Anyway, he’s one of those bad ass action guys that has charisma and presence (we won’t speak of The Pacifier) and the bonus that he’s a Dungeons and Dragons geek makes me giddy.  It also makes me imagine wonderfully naughty things happening on a table in a basement covered in maps and player sheets where many a D20 and a pewter figure of an elf get knocked off.  But I digress…

The international trailer for Riddick gives us some more meat to chew on of the the 3rd film in the trilogy.  It looks like Riddick may have headed back to the world seen in Pitch Black to hide.  What I want to know is what happened to all the Necromongers?  And I keep reading that Karl Urban is in the cast list but I don’t see him anywhere.

What’s really distracting though is this guy who I’ve dubbed Spanish Gerard Butler.  His name is Jordi Molla but I was getting confused in a few of those shots and waiting for him to kick Riddick off a cliff.

Anyway, this looks phenomenal and will no doubt garner more Oscar noms and wins for most of the people involved.

Also Matthew McConaughey you need to stop being so awesome.  You’ve won my heart as a cannibal (and promptly tried to eat it) and then made me feel more unease in a theater than I ever have with Killer Joe after having made me thank God above for assless chaps.  So yeah, you are a roller coaster of emotion.

The Wolf of Wall Street hits the street on November 15th.

Oh and for all you Walking Dead fans out there, check it out..SHANE IS ALIVE AND LOOKING BETTER THAN EVER

Snowpiercer is the story of a not too distant future where the remaining population of earth are all aboard a super-train that travels a loop around the entire globe, winding it’s way around so that one transit takes a full year. Oh ya, and the world is in an ice-age. It’s based on a French graphic novel called ‘Le Transperceneige’. It looks gritty and dark and crazy fun. If you’ve ever seen “The Host“, another film be the same director, Joon-ho Bong, then you’d expect nothing less.

Checkout this awesome cast!

Chris Evans
Tilda Swinton (Yes that’s Tilda Swinton!)
John Hurt
Jamie Bell
Ed Harris
Octavia Spencer
to name a few!
 

Having been a little non-plussed by the first one, i’m very anxious to see this next one as the meatiest bits of the book are with the Elves, when they get to Lake Town and then when they have to sneak into the Lonely Mountain. There appears to be, as in the last one, plenty of fabricated supplemental plot-lines, like Gandalf and Radagast doing weird stuff regarding the Necromancer’s presence in the Forest to the south. And also now the addition of some Elven characters that did not appear in the book either, most prominently Legolas. But if that didn’t really bother you in the first one then it shouldn’t been an issue here either.

Noticeably absent from the trailer however is Beorn, the shape-shifting man-bear (or bear-man depending on how you interpret Gandalf’s waffling). If they’ve left him out i know a LOT of people who will be pissed.
*EDIT* Upon closer viewing of the trailer there is a single shot, about one second long, of the Dwarves and Bilbo holding back a giant bear from breaking down a door. This (as is becoming a trend with these films) never happened in the book.

Sigh, i’m not legalistic about these books, i didn’t throw any tantrums over the changes they made in the LOTR series. But i do think these Hobbit movies are playing really really fast and loose. I enjoyed the last one well enough, and i’m sure i’ll enjoy this one too. But i can’t help wondering what it would have been like to see something closer to the book that i love so much.

Sadly, the Guillermo del Toro led version of the tale seems to be on a permanent hold but you can’t keep a good monster down.  Next year we will be treated to at least two new film versions starring the creature (who’s real name was Adam in the book…just so you know.)

Aaron Eckhart is starring as the creature in I, Frankenstein.  It’s based off the comic book series that was written by Kevin Grevioux the man also responsible for Underworld (and who played the big bad ass werewolf/lycan Raz in the film.)  He’s also in this movie alongside his Underworld co-star Bill Nighy.  It will be hitting screen in January of 2014.  We’ve only got some images so far but they look awesomely gothic:

Also recently announced was the release date for Frankenstein to be directed by Paul McGuigan.  McGuigan has directed some of the best (and nearly all of) the Sherlock series starring Benedict Cumberbatch.  He’s also the director of Lucky Number Slevin.  His version of the tale is being penned by Max Landis, the writer of the underrated The Chronicle.  It’s also set to star Daniel Radcliffe as the hunchback Igor (which should be interesting.)  As of right now no set title has been given to the project (we’re just going to go with Frankenstein right now.)  But the movie has been given a release date of October 2014 (which means it will most likely be taking on Paranormal Activity #121003.)

Also sailing the channel seas next year is Crossbones on NBC, created by Neil Cross the man behind the amazing series Luther.  It has John Malkovich cast as Blackbeard (which sounds awesome) and is being produced by Josh Friedman who headed The Sarah Conner Chronicles back on Fox.  No footage yet but we do have this niffty image that was released as a promo shot (click to make bigger):

The cast includes Max Irons (yes, the son of Jeremy,) Janet McTeer, Rebecca Ferguson, and James Frain (who is trying for the Sean Bean award for not living in the films and series he stars in.)

It looks interesting and it’s a nice change from the typical male centered fare.  I think series like TrueBlood and Game of Thrones have shown that strong female leads can keep the audience interested.

The White Queen starts on Starz August 10th

The Witcher 3 looks all sorts of pretty.  This is also for the Xbox One:

Dead Rising 3 (also part of the Xbox One)

And here we have a retro classic redux just to wet the appetites of all us old school arcade quarter spenders.

Now with all this flashy trailer showing that Microsoft did they also released the price point in the US for the new X-Box One.  It will be $499.00 when it hits shelves.  Do I think I’ll be in line for this system?  No.  Even with all the flash it doesn’t change the fact that the policy is still bizarre and not gamer/buyer friendly when it comes to used games/selling games.  Also I think the entire “it has to be online” at least once a day thing is unfair to people who may not have that ability or income to always be online.  I know many people who, when money is tight, skip their at home internet service for a bit to save cash.

As of right now this is the route Microsoft is going and good luck to them.  The games look snazzy I’ll give them that.

Here are a couple more shots from Open Grave, the Sharlto Copley starring horror/thriller/mystery coming out this year.   I wish we had more information on this or like I said a trailer as it sounds pretty grisly (as is evident by the picture below) and disturbing.

This gives us a better shot at the fact they are in a hole in the ground with a bunch of dead people.  That’s disturbing.

This looks pretty self explanatory…(and hot)

A Review for Fangirl Magazine

By John Fountain.

Maniac (2012)

Meet Frank Zito (Elijah Wood).  He has mommy issues.  Unfortunately for the young, attractive women of the city, he deals with these problems with his own form of therapy: stalking them for their scalps, which he then staples onto mannequins and calls them his girlfriends.  Frank seems nice enough, apart from this minor personality defect, and scrapes out a living restoring antique mannequins in his shop, which has serial-killer lair written all over it.  Also written large on the shop, and Frank’s psyche, is his mother’s name and her memory.  Frank loves his mother, but he also hates her.

As the story progresses, we find out that Frank’s mom was a bit of a slut, taking two men on at once while the little boy version of Frank watched from a cupboard.  What makes this even more disturbing is that Frank’s mom knew her little boy was there the whole time.  Why this makes Frank hunt scalps is never quite explained, other than a general sense of the poor guy being loony-tunes.  Into this already quite crowded relationship Frank has with his fly-blown “girlfriends” comes Anna (Nora Arnezeder), a fine-art photographer with a passion for mannequins that while not exactly like Frank’s sparks the seeds of love in his little serial-killer heart.  And so we slip, gracefully, into the awkward love story of boy-stalks-girl, boy-kills-girl-for-her-scalp, boy-meets-another-girl-but-doesn’t-want-to-scalp-her-so-takes-her-to-feed-the-birds-then-a-movie-then-discovers-she-thinks-he’s-gay-so-kills-someone-close-to-her-so-he-can-comfort-her.

It’s a story we’ve all lived in our own lives, surely.  Or maybe that’s just me.  Anyway, this latest murder causes a whole raft of problems for poor Frank, whose attempts to explain it to Anna fall on unreasonable ears.  Needless to say, this love story probably isn’t going to end well.

Maniac is a remake of the William Lustig/Joe Spinell movie from the 1980s: y’now the one, Tom Savini did the effects then tried to distance himself from the final film.  As remakes go, this is pretty faithful to the original, at least in terms of plot.  However, most of the film is shot from the Point-Of-View of Frank: if we hadn’t been saturated with a decade of “found-footage” movies, this would have become tedious very quickly, but being filmed in this way means that when the POV shifts, no matter how subtly, we are wrenched away from Frank’s inner narrative and forced to reposition him as a character.

Frank is played by loveable, blue eyed Frodo Baggins, who becomes more and more like Gollum as the film progresses.  He even gets Gollum’s patented line in schizophrenic dialogue, albeit with the other side being played by a completely absent mother-figure.  But Frodo, sorry, Elijah Wood, manages to come across as shy, manipulative, pathetic, and psychotic to such a degree that not only do you like and pity this character, you don’t really question his actions too much.  There is the inevitable “No Frodo, don’t do it, you’ll find love someday!” feeling running through the movie, and yes, you really do want this nutty murderer to come through at the end, cleansed, loved and redeemed.

But deep down, you know that ain’t going to happen.  Not after the exchange between Frank and Anna after they watch The Cabinet of Dr Caligari at their local cinema.  From then on, things are going to start spiralling downwards for Frank, and you really feel for the pathetic killer.  This is a triumph of three things: a minimalist script, Wood’s voice acting, and the acting of Arnezeder, through whom you have to filter most of Wood’s action (because he’s just not there to look at).  The other triumph of the film is how it looks: it is both glossy and slightly sleazy (as opposed to the “just sleazy” feel of the original), and apart from a chase through the world’s most deserted major metropolitan subway station, allows the city to act as a shroud for Frank’s deeds.  He uses the city as his hunting ground, and at no point do you feel that he is not part of the dirty underbelly itself.

There is also a moment where fans of the original will love, where the DVD sleeve of the Blue Underground release is captured in a reflection.  The other selling point here is the gore: it is extremely well done, and you can barely tell the CGI knife blades aren’t real as their pierce nubile flesh.  Every gore scene is wonderfully rendered: a mix of practical and CGI that works incredibly well, even down to the laugh-a-minute final scenes where Frank’s psyche decides that Freud was right, and there really is a “return of the repressed”.

All in all, the film is a triumph, and certainly an improvement over the original, if only for production values.  As a final verdict, this is great movie, but probably not one for a first date.  Unless you have a penchant for scalps…

Now the popular theory is that he is going to be playing Thanos.  But as stated, that’s not confirmed.  Speculation is running wild with this one as it is want to do.  But as of right now, Guardians of the Galaxy is becoming a big piece of the new Marvel Phase.

Just for reference here’s the trailer for Elysium:

What I find interesting is this is the (other than the one season only departure of Chirstopher Eccleston) where the current season runner has stayed with the show once “their” Doctor has left.  Steven Moffat appears to be sticking around where Russell T Davies left once David Tennant departed the series.

So now the big question is, officially, “Doctor WHO?” Who will be the 12th?  The 12th Doctor, at least back in original series days, being the LAST Doctor.  They’ve actually changed this bit of cannon though with one line of dialog.  I figured a logical excuse for throwing out the 12 regeneration’s only rule to be “there are no more Time Lords so the Doctor has all the regeneration energy for himself.”  But that’s just my theory.

This time around it is anyone’s guess on who they may choose.  A well established actor?  An unknown?  Or my dream of a retro-regeneration back to Paul McGann to give him a shot at being on screen for more than just a film.  Or even cooler…make the entire next season a flashback to the time war so we can give it the attention that it deserves.

So let the speculation begin.  There are theories of making the Doctor a woman (Which would be a disservice, at least to me, to all the Time Lady’s who have come before.  We’ve established two genders.  I still don’t understand it and they’ve already done it in Big Finish and as a joke in Curse of Fatal Death.  What is the point of this?) There are people who want a non-Caucasian actor in the role (sure why not?)  A possible non-Brit (this has never happened.)  It’s going to be a back and forth for a while.

A few of my choices are, if we are going to for a new Doctor:

Michael Sheen (he was considered before and has voiced a planet in the show)

Sean Pertwee (he looks just like his dad)

Andrew Scott (oh man can you imagine)

Tony Head (who’s already been in the show and been part of the audio dramas)

Or like I said, we could just have an entire flashback to the Time War and this guy is back.

So we shall see.  In the meantime here is the official press release.  Let the Rise of the 12th Begin!

Matt Smith to leave Doctor Who

The BBC is today announcing that Matt Smith is to leave Doctor Who after four incredible years on the hit show. Matt first stepped into the TARDIS in 2010 and will leave the role at the end of this year after starring in the unmissable 50th Anniversary in November and regenerating in the Christmas special. During his time as the Doctor, Matt has reached over 30 million unique UK viewers and his incarnation has seen the show go truly global. He was also the first actor to be nominated for a BAFTA in the role. Doctor Who is BBC AMERICA’s highest-rated series and premieres as part of the channel’s Supernatural Saturday programming block.

Matt quickly won over fans to be voted Best Actor by Readers of Doctor Who Magazine for the 2010 season. He also received a nod for his first series at the National Television Awards, before winning the Most Popular Male Drama Performance award in 2012. Matt has played one of the biggest roles in TV with over 77 million fans in the UK, US and Australia alone!

Matt Smith says: ”Doctor Who has been the most brilliant experience for me as an actor and a bloke, and that largely is down to the cast, crew and fans of the show.  I’m incredibly grateful to all the cast and crew who work tirelessly every day, to realize all the elements of the show and deliver Doctor Who to the audience.  Many of them have become good friends and I’m incredibly proud of what we have achieved over the last four years.

Having Steven Moffat as showrunner write such varied, funny, mind-bending and brilliant scripts has been one of the greatest and most rewarding challenges of my career.  It’s been a privilege and a treat to work with Steven, he’s a good friend and will continue to shape a brilliant world for the Doctor.

The fans of Doctor Who around the world are unlike any other; they dress up, shout louder, know more about the history of the show (and speculate more about the future of the show) in a way that I’ve never seen before, your dedication is truly remarkable.  Thank you so very much for supporting my incarnation of  the Time Lord, number Eleven, who I might add is not done yet, I’m back for the 50th anniversary and the Christmas special!

It’s been an honor to play this part, to follow the legacy of brilliant actors, and helm the TARDIS for a spell with ‘the ginger, the nose and the impossible one’. But when ya gotta go, ya gotta go and Trenzalore calls. Thank you guys.  Matt.”

Steven Moffat, lead writer and executive producer, says: ”Every day, on every episode, in every set of rushes, Matt Smith surprised me: the way he’d turn a line, or spin on his heels, or make something funny, or out of nowhere make me cry, I just never knew what was coming next. The Doctor can be clown and hero, often at the same time, and Matt rose to both challenges magnificently. And even better than that, given the pressures of this extraordinary show, he is one of the nicest and hardest-working people I have ever had the privilege of knowing. Whatever we threw at him – sometimes literally – his behavior was always worthy of the Doctor.

But great actors always know when it’s time for the curtain call, so this Christmas prepare for your hearts to break, as we say goodbye to number Eleven. Thank you Matt – bow ties were never cooler.

Of course, this isn’t the end of the story, because now the search begins. Somewhere out there right now – all unknowing, just going about their business – is someone who’s about to become the Doctor. A life is going to change, and Doctor Who will be born all over again! After 50 years, that’s still so exciting!”

Having starred alongside three different companions, Amy Pond (Karen Gillan), Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill) and most recently Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman), Matt’s Doctor has fought Daleks and Cybermen, as well as Weeping Angels in New York.  Regularly heard shouting ‘run’ and ‘Geronimo’, through Matt’s Doctor fans have been introduced to a new culinary combination – fish fingers and custard!

Matt’s spectacular exit is yet to be revealed and will be kept tightly under wraps. He will return to BBC AMERICA in the unmissable 50th anniversary episode on Saturday, November 23, 2013 – TUNE IN!

Doctor Who is a BBC Cymru Wales production for BBC ONE

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