Transformers: Age of Extinction...

Clearly, Michael Bay and/or the folks at Paramount Pictures' marketing department love this particular scene (featuring the Decepticon named Lockdown and his ship) from the movie to create these posters out of it. I don't blame 'em. Less than three months to go before Transformers: Age of Extinction hits theaters nationwide!

The Amazing Spider-Man 2...

Check out the newest and final theatrical trailer for this May's second installment in The Amazing Spider-Man saga. Shown in these screenshots from the preview are—along with Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy—three members of the Sinister Six...Marvel's villainous equivalent to The Avengers. With Rhino, Electro and the Green Goblin taking on the Webslinger in this film, it will be interesting to see if Carnage, Venom and Doctor Octopus (or Vulture... Along with Doc Ock's robotic tentacles, Vulture's wings were also featured in this trailer) show up in the next flick to destroy Spider-Man. Yea, they probably won't be very successful in that endeavor. We'll see.

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Photos of the Day...

Earlier today, I went back to L.A.'s Shrine Auditorium to attend an autograph signing by Jaimie Alexander, who played the Asgardian named Lady Sif in the last two Thor movies as well as a recent episode of ABC TV's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Ms. Alexander was totally nice and cool in person... Here's hoping that we'll see more of Sif kicking arse in the next Thor flick and even Avengers: Age of Ultron (or at least in the third Avengers film). This signing came more than a month after I met Katia Winter from FOX's Sleepy Hollow at this sci-fi and comic book convention.

300: Rise of an Empire...

"This. Is. Sparta!" This memorable line by King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) was one of many factors that made 300 such a huge hit when it was released in theaters back in March of 2007. This time around though, there aren't that many noteworthy quotes in 300: Rise of an Empire despite the fact that director Noam Murro did a commendable job retaining the visual style and gory swordplay that adorned Zack Snyder's original movie. Unlike the first 300, Rise of an Empire ends on a more upbeat note, as Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton) was successful in fending off the Persians while Leonidas (whose Spartans were fighting against Xerxes' forces at the same time as the events that take place in this new film) was forced to make one last stand against a dominant enemy at the hot gates of Thermopylae. Leonidas' wife Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) sees actual combat this time around, as Artemisia (Eva Green) proved to be a formidable adversary against her fellow Greeks as she was the femme fatale who was instrumental in getting Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) to rise into power as the God-King.



Whereas the first 300 took place in the mountainous terrain of Greece, Rise of an Empire focused on the naval battles that transpired between Artemisia and Themistocles during the Persian Wars. Despite his ships being vastly outnumbered by Artemisia's fleet, Themistocles showed that he was as much a brilliant tactician as he was a formidable warrior. Using fog and the structural weak points of Artemisia's ships to his advantage, Themistocles enjoyed many victories in the Aegean Sea until Artemisia is forced to meet with Themistocles and try to persuade him to join forces with her naval armada. Themistocles ultimately turns down Artemisia's offer...resulting in a final confrontation between the two that would lead to Gorgo and her fellow Spartans joining forces with Themistocles in defeating Artemisia's fleet—and causing Xerxes, who was watching the naval battle from a cliff overlooking the sea—walk away as his Persian army faced its first major setback.



Unlike sequels like The Empire Strikes Back, The Dark Knight, The Matrix Reloaded and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, 300: Rise of an Empire did not conclude with its heroes having to regroup after suffering a significant defeat at the hands of their more formidable enemies. However, Rise of an Empire does end in a cliffhanger, with a third 300 movie most likely on the horizon. Xerxes' army is down but not out, and it remains to be seen if Themistocles and Queen Gorgo will avenge the great sacrifice that Leonidas and his men made in the first film. All that's certain is, if there is a 300: Part 3, you can expect Xerxes to face a bloody death just like Leonidas did in the first movie...with Gorgo or most likely Themistocles holding the God-King's severed head as his vanquisher watches Persia burn at the hands of the Greek army. (Even though in real life, Xerxes was assassinated by Artabanus, one of Xerxes' royal bodyguards... Good ol' Wikipedia.) That is all.

Transformers: Age of Extinction...

The newest trailer to this summer's fourth installment in the Transformers series was released online today...with glimpses into the lives of Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) and his daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz), the sinister plan by Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer) to rid the world of Autobots and all Transformers in general, and the return of Optimus Prime as he battles both ungrateful humans and a rampaging Grimlock. Anyways, check out the trailer posted below these cool screenshots. Transformers: Age of Extinction gets released into theaters nationwide on June 27.

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The 86th Annual Academy Awards...

While Steve McQueen's historical epic 12 Years A Slave took home the Best Picture trophy at the end of the night, the Academy Awards belonged to Alfonso Cuarón and his commercial and critically-acclaimed sci-fi hit Gravity. The space-disaster film took home seven Oscars...each for Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing and Best Film Editing. Sandra Bullock was nominated for Best Actress on Gravity, but lost out to Cate Blanchett for Blue Jasmine. Gravity was also nominated for Best Production Design—but Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby was honored with this award instead. Matthew McConaughey won Best Actor for Dallas Buyers Club, his co-star Jared Leto won for Best Supporting Actor and Lupita Nyong'o won Best Supporting Actress for 12 Years A Slave. John Ridley won for Best Adapted Screenplay on 12 Years, while Spike Jonze took home the Best Original Screenplay trophy for Her.



Gravity joins Star Wars: A New Hope, Inception, Avatar, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Apollo 13 in the club of successful sci-fi and/or space-themed movies that fell short of winning a Best Picture Oscar. Oh well. I think that NASA should be grateful that Gravity (along with the CBS TV show The Big Bang Theory) brought mainstream awareness to the International Space Station, Russian Soyuz spacecraft and Chinese Shenzhou capsules. Oh, and much props to Ellen DeGeneres for her great job hosting the Oscars, and Bill Murray for giving a shout-out to his late Ghostbusters co-star Harold Ramis in tonight's telecast. Carry on.


Photo courtesy of Ellen DeGeneres - Twitter.com

Why E.T. Is A Jedi...

This meme speaks for itself... (I stumbled upon this through Facebook.)

Pompeii...

Earlier today, I watched Paul W.S. Anderson's cinematic take on the volcanic eruption that wiped out a Roman city back in 79 A.D., and all I can say is, this was one of the most derivative movies I've seen in a while. Clearly, Anderson and/or his screenwriting team for Pompeii must have viewed the film Gladiator (and maybe the 2004 Brad Pitt flick, Troy) around the time the script was being written. From a man (Milo, played by Kit Harington) who lost his family due to a murderous Roman politician (Corvus, played by Kiefer Sutherland) and befriending an African slave (Atticus, played by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) who he was suppose to fight to the death in a gladiatorial fight, to the 'thumb-down' gesture and the line, "We who are about to die, salute you," Pompeii is the unofficial and CGI-heavy sequel to Ridley Scott's 2001 Academy Award winner. While the thumb-down gesture and "We who are about to die..." salute was used in real life (I think), I find it amusing that Anderson must have presumed that enough time had passed since Russell Crowe's Oscar-winning take on Maximus to copy Scott's flick pretty much scene-by-scene...up until the eruption of Mount Vesuvius itself. Not surprisingly, the visual effects of the volcano coming to life and decimating Pompeii was top-notch—and I'm tempted to see how the visuals in Pompeii compare to those of 1997's Volcano and Dante's Peak. Or the volcanic eruptions on the planet Mustafar in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, for that matter.



I have to give props to Anderson for opening the movie with a shot of Pompeii victims completely encased in volcanic ash...which is what really happened. You can actually see plaster casts of these poor souls in person at the Archaeological Museum of Naples in Italy today. Apart from the volcano part, I also wanted to check out this film just to see how well Kiefer Sutherland pulled off a Roman accent as Corvus—what with me being a huge fan of 24 and all. I'm also a big fan of Emily Browning after watching her ass-kicking performance as Babydoll in the 2011 Zack Snyder flick, Sucker Punch (Browning was also in the 2004 Jim Carrey film, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events...but she wasn't exactly toting a sword or automatic rifles in that movie). And in case you're wondering, no, not even her character Cassia was able to avoid Vesuvius' wrath. That is all.

RoboCop: Movie Review...

"I won't buy that for a dollar..." Such is Rick Mattox's (Jackie Earle Haley) updated take on the classic line from Paul Verhoeven's RoboCop. While there were no criminals who melted in acid or that other memorable quote "Can you fly, Bobby?" in this remake of the 1987 sci-fi satire, the new flick is still a decent one that provides an allegory on the use of unmanned drones here in the United States. Talk show host Pat Novak (Samuel L. Jackson) actually has some pretty interesting lines about how Americans are resistant to robots being used on native soil to police this country (and potentially invading privacy rights), despite the fact that in real life (for folks who haven't been watching the news for the last ten years), drones are being used to lethal effect in other nations and dispatching terrorists (which may include those who were born here in the U.S.) left and right long before they put their attack plans into motion. But enough about the political undertones of RoboCop... Let's talk about the part-man, part-machine, all-cop himself.



In terms of the 'Tin Man' (a nickname given to RoboCop by Mattox), Joel Kinnaman did a commendable job playing Detective Alex Murphy and his eventual robotic self. Kinnaman looks just as imposing in the metal suit as Peter Weller did in the 1987 flick and 1990's RoboCop 2. With the rest of the cast, Abbie Cornish (of 2012's Seven Psychopaths) does a great job and looks beautiful as Murphy's wife Clara, Michael Keaton is devious (in a good way) as OmniCorp owner Raymond Sellars, Gary Oldman is channeling the conflicted heroism of Commissioner Gordon in The Dark Knight trilogy through Dr. Dennett Norton, Haley clearly had a lot of fun playing the humorous character Mattox, Liz Kline—played by Jennifer Ehle (of Zero Dark Thirty)—is just as delightfully shady as Keaton's Sellars, Jay Baruchel (of last year's This Is the End) is amusing as Tom Pope, and Samuel L. Jackson took his role as Novak in stride. One thing's for sure, director José Padilha put lots of effort into this movie having a stellar cast to make up for the absence of biting satire that the original film possessed.



Unlike the original RoboCop flick, this one went more global by having OmniCorp dispatch its army of ED-209s to places such as Afghanistan, and having Murphy (severely-maimed from a car-bomb explosion outside of his house) don his silver (and then the Dark Knight-ish black) armor at a remote facility in China. Speaking of the armor, one cool thing about this RoboCop movie over the first one is that we see what's underneath the metal. Like General Grievous from Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, all that's left of Murphy are his head, lungs, heart(?) and right hand. Murphy apparently doesn't have the capacity to eat (since we don't see him eat baby food like Weller's version did in '87)...what with his digestive system being removed and all. But it was a nice touch by Padilha to use modern visual effects to allow the audience to view what was underneath the suit that allowed RoboCop to strike fear into the hearts and minds of criminals throughout the city of Detroit.



All-in-all, RoboCop was an entertaining film. It is understandable that CGI would be utilized to create scores of ED-209s that could move much more dynamically than the full-scale puppet used in the 1987 version, and that the 2014 RoboCop is much more agile and can leap over large walls in a single bound. Plus, he gets to drive through the streets of Detroit on a souped-up motorcycle that almost sounds like the Batpod from Christopher Nolan's last two Batman films. I would also have to give props to Padilha for briefly featuring Basil Poledouris' main music theme for the 1987 flick at the beginning and end credits of this movie. And last, but definitely not least, I have to give kudos to Padilha for allowing Murphy to regain the iconic silver suit near the end of this film. The black 'tactical' armor was cool...but nothing beats the silver covering that fans have come to know and love since its metallic feet first made those "wamp, wamp" sounds throughout the halls of that Detroit police station in 1987. That is all. "Thank you for your cooperation..."

RoboCop 2...

In honor of José Padilha's remake of Paul Verhoeven's sci-fi classic RoboCop being released in theaters this week, just thought I'd post these images of Cain...the main mechanical villain of 1990's RoboCop 2. Back when this film was released (I just finished 4th grade around the time it came out), I was a huge fan of Cain—thinking that his design was a lot cooler than that of ED-209 from the first movie. To this day, I still dig Cain's design...and can definitely picture him being a more brutal and unstoppable machine through the use of computer-generated effects should an updated version of him pop up in a future RoboCop sequel (assuming the new RoboCop doesn't flop at the box office). RoboCop 2 was helmed by none other than The Empire Strikes Back's Irvin Kershner...and this was his last directorial work before Kershner passed away in 2010.