TV/Movies Megathread

[Ideologue]

Re: Terminator reboot, fair enough.  I'd only seen a brief article confirming a fifth film with Arnold.  A reboot is lame, unless they do take it a radically different direction, which they won't.

[The Brain]

Will the robot come from the past?

[Admiral Yi]

If they want to redo Terminator, the smart choice to be to pretend that abortion highly personal reproductive decision T4 never took place and make a real movie about John Connor leading a rebellion of man against machine in a post-apocolyptic wasteland.

[Ideologue]

I'd go for the gusto and make a movie about Skynet actively creating itself.  This was already present, but since there's no chance of outdoing the original movies in their own arena, I'd instead try to make a movie about a full-scale invasion from the future.

You don't see those very often.  There's, what, Millennium?  If that even counts.  I'm kind of hoping it's what Avengers 3 will be about--it's pretty bound to be either Kang and Ultron there, I figure, since other than that there's the Krees and Skrulls, and Avengers 2 is going to do the cosmic thing so a repeat is undesireable, and after that options become obscure like the Grim Reaper and Count Nefaria.

Opening scene is 1992 Los Angeles getting nuked by a Tellar-Ulam device covered in artificial skin and vascular tissue.  Take that, Connor!

[Eddie Teach]

I'd go for the gusto and make a movie about Skynet actively creating itself. 

[CountDeMoney]

Speaking of Will Smith

There have been rumblings about an impending second installment in the I Am Legend (would-be) franchise being made, ever since the original 2007 film grossed over half a billion dollars worldwide in theaters. Warner Bros. has finally struck a deal to do just that, with Oscar-winner Akiva Goldsman – who co-wrote and produced the original Legend adaptation – now onboard to collaborate on the project (in some form).

Here's where things get a bit tricky. The second I Am Legend flick is (as Deadline puts it) "not being called a prequel," and is being fashioned so as to allow Will Smith to reprise his role as scientist Robert Neville (if the A-lister so chooses).

Quick history lesson: some three years ago, Smith reportedly conceived an idea for an I Am Legend prequel, the setup for which would have seen the Robert Neville character team up with pockets of survivors in the aftermath of an apocalyptic man-made virus – resulting in him "interacting, bonding, and ultimately failing to save them," thus setting the stage for the events of I Am Legend.

However, that idea was scrapped in favor of a more direct sequel. The script for I Am Legend 2 was to be written by then-unknown D.B. Weiss (now, known as the co-creator of HBO's Game of Thrones TV series) and would have somehow allowed for Smith to reprise his role as Mr. Neville, despite his (spoiler?) having been seemingly blown up by a grenade during the climax of the first film.

Jump to the present and Warner Bros. has instead recruited up-and-comer Arash Amel (The Expatriate) to pen the initial draft for the new I Am Legend movie. There's no word yet on whether or not the project is still being fashioned as a sequel – though, it could be in a state of flux similar to the studio's 300 spin-off, a film which was long assumed to be a prequel/midquel, but has recently been labeled a sequel instead.
i am legend sequel will smith I Am Legend 2 with Will Smith is Officially Moving Forward

Smith is expected to return for the second 'I Am Legend' installment

Assuming the second installment of I Am Legend is not simply a prequel-in-disguise, there are two ways for a Smith-starring sequel to make sense (sort of):

Robert Neville is featured heavily in flashbacks, in a manner similar to how I Am Legend chronicles the chaotic quarantine of Manhattan (via its protagonist's memories).
Amel's screenplay accepts I Am Legend's alternate ending (which partly restores the thematic value of Richard Matheson's source material, while also allowing Robert Neville to live) as being "canon" – and ignores the much-decried climax to the film adaptation's theatrical cut.

Obviously, the easier (and, frankly, more interesting) route would be to develop a prequel along the lines of what Smith originally had in mind, rather than attempting to awkwardly navigate around the conclusion to the theatrically-released version of I Am Legend. For the time being, though, it seems that the former may NOT be what Warner Bros. has in mind. Make of that what you will.

I liked Legend, particularly the back story.  But his dog...   

[Ideologue]

Europa Report (2013)

Edited version below.  Long(er, ~1600 word) version here: ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT

Europa Report: a science fiction movie where not every technological surface is a touchscreen. If that's not refreshing enough, how about Europa Report: a found footage horror movie with almost no shaky cam? Or Europa Report: a movie about space that isn't scientifically retarded?

Like the Discovery and the Andrei Leonov before it, but with fewer crazy AIs and secret mission parameters, the Europa One has been launched to Jupiter.  Its mission: to find life, if there is life, on its most potentially-fecund moon, in the vast and mysterious tidally-heated ocean that exists beneath Europa's ice. The cost is a pretty reasonable $3.7bn (my impression is that under four bills is a real bargain for sending humans to Jupiter). The astronauts, cosmonauts, and euronauts selected for this five-year mission form a Standard Crew, including a Wide-Eyed Explorer (Katya), a Crybaby Fatalist (Daniel), a Bleary-Eyed Russian (Andrei), an Ellen Ripley (Rosa), an Android (William [sorry, Mr. Wu]), and a Family Man (James).

...

So, everything marked, everything 'membered, to hear the tell of Captain Xu: Europa One boasts between fifty and a hundred cameras to chronicle its historic voyage. The great thing is that most of these cameras are stationary. In one of the few instances a hand-portable camera is used, it actually gets placed on a tripod! Europa Report is something of a minor miracle in this arena: a found footage movie with more static shots than most movies with a non-diagetic lens.

...

Things go increasingly and devastatingly wrong on Europa One... Weird things begin to be observed, and it's to the movie's neverending credit that, while the possibility of fatigue/craziness is never dismissed, the allegations brought to the group are taken seriously, because these are serious people.

But evidence does mount, and it becomes increasingly apparent that space is more inhospitable than we thought and Europa in particular does not like guests.

Found footage movies can get kind of sloppy when it comes to how the footage gets found in the first place. Europa Report uses this as its most important plot point, and how the footage does get back to Earth is what sets it apart from just recycling horror tropes in space, like Alien did. This is a science fiction/horror hybrid that really earns its genre wings in both. Europa Report never, ever forgets that its characters are scientists, not space truckers who don't give a shit. It's one of the few sci-fi films that gets that a sensawunder is not dissimilar to fear, and that discovery is often synonymous with sacrifice.

I wouldn't recommend it to a horror fan based on that element alone.  But for those desirous of hard sci-fi involving astronauts in trouble, well, I suppose you could wait for Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity in October if you wanted, but I wouldn't recommend it. Europa Report is available on VOD presently, including iTunes and Amazon. I watched it thru Amazon's Instant Video service, and cost was a factor—I didn't comparison shop, but there it's $10 for a rental (a 48 hour rental if that makes any difference—and it may, as I am tempted to watch it again while I have the right to).

There is something a little annoying about paying a theater ticket's price to watch a movie in my house, but ultimately this is an extra-niche product targeted squarely at my most sensitive niche.  Therefore, for me, it was completely worth the price. I've got a hard bias, if not a hard on, for movies like this, but the only thing more useless than a reviewer without a bias is a reviewer who isn't aware of their biases. If, like me, you are partial to space, pleasant surprises, and a winning combo of bleakness and reaffirmation of the power of the human spirit, pay your money and take my word for it that you'll be rewarded.

A

[Ideologue]

I'd go for the gusto and make a movie about Skynet actively creating itself. 

No time travel element.

[Admiral Yi]

Watched some flick last night in which Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, that fat guy that was in Money Ball, and a totally random British black guy form a neighborhood watch and end up fighting aliens that invade their neighborhood.

The fat guy has some good lines about the dick size of the high school stud [spoiler]who's actually an alien and[/spoiler] who's trying to tap Vince Vaughn's daughter's ass, but otherwise the dialogue is barren.  Sounds at times like the cast just got really stoned and ad-libbed their lines.

The jailbait daughter and Stiller's wife, played by the chick who was the fuckup sister in Weeds, are oases of visual delight in a lost cause.

[The Brain]

Watched some flick last night in which Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, that fat guy that was in Money Ball, and a totally random British black guy form a neighborhood watch and end up fighting aliens that invade their neighborhood.

The fat guy has some good lines about the dick size of the high school stud [spoiler]who's actually an alien and[/spoiler] who's trying to tap Vince Vaughn's daughter's ass, but otherwise the dialogue is barren.  Sounds at times like the cast just got really stoned and ad-libbed their lines.

The jailbait daughter and Stiller's wife, played by the chick who was the fuckup sister in Weeds, are oases of visual delight in a lost cause.

Is Richard Ayoade in this? He's hilarious on game shows and the like.

[Admiral Yi]

That's the dude.

[katmai]

I know all white people look alike to you yip, but That wasn't sister from weeds.

[Admiral Yi]

No shit.  What was she in then?  Maybe that show about the Aussie chick with the multiple personalities.  Yeah, that's it.

[katmai]

No shit.  What was she in then?  Maybe that show about the Aussie chick with the multiple personalities.  Yeah, that's it.

[jimmy olsen]

Interesting 

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/06/the_best_pixar_movies_as_chosen_by_children_critics_say_they_re_on_the_decline.html

Overall, children were more persnickety than critics, giving 11 out of 14 movies lower ratings than critics did. Moreover, their favorites frequently differed from those of the critics: Cars 2, for example, declared a stinker by critics, was among the most popular Pixar films with children, rating even higher than the original. But almost half of the kids hated Finding Nemo, a movie that achieved a near perfect rating (99 percent positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes) from critics.

And while many critics see the quality of Pixar movies falling off, children see Pixar movies as better than ever. To illustrate this, we've graphed the Rotten Tomatoes ratings of each Pixar film over the years, comparing critics' ratings with the percentage of positive responses from children.

What explains the difference? Critics often judge whether the movies are also good for adults, but not a single child we spoke to expressed any concern for whether their parents enjoyed the movie. And kids love sequels, apparently, rating both Monsters University and Cars 2 much higher than the critics did. (Pixar may want to rethink its new plan to cut back on follow-ups.) There was one other thing that turned off younger reviewers: Again and again, movies ranging from Monsters, Inc. to A Bug's Life were deemed "too scary."