Weekly Weblinks: Superman and Splinter Cell

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!

Beetlejuice

One of the very first posts I made on this blog was the news that Warner Brothers was looking at making a sequel to the 1988 Tim Burton film Beetlejuice. At the time I noted that although I had seen Beetlejuice, I was relatively young at the time, and probably not paying great attention, and so it had mostly faded from my memory. I resolved to correct this, and while it took me a year to do so, I can finally cross Beetlejuice back off of my “need to see” list.

As regular readers are probably aware, I’m not a huge fan of Tim Burton’s work as a whole, though a lot of that has to do with his tendency to put the same gothic styling on absolutely everything, regardless of whether it fits. In the case of Beetlejuice however, I knew going in that it was a film where the topic fit Burton’s style; it being one of his early works might have helped my decision as well, though the main thing was simply the knowledge that this is a well-loved 80s comedy.

Weekly Weblinks: Willis and White Whales

It’s the first Friday in October, and you know what that means! Being Friday means it’s time for the Weekly Weblinks, and being October means there’s a lot of spooky and scary content to be shared. From other bloggers, we have reviews of two spooky flicks for kids, a horror anthology for adults, and an in-depth look at the master of suspense, plus a new sci-fi feature that’s getting a lot of love lately and a whole lotta love for some actors who don’t get the spotlight often.

The press agencies are getting into the Halloween spirit as well, although there aren’t any horror films mentioned in the news bites. No, instead they’re settling for just making the news itself horrifying. You’re sure to find something to scream about, so read on for the Weekly Weblinks!

Weekly Weblinks: Horrors and Hendricks

It’s been a little bit of a hectic week for me, trying to get various things done for the site, so the Weekly Weblinks are running just a tad behind their usual schedule. But it’s still Friday morning, so they’re still technically on time!

I’m just going to cut the intro portion short, and get on with it; it’s all about the posts and news, after all.

Rock Liebster

So there’s this meme going around called the “Liebster Award”; it’s basically a way to pass around questions and draw attention to other blogs. I’ve been tagged by three people (that I know of; if I’ve missed one, sorry!), so I figured I’d knock out a post to answer the questions. There are a few rules associated with it, but a: I’m not always good about following rules, and b: most of the rules relate to passing the award on. While there are many bloggers who I think are worthy of a spotlight — if I’m following you, and/or if I’ve featured you in my Weekly Weblinks, you’re almost certainly one of them — I suspect that anybody I could tag either doesn’t want to do it or has been tagged three or four times already. So like a few others I’ve seen, I won’t be passing it along — but if by chance you haven’t been tagged and want to have been, consider yourself tagged and steal 11 questions from the people who asked me questions. I’m sure they won’t mind.

The other rules are that I have to post eleven things about myself, and answer 11 questions from the people who tagged me. Since three people tagged me, that’s 33 questions. Plus 5 more from a fellow rule-breaker. So here we go.

Mars Attacks!

This film was loaned to me by my brother, who was surprised I hadn’t seen it yet; since today is his birthday, I thought it would be appropriate to review his selection today. I’ll admit to having had just a small amount of wariness, as this is after all a Tim Burton picture, and I haven’t often been a fan of Burton’s work; however, I figured if anything was tailor-made for Burton’s sensibilities, it’s an over-the-top retro invasion sci-fi comedy.

Mars Attacks! began life as a series of trading cards put out by Topps in the 1960s; after some adults grew concerned about children buying cards with the graphic and violent images, they were cancelled, only to be brought back in the 1990s. In 1996, a movie inspired by the cards and their pulp sci-fi style was released. It was the same year as Independence Day, and though Mars Attacks! was released several months later, it still took a beating in the box office. Part of that may have been due to people seeing the other alien film earlier in the year, and part of it may have been due to Mars Attacks! being a parody/homage to 1950s science fiction. Films with a pulp fiction sensibility (regardless of genre) — such as The Rocketeer, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and John Carter — have a tendency to do poorly at the box office and become cult classics at best. The only exception I can think of off the top of my head would be the Indiana Jones series, and that’s at least partly because very few people recognized it as such. Like its pulpy brethren, Mars Attacks! has had more success on home video and cable than at the box office. And watching it, it’s not hard to see why it has held on.

Weekly Weblinks: First Feature

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.

Tim Burton, Steven Spielberg Discuss Upcoming Projects

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.

News: Sequeljuice, Sequeljuice, Sequeljuice

David Katzenberg and Seth Grahame-Smith, partners in KatzSmith Productions, have recently signed a deal with Warner Brothers to give WB the right of first refusal to movies produced under their company. One of the upshots of this is a sequel to the 1988 Tim Burton film, Beetlejuice.