Movies-Archived

Just sayin’.

via

When it comes to adapting books (or comics, for that matter) to screen, casting can be a tricky thing – especially for the main character of a series of novels with a pretty big following.

You see, there’s good casting, there’s casting against type, and there’s miscasting. And then there’s fatal miscasting. The kind of casting that results in howls of derision from fans of the source material, suggesting that producers simply do not understand the draw of characters in books.

Take Jack Reacher, the ex-Army MP who lives a nomadic life on the highways of America. Reacher’s a tough-as-nails 6’5″ powerhouse of a man who can take – and dish out – beatings that would make a normal man curl up in a ball and cry for his mother. He’s laconic but witty, a crack shot, an incredibly keen observer, with a nose for trouble and a highly developed sense of right and wrong. A man not afraid to break laws to protect the little guy (or girl).

Over the course of 15 hard-bittenly-titled novels (Child has said in the past that the 19th book will be Reacher’s last, titled ‘Die Lonely‘), Reacher has shot, punched, stabbed, thrown, and generally killed a wide array of shitheels, criminals and murderers across the country. Men want to be him, women want to be him. He’s one of the few current literary characters who matches so completely an archetype.

In spite of the modern setting and trappings of the books – Reacher’s worked with the Secret Service in one book, and the FBI in another – it’s very much a traditional Western series in my mind; only this cowboy leaves a pile of bodies behind him when he leaves town, not a silver bullet – but they all had it coming.

So who would you get to portray this tough as nails character? I’m actually not 100% committed to the character’s height, but he still needs to be of a decent size, and have an intimidating physicality. Viggo Mortenson was circling the role a few years ago; Hugh Jackman’s got the physique for it and can certainly turn up the machismo (and his casting as Wolverine is one of the reasons I don’t care about height too much); someone even tossed Liev Schreiber’s name into the mix, and I’d be good with that too.

However the perfect Reacher, for me at least, would be Jason Statham (if he could get the accent down).

Statham’s come a long way since he high-dived at the Olympics, and has carved himself an impressive career as one of the last remaining action heroes – but, as shown in The Bank Job, the man can also actually act.

And he can also summon up a glower that would make grown men piss their pants if they ran into him in a dark alley.

So do movie executives go for Statham? No. They go for Tom Cruise.

Now, can Tom Cruise act? Undoubtedly. In spite of what seems to be a quite abrasive off-screen persona, I’m actually a pretty big Cruise fan, and I think more people should see Valkyrie.

Can Tom Cruise act against type? Again, yes. This is the man who so completely went against type in Magnolia that there are very few occasions where yelling ‘Respect the cock!‘ will not get a laugh*.

Can Tom Cruise intimidate? Yes, his stone-cold killer in Collateral was a revelation.

But can Tom Cruise walk into a diner and intimidate the shit out of a man without opening his mouth? Can his sheer physicality cause people to worry? Can you buy him as an ex-Army badass who can take on five or six guys in a straight fistfight and win without breaking too much of a sweat?

No, you cannot.

Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher in One Shot: miscasting so fatal it makes casting Morgan Freeman as Alex Cross look like a genius move.

Via
*Laughter not guaranteed; also not recommended in an office environment, or where children are present.

I know. I’m as surprised as you are.

They’re really playing down Blake Lively’s role in this whilst playing up the sci-fi aspects, and that extra $9M for SFX looks to be money well spent.

A couple of glimpses here that we haven’t seen before; first up – hey, that’s not the Green Lantern Corps logo…

Secondly, we get what I think is the first look at the Guardians, complete with semi-transparent skull –

- and they look a little familiar to me.

But that may just be me. All in all, I think the trailer’s pretty good – certainly a huge step up from the first effort – and I’m now at ‘cautiously optimistic’ regarding this. I’m still not sold on Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan, but pretty much everything else looks good.

Remember those amazing Olly Moss posters for the original Star Wars trilogy? Of course you do. But I’ll run them anyway since it’s Star Wars Day – but I’m going to preface them with Ollie Boyd’s prequel trilogy posters in Moss’s style because they’re awesome.

You can see more of Olly Moss’ work here and Ollie Boyd’s here.

…well, more hope than the first trailer did, anyway. Granted there is a crapload of CGI in here, but this footage seems to be wisely ignoring the more jokey aspects of what we saw last time, not to mention Blake Lively.

I still feel uncomfortably like I’m watching cutscenes from an XBox game, but what the hell, what did I think it was going to look like?

Hot on the heels of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Governator announcement comes news he is to produce and star in an unexpected adaptation of the non-fiction bestseller ‘Black Like Me’.

Variety has the full story.

IDW’s new Godzilla comic launches today – but it’s by no means the first foray the King of Monsters has had into the US comic market. Yes, he had some Dark Horse series in the 80s and 90s, but – more memorably he also had a 24 issue run from 1977 to 1979 as a fully integrated part of the Marvel Universe.

And that Godzilla series will forever beat all challengers for these simple reasons…

1. Eating the Seattle Space Needle!

Well, I’m assuming he’s eating it, as opposed to going in for some lovin’. It’s been a while since I read the series.

2. Fighting the Champions! (of Los Angeles!)

That’s right, Godzilla threw down with the short-lived 70′s hero team that inexplicably hung out together for no real reason. Hercules! Black Widow! Angel! Ice Man! I guess it was Ghost Rider’s day off. And this was back when Hercules was really incredible. Like, towing-the-island-of-Manhattan-incredible.

3. Hunted by S.H.I.E.L.D.!

Godzilla’s not much of a conversationalist so the primary human content of the comic came from S.H.I.E.L.D.’s mainly inept attempts to capture him. Lead by Dum Dum Dugan, Gabe Jones and Jimmy Woo – yes, that Jimmy Woo – the organization kept trying and, largely, failing to capture (or even keep track of) the green behemoth. Will the same be said of IDW’s Godzilla? Clearly not.

4. Red Ronin!

Red Ronin, people. Red Ronin is certainly not a Shogun Warrior, just in case you were wondering. Designed by S.H.I.E.L.D-advising Japanese scientists Tamara Hashioka and Yuriko Takiguchi in conjunction with Stark International to battle Godzilla, Red Ronin was usually piloted by cheeky 12 year old Rob Takiguchi because, let’s face it, the person you want controlling a 100ft tall robot warrior is definitely a 12 year old boy with raging hormones.

5. Being kidnapped by aliens to fight other monsters as Earth’s champion!

Is it just me or did that seem to happen a lot to Marvel characters in the 60s and 70s?

6. Cattle rustling!

Will IDW’s Godzilla be falsely accused of cattle rustling and chased by a bunch of angry cowboy types? I don’t think so.

7. The Incredible Shrinking Godzilla!

Obviously having a 100ft tall lizardKing of Monsters traipsing around the US pretty much unhindered (not to mention cattle rustling) would be a bit of an embarrassment for S.H.I.E.L.D., so Godzilla was miniaturized using the ever-popular Pym Particles (Hank Pym, is there anything you can’t do?!?) which led to a whole other set of adventures as he slowly started to grow back to normal…

- he got molested by Dum Dum Dugan! (Oh, come on, you were never really going to trust a man with a hat and mustache like that, were you?)

- he fought rats!

- he wrestled on the docks!

Bet IDW’s Godzilla doesn’t throw down with rats under 8th Avenue.

8. The Fantastic Four!

Eventually, if you’re in the Marvel Universe and you’re a big-ass monster chances are good that you’re going to throw down with the Fantastic Four, if only so the Thing can lament about how he’s just a monster too. And let’s face it, he did that a lot back in the 70s.

9. Devil Dinosaur! (And Moon Boy too, but nobody likes him)

There’s certain super-hero tropes that you can’t get away from, like fighting another hero over some silly misunderstanding then teaming up against a greater threat. Thing is, when you’re Godzilla, fighting another hero should really only last as long as it takes for you to stand on them – unless you’re Devil Dinosaur. Moon Boy, though? He should probably have just been trod on.

10. A real ending!

It takes low sales (or the lapsing of the license, whichever came first) to finally put Marvel’s Godzilla book to rest, but Big Green went out fighting the Avengers, the Fantastic Four and S.H.I.E.L.D. before finally heading off out into the Atlantic to hibernate.

What that means is that – licensing aside – Godzilla is still out there. Sleeping. Waiting. Dream on that, Merry Marvelites!

What’s that you say?

That’s only 10 reasons why Marvel’s Godzilla rules, but the title said 11?

11. J. Jonah Jameson vs Godzilla.

Nuff said.

I think I’d subconsciously buried the existence of MTV’s upcoming Teen Wolf series, because if I made a list of 80′s movies I never wanted to be converted into TV shows, that would probably be pretty high on the list (obviously, cartoons don’t count).

Because, really, how can you top this?

Well…maybe by switching out basketball for boxing, and Michael J Fox for Jason Fucking Bateman*.

Anyway, now that your nostalgia is over, I present the trailer for MTV’s Teen Wolf.

It’s amazing. It’s like the creators looked at everything that made the first Teen Wolf almost watchable – like a sense of humor, a likeable lead, and a popular sport, and replaced it with a sinister tone, a dull lead, and lacrosse.

Aside from the name of the show and the basic ‘I was a teenage werewolf’ concept, there’s not a lot of the original Teen Wolf here, and it seems obvious that the creators looked to The Vampire Diaries pretty heavily for inspiration; there’s a bad boy Wolf type who really won’t be anything at all like Damon Salvatore, a pretty girl who tucks her hair behind her ear who drives our hero to wolf out a little when he gets too close, a secret group of people hunting vampires wolfy types, and a knowledgeable best friend (sadly a guy and not someone who is, say, an attractive witchy type). Oh, and lots and lots of shots in the woods at night.

They probably looked to theTwilight books and movies too, but I’m happy to report that I haven’t read or seen any of those.

On the other hand, if Teen Wolf is actually a bit like The Vampire Diaries, it could end up being actually rather good and kind of addictive, which would be a bit annoying.

On a vaguely related note, I remember when the ‘M’ in MTV used to stand for Music…

*I’m pretty sure Jason Bateman’s middle name is actually Fucking. Or it should be, anyway.

It sounds like Zack Snyder has found his Lois Lane – and she’s Amy Adams.

I have no problem at all with this casting as Adams is pretty damn cute and, more importantly, can do drama and comedy with equal aplomb. She’s a great choice – and I know that some people will complain that she’s a redhead and so would be better as Lana Lang, but let’s face it: hair color only matters to geeks like us.

Although part of me would like to see Amy Adams as the Insect Queen.

In any case; great choice. My next Superman-related question, though, is how long Zack Snyder is going to be linked with Nolan’s Superman given the critical and financial drubbing that SuckerPunch took over the weekend…

I may be busy as hell and off-line but I wasn’t not going to post this was I?

I feel a little better about the movie after seeing that, although I’m still a little irked that the movie seems to be going down a ‘no real Nazi’ route with Hydra being represented as a swastika-free arm of the Reich. At least there was no Chris Evans usual mugging in this, so that’s something – and if I’m not mistaken we got our first clear look at Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes in this trailer too.

You know, now that I realize that Sebastian Stan is the douchebag ski dude in Hot Tub Time Machine, his casting makes a lot more sense.

Also: laughing at Manchester’s northern quarter and Liverpool’s Albert Dock standing in for Brooklyn:

Nothing’ll pull me out of a movie like a familiar location as a completely different one…

I’m not really sure why the UK and the US often get different movie posters, but they do – and sometimes I prefer the UK ones over the US. Empire has run the newly released UK ones.

Quite like that tag line – ‘Courage is Immortal’ – and I think Bleeding Cool’s reference to the Nuremburg rally is a little unfair. Anyway, for comparison here are the last two US ones that were released again –

– which set do you prefer?

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s promotional push for Paul is in swing and as part of it they’ve put out a little video of them re-enacting Star Wars on College Humor. Well, kind of…

I read the script for Paul a while ago and loved it, although it did seem full of in-jokes to the extent that it may be impenetrable to non-geeks. Luckily, I don’t fall into that category, and as I love Spaced, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz (and the last of those is probably the best of these, the most approachable and the most underrated) I’m going to try to go and see this at some point.

As it happens I’m also reading Pegg’s autobiography, Nerd Do Well that the better half bought for me in the UK at Christmas (it’s not out here till the summer, apparently).

It’s lightweight but entertaining – although if I’m perfectly honest, part of me could have probably done without the tale of how 14 year old Pegg got his first gobble.

Hee. ‘Gobble’.

Marvel has released two new posters for Thor and damn but they’re looking good. The more I see of this, the more I think that it’s definitely the movie to beat this summer.

Yep. Looking forward to this.

Charlie Sheen’s very public meltdown has been all over the news this week with barely a day going by without his definitely-not-drug-fuelled-honest rants getting just a little bit crazier.

I had an idea last Friday – which I joked with a friend about – for a site with a revolving quote every time you refreshed it. Of course, I did nothing about it and on Monday I found the Live the Sheen Way site and cursed myself.

Always one to act a little later than I should, today I put up the Motivational Sheen site, with some of Sheen’s quotes as little t-shirt designs…

…and of course there’s a matching t-shirt sale site via spreadshirt.

Now, it’s not funny to take advantage of people who are mentally ill, obviously. But if they’re living Charlie Sheen’s bitching life, it seems easier somehow, so go on over to the other site, like it, tweet it, and make me happy.

Please?

The Chris Nolan-led, Zack Snyder-directed Superman movie reboot has landed it’s Jonathan and Martha Kent – Kevin Costner and Diane Lane.

Kevin Costner I understand in a Field of Dreams, down-home, kind of way (and it’s not like he’s doing much else these days aside from trying to save the world) -but Diane Lane?

Not the Ma Kent from the period I first remember reading (I probably read some pre-Crisis stuff too, but Ma was largely absent)…

..or even the current version of her and Pa.

No, this is a Martha and Jonathan Kent who are a bit younger. A bit less homely. A bit sexier.

Just like the Superman: Birthright Kents – which is apparently one of the sources for the movie…

Interesting casting.

Over on Bleeding Cool, they’re running the motion poster for the upcoming Conan the Barbarian movie which is being released – of course – in 3D.

While I have nothing against 3D as such I’m not a fan of movies automatically coming out in 3D with a 2D option – that feels the wrong way round to me (and yes, Thor, I’m looking at you). Until a movie can convince me that 3D really adds to it – like I believe Avatar did – and, more importantly, actually looks good and doesn’t detract from it, I’ll stick to 2D thanks.

Even so – I do like this poster. Of course when I was a kid it was called a website banner…

The more I see of Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch the more intrigued I am. And by intrigued, I mean confused; it’s not often that a big mainstream flick uses imagery in quite so blatantly an exploitative way.

Case in point; Vanessa Hudgens likes it rough, apparently -

There’s also a trailer i hadn’t posted yet -

And a whole bunch of posters:

I really don’t know what to make of this movie. On paper it sounds terrible, but if there’s one thing that Snyder can be relied on to deliver, it’s incredible visuals.

And attractive young women in skimpy outfits. There’s that too…

A new trailer for Thor has hit, expanding on what we’ve seen before. This time out, we start off more Earth-bound…

For me, this is still the movie to beat this summer. Yes, X-Men First Class looks better than expected, but I still have my doubts about Captain America – and Green Lantern looks like it could be a huge disappointment.

This, though – this I rank highly for three reasons; firstly, Kenneth Branagh can do no wrong in my eyes – none at all; second, Natalie Portman remains one of my favorite actresses dating back to Leon (that’s The Professional to you Yanks) and the hugely underrated Beautiful Girls; and thirdly, I was damn impressed with Chris Hemsworth’s five minutes of screen time at the start of Star Trek – the guy has charisma by the bucketload and I think he really sells me on the part in this trailer.

So yes, the gauntlet – well, hammer – is thrown down. For my money, this is the one to beat.

Edit: Apparently Levitt and Cotillard haven’t been cast in The Dark Knight Rises and someone with too much time on their hands has faked a press release. But what the hell, I wrote the damn post, found the damn pics, and goddammit I’m leaving it up here anyway. Just you know, caveated by the fact that it was based on bollocks.

Somewhere in Hollywood, Leonardo Dicaprio and Ellen Page are wondering if Chris Nolan doesn’t really like them – because why else would they be the only two main actors from Inception not to be cast in any of his Batman films? Well, there’s Dileep Rao as well, but he could still crop up in a bit part because he’s not too expensive.

According to this press release, Joseph Gordon-Levitt – rumored for every role from Albert Falcone to Hugo Strange to Robin – has been cast as Roman Sionis – better known as Black Mask, the Gotham crime boss.

Black Mask knocked around for a while (debuting way back when before Knightfall) before really making a comeback in Catwoman by torturing Selina Kyle’s brother-in-law to death, then making his wife Maggie (Selina’s sister) eat parts of his body – I definitely remember some eyeball-eating going on somewhere.

Not one to stand on ceremony, the Black Mask later took over Gotham’s gangs during War Games, and tortured Stephanie Brown (former Spoiler, then Robin, now Batgirl) to near-death before she escaped and died anyway (only she didn’t; long story). Finally, a while later, Catwoman decided enough was enough and shot him in the head.

All this makes me wonder if anybody has been cast as Anne Hathaway’s sister in the new movie…

Also cast is Marion Cotillard, last seen doing a real number on the inside of Leonardo Dicaprio’s head. She’ll be playing Talia A Ghul, daughter of Ra’s Al Ghul (played by Liam Neeson in Batman Begins).

Talia’s spent most of her comic existence yo-yo’ing between supporting her father and working against him. She found time along the way to bed not only Bruce Wayne – giving him an heir in Damian, the current Robin -

- but she also knocked boots with Jason Todd when she was mentoring him after his resurrection –

- and also Bane, back when he was bumming around as Ra’s new heavy.

So, yes, Talia has a lust for life and, apparently, tall, dark-haired types with a streak of violence a mile wide. She also ran LexCorp while Luthor was busy being President, and has a tendency to show a lot of cleavage. I’m totally resisting some kind of ‘head for business/bod for sin’ Working Girl mash-up here.

Coupled with Tom Hardy’s Bane and Anne Hathaway’s Selina Kyle, plus the regular returnees, the cast for The Dark Knight Rises is starting to fill out nicely. I imagine Ellen Page is sitting by the phone waiting for that ‘Barbara Gordon’ call right this minute…

It’s official – the rebooted Spider-Man movie franchise is kicking off with the aptly-titled The Amazing Spider-Man; the official site is live with the first official picture of the new Spider-Man costume in action:

A couple of quick thoughts – first off, it seems like this costume bears more than a bit of resemblance to the one that Ben Reilly ran around in back when he was Spider-Man and Peter was a clone (don’t know what I’m talking about? There’s a whole bunch of trades that can fill you in!):

The second thought is that the film’s title opens up a whole host of possibilities for sequel titles: Spectacular Spider-Man, Sensational Spider-Man, Web of Spider-Man, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man…time to start registering some domains!