Hot Toys has unveiled another badass new collectible action figure for their Star Wars: The Force Awakens collection. This one is a 1/6th scale figure of the black First Order TIE Pilot. This thing is so damn cool, and it gives us our most detailed look yet at the costume design for the new TIE Pilots that will be introduced in the upcoming film. I want one! 

Here's the description that came along with the figure, along with more photos:

The First Order has enlisted a wide range of troops to carry out its will across the galaxy in the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Following the reveal of the First Order Snowtrooper, Hot Toys is continuing to expand the First Order army and is delighted to officially present the new streamline designed First Order TIE Pilot 1/6th scale collectible figure from the highly anticipated movie! 

The skilled pilots of the First Order launch into combat aboard advanced fighter craft to hunt down enemy vessels and protect space around First Order installations and warships.

The highly-accurate collectible figure is specially crafted based on the image of First Order TIE Pilot in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It features an all new glossy black color designed TIE Pilot helmet and armor with life support system, meticulously tailored flight suit, detailed blaster pistol, and a hexagonal figure stand with the First Order’s emblem!

Recruit the new First Order TIE Pilot for your growing army today!

Vin Diesel has taken to his Facebook page to talk more about Universal Pictures' Furious 8, and he says that he his hoping to get the original Fast and the Furious director Rob Cohen back to helm it. The actor says:

"Back to the matter of 8… First and most importantly is the SCRIPT, which has to be great. Hopefully the writer will deliver something within the next two weeks… before my Witch Hunter press tour begins. There has always been the desire by Paul to have Rob direct one more, this is what fueled my campaign… I believe that he can and would reset the franchise nicely, returning to what was the core of the film in the beginning… racing. He would also handle the Brian O’connor issue with integrity, given that he and David Ayer were the ones who initially created that beloved character in the first place.

"Ultimately we all want the best film to honor what we have created and what you the audience has adopted as your favorite franchise. I will leave this matter in the studios hands for a moment while I release The Last Witch Hunter and start production of the long awaited “Xander Returns”.

Again, we make these films with Our hearts."

If they want to bring back someone who worked on the original film to develop Furious 8, I'd much rather see David Ayer direct it. As much as I enjoyed Cohen's The Fast and the Furious, that was the last decent movie that he made. After seeing directors like Justin Lin and James Wan take the franchise to awesome and exciting new levels, going back to a mediocre director like Cohen just seems like a step in the wrong direction. 

I know Diesel wants to honor the fans and the franchise, but he can do that by bringing in a great director that has the talent to make a great film. Who knows, though, maybe if Cohen is brought in to direct it he will deliver something unexpectedly badass.  

Universal Pictures is looking to release Furious 8 on April 14th, 2017. Do you think Cohen would be a good director to bring back? If not, who would you like to see take on the next chapter in the franchise?

Posted by Vin Diesel on Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Admittedly, I've never been too sweet on the Call of Duty franchise. I'm terrible at competitive FPS games, so multiplayer was always out the window. Not to mention the narrative of the mainline Modern Warfare games always seemed like done-to-death retellings of old Van Damme movies... View Full Post on GameTyrant

Permalink

Sillof is an artist who is known for making custom action figures, and one of his recent sets features the Justice League superheroes as Dungeons & Dragons medieval warriors. The series is called Dungeon League, and it features Batman, Superman, The Flash, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman. Here's the description that Sillof included with the collection:

Anyone who has ever played a role-playing game in their childhood probably at some point imagined what some of their favorite characters from television, film, comics, and literature would look like inside the medieval fantasy world of their chosen RPG, I know I did.

I spent house imagining what race and class each of them would be. Recently I decided to indulge my childhood fantasies and make some of those characters. While this is not a unique endeavor and it has been done by others before in various ways I think they are still unique and I hope you enjoy them.

Drafthouse Films, the distribution arm of the awesome Alamo Drafthouse theater chain, has become known for re-releasing movies that were given a small release once before, but didn't receive the attention they deserve. They've done this with Roar, The Visitor, and the amazingly ridiculous Miami Connection (seriously, seek out that movie), and now they're back with another little-seen piece of cinema history called Dangerous Men. This was one of the secret screenings at this year's Fantastic Fest, and it sounds totally bonkers in the best possible way. Just read this description:

Killers. Perverts. Bikers. DANGEROUS MEN.

In 1979, Iranian filmmaker John Rad moved to the U.S. to shoot his dream project, a rampaging gutter epic of crime, revenge, cop sex and raw power. Just 26 years later, he completed an American action film masterpiece that the world is still barely ready for today: Dangerous Men.

After Mina witnesses her fiancé's brutal murder by beach thugs, she sets out on a venomous spree to eradicate all human trash from Los Angeles. Armed with a knife, a gun, and an undying rage, she murders her way through the masculine half of the city's populace. A renegade cop is hot on her heels, a trail that also leads him to the subhuman criminal overlord known as Black Pepper. 

It's a pulse-pounding, heart-stopping, brain-devouring onslaught of '80s thunder, '90s lightning, and pure filmmaking daredevilry from another time and/or dimension. Blades flash, blood flows, bullets fly and synthesizers blare as the morgue overflows with the corpses of Dangerous Men.

Check out the trailer below:

Fans of weird, off-kilter movies should mark November 13th on their calendars, because that's when this baby is hitting theaters once again. Check out the press release for the full story:

AUSTIN, TEXAS — Drafthouse Films, the curatorial force behind exceptional repertory releases such as the ninja-blasting synth-rock monolith Miami Connection, the psychedelic sci-fi brainmelter The Visitor, and the most dangerous movie ever made, Roar, have announced the acquisition of their latest cult sensation, Dangerous Men, following a packed-house screening of the film at Fantastic Fest. 

The fanatical brainchild of Iranian polymath John Rad, Dangerous Men is a passion project that remained in obsessive production for nearly two decades before finally debuted in Californian theaters in 2005. An unflappably prodigious creative force, Rad handled much of the technical duties of the film, appearing multiple times in the film’s credits as the director, writer, location scout, producer, executive producer, and more. 

Despite initially languishing at the box office during its limited theatrical release, and never finding a likeminded audience before Rad’s untimely death in 2007, Dangerous Men developed a devoted following before vanishing as mysteriously as it appeared. Chief among them was Hadrian Belove, of the independent Los Angeles theater The Cinefamily, who saw the film multiple times during its brief theatrical run, and alerted Drafthouse Films and Alamo Drafthouse Cinema programming teams to the existence of the film. Working with the late artist’s family, the team worked tirelessly alongside the American Genre Film Institute to locate and restore the original film.

“It took us almost three and a half years of continuous begging, pleading and debasement before John Rad’s family agreed to license us the film,” said Drafthouse COO James Emanuel Shapiro. “It was well worth it! We are immensely proud that we've carved out our own niche of mind-shredding repertory releases and beyond thrilled to unleash what should very much be considered the Holy Grail of Holy F*cking Sh#t on audiences worldwide!”

Dangerous Men will storm screens nationwide starting Friday, November 13th, and will hit multiple video on demand platforms in December. A home video release on Blu-ray, DVD and VHS is planned for early 2016.

Via: BMD

I still have an original Nintendo from back in the day, but unfortunately, it doesn't work anymore. Maybe one day I'll try and get it fixed. I have a lot of great memories playing the original NES. The first Nintendo system had 678 games, and there's a new documentary that follows a guy named Jay Bartlett, who goes on a journey to track down and buy all 678 games in 30 days. To make it a real challenge for himself, he isn't allowed to buy any of the games online. He had to actually go around to places and find all of these games. It's like his own real-life video game adventure!

An adventure-filled documentary on Nintendo that follows two gaming enthusiasts as they hit the open road in hopes of buying all the 678 official retail-licensed Nintendo games in 30 days… with NO online purchases.

The movie was directed by Robert McCallum and if you're interested, it will be released on Vimeo to watch on October 2nd. This is the kind of film that will give me that nostalgic feeling that I love so much. 

Via: /Film

Tilda Swinton looks to continue her string of impressive performances in A Bigger Splash, a new movie from I Am Love director Luca Guadagnino. Here's the full synopsis:

Rock legend Marianne Lane is recuperating on the volcanic island of Pantelleria with her partner Paul when iconoclast record producer and old flame Harry unexpectedly arrives with his daughter Penelope and interrupts their holiday, bringing with him an A-bomb blast of nostalgia from which there can be no rescue. A Bigger Splash is a sensuous portrait of desire, jealousy and rock and roll, under the Mediterranean sun.

Gorgeously shot in dazzling locations, A Bigger Splash looks to have a little more up its sleeve than this trailer implies, although the final seconds hint at the aspects that make it more than just a breezy vacation movie. At the very least, I think we can expect a beautiful movie with a terrific Swinton performance, and that seems like reason enough to check this out. Co-starring Ralph Fiennes, Dakota Johnson, and Matthias Schoenaerts, A Bigger Splash arrives in theaters on March 13th, 2016.

Hearing Gene Wilder sing "Pure Imagination" in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory has always been one of my favorite parts of that film, and a remix of that song provides the score for a new short film called Imagination from PermaGrin Films. It's a stop-motion project that attempts to take viewers back to the innocence and uninhibited creativity of childhood, trying to recreate that special feeling that anything is possible.

As children, we viewed the world through the lenses of our imaginations. The carpet became lava, the shadows formed monsters, the family minivan was a spaceship. But the older we got, the more reality set in, and soon we forgot the magic our minds could create. We invite you to step back into your childhood and take a look through the lens once again. PermaGrin Films presents "Imagination" as part of the Dream Music series.

I'm aware that too much nostalgia can be a bad thing and we're experiencing more of it than ever at this point in our culture, but even removing that aspect from this short, it's still impressive on a technical level. If you're interested in how it was made, you can watch a behind-the-scenes video below:

Via: LaughingSquid

Domhnall Gleeson is one of my favorite young actors right now. He's been working for nearly fifteen years and got a big break playing Bill Weasley in the Harry Potter films before gaining my attention with his work in About Time, Frank, and Ex Machina. He's not a household name yet, but that could change when Star Wars: The Force Awakens comes out this December, because he's playing the villainous General Hux in J.J. Abrams' anticipated sequel. As with a lot of Force Awakens-related things, we still don't know too much about his character for sure, and though he didn't do much to change that in a new interview with Total Film (via GamesRadar), the actor did open up a little:

"Yeah, I mean you look at him and you realise he’s not a good guy! He’s got an English accent so he can’t be good.”

Abrams has referred to General Hux as "merciless" before, and Gleeson echoed that sentiment before wondering if even that tiny description might be too much information. "Is that what [Abrams] said?" he asked.

Abrams has also spoken about what it was like walking on the set for the first time, and it sounds like Gleeson had a similar experience:

"That does sort of take your breath way," he grins. "That’s one of those ‘pinch me’ moments. I experienced it in a major way on Harry Potter and it’s a similar thing with Star Wars, except you look down and you’re in the gear and you have stuff to say and you’re like, ‘Holy God.’ And yes, it’s very difficult to remain cool about stuff like that. There’s no two ways about it, it’s totally brilliant."

But all of that was just an added bonus for him, since all he really cared about was tackling the type of character audiences hadn't seen him play before:

"Yeah, it’s fun to do different things. I hadn’t played anybody like that before. Star Wars is amazing, J.J. Abrams is amazing, but the thing to do was play something different. That’s what got me really excited."

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (finally) arrives on December 18th.

A few months ago, CineFix released a video showcasing their 100 most iconic movie quotes of all time. They've recently followed that up with a video that includes 100 more iconic movie quotes! There are just so many great movie quotes out there, and if you enjoy watching movies as much as I do, then I'm sure you'll recognized all of the quotes that have been included in both these videos. 

We’ve already given you our 100 most iconic movie lines of all time, but you wanted more! So based on your suggestions and our own ideas, here are 100 more of the greatest movie quotes ever!

Whether it’s a killer one-liner, a bit of cinematic poetry, or an unexpected delivery of an ordinary phrase, these lines became synonymous with their movies’ cultural impact. Whether you quote them to your friends or wear them on T-shirts, we thought these were the hundred most iconic lines of all time.

A lot of fans, including myself, were really hoping that the rumors of George Miller directing Man of Steel 2 would be true (well, Zack Snyder said Batman v Superman is technically Man of Steel 2, but you know what we mean). I have no doubt that he could do some incredible things with it. Unfortunately, it doesn't sound like that's going to happen.

While talking to Digital Spy, Miller confirmed that he has had conversations with Warner Bros. about directing a DC movie, but he says that his next film is going to be on a much smaller scale. This is what he told them: 

"I hope the next film I make is a very small film without any special effects and not many stunts."

Unless this is a statement he made to keep things under wraps and keep fans off the scent of what is really going, then Man of Steel 2 may not be in the cards for him. If that's the case, it would be a shame. Miller could have done some great things with Superman. You can watch the full interview below:

We've known for a while that boxing champ, The Hangover star, and convicted rapist Mike Tyson would face off against Donnie Yen in Ip Man 3, but it's one thing to read about it in a press release and something else entirely to actually see it in a teaser. Tyson will play a real estate developer who's also a street fighter, while Yen will reprise his role as the iconic martial arts master who trained Bruce Lee. Last we heard, Lee will make an appearance in the movie in digital form since the producers couldn't find anyone they liked to portray him.

The movie opens in Hong Kong on December 24th (Merry Christmas to those audiences!), and a 2016 U.S. release date is expected to be announced in the coming months. Take a look at the trailer below:

Via: ScreenCrush

About a week ago we heard that IO Interactive and Square Enix were pushing the release date for Hitman until next March. One of the major reasons they were doing so was their desire to create more content to release after launch... Read Full Post at GameTyrant

Permalink

This morning, we wrote about how Vin Diesel wanted The Fast and The Furious director Rob Cohen to return to direct the upcoming Furious 8 after Justin Lin and James Wan moved on to other projects, but we failed to mention how that same Facebook post indicated that Diesel's mother suggested he direct the movie himself. Is that a real possibility? Well, it would certainly be a hell of a jump for him, but if they decided that they wanted to severely scale the franchise down all the way back to its small-scale racing roots instead of trying to top the insanity Wan achieved with Furious 7, there's a chance he could pull it off. After all, Diesel did direct a short film set in the Fast universe called Los Bandoleros:

But if he ends up not stepping behind the camera, Deadline reports that Louis Leterrier (The Incredible Hulk, Now You See Me, The Transporter 2) and Point Break remake director Ericson Core (Invincible) are "possibly" being looked at for the director's chair. (How someone is "possibly" being looked at, I have no idea. You're being considered for the job, or you're not. What the hell, Deadline?) 

If this report is true, Leterrier makes a bit of sense considering he's worked with Universal a bunch of times before, but I don't know if he has the right kind of style for this franchise. Core might be a better fit. He was the cinematographer of the original The Fast and The Furious movie, and his remake of Point Break looks like it has the right mixture of self-aware stupidity and insane stunts that could transfer well to this franchise. (Though it would be really bizarre if he ended up getting the gig, considering how the original Furious movie was essentially a beat for beat remake of the original Point Break...talk about the snake eating its tail.)

Who do you want to see direct Furious 8?

Variety has the results of a recent poll conducted in regards to the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and while much of the data deals with the film's perceived quality (example: 63% think it'll be the best movie in the franchise), there's a bit buried near the bottom that drew my attention:

Some fans, facing potential toy shortages, admitted that they’d be willing to take unusual measures to score merch. About 19% said they would dress up as a “Star Wars” character, 12% would willingly lie to other customers to posses a coveted item and another 12% would cut in line. A particularly desperate minority said they would trip an elderly person (7%) or fake a panic attack (5%), although how those actions could improve their odds of successfully purchasing a toy is unclear.

Seven percent would trip an elderly person. That says a lot about our culture, don't you think? Keep in mind, this survey only consisted of "2,031 U.S. adults ages 18 and older, among whom 801 said they were Star Wars fans," but that still means that of those surveyed, 142 of them would trip an old person in order to get their toy before, presumably, heading into the darkness of a mountain cave with their "precious" in tow and ultimately completing their full transformation into Gollum.

After reading those results, one thing is clear to me: if any writers are researching a remake of Jingle All The Way, toy stores during this Christmas season are going to be an ideal place to get some inspiration.

Zack Snyder's 2009 film adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' iconic comic series Watchmen was somewhat divisive. It wasn't a huge financial success, and it walked the fine line of being mega-faithful to the source material all the way up until the very end, which I think threw some people off and soured the whole film for them. It's a shame some people can't get past the ending, because Snyder essentially did the impossible by adapting a comic that was meant solely to exist as a comic (complete with commentary on the medium itself embedded into it).

Now it appears that Snyder is interested in revisiting that story in some capacity. Collider reports that Snyder has met with HBO to discuss a Watchmen TV series, though at this point that's all the information they have. There's no word yet on whether an eventual show would cover the same material Snyder already covered in the film, or if it might center on the comic prequels Before Watchmen that were released a few years ago. We'll have to wait and see how this pans out, but for now any details about the level of Snyder's involvement and the scope of the show remain a mystery. The story is so dense and sprawling that a mini-series might be a good idea, and it could allow them to maybe include the weirdest aspect of the comic's finale that just wouldn't work in the movie (I won't spoil it, but read the comic if you haven't yet — it's great).

For more, check out this fascinating talk about the film between notable nerd actor/writer Patton Oswalt and Watchmen star Patrick Wilson.

The second season of HBO's True Detective suffered perhaps the biggest case of sophomore slump that I've ever seen. I can't think of another property which had such a beloved first entry followed by such a disappointing follow-up. And yes, there were people out there who practically reveled in tearing the show apart for one reason or another, but as someone who was legitimately hoping it'd be good from the start and was willing to give it a few episodes before I started complaining, I still ended up being hugely disappointed with it. I think the writing was the worst part about it, and it seemed to me that showrunner/creator Nic Pizzolatto simply didn't have enough time to create something all by himself before his deadline arrived.

I'm not the only one who didn't like the writing in the second season. Director David Cronenberg was offered the directing gig on the second season premiere (a job that eventually went to Justin Lin), but he ended up turning it down. As he told the Reykjavik International Film Festival (via Indiewire):

"The heat is in TV. Last year I was approached to direct the first episode of the second season of True Detective, I considered it but I thought that the script was bad, so I didn’t do it. In TV, the director is just a traffic cop, but on the other hand it is work and there’s a lot of it."

It's rare to hear people in the industry talk negatively about projects or writers because they so often want to protect their own asses so they might work with those people (or their studios, etc.) down the line, but Cronenberg apparently doesn't give a crap about that and just straight up tells it like it is. I like it.

I obviously agree with Cronenberg on this one, but where do you stand on True Detective season 2?

A quick line buried in a THR report about financiers who become film producers should be of note to fans concerned about the future of the Terminator franchise. Terminator Genisys didn't exactly light the domestic box office on fire, but it managed to pull in almost $90 million stateside and made $350 million worldwide, which theoretically would be enough to justify its planned sequels which are slated for 2017 and 2019. But THR paints a different picture, relaying that their "sources say the notion of a Terminator universe is on hold indefinitely."

Does that mean that the movies won't hit their projected release dates? That's certainly what it's hinting at, but there's one possible reading of this news that may not lead to that outcome. Though the planned TV series (which was said to cross over with the events of the new films) isn't mentioned at all in the THR article, it's possible that their source could have meant that the show has been put on hold, and therefore the future of a larger "Terminator universe" is in question. But that's a very charitable reading. More likely is the fact that the movies are on hold as Paramount tries to figure out what to do. I didn't mind Genisys, but if the sequels had a better story, I certainly wouldn't complain about it. Hopefully they either improve the scripts or abandon the idea of a new trilogy altogether. I don't want to see this franchise slowly die a protracted death.

For some reason — maybe it's the fact that Spectre is reportedly going to be director Sam Mendes' final James Bond film, or maybe it's the rampant speculation about who will eventually take over the role — some fans have it in their minds that this new movie is definitely going to be star Daniel Craig's last ride as the famous super spy. While there's always the chance Eon Productions could boot him and cast someone else, Craig does in fact have one more movie left on his contract. This is something we've known about for years, but some very recent comments from Craig implied that he might not be interested in coming back after all, so the confusion is understandable.

In a new interview with The Daily Mail, Craig says:

“It’s getting harder. But such is life. I’ll keep going as long as I’m physically able. I’m contracted for one more – but I’m not going to make predictions.”

So there's confirmation that clears up the contractual angle. Meanwhile, when EW (via The Playlist) asked how much longer we could expect him to play the character, he said:

“I can’t give you an honest answer at this point. It’s not that I’m trying to play hard to get. I’ve just given it no thought whatsoever.

This movie has taken up two years of my life. And I just need a break. I need to get back to normal life. I need to reintroduce myself to my family who are not best pleased with me. The idea of planning ahead — I’m not trying to be coy. People want an answer and I don’t have one.”

So it sounds like Craig is up for fulfilling his contract (meaning one more after Spectre), but isn't sure if he's going to be renewed after that. Considering Skyfall is the most financially successful Bond film to date, the producers might have reason to want to keep him around, especially if Spectre is as good of a movie and makes near the same amount at the box office. We'll see, though: by the time the next movie ends up hitting theaters (likely sometime in 2017 or 2018), Craig could be fifty years old, and it might be time to find a new actor to slip into the role.

We have a new poster from The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 that features Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen in front of a flaming mockingjay. While not as artistic as previous posters from the film, it very much says "badass in action." 

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay movies are one of the few times I'm glad they split a book into two parts. The final book of the series felt very rushed and seemed to just skim over events. I fully expect the movies to be better than the book in many respects, especially when it comes to the battles.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 rocks the Capitol on November 20th (USA).