"Dead Hearts" is a great short film that follows the story a young mortician who learns that “not even death can stand in the way of true love.” It’s described as a “whimsical, gothic bedtime story filled with love, loss, taxidermy, Kung Fu, and biker werewolves.” Because every film needs biker werewolves! 

Sound like something you’d be interested in? Then you should probably watch it because it is incredibly entertaining! Who would have thought that death could be so much fun!? I saw "Dead Hearts" for the first time at the FilmQuest film festival last year, and I’ve eagerly been waiting for it to be released online. The short was directed by Stephen Martin, and now you get a chance to see it for yourself! Enjoy!

When I started this video I was worried my boy Michael Mac let me down! Luckily, things picked up around the :50-second mark and my dream of a metal theme to Luigi's Mansion was fully realized...read more on Gametyrant

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Rumors about Ridley Scott's upcoming sci-fi Alien prequel/Prometheus sequel Alien: Covenant have been hitting hard over the past week or so, and now there's a new one that might raise eyebrows of Alien fans out there. Possible spoilers ahead, so turn back now if you don't want to know.

AVP Galaxy, the same site that brought us the recent information about the names of the new xenomorphs, apparently has access to someone inside the film's production who has revealed the opening scene of the movie to them. And as if that weren't enough, it includes the surprising return of a character I thought we wouldn't be seeing in this franchise anymore: Guy Pearce's Peter Weyland.

We have learnt that Guy Pearce will be reprising his role as a slightly younger Peter Weyland during the film’s opening scenes. The current edit of Alien: Covenant begins with David 8 being brought online in a large white room with a grand view overlooking an ocean.

A younger, but still somewhat aged, Weyland asks David various questions to test him. We eventually move to David performing Richard Wagner’s Entrance of the Gods into Valhalla, explaining the meaning of the piece as he plays.

David explains that it is about God’s abandoning their creations due their displeasure with their creation’s greed and vanity, only to realise that the Gods themselves sharing the same flaws. This leads to David and Peter discussing Gods and creations and human mortality which strikes a chord with Weyland (a tip of the hat to his motivation in Prometheus).

After seeing a super old Weyland in Prometheus, I just assumed that would be the last we saw of that character in this franchise. That's all the information the site has about Weyland's appearance in Alien: Covenant, but now I'm starting to wonder if maybe Weyland might appear in all of these films that lead up to the original Alien. If flashbacks aren't off the table, it makes sense that Scott would want an actor as talented as Pearce on board to add a bit of gravitas to the proceedings. What do you all think?

Alien: Covenant arrives in theaters on August 4, 2017.

Hat tip: B.M.D.

It was recently announced that legendary comic book artist Alex Ross would be releasing a series of art based on the classic Universal monster movies. Over the weekend, I posted the first piece that he created featuring all of the monsters, and now he is starting to release the individual posters for each character. 

Today I have the art for The Wolfman and The Mummy, and as you can see, it's spectacularly stunning work. I can't wait to see what Ross does with the other characters! This is definitely a series of art I would love to own. 

These classic Universal Monster movies are favorites of mine, and it's a shame that the upcoming reboot films probably won't be as amazing as this art. 

Source: Alex Ross

Fuller House returns to Netflix for a second season on December 9th. While I can't say I was a huge fan of the show, I did watch the first season and things did get progressively better as it went along. Check out the girls doing a cheeseball sketch below!

Doug Liman must be tired, because he's been making headlines for more than a week now. First it was announced that he was bringing Jumper back to life in a YouTube Red digital series, then he talked about turning the comic book movie genre on its head with Justice League Dark, and on Friday, we wrote about his claims of how his Edge of Tomorrow 2 will "revolutionize the way people make sequels." In addition to all of that, Deadline reports that Liman is now attached to direct yet another movie, and this one sounds like it could be a future favorite of those of you who love sci-fi adventure movies.

Liman will direct Unearthed, a film adaptation of an upcoming book written by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner. Here's the description:

[Unearthed] is a YA thriller described as Lara Croft meets Indiana Jones, set in deep space. Jules Addison and Amelia Radcliffe join forces in a tomb-raiding race on a newly discovered planet to unravel the secrets of an ancient, long-extinct civilization — only to uncover a revelation that could spell the end of the human race.

I love the idea of a Lara Croft type and an Indy type hanging out and raiding tombs in space, so this sounds like it could be a lot of fun (not to mention the fact that Liman is a great director who could bring a great visual eye to the movie). The book will be the first of a two book series, so it seems like there's sequel potential here if the first film performs well enough. What do you think? Looking forward to this one?

A chart online provided by SamuelWBennett is showing that the number of Netflix subscriptions will soon overtake the total amount of cable subscriptions in the United States. Currently, the number sits at 48.86 million subscribers for cable, and 47.5 million for Netflix. 

While some part of this is due to the amount of cord-cutting that is happening across the nation, there's also a significant population who have both cable subscriptions and Netflix accounts. I even saw on my Comcast account yesterday that you can add a Netflix subscription to your cable account. Why you would want to do that and have to screw with Comcast's awful navigation system is beyond me, but it is an option.

It seems like more and more people I'm friends with are cutting cable out of their lives completely. Are you one of them? What would it take to get you to go back to cable television?

James Cameron has built his career on pushing the boundaries of what's possible. He's made at least four movies (Terminator 2, True Lies, Titanic, and Avatar) that were the most expensive films ever at the time of their productions, and he's able to get those budgets because he is a demanding filmmaker with an uncompromising vision. Obviously that's paid off for him in a big way over the years, and he's almost singlehandedly responsible for launching the resurgence of 3D movies with Avatar back in 2009. Now that Cameron has moved on to his Avatar sequels, he's not resting on his laurels — he wants to keep taking things to the next level when it comes to cinematic presentation.

On Friday night, Cameron accepted honorary membership into the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, and Indiewire was there to snag a quote from his acceptance speech about how he intends to approach technology moving forward:

“I’m going to push. Not only for better tools, workflow, high dynamic range (HDR) and high frame rates (HFR) — the things we are working toward. I’m still very bullish on 3D, but we need brighter projection, and ultimately I think it can happen — with no glasses. We’ll get there.”

I'm not sure how glasses-free 3D works or what kind of systems need to be in place in theaters for that kind of projection to occur, and that certainly sounds like a tall order to fulfill. But over the years, I've learned never to underestimate James Cameron. If he puts his mind to something, you can bet he's never going to stop trying until it's achieved — even if it's something as crazy as glasses-free 3D. Here's hoping he manages to get that up and running sometime soon, because I hate wearing 3D glasses when I go to the movies.

Dead Rising 4 may be Christmas-themed, but don't let that get in the way of thinking about it this Halloween! Capcom released a new trailer that shows all the crazy weapons...read more on Gametyrant

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You knew it was only a matter of time. Did you really think Funko wasn't going to jump on the Stranger Things bandwagon? Unfortunately, the figures won't be available until early 2017, which robs everyone of a great stocking stuffer for the holiday season! Entertainment Weekly managed to get a first look at the figures, but we have them here below as well. 

Here's the second trailer for The Eyes of My Mother, an unsettling-looking black and white horror film that earned some pretty solid buzz from the festival scene earlier this year. The first trailer released for the movie was pretty disturbing, but this one (which practically serves as a prequel to the first trailer) is full of subtle, understated terror as you realize what a little girl is capable of doing to her "friend." Take a look below and let us know what you think.

The Eyes of My Mother hits theaters, On Demand, iTunes, and Amazon Video on December 2, 2016.

In their secluded farmhouse, a mother, formerly a surgeon in Portugal, teaches her daughter, Francisca, to understand anatomy and be unfazed by death. One afternoon, a mysterious visitor horrifyingly shatters the idyll of Francisca’s family life, deeply traumatizing the young girl, but also awakening some unique curiosities. Though she clings to her increasingly reticent father, Francisca’s loneliness and scarred nature converge years later when her longing to connect with the world around her takes on a distinctly dark form.

At GeekTyrant, we like to celebrate heroes. Some of us can only aspire to be as great as this guy who decided to dress up at the logo for 20th Century Fox. Even if we managed to recreate the artistry executed in his costume, I fear none of us would possess the strength to then meme themselves by playing the crappy flute version of the theme. 

This man did, and on this Halloween of 2016, we salute him. 

While Ben Affleck is busy playing the latest live-action incarnation of Batman, his brother Casey Affleck isn't content to sit on the sidelines and let his big bro have all the fun. According to Variety, Casey will star in an upcoming movie called Villain, a film for which he also wrote the screenplay.

The movie is set in a city overrun with crime. Affleck’s character loses everything of meaning in his life when a brutal home invasion leaves his family dead and two bullets lodged in his head. He develops a unique power in the wake of his trauma — an ability to see into people’s pasts, presents, and futures — and goes on a mission of revenge to find the men who killed his family, and in the process clean up his city long overdue for justice.

But as his vigilante acts become more frequent and violent in nature, his arrival as the city’s hero may instead be the announcement of its most prolific villain.

A complex movie about a guy with superpowers who starts out with good intentions but takes things too far and may become the villain of his own story? Sounds awesome to me, and I've always considered Casey Affleck to be an underrated actor, so I'm glad to see him write a project for himself that will presumably play to strengths we might not even know he has as a performer.

He'll next appear in Manchester by the Sea, a drama that earned rave reviews at Sundance (read ours here) and seems to be in position to make a big splash during awards season. 

HBO must be pretty happy with the audience response to Westworld. The show is only halfway through its first season, and it’s already dominating the pop culture discussion on Sunday nights with fan theories, speculation, and deep dive articles flying left and right after every episode. But I don’t know about you, but at the halfway mark of season one, the see-saw has tipped for me from the show being “mostly intriguing” to “mostly frustrating.”

There’s no arguing that the show is gorgeous to look at and exceptional at being mysterious. It’s set up a ton of mysteries in only five episodes and it’s delved into some interesting thematic territory while doing so, exploring questions about what makes us human, how much of an effect our environment has on what kind of person we are, and much more. It tries very hard to be deep and meaningful, and I’d say it occasionally succeeds in that regard.

But where it’s failed for me, at least so far, has been in presenting compelling characters. Westworld has drawn inevitable comparisons to Lost for the way it sets up mysteries. Many fans are hoping that Westworld answers its questions more satisfyingly than Lost did; say what you will about Lost, though — that was a show that truly cared about crafting its characters. It took the time to make us care about the castaways right from the very beginning and continued building and deepening them from there. Westworld has chosen to tell its story in a similarly oblique way, but telling it largely through the hosts’ perspective, while a theoretically interesting decision, hasn’t resulted in the kind of characters that an audience can latch on to in the same way. 

Yes, I’m interested in Dolores’ journey of self-discovery, and secondarily, I’m interested in Maeve’s similar trajectory toward finding out the truth about the park. But that’s about it for me so far. The storylines of the park operators don’t interest me because they haven’t even established the rules of how the park really works yet, and I think the show is at its worst in both acting (sorry, third Hemsworth brother, but your line readings are terrible) and dialogue (see: the scene from this week’s episode in which one lab guy yells at the other one how he’ll always be a butcher and nothing more…gimme a break). I could endure some of the “off” episodes of Lost because even if the interesting mythology stuff I cared about wasn’t addressed in a satisfactory way that particular week, I still had these characters to fall back on. So far in Westworld, I think showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy have spent too much time introducing mysteries and not enough making us care about the people trying to solve them.

What do you think?

While I will concede that this is far from the best Silver Surfer cosplay I've ever seen, it's pretty decent. I give him a 10/10 alone for the chromed-out board and sneakers! I also have to give him a lot of respect for having the guts to surf around town in NYC traffic without fear of getting arrested or hit by something! 

Good stuff. 

Become the Sean Connery 007 you've always wanted to be in I Expect You To Die! IEYTD takes the best parts of being a '60s spy and puts you in the front seat via Oculus and PSVR...read more on Gametyrant

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The news that Atlanta and Community star Donald Glover will be playing Lando Calrissian in Lucasfilm's Han Solo movie has certainly piqued our interest, but we've been curious about this project since the moment we heard that Phil Lord and Chris Miller were going to direct it. The Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Jump Street filmmakers have done an amazing job of taking concepts that sound terrible and actually turning out fantastic final products (exhibit A: The LEGO Movie), so something as clearly corporate-driven as a prequel about the adventures of young Han Solo could actually end up being enjoyable with these guys at the helm.

And we know that the movie will look fantastic, too, since they've hired cinematographer Bradford Young to shoot it. Young is the guy behind Selma, Ain't Them Bodies Saints, A Most Violent Year, and the upcoming sci-fi masterpiece Arrival, and in a new interview with Collider, he spoke a bit about joining the Star Wars universe and what we can expect from the Han Solo flick:

"Don’t put those guys in a box because they have a vision, they know exactly what they want. They have no hidden agenda, but they do have an agenda; they have a way of seeing that’s very special, and their collaboration is genuinely unique. So I have to say I had to get converted into that. I respect their work, I respect them as filmmakers, but I wasn’t quite sure if there would be a good marriage between what I’m trying to pursue and the work that I’m doing and what they’re doing, but they helped make that real clear to me early on by expressing some real interesting story [and] photographic ideas that really resonated with me.

These cats are subversive, don’t let it fool you (laughs). They are prepared to say exactly what they wanna say and it’s complex, it’s layered, it’s smart, it’s visual, it’s dramatic, it’s funny, it’s uneasy, it’s unexpected. These cats are—I’m honored to have them in the list of directors I’ve worked with, that’s for sure.

We’re doing our own thing, that’s why we’re there. Phil and Chris are there to bring what they bring to their films, their very unique vision, their perspective on story and they asked me to come bring what I bring, and so just for that it won’t feel like any of the other films. And nobody at Lucasfilm is asking us to betray that, they’re saying ‘We’re in full support of what you do and we wanna make sure that we’re able to help you do it in the best way.’ It’s gonna feel like a Star Wars film, but we’re definitely gonna break some rules, and we’re encouraged to do that. Visually, narratively, that’s a good mandate. They really are about, from what I’ve seen so far, supporting up and coming artists, artists who have a strong vision and voice and perspective, and they really wanna permeate the films with those kinds of voices. So it’s interesting, very interesting. Not what I thought it would be, that’s for sure. I’m pleasantly encouraged and pleasantly surprised."

That quote makes it sound like the fans' belief in these filmmakers is not misguided. I can't wait to see what they do with the opportunity to play in this sandbox.

Filming on the Han Solo prequel film begins in January, and it's scheduled to arrive in theaters on May 25, 2018. Alden Ehrenreich stars.

Happy Halloween from Franklin Manor! To commemorate the holiday, Junto archivists Dave and Rob are broadcasting from the mansion's scullery and sharing a long forgotten tale from America's past. It's a story from the old New England town of Alloway, about a con man named Jack, a deal with the Devil, and the birth of Halloween...Listen on PodTyrant

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Disney is having a lot of success with their big screen live-action adaptations of their animated movies, and now they are throwing another into development. THR is reporting that Disney is moving forward with a new film adaptation of Snow White and the studio looking to hire The Girl on the Train screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson to write the script. 

Snow White was the very first animated feature film that was released by Disney and it came out in 1937. The original movie is actually pretty dark and terrifying, especially the end. According to the report, the new film "will expand upon the story and music from the beloved animated classic." It will also feature new songs created by songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who most recently wrote the lyrics for the upcoming film La La Land. 

There have been a few film adaptations of Snow White over the years, with recent incarnations being Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman. I wasn't really a big fan of either of those films, but I think fans of the classic animated movie can rest assured that Disney will deliver a solid live-action adaptation of Snow White. The question is, will it be as dark as the original or will they lighten it up?

I guess at this point we should just expect Disney to adapt every animated movie they've ever made into a live-action film. But for some damn reason, they still won't adapt Gargoyles into a movie! That's something I will just never understand. 

More trouble is brewing behind the scenes at DC Films.

The Hollywood Reporter brings word that director Rick Famuyiwa, who was set to direct Warner Bros./DC Films' The Flash, has dropped out of the project due to "creative differences." The director previously helmed Dope, a coming of age movie that was a hit at the Sundance Film Festival. He released a statement about leaving the superhero film:

When I was approached by Warner Bros and DC about the possibility of directing The Flash, I was excited about the opportunity to enter this amazing world of characters that I loved growing up, and still do to this day.

I was also excited to work with Ezra Miller, who is a phenomenal young actor. I pitched a version of the film in line with my voice, humor, and heart. While it’s disappointing that we couldn’t come together creatively on the project, I remain grateful for the opportunity. I will continue to look for opportunities to tell stories that speak to a fresh generational, topical, and multicultural point of view. I wish Warner Brothers, DC, Jon Berg, Geoff Johns, and Ezra Miller all the best as they continue their journey into the speed force.

So much for DC Films being "filmmaker-driven," huh? This is the second director for this project alone; writer Seth Grahame-Smith was originally on board to direct before he parted ways.

Look, it would be easy to sit here and make snarky comments about the perceived inner workings of DC and how this announcement makes it appear as if they don't know what the hell they're doing over there, but Flash fans are probably reeling right now, so I'll avoid that line of thinking for now. The report says that because of Famuyiwa's departure, the film (which was originally scheduled to hit theaters on March 16, 2018) will likely be delayed because Miller has another movie to shoot next summer. (Filming on this was supposed to begin in March of 2017.)

The report also claims that Famuyiwa's take was too edgy for the studio, which could be indicative of a drastically different creative direction inside DC Films. Everyone knows Man of Steel, BVS, and Suicide Squad were pretty grim, and the studio went out of its way to try to convince press that Justice League will have a much lighter tone. It sounds like Famuyiwa may have wanted something a little darker, but the studio could be taking a page out of the TV playbook and wanting to give audiences a version of The Flash with a bit more levity. We'll see how this plays out, but what do you think about the director leaving the project? Who should step in to take his place?