Hot Wheels debuted their Darth Vader car this past summer at San Diego Comic-Con. We’ve seen pictures of it, but now we have an episode of Jay Leno’s Garage that offers us an in-depth, detailed look at this awesome car. There are a lot of really cool things about the vehicle that I didn’t know prior to watching this video, and you even get to see Leno take it out for a test drive. 

Designer Bryan Benedict and builder Billy Hammon take Jay through the Star Wars prop-laden, real-world car that moves - and breathes - like Darth Vader!

I enjoy watching Jay Leno’s Garage from time to time, and I think you’ll enjoy this latest episode.

Bloody Cuts Films has released a fun new short film for the holiday season called "Christmas Horror." If you’re into Christmas horror movie then it’s worth checking out when you get a chance. It’s a simple slow burn style short film that leads up to a nightmarish ending.

It might drop down your chimney, it might mysteriously fill your stockings, it may even slip itself under your tree, but be sure... This Christmas… EVIL IS BACK.

Bloody Cuts return with a frightful Christmas cracker of festive catastrophe, as Oliver Ebsworth, Sian Breckin and Jonah Russell deliver to you Episode 9: “Deathly Presents”.

This year we’ve cooked up a Christmas pudding of pleasurable pain in association with RØDE Microphones, marking a reiginiton of the Bloody Cuts series.

The short film was directed by Ben Franklin, and I hope you enjoy it!

Somtimes filmmakers like to slip some dirty adult jokes into their films that are meant to be for kids. Most of the time these jokes are thrown in known that they will go over the heads of the kids. There are some films I revisted as an adult that I loved as a kid, and it was crazy to see how dirty some of them were! 

Screen Rant has released a video for you to watch called "10 Hidden Adult Jokes in Children's Movies." Some of the movies that included on the list are Space Jam, Shrek, Monster House, The Little Mermaid, Mrs. Doubtfire, and The Road to El Darado. 

In recent years, filmmakers have gotten a lot better at making kids’ movies appeal to adults – usually by filling it with jokes and references that the average kid won’t even understand. There are almost too many to choose from, but these are just a few of our favorite adult jokes that younger audiences never caught. Wait until you see the last one... You won't believe it! Here are Screen Rant’s 10 Hidden Adult Jokes In Children's Movies.

We recently learned which stormtrooper Daniel Craig suited up as in Star Wars: The Force Awaken, but there are even more intriguing cameos that you may have missed. 

Minor SPOILERS Ahead:

During the vision sequence when Rey comes in contact with Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber, we hear several whispering voices, including Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Well, James Arnold Taylor, who provides the voice of Obi-Wan Kenobi in The Clone Wars was originally brought in to provide the voice of Obi-Wan in the sequence where you hear the character's voice say “Rey.” Turn’s out J.J. Abrams didn’t end up using his voice in the final product that we all saw. His voice was replaced by Ewan McGregor and Alec Guinness. 

The news was revealed by Taylor himself when he was asked about it on Twitter. You can read those tweets below, then read quotes from Abrams confirming that the voices of McGregor, Guinness, and Frank Oz were all included in the film:

@maxreborules it was me originally but they replaced me with some guy named Ewan McSomething... 😜

— James Arnold Taylor (@JATactor) December 19, 2015

@t_betts94 yes, it was me originally but they replaced my version with Ewan. I guess if I'm gonna be replaced it should be him! 😀

— James Arnold Taylor (@JATactor) December 19, 2015

Here's what Abrams said about McGregor's involvement in the film, in an interview with EW:

“We asked Ewan McGregor to come in and do the line. And he was awesome and we were very grateful. He was incredibly sweet and handsome, and all that stuff. Then he rode off on his motorcycle. Literally the coolest voice over actor ever.”

The director went on to reveal how Guinness’ voice ended up being used. He explained that Bryan Burk, one of the executives at Bad Robot, surprised him with the voice, and this is how it all went down after Burk had him listen to it:

“I said, ‘That’s cool, is that the thing from Ewan McGregor?’ He said ‘No, we took a line from Alec Guinness saying ‘Afraid.’ They cut it, and you hear the performance – he’s saying it the way I would have begged Alec Guinness to have said it. It is so crazy perfect. So when you hear Obi-Wan talk to Rey it is both Alec Guinness and Ewan McGregor doing the voice.”

Even though it wasn’t much, I love that McGregor came back for this. But there’s always the possibility that there could be more to his character's involvement in future films. We know that Lucasfilm is looking at doing an Obi-Wan Kenobi standalone film that McGregor could reprise his role in. It’s also pretty damn awesome that they were able to include Guinness! 

The other big voice cameo was Frank Oz reprising his role as Yoda, which is another voice heard in the vision sequence. Abrams said:

“He was incredibly generous and came in to Bad Robot, where we had a recording area, and he was doing Yoda, saying a number of lines we gave to him. This whole experience has been one outrageous moment after another. Just watching Frank Oz, you look at him and talk to him and his voice is very deep. I don’t know why I would have thought he sounded like Miss Piggy!”

The addition of these voices just gives us more insight into how Abrams wanted to honor to the original films in the saga and the people who were involved with them. I think it's something the fans appreciate as well. 

We do get to see Han, Luke, and Leia in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but the film really belongs to the new characters, and there are plenty of new faces in the galaxy far, far away. Some are so incredibly minor — examples: J.J. Abrams’ buddy Greg Grunberg plays a pilot named Snap Wexley, and the guys from The Raid pop up for all of two minutes — that they aren’t really worth diving into in any meaningful way, but I think the rest of the new additions are all worth discussing, so I decided to rank them in order of my least favorite to my favorite. Let’s see if you agree with my placement, but heads up — there will be SPOILERS ahead:

9. Captain Phasma

Like any Game of Thrones fan, I think Gwendoline Christie is phenomenal. I was so happy to hear she’d be playing a badass Chrome Trooper in this film, but I was really disappointed to see that Captain Phasma is essentially the Boba Fett of The Force Awakens: she stands there and looks cool for a minute…and that’s about it. She has a ton of potential, and hopefully that’s taken advantage of in future films.

8. Maz Kanata

A Yoda-esque figure who runs her own cantina, Maz doesn’t have a ton to do in this movie, but Lupita Nyong’o does what she can as the all-CG character. I’m intrigued with how she came about Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber, but as she says in the film, that’s a story for another time…probably a comic tie-in or new in-canon novel.

7. Supreme Leader Snoke

Even after seeing the movie, we still know almost nothing about this character. Is he the Emperor, who somehow survived the events of Return of the Jedi? Is he actually 25 feet tall in person, or was the scale of his hologram just kicked up to 11 for some reason? There are more questions than answers when it comes to Andy Serkis’ villain, and I’m interested to see what Rian Johnson does with him in Episode VIII.

6. General Hux

I’m a big fan of Domhnall Gleeson, but his character here wasn’t much more than a mouthpiece for The First Order. But his furious speech to the troops, with spit flying and an insane look in his eyes, barely edged him above Snoke for me. The motivations of the film’s new evil empire aren’t really explained (or even hinted at, as far as I recall), but at least it looked like Gleeson was relishing the chance to play against type.

5. Poe Dameron

I loved this character. His sarcastic comments in the face of danger are endearing, he’s an excellent pilot, and you can feel a genuine sincerity in his friendship with Finn. Poe may seem like a roguish Han Solo type at first, but he’s actually much more of a pure hero than Han ever was; he’s all about completing the mission, and he never even considers doing anything other than “the right thing” at any given time. But after he starts out the film on such a great note, I think he’s sidelined for a little too long before he gets back in action. I would have liked to have seen more of him, because Oscar Isaac does a great job with the character.

4. Kylo Ren

Here’s one of the film’s most complex characters. He’s torn between the two sides of The Force, but his obsession with Darth Vader — his grandfather (!) — and the influence of Snoke leads him to kill his own father in one of the saga’s most heartbreaking moments. (It also reminded me a lot of scene in which Gandalf “dies” in The Fellowship of the Ring, on a bridge over a chasm with his younger friends looking on from afar.) He’s able to read minds using the Force (which I don’t think we’ve seen before in the live-action films), and his history rebelling against Luke’s training sounds like it could have been a movie all its own. He’s much more impetuous than Vader, and his temper makes him a wild card. While Vader might quietly Force choke someone, Kylo Ren seems more likely to hack someone to pieces with his lightsaber in a fit of rage, and Adam Driver gives him enough pathos that the character isn’t viewed as silly or childish.

3. BB-8

Move over, R2 — BB-8 just stole the show when it comes to the saga’s best droid. Its design is flat-out wonderful, and it’s still staggering to me that it’s a real thing that was actually rolling around on location with the actors. It’s able to get across so much personality in such small movements, and its “thumbs up” to Finn got one of my screening’s biggest laughs. Everyone who sees this film is going to want a BB-8 of their own.

2. Finn

Anyone who saw Attack the Block already knew John Boyega was awesome, but now the rest of the world will know just how great he is. Boyega has a magnetic personality, some of the movie’s best jokes, and palpable chemistry with all of his co-stars. Finn is instantly relatable, the kind of hero we hope we’d be in his situation. He’s also just the right amount of goofy, which we see as he’s constantly trying to impress Rey, and he has a haunted past as a child soldier separated from his family and trained to be a First Order Stormtrooper. The reasons he, and no other members of his Stormtrooper brethren, decided to defect aren’t explicitly clear, and though it didn’t bother me much when watching the movie, it’s one of those things that sort of becomes a problem when you’re looking back on it. I still really like the character, but a look into some of the other Stormtrooper’s lives in order to contextualize what made Finn make his decision would have been very welcome.

1. Rey

This is Daisy Ridley’s debut film performance, but she completely owns it and creates one of the best characters in Star Wars history. Rey is as talented a pilot as Han Solo (maybe even moreso), a hell of a mechanic, and completely capable of getting by on her own without ever needing to be rescued by any of the film’s male characters (that last part is especially refreshing). Oh, and she’s Force sensitive in a big way, showing more promise of being a Jedi by the end of one film than Luke Skywalker did after two. She’s untrained but extremely powerful, able to hold her own against Kylo Ren in both mind tricks and lightsaber battles, and she’s also coming to terms with her own past, which is full of abandonment issues. Ridley is alternately vulnerable and resilient, mastering the balance between being hesitant about her future and brave enough to embrace it. And considering the film’s provocative final images, I can’t wait to see how her storyline plays out.

A new TV spot has been released for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and in it, you get to see our two heroes intensely yell at each other in German. The whole spot is completely in German, and that actually adds some wonderfully entertaining charm to it. The spot also includes a bit of footage from the film that I don't recall seeing before. 

Fearing the actions of a god-like super hero left unchecked, Gotham City’s own formidable, forceful vigilante takes on Metropolis’s most revered, modern-day savior, while the world wrestles with what sort of hero it really needs.  And with Batman and Superman at war with one another, a new threat quickly arises, putting mankind in greater danger than it’s ever known before.

The movie is set to be released on March 25th, 2016.

Via: Batman-News

Jurassic World blew up at the box office this summer, and many of the fans of the original like myself loved it! I really liked how it harkened back to the original film and paid tribute to it. One of the things they did that I loved was bring back the T-Rex from the first film. At the end of both films, the T-Rex swooped in and saved the day. But that came close to never happening in this film or in the first one, because Steven Spielberg almost killed off the iconic dinosaur in Jurassic Park.

Jurassic Park producer Kathleen Kennedy was a recently a guest on the Nerdist Podcast, and she revealed that the T-Rex was originally supposed to be killed off in the middle of the first film. Thankfully, she managed to stop Spielberg from doing it! She recalls the story of what happened saying: 

"I was sitting by the monitor one time with Steven on Jurassic and about halfway through the movie we killed the T. Rex. He was sitting there and he goes, 'Guys, guys come here—we can’t kill the T. Rex!' He had been watching the movie in his head as we’re shooting, and we’re halfway through the process and we’re nearing the moment where we’re gonna shoot the scene where we kill the T. Rex and he’s like, 'No, the T. Rex is the star of the movie. We can’t kill him.'

"So we called the production designer Rick Carter over and we, literally right by the monitor, started to talk about how we were going to change the next scene and the entire end of the film as we were making it, so that we could keep our leading actor, the T. Rex, alive."

It’s pretty crazy to learn how close this movie was to killing off this iconic franchise dinosaur. I’m happy they ended up not taking that route. Who would have saved Dr. Grant and the rest of the characters at the climax of the movie when they were about to be torn apart by the raptors?!

There are so many questions I have regarding Kylo Ren and Rey in the new Star Wars trilogy. I’m sure all of these questions will be answered by the time Lucasfilm’s trilogy is complete. I can’t wait to learn more about the backstory of these characters!

In a recent interview with IGN, J.J. Abrams talked a little bit about Kylo Ren’s past and teased what drove him to turn to the Dark Side. 

SPOILERS ahead if you haven’t seen the movie yet.

Here’s what Abrams had to say:

“Kylo Ren idolizes Darth Vader, not Anakin Skywalker. He idolizes what Vader represents and what Vader was trying to do, and the idea that Vader didn’t succeed, if you look at it from Ren’s point of view, he was seduced by the enemy and failed because of that seduction. So the idea is that Ren wants to complete the thing that Vader started.”

The director also talks about the intense power that resides in Ben Solo, a.k.a, Kylo Ren, and how he was able to be manipulated and turned to the dark side. 

“An incredible power, an incredible force, and incredible potential that was, like many young people, sort of misguided and unclear. And the story for him is one of conflict, not just internal conflict but external conflict. And it’s what makes him a rather interesting villain.”

He really is an interesting villain, and I love what Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan did in bringing him to life. He is full of such rage and hate and is worried that he would never be as strong as Darth Vader, but he proved himself wrong when he killed his own dad, Han. That took him to a whole new level of evil that I don’t think Darth Vader dared to go. Vader had the chance to kill his son Luke multiple times, but he never did it, and then he ultimately saved Luke from being killed by the Emperor. That was his redemption moment, and at this point, it's hard to think that Kylo Ren can ever be redeemed after what he did. I don’t want him to be redeemed. I want him to get what he has coming to him. I guess it's possible, though, because Vader did a lot of terrible evil shit as well.

We learned from the film that Ben was being taught be Luke Skywalker before he was seduced by the dark side and turned against him. I can’t wait to get the backstory on that! I imagine more of his backstory will be revealed in the next chapter of the saga, and I can't wait to see it!

I've been wanting to spotlight Rob Duenas' artwork for quite awhile actually. With Star Wars fever at an all time high, this new Star Wars gaming tribute piece was too good not to feature. Rob's line work is so clean and stylized, and here he has taken that to an extreme. There are so many little details here, but because his line work is so strong it isn't overwhelming, just begging to be analyzed for a good long while to catch everything. It took a few looks to catch them, and I'm sure I haven't caught them all. Things like the little Han Solo in Carbonite keychain hanging next to mini Lando on Leia's Boba Fett backpack, or the little Ewok poking his head out of the Star Wars arcade machine. He fit in a set of Disney Infinity figures, and even got in a little Funko Fabrikations-esque looking J.J. Abrams. Plus, it's nice to know what Leia does in her off time when she's not trying to take down the Empire. Everybody needs to let off steam.

You can see the sketch of the pic below, and you can catch more of Rob's work on his Sketchcraft facebook page or his Deviant Art page. 

When the first official photo and the full cast list from Wonder Woman were released a few weeks ago, Nicole Kidman's name was conspicuously absent. Since she was rumored to play Hippolyta, the Amazonian queen, just a little while before that official cast list was revealed, it seemed odd that she wouldn't be involved — and it seemed even more odd that House of Cards and The Princess Bride star Robin Wright's name was on the list, considering no one had heard anything about her involvement with the film. Naturally, many assumed Wright had taken over Kidman's role, but apparently that isn't the case.

Variety reporter Justin Kroll tweeted some details a couple of days ago:

As you know Kidman's dates didn't work out so they are trying to figure out whether to just give Robin Wright that role or find another star

— Justin Kroll (@krolljvar) December 18, 2015

Don't know what role Wright currently has but it isn't Hippolyta like others believed, it's actually another role

— Justin Kroll (@krolljvar) December 18, 2015

In fact Wright's deal for her unknown role had closed before Kidman even had an offer, so we'll just have to see what ends up happening

— Justin Kroll (@krolljvar) December 18, 2015

So the source of all of this is a scheduling conflict, and it sounds like, as of right now, Wright is playing a mystery character. Could she have won the role of Circe, the villain that Eva Green was initially rumored to play? That'd make some sense; watching her icy performance in House of Cards, one could easily imagine those skills being translated to a straight-up comic book villain. Green and Sean Bean — who was also rumored to be playing a villainous role — were both also absent from the official press release confirming the cast, so it's possible that one or both of them are no longer options for Warner Bros. and director Patty Jenkins.

It remains to be seen whether or not WB will give Wright the role of Hippolyta, but she certainly has the talent to play any character in the DCEU, so whoever she ends up playing, hopefully she'll force everyone around her to step up their game and improve the entire movie.

2015 was a rough year for America, but it ended up being a pretty terrific year for film. Still, there were a group of movies that ended up disappointing me because I didn’t think they fully lived up to their potential. I suspect your list won’t look exactly like mine since we all go into movies with different expectations and different levels of anticipation, but here, in no particular order, are my six biggest movie disappointments of this year in film.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

I’ve voiced this concern elsewhere on the site already, but to me, Avengers: Age of Ultron marked a major turning point in the history of Marvel Studios. It was the first time I thought there was simply too much going on at once — too many characters, too many story beats, too many side quests — to the point where it made me almost completely check out of the film. I grew up loving this stuff, and I’ve been a big fan of almost all of the Marvel Studios films up to this point (sorry, Thor franchise), so when someone who is super excited to see a movie like this walks out disappointed, there might be something wrong. I really like the idea of Tony Stark creating a program that becomes sentient and tries to wipe out the planet, but Age of Ultron often felt more like a studio-mandated checklist than a well-told story, and we all know how the stress and behind the scenes back-and-forth essentially broke Joss Whedon. On paper, Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War sound really cool in that “Oh yeah, we’re getting to see these awesome characters fight with each other and then reunite to bring down Thanos!” kind of way, but after seeing how many characters were shoved into Ultron and knowing that even more are going to be in future films, I find it hard to believe that there’s going to be enough time to give fans enough of the characters they want to see when there’s perpetually so much set-up that has to be done for upcoming films. I’d love to be proven wrong about that with those movies, but Age of Ultron doesn’t have me particularly optimistic about the future of the MCU.

Chappie

I wasn’t thrilled with Elysium, Neill Blomkamp’s follow-up to District 9, mainly because I didn’t think the script was very good. Blomkamp wrote that one all by himself, so when I heard he was reuniting with his District 9 writing partner Terri Tatchell for Chappie, it raised my expectations and I hoped this could be a return to form. Now I know better: I’d rewatch Elysium over Chappie any day without hesitation. The choice to include Die Antwoord members Ninja and Yo-Landi Visser as the leads crippled the film from the get-go (they’re so clearly not professional actors and they’re so bad, it feels like punishment having to watch them through the whole movie), and though I appreciate some of the larger concepts Blomkamp attempted to tackle here, they’re handled in such a nonsensical way that they simply don’t have the desired effect. Cool visual effects alone can’t save a film like this — there needed to be a really solid foundation, and this script failed to match that description.

Tomorrowland

I was really looking forward to Brad Bird’s second live-action effort, because there were so many potentially cool aspects at play that sounds like I would have loved: a completely original story, a female protagonist not saddled with a love interest, NASA, the secret history of Disney, a mysterious countdown clock, inventors, science. But aside from one jubilant scene in which the main character travels to Tomorrowland for the first time, the film couldn’t quite capture the effervescent magic the trailers and premise promised. It’s a movie that wants to be optimistic about our future, but while it brings up some decent points (“how can we live in a world in which there are simultaneous obesity epidemics and hunger strikes?”), it never does anything meaningful with those observations. For a movie called Tomorrowland, so little of the movie actually takes place there, and Britt Robertson’s character is essentially sidelined in the climactic moments in her own film as George Clooney gets to be the one to save the world. I loved the concept, but I wish they would have delved deeper with this one.

Spectre

I wrote a ton about my history with the Bond franchise and my in-depth feelings about Spectre when the movie came out, and while I still think the movie is in the top 10 Bond films, the more I think about it, the less I like it. I don’t mind the whole “surveillance state” subplot as much as I did on first watch — it is a spy movie, after all — but what they did with Christoph Waltz’s character is practically unforgivable, and it really does have a negative narrative effect on the previous Daniel Craig Bond films. But in a year packed with some pretty spectacular spy films, and coming on the heels of Skyfall, it’s hard to see how Spectre could be considered anything other than a disappointment.

Ted 2

I know Seth MacFarlane is an intelligent person, so it’s frustrating to see his insistence on going for the quickest, easiest joke all the time. It’s especially disappointing in Ted 2, a film that seemed like his chance for redemption after the failed A Million Ways to Die in The West, and a sequel to a movie that did mega box office numbers and seems generally well-liked. But whatever magic was present the first time around has worn off, and I might have been able to better stand seeing Ted and Mark Wahlberg’s characters being rewarded for acting like immature idiots if the film was rip-roaringly funny. Sadly, though, most of the jokes missed the mark for me.

What were your biggest movie disappointments of 2015? Sound off in the comments below.

If you watch Steven Soderbergh’s The Knick, then you know the second season ended with quite a shocking cliffhanger. It was one of those events that made it hard to think there would be a third season. I’ll talk about the spoiler stuff at the end of the post.

Regardless of how Season 2 ended, Cinemax is looking at putting a third season into development. The cable network is currently in negotiations with the creators to do it, and according to Variety, they’ve apparently already ordered a script to be written for the season 3 premiere. 

Series creators Michael Begler and Jack Amiel would both return as executive producers and writers, should Cinemax order up season 3. Cinemax released a statement saying:

“Cinemax has been in conversations with Steven Soderbergh on how we might continue with ‘The Knick,' When first conceived, the series was always meant to be presented in a two-year story arc, and Steven has been meeting with the writers to discuss how to proceed.”

It’s going to be interesting to see how they proceed if the series gets another season. I’m going to jump into some major SPOILER territory now.

Clive Owen’s Dr. Thackery seemingly died at the end of the series, after he attempted to perform surgery on himself. When Owen was asked if his character died, Owen said, “It certainly looks that way.”

It’s really hard to imagine this series with out Owen’s character. But the story can certainly keep going with the other characters — I just don’t see it as being as interesting as it has been without Owen.

Owen only originally committed to two seasons, but I guess there’s a chance he could return if they wanted him to. No decisions have been made regarding his return for another season, but we’ll see how things go.

Soderbergh recently finished shooting a project for HBO called Mosaic with Sharon Stone and Garrett Hedlund. That project is described as an interactive choose your own adventure project in which viewers have the option of seeing the story play out in different ways. I’m really excited about that project.

Soderbergh has directed every episode of The Knick so far, and if Cinemax does a Season 3, I hope he comes back to do it.

Source: Variety

What kind of sucker keeps buying all these re-releases of Kingdom Hearts games on the PS3? I'll tell you which, suckers like me. I love the Kingdom Hearts series, and I'm stoked I get to play the handheld spin-offs on... View Full Post on GameTyrant

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As you can hopefully tell by the headline, there are spoilers ahead for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. If you're one of the few people who didn't go see the movie in theaters on opening weekend, A) go see it and come back or B) turn back now. You've been warned.

In an interview with GQ, Oscar Isaac — who plays Resistance pilot Poe Dameron — revealed that his character was originally going to die pretty early on in the movie. 

Isaac says he had been summoned to Paris for what he suspected might be a role in The Force Awakens. Sure enough, earlier that day, he had met with Abrams, screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan, and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, and Abrams had pitched him the character of Poe Dameron, a badass fighter pilot battling against the remnants of the Empire.

“He’s amazing!” said Abrams.

“Sounds good!” thought Isaac, whose first experience in a movie theater had been seeing The Empire Strikes Back.

“He opens the whole movie!” said Abrams.

“Sounds great!” thought Isaac.

“And then,” Abrams went on. “He dies.”

“Oh,” thought Isaac.

He let his disappointment show, and he and Abrams spent the rest of the meeting talking about how Poe could still make an impact in the Star Wars universe outside of The Force Awakens. But apparently Abrams saw Isaac's initial reaction, and decided to rework the script:

“I went back home [to New York], and I thought about it,” [Isaac] says. “Then I wrote [Abrams] and said, ‘Okay. I’ll do it!’ I figured it would be a cameo: I’ll come in, do my thing, and maybe it’s actually better not to have to sign myself up for three movies.” By that time, though, things had changed and Abrams soon wrote back: “Never mind. I’ve figured it out. You’re in the whole movie now.”

“I was like, ‘Holy shit! Alright, cool,’ ” Isaac says.

Poe follows in a long tradition of characters who were originally going to die, only to be saved at the hands of their creators. The most recent high-profile example I can think of is Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad. Vince Gilligan planned on killing off the character near the end of the first season, but Aaron Paul ended up being so good in the role that Gilligan wanted to see what else he could do with that character. That ended up being a terrific decision that helped make that show arguably the greatest TV series of all time. Even though I would have loved to see more of Poe in The Force Awakens, I'm really glad he didn't get killed in the first few minutes of the movie because I'm a big fan of his character. Hopefully Rian Johnson can write him an even more spectacular part in Episode VIII.

Harry Potter and The Cursed Child is the new two-part stage play that will continue the wizard's story starting in London's West End next year, taking place nineteen years after the events of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2. You can read some details about the story right here, but now the production has officially cast actors to play Harry, Hermoine, and Ron. Check out the announcement from its official Twitter account:

We’re thrilled to confirm Jamie Parker, Noma Dumezweni & Paul Thornley will play Harry, Hermione & Ron #CursedChild pic.twitter.com/s1rsDbrXMO

— Harry Potter Play (@HPPlayLDN) December 21, 2015

First of all, it's awesome that they cast a black actress as Hermoine. This is art we're talking about — no one should have to justify a casting decision like that. But before any fans start freaking the hell out about this, check out what J.K. Rowling herself has to say:

Canon: brown eyes, frizzy hair and very clever. White skin was never specified. Rowling loves black Hermione 😘 https://t.co/5fKX4InjTH

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) December 21, 2015

That's an excellent point, and again, even though no justification should be needed, approval from the series' creator should hopefully be enough to keep the haters from rolling in. Tickets for Harry Potter and The Cursed Child are on sale now, so if you're lucky enough to either live in London or have a trip planned there for summer of 2016, let us know how it is!

It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children.

While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a Ken Burns documentary series, but they’re freakin’ amazing! I’m actually currently watching his doc series on The Roosevelts. So far, out of all the ones that I’ve seen, his Civil War doc is my favorite.

The Washington Post has released an amusing video that uses Burns' famous style to tell the epic story of the Galactic Civil War from Star Wars. The project was spearheaded by Alyssa Rosenberg, who says:

“I recruited PostEverything’s Dan Drezner, Act Four columnist Sonny Bunch and Digital Opinions Editor James Downie to work with me and genius video editor Thomas LeGro to remake “The Civil War” “Star Wars”-style.”

If you’re familiar with Burns’ work, then you’re sure to get a kick out of this.

If you haven't seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens yet, then you probably don't want to read this. If you have, then you'll learn why director J.J. Abrams and screenwriter Michael Arndt did what they did with R2-D2 near the end of the film.

When we see BB-8 and R2-D2 on screen together for the first time, it looks like R2-D2 isn't functioning, and BB-8 tries to wake him up. C-3PO then enters the scene and explains to BB-8 that R2 has been in low power mode since Luke Skywalker went into hiding after his student Ben Solo turned to the Dark Side and became Kylo Ren.

At the end of the movie, R2 conveniently woke up and has the final piece of the puzzle to help find Luke Skywalker. Why did it take so long for him to wake up from low power mode? How did he have the entire map to Luke's whereabouts, and not the piece of it that BB-8 was carrying around?

In an interview with EW, we learn the answers to these question from Abrams and Arndt. Arndt explains:

“We had the idea about R2 plugging into the information base of the Death Star, and that’s how he was able to get the full map and find where the Jedi temples are.”

Han Solo does tell Rey and Finn in the film that those who knew Luke best said he went to search for the first Jedi temple. So it makes sense that R2-D2 had a map of where Luke could go looking for it. That also explains why the First Order has the rest of the map since the villain mentions that they obtained it from the archives of the Empire. 

Abrams explains that this was all referenced indirectly in the movie because he didn’t want the story to get bogged down in “how s–t happened 30 years ago.” The director went on to explain what BB-8 says to R2-D2 while he was still in low power mode.

“BB-8 comes up and says something to him, which is basically, ‘I’ve got this piece of a map, do you happen to have the rest?' The idea was, R2 who has been all over the galaxy, is still in his coma, but he hears this. And it triggers something that would ultimately wake him up.”

Abrams does acknowledge that the way he handled this was designed to be an "emotional storytelling utility," he says:

"While it may seem, you know, completely lucky and an easy way out, at that point in the movie, when you’ve lost a person, desperately, and somebody you hopefully care about is unconscious, you want someone to return.”

So it basically just took a long ass time for R2-D2 to boot his system, and get up and running again. But in the end, they got the map and found Luke! It will be interesting to see how he's changed after all these years, after all the things that he went through. I can't wait to see him jump back into the fight! We all know it will happen, but I'm sure he'll have his reservations. After he finds out what Kylo Ren did to Han Solo, though, there's no doubt he is going to come face to face with his student eventually. 

I’m thrilled to introduce the first episode of an ongoing new podcast called GeekTyrant Audio, where we put the focus on the artists behind the music of the TV shows and films that we love.
 
Charlie Clouser is the composer of Resident Evil: Extinction, the Saw franchise, Wayward Pines, Childhood’s End, and also wrote the opening theme to American Horror Story. Those works follow a long-running music career as a member of Nine Inch Nails, and a collaborator with A Perfect Circle, Puscifer, White Zombie, Rammstein, Type O Negative, Fuel. He has even collaborated with Marilyn Manson and David Bowie.

In this debut episode of GeekTyrant Audio, we discuss how Clouser created the gorgeous, atmospheric, and occasionally creepy, dread-inducing soundscapes for Childhood’s End and Wayward Pines. We discuss how he learned a lot from his years of work alongside Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails, Gone Girl, and The Social Network soundtracks), and the importance of crafting synthesized sounds that resonate with us on an organic and human level. We also cover some philosophy about what it takes to persevere towards accomplishment of your goals in life, and how as an artist it’s important that you take what you can from your influences while forging your own path with a mindset geared towards innovation.

Childhood’s End has recently aired on SyFy, but you can rewatch the episodes direct on Syfy’s website. The Childhood’s End Original Soundtrack is available on iTunes. You can also find the soundtrack for Wayward Pines on iTunes.
 
In the weeks ahead, we’ll be bringing you additional in-depth interviews such as these where we find out how these awesome soundtracks and scores came together. What are some scoress to films and TV shows that you love? Let me know, and I’ll work to getting these composers on upcoming shows to talk about some of the finer details within these sonic masterpieces.

Earlier this year, we learned that Dolph Lundgren was shooting Kindergarten Cop 2. I was surprised to learn that this is actually happening, and now we have some official photos from the film featuring a frustrated Lundgren yelling at kids and other awkward interactions that the actor has with them.

In the film, Lundgren plays an undercover cop posing as a kindergarten teacher who is "on the trail of a missing flash drive from the Federal Witness protection program. Somehow it’s wound up in a kindergarten class." Lundgren will also have "an Indian sidekick named Sanjit" helping him track down a group of Albanian bad guys.

It's a shame they didn't get Arnold Schwarzenegger on board to team up with Lundgren in this ridiculous sequel. As I joked about in my initial report, the next Expendables movie should be patterned after Kindergarten Cop. I have to watch this movie just to see how absurd it will actually be. Lundgren interacting with a bunch of children seems crazier than Schwarzenegger!

The movie is being directed by Michael Don Paul (Jarhead 2: Field of Fire) from a script written by David H. Steinberg (American Pie). 

Today the Batman fanatics over at Rocksteady Studios released a video discussing the upcoming Season of Infamy DLC for Batman: Arkham Knight. Originally this was meant to be the last bit of Dark Knight goodness we would... View Full Post on GameTyrant

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