News Bites: Dory and the Dark Universe

Good morning folks, it’s time for your weekly bite-sized chunks of entertainment news. This week has some sombre stuff, unfortunately, but it also has some fun with remakes and sequels, and assorted superhero-ish action films. I’ve front-loaded the sad stuff so that it doesn’t bring people down for too long — and if you really want to just skip over it, hit the first bold line. I don’t judge; we’re mostly here to have fun, after all.

However you want to take it, read on for the news.

News Bites: Turtles and Transformers

This week’s assortment of news bites largely consists of superhero movie news and other adaptations. There are a few denials of things, a few rumors, and a few confirmations. There’s also a distressing amount of Michael Bay news. Such is life.

Read on to find out what’s going on.

Weekly Weblinks: Horror and Heathcliff

It’s Friday morning, and as always it’s time for the Weekly Weblinks. I’m going to be out of town for most of the day, so it may take me a while to respond, but fortunately there’s a lot of reading to do out and about on the web. Got a nice assortment of blog posts, including horror movie reviews and more, and a huge slew of news, including a lot out of Marvel Studios. So read on!

Weekly Weblinks: Comics and Coens

It’s Friday morning, and you know what that means: it’s time for the Weekly Weblinks. There’s a hefty amount of both blog posts and news this week. There’s some talk about upcoming movies that haven’t yet hit their wide release, as well as a couple looks back at slightly older films.

On the news front, there are remakes, retitlings, planned sequels, and a meeting of William Shakespeare and Joss Whedon. Plus, a long-lost Stanley Kubrick film is coming to home video. To find out what it’s all about, keep reading!

Weekly Weblinks: Reboots, Remakes, and Recall

Bandwidth issues may be slowing me down, but they’re not stopping me from making my rounds. It’s Friday morning, so it’s time for our weekly assortment of blog posts and news links, complete with a shiny new graphic I spent my downtime creating. In fact, this edition of the Weekly Weblinks is just a bit heavier on the news than it has been, and I’m not skimping on the blog posts either. There are a few reviews of new movies, a review of a much-reviled comic book movie, and a review of one of the greatest comedies ever made.

On the news front, there are quite a lot of things to cover, from rumors and news on comic book movie directors, to a surprising film adaptation, a film franchise which is getting rebooted, and — refreshingly — one which isn’t. So read on for the Weekly Weblinks!

Weekly Weblinks: Bats and Bullets

Late last night, The Dark Knight Rises was finally released to theatres. Now, maybe you’re just waking up after spending a night watching Batman battling Bane, or perhaps you’re still waiting for your chance to get down there (like me). Either way, I’ve got your dose of the Weekly Weblinks to tide you over today.

On the blogging side of things, you might expect there to be a fair amount of Batman posts — and you’d be right. But there are also some classic movie reviews and an homage to great movie openings. In the news, there’s yet more rumor-mongering about superhero cinema, as well as a perhaps-unexpected Pixar sequel. So read on to see what’s happening!

The Avengers

Six Marvel Comics superheroes, four of whom have had their own film franchises, come together in one great big action adventure movie. Hulk. Iron Man. Thor. Captain America. Black Widow. Hawkeye. Brought together by Nick Fury, head of S.H.I.E.L.D. Ever since the after-the-credits scene in Iron Man teased the idea, fans have been eagerly awaiting The Avengers, hoping it would live up to its potential.

It’s not an easy task. The film has to balance the different characters, making sure they play off well against each other, making sure each has plenty of screen time and “awesome moments”, and making sure it builds just enough on each characters’ own film franchise. It has to be exciting, it has to be inspiring, it has to be at least a little witty, and it has to have just a bit of emotional depth. It has to make the audience want to see more Avengers films, more films from the established character film franchises, and hopefully films with the characters who didn’t have franchises before. It has to do a lot.

It does it.

The Focused Filmographer’s Avengers Initiative

With The Avengers coming out in theatres soon, Terrence Faulkner of The Focused Filmographer is running an Avengers Initiative blog-a-thon, featuring bloggers from various sites reviewing and discussing the movies that led up to the series: Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 1 and 2, Captain America: The First Avenger, and Thor. We’ll be looking at the roles different Avengers played in the films, how the films set up The Avengers, and what we expect from the characters in the film.

Fogs, of Fogs Movie Reviews leads us off with a look at Iron Man. Be sure to check it out. Also participating are Aidy of Aidy’s Reviews, Ruth and Ted S. of Flixchatter, Jaina from Time Well Spent, and Tajuana from TajGreeneMoviesInReview. You might recognize some of those names from the comments section here, but whether you know them from here, elsewhere, or not at all, be sure to check out their articles as they’re posted. I’m sure they’ll all be good reads. You can check out this page for the schedule of posts.

My own entry in the blog-a-thon will be going up Wednesday, May 2. I’ll be taking a look at the roles Loki and Hawkeye play in Thor, and how they’re set up for their parts in The Avengers. I hope you’ll head over there to see it when it goes up, and follow The Focused Filmographer for the entire blog-a-thon (and beyond! It’s a good site!) as we all get ourselves psyched up for The Avengers.

News: Captain America 2 Gets Release Date, Needs Director

Modern Myth Media has a couple pieces of news about the upcoming sequel to Captain America: The First Avenger, tentatively titled Captain America 2. First, it now has an official release date, at April 4, 2014. This is a fairly early date in the blockbuster schedule (by comparison, the first one was released in late July). It’s hard to guess exactly what the thinking is there; it may be that they’re trying to position it to be the “first big blockbuster” of the year, or it may be that they don’t think it has the strength to fend off other contenders that will be in more traditional summer blockbuster slots. So that could be good news, could be bad.

Captain America: The First Avenger

I felt like I needed to watch something a bit more uplifting after yesterday’s viewing of Boyz N The Hood, and it seemed like the right time to go see Captain America: The First Avenger. One advantage of being late to the game is that by this time, word of mouth has gotten around and I had reason to think I wouldn’t be disappointed. The early promotional material — blurbs from the director, hints from the writers — before the trailers hit gave me some mild concerns, but I held onto my optimism for once. Captain America’s been subjected to some very bad movies in the past, but I felt that, handled correctly, a Captain America movie could and should be one of the best of the superhero genre.

I was not disappointed.