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!
Sneak Peak at Black Knight #1 From Marvel
The Flash 203 Review: Family Of Rogues
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.
Best ‘Back to the Future’ Parody Of The Day
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!
Trailer #2: Jennifer Lawrence in ‘Joy’, the Most David O. Russell Movie Ever
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.
Here is the Joy trailer:
And here is the official synopsis:
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.
Joy hits theaters this Christmas.
Freddie Wong Talks New Hulu Series ‘RocketJump: The Show’
Debuting at New York Comic Con 2015, filmmaker Freddie Wong and the RocketJump team, best known for their YouTube channel and online series Video Game High School, sat down to talk about their upcoming Hulu series entitled RocketJump: The Show, following the RocketJump team as they create their wildly popular YouTube shorts.
The team spoke in depth about how their company has grown over the years, the ups and downs, and what to expect from the upcoming series.
RocketJump: The Show will follow the RocketJump team, as they create single shorts, with half the episode focusing on the creation and the other half displaying the actual short the group has created, in a documentary style series.
“It’ll be a different short per every episode and they range quite a bit, we’re showing one here later today. But, each episode will focus on a short, the shorts like anywhere from six to twelve minutes long. We’re doing like a Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton silent film. We’re doing like a horse race western. We’re doing the one today, it’s like a sci-fi space lightsaber fight. It’s everything…everything you can think of,” said Wong.
Wong also felt that in this series, the shorts will be in a way more evolved and fleshed out, than the shorts people are used to on their Youtube channel.
Reflecting on how his company has grown over the years, with their series with Hulu becoming another step forward,
“Looking back like you know five years ago, when we first started, it’s like whoa that’s a big step! But then going through it, it never felt anything was a big, huge step. It always felt like, oh let’s doing something else and this is more interesting to us and let’s kind of go in this way,” said Wong.
When asked about what has been the most difficult part, in creating this series, Ben Waller, the RocketJump showrunner stated, “I think for me personally the most difficult part, as the show runner, you have a very specific set of concerns, like budget and the overall picture. But then, I dove in on one of the episodes to direct one of the shorts and as a director, you want to be enabled to do whatever you can or whatever you want to do on the day, as long as it sort of fits in the boundaries of the script. And sometimes the director and the producer or the showrunner, push against each other, to figure out what that best direction is. And that’s just sort of a natural part of the process and functioning as someone on both sides of that conflict, you don’t know which side to choice.”
On the opposite side of the spectrum, when asked what the most enjoyable part of creating this series was, Ashim Ahuja, the RocketJump producer said, “Putting it that all together and then actually doing it, we really developed like a family and a bond. And multiple times, this has always been something big for me, we’ve had people that are industry professionals for 20 years and they come to work with us and they time, time again say we’re the best people to work with. And that’s like the best compliment for us because we’re all so cool together and kinda developed this family of filmmakers.”
Wong did go on to talk about the short they showed at Comic Con, entitled Fan Friction, “It starts off like the most fan fictiony thing like ever. Oh, it’s the Battlestar Galactica, the ship Serenity, Sherlock Holmes, then Dracula shows up and they got a lightsaber fight. It’s like come on guys, but then it cuts out and you realize what it is, you’re watching the depiction of two girls watching fan fiction and they’re fighting about it.”
RocketJump: The Show is set to debut on Hulu December 2. Listen to the complete New York Comic Con interview below.
Review: ‘Beasts Of No Nation’- Beautifully Brutal
Beasts of No Nation is a film about the brutality of humanity, but it begins in the most innocent of ways. The boys cajole a group of soldiers and pay them to act on their “Imagination T.V.” (which in reality is just a hollowed out old T.V.) It’s hard to fathom that a movie starting with such exuberance and innocence could quickly turn into a nightmare from which the audience can’t wake.
Quickly orphaned by war as his family is massacred, Agu (Abraham Attah) is captured and told he’s going to be a soldier in Commandant’s (Idris Elba) army. It’s hard to digest the very real notion of an innocent transforming into a cold blooded killer, but as we soon learn, the line between innocence and evil is as thin as paper. Agu initially describes himself as “a good boy from a good family” and he seems harmless at first – a rail thin preadolescent whose love of malice seems to be reserved for pranks towards his older brother. However, Commandant views Agu in a completely different light. “A boy is a dangerous thing,” he states to his fighters, some no more that twelve years old. Commandant views Agu as not a boy, but a vessel of destruction that will serve him well in battle.
Beasts of No Nation doesn’t follow a traditional plotline and instead follows a set of events which gives the movie a more adolescent point of view. This structure makes sense as the story is told through the eyes and narration of Agu. Cary Fukunaga directed, wrote, and was the cinematographer on this picture and it seems that his one focus was making sure we felt what Agu felt. When Agu anguished, so did we. When Agu was enraged, so were we. It’s a roller coaster of emotions that that punches you in the gut. Even with this being the case, Beasts of No Nation was not emotionally exploitative; if anything, you felt empathy to everyone who was involved in this senseless war.
Fukunaga’s cinematography is “run and gun,” and it works brilliantly. Being that this film centers more on events than a set storyline, catching the pace and the sheer savagery of war was essential to the success of the film. Sometimes one little decision can make a huge impact on the overall quality of the picture. Fukunaga used the same technique when he shot season one of True Detective and achieved a similar result just by amplifying the pacing. Fukunaga also uses the right amount of voiceover throughout the film. It’s important to remember this experience is through the eyes of a child, so hearing Agu’s innermost thoughts is crucial to the film’s overall quality.
Idris Elba’s performance as the Commandant is a force of nature. His portrayal was extraordinarily rich in nuance and seductive psychosis that it’s easy to understand why all of those children would die for their Commandant. Agu tries to fight being molded into a killer because of his moral compass, but a child can only hold out for so long. It’s sad, but it speaks to the power Commandant holds. As much as Commandant wants the children to believe he is only training them for glory, it’s easy to look through the vainglorious cracks in his character and see him for the monster that he is.
As Agu, Abraham Attah’s was captivating from beginning to end. Attah’s transformative performance is not only at the heart of this film, but it could be argued that he outperformed Idris Elba. For those who are expecting a happy ending for Agu, that would be settling for a simply Hollywood ending. His ending is honest, true, and a sign of the times in that part of the world. Beasts of No Nation is scintillating from start to finish, the type of film that is deeply impactful no matter how brutal it might be.
British Filmmakers planning a ‘Max Payne’ Fan-Film
The third person action game series Max Payne has been a highly successful games series. All three games have been critical successes and Max Payne 3 sold four million copies in its first year of release. But its treatment on film has been less favorable, having a critically panned film adaptation in 2008 starring Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis. Well two filmmakers in the UK want to make amends by proposing their own fan film and have started fundraising.
The game series tells the tragic story of Max Payne, an ex-NYPD detective turned DEA agent who wants revenge for the murder of his wife and daughter. The games fully embraced its dark, neo-noir style with gameplay that used Matrix-style bullet time.
The fan film, Max Payne: Retribution, is being pitched by writer/director Leroy Kincaide, a director, actor and photographer who won the Professional Photographer Magazines Award for Best Fashion Film in 2013, and Chloe Chudasama, a fellow photographer and acting as producer for the project. In their pitch video they state movies like John Wick, The Equalizer and Saw and the pairing is very similar to another British duo, director James Bushe and cinematographer/producer Simon Rowling who made the well-received fan film Predator: Dark Ages earlier this year. Even their pitch videos are similar. Actor Jon Campling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1) is already attached to the project.
Kincaide and Chudasama are seeking to raise £8,000 ($12,000) for the short, and will be at London Comic Con this weekend for a Q&A session. You can find out more information on their Indiegogo page.
Is Chris Rock Headed Back to Host The Oscars?
It seems Chris Rocks is in “serious talks” to return to host the 2016 Oscars ceremony.
Variety reports the comedian/actor is in the final discussions to return to the Academy Awards: “Chris Rock is in serious talks to host the 88th Academy Awards, Variety has learned, with an official announcement expected shortly,” the report said.
Chris Rock hosted back in 2005. That ceremony is most memorable for ruffling the feathers of notably red-assed actor Sean Penn, who took strange exception to Rock’s Jude Law joke…
The Oscars will be February 28, 2016.
‘Jack Reacher 2’ Gets a New Title, Official Release Date. Be Optimistic.
Like it or not, Jack Reacher 2 is on its way, and now it has an official release date and title.
Instead of Jack Reacher 2, the Tom Cruise sequel will be titled Jack Reacher: Never Go Back. This clumsy title comes from the 18th Lee Child Jack Reacher novel, according to the report over at Collider. It will hit theaters October 16, 2016.
It’s unclear whether or not Never Go Back will follow the story of Child’s novel, but here is a synopsis of the story:
Former military cop Jack Reacher makes it all the way from snowbound South Dakota to his destination in northeastern Virginia, near Washington, D.C.: the headquarters of his old unit, the 110th MP. The old stone building is the closest thing to a home he ever had. Reacher is there to meet-in person-the new commanding officer, Major Susan Turner, so far just a warm, intriguing voice on the phone. But it isn’t Turner behind the CO’s desk. And Reacher is hit with two pieces of shocking news, one with serious criminal consequences, and one too personal to even think about. When threatened, you can run or fight. Reacher fights, aiming to find Turner and clear his name, barely a step ahead of the army, and the FBI, and the D.C. Metro police, and four unidentified thugs. Combining an intricate puzzle of a plot and an exciting chase for truth and justice, Lee Child puts Reacher through his paces-and makes him question who he is, what he’s done, and the very future of his untethered life on the open road.
Despite the lukewarm reception of the original, directed by Chris McQuarrie, Jack Reacher was a decidedly unique, unusual action/thriller. The opening scene was disturbing and perhaps a little too heavy for such a throwaway flick, but the car chase which anchors the action is stellar. McQuarrie, a fine director and the one in charge of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, is no longer on board, replaced by Ed Zwick who previously worked with Cruise on The Last Samurai. It’s also notable as Cruise’s only other sequel outside of the M:I franchise (hoping Top Gun 2 doesn’t come to fruition).
Jack Reacher has the potential to be an interesting franchise, maybe three or four films overall, and if different filmmakers can take the character in different, interesting directions, there’s plenty to be excited about going forward.
Doctor Who Review: ‘The Girl Who Died’
“The Girl Who Died” is one of the most anticipated episodes of this series of Doctor Who, the episode where Maisie Williams, better known as Ayra Stark from Game of Thrones joins the show as a guest star.
After The Doctor saves Clara from deep space the TARDIS takes the time travellers to the Dark Ages where they are swiftly captured by Vikings and taken to their village. Even worse an alien claiming to be Odin has been taking the village’s best warriors for his once sinister purposes when one girl, Ashildr (Williams) declares war on the aliens. It is up to The Doctor to come up with a plan to train the remaining farmers and fisherman and save the village from the feared, war-like aliens, doing it without the TARDIS or his Sonic Sunglasses.
When Williams was cast in Doctor Who it was met with great fanfare and one of the biggest pieces of news during the season’s production. Williams was solid in her role as a teenage Viking with a big imagination and with certain innocence to her despite coming from a culture that is infamous for raiding and pillaging. This was an introductory episode for Williams and the follow-up should be able to expand on her character.
“The Girl Who Died” is a very light-hearted episode, having well-written jokes throughout. Both The Doctor and Clara are fun, having a great back-and-forth with each other and good jokes during the run time. The Doctor has contempt for the locals and their lack of competency considering their culture, while Clara has a good joke towards the aliens. The Doctor’s interactions with the villagers do raise a lot of smiles, such as the training sequence, with Vikings’ destroying The Doctor’s Sonic Sunglasses, his attempts to impress the villagers and seeing how the whole village react on their day of reckoning. Writers Jamie Mathieson and Steven Moffat and director Ed Bazalgette do keep a jovial tone throughout the episode despite the threat of annihilation, because the Medieval Era was a happy, jolly time and not a period of war, disease and despair.
The episode truly shines in its final five minutes when it flashbacks to “The Fires of Pompeii”, the previous Doctor Who Peter Capaldi appeared in before he became The Doctor. The scene reveals why The Doctor choose the face of Caecilius and results in Capaldi giving his best speech so far in the timelord. The episode does end on a touching, if bittersweet note, that sets up the second part that is going to be important for characterization in the second half of the two-parter. Going into further detail would lead to spoilers, but it was a vivid scene that had excellent direction and editing to bring out the emotional resonant it needed.
The introduction of Maisie Williams to Doctor Who is the success it needed to be and it does set up for a darker follow-up. “The Girl Who Died” was a fun romp episode that was funny but also had plenty of poignancy and drama.