GeekiN #112
Tuesday, June 1st, 2010
Movie discussion. Lots of it. It’s the flavor of the week. Looking for specifics? Keep reading. And also, those of you that visited our booth at Summit City Comic Con, check out the end of the episode for our first raffle.
Discussion
Television
- ABC considering an Alias reboot? To share similarities with the original series, minus Rambaldi prophecy
- Robert Kirkman will help with the writing of Walking Dead TV Series
- NBC to air half hour special on “The Making of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter” June 6th, 7pm
Movies
- Guillermo Del Toro steps down as director of The Hobbit
- Michael Bay’s production company will be co-producing the new TMNT movie with Nickelodean/Paramount
- James McAvoy cast as Charles Xavier in X-Men: First Class; possibly Aaron Johnson for Cyclops?
- Tommy Lee Jones cast in Captain America movie
- Emma Roberts, Rory Culkin, and Hayden Panettiere cast in Scream 4
- Sherlock Holmes 2 is happening on December 16, 2011. Rachel McAdams will return with reduced role. Moriarty will be the focus
- The Flash, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman are “close” to being greenlit
- New potential cast list for Peter Parker: Jamie Bell, Alden Ehrenreich, Frank Dillane, Andrew Garfield, Josh Hutcherson
- Donald Glover campaigning for Spider-Man audition via Twitter
- New Scott Pilgrim trailer melts faces!
- No Heroics creator Drew Pearce writing a new draft for Runaways from Vaughan’s script
- Legendary Pictures acquires rights to Mass Effect movie, producing the movie alongside Avi Arad
Video Games
- Natal to be be renamed Wave?
Geek Jerk Reaction: Get Him to the Greek, Killers, Marmaduke, Splice
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Book of the Month
Y The Last Man Vol. 5In this final Deluxe Edition hardcover collecting Y #49-60, Yorick and Agent 355 prepare for their ultimate quest to reunite the last man with his lost love, while the person, people or thing behind the disaster that wiped out half of humanity is revealed. Then, Yorick Brown's long journey through an Earth populated only by women comes to its dramatic, unexpected conclusion.
Great show this week, but a correction is in order: MGM did not produce & release the Lord of the Rings films. That was New Line. New Line’s fall comes courtesy of the bomb that was The Golden Compass. So depressing. I really miss New Line.
They must have paid a pretty penny for TGC for that to have killed them. The listed budget was only $180 million. That means they only lost about $110 million. Must have banked on it being a successful trilogy and paid quite a bit for the rights upfront.
TGC was a terrible movie, IMO. It’s the reason I never finished the last book of the series.
The Rambaldi storyline from Alis is kind of the “supernatural” element of the show…kind of the precursor to all the crazy stuff on Lost.
I loved Alias. The show was awesome. Jennifer Garner was awesome on that show, regardless of how good or bad she was elsewhere. The regular cast was great, and it had many great recurring roles including turns by Bradley Cooper in the early seasons, a pre-Heroes Greg Grunberg, a pre-Lost Terry O’Quinn, Amy Acker, Gina Torres (Firefly), and David Anders playing one of my favorite TV villains ever. Quentin Tarrantino guest starred in a couple episodes (and actually made a pretty interesting villain), and David Cronenberg guest starred in an episode as a mad scientist (awesome!).
Overall, Alias had a really good story, and the show had a couple of the craziest cliffhanger finales of its day. The story was a little bit rushed in the end, probably due to its last-second cancellation, but flawed as it was, the ending was more satisfying than Lost ended up being.
They brought on a couple of new characters in the last season that could have featured in a spinoff or something, but I doubt they would go that direction now, especially since Rachel Nichols’ career has gotten fairly big.
I would be interested in a new Alias series, but probably not if they just reboot it. If they try to get someone else to play a character named Sidney Bristow, it would be the complete wrong direction to go. They should just have the same undercover spy organization with new people or something. This would be a little difficult to do properly, considering the end of the original series, but it really wouldn’t be that terribly difficult to retcon things.
I was a big Alias fan too. Though the Rimbaldi storyline ultimately went nowhere. It was akin to the conspiracy storyline on X-Files or ALL the storylines on Lost…
I thought the show was at its best when it was about the college girl keeping her spy life secret from her friends. And her relationship was Vaughn was always good times the first two seasons. And OMG, YES! They had the BEST season finale cliffhangers ever! It was very on par with Lost.They even had fun week to week cliffhangers in the first season they unfortunately dropped.
I agree, rebooting it would be ultra weird. I mean, I wouldn’t mind if someone pitched another show about a college girl who’s a spy but I don’t see the point of calling it Alias. Alias was a fun show that went very week in the last season (I didn’t even watch it other than the finale. I keep meaning to go back and watch it but I just can’t do it.) but I don’t think it’s worth rebooting. Just start over from scratch.
I’ve watched through Alias about 2 1/2 times. While it certainly has a few weak moments, it is still a damned good story overall. Talking about it makes me want to pull the DVD sets off the shelf again.
I don’t think that the Rambaldi storyline went nowhere. I think that they had to rush through it at the end in a few episodes because the show got cancelled. They had enough time to cram as much of it into the end of the show that they could, but it was obvious that it needed a bit more time to flesh out properly. However, the last season of Alias and its series finale, flaws and all, is still leagues better than Lost’s finale.
At least Alias tried to wrap things up for the characters and did a pretty good job of it, IMHO. Sure, the final season wasn’t quite as good as the previous ones, but it was still a good ride overall and had several great moments.
I agree that Alias was at its best when Sidney was trying to balance her spy life with her personal life, and some of the best moments of the show were when these two worlds collided. Like I said before, Alias is full of great characters, and I think that is what the show did the best. The stories were engaging week to week in large part because you cared about what happened to the characters.
And just because we’re on the subject, my favorite character from the show? Marshall Flinkman. He is still my favorite “geeky tech guy” from any TV show or movie. Kevin Weisman was brilliant as the character, and the line delivery on some of his awkward, off-topic rambles during briefings and otherwise were hilarious. Also, the few times Marshall had to go out in the field and be undercover were absolute gold. Marshall was one of those characters that started off in a minor role that later gets promoted to main character status because he’s just that awesome. :D
The new Scott Pilgrim trailer was awesome! I loved the bit where he’s sitting in front of the door waiting for his Amazon package. I also loved the whole “Didn’t you get my email?” exchange. Great stuff. I can’t wait for the movie.
Have you read the books Polygon? Those scenes you mentioned are directly from the book. In fact, this newest preview gave me the feeling that they are going out of their way to make this movie faithful to the comics. I am really pumped for this movie. The visual style is rock n roll.
Nope.
I really know next to nothing about Scott Pilgrim outside of the basics from these trailers and short descriptions from people. Early on, I was excited for this movie purely because Edgar Wright was directing it. The more I hear about/see from it, the more excited that I get.
A Mass Effect movie could be great. There is so much background information on the universe that there is plenty of material to adapt. The game is story-heavy so adapting a good film out of it shouldn’t be too difficult.
Personally, I would be rooting for a badass female Commander Shepard (Michelle Forbes please!), but I’m sure they would want to cast it like the default, boring Shepard that’s on the box.
You guys mentioned the rumor about Project Natal being renamed “Wave”, and you mentioned Google Wave as a reason why the rumor may be false. What about this”?
http://www.microsoft.com/uk/wave/home.aspx
I think Splice looks awesome, and the buzz I’ve heard on it makes me even more interested. Harry Knowles described it like this in his review:
“There are films that I see, that most of you out there have to wait for some obscure DVD release that you end up watching at home because the powers that be, just never get behind the film in question to a degree that would put the badass film in a theater near you.
SPLICE is such a film. A delicate, crazed, wonderful, beautiful and warped film that we don’t see in wide release any more. Mainstream horror & science fiction is generally these days a remake or a gore fest. One or the other. Smart horror… well, frankly it is usually relegated to being put out by MAGNOLIA these days.
SPLICE languished for quite some time. It has Guillermo Del Toro’s namebrand attached as producer, but even still… it wasn’t seeing a release. The economy hurt it. The subject matter. A lot conspired against this fantastic film. But then at SUNDANCE this year – a buzz began. And Joel Silver saw it and lost his wondrously wacky mind for it. And he convinced WARNER BROS to get behind it… In a big way. SPLICE is going to be on more that 2,500 screens this weekend.”
I think Killers looks pretty poor, mainly because I can’t stand the 2 leads but also I think it looks way to similar to Knight & Day which looks like a far superior movie.
Sorry, you lost me when you complained about the actors in Killers, but talked about a movie with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. :P
Say what you will about Cruise and Diaz but they’ve made some great movies. Minority Report, The Mask, Magnolia, Mission Impossible (1 and 3), Charlie’s Angels (the first one was fun), Being John Malkovich, Collateral and Jerry Maguire are all wonderful movies that pop up in their filmography’s. Ashton Kutcher has never really done a movie worth watching and Katherine Heigl? Knocked Up was fantastic, but then she bad mouthed it and it’s all been down hill from there.
Also, the director of Killers is abysmal, whilst I really like the guy who did Knight and Day.
I think Knight and Day looks pretty fun as well. I like Tom Cruise, especially when he’s playing with a fun role rather than overacting a dramatic one, but I also can’t stand Cameron Diaz. Listing the movies she’s been in just proves she has good taste, not that she has talent… at least I don’t see it. She’s barely a notch above Mischa Barton for me, and I HATE Mischa Barton. The only thing I’ve ever liked her in was The Holiday, and I think that was mostly because I like the other three leads so much.
But regardless, I do want to see Knight and Day (it looks like a romantic comedy director’s take on Mission Impossible), but I think Killers looks fun as well. I don’t mind the two leads at all and I’m actually excited to see Kutcher in a really different kind of role. That being said, I probably won’t see either of these movies until they hit my local second run theater…
I’m totally with Scott on this one. Both Killers and Knight and Day looking like they could be fun, but I probably won’t see either until second run or DVD.
I don’t know….Katherine Heigl isn’t really making movies for guys like us. She’s appealing to a female 17-40 demographic. She is fairly popular among female movie goers. Plus I kinda have a monster crush on her. I do want to see Killers. It’s looks like it’s going to be pretty funny for a semi-chick flick.
I feel like I’ve seen some variation of Knight and Day in about 20 other movies.
I hate to continually be the dissenting opinion, but I REALLY liked the Joss Whedon story arc of Runaways. The whole traveling back in time thing, seeing the first generation of homeless super kids, Roberto dating the red head flying girl. I don’t know, it was a lot of fun.
Best line: Molly is talking to Klara, an 9 year old married girl.
(Molly)–You’re married to that lame-o?
(Klara)–It’s not so bad. I don not enjoy…..my marital duties.
(Molly)–Oh my God!! He makes you do CHORES!!!
I wouldn’t be opposed to a Wachowski siblings’ (Larry’s a woman now btw) TMNT. I might be the only one who actually really liked Speed Racer (hated the last 2 Matrix movies though).
There have been nothing but white guys as Peter Parker, even if 99% are all in print, not movies.
But I want Anton Yelchin as Spidey/Parker. (Glover should get an audition though).
Another Twitter campaign, sort of, Alison Brie (Community/Mad Men) as Mary Jane. Meh, I want Gwen Stacy anyway.
Community is great. :)
Ugh, Six trades for Pilgrim, but I really want to read them. Why black and white though? I hear they are in B&W. I’m not a comic guy and am not opposed to B&W but it’s interesting anyway.
Male ME Shepard or female? Please no Worthington, he’s so meh.
And I’m not a good gamer so please indulge my bragging.
ME1: Level 60, Beat it on Insanity :) That was a male character but I do prefer to be female (in the game!) And that was a Soldier but grew to love being a Biotic. I beat this game 6 times. :)
Will see Get Him to the Greek, hear good things, will see it this weekend. Kind of want to see Splice, have also heard good things.
Marmaduke? NOT GEEKIN :)
Killers didn’t get a press screening, not a good sign. I do like Kutcher (one of the few I guess) and Heigl is hot, but I hear, not so nice. Do like her in some stuff though.
If I judged actors on their personality, I wouldn’t watch movies. So that’s a non-issue. :)
You’re not the only one. I thought Speed Racer was brilliant.
Yeah… Alison Brie is hot and all (and a good actress of course *ahem*) but she’s TOO OLD.
And after some research, so is Donald Glover for that matter… they’re both 27 and they want to play HIGH SCHOOLERS?! Ugh… I’m now completely against either of them even getting an audition. That’s ridiculous. I
f they’re thinking about casting that old, then somebody get ME a damn audition LOL
WHERE’S MY TWITTER CAMPAIGN?!?! Hahahaha
So how does one start a Twitter campaign? I’d totally support a Scott Carelli for Spider-Man movement. :)