The Walking Dead

James Hibberd of Entertainment Weekly published a letter reportedly from Frank Darabont about his idea for the second season opener of The Walking Dead. The first half of season 2 aired just before the holidays, and the second half begins February 12th. The season so far has felt slow and decompressed to the point it was boring at times.I feel a little bit cheated because this letter describes an episode that could have been great.

"The opener allegedly flashbacks to the early days of the zombie apocalypse. The entire episode would have tracked a squad of Army Rangers dropping into Atlanta. They get trapped in a zombie outbreak. “All they have to do is travel maybe a dozen blocks, a simple journey, but what starts as a no-brainer scenario goes from ‘the city is being secured’ to ‘holy shit, we’ve lost control, the world is ending,’” Darabont describes in a letter to AICN. So, yeah — Black Hawk Down with zombies.

Along the way, the soldiers encounter some familiar faces from the show. “Picture our squad arriving at a manned barricade where some civilians are being held back from leaving the city on shoot-to-kill orders to stop the spread of contagion, it’s a panicked high-intensity scene, and in this crowd of desperate people we find Andrea and Amy. The barricade gunners panic, the civilians start to get mowed down by machine-gun fire, and in this melee the girls get pulled to safety by some old guy they don’t even know. It’s Dale. He’s nobody to them, just some guy who saw the opportunity to do the right thing and reacted in the moment.”


The end of the episode concludes with the last surviving member of the squad, now infected and dying, hiding in a tank. A very familiar tank…

After the soldier dies this squalid, lonely death … and after a quiet lapse of time … we do a shot-for-shot reprise from the first episode of the first season: Rick comes scrambling into the tank to escape the horde … blows that zombie soldier’s brains out … now Rick’s trapped … fade out … the end.

 The notion was to take the ‘throwaway’ tank zombie Rick encountered in the pilot, and tell that soldier’s story. Make him the star of his own movie, follow his journey, but don’t reveal who he is until the end. The idea being that every zombie has a story…”

(Please note I have no idea about the truth behind Darabont's leaving the show. Some reports say it was due to budget cuts. Creative differences due to the cuts. Whatever the case, I'm not saying Darabont was dismissed for any particular reason. No one knows but Darabont and AMC.)

Alcatraz

A new show starting on January 16th from J. J. Abrams is Alcatraz. It's a supernatural show, which has me excited since he did such a great job with LOST. Jorge Garcia is in this one too. Everybody loved Hurley, and it's good to see him again.

So, the idea behind the show is "the disappearance of more than 300 inmates from San Francisco’s notorious Alcatraz prison in the 1970s, and their sudden reappearance in present day. Jorge Garcia plays a modern-day historian and comic-book enthusiast with a special interest in the former prison. Sarah Jones lays a present-day police detective on the case, and Sam Neill plays the obsessive, single-minded government agent who possibly knows more than he’s letting on."

It's filmed in Vancouver, so it will have that great rainy gloomy look that X-Files had.

Check out the trailer below:




UPDATE: Forget it...it's over. Dead on arrival.

Iron Sky

Okay...picture this: Nazis on the moon.

Ummmm, that's about it, but it looks AWESOME!!!!

Happy 100th Birthday Universal Pictures!

Image Credit: Universal Pictures

 


Universal Pictures is 100 years old this year. In celebration, Universal is unveiling an new logo to appear before films. This logo will debut before Dr Seuss' The Lorax, which opens March 2.

Zlata

At the age of four Zlata discovered she had an amazing talent – and she has been bending over backwards ever since to make the most of it. The Russian-born former gymnast, 24, is one of the world’s most extreme contortionists. At 5ft 9ins and weighing just eight and a half stone, Zlata spends most of her day working out and training for shows around the world.

Is the room getting hot? Or is it just me...?

Stephen Hawking

Happy 70th Birthday!

For all the theories I still can't understand, you are the best!

Back to the Future

I came across some pics of Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly. Eric Stoltz was the original actor to play Marty, before Michael J. Fox took over. Eric was more method as an actor and was making the character more serious and less funny. The film was 75% done when they fired Eric Stoltz so they had to re-film it all when Michael J. Fox came on.

What do you think? Would Back to the Future be the classic it is with Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly?

Tom Wilson

Here's an artist that some people my know from another place.

"What're you lookin' at, butthead?"

Or how about this one?

"Hello? McFly?"

Tom Wilson has done quite a bit since playing Biff Tanner in the Back to the Future series, but lately he's been working as a fine artist. His subject matter is toys of childhood. His childhood anyways.

He has more examples at his website www.bigpopfun.com.

Tom also has a podcast available on iTunes titled Big Pop Fun with Tom Wilson.

ST:TNG in HD

Holy cow, I was pleased by this news today! Paramount has taken episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and remastered them in high definition.

We all know that everything looks better in HD...everything:

Watch the video at the link, provided by Entertainment Weekly.

http://insidetv.ew.com/2012/01/05/star-trek-tng-hd-exclusive-video/

Pripyat

On April 26, 1986 the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant malfunctioned. The reactor began having problems just after 1:00 am on the 26th. Tests were being run at the time, safety systems had been deactivated for nearly 24 hours. The power dropped suddenly in the reactor, the operators tried to compensate for the problem which caused the reactor to spike out of control. Since the safety systems had been shut off for the tests the reactor exploded at 1:23 am. If the safety systems had been on, the reactor would have stabilized itself.

Pripyat is the town where the power plant employees lived at the time of the accident. It took 3 days after the disaster to evacuate 50,000 people. The radiation levels reached 3 times the radiation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The town is uninhabitable 26 years after the disaster.

Jeremy Geddes

I found a very interesting artist today named Jeremy Geddes. He's a realist with a twist. I find his Cosmonaut series to be wonderful.

Check out his website to see other fabulous stuff:

www.jeremygeddesart.com

Friday Funny!

Spaced

Best show ever made. Enough said.

Cast of Spaced (Front to Back):

Jessica Hynes (née Stevenson), Simon Pegg,

Julia Deakin, Mark Heap,

Nick Frost, Katy Carmichael

New Movies: Friday, January 6, 2012

Post holidays is a depressing time for some people. I'm depressed because the movie releases are so dismal this time of year. There are four movies coming out tomorrow. I'm familiar with one of them. The other three are a mystery.

All four choices are questionable.

Plot synopses garnered from the good folks at comingsoon.net

Beneath the Darkness (Limited Release)

Starring: Dennis Quaid, Aimee Teegarden, Tony Oller, Devon Werkheiser, Brett Cullen, Stephen Lunsford
Genre: Thriller
MPAA Rating: R (for some violence and language)
Official Website: BeneaththeDarknessmovie.com

Plot Summary: In "Beneath the Darkness," Ely Vaughn (Quaid) is a pillar of the community in tiny Smithville, Texas. The town's mortician, Ely has been revered since his days as the high school's star quarterback. But since the tragic death of his wife two years earlier, Ely has withdrawn from his neighbors, while local teens spread stories of supernatural goings on at Ely's mansion - which is also the funeral home. When high school friends Travis (Oller), Abby (Teegarden), Brian (Lunsford) and Danny (Werkheiser) decide to check out the rumors, they are shocked to see the supposedly grieving widower dancing with a mysterious woman behind the curtains of his bedroom window. Their curiosity aroused, the four teens wait for Ely to leave the house before breaking in to investigate. But instead of finding clues to the woman's identity, they stumble on a grotesque, long-hidden secret. The sadistic mortician next door will now stop at nothing to literally bury his past.

Norwegian Wood (NY Only)

Starring: Kenichi Matsuyama, Rinko Kikuchi, Kiko Mizuhara
Genre: Drama
MPAA Rating: Not Available
Official Website: NorwegianWoodmovie.com

Plot Summary: "Norwegian Wood" is a moving story of loss and sexuality set in Tokyo in the late 1960s against a time of global instability. Watanabe (Japanese rising star Kenichi Matsuyama, "Death Note," "Detroit Metal City") looks back on his days as a freshman university student living in Tokyo. Through his reminiscences, we see him develop relationships with two very different women, the beautiful yet emotionally troubled Naoko (Oscar nominee Rinko Kikuchi, "Babel"), and the outgoing, lively Midori (Japanese-Korean model-actress Kiko Mizuhara.) The film's gorgeous cinematography is by Mark Lee Ping Bin ("In the Mood for Love," "Devils on the Doorstep"). Originally published in 1987, Murakami's novel has since been translated into 33 languages and published in 36 countries. Vietnam-born and Paris-based writer-director Tran Anh Hung was nominated for an Academy Award for "The Scent of the Green Papaya" and won a Golden Lion in the Venice Film Festival for "Cyclo." "Norwegian Wood" is his fifth feature.

Roadie (NY Only)

Starring: Ron Eldard, Jill Hennessy, Bobby Cannavale, Lois Smith, David Marguiles, Catherine Wolf, Suzette Gunn
Genre: Drama
MPAA Rating: Not Available
Official Website: Roadiemovie.com

Plot Summary: Canned from a 20-year job as roadie for Blue Oyster Cult, Jimmy is broke and desperate. With nowhere else to go, he returns home to Forest Hills, Queens to visit his aging mother, where a wild night with some hard-partying high school friends shows him that some things never change. From director Michael Cuesta, "Roadie" features powerful performances from Ron Eldard, Bobby Cannavale, Jill Hennessy and a refreshingly eclectic 70s hard rock soundtrack.

The only wide release film this week, and the one most folks will be familiar with because of it's pant-wettingly scary trailer:

The Devil Inside

Starring: Fernanda Andrade, Isabella Rossi, Simon Quarterman, Evan Helmuth, Ionut Grama, Suzan Crowley, Bonnie Morgan, Brian Johnson, Preston James Hillier, D.T. Carney
Genre: Horror
MPAA Rating: R (for disturbing violent content and grisly images, and for language including some sexual references)
Official Website: DevilInsidemovie.com | Facebook

Plot Summary: In 1989, emergency responders received a 9-1-1 call from Maria Rossi (Suzan Crowley) confessing that she had brutally killed three people. 20 years later, her daughter Isabella (Fernanda Andrade) seeks to understand the truth about what happened that night. She travels to the Centrino Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Italy where her mother has been locked away to determine if her mother is mentally ill or demonically possessed. When she recruits two young exorcists (Simon Quarterman and Evan Helmuth) to cure her mom using unconventional methods combining both science and religion, they come face-to-face with pure evil in the form of four powerful demons possessing Maria.

Many have been possessed by one; only one has been possessed by many.

All right! I'm going to leave you with one thing to remember: I do not make these movies. I just relay the information. It's not my fault if they suck monkey balls!  

Movie Posters As Vintage Book Covers

In the last post I declared my love for movie posters and vintage book covers. What if they got mashed together like the peanut butter and chocolate in those commercials?

"Your movie poster is in my book cover!" 

"Your book cover is in my movie poster!" 

How's that for a slice of fried gold?

So, I stumbled upon a designer named Spacesick who has done a series of fabulous retro movie book covers.

Click this link to see the whole series, it's great stuff!

Olly Moss

I love movie posters. 

LOVE THEM. 

I also love vintage book covers.

Olly Moss is a UK designer younger than me (feel the green eyed monster rising?) He has a truck load of clients ranging from Lucasfilm to Penguin Books. If there was any other reason to love this guy there's this:

There's also a very neat poster for some wizard movie:

If you want to have a closer look at Olly's work, go check out his website:

http://www.ollymoss.com/home

Fluffed or Whipped?

For those of you who enjoy a sip of vodka, and in a past life it was my drink of choice, the braniacs at Smirnoff have brewed two new flavours to choose from. I'm sure they spent tireless hours market testing red liquorice, nutella, and marzipan flavoured vodkas but they settled with "Whipped Cream", and "Fluffed Marshmallow." Really?

According to a Rueters story, Smirnoff is taking a beating from other flavoured spirits and "… took inspiration from things like cookie-scented candles and vanilla-scented laundry soap. It then relied on focus groups, mixologists and food scientists to come up with the new drinks, which went through some 15 iterations, according to the company’s chief marketing and innovation officer for North America, Peter McDonough."

The trend for sugary, spicy spirits has become very popular with younger, female drinkers. It's the new party drink apparently. Which brings up a new problem for watch dog ninnies...what about under age drinkers? Something sweet and tasty to liven up the day? Kids will drink, you can't stop them...no one stopped me when I wanted to. I guess all we can do is make sure they brush their teeth after a party. The problem arises from the glamour of drinking, the advertising portrayal of drinking as a fun, hip, sexy thing to do. The two ads above are indeed sexy and stylish, and an industry watch dog group called Alcohol Justice claims Smirnoff has hit a new low with "pornohol" advertising.

I don't think I agree with that statement, look at Captain Morgan and Jose Cuervo, both brands have used tongue-in-cheek attitudes to sell their hooch. People will drink. They will drink a lot if they desire. Whether it's dust bunny or new car flavour you can't stop the 'verse from getting their drink on. If there's a fine looking lady or hunky guy selling it to you where's the harm in that?

Oh, the lady in the ads? Amber Rose.

Hasslein's Evolution of the Species

The Dead 2011

1 Elizabeth Taylor, 2 Jane Russell, 3 Amy Winehouse
4 Peter Falk, 5 Jackie Cooper, 6 Roger Williams
7 Joe Willie 'Pinetop' Perkins, 8 Anne Francis, 9 Harry Morgan
10 Jack LaLann, 11 Steve Jobs, 12 Andy Rooney