UK box office top ten and analysis for the weekend of Friday 18th - Sunday 20th January 2013...


1. Les Miserables - £4,406,828 weekend; £17,360,303 total (2 weeks)
2. Django Unchained - £2,801,312 weekend (New)
3. Life of Pi - £1,201,163 weekend; £24,147,499 total (5 weeks)
4. The Impossible - £1,092,754 weekend; £9,118,833 total (3 weeks)
5. Gangster Squad - £791,799 weekend; £3,890,342 total (2 weeks)
6. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - £765,437 weekend; £49,997,203 total (6 weeks)
7. Monsters, Inc 3D - £681,247 weekend (New)
8. Quartet - £335,518 weekend; £5,904,503 total (3 weeks)
9. Jack Reacher - £212,540 weekend; £9,126,695 total (4 weeks)
10. Parental Guidance - £206,060 weekend; £4,224,758 total (4 weeks)

Incoming...

Action icon Arnold Schwarzenegger returns to top billing on Friday with the release of The Last Stand (cert. 15) and will be hoping he still has some pulling power here in the UK after bombing in the States this past weekend. Also released is the ensemble comedy Movie 43 (cert. 15), starring just about every Hollywood actor under the sun (including the likes of Halle Berry, Gerard Butler, Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Naomi Watts, Uma Thurman and Richard Gere), along with two Oscar hopefuls in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln (cert. 12A) [read our review here] and Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty (cert. 15) [read our review here]. If I was a betting man (which I am), I'd put my money on Lincoln claiming top spot...

 
Screen Junkies have posted their latest 'honest trailer', and this time round they have Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of The Crystal Skull in their sights - you know, the one everyone tries to forget.

As always, they nail the movie's major flaws in a three-minute trailer, and even highlight a few minor ones (the 'same over-the-top sound effect' is a zinger).

It'll bring back bad memories of swinging CGI Shia LaBeouf monkeys, and nuclear fridges, but it's worth it for the chuckle...



...or maybe not. Damn, that film's bad.

It's typical, you wait years for a White House hostage thriller, and then two come along at once. Before Channing Tatum (G.I. Joe: Retaliation) gets a chance to protect Jamie Foxx's (Django Unchained) POTUS in Roland Emmerich's White House Down, Gerard Butler (Machine Gun Preacher) will perform said duties for Aaron Eckhart (The Dark Knight) in Training Day director Antoine Fuqua's latest action thriller Olympus Has Fallen, which has just received its first poster and trailer today.

"When the White House (Secret Service Code: “Olympus”) is captured by a terrorist mastermind and the President is kidnapped, disgraced former Presidential guard Mike Banning finds himself trapped within the building. As our national security team scrambles to respond, they are forced to rely on Banning’s inside knowledge to help retake the White House, save the President, and avert an even bigger disaster."

Gerard Butler and Aaron Eckhart are joined in the cast of Olympus Has Fallen by Morgan Freeman (The Dark Knight Rises), Angela Bassett (This Means War), Radha Mitchell (Silent Hill: Revelation), Dylan McDermott (American Horror Story), Ashley Judd (Missing), Melissa Leo (The Fighter), Robert Forster (The Descendants), Cole Hauser (A Good Day to Die Hard) and Rick Yune (The Man with the Iron Fists).


Olympus Has Fallen is set for release in North America on March 22nd and arrives in the UK on April 19th.

Trevor Hogg chats with William Goldenberg about his film editing work on Zero Dark Thirty with colleague Dylan Tichenor which has captured them international awards recognition...


“We finished Argo [2012] in June and the movie didn’t come out until October,” recalls William Goldenberg who immediately went from the historical thriller detailing the CIA rescue of six American embassy workers in Iran to the true life tale chronicling the decade long hunt for Osama bin Laden which fatally concludes in Pakistan.  “I was able to jump onto Zero Dark Thirty [2012] in the middle [of the production] but it meant having no time off.  I think I had a weekend.”  The film editor did feel the weight of history when assembling the pictures.  “Of the two movies I did this year there was more pressure on Zero Dark Thirty because of the recentness of the events.”  Goldenberg notes, “You feel responsibility to doing justice to their stories and representing them in an appropriate way because they are real people and in both movies they are real people who are alive.”  The opportunity was too good to pass up.  “As an editor you want to work with the top directors and Kathryn [Bigelow] is right now one of the top few directors in Hollywood.  I’ve never worked with a woman director and thought that would be exciting.  I thought that The Hurt Locker [2008] was great so when I heard about the possibility I was excited about it.  When it all came together I couldn’t be happier with prospect of working on it; that said the movie was pretty much shot when I came on it.  I came on in the middle of June and worked from June to December.  I didn’t meet Kathryn because she was Jordan shooting the raid when I first spoke to her about working on the movie.  We had one 40 minute conversation because she was busy and I spoke to Mark Boal for a brief time; they hired me based on that.  I didn’t even meet her until my first day for the movie; Kathryn had just come back from Jordan or London when they finished shooting.  It’s like, ‘Hi!  How are you? Glad that you’re on the movie.’  That was my first day at work.”


“Dylan Tichenor [Lawless] was on the movie at the time and Kathryn was shooting a tremendous amount of film,” states William Goldenberg who co-edited the digital production with Tichenor.  “Argo was a lot.  It was a million feet.  But Zero Dark Thirty it would have been 1,800,000 – 170 hours or something around there.  It was clear as they got through to the end of the shooting that it was going to be impossible for one person to finish the movie by themselves.  It wasn’t humanly possible.  They had a schedule and a need so they were looking for someone to come on and help. They went out to a few different people.  I showed a lot of enthusiasm and had a relationship with Colin Wilson who was the line producer on the movie and had worked together as assistant editors a long time ago which helped.”  Having to collaborate in the editing suite is nothing new to Goldenberg.  “I’ve done multiple editors with Michael Mann [Ali] and one with Michael Bay [Transformers: Dark of the Moon] and now with Kathryn. For the most part what happens is that you have your section of the movie and work on it.  In my case on Zero Dark Thirty, the first thing I cut was the raid on the Abbottabad compound.  It hadn’t been touched when I got there. They had just finished shooting it and I don’t think I got all of the dailies until after two or three weeks after I got there.  There was 40 hours of material and I sat down for almost a month cutting that.  I had that section until the end of the movie as the first hunk of the movie I cut.  Dylan had first cut most of the rest of it because he had been on the movie for all of that time. Slowly there were sequences that needed to be reworked and I would cut those.  It is interesting.   The director will say, ‘I think you would be great for this sequence.  Give it a try.’  Sometimes you need a sequence to cut and somebody else was working on one thing.  You take the next one that’s up which is the best way to do it. For The Insider [1999], I had the second half of the movie and Paul Rubell [Collateral] had the first half with a few exceptions; that way you have a continuity of what you’re doing. It’s not like you cut a scene and you have to run into somebody else’s room and say, ‘How does this transition work?’  You have big long section you can work as a whole film.”

Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow

“I wouldn’t call it looming,” states William Goldenberg when discussing the impact The Hurt Locker had on the $40 million production.  “There was an expectation created by the fact that Kathryn had won an Oscar [for Best Director] and the movie won Best Picture.  I have to tell you that with every movie there’s something looming and that’s the fear of failure.  I find with every movie there is an unbelievable amount of pressure to have the movie be good and the studio wants its money; there’s a lot on the line.  I feel a unique pressure on every movie.  There’s an added pressure with Zero Dark Thirty because of the subject and the responsibility of such a big subject in the recent past; between the 9/11 part of it and all of the politics going on right now. That part was looming over it more than The Hurt Locker.”  As for 9/11 and Iraq War movies being cursed at the box office, Goldenberg remarks, “They’ll say, ‘Oh, sports movies don’t make money.’  We did Seabiscuit [2003] and made $125 million.  Sometimes the movies aren’t good or maybe they’re not quite commercial enough.  Who knows what makes a movie a hit.”  Controversy has sparked a US Senate Intelligence Committee investigation as to whether the CIA had given Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow "inappropriate" access to classified material.  “I know that Mark was operating with the information that he was given at the time.  They brought me on to edit this screenplay which I thought was amazing and didn’t ask a lot of questions.”


“They’re both masterful,” states William Goldenberg when comparing the directorial styles of Ben Affleck [Argo] with Kathryn Bigelow.  “She doesn’t say much but the few things Kathryn will say about a sequence is so right on the point on what the problem is or what is not working for her. She has varying degrees of how important it is to her.” Whether you are the film editor or the cinematographer, the expectations of the woman behind the camera remains the same.  “She’s relying on you to cut that movie and show her the way editorially which is not to say that she isn’t brilliant in the editing room but she is relying on you as an editor.  Kathryn is not someone who’d say, ‘I can do this myself.  You’re my hands.’  She’s relying on your interpretation of it and your abilities as an editor.  It’s phenomenal for an editor because you feel like this freedom to do stuff.  If you are connecting with her with what you’re going after creatively it’s really freeing and great.  You can feel like you’re allowed to try anything.  Kathryn is relying on you and that’s what you want.  You want to be a part of the process.”  Bigelow is not the habit of handing off notes when watching the dailies.  “She relies on your performance picks and if she doesn’t like it she’ll say, ‘Try something else.’  Rarely you would sit there and they’d run every take of a performance. For them, they’re not worried about that.  You’ll go and try something else, and show it to her.  Kathryn will hope you’ll get it right by the second or third time.”


“In the film the time is marked by terrorist attacks that happened or attempted attacks that happened, not every single one but through the decade,” explains William Goldenberg.  “The London Bombings [2005], I believe there were seven CIA agents killed in Khost, Afghanistan [2009] by a suicide bomber, and there’s the bombing of the Islamabad Marriott Hotel [2008] in Pakistan. Every time in the movie what happens is that you see the date come up and the location.   When you see the date by the time the fourth one happens you realize this isn’t going to be good because these mark the terrorist attacks.  You see the date before you see the attack.  Often times after these attacks we would go into newsreel footage. We were able to shoot a bus not blowing up but going to the exact spot one of the buses blew up in London.”   The opening of the film does not rely on images but voices to set the tone for the entire movie.   “In the beginning of Zero Dark Thirty there’s an audio collage of 9/11 phone calls, some from the planes, towers, and emergency operators.  Basically, it’s sound over black.  There are no visual and that’s the way the script was [written].”  Goldenberg approved of the creative decision.  “It’s a daring move.  It’s incredibly emotional.  You’ll see when you see the movie.  It’s devastating to hear the voices of these people and they’re real and not here now.  We were careful about it and it is haunting but what it does is sets up the rest of the movie and creates the mindset that the country was in after that happened.  Everything that happened through the 10 years is setup by that one event.  The whole hunt for bin Laden is setup by that one event.  It was important to Mark and Kathryn to get the audience in that mindset and that’s why he chose to do it that way.”


“You want to make situations real and I’ve done a lot of movies where the situations are real whether it was The Insider or even Seabiscuit,” states William Goldenberg when addressing the torture scenes.  “If a scene is suppose to make you cry works if it makes me cry.  I’m like the audience at that moment.  I’m trying to make myself feel a certain way so the audience will feel a certain way.”  The monumental task was constructing the raid sequence.  “Everything was shot with four or five cameras and everything was shot with an incredible amount of detail in terms of each moment, how it happened.  My understanding is based on the book [No Easy Day by Mark Owen] that the Navy SEAL who was there wrote we were incredibly accurate about the raid.  The fun part was using that night vision footage.   The footage is shot in low light conditions because it was a moonless night.  Greig Fraser [Snow White and the Huntsman] and Kathryn wanted to be real feeling and not to feel like movie light so there is very little light and shadow.  It’s gritty, grey and dark and feels incredibly real; juxtaposed with that was the night vision where you see what it looks like through those night vision goggles and how much the SEALs can see.   It’s as if you’re there.”


“One of the tougher sections of the movie is there’s a point where they are looking for the courier,” reveals William Goldenberg.  “Maya [Jessica Chastain] feels that he’s key to finding bin Laden.  They bribe a Kuwaiti oil baron and get that guy’s mother’s phone number in Kuwait. They were able to do what’s called a trap and trace which is a tap into her phone and try to get him calling home to his mother so to find his whereabouts.  The courier buys a cellphone and by tracking that cellphone they eventually, after probably 30 minutes of the movie, find the guy. They see him on the street, take his picture and find him after 10 years of looking for him.  The first cut of that section was probably an hour long and completely a mess.” The difficulty was to hone the hours of principle photography footage into an exciting sequence.   “It took a long time to make sense of it. There’s a phenomenal section at the end where they finally find him and there’s this jubilation but in the relation of the context of this movie.  It’s not Hollywood movie jubilation but what real CIA agents feel like.” The solution was in the creative process.  “The thing about editing is you can’t know in week one what you’ll know in week ten.  It was a constant evolution, thinning out and refocusing. I don’t think there was a key one moment or one key thing. It was hard work.”


When it comes to Jessica Chastain (The Help) portraying Maya, William Goldenberg has nothing but praise.  “Jessica is the centre piece of the film and she’s spectacular.  In the movie you don’t really know a lot about her but you do because of her performance.”  Goldenberg adds, “It was more of a trust thing.  We knew Jessica had so much depth and intelligence and was giving us so much in her performance that we trusted that was going to work for the audience.  You try to use the takes and the pieces of performance, and cut for the subtext [what was happening internally with her] instead of the text.”  A creative partnership was formed between Chastain and the screenwriting.  “That’s one of those moments where you trust Mark Boal’s screenplay and a great actress and you have complete faith in it and run with it.”  Goldenberg was impressed by the other cast members.  “They’re all pretty fantastic.  I could go down the line.  Jason Clarke [Public Enemies] who plays Daniel the interrogator in the beginning of the film, Stephen Dillane [King Arthur] and Mark Strong [Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy] who has one of the most spectacular scene in any recent movie where he’s telling everyone in the room that they’re failing and there’s no one else.  ‘You guys are it.’  I was lucky enough to have Kyle Chandler [Broken City] in both Argo and Zero Dark Thirty; he’s wonderful in both movies.  I don’t think there’s a weak performance in either movie.  That’s what is required for a great movie.”


Unlike Argo which had elements of satire to provide comic relief, the humour in Zero Dark Thirty is much less overt.  “People act in strange and funny ways in real situations and it gives you a feeling of reality,’ observes William Goldenberg.  “There are scenes within those intense moments that are funny or are unusual that make you laugh; that’s what real life is like.  There’s a moment that gets a laugh, not a belly laugh, when Jessica Chastain is telling off Joseph Bradley played by Kyle Chandler; she’s screaming at him to get more help and saying, ‘You don’t know al-Qaeda.  You’re going to be the first station chief to be brought up on charges.’  Kyle looks at her and goes, ‘You’re out of your fucking mind.’  It gets a laugh in a great way because she is pretty much bordering on being right out of her mind with being obsessed about this. It’s a great observation.  Kyle delivered it so beautifully so that does get a laugh.  There’s stuff with the SEALs, Chris Pratt [Wanted] supplies some relief.   When asked what he’s listening to in the helicopter on the way to the compound, Chris starts talking about Tony Robbins.”  Pratt has a memorable scene which appears in the trailer where his character is asked as to why he believes in Maya.  “A lot was ad-libbed on Chris Pratt’s part. They would add dialogue; there were lots of different versions and variables. That was the only take where he put his arms out and went, ‘Her confidence.’  For us we get great moments from great actors and all we have to do is be smart enough to use them.”

                                   
“I don’t edit with music when I’m first cutting,” says William Goldenberg.  “As a rule I try not to do that because I don’t want to be influenced by the music.  The music has a rhythm and you don’t want the rhythm of the cuts to be dictated by the rhythm of that music.  I like to have the edits have their own rhythm. To have a rhythm that the scene needs and then afterwards when I’m happy with the cut then I will put temporary music in where I feel it’s appropriate.  It’s a great tool for people seeing the movie and it’s a great tool for finding out what works and doesn’t work.”  The digital footage used with Zero Dark Thirty shares a lot of similarities with film.   “Whether it’s digital material or 16mm film or 35mm film once it gets into the Avid it’s all the same to me.  I’m trying to use what’s in front of me to tell a great story.  It creates a different workflow but for me it’s not that different.  You get a lot more material. There are a lot more takes that they don’t do a restart.  They restart within a take and don’t re-slate so you get these long sometimes 30 to 40 minutes takes because instead being limited to a 10 minute magazine you can keep going with the high definition.”  A production that shoots a lot of footage or one that storyboards every shot is equally valid.  “That’s the great thing about all of this.  Some films have a tiny bit of footage and all of these composed masters, and everything is predetermined how it's been shot and turns into a great movie.   Or it’s a film where there’s two million feet of film and a million ways to cut it and it also turns into a great movie.  To me it’s the end result is the thing not the journey.   It can be different as long as the end result is something special.”

William Goldenberg

William Goldenberg has become an awards darling on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean as he has been lauded with Best Editing nominations from the BAFTAs and Oscars for Zero Dark Thirty and Argo.  “In my wildest imaginations at the beginning of these two I never expected anything like this would ever happen,” The film editor who previously received Academy Award nominations for The Insider and Seabiscuit is quick to share the spotlight with Brett Reed.  “He is a phenomenal guy and partner.  Brett was with me as a production assistant then became an apprentice then became an assistant editor and then became my first assistant.”  For the past 13 years Reed has enabled Goldenberg to focus entirely on the editing.  “He’s the face of the editing room.  I don’t have to worry about the logistics.  I don’t have to worry about things being turned over to sound or visual effects.”  Both Kathryn Bigelow and Ben Affleck missed out on contending for Best Director at the Oscars. “Obviously, based on what everyone’s predictions were we were surprised.  It’s not an exact science.  It’s not the same people voting for the same branches so it makes it a little more complicated.  I owe Ben and Kathryn my nominations.”  He believes, “The movie is the star of the show.  It’s the director’s vision and I’m trying to help them.”  When asked as to what makes Zero Dark Thirty special, the film industry veteran answers, “It’s a movie that’s entertaining and informative.”  Goldenberg enthusiastically concludes, “I had a great time with both movies.”


Many thanks for William Goldenberg for taking the time for this interview.

Make sure to visit the official website for Zero Dark Thirty and read our filmmaker profile on Kathryn Bigelow titled Action Artist.

Stranger Than Fiction: William Goldenberg talks about Argo

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.

Chris Cooper reviews the latest issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles...

“The TMNT find themselves stranded on the planet Neutrino in Dimension X, which is under a massive assault by Krang! Krang is determined to find the Fugitoid to complete his Technodrome. Little do the Turtles know that the Fugitoid is with them in the form of April’s co-worker Chet!”

If you’ve read any of my previous reviews for TMNT you’ll know that I’ve been enjoying it very much. You might also know that I loved Secret History of the Foot Clan #1 (a 4 part mini-series). That issue (and its #2) have really thrown a spanner into the works. That story has been so strong in both its story and artwork so far that I can’t help but look upon TMNT #18 slightly disparagingly. I feel harsh for saying that, but it does coincide with the main title making the jump from Earth to Dimension X, which has never been the strongest piece of TMNT lore for me.

This is not to say that I think #18 is bad. It really isn’t! We’ve got action, romance (sort of!) and shurikens! Never a bad thing. The problem is the story doesn’t move along very far, and some characters that I assume I’m meant to care about, I just don’t. You can’t give me an ending that relies on a gasp when I have no real reason to care yet.

Ben Bates’ art improves slightly on #17, with less of the obvious lack of detail. Maybe he is settling in now. He gets across the frenetic action of a large scale fire fight well. Mikey’s actions are really well presented here in particular. The facial expressions are good too, and Bates does a great job presenting Krang as a truly evil ‘pink and squishy’ villain.

A good amount of humour is present too, with a reveal in this issue provoking a great reaction from our heroes. Raphael’s ribbing of Michelangelo is also pretty funny.

Does anyone get the same vibe from #18’s cover as they did the old NES games box art? Google ‘TMNT NES’ and let me know what you think.

Here’s hoping that #19 picks up again and keeps me interested. Though far from bad, the main TMNT title needs to up its game to compete with its spin-off.

Chris Cooper

This summer Warner Bros. launches its shared DC movie universe with the arrival of Zack Snyder's (Watchmen) hotly-anticipated Superman reboot Man of Steel, but with Christopher Nolan bringing the curtain down on his epic Batman saga last year with the release of The Dark Knight Rises, the studio is now left with a giant bat-shaped hole in its upcoming production slate.

Of course, we all know The Dark Knight will return to movie screens eventually, but if the usually-reliable Batman-on-Film is to be believed, fans have a few years of waiting before the next Batman film arrives in cinemas. According to the site, the studio will use its proposed Justice League movie to reboot the character in 2015, which would eventually lead to a new solo Batman movie in 2017 "at the earliest."

Considering it's 2013 already and Warner Bros. is expected to move forward with Justice League following the release of Man of Steel, it would seem that a minimum four-year wait is to be expected. However, Batman-on-Film also goes on to stress that the future Batman series could be dependent on how the character is received in Justice League, meaning that if the superhero team-up fails to perform at the box office, the studio could be back to square one with its plans for the Dark Knight Detective.

In other Batman-related news, Joseph Gordon-Levitt has spoken to MTV about his rumoured involvement in Man of Steel, denying that he's set to don the cape and cowl for a cameo appearance alongside Henry Cavill's Superman: "I hadn't heard that one. It just goes to show how much you can believe rumors. I don't think you should believe in any of them. If there's something I'm going to be in, I'm going to tell you about it."

Holy Franchise, Batman! Bringing the Caped Crusader to the Screen - Available now via Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts has announced that British filmmaker Sir Alan Parker is to receive BAFTA's highest accolade, the Academy Fellowship, in recognition of outstanding and exceptional contribution to film. Previous Fellows include Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, Sean Connery, Elizabeth Taylor, Stanley Kubrick, Anthony Hopkins, Laurence Olivier, Judi Dench, Vanessa Redgrave and Christopher Lee, along with last year's recipient Martin Scorsese.

"Sir Alan Parker is a hugely distinctive filmmaker, and a man of uncompromising vision and personality," said John Willis, Chairman of the Academy. "He has made an immense contribution to the British film industry, receiving a wide range of critical and public acclaim for his writing, producing and directing across almost 40 years of filmmaking. It’s almost impossible to highlight any one moment of his career, but the incredible 19 BAFTAs his films have won indicate the esteem in which he is held by his peers, as well as the outstanding nature of his work. I’m delighted that the Academy has taken this opportunity to recognise Sir Alan with the Fellowship this year.”

Making his feature debut as writer and director in 1975 with Bugsy Malone, Parker's subsequent films have gone on to win nineteen BAFTAs, ten Golden Globes and ten Oscars. 1977’s controversial Midnight Express won him the BAFTA for Direction, while his other works include The Commitments, Shoot The Moon, Pink Floyd: The Wall, Mississippi Burning, Evita, Angela’s Ashes and The Life of David Gale. “When you make your first film, you’re sure it will be your last," stated Parker on today's announcement. "And then you squeeze your eyes together and suddenly, forty years later, you’re at BAFTA getting an award like this. I’m of course enormously flattered and honoured."

The British Academy Film Awards takes place on Sunday, February 10th.

It was announced a couple of weeks that Frank Darabont was brought in to be the fifth writer for Legendary Pictures' 2014 Godzilla reboot and despite all of the legal issues with the producers, Darabont spoke to io9 about the script for The King of the Monsters' return to the big screen. In the interview he speaks about Godzilla's cinematic origins, how he became a comedy character and what he has in store for the reboot.

"What I found very interesting about Godzilla is that he started off definitely as a metaphor for Hiroshima and Nagasaki and some of the atom bomb testing we were doing in the South Pacific in the subsequent years" the writer said. "The giant terrifying force of nature that comes and stomps the s--t out of your city, that was Godzilla. Filtered through the very fanciful imaginations of the Japanese perception. And then he became Clifford the Big Red Dog in the subsequent films. He became the mascot of Japan, he became the protector of Japan. Another big ugly monster would show up and he would fight that monster to protect Japan. Which I never really quite understood, the shift. What we're trying to do with the new movie is not have it camp, not have it be campy. We're kind of taking a cool new look at it. But with a lot of tradition in the first film. We want this to be a terrifying force of nature. And what was really cool, for me, is there was a very compelling human drama that I got to weave into it. It's not that cliched, thinly disguised romance or bromance, or whatever. It's different, it's a different set of circumstances than you're used to seeing. And that's tremendously exciting as a writer when you're asked to do something else."

While he is teasing a new culturally relevant allegory, he is remaining very tight lipped about it.

"I love leaving a few crumbs on the table for the audience to determine what they think. Let them bring something to it as well. That's why a movie like The Green Mile is so satisfying or why The Mist is so satisfying to me. Because it stirs their participation and they have interpretation. I've heard metaphors that people apply to Shawshank Redemption, for example, that are fantastic that I never, ever would have thought of. And I say, you know what? You are absolutely right. That is exactly what it means to you. And how satisfying for me to have served you this meal and you identify flavors in it that I never even intended. That's one of the great rewards of what we do."

Godzilla is set for a release in 2014 and will be directed by Gareth Edwards (Monsters). Production is due to start on March 14th in Hawaii.

Luke Owen reviews the latest issue in IDW's January Mars Attacks series...

“The weekly invasion continues: AUTOBOTS vs. DECEPTICONS vs… MARTIANS?! The invaders from Mars take advantage of the colossal Cybertronian’s conflict and begin their assault on Earth in full force. It’s Martian vs. Machine as the audacious Autobots and the devilish Decepticons begrudgingly join forces to repel the inhuman invaders and save the planet!”

I’ve been saying for the last few weeks that the IDW Mars Attacks series has been really, really great. It got off to a fine start with Mars Attacks Popeye, continued the brilliance into Mars Attacks Kiss and then created an absolute gem last week with Mars Attacks The Real Ghostbusters. At the time, I thought that would be the best issue of the series, until I read Mars Attacks The Transformers.

It’s been quite some time that a comic has made me laugh out loud as many times as this did. While at times it feels like a parody of the original 80s cartoon series, Shane McCarthy’s writing still keeps faithful to the original source material – just choosing to poke fun when it’s appropriate. If like me you grew up watching The Transformers, you will find a lot of clever in-jokes and air-punching moments that will caress your nostalgic bones. From jokes about Spike’s yellow boots to the awesome sight of the Insecticons battling the Martian giant ants, Mars Attacks The Transformers is a Transformers comics made for Transformers fans.

The story and pacing are perfect. The Autobots have finally defeated the Decepticons and place Megatron under arrest. However when the Martians start to invade, Megatron must put aside his hatred for Optimus Prime so that the Martians don' win the war he wants to win himself. Because it’s so perfectly simple, it doesn’t take long to set up which means more time can be spent on jokes, fight scenes and fantastic artwork. The interplay between the Autobots and Decepticons is absolutely fantastic and it’s just awesome to see them working together, even if it is just for this one fun comic.

While the story is centred around the Autobots and Decepticons fighting Martians, this is really Megatron’s comic. You can tell that McCarthy has a lot of love and affection for the character as he revels in writing every line of dialogueand gives him all of the best moments. That’s not to say that he overshadows every other aspect of the comic as, but he is clearly the stand out character from the issue. I made the comment in Mars Attacks Popeye that the Martians weren’t given enough focus as the issue centred around one character, but here McCarthy has managed to get the balance just right.

Also getting the balance right is artist Matt Frank who has created artwork that doesn’t look out of place in 21st Century comics but still maintains the original 80s designs. I said in the Mars Attacks The Real Ghostbusters comic that Jose Holder didn’t quite capture this and that it was a slight detriment to the issue, but Frank has nailed it 100% and got the entire comic spot on.

I have nothing but praise for Mars Attacks The Transformers and would go as far to say that there isn’t a fault in there. The writing is great, the art is great, the jokes are funny and the action is exciting. It makes me wish that McCarthy was back writing The Transformers (as I have issues with both the current series) or that he can carry on with this Mars Attacks The Transformers series as a spin-off.

If you’re only going to buy one comic today, make sure it’s this one.

Yesterday we were teased with a preview for Nova #1 and today we get an inside look into Nova #2. The newest addition to the Marvel NOW! superhero line-up is under the creative guidance of writer Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness.  The official synopsis for the second instalment reads:

After coming face-to-face with a strange, green skinned alien and talking raccoon from a Super Hero team calling themselves the “Guardians of the Galaxy”, Sam Alexander now has more questions about his heritage than ever before. Who was his father? What is the mysterious helmet he holds? And who in the blue blazes were the Nova Corps? The birth of the most exciting new Super Hero of 2013 continues here! 

Ahead of tonight's New York premiere of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 2, Warner Bros. has just released a brand new image and clip from the the hotly-anticipated direct-to-video feature, which features a seemingly reformed Joker making a guest appearance on The Dave Endochrine Show alongside his psychiatrist Dr. Bartholomew Wolper, and ultimately showing his true colours.

Michael Emerson (Lost, Person of Interest) lends his voice to the Clown Prince of Crime, with talk show host Conan O'Brien providing the voice of Dave Endochrine and Michael McKeen (This is Spinal Tap) voicing Dr. Wolper. Take a look at the image, and check out the clip below:



Also appearing in the voice cast for Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 2 are Peter Weller (RoboCop) as Bruce Wayne / Batman, Mark Valley (Human Target) as Superman, Ariel Winter (Modern Family) as Carrie Kelley / Robin, David Selby (The Social Network) as Jim Gordon, Maria Canals (Justice League) as Ellen Yindel, Paget Brewster (Criminal Minds) as Lana Lang and Radio Hall of Fame member Michael Jackson as Alfred Pennyworth.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 2 is set for a Blu-ray and DVD release in North America on January 29th.

Holy Franchise, Batman! Bringing the Caped Crusader to the Screen - Available now via Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com. 

Paul Risker continues our American Mary feature by chatting with directors Jen and Sylvia Soska, a.k.a. the 'Twisted Twins'...

Yesterday I said, “No American Mary feature would be complete without an interview with American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle.” A rather misguided statement when equally no such feature would be complete without an interview with the humorous and lively ‘Twisted Twins’ Jen and Sylvia Soska. A possible sequel to their debut feature is currently being penned… ‘Dead Film Critic in a Trunk.’

At last year’s FrightFest I learnt that you can never have enough time to talk with Katharine and the ‘Twisted Twins’, full of interesting anecdotes and observations that time in their company will undoubtedly always be an enemy. Following the obligatory hugs Jen and Sylv spoke to me about creating a movie for a reason, their retirement from acting, a possible piss take on the romantic comedy genre, and the only reason to get out of bed: prosthetics and gore.

Paul Risker: Your new film is about underground surgery and body modification. What inspired you to make a film about this particular subject?

Sylvia: I had learnt about body modification through an April Fool’s prank that was online, but at the time I thought it was authentic. It had two identical twin brothers. One brother had his arm severed off and attached onto his other brothers, and because they were genetically identical the limbs weren’t protected. Then he had his ring finger taken off and put onto this other brothers solo remaining hand, so that he had an elongated finger. It didn’t creep me out as much as the love letters that accompanied it that said, “Well in order to do something like this you have to be an identical twin,” to understand why you would want to do it, because they all do it. So every time something scares me I become obsessed with it and Jennifer and I became obsessed with body modification. At first it was like, “What’s the creepiest thing we can find?” Then we started discovering how normal it was, how the people who were actually involved in it, they weren’t the monsters that your kneejerk reaction would be. They were a self-aware, a cool people who wore their passions and their interests and their intergradation of their selves on their skin. We never went, “Oh like well we’re going to make a movie about modification”, but it was something we always had in the back part burner of our minds, “oh something a really cool culture.” We were talking to Eli Roth who was such a mentor to us during Dead Hooker and he asked us, “What other scripts do we have?” So of course we didn’t have anything, so I lied, and I was like, “Oh Eli, I’ve so many scripts, I have this one and this one, and this one about body modification.” He was like, “Yeah that one sounds interesting, send that one over”, and I was like, “Well if there was a spelling mistake I would be so embarrassed.” So I said, “Just give us two weeks and then I’ll send it over.” I look at Jen and, “Holy shit we need a script in two weeks to send over to Eli.”

Jen: Something that identical twins have in common with someone in the body mod community, and I think almost everyone, is people look at you and make certain assumptions about who you are just based purely on the way you look. Often people make wrong connotations associated with us, and I mean our Lance, played by Tom Holliday, people would look at him and just think he’s a thug, he’s just violent, and if you actually meet the guy he’s so brilliant, he’s so down to earth, he’s one of the kindest people you’ll ever meet, which shows in that scene where he and Mary are having that conversation. So it was always something we were fascinated with, how appearances are everything, and you think it’s something you learn in grade school, where you shouldn’t judge someone by the way you look, but you don’t really notice a personality across the room. You know, there are a lot of negative connotations associated with how someone perceives your look.

PR: You’ve said that one of the things you admire most about American Mary is the way it will create a discourse on why cosmetic surgery is universally acceptable, whilst body modification isn’t. Do you see film as a medium that can simultaneously entertain and inform?

Sylvia: I feel if a movie is created it should have a reason it was created. It should be entertaining to yourself, but it shouldn’t be entertaining only to yourself. I’ve seen so many movies and I walk out of them and like, “Why did that have to exist? Nothing happened, nothing original happened.” It would be so nice if we lived in a place where body modification could be done safely, and that’s really the element of it; it can’t be done safely. It’s like saying that prostitution needs to be banned and always needs to be illegal. It’s not safe for those women, and you’re never going to stop it, you’re never going to stop body modification. What you could do is help these people and the quality of their life so they’re not going to some back alley and getting chopped up, and then having to go to a hospital to get themselves repaired from the damage that they had. Russ Fox who was our flesh artist consultant from the body mod community, he does so many procedures to fix people who have gotten butchered somehow. He trained to be a doctor, but he couldn’t continue that because what he wanted to go into. They were like, “That’s never going to be legal.” There’s a case in Alberta where a gentleman had gone in for a penis modification, and he went and did the procedure and everything was fine, but he brought a friend with him. The friend went and told his parents, the parents, and this is an over eighteen gentleman called the police. The police went to his house, looked at his computer, found all the body modification stuff he had done and put him in prison. I mean it’s like if someone as horns in their head or a forked tongue you can’t say they did that because they wanted to reach into somebody else’s aesthetic of beauty. But you see these – and I think it’s because we’ve spent so much time in Los Angeles as of late – bleached blondes, Barbie doll, fake tittied, liposuction women. Maybe part of it is for themselves, but for a lot of them it’s because they want other people to perceive them in a certain way. It doesn’t make sense to me, there’s no difference between having horns and having fake tits to me. It’s just a choice that people have, and they should have the ability to do it safely. Hopefully the film will open a discussion about this, and people will re-examine it, because this is the first film that really highlights body modification. It does ask the question, ‘Well what is considered a real sense of duty?’ ‘What is safe, what should be accepted, and how are people supposed to do these procedures?’

Jen: I think that in general with a lot of North American films if they have a message they really beat you over the head with it. We have many, many messages in American Mary and you go into them and I think there are a lot of things that can be discussed and thought about; but also aesthetically I feel it is an entertaining movie. I mean if you look at something like our original film DHIAT, we do have some messages in there like the value of life even though the characters go round killing indiscriminately; except they really care about putting the dead hooker, her body to rest. With American Mary you can say that its entertaining, but it’s entertaining in a very different way to DHIAT. I think that’s one of the triumphs of the film that it’s very stylistic and it’s got a lot more to say than perhaps DHIAT did.

PR: Is there something behind the use of ‘American’ in the title, and do you perceive the film to be about something uniquely American?

Jen: Being Canadian you’re always looking at America, and there’s this kind of Canadian glass ceiling that if you want to be truly successful, and it’s unfortunate, you really do have to move down to America to reach the American Dream; particularly in our experience in the film industry. I mean I wish Canada would embrace their artists a little bit more, but even our town Vancouver, it’s a little bit more of a service town, where LA makes a movie and then they ship everyone to film up in Vancouver cause of our dollar, and it’s a little bit more cheap. Also if you look at characters like our Ruby real girl, which is in America a pretty average thing to see: a blonde with a lot of plastic surgery, bleached hair and large implants. That is the expected form of beauty, whereas as you look at our mods and people say, “Oh that’s not beautiful”, because you know it’s not the accepted form of beauty. There’s a lot of self-sacrifice to get to the American dream, and you see Mary make sacrifice after sacrifice of her own morality and the person that she is, and it’s just about how far you will go to reach your own American dream.

Sylvia: Throughout it we didn’t want to hammer it over the heads of our audience. There’s no part where she says I’m pursuing the American Dream, I’m willing to sacrifice my own morality because my ambition is so great. But we wanted it there, so the colour scheme you see through the whole movie is red, white and blue, and there’s American imagery everywhere. In the bar its red, white and blue and there’s stars on the wall, and there’s the biggest American flag on the wall. In the very last scene the streaks of blood are the stripes. We wanted it to be there, people to have it in the back burn of their mind, but at no point did we want to be like, “This is how you have to think about the movie, and this is what you have to get out of it.” I think the biggest disservice you can do to your audience is tell them what to think or how to think. It should be something where you can think, and interpret things for yourself.

PR: You directed and starred in DHIAT. With American Mary you have been almost exclusively behind the camera apart from a cameo appearance. Do you feel this impacted the final look of the film and would you consider taking a starring role in future films?

Jen: Our cameo in American Mary has been kind of our retirement from acting. As much as we love acting, it really was our real passion, but it’s a real challenge to be able to direct and do all of the other responsibilities that go along with it, and be on the camera. Even if you’re going back and forth, it was very stressful to be like, “Am I using the right light?” It’s not like an actor thing when you’re directing as well to be concerned with. It’s, “Did I get the shot? Was it clearer enough? Was there another sound going on while I was talking?” We really wanted to focus on the story of American Mary, and all the different elements, so as a choice we wanted to take a step back. But we had such good support from DHIAT that people said, “We want to see you do something.” So we said, “Okay we’ll let you see us do something, one final something.” I would say we could be talked out of retirement for something really amazing, like I challenge anybody to take us out of retirement, but right now we really want to focus on our directing and our writing.

Sylvia: Actually in all of our other scripts that we have there is nothing at all for us to do in it. This was it that was the one final time. So we decided to do things we really like. Jen loves prosthetics so she got a lot of prosthetic work on that. I wanted to kiss a girl and I got to do that because I guess I don’t date ever. It was really fun, but the whole time in the back of my mind I wanted to be behind the monitor, and there were a few little things that were very different from how… looking at it I wish I’d done this or I wish I’d done that, you can’t do that when you’re actually in the seat, especially when you’re working on an independent. You have so little time to get everything done. So its fun, I love acting, and I hope people enjoy the final cameo. I hope it wasn’t too narcissistic like, “Everyone stop the movie, the twins are going to make their cameo now.”

PR: It is well known that you both grew up on a diet of Stephen King (“Ah, our beloved”, remark Jen and Sylvia). I wonder if you would be interested in taking a break from original screenplays and adapt one of his stories, and if so which one?

Jen: Wow, it would be such an honour to be able to adapt one of his novels; of course with his blessing and his input. I find that Stephen King film adaptations are either awesome like The Shawshank Redemption or The Green Mile or they’re complete shit; insert anything that premiered on television. Actually a few of them were done on TV and weren’t done well that I would love to remake. I hear that they’re remaking The Shining, which is just fucking blasphemy. First of all it was perfectly executed, and I really pity the director who’s going to take that on because it’s just going to be like, “Well you’re not Kubrick.” It’s like Adam Lambert singing in Queen right now, “You’re not Freddy Mercury, what the fuck are you doing?”

Sylvia: It’s really funny that you should mention that because there was a script up for option for an adaptation of one of our favourite Stephen King books. We threw our hat in. I don’t know if we are getting it, I haven’t heard anything so I’m guessing not, but it would be like one of the biggest fan girl moments ever. We are huge graphic novel fans also, and we have been discussing with the creators of one of our favourite comic books being able to work on a big screen adaptation of that, and that would be the first time, like we would have I’m sure script notes. But having the person who actually invented this incredible character, and for them to trust them in our hands to make an adaptation, I would just, I’m up for the challenge, I would love that, and I’m hoping that they are impressed enough with ourselves that it’ll be, “Okay you can have my baby, just don’t fuck it up too much.”

Jen: One of our favourite Stephen King short stories was Room 1408, and when we saw it, I mean… I was such a weirdo. I was at work one day and I come back and the apartment is completely dark, and she’s sitting there holding one of Stephen King novel’s and she’s like, “Sit down I have to read to you”, and I was like, “Oh my God, you psychopath, what’s wrong with you?”

Sylvia: Don’t say that, it makes me sound weird.

Jen: She is weird, she is. So I sit there and she reads this to me and it’s so fucking good, and one of the triumphs of it are the subtleties, how like the picture frames start to get a little bit crooked, and it just kind of snowballs as it gets more and more severe. And then, then you see the film adaptation and it’s a bit of a snooze, and it goes in a completely… it goes into some story. I know when you make a short story you have to write more bull shit so that it’s a feature length thing, but I was so disappointed with it, no part of it was I ever terrified. I mean maybe I woke up startled while I was watching it, but it really was such a let-down compared to how good that story was. There’s also Bag End. It’s kind of his H.P. Lovecraft adaptation. It’s a short story as well and I just love that one too because of again, of the subtlety. The way he writes he really brings you into the world and I guess if you don’t have the same kind of imagination, I mean if you don’t read Stephen King then you really don’t have a place directing one of his films, because you need to be able to already have visualised and been terrified by it, and try to bring that back to life.

PR: Do you consider American Mary a horror or would you say it’s more of a psychological thriller, and what are you going to do next?

Sylvia: The funny thing is, that we thought DHIAT was a buddy, road trip movie, and this, I thought it was a romantic comedy. Everyone just looked at me and like, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” So, I think it’s always going to be horrific because that’s kinda where it goes, even though we don’t think that we are making one. To me, it was a modern tragedy, that’s how I looked at it, but Jennifer and I are such fans of prosthetics that if there isn’t a little bit of gore, “What are we getting out of bed for?”

Jen: Everything we will do will have elements of horror in it. I mean DHIAT was our version of Weekend at Bernie’s, and until we started shopping it around and people started freaking out, we were like, “Oh I guess it is a bit of a horror.” It’s hard to categorise American Mary strictly as a horror because it’s a film that really escapes definition. There’s so much that you can take from it. Some people will see it as a horror, some people will see it as drama, and you know sick people like ourselves will see it comedically as well. I mean Sylvia and I even have a romantic comedy script, and it wouldn’t be like 'Fifty Shades of Crap', it would be something that was horrific and really taking a satire and taking the piss out of romantic comedies and Harlequin novels, with some gore.

Sylvia: Jen forgot, well failed to mention that it’s also going to be a musical and one of our songs is called Get in the Van. I’m really looking forward to it. I guess we’re just bad at relationships, and we just take the piss out of everything. We’re like, “If we could just have a little slasher, romantic comedy… musical?”

Jen: There’s nothing more romantic than coming home and having someone already in your apartment when it is dark waiting for you.

Sylvia: I know… that’s commitment.

Jen: Oh God fans please don’t break into our apartment.

Thanks to Jen and Sylvia Soska for taking the time for this interview.

This article originally appeared on EatSleepLiveFilm. 

Paul Risker is a freelance writer and contributor to Flickering Myth, Scream The Horror Magazine and The London Film Review.

With Arnold Schwarzenegger returning to the big screen in The Last Stand, the Flickering Myth writing team look back at their favourite Arnie movies. Next up, Matt Smith with 1996's Christmas epic Jingle All The Way...

A father must stop at nothing in order to get his son the toy he really wants for Christmas. Makes you wonder why he waited until the last minute though... also Sinbad’s in it, which is good because it’s the 90s.

Alternatively, a multi-faceted, bad tempered repeat offender takes five minutes to pay attention to his family who he tries to placate by buying high-in-demand goods. On the way, he strikes out at various strangers violently, is the direct cause of thousands of dollars worth of damage, attempts to escape from a hard working police officer, poses as an undercover agent in order to cover his tracks and misuses highly dangerous and highly experimental space-age technology. A Christmas lesson is learnt.

Okay. Wow. I’d forgotten how... this film is, and what it’s like. It’s something. Another Arnie attempt at comedy, this one ranking below Last Action Hero and Twins, but also below Junior.

What has the capacity of being a satire about the modern way of commercialism and modern culture, and how we don’t communicate as oh who cares, Arnie has to find that toy in time or his son’s world will explode or something.

Yes, anyone hoping for a biting satire of modern culture and the Christmas spirit should take a quick look at the tagline. It’s a family comedy and has the words ‘No prisoners’ on the poster, so any hope for anything related to clever comedy has been quickly and succinctly chased away by a fake reindeer, punched by a professional wrestling Santa and shoved on a jet pack.

The film is full of plot holes. The jet pack at the end criminally overlooks basic scientific principles, completely ignoring the reality of the situation. It also makes you wonder why the first thing you’d do after inventing a jet pack is give it to someone who wasn’t even involved in the parade in the first place. Why you’d give it to someone involved in a parade in the first place is another question entirely. But Arnie does outdo Jean Claude Van Damme’s punching of a snake by knocking out a reindeer, so well done him.

It doesn’t help that the direction is ordinary to say the most. I have no time for this, what I call lack of any certain style. It’s one step above a bad sitcom, and to confirm that James Belushi has a bit part. In all fairness, his character (a mall Santa who offers Arnie a last minute get out clause in the form of a badly made Turbo Man rip-off) is the only one who strikes a satirical chord. He’s the snake from the Garden of Eden given the job of Santa. His character provides darker commentary on what people will do to reach their last minute Christmas objective.

But what of the other funny people? Well, Phil Hartman is criminally underused, but that’s always the case if Phil Hartman isn’t the main character or doing voice work for The Simpsons. Sinbad tries far too hard, kind of like me except I’m not wearing a funny hat. Ahem.


Sinbad reportedly missed his first audition and screwed up the rescheduled one. He then decided to improvise instead of sticking to the script. He of course got the part and got second billing underneath the $20 million star. The film was, for some reason, not critically successful.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, reportedly excited about playing a human, doesn’t seem to stretch himself in this film. He’s like someone should varnish him and use him to eat at. It’s like he’s been assembled from an IKEA box that has too many of some parts and not enough of others. He has the acting capacity of something that you’d use to create a fire. He’s very wooden, is what I’m saying. Just like the film, always end on a good joke.

Chris Cooper reviews the third issue of IDW's Judge Dredd...

"In Mega-City One, kidnapping of the rich is a thing of the past, thanks to personal security droids. But a ruthless team of high-tech snatchers has come up with a cruel twist on the oldest racket on the books. They don't nab you. JustÖ a certain part of you. But the kidnappers may regret holding one of the city's most prominent citizens for ransom, because Judge Dredd's just signed on to be the bagman!"

With the release of this third issue, I think Dredd might just be hitting its stride. Eschewing the robot story of the first two issues, we are thrown straight into a very interesting story regarding human clones of wealthy people being held to ransom. Some hard questions are asked. Would you pay a ransom for someone who is your wife/husband/sibling, with even the same memories, when the original is stood next to you? Could you watch them be tortured and killed even though you won't actually lose anything?

This issue is full of action, explosions and some clever ideas. Plus more of Dredd being a badass. Everything I need then really!

The art continues to be strong, though with all the Judges looking so similar with their helmets on I'm pleased they always make Dredd's face so grouchy, or else I'd never know who I was looking at. The city wide views are detailed and give a good sense of scope whist the action is exciting and doesn't muck about.

The back up story is the strongest yet, and ties directly into the main. Langdon Foss' lines are sharp and Ronda Pattison's colours strong. It all comes together to tell a solid little tale that gives us slightly more information to take into the next issue. I do wonder however, if the pages given over to these backups might be better spent on bulking out the main story.

For those interested in the history of the character and his creation, the final page of the comic contains a piece written by Douglas Wolk. He goes into detail regarding the early issues of 2000 AD and how there were many people involved. Not just creators John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra. An interesting read and nice addition.

If I were a old school fan of Dredd, I might find this all quite underwhelming. But as I feel I'm very much part of the demographic that IDW are targeting with this new series (liked Karl Urban), I can say that this is continuing to be solid. It has grew in strength over the first three issues and I hope it builds further. Judge Dredd #3 is the best issue yet. I have my fingers are crossed that this is a sign of things to come and is a trend that continues.

Chris Cooper

Director Jon M. Chu's (Step Up 2: The Streets, Step Up 3D) action sequel G.I. Joe: Retaliation was building a fair bit of buzz before it was unceremoniously shunted from Paramount Pictures' 2012 slate just weeks before it was due to hit cinemas. Since then, Retaliation has been all but forgotten and with just over two months to go now until its release, Paramount has moved to remind us that about the film by revealing that a four minute 3D preview will be attached to Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, which is out January 25th in North America and February 27th in the UK.


Of course, that's not much use to you if you're planning to skip Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, but fortunately a preview of the preview has also been released online, and you can watch it right here...


The sequel to 2009's G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Retaliation sees the return of Channing Tatum (Duke), Ray Park (Snake Eyes), Lee Byung-hun (Storm Shadow), Arnold Vosloo (Zartan) and Jonathan Pryce (The US President), while new recruits include Dwayne Johnson (Pain & Gain) as Roadblock, Bruce Willis (A Good Day to Die Hard) as Colonel Joseph Colton, Adrianne Palicki (Friday Night Lights) as Lady Jaye, Elodie Yung (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) as Jinx, D.J. Cotrona (Dear John) as Flint,  Ray Stevenson (Thor: The Dark World) as Firefly, Stephen Martines (General Hospital) as Cross-Country, RZA (The Man with the Iron Fists) as Blind Master, Eddie Hargitay (The Superagent) as Tunnel Rat, Joseph Mazzello (Jurassic Park) as Mouse and Walton Goggins (Django Unchained) as Warden Nigel James.

G.I. Joe: Retaliation is set for release on March 27th.

Over the past few weeks it's been almost impossible to keep track of all the names linked to roles in Marvel Studios' first (and only) original Phase Two property Guardians of the Galaxy, and thanks to Latino Review we can now throw a few more actors into the mix. According to the site, Marvel has made inquiries as to the availability of Jim Carrey (Kick-Ass 2) and Adam Sandler (That's My Boy) for unspecified roles, with speculation pointing towards the comic actors lending their voices to either Rocket Raccoon and Groot.

Meanwhile, it's also suggested that director James Gunn (Super) has now widened his search for the role of Peter Quill / Star-Lord, the half-human / half-alien leader of the Guardians, with Wes Bentley (The Hunger Games), Chris Lowell (The Help) and Cam Gigandet (Priest) said to be testing for the part. Other actors thought to have been under consideration include Zachary Levi (Thor: The Dark World), Jim Sturgess (Cloud Atlas), Jack Huston (Boardwalk Empire), Lee Pace (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey), Joel Edgerton (Zero Dark Thirty), Michael Rosenbaum (Smallville), Eddie Redmayne (Les Miserables), Garrett Hedlund (Tron: Legacy), James Marsden (X-Men) and John Krasinski (The Office), while Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Looper) passed on the role in favour of another comic book adaptation, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.

While the majority of the casting talk has surrounded the role of Star-Lord, it's also been reported that Isaiah Mustafa (the Old Spice guy), Brian Patrick Wade (The Big Bang Theory) and former WWE star Dave Bautista (The Man with the Iron Fists) are on Marvel's radar for the role of Drax the Destroyer. With filming on Guardians of the Galaxy set to begin this summer in London ahead of its release on August 1st 2014, expect to hear some official announcements very soon indeed.

Anghus Houvouras presents a theory on the death of film criticism...

That headline is incendiary.  Designed to illicit a reaction from you, the reader.  Because we live in an age where audiences must be engaged within the first sentence or they won't even bother to click a link to read the subsequent article.  I'm guessing by the time you've finished reading it, you'll either think it's an interesting and engaging theory or that I'm a complete idiot and should be banned from ever writing about film again.  Because that's the kind of reactions you get in an era where everything is judged only as success or failure.  And that's because of the following phenomenon.

Binary Theory.

Everything is a "0" or a "1"

To walk you through this paradigm shift, you have to understand that all critical thought has been reduced to a pass/fail mentality.    Nuance has been murdered in favor of a cold, calculating metric determining value.  Good/Bad.  Right/Wrong.  Worth/Worthlessness.  Everything is a masterpiece or a piece of shit.  This is the core of what i like to call "Binary Theory".

The information age has reduced everything to a simple, definable value.  And the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel.

First off, let me say that at one point I was a fan of Siskel & Ebert, and don't consider them malicious or complicit in the murder of film criticism.  No more than you could blame the first man who split the atom, Ernest Rutherford, for the bombing of Hiroshima.  While you can easily draw a line between the two events, their was no intent or ill will involved.  It is merely a byproduct of the initiating act.  I doubt Gene Siskel or Roger Ebert even understood the gravitas involved when they first started reviewing films and took their dog and pony show global.  And yet, it had a profound and defining impact on the medium.

Like many of you I watched them reviewing movies every week during a time when there were few options for film fans to see movie reviews.  There were the weekly write ups in your local newspaper.  If you were fortunate enough to have literate parents you may have been privy to the works of Pauline Kael or reviews found in magazines like Time, Newsweek, or (God forbid) People.  However, for a vast majority of Americans you were limited to the local paper and Siskel & Ebert once a week on TV.

For those of you unfamiliar, here's a little history.  Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel were Chicago-based film critics who had found some success on Public Television reviewing movies.  They were both strong personalities and generated an ample amount of friction discussing whatever films were released that week.  Like all good television it was equal parts informative and entertaining.  It was good television to watch them discuss a movie they loved.  It was great television when they disagreed.  Watching them trade blows over a divisive film was the highlight of every broadcast.

They parlayed this gig onto the national stage with "At the Movies" which became a mainstay on Public Television before jumping into syndication and becoming a cultural staple.  While Siskel and Ebert were the personalities behind that fueled the success, it was a simple metric that helped define the show: Those damn thumbs.

Thumbs up.  Thumbs down.

One convenient gesture that would tell audiences whether or not they recommended a movie.  Sure, there were six to seven minute conversations that preceded their Caesar-like final judgment.  It wasn't as if they weren't going into detail about the film before reducing it to a brutal pass/fail methodology.  However, that's what stuck.  Everybody wanted to know if it was a thumbs up or a thumbs down.  "Two thumbs up" was the equivalent of critical praise.  Studios slapped it on print ads and announcers loudly trumpeted it on television commercials. 

Siskel and Ebert contributed greatly to the popularization of film criticism.  In fact, they are probably the most responsible for turning film criticism into water cooler conversation.   However, they are also responsible for the vitriolic attitudes and tabloidization of modern movie criticism.

Those thumbs, their weapons of choice, were intentionally incendiary.  The thumbs were cribbed from the Colosseum of ancient Rome where the fate of a fallen foe would hinge on the crowd's vote.  A thumbs up from the crowd would spare a man's life.  A thumbs down would result in his bloody execution.  Of course, this gesture took on far less sinister overtones in subsequent centuries, but their choice of this 'live or die' method of recommendation helped foster the mentality that all movies were either worth watching or worthless.  Intentional or not.  That mentality has snowballed in the internet age where guys like Gene Siskel would seem downright courteous compared to some of things you read on film websites.

Siskel and Ebert were to film criticism what McDonalds is to the hamburger.

Most people have probably had a McDonalds hamburger.  After serving billions, that's probably a safe assumption.  While there's nothing wrong with the McDonalds hamburger I doubt few people would refer to it as the crowning example of the formula.  There are better hamburgers out there, but McDonalds has the most popular. 

The McDonalds hamburger is the reduction of the food to its simplest state.  It has all the pieces: meat (supposedly), a bun, and some rudimentary fixings slapped together in a paper wrapper and mass produced for high quantity consumption.  Siskel and Ebert reduced criticism to the same state.  Simple, easy to understand and palatable for the masses.

And much like the hamburger, popularizing it and transforming it into something convenient did little to improve the quality.

It feels like we need to take a moment to review.  You have two film critics, a popular tv show, and a marketable hook with the thumbs.  Pass/Fail.  "0" or "1".  Siskel and Ebert brought the art of debating cinema to the suburbs and reduced every discussion to a simple metric.  How exactly are Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert responsible for killing criticism?

The real impact of this wasn't felt until well after Siskel passed away and the show faded from pop culture mainstay to a forgettable, oft repackaged mess.  It was those influenced by Siskel and Ebert who stepped up and became the modern day film critics.  The ones who launched websites, or in the early days took to BBS boards.  These were the film critics of tomorrow.  Average Joes who didn't learn about film in a classroom but from a video store.  Analysts who dictated from a place of common sense and shed the traditional trappings of actual film criticism in favor of stripped down, frills fee approach.   A generation of film and entertainment writers inspired by the fast food film criticism of Siskel & Ebert.

Initially the online film movement seemed to shepherd a focus on discussion.  That the content of the written review as making a comeback.  Long, inspired discussions would talk place on internet bulletin boards and chat rooms.  Hours could be spent dissecting even the most trivial of topics.  Websites became the new water cooler for film discussion where even the most microscopic of topics could find willing participants.

And yet, there was still a strong focus on reducing these opinions to a simple, definable metric.  Mostly in part because there were so many voices vying for your attention.  In the early days of television film criticism, Siskel and Ebert's "Two thumbs up" was a way to separate themselves from the other similar shows that sprung up in the wake of their success.   It didn't matter how many talking heads had taken to television discussing movies or what they were saying.  They were the ones with the thumbs.

Once again there was a need for simplification.  To cut through the clutter and place everything into a convenient easy package.  Thus was born sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic and a popularization of the simple metric which has become commonplace on the sites and apps used by people to find films.  Websites like Fandango, Moviefone, and Flixster. 

The problem is that the 'clutter' is in fact the nuanced and formulated opinions of film critics and bloggers.  Reducing those thoughts back into a pass/fail mentality only helps further the failed notion that movies are either massive successes or epic failures.

Twitter has continued this trend: the reduction of complex thought into 140 characters.  Film criticism continues to die one tweet at a time.  Twitter is where discourse goes to die.  And anyone claiming they've had quality discussions on Twitter probably aren't the best conversationalists.

The problem with Binary Theory is that art should never be a pass/fail proposition.

I can't speak for any other writer out there, but i know that 75% of the movies I see each year are neither masterpieces or complete disasters.  They exist in that nebulous, gray area where good critics often flourish and bad critics often drown: the middle.

I've heard critics say before how easy it is to write a review for a movie which they are passionate about.  And i've heard others declare that seeing a terrible movie may be the easiest review to write.  The ones where the bile and the venom can be spewed in a hate fueled rant guaranteed to generate some page views.  Those who adhere to that school of thought will also tell you writing a review for a mediocre movie may prove the most difficult because there is no passion to move them or hate to motivate their words.   That only the best films and the worst films are worthy of inspiration.

When did it become so difficult for critics to review an average movie?  Why is their only motivation in the best and the worst?  When did film criticism become an exercise in praise and annihilation?

Maybe it was right when Siskel and Ebert started dolling out those thumbs.

Fortunately, for those willing to look being the tomato-meters and the tweets, there are interesting discussions to be had.   For many, they will be content with simple, extrapolated math to tell them whether or not what's showing in the cinema is worth seeing, that every movie is either a "0" or a "1".  As a film writer, I find that troubling.

Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert helped popularize film criticism, but they are also the most responsible for it's deterioration as an art form. 

Anghus Houvouras

A few months back it was revealed that Carlton Cuse (Lost, Bates Motel) was developing a TV adaptation of Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt's graphic novel series The Sixth Gun, and now NBC has officially given a pilot order for the supernatural western. The project is being written by Ryan Condal (Hercules: The Thracian Wars), with Cuse serving as showrunner and executive producing alongside Eric Gitter and Andy Borne.

Published by Oni Press, the official description for The Sixth Gun reads: "During the darkest days of the Civil War, wicked cutthroats came into possession of six pistols of otherworldly power. In time the Sixth Gun, the most dangerous of the weapons, vanished. When the gun surfaces in the hands of an innocent girl, dark forces reawaken. Vile men thought long dead set their sights on retrieving the gun and killing the girl. Only Drake Sinclair, a gunfighter with a shadowy past, stands in their way."

Along with The Sixth Gun, NBC has also placed pilot orders for several shows this week, including drama The Blacklist, comedies Holding Patterns and Girlfriend in a Coma, and as-yet-untitled projects from Rand Ravich (Life) and DJ Nash (Up All Night).

The news broke early last year that WWE Studios and Lionsgate were working on a reboot to the Leprechaun franchise with Leprechaun: Origins. Aside from the main role casting, news on the project has remained quiet since the announcement but in an interview with CraveOnline, WWE Studios president Michael Luisi discussed some of the ideas they've had for the reboot.

"The tone is going to be a little darker" Luisi said. "A little more traditional horror than the Warwick Davis ones that people remember. [We're] trying to find a way to please fans of that genre but, at the same time, this is really being played for scares."

Replacing Davis this time round is Dylan Postl who, funnily enough, plays Leprechaun type character Hornswoggle on WWE TV shows. However Luisi seems open to the idea of Davis being in the movie, "I think that’s still an open question. Maybe a cameo. I don’t know at this point. The script is still in development."

The original series spanned 6 movies and saw Leprechaun battle Jennifer Aniston before heading to space and then to the "tha hood" twice. Will this series go the same way? Luisi jokes, "I guess it depends on how enthusiastic the fan reaction is to the first one that we do."