Weekly Weblinks: Spidey, Scots, and Rocker Snots

It’s Friday morning, and so it’s time for another dose of the Weekly Weblinks. This week’s blog posts include another take on Brave, a review of a film that is coming out soon, and a few reviews of films that range from a year old to a 1960s classic.

In the news, an unlikely TV adaptation, a prog metal group’s demise, Keanu Reeve’s next big thing, and yet more puppet film news. So read on for a Weekly Weblinks that is surprisingly heavy in the Scottish influence. (I swear I don’t plan these things.)

Blog Posts:

Andrew Crump of A Constant Visual Feast takes a look at Brave, and asks whether it’s fair to the film that people expect Pixar to raise the bar with every single movie.

Alexander Ryan Rhoades has some harsh words about last year’s Real Steel.

Mark Walker of Marked Movies reviews the 1996 film Trainspotting, in his native Scottish brogue. It’s surprisingly coherent.

Steve Massart at Watch a Lot has one of the first reviews of The Amazing Spider-Man, out nationwide in the U.S. this Tuesday. Go see what he thinks about this reboot of the franchise.

Jaina at Time Well Spent takes a look at highly-regarded classic, James Dean’s signature role in Rebel Without a Cause.

News Blurbs:

Ryan Reynolds has been cast as the lead in the new Highlander remake. Not that we really needed a Highlander reboot, but at least it’s not another sequel.

Nora Ephron, writer of When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle, among others, and director of the latter, Julie and Julia and more, has passed away at age 71 from complications due to leukemia. I’m sorry to say the only films of hers I’ve seen so far are Mixed Nuts and Michael, both of which were enjoyable; I plan to see several of her other films eventually and am sorry to hear that the list won’t be growing.

Queensrÿche has fired lead singer and chief songwriter Geoff Tate; Rolling Stone has an interview with Tate over the incident. I don’t really know who’s right or who’s wrong about the whole thing, and obviously we’re only getting one side in that interview, but I can’t see how firing the guy who is not only your frontman but who wrote most of your songs is a good plan for moving forward. They may have only fired one person, but I’d be surprised if the end result is anything other than the complete dissolution of the band.

What’s the next science-fiction film to possibly get a TV adaptation? If you said Barbarella, you may collect your prize, and also should probably go play the lottery or something, because those were seriously long odds. Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn is behind the move to bring the cult-classic character to the small screen.

Keanu Reeves… director? The star of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and The Matrix is making his directorial debut with The Man of Tai Chi, a martial arts film, and is even working with a new type of camera to try and film shots in live-action that were previously unfeasible without CGI. Joblo.com has a video of Reeves’ proof of concept sequence, and it actually looks like it might be a solid addition to action film shooting. The movie might be worth checking out just on that score.

Joblo.com also has a few words from director Todd Berger about his upcoming puppet film The Happytime Murders, for the Jim Henson Company. It’s confirmed that Brian Henson is involved in the puppet design, and that the film is expected to be rated R. I’m still more than a little skeptical about the wisdom of not going for the PG-13 when it’s Muppet-esque characters, but I guess we’ll see. Berger says he’s trying to create “the Heat or The Dark Knight of puppet films”. The film will be released through Lionsgate.

Just For Fun:

Famous Objects from Classic Movies is a simple quiz game which presents the viewer with an image in silhouette of a movie object, and challenges the player to guess the movie in a game of Hangman with only three strikes per movie. It’s not super-challenging, at least in the early levels, but it gradually gets trickier and is fun even when it’s not hard.