Big Picture: "Secrets of S.H.I.E.L.D."

It's speculatin' time.

Not Entirely Unlikely

Just kinda popped in there...

Click for larger version, obviously.

Help Me Out Here...

The second half of my "Star Trek Into Darkness" review got into spoiler-territory in order to address what I see as some pretty serious flaws, but there's one in particular that I didn't fully discuss - partially because it would've taken too much time and the show ran long as it was, but mainly because I'm not 100% sure that I didn't "miss" some bit of dialogue that would've made this not the ginormous, baffling plot hole that it seems to be.

Obviously, EVERYTHING after the jump is spoiler-territory, including the comments. So read/click through only if you've seen the film and/or really, really want to...

And Your Next Two AVENGERS Are...

Long rumored but now seemingly confirmed by Joss Whedon to IGN, joining the team (or at least in the film to some capacity) will be Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, better known as The Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. He's basically The Flash if he was a Eurotrashy douchebag, she can manipulate probability - i.e. she can make pretty-much anything happen through "magic" handwaved with psuedo-science. They're fraternal twins, originally villains who reformed and joined The Avengers alongside fellow ex-baddie Hawkeye during the team's first major overhaul (everyone quit but Captain America, leaving him to train a new team of ex-villains.)

And now things get interesting...

Escape to The Movies: "Star Trek Into Darkness"

Second time is not the charm.
(Note: later-half of review has clearly-marked spoilers)

"Intermission" has some Blood Dragon for you.

Final(?) "PACIFIC RIM" Trailer Hits

I really, really hope that this marks the start of a much bigger push for this movie. Fairly or not, I feel like so much is riding on "Pacific Rim." An original (read: not a sequel, remake, reboot, adaptation, etc) big-budget genre movie? Guillermo Del Toro finally on the cusp of the blockbuster clout he should've had a decade ago? Giant monsters and robots up onscreen with no "apology" for their own existence or attempt to make them palatable to audiences that might turn their noses up otherwise?

If something like this doesn't "succeed," it validates all the worst chickenshit instincts of the current studio-system. "Joe Popcorn" (or whatever the current euphemism is) probably doesn't deserve this movie... but I hope "he" shows up anyway. There's more riding on this than just this.

"Riddick" Trailer

In case you weren't aware, the reason Vin Diesel keeps agreeing to "Fast" sequels is because it's the only way to force Universal to make more movies featuring his "Riddick" character. The new film, simply titled "Riddick," now has a trailer:

FULL Three Minute "S.H.I.E.L.D." Promo Hits!

An extended version of the trailer for Marvel's "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." series has now hit the web HERE.

This follows the previous 30 second teaser, the 7 second teaser for THAT teaser, and the 2/12 hour teaser released to theaters last year as "The Avengers."

Big Picture: "Mystery Bonks"

This is sort-of about "Star Trek." It's that kinda week.

Also: NEW GAME OVERTHINKER today!

Fox's "SLEEPY HOLLOW" TV series. Holy. Cow.

I'm an on-record eye-roller when it comes to the Orci/Kurtzman team, not because they so often make bad movies and TV shows but because the bad stuff they make is often so close to being awesome. So much of their output plays like a "sanitized" version of someone else's batshit-nuts brilliant idea; and as I continue to say: A crazy, unwieldy, unworkably ridiculous idea unleashed full-force - even and often especially if the result is spectacularly embarassing - is preferable to competently-executed mediocrity: Please me, horrify me, just don't BORE me.

With that in mind, the trailer for O/K's latest TV effort for Fox, "Sleepy Hollow;" in which Icabod Crane and the Headless Horseman are ressurrected in present-day New England to continue their battle anew. With Dan Brown-style historical conspiracy theories. And machine guns. And it looks AWESOMEly terrible.

Looks like these guys are finally heeding the sage advice of every assistant director on every porno ever: If you're gonna suck, at least suck well:

Close The Blast Doors

There's been fan-scripts and fans-becoming-writers, but this might be the first time in history that a TV series has opted to create a spin-off series and a theatrical movie... effectively based on it's own fan-art.

"Equestria Girls" is a spin-off movie (and apparently also a series pilot) from the rebooted surprise crossover-hit "My Little Pony" cartoon; built on the conceit of the main character dimension-jumping into the human world; where she and the other recurring characters appear as human versions of themselves. If we're going to start building movies around Deviant Art trends, I'll just assume that some other franchise will take "____ If They Were Mega Man Sprites" and "_____ But Everyone Is A Dog."

Not really my thing either way, but I'm familiar enough with both the harmless and decidedly-less-pleasant fringes of "Brony" culture to comfortably predict that this will probably do surprising boxoffice... and that if any of the main character winds up with a boyfriend he's going to be the most frighteningly-hated cartoon love-interest since that guy from the later seasons of "Daria" in certain unfortunate circles of the web.

Full "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." Teaser

And now, here it is: The first teaser for "Agents of S.H.I.E.LD.," which effectively frames the show as "'The X-Files' But More Funny And With Those Guys From 'The Avengers.'" The mysterious-man sequence is now unblurred, and we can now clearly see that the unnamed superhuman in question is indeed a black man wearing a hoodie. I still say it's probably Luke Cage.

Gotta chuckle at how they manage to work in ultra-short "cameos" for The Avengers without having to show (and thus pay) the actors associated with them - Thor's hammer, Cap's shield, Iron Man flying, Banner in Hulk-form, etc.

I'm excited about this. There's a lot of fun stuff to mess around with in the Marvel universe that may not need or warrant a full movie or full act in a movie - you could probably get a solid syndication-worthy run of shows JUST out of having them chase B and C-list supervillains around every week.

Screencaps: Who Is This Hero(?) In The "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." Teaser?

A moment ago I posted the "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." pre-tease, which opens with a motion-blurred action shot of an unidentified person(?) rescuing a woman from a burning building by jumping out the window and landing safely with enough force to crater the pavement on impact.

Below the jump, some screencaps of the very brief action-shot for a clearer look and possible guesses as to who this might be:

First (Brief!) Tease of "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D."

A "teaser" for Joss Whedon's Marvel TV franchise "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." is set to air during tonight's season finale of "Once Upon A Time." For now, here's the - um... teaser for the teaser?

Egh. Y'know what? There's still enough residual goodwill from "The Avengers" that I can't even be mad about this kind of marketing. Yes, Marvel (and Whedon) are allowed a pass on this - they did the impossible, they earned it.

Previously, everybody's top question was: "How is Coulson alive again?" But now, I'm guessing it's either about to be equaled or passed by a new one: "Who is that (apparent) super-human pulling a rescue at the beginning?" It all goes by pretty fast, and I'm about to do some screencapping to see if it can't be made clearer, but check it out yourself for now:

UPDATED: Screencaps and guesses HERE.

"The Venture Bros" in 8 Minutes

The curse of being a "Venture Bros." fan is that a big part of the show's charm (at this point) is the way it's gradually turned making fun of the self-referential moebius-strip nature of comic books and "cult" genre series (OMG! This suddenly super-prominent character was in the background on that random flashback three seasons ago!) into a functioning continuity that's rewarding in it's own right... which becomes REALLY hard to keep track of since there are such lengthy breaks between seasons.

Fortunately, since the break between seasons 4 and 5 (debuting June 2nd!) was longer than usual, Adult Swim has posted this compressed recap of the important-ish stuff - though what I'm most excited about is the apparent Season 5 returns of Captain Sunshine and Ghost Robot (a ghost living inside a robot, which we are told is completely different than a machine with a soul.)

Escape to The Movies: "The Great Gatsby"

I liked it.

RIP Ray Harryhausen.

Better Living Through Chemistry

I don't generally get professionally jealous of other people in my industry, but seeing James "AVGN" Rolfe getting to work with Troma founder and "Toxic Avenger" creator Lloyd Kaufman recently got me close - damn, that must have been awesome. But then, James has worked his ass off building his brand and more-or-less inventing a big slice of web video business - if anyone deserves to have things finally start paying off big-time, he does.

In any case, Kaufman is still doing his thing as a vanguard of authentic, no-bullshit independent moviemaking. He and Troma's latest offering, a reboot(?) of "Class of Nukem High" (one of their better 80s offerings, about a High School whose student body is mutated by a leak at the nearby nuclear power plant) officially titled "Return to The Class of Nukem High" has had a teaser up for a bit now promoting the film's scheduled premiere at Cannes 2013 - ULTRA NSFW, but check it out if you haven't already:

Presented With Sincerity

UPDATED: First Images of Megan Fox as April O'Neil in "TMNT"

Hey, Internet? You want borderline-obsessive, Zapruder-esque coverage of a likely-middling movie based on a bunch of toys from the mid-1980s!? Of course you do. Here's the first BTS video of the Michael Bay produced "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" movie, featuring our first glimpse of Megan Fox as April. Does this meaningless, masturbatory entertainment "journalism" puff-piece tell us anything useful about the movie?

(with apologies for the wonky formatting caused by aol's shitty video embed)

"I'm The Captain Now"

The next year or so will find Tom Hanks back in American Hero mode in a big way: He's slated to form an Americana moebius-strip by playing Walt Disney in the making-of-"Mary-Poppins" drama "Saving Mr. Banks" soon enough, but first up he'll be "Captain Philips," the real-life captain of a freighter attacked by Somali pirates a few years ago. Directing duties went to Paul Greengrass, so... "United 93. But On A Boat. And With A Happy Ending."

Gump Harder

The (perhaps unwitting) con-job Lee Daniels is running on the old guard movie press is kind of a joy to watch: His penchant for social-consciousness casts him as a helmer of Award Season middlebrow pablum, and the halo-effect of his Oprah connection seems to make many unable to discern that his films are actually sleazy, trashy, batshit-insane exploitation junk of the highest order. Seriously, go back and actually watch "Precious." The only question is whether Daniels himself is a subversive genius in on his own joke or if he thinks his Hallmark-meets-Grindhouse schlock is serious drama, too - the guy is like Tyler Perry's George Stark.

Anyway, Daniels' big movie this year is "The Butler," aka "Black Forrest Gump," aka "We SWEAR This Is a Real Movie, Not an SNL Sketch." Forrest Whitaker stars as a White House butler who has a front row seat to turbulent decades of American cultural change as he serves in the background of the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Carter and Reagan administrations. It already looks completely nuts, mostly due to a rosters of stars running the gamut from disastrously bad casting to ingeniously bad casting (JOHN FUCKING CUSACK AS NIXON!!!) - and this is only the early "hide all the ridiculous Lee Daniels stuff" trailer!

"Ender's Game" Trailer

And so, the countdown begins: Orson Scott Card now just under six months to find his way in front of a camera, microphone or keyboard and create a "sugar tits"-level public-relations nightmare for Summit Entertainment. Smart money says he'll find a way...

RIP Ray Harryhausen

Ray Harryhausen, one of the greatest (and by far the most influential) special-effects masters of all time, died today. So today sucks.

More to come, obviously. But until then, here's a montage of all his famous creatures:

Big Picture: "The Big Spoiler - Iron Man 3"

First things first: RIP Ray Harryhausen. Today sucks.

Alright, then. Let's talk about The Mandarin. Title's not joking, this is all spoilers.

Uwe Boll's "Assault On Wall Street"

Holy. Shit.

German filmmaker Uwe Boll made himself (in)famous via adaptations of video-games so bad they seemed deliberately provocative, then he took that fame and that provocateur attitude and used to it to transform himself into true dyed-in-the-wool modern exploitation filmmaker - i.e. he makes fast, cheap, nasty movies exploiting incendiary newsworthy subject matter to get the audience's attention (this actually seems to be his "real" passion - his actual debut feature was about a school-shooting.)

The kick in the pants, though, is that his non-game exploitation movies are actually pretty damn solid work... for the most part. I know plenty of people who find them in horrifically bad taste, and some of them are... but I just can't deny that they work. "Rampage," in particular, which is a moment-by-moment account of a mass-murderer's commando-style shooting spree in a small town, is seriously chilling stuff made even moreso by really, really good direction.

His newest, "Assault on Wall Street," appears to be a kind of successor - "Falling Down" for the Investment Age: Dominic Purcell stars as an ordinary man who snaps after his life savings vanish during the recent economic meltdown and opts to wage a one-man war on the Wall Street investment bankers he holds responsible. Knowing Boll, the final film will likely strike a perfunctory "right-bad-guys/wrong-actions" tone... but the trailer is essentially selling straight-up "fuck those fat cats!!!" revenge-fantasy. There's an argument to be made that that's pretty reprehensible, maybe even straight-up irresponsible. But this is the kind of aggressively-nasty stuff that true "exploitation filmmaking" was always made of, and I'm perversely fascinated to see how it plays today.

Below: The film's official trailer, and a new Red Band clip dropped by Latino Review depicting a sniper sequence (and demonstrating that, yes, Boll's action-chops for gunplay are the real-deal for those who didn't see "Rampage.") I get the sense this will NOT be the last we hear of this one...