Once again it’s Friday morning, and once again it’s time for the News Bites. Although in this case, it’s more like the News Choking Hazards. Some weeks you get a few items, and then some weeks you get several. This week is heavy enough for at least two weeks, with 13 news items, 2 speculative items, 2 debunked rumors, and 2 set photos.
So grab your coffee, settle in, and hit the jump to find out all that’s going on this week! Continue reading
It’s Friday morning, and though I took the last two Fridays off, that means it’s time once again for a weekly dose of news bites. Before I get into the news, I’d like to mention that I’m now on Letterboxd. I don’t know if it’ll prove useful yet, but it’s at least interesting to see all the posters of the various films I’ve watched. I’ll note that there’s a significant discrepancy between the count it gives and my count of theatrical features I gave a few weeks back; there are a couple reasons for this. The major reason is that Letterboxd also counts short films, TV movies, and direct-to-video movies. But there are also a few cases where a film I’ve seen simply isn’t listed on Letterboxd (such as Sol).
Now on with the news.
The release date for the Carrie remake has been pushed back to October 18, 2013. At least it’ll be seasonal, though there’s still the question of why a remake is necessary.
The film adaptation of Robopocalypse has been indefinitely delayed. Steven Spielberg says the script isn’t ready, and it’s “too important” to rush. Additionally, Spielberg says it is, at present, too expensive to produce. He has since added that he believes he’s found a way to make it “more personal”, and is retooling the script himself. He expects a delay of approximately 6-8 months.
In other Spielbergian news, he is producing Jurassic Park IV, which is scheduled for release on June 13, 2014. The film will be released in 3D, which isn’t surprising considering the spectacle nature of the series.
Repeat Ralph? The stars and director of Wreck-It Ralph are discussing sequel possibilities. Director Rich Moore particularly hopes to be able to actually use Mario the next time around.
Jack’ll be back July 10, 2015. The fifth Pirates of the Caribbean film is going forward, with Jeff Nathanson working on the screenplay. Although the presence of Tower Heist and Speed 2 on his resume isn’t exactly encouraging, he also wrote the screenplay for Catch Me If You Can, which was reasonably well-received, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which was… divisive, but at least in a related genre.
With Man of Steel on the horizon, and the success of Marvel’s The Avengers, there’s been a lot of talk as to whether DC Comics would make a Justice League movie. It’s been known for a while that they’ve been working on it… but now it sounds as if there may be a second one in the works. Guillermo del Toro has confirmed that he is working on a film adaptation of the DC Comics title Justice League Dark, about a group of DC’s magic-themed superheroes working together. The team includes John Constantine (played by Keanu Reeves in a 2005 film), Deadman, Zatanna, and several others who have rotated in and out. While not major characters for the most part, this could be an interesting take on a superhero team movie, and del Toro, if he stays attached, could do well on it. The project is currently titled Dark Universe, presumably to avoid confusion with the main Justice League movie.
It’s December 31, which means that 2012 has come to a close. Despite a few different choices for the apocalypse, the world did not end — or if it did, nobody noticed. Every indication is that the world will continue to exist next year as well, so before we head into 2013, it’s time for a look back on 2012, as viewed through Morgan on Media.
My blog celebrated its first anniversary back in September, and it’s certainly grown since both this time last year and even since its anniversary. At this time last year, I had reviewed 68 films — including theatrical releases, TV movies, direct-to-video releases, and short films. This year, I nearly tripled that number, reviewing 202 films for a total of 270 since the blog’s inception. 15 of those were Favorite Films reviews — the rest (barring an occasional exception, such as Santa Claus Conquers the Martians) were films I had not seen before. The year began with Cool Hand Luke and ended with Heathers, so while there were definite ups and downs in the middle, it started and ended on strong notes. Overall, I made 328 new posts, roughly six a week — though in truth it was more that after the mid-point of the year I started writing seven days a week, while before it was a little more haphazard. As of this writing, the blog has had exactly 46,000 page views in 2012 (it’ll go up a bit since the year isn’t quite over yet.) Over 10,000 of those were in December alone — though I do expect a bit of a drop-off in January, it’s still nice to compare that to last year, when all four active months combined only added up to 2800 views. But enough of the general stats. Onward for the best and worst of 2012. Continue reading
It’s Friday morning, time for the Weekly Weblinks. Things kind of got away from me this week, and I’m considering some changes here, but that’s a discussion for another day. Today, we’ve got another batch of blog posts and a slew of news to read up on. There aren’t any new movie reviews in this week’s blog posts — I’m not even sure there are new movies out that people have had a chance to review yet — but there’s some great discussion on some classics. And in the news, the 1980s are being pillaged again for Hollywood’s idea machine. Or lack-of-ideas machine. So read on to see what it’s all about! Continue reading
Thanks to last week’s delayed post, this Friday’s edition of the Weekly Weblinks is perhaps just a bit lighter than usual (or maybe it just seems that way to me), but there are still several good blog posts and news articles to read. Some fun semi-obscure films are reviewed, and some movie franchises have new information being released. So read on for this week’s batch of the Weekly Weblinks. Continue reading
I first heard about Robopocalypse from an article in the Osage News about a year back, announcing it had been published, and discussing the involvement of the Osage in Daniel H. Wilson’s story. Being both an Osage and a science-fiction reader, I felt that this was a novel I would want to read before Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation came out. With casting rumors starting to file in, I finally got around to it.
I’m glad I did. Robopocalypse is an excellent novel, and if screenwriter Drew Goddard and director Spielberg stay remotely true to it, it should be an excellent movie as well. There are a few possible areas of concern, of course, but overall I’m feeling pretty optimistic. Continue reading
This morning I’m starting a new feature here on Morgan on Media, the Weekly Weblinks. I’ve been seeing a few other bloggers start up various “Follow Friday” features, or other ways to share readers around the net, and I felt like this would be a good way to do my part. Each Weekly Weblinks feature will include several links to specific blog posts that I have enjoyed reading, and think are worth sharing. It will also include various news tidbits that I felt like saying a few words on, but which didn’t warrant a full post on their own (news pieces where I do have more to say will remain as their own posts under Media News). And it’ll often have another item just for the fun of it.
Because these are articles that I’m finding as I go along the week, the exact nature and number of the links will vary from week to week. Bloggers who I follow are likely to have a greater representation — I wouldn’t be following them if I didn’t like what they write, after all — but other posts I come across can and will show up as well. If any of the posts sound interesting to you, check them out; that’s what it’s all about. Continue reading
Not together, of course. I’m just being lazy on the number of posts I write. But apparently it was time for both directors to drop several small hints about the movies that they’re working on. First up, Tim Burton talks to MTV about his 2012 films, all of which — as one might expect — have Gothic overtones. It looks like the big one is probably going to be his adaptation of the vampire soap opera Dark Shadows. Does Johnny Depp star as vampire Barnabas Collins? Of course he does, it’s a Tim Burton film, and you can’t have that without Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. Michelle Pfeiffer is also cast in the film, which makes at least three Burton alumni, as she starred in his Batman Returns — though hopefully this is better than that dreck. I have to admit, though, I’m not really the target audience for a vampire romance film anyway, so it’ll take some seriously good reviews to drag me to the theatre for that one. I do find it interesting that he’s having the movie set in 1972, the year after the series concluded in real life, and has eschewed the use of 3D because it wasn’t in vogue in 1972. So he might be treating the source material with some respect. Continue reading
Generally when I open my monthly copy of the Osage News, I expect a few pieces on cultural activities on the reservation, some business news, and the latest on the various legal battles the Osage Nation gets involved in against the federal government. I don’t expect to find news about upcoming movies. But the September issue carried with it the news that the Daniel H. Wilson novel Robopocalypse has been optioned by no less than Steven Spielberg, and will be hitting theatres in the summer of 2013.
