food, or the neighbors cat.
Tomas Mazzetti, the devices inventor, came up with the idea after he got as to what would happen if he strapped an off-the-shelf EEG machine to his mother’s Australian terrier. The observations that followed inspired the launch of a new project for Mazzetti and his team of fellow creatives at the Nordic Society for Invention and Discovery.
This society – which represents a collaboration between the ad agency Studio Total and Swedish retailer MiCasa – has spawned a number of quirky products in the past. These include a rocking chair that charges your iPad, a weather forecasting lamp, and a levitating carpet for small-ish pets. No More Woof is the society’s latest work, and the team recently launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise more funding for research.
So far, Mazzetti and his team have been able to determine three baseline dog emotions to translate into speech: sleepiness, agitation, and curiosity. In time, they hope to be able to decipher hunger pangs as processed by a dog’s brain, and come up with appropriate verbalizations for all:
When the dog is sleepy, we translate to ‘I’m tired.’ And if they are really agitated, we can translate to ‘I’m excited!’ And the most active brainwave is when the dog sees a human face and tries to recognize that face. Then the brain is working overtime.
Mazzetti and the NSID are also working on finding cheaper EEG machines, after which they can fine-tune the software. They’ve done tests on roughly 20 dogs, of which they found that short-haired pets were able to communicate with the EEG machine better. If NSID receives more funding, its researchers hope to have something for sale by March or April of next year.
But while Mazzetti’s primary goal is to produce something commercially viable for use with dogs, he’s also hopeful that other research institutions or retailers will pick up where NSID leaves off. For example, what thoughts could be translated if someone were to put a more sophisticated version of No More Woof on the head of a primate, or another highly intelligent mammal?
Looking even further afield, Mazzetti has suggested that such a device could work both ways, translating human speech into concepts that a dog (or other animal) could understand. As we all know, dogs are very good at learning verbal commands, but again, the idea of two-way communication offers possibilities to convey complex messages with other, more highly-intelligent animals.
Could it be possible someday to communicate with simians without the need for sign language, to commune openly with dolphins and Orcas, or warn Humpbacks about the impending dangers of whalers and deep sea fishers? Perhaps, and it would certainly be to the benefit of all. Not only would we be able to get our mammalian brethren to better understand us, we might just learn something ourselves!
After all, the line that separates humanity from all other species is a rather fine one, and tends to blur to closer we inspect it. By being able to commune with other species in a way that can circumvent “language barriers”, we might just learn that we have more in common than we think, and aren’t such a big, screaming deal after all.
And in the meantime, enjoy this video of the No More Woof in action:
And be sure to check out this clip from Up where Doug (the talking dog) is introduced, with hilarious results!
Just learned this little gem is available for watching online. It’s called the The Starving Games, a not-so-subtly named satirical take on The Hunger Games. In addition to spoofing that sci-fi, dystopian YA hit, they also tackled franchises like The Avengers, Harry Potter and Oz the Great and Powerful to pop culture characters and celebrities like Taylor Swift, PSY, LMFAO and Honey Boo Boo.
Directed by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, the people who brought us Spy Hard, Scary Movie, Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, Disaster Movie, and Vampires Suck, this movie promises to be entertaining for people who don’t mind seeing popular franchises being slammed, and don’t care much about good writing, acting, or coherent story lines.
Enjoy the trailer, and then check out the full movie (if you’re so inclined) over at Youtube:
I came across this trailer recently, thanks again to my bud over at Ellipsis Media. And although the clip is short, it does manage to intrigue and fascinate. And as the name would suggest, the movie is all about space exploration in the not-too-distant future, where humanity suddenly finds itself able to bridge the vast distance between the stars for the first time ever.
Here is the commercial description, courtesy of MOVIECLIPS:
Interstellar chronicles the adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.
The movie is set for release in November 7th, 2014. Christopher Nolan is the director (Inception, Dark Knight trilogy), and the film has an all-star cast that includes Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Casey Affleck, Topher Grace and Michael Caine. Enjoy!
Before 2013 ended, some news concerned a certain reboot emerged on the entertainment feed. Yes, after many unconfirmed rumors and updates about the upcoming Terminator relaunch, it now seems that some genuine, studio-backed news have been announced. Foremost amongst these was the casting of the two main characters, Sarah and John Conner.
After much consideration as to who would play role of the woman who gave birth to mankind’s salvation (no, not THAT one!), it has been officially confirmed that Emilia Clarke has been cast. Fans of the HBO miniseries Game of Thrones will instantly recognize her as the British actress who brought Daenerys “Stormborn” Targaryen to life.
This announcement came mere days after the studio announced that it had Jason Clarke in mind to play the role of John Conner. The 44-year old veteran of such movies as Zero Dark Thirty, Great Gatsby, The Chicago Code is a much more seasoned choice than either Garrett Hedlund (Tron: Legacy) and Boyd Holbrook (The Host). But he’s grizzled as hell and definitely has the look for John Connor.
What’s more, the casting of a 40 something man to play the son, and a 20 something woman to play the mother would seem to provide some hints as to the plot of the movie. Combined with the recently confirmed title – Terminator: Genesis – there is strong evidence to suggest that the story will revolve around John Conner going back in time to protect his own mother.
Either that, or the movie will consist of relatively equal parts of John Conner fighter the machines in the future, with flashbacks or cut-scenes showing the past, where Sarah battles to ensure her son lives to see the day when he will lead humanity to victory. Difficult to say, but personally I hope they go with the latter, since it offers a chance to cover both aspects of the story while giving the studio a chance to be fresh.
Other confirmed bit of information include that the studio is considering both Garrett Hedlund and Boyd Holbrook for the role of Kyle Reese, John Conner’s father and Sarah’s original protector. Arnold Schwarzenegger has already confirmed that he will be back for the fifth installment, and in the role of a Terminator. None of this “he’s the human template they built them from” crap!
It is also been made abundantly clear at this point that the movie will be a reboot of the franchise and the start of a new trilogy, retelling the events of 1984’s The Terminator, and is set for release July 1st, 2015 (Canada Day!). A TV series is also to be produced which will run parallel to the movie trilogy and intersecting at certain points in the trilogy’s narrative. So it won’t be a reboot of the Sarah Conner Chronicles.
All I can say is, this time around, they better get it right! Terminator: Salvation promised to be a reboot of sorts after the relative fizzle that was Terminator 3. But of course, the studio made a terrible blunder there by offering no solid resolution, and instead trying to keep the movie open-ended for the sake of potential sequels. Somehow, learning that Skynet was destroyed, but there was still a war on, just seemed like a transparent money grab.
This time around, I’m hoping the lesson will be learned. What we don’t need is a return to the original Terminator storyline. What we need is what we haven’t seen yet, a detailed account of the war against the machines and how it was ultimately won. Sure, bits and pieces were shared through Kyle Reese’s recounting and flashbacks, but that only made the story seem more interesting!
Now, and at last, it would be good if a movie covered the war and only the war. No more time-travel paradoxes, no fate crap (which John Conner repeatedly says does not exist!). Just show us how Conner managed to carve a resistance from a post-apocalyptic landscape, recruited people from the extermination camps, and turned them into an ass-kicking force that managed to stomp the machines and destroy Skynet.
As a kid, I was a big fan of the Eastman and Laird TMNT comics. As a youngster who grew up in the Star Wars and Karate Kid era, and who loved science fiction and RPGs, my love of this franchise was pretty much a given from the get go. And over the years, I and many other adolescents were excited to see these characters adapted to television and the big screen, with mixed results. And now, true to form, Michael Bay has chosen to tap into this latest reservoir of nostalgic energy for the sake of profit.
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