20 Movies I Can't Miss This Summer? Watch Me

Cinema Blend has a list of the 20 Top Movies Not to Miss This Summer.

If those movies are example of the best this summer has to offer movie wise, my library card will be getting a workout.  Here's the list (in chronological order)


The Amazing Spider-Man 2
A sequel to a reboot, the Hollywood version of double-dipping.


Godzilla
A reboot of a reboot.  (More double-dipping)  I have been underwhelmed by the trailers.  Cliched governmental conspiracy plot with incorporation of real-life disasters and footage that looks lifted from Jurassic Park.  Sign me up!


X-Men: Days of Future Past
Plot directly lifted from Marvel Comics. (This may actually bode well for the film given the apparent lack of creativity in Hollywood now days.)  The problem is that the plot has been done to death in other movies since it originally appeared in the X-Men comic books.  How many movies with "go back into the past in order to change the present" plots do we need?


Maleficent
Maleficent from Disney's Sleeping Beauty asks herself "What's My Motivation?"  Disney basically gives Sleeping Beauty the villain-centric treatment Wicked gave to The Wizard of Oz.

The problem?  The movie attempts to humanize someone who isn't human.  Maleficent is based on the old stories of the evil Fae or Sidhe; beings that, by there very nature, were malevolent towards humanity.

They didn't need a motive to be evil.  They just were.

Trying to humanizing Maleficent is like trying to humanize Hitler.

(Plus, from what I can tell from the trailers Angelina Jolie just lacks the ability to pull off "evil".)


A Million Ways to Die in the West
The good news?  It's not a reboot and it's not based on a non-Hollywood written work.  It's from an actual movie script.

The bad news?  It's from the people that gave us Ted.  (Notice the number of "F" reviews?)

And don't forget, the movie is apparently being used by Seth MacFarlane to launch his acting career.   I've seen pictures produced by wannabe actors.  It usually doesn't go well.


The Fault of Our Stars
A movie that deals with someone with terminal cancer.

Too depressing for me.


Edge of Tomorrow
Tom Cruise.  (Okay, that was snarky.)

Try Starship Troopers meets Groundhog Day.  Does that combo sound like it makes sense?


22 Jump Street
A movie based on a t.v. reboot.  (More double dipping.)


How to Train You Dragon 2
Yawn.  Another sequel.


Snowpiercer
Sci-Fi movie based on a French Graphic Novel.  The last survivors of humanity live together on a single train due to devastating ice age.

Instead of the plot centering around the struggle to survive it's focused on class warfare.

I just know that if I watch this film I'm going to keep asking myself questions about the obvious plot holes.  (Really?  Where do they get their fuel?  Or Food?)


Transformers: Age of Extinction
You know that saying about guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days?

Try "movie franchises begin to smell after three movies." 

In case you were wondering about the James Bond franchise, the third movie was Goldfinger.  That was followed by Thunderball.  It's difficult to keep a franchise fresh that many films in.  And the plan is apparently for another two films after this one.


Tammy
A comedy version of Falling Down.

Stars Susan Sarandon and Melissa McCarthy.  McCarthy might be able to pull this one off, but that's not guaranteed.


Life Itself
Film tribute to the late Roger Ebert.


Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Is it a sequel to a reboot or a reboot of a sequel?  Either way, it's more Hollywood double dipping.

Oh, good.  More CGI.

And the previous movie's glaring plot hole still applies.  You know the hole "world overrun by apes" thing?  There aren't enough apes on the earth to create the ape army shown in the previous movie.


Jupiter Ascending
I'll repeat what I said when I saw the trailer: Oh, look.  Space elves.


Guardians of the Galaxy
Based on the Marvel reboot of one of its lesser known titles.  That means the movie will lack the following inherit in titles like The Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, Thor or the Avengers.

Did you even know this was based on a Marvel comic book before reading this? 

The track record of Marvel adaptations has been fairly good, so there's a decent chance this movie will be worth watching.  (Viewers will also have fewer expectations than they would with more well know titles.)


Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Another reboot, this time with CGI generated characters.  Joy!

And the character art makes me wonder if the producers really wanted to make a Godzilla movie.

The Giver
I have no idea what this film will be like.  I've never read the book it's based on. 

(Just checked Wikipedia.  It's another Young Adult series.  Ugh.  Twilight?  Divergent?)


The Expendables 3
A movie series written by and featuring has-been actors looking for work. 

This one is a bit of a crap shoot.  It could be good or bad depending on how the director plays things.  There is certainly enough talent given the actors involved.

On the other hand, all those egos could get in the way.


The Maze Runner
Another movie based on a young-adult series. 

Young-adult books tend to have plots that lack a certain amount of sophistication.  This can lead to a movie with what amounts to a dumbed-down plot.  Couple that with young actors and you can have a real bomb.

This one seems to have the potential for a really thin plot.  Try a full-length movie version of the maze scene from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.


That's the entire list. 

The final score?
Sequels: 6
Reboots: 5
Double Dip:  4
Books/Comic Books/Graphic Novels:  3
Young Adult Novels:  2

Total "Lack of Originality" Score:  20

The Hobbit Sequel Title Generator

Great minds think alike.  (Or is that depraved?)

The people over at us vs. th3m have come up with a  web page that generates titles for sequels to the Hobbit movie.

I have taken the luxury of including one of the title I recently suggested in a blog post.


Have fun coming up with alternatives.

Dark Matter Could Send Asteroids Crashing Into Earth!

Today's sensationalist headline brought to you courtesy of Space.com.


Harvard scientists are suggesting that the pattern of large-scale planetary extinction that seems to be caused by meteor or comet bombardment could be caused by the sun's galactic orbit interacting with a sphere of dark matter.

The Sun's orbit oscillates as it travels around the edge of the galaxy.  This oscillation causes the Sun to travel through the dark matter disk and the gravitational effect could conceivably include disruption of the Ort cloud, causing cometary bombardment of the inner planets.

The dark matter disk would replace "Nemesis" as the cause of periodic extinctions.


Personally, I'm just waiting until a dark matter created asteroid disaster makes it into a SyFy "Originals" movie.  Any guess as to how long that will take?

Weirdest Cover Ever?

Somehow I ran across this video on YouTube:




It's Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings doing a cover of A Whiter Shade of Pale.

Is this the weirdest cover ever?

It's Fairy Tale Night on TCM

TCM's lineup tonight features three fairy-tale movies.

The 1946 Black and White version of Beauty and the Beast kicks things off at 8:00 PM Easter.  Followed by The Glass Slipper at 10:00 PM.  (A musical version of Cinderella starring Leslie Caron.)

It finishes as 12:00 Midnight with Hans Christian Anderson starring Danny Kaye.  (Another Musical)


Saturday night is usually a night with lousy television choices.  (At least as far as I'm concerned)  I have the feeling TCM I'll be watching TCM a great deal tonight..  That, or listening to the radio.


P.S.  The 5:00 PM show is Gunga Din.  It's another good movie, but falls outside the fairy-tale genre.

Someone Gives Bruce Springsteen Virtual Sex Change

Hat Tip: AV Club

Turns out, if you play a Bruce Springsteen 33 of "I'm on Fire" at 45 speed he sounds remarkably like Dolly Parton.  The best part is the last 30 seconds or so.

The Next Hobbit Film Gets New Title

Hat Tip: Digital Trends

The last film in the Hobbit Trilogy has been renamed.  Instead of The Hobbit: There and Back Again it will be The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies.

Given all the extraneous material that had to be included in order to make three films, I suggest some alternatives.

The Hobbit: Two Films Too Many.

The Hobbit: Finally Over.

The Hobbit: Roger Corman was a slacker when it comes to padding.

The Hobbit: Enough Already

The Hobbit: Tolkein is Rolling Over in Hs Grave.

And Finally,
The Hobbit: Three Films to Get There, Now for Three More to Get Back Again.


BTW, I have to correct something in a previous post.  I miscalculated the amount of padding involved.

The Hobbit in written form is about 300 pages.  Each book in the trilogy runs 450-500 pages.  That means Peter Jackson had to add the equivalent of 1,200 pages to the Hobbit in order to produce a trilogy instead of a single film.

And I Thought Watching Paint Dry Was Boring

Scientists at the University of Queensland in Australia have been watching a piece of pitch (tar) drip–very slowly–for 85 years.

It started as an experiment (conceived in 1927) as a way to demonstrate the liquid nature of even the most viscous fluid.  The tar has produced 9 drops in the 85 years it has been running, and only the last has been caught on camera.

This is apparently the longest running experiment on record.  (Does anyone actually keep track of that?)


And I thought waiting for paint to dry was boring.

(I actually had a job where I had to do that.  I worked at a test lab that did quality control for a building manufacturer.  Testing paint samples required spraying two coats of paint on a piece of metal.  The first coat had to dry before the second was applied.)

For those of you without the needed patience, here's a time-lapse video.

Mystery Science Theater Reboot in Works?

Geekosystem has a post speculating on a MST3K reboot.

 This would be coming from Joel Hodgson, not from the RiffTrax guys.  (Not that I have anything against Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy.)  This would apparently be an online program similar to the original series with a new host and probably new robots.

The biggest hurdle will probably lining up fodder.


I've been complaining lately about all the reboots coming out of Hollywood lately.  I could actually get behind this one.


As an added bonus, Wired posted an online article on MST3K  today:

Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Definitive Oral History of a TV Masterpiece



(The article has a brief note on Joel attempting a reboot, but little detail.)

3 Dev Adam, Bizarre Superhero Movie

Hat Tip: Neatorama

Watching the clips in the video you have to ask how well the producers understood American comic books.

I only have three words: carnivorous guinea pigs.

I Knew There Was a Reason Not to Look Forward to the Next Hobbit Film

Hat Tip: Geekosystem

After watching the first film installation of the Hobbit, I really was not looking forward to the second movie.  The only reason for two movies was the inclusion of a great deal of extraneous material.

The Hobbit runs about 300 pages in book form.

The books in the Lord of the Rings trilogy each run 450-500 pages.

Given the difference, creating two movies out of the Hobbit requires adding the equivalent of 700 additional pages.  Additional material in the movie industry is referred to as "padding", and the producers of the Hobbit films have literally created an entire movie's worth of it.

All that padding results in problems, and there's nothing more enjoyable than poking fun of those problems.  Someone did that in video form and posted it to YouTube.

The video lasts almost 15 minutes.

85,000 Historic Films Loaded to YouTube

Hat Tip: Engadget

British Pathe has uploaded 85,000 historic newsreels to their YouTube Channel.  The films cover 80 years worth of documentaries starting from 1896.

Footage includes coverage from both World Wars, interviews of those that survived the Titanic disaster and other noteworthy events.

Some examples:





British Pathe also has a blog and a website if interested.

This promises to provide an invaluable resource for bloggers looking for historic footage to go with blog articles.

We Need a Statute of Limitations on Sequels

That latest move in Hollywood seems to be resurrecting decades old movie franchises.

The latest recycling effort?

Mrs. Doubtfire!

Do we really need a Mrs. Doubtfire sequel 21-years after the original?  Do we need any sequel 21-years after the original?

I think it's official at this point.

The people responsible for writing scripts for Hollywood have no creativity.  They are only capable of recycling old ideas or stealing ideas from those outside the movie industry.


If you want originality, don't look to Hollywood.

New Saturn Moon May be Forming

Hat Tip: Geekosystem

The Cassini space probe may have captured a new moon forming out of Saturn's ring system.

The potential moon has been nicknamed "Peggy".


Now we know why all those support calls take so long:

What the Heck? KFC Corsage?

And, yes. It's a real product.

The Remake Craze Continues: NBC to remake Rosemary's Baby

BuzzFeed has posted the trailer for the upcoming NBC mini-series Rosemary's Baby.

The NBC remake was written by Scott Abbott (Queen of the Damned) and James Wong (American Horror Story) and runs four hours.  Zoe Saldana replaces Mia Farrow as Rosemary.

Lunar Eclipse Map for April 14-15 Eclipse

Space.com has a map showing where the April 14-15 eclipse will be visible.

Looks like the eclipse will be viewable in its entirety for the Continental USA.  (With possible exception of the extreme northeast.)

Alaska and Hawaii will have a full or partial eclipse depending on where you are in those States.  (Most of Alaska sill only experience a partial eclipse.

Cartoon Voice Actor Does Darth Vader. Somehow, It's Just Not the Same.

I know this was posted to YouTube some time ago, but I just came across it recently.  Someone has posted a video of Jim Cummings reading part of the Star Wars script as Winnie-the-Pooh.

The idea alone is enough to make you giggle.  The actual video is better.



Of course, this raises the question:  Is it Winie-the-Vader or Darth Pooh?

Amazon Deal of the Day: Save 69% on The Simpsons Season Collections

Amazon has a short-time deal on Season Collections of the Simpsons.

The deal only covers the DVD version, but you can save almost 70%.  The price with the deal ranges from $13.99 to $17.99 depending on the season.

The deal runs through April 10.

Hollywood's Remake Craze Runs Amok

I feel like I'm channeling Sarah Jessica Parker from Hocus Pocus: Amok! Amok! Amok!

The Hollywood remake craze really has gotten out of hand.  Do we really need another version of Godzilla?  Or another Teenage Mutant Nina Turtles movie?

It gets worse when you think about all the equals coming out of Hollywood, some of them are sequels to films that weren't even recently made.  I can understand Star Wars chapter VII.  (That is technically a sequel to a film made in 1983.)  The franchise has been updated on an ongoing basis with the re-release of the original film with additional footage and the three prequels.  But a Goonies sequel? 

Think about that one.  Goonies was released in 1985.  How do you produce a sequel when there has been no activity related to the film for 30 years?

Why would there be any interest?


It's more absurd when you start discussing remakes of remakes.  Besides the latest Godzilla remake, you can now add Battlestar Gaactica to that list.

Battlestar Galactica first appeared on television in 1978 and lasted for 17 episodes (24 shows total do to the number of two-part episodes.)  It was remade in 2003 by the SyFy channel.  The remake was more sucessful and ran four seasons.

It is now being remade as a feature film.


Remakes do make some sense.  It's similar to the branding effect of making a James Bond film.  The name recognition alone helps with marketing the film.  Those that saw (and enjoyed) the previous film should automatically have some interest in the sequel and name recognition helps when marketing remakes.

I just wish they would actually come up with something original. 

Climax! Television Show. The First James Bond Appearance.

Before appearing on the big screen, James Bond made appeared in an episode of the 1950's television series: Climax!

Barry Nelson played James Bond.

Don't recognize the name?  Nelson was primarily a television actor and showed up in many television series in a guest spot.  He also played the Hotel Manager in the original Shining movie.




The Internet Archive lists the episode as being in the Public Domain.  (They try their best to check copyright status, but they can make mistakes.)

According to IMDB, the Casino Royale spot was actually a pilot for a James Bond t.v. series that never materialized. 

Extended Godzilla Trailer Released

Warner Brothers has released an extended trailer for the new Godzilla movie.




This follows two very short trailers that barely show anything at all.

After seeing this trailer, I see why.  Color me unimpressed.

The trailer starts with an earthquake at a nuclear power plant.  In Japan.  (That appears to be Mt. Fuji.)  But you only show Caucasian actors in the trailer.

Followed by a tidal wave on a tropical beach. 

Incorporating actual disasters in Japan and Indonesia seems a little crass to me.


This is followed by a scene that looks like it was lifted directly out of Jurassic Park.


And the movie seems to throw in a Government conspiracy/cover-up for good measure.


A remake of a remake that relies on incorporating actual events and scenes that could have been lifted from another film (and the obligatory Government coverup) just screams lack of creativity.

You can't always tell how good (or bad) a movie will be from the trailer, but this trailer does not result in me wanting to see this film.  It seems to indicate another Hollywood production where all the effort was geared toward special effects and everything else was just a second thought, including plot.

Shaun the Sheep Short: Synchronised Swiming

This reminds me a little of the old Laff-A-Lympics cartoon.  (Am I dating myself with that?)

Wallace and Gromit Movie Spinoff: Shaun the Sheep

Shaun the Sheep from the Wallace and Gromit franchise is getting his own movie.



It's hard to tell how god the movie will be based on the teaser, but the fact that it's from the people that produced Wallace and Gromit suggests it should be worth watching.

Get Lost in Middle Earth

For all those Lord of the Rings Geeks out there, the LOTR Project website has a new interactive map showing the location where the events in the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit take place.

The map does take a little time to load, so be patient.

The tabs on the right of the screen control what is displayed on the map.  (They aren't visible in the screenshot, but you should see them on the actual map.)  Options include places where important events occurred , paths taken by various characters, and important locations.  Zoom in/out by using the control on the left or the scroll button on your mouse.

Star Wars Featurette: The Birth of the Lightsaber

Hat Tip: Digital Trends

The Star Wars YouTube channel has a new video on the origin of the lightsaber.