Marvel Studios is in negotiations with Peyton Reed to return as director of Ant-Man and the Wasp, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Reed pulled together a film that seemed lost after Edgar Wright left the project. His film was the little engine that could at the box office with a modest $57 million opening weekend but impressed with a $454 million worldwide box office take.
Ant-Man starred Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll, Michael Peña, Tip “T.I.” Harris, Bobby Cannavale, and Judy Greer.
Ant-Man and the Wasp is set for a July 6, 2018, release.
Brian De Palma loves making us feel like perverts. The director’s signature voyeuristic style puts the audience in salacious situations at times, creating discomfort and unease, and this is no more pronounced than in the opening scene of his breakout 1976 masterwork, Carrie. Here we are, in a high school girl’s locker room. Only it isn’t a real locker room, this is the fantasized notion of frolicking teens interpreted through the male gaze. Girls are topless, popping each other with towels, doing everything short of soaping up each other in the shower. As the softcore lighting and synth strings lure us in, De Palma’s camera drifts past the girls into the steam, where we see young Carie White (Sissy Spacek) showering. It’s even more salacious in its voyeurism, until everything goes horribly wrong.
Carrie’s first period comes while she’s showering, upending this serene, boyish fantasy with the most horrifying thing that could ever happen to a young girl who has no idea what’s wrong with her. Carrie is mocked, ridiculed, pelted with pads and tampons as the softly-lit locker room transforms into a sharply-lit, waking nightmare.
This opening scene sets the stage for a film that thrives on a false sense of security. Carrie takes us on a journey to the top of a beautiful mountain, then repeatedly pushes us off the cliff into horror. Once the opening scene ends – mercifully so – De Palma once again settles into a certain gentleness. Young Carrie is an outcast, a shy, beautiful girl who hides behind her blonde hair and lives in her troubled mind more than in the classroom or among her peers. She is bullied by the popular girls, led by Nancy Allen’s Chris Hargensen – the true monster of the film – but she finds an ally in Miss Collins (Betty Buckley), the gym teacher. The scenes following the opening lure us in once again, and they make us feel safe. That is until we meet Carrie’s mother, Margaret.
Piper Laurie’s Margaret is a horrifying creation. No doubt wounded by men in her past, obsessively religious, Margaret forces Carrie into a closet to pray when she discovers Carrie got her period at school. “First comes the blood,” she says, “and then the men.” The statue of Jesus in the closet, bloodied, broken, it’s gaze fixed through cold-dead white eyes, is deeply unsettling. And once again the gentleness of the picture is flipped, we are in the throes of true horror once again.
The central story here involves Tommy Ross, implored by his girlfriend Sue (Amy Irving) to ask Carrie to the prom. Not for malicious purposes, but out of pity. Only Tommy doesn’t see it that way; Tommy may genuinely like Carrie, and after some prodding she agrees to go with him. The invite sets the stage for the final bloodletting at prom, but as it happens everything once again feels okay. Carrie is beaming, happy, standing up to her insane mother, blossoming. Her hair no longer hides her face, she is confident for the first time in her life. But of course this cannot last.
A parallel storyline focuses on Chris and her dolt of a boyfriend, Billy, played by John Travolta. Billy and Chris hatch a plan, one we don’t quite understand until the end, but one that involves pig’s blood. This gets us to one of the more ghastly scenes in the film. Chris, Billy, and their hoodlum friends go to a pig farm one night to get their blood. Only nobody wants to kill the pig. Because it’s fucked up, the senseless murder of a pig for its blood to pull off a nasty prank. Once again, we are put ever-so-slightly at ease as it appears the pig murder won’t happen. But then, inexplicably, Billy hops the fence and brutally massacres a pig with an axe. It not only delivers the necessary shock, but it heightens the villainy of the picture. These kids are no longer kids, but real monsters, dedicated to exacting their revenge against Carrie, who never did anything to them in the first place.
The prom scene is the sequence where De Palma’s stylistic mastery is on full display. It’s the playbook for De Palma. The camera sweeps and spins, the lighting is soft and inviting, Carrie has transformed form misunderstood telekinetic freak into the belle of the ball. Literally. She and Tommy appear to really form some sort of bond. There is no sexual tension per se, because Tommy does still care for and want to be with Sue. But it’s an honest friendship, and it once again eases the audience into something pleasant. Carrie is reluctant to dance, but she does eventually, and she enjoys herself. And then she and Tommy inevitably win prom king and queen, albeit through a little manipulation. You can feel the tension build, almost physically as the camera slows and the dreamlike camerawork pulls us deeper into Carrie’s renaissance.
And then, through some genius cuts and a steadily growing apprehension, everything is once again completely upended. The pig’s blood spills from the rafters and douses poor Carrie. It is a horrific moment, maybe even more unsettling that Carrie’s vengeance. Spacek’s face, the way the soft prom lighting transforms from easy and welcoming to garish, red, and vile, all sharpens. It’s everything wonderful spinning down and concentrating into the base of a funnel of horror. The revenge is welcome for the audience, but no less horrific in the fact that Carrie’s biggest advocate, Miss Collins, is collateral damage. For all the delicacy De Palma employed in his camera leading up to this finale, his ability to flip the coin so drastically is what makes Carrie a horror masterpiece.
Brian De Palma has always been marginalized for his perversions, his tendency to employ the Hitchcockian method of exploiting females in his films. He does it in the name of style, and he does it for specific reasons. But Carrie is nothing of the kind. Here, De Palma’s watchful camera pushes the onus on the audience, making them feel the guilt and shame of this young girl whose life is ruined. The horror almost seems secondary to the nature of bullying and how nothing is as safe as it seems.
Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs is one of the most hotly-anticipated films this fall. The screenplay from Aaron Sorkin presents him as inhumane in scene after scene until they humanize him in the end. It was as if Cersei Lannister had finally captured Jon Snow then suddenly released and married him on the spot. Sorkin gleefully contributes to the absurdity of this film by structuring the story as a series of coincidences that defy reason. Even though Sorkin and Director Danny Boyle adapted the authorized biography Walter Isaacson wrote while Jobs was still alive, Steve Jobs doesn’t fill you in on Steve Jobs the man but more on what other people perceived him to be. They portray Jobs as a control freak of epic proportions and it takes place on the days of three product launches: The Macintosh in 1984, the next “black cube” computer, and finishes with the launch of iMac.
During each of these launches, he interacts with the same group of people and treats them like garbage each time. Andy Hertzfeld ( Micheal Stuhlbarg) is mercilessly belittled, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak ( Seth Rogan) is constantly ignored, and Apple board chairman John Sculley (Jeff Daniels) is constantly dismissed as being insignificant. His former girlfriend Chrisann Brennan (Katherine Waterston) keeps demanding money and wants him to acknowledge the daughter he fathered. Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet), the marketing director, seems to be the only person who can call Jobs out and get him to do the “right thing.” They all realize at one point or another that he’s a horse’s ass but he must be endured because he makes money for Apple. One can only wonder how someone can be so right about technology can be so utterly clueless when it comes to dealing with people.
The film is a typhoon of dialogue as it swirls between these different product launches in Jobs’ life. When Jobs finally realizes that he had screwed up his relationship with his daughter, it’s this epiphany of imperfection that allows him to finally begin to mend broken fences.
Steve Jobs is far from a perfect film. The film is rife with dialogue, but there comes a point where you cross the line into verbosity and this film eclipses that line. It was if Aaron Sorkin wanted to cram every conversation Job’s ever had into a Two Hour gab fest. It’s an episode of Newsroom but on steroids. Less could have certainly been more.
Micheal Fassbender dominates Steve Jobs with a presence that just fills the theater. It’s hard to imagine anyone else in the title role because he embraces that role as the ego-driven Jobs in such a way that the audience both loves when he comes on screen and hates basically everything that comes out of his mouth. Daniels, Winslet, and Rogen all are on screen to serve the purpose of the Yang to Fassbender’s Ying. None of those three particularly stand out because they are so overshadowed by Fassbender’s electric work.
This movie has the potential to be a top contender for all the major awards, but line after line of dialogue weighs down the film and doesn’t allow the actors to act. Maybe Aaron Sorkin and Danny Boyle should have taken a page out of Apple’s playbook and thought differently.
Jeb Bush is running for the highest political office in the land, President of the United States. You would think that a person would need to be qualified to run for that position, but as Bush points out, you do not.
According to CNN, Bush was at a campaign event in Las Vegas and was asked who his favorite superhero was. He gives three answers and he probably should’ve stopped after the second.
“I like watching the movies. I wish I owned Marvel, as someone that believes in capitalism,” said Bush.
“I don’t know, I’m kinda old school. I like the old school guys like Batman, a little dark these days,” said Bush.
Wait for it…
“I saw that Supergirl is on TV, I saw it when I was working out this morning. There was an ad promoting Supergirl. She looked kinda … she looked pretty hot.”
Melissa Benoist plays Supergirl on the new CBS show, which premieres on October 26.
Things are beginning to ramp up in iZombie! With Max Rager finally getting some love, other plotlines continued, and a certain character coming back, things are looking up for Season two!
Spoilers
Nearly every single plot line that has been introduced appeared in this episode, the only storyline that didn’t was Liv’s family, and boy does that add up to a wonderful addition to our season’s story. But, while ‘Read Dead Housewife of Seattle’ excelled in progressing our overarching story, as a stand alone episode it felt a little stale.
But before we get to that, let’s talk about bit about the main characters and plotlines, and how this episode has affected them.
First of all we have Ravi, who at the beginning of this episode mentions dating this ‘Stephanie’ character. I don’t remember this every being a thing before, but I doubt it’ll last very long. Considering…
Peyton’s back! Peyton is back and ready for business. We’ve learned that she’s leading the task force against Mr. Boss, which Blaine ‘persuaded’ the Mayor to start in the first place. Peyton’s also working on patching things up, sending cakes to Liv and having a heart-to-heart with Ravi. It’s clear that Peyton is going to have a huge effect on both our characters and the whole Utopium scene, speaking of which…
Major is still sniffing away at that Utopium, he’s clearly hooked. And despite how uncomfortable it makes him, Major is still keeping those zombies a sinkin’. Speaking of Majors employer…
Max Rager really is planning something evil. Just this episode we saw Du Clark having sex with wives, killer their husbands, and doing this strange yoga-like routine. We clearly have a villain on our hands. We’ve also learned something else shocking about this CEO, he has a certain relation to the secretary…
Speaking of the secretary, she really had a big role this episode. We learned Du Clark is her dad, she had a bigger presence as Liv’s roommate, and she’s making out with Major now. I guess I actually have to learn her name now. Gilda… hmm, she doesn’t really look like a Gilda, more of a… Leanne. Right? Well, at least Gilda is easier than calling her Max Rager’s CEO’s Secretary/Secret Daughter. Speaking of Max Rager…
Definitely a Leanne.
Guess who Liv saw at Max Rager? That’s right! Liv saw Major at Max Rager (Major at Max Rager… has a nice ring to it)! Liv was not to happy about that. I’d guess this means that eventually Liv is going to find out about Major’s zombie hunting activities, and his drug addiction. Probably the drugs first, if I were to guess. Liv went through some hard times this episode.
She saw Major at Max Rager (yep, still fun to say), saw the Prodigal Best Friend return, and found out her new best friend was actually a murderer. While things seem to look up at the end, this was a bad week for Liv to have such a sensitive and dramatic brain. Speaking of brains…
Liv’s persona this week was just as over-the-top as the previous weeks, if not more. Keeping in line with this new seasons quirk of more powerful brains. Last week I mentioned that I was worried these dramatic persona’s might wear out, and this episode gave that fear a little legitimacy. Don’t get me wrong, there were moment that elicited a hearty laugh, but other brought nothing but a cringe. This weeks Liv actually got a little annoying, which is both a first and a disappointment. Let’s just hope it doesn’t happen again.
As for the actual murder and solution, it also left us a little cold. The ‘murderer’ wasn’t foreshadowed at all and was more shock value than well-written. And it was suggested that she didn’t even do it, but it doesn’t matter because the possible real killer is dead, thanks Du Clark. Overall the mystery wasn’t intriguing, and the solution didn’t feel satisfactory. I can say without a doubt this episodes case was the weakest we’ve seen from the series so far.
Yeah, this Liv? Not my favorite Liv
Overall this episode was a real mixed bag, what it did well it did really well, and what it didn’t do well it really didn’t do well.
The international trailer for Jane Got a Gun starring Natalie Portman, Ewan McGregor, Noah Emmerich, Joel Edgerton, and Rodrigo Santoro has made its way to the internet, thanks to Latino-Review.
It will be interesting to see what this film looks like as this film was originally scheduled for release on August 29, 2014. The director Lynne Ramsay quit the project along with Michael Fassbender, Jude Law, and Bradley Cooper. Anthony Tambakis was brought in to rewrite the script.
In the end, Jane Got a Gun was directed by Gavin O’Connor and is looking at a February 2016 release.
Their legend echoes through history. Ancient warriors and wielders of the legendary Ebony Blade. Champions of their own destiny. But what do you do when it’s your destiny…to be damned? Today, Marvel is pleased to present your first look at BLACK KNIGHT #1 – the new ongoing series from writer Frank Tieri and artist Luca Pizzari! All power comes with a price, as each and every Black Knight through the centuries has met and untimely end, a victim of the Ebony Blade’s curse. Will Dane Whitman’s fate be the same? The long-time Avenger’s addiction to the blade grows stronger and stronger each day. Will he succumb to its power and suffer the same end? A lost man himself, Dane now finds himself in Weirdworld, the place where all lost things go. What circumstances brought him here? And what could he possibly have done that would cause the Uncanny Avengers to mobilize against him? Find out, and see the Marvel Universe from a whole new angle this November in BLACK KNIGHT #1!
Last night’s episode, Family Of Rogues, took the focus away from the multiverse – aside from Jay’s research on the breach – and brought the fight back to Earth-1 with some homegrown villains making their reappearance in Barry’s life.
Both Lisa and Leonard made their reappearances in Central City, but it was the addition of Louis Snart (played by Michael Ironside), their father who, in a way, caused some headaches for Barry and the gang. Much to Cisco’s happiness, his previous sexual tension with Lisa was still in full bloom, which, to my surprise, she showed her vulnerable side more than not.
Add in the introduction of the long thought dead Mrs. Francine West to the mix and you have a long backstory that is just now coming to the forefront. Joe’s past finally came to light when he revealed to Iris the true story about what happened to her mother, a drug addiction gone wrong. Way back when, 911 received a call from a young girl who said he mother was non-responsive, she gave the address and Joe responded. The little girl was Iris and it was Francine that had passed out on the couch. Joe put her in rehab, where she disappeared up until now.
With the eldest Snart calling the shots, Wentworth Miller’s Leonard “Captain Cold” Snart was backed into an unlikely partnership with his cold hearted father. But to Lisa’s confusion, she did not understand why. Revealing to Cisco the long and abusive relationship between her and her old man, the relationship between her and her brother shows its true strength, the older brother who will do anything to protect his younger sister. With Captain Cold still holding onto the cold gun, Barry and Leonard’s first meeting ended with Leonard turning Barry into a frozen Flash.
Through the episode it became clear Louis had people doing his bidding by the use of thermite bombs planted in peoples heads. But the question was still there: “If Snart hates his father, why is he working with him?” When Barry and Patty Spivot investigate the former techs headless body, they discover the thermite present in the body. When Cisco was examining Lisa, the discovery of thermite present on her skin was the knot that tied everything together. Barry then infiltrated the Snart duo, as a way of earning trust and bringing Louis down. Playing the new and smart tech, Barry successfully got them past security twice and a locked vault, all before Louis pulled a Joker-esque move from The Dark Knight and “killed” his henchman on Barry.
Barry was then able to speed away and change into his well known red suit and stop Louis from getting away. In the vault room, the tension quickly rose, as Barry confronted the two while Cisco fought to remove the bomb. After extracting it, Leonard took his father’s life into his own hands and froze his heart.
Among the team, the, in my opinion, awkwardly forced romantic vibe between Caitlin and Jay took an even more awkward turn when Jay spent the entire episode, it seemed, locked away in the basement, working on stabilizing the largest breach. Using his physicist self instead of his superhero self, he was able to build a device that I’m not even going to begin to try and explain it’s name. In essence, it took the breach and harnessed the energy to allow it to open up and allow passage between worlds.
The end of the episode was, in my opinion, well done. On the Flash front, the episode remained grounded and left room for the multiverse, not shoving it down my throat. I was really happy to see that Iris and Joe’s relationship didn’t take a hit for Joe’s hiding of the truth. I thought that by causing a rift between the two would have been a bit of a distraction from the overall plot.
My favorite part of this episode was when the group is standing around the breach. Jay is weighing his options of returning home, Barry is finally beginning to hone in on his sense of when will be coming and going through this breach. Cisco is daring to test out what stands before him in the breach. Then, the curious case of Dr. Stein, seemingly feeling better after falling ill last week, we see him toss his heart monitor into the void, but it suickly takes a turn when his eyes go white and he bursts into a familiar F.I.R.E.S.T.O.R.M. flame and then quickly bursts into a blue flame before extinguishing and falling to the ground. While I can only speculate, it seems like the lack of Ronnie is getting worse and worse, which we can only wonder what is happening to Ronnie as well, if he is even out there. Given that next weeks episode is named “The Fury Of The Firestorm,” we will get a closer look at the plagued doctor.
Finally, the show ended on another high note, when the breach produced a figure, a Dr. Harrison Wells, who menacingly looked around before the show cut to the credits.
The things that I really liked about this episode were simple.
The stories are more character driven than last season, it seems. Everyone has a story, whether or not that story has made an appearance yet. The season is also remaining very well-grounded and not straying too far, despite having to deal with an intense storyline such as the multiverse. Just through three episodes, we see an ever-expanding story behind not just Barry, but everyone around him.
It seems like love is in the air all around the group, Cisco and Lisa, Jay and Caitlin and even an awkward and bumbling relationship between Barry and Patty, who I am very anxious to see the two become more trusting than ever. Given that we saw the future headline that read Iris West-Allen, we can assume that the two’s relationship isn’t much of anything, but we still have a large number of episodes to watch in order to find the truth between the two.
By far, each and every episode has a way to keep me entertained, with the next season continually gaining speed, we look to next week in the exciting storyline that is, The Flash.
October 21, 2015, is Back to the Future II Day and what better way to celebrate they day than with a three-minute parody.
The folks over at Lowcarbcomedy have developed a BIG HEAD parody series with their most popular sketch, Jurassic Park registering 300,000 plus views on Youtube.
Celebrate October 21, 2015, with our BigHead parody of Back to the Future! Why is Doc Brown always in a hurry? How is Marty coping with making out with his mom? Is the role of Jennifer really that interchangeable? Find out answers to these questions and more!
A second more detailed trailer for David O. Russell’s latest, Joy, has been released. It gives us more details, more exuberant flourishes, and more David O. Russell than anyone should be able to stand.
JOY is the wild story of a family across four generations centered on the girl who becomes the woman who founds a business dynasty and becomes a matriarch in her own right. Betrayal, treachery, the loss of innocence and the scars of love, pave the road in this intense emotional and human comedy about becoming a true boss of family and enterprise facing a world of unforgiving commerce. Allies become adversaries and adversaries become allies, both inside and outside the family, as Joy’s inner life and fierce imagination carry her through the storm she faces. Jennifer Lawrence stars, with Robert De Niro, Bradley Cooper, Edgar Ramirez, Isabella Rossellini, Diane Ladd, and Virginia Madsen. Like David O. Russell’s previous films, Joy defies genre to tell a story of family, loyalty, and love.
It looks interesting, just like all of David O. Russell’s films, and I will forever support Silver Linings Playbook. That being said, Joy looks like it could be a crossroads for the filmmaker, either heightening his auteurism or sending him into the deep end of self parody.
