The producers of the sequel to the horror anthology ABCs of Death have been taking short film submissions for the letter M. Out of 541 submissions they have narrowed their choices down to twelve finalists. They are actually all pretty good in their own way and worth watching, so I suggest you check them all out when you get a chance. According to Badass Digest,

"Half of these finalists were selected by popular vote, and half were selected by our jury, made up of ABCs of Death producers Ant Timpson and Tim League, associate producer Ted Geoghegan, Magnolia Pictures’ Matt Cowal, Entertainment Weekly's Clark Collis, Fangoria's Michael Gingold, author Grady Hendrix and our very own Brian Collins.

The Top Twelve finalists will be screened for free at Alamo Drafthouse theaters on December 15th, after which Drafthouse founder Tim League will announce the grand prize winner, voted on by the 25 already announced directors for the horror anthology, including Álex de la Iglesia, Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, Sion Sono, Vincenzo Natali and Jen and Sylvia Soska. In addition to receiving a $5000 cash prize, the winning film will be become ABCs of Death 2’s “M” segment."

Check out all of the shorts and let us know which one is your favorite!

Here are two more film clips from director Carl Erik Rinsch's long awaited martial arts fantasy epic, 47 Ronin. The first clip features Keanu Reeves telling the woman he loves the lengths he would go to find her and be with her. The second clip features Reeves taking on a really cool-looking mythical creature. The movie is set to hit theaters on December 25th, and it looks like it going to be awesome. 

Leah Burroughs, a.k.a. Callie Cosplay, is back, and this time she's cosplaying She-Hulk--both green and red versions. She on quite a fast pace with the cosplay photos, and it doesn't seem like she's slowing down anytime soon. She's always doing great stuff! 

This is the fun fake trailer for Machete Kills Again... In Space, which played in theaters before Robert Rodriguez's Machete Kills. It actually looks like it would be a ridiculously entertaining movie. I don't think it will happen though, as Machete Kills did terribly at the box office, only pulling in about $14 million worldwide. Maybe Rodriquez should start trying to make real movies again. 

Missyeru is Ashe | Photo by: Silenceral

League of Legends has amassed a huge following due to its addictive and competitive gameplay, as well as its vast array of characters and heroes to choose from. In fact, that variety is what makes cosplay based on LoL so interesting. From human barbarians to dark elves, from slick pirates to otherworldly warriors, there is something for everybody, With all that said, here is some of the finest League of Legends cosplay around. Enjoy!

PortgasDaceXx is Tryndamere | Photo by: Angel Ortuno

Calssara is Nidalee | Photo by: Midgard1612

Missyeru is Malzahar | Photo by: SNTP

Yaya Han is Fiora | Photo by: Elysiam Entertainment

Louise G. Betita is Darius | Photo by: Johann Lim

Aruba Chan as Katarina | Photo by: White Lemon

Chrix Design is Vi | Photo by: Joacim Schwartz

Pauline Chua is Ahri | Photo by: Kuroyuki Kanade

Danielle Beaulieu is Taric | Photo by: BGZ Studios

Yaya Han is Fiora | Photo by: Martin Wong

Vera-Chimera is Katarina | Photo by: Beethy

Shinra Junkie is Draven | Photo by: SF Design

PipiChu is Morgana

RiskBreaker is Hecarim | Photo by: Eyestrain Photoworks

Ailkeen is Leona

Jemimah Christel is Caitlyn | Photo by: Johann Lim

Pentakill is Ahri

Edyta Patrycja Maria Nowak is Orianna | Photo by: Edylisation

Calssara is Nidalee | Photo by: Midgard1612

Xamika Faye Sarita Beronio is Vi | Photo by: Paolo Marco

Jerry Polence is Desperada Cassiopeia | Photo by Kira Hokuten

Glory is Miss Fortune | Photo by: Sevi Yummy

@@mccrabb_will

Here's a little bit of Raiders of the Lost Ark trivia for you! In order to get a PG rating for the film, the MPAA asked Steven Spielberg to add more flames to hide the exploding head of the Nazi character Belloq at the end of the movie after he opens the ark. The photo above gives us a little glimpse of what the exploding head looked like before the flames were added. 

Originally, Spielberg wanted Belloq’s head to explode on its own, but that was just too graphic for the MPAA. You have to remember this was before there was a PG-13 rating. The PG-13 rating wasn't created until Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

I'm not sure what makes a fiery exploding head more tame than just a regular exploding head, especially when there are already disturbing melting faces, but that's the MPAA for you! I've also included a fun video from Slate that explains the fiery censorship.

Via: Io9

Universal Pictures has announced that Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels' Dumb and Dumber To will be released in theaters on November 14th, 2014. That's three weeks shy of the actual 20th anniversary of the original movie.

The movie takes place 20 years after the events of the first film, and here's a previously reported description of the story from director Bobby Farrelly: 

"I can tell you that there is no growth out of either one of them and it's 20 years later... these guys are in regular life and they're still basically children at heart. The story revolves around the fact that one of them may have sired a child. They want to go and find the child because he's having a kidney problem and he wants to ask him for one of his kidneys."

The Farrelly brothers are directing the sequel, which also stars Kathleen Turner, Brady Bluhm, Laurie Holden, Steve Tom, and Rob Riggle. I'm excited to see how this turns out! 

You've got to check out this incredibly cool concept art for the world of Dune created by artist Eduardo Peña. If the filmic reboot of this story ever goes back into production, these designs would be perfect for it! I would love to see this art brought to life in a Dune movie!

Kevin Smith has offered us a first look at the crazy design for his half-human/half-walrus creature for his upcoming horror film Tusk.  The film is actually based on a prank article Smith read about a man who was lost at sea for six months with a walrus and was now looking for a roommate. His roommate would be required to wear a walrus costume for 2 hours a day and act like a walrus. The movie will focus on the man turning his hostage into a walrus-man hybrid. The image above came with the following caption,

"Is man, indeed, a walrus at heart?" We wrap TUSK this Friday! Will be tough to leave NC as I'm so in love with my Charlotte crew and this wacky flick we're making!#WalrusYes

Smith actually called up the guy behind the hoax and offered him a producer credit. He then proceeded to turn it into a horror story about a crazy old man played by Michael Parks (Red State) who wants to turn a person into the creepy creature above.

Smith also cast Justin Long as the poor victim in the story. Then there's Haley Joel Osment's character and his girlfriend, played by Genesis Rodriguez, who go looking for Long. Smith previously described the movie as “the cuddly version of The Human Centipede.” Sounds like it will make for an entertaining flick. 

Smith started shooting the film earlier this month and hopes to have it completed in time to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. 

Check out this awesome CG animated short from Machinima that pits PS4 against the XBOX One. The short is called "The Console War." Each console is represented by giant mech robots. Viewers get to choose the outcome.  

In a distant empire ruled by consoles, an apocalyptic war unfolds. The fate of the world lies in a single battle between the XB-01 and the PX-04: the ultimate technological monstrosities of the console era.... or are they? 

I've got to admit that I'm more of an XBOX kind of guy, but in the long run I'll end up with both consoles. 

I'll be the first to admit I am way too excited for the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who. I'm so excited in fact, that it took me about 15 seconds into this video to realize it was a joke and that none of these things will be used in the actual episode, which premieres this Saturday! Even though it's all a big joke it is great to see David Tennant completely deadpan his way through the entire video. I can't wait for Saturday.

In a recent interview with The Daily Beast, actress Winona Ryder spoke a little bit about the upcoming sequel to the 1988 hit Beetlejuice.  She said,

"I'm kind of sworn to secrecy… But it sounds like it might be happening."

I know that doesn’t say a lot, however, you can glean at least one thing from it. If she wasn’t involved, why would she be sworn to secrecy? Of course, that could just be me wanting to read into things.

She was asked what the reaction from fans was in regards to a sequel being made:

"It's a very precious movie to people. So there are a lot people like, 'DON'T”

She does go on to clear up a little confusion that is surrounding the movie:

“It's not a remake. It's 27 years later. And I have to say, I love Lydia [Deetz, Ryder's teenage goth character] so much. She was such a huge part of me. I would be really interested in what she is doing 27 years later."

Ryder also goes on to say that she wouldn’t go near the project if Tim Burton and Michael Keaton weren’t involved. Fortunately for us, it looks as if they are going to be in the movie. 

I know there are many of you out there that are not very excited for this to happen, and usually I would not only be on that bandwagon, I would be driving it. However, Beetlejuice is one of my all-time favorite movies, and I have always felt that it needed a sequel.  If it does actually happen, I will be first in line to see it.

Until next time…

Billy Out!

Today we have a bizarre but awesome crossover done by Phillip Sevy. This Batman meets Star Wars piece was actually made to honor the memory of Ralph McQuarrie. For those that don't know, McQuarrie did the concept designs and illustrations for Star Wars, E.T., and several other films. Head on over to Phillip's page for more great artwork!

icollector.com

Here's some very early concept art for Bryan Singer's first X-Men film from back in 2000. It gives us some very different character and concept designs from what actually ended up in the movie. The concept art was done by Tim Flattery, and it definitely would have given the movie a very different feel. I'm not really a big fan of these designs, but I wasn't a big fan of the costume designs that were used in the film either.

Via: CBM

Here's a new bit of Star Wars news that I've never heard before. Apparently, Yoda was originally going to be played by a monkey, and there are a couple of rare behind the scenes photos from @mccrabb_will to prove it. According to him, the "Empire team initially hired a trainer and a MONKEY to hold a cane & play YODA." 

The puppet was designed and built for Empire Strikes Back by Stuart Freeborn, with Jim Henson consulting. The monkey would have worn a Yoda mask. The plan was scrapped when the monkey kept pulling the mask off. 

I've got to say, it would have been really weird to see a monkey play Yoda. I'm really glad that they ended up going with the puppet and Frank Oz. 

FX has announced that they have ordered 13 episodes of Guillermo del Toro's gritty, hardcore vampire series, The Strain. The show is an adaptation of the book written by Del Toro and Chuck Hogan, and it's set to premiere in July of 2014. Del Toro had this to say in a statement,

“The Strain books are near and dear to my heart and now, Chuck and I have the blessing of a partnership with Carlton and FX that holds great promise. Working with FX has yielded an amazing experience with total creative freedom and support.”

FX Productions Presidents of Original Programming Eric Schrier and Nick Grad added, 

“We could not be more excited to be moving forward with Guillermo, Carlton and Chuck on The Strain. This is an epic story with stunning visuals and remarkable acting. The Strain totally reimagines and reinvents the genre.”

For those of you not familiar with The Strain, the trilogy is a vampire bioterror thriller that tells the story of an outbreak in the U.S. of a virus that either kills those who are exposed to it or turns them into vampires. It was previously revealed that the plan was to turn it into an event series unfolding over three seasons. This has the potential to be a great series, and the network obviously sees that. I'm looking forward to see what they come up with.

Here's a description of the book:

Via: THR

High-concept thriller with a supernatural edge from world-famous director, whose films include Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy. A plane lands at JFK and mysteriously 'goes dark', stopping in the middle of the runway for no apparent reason, all lights off, all doors sealed. The pilots cannot be raised. When the hatch above the wing finally clicks open, it soon becomes clear that everyone on board is dead -- although there is no sign of any trauma or struggle. Ephraim Goodweather and his team from the Center for Disease Control must work quickly to establish the cause of this strange occurrence before panic spreads. The first thing they discover is that four of the victims are actually still alive. But that's the only good news. And when all two hundred corpses disappear from various morgues around the city on the same night, things very rapidly get worse. Soon Eph and a small band of helpers will find themselves battling to protect not only their own loved ones, but the whole city, against an ancient threat to humanity.

The first trailer has been released for the West Memphis Three film, Devil's Knot. The movie tells the true story Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley, who were wrongly convicted for the May 1993 killings of three 8-year-old boys from West Memphis, Ark. 18 years later they were finally released from prison. I've been following their story for years. There has been a series of documentaries made about the story, and now we have this feature film.

The movie was directed by Atom Egoyan, and it stars Colin Firth, Reese Witherspoon, Dane DeHaan, Mireille Enos, Bruce Greenwood, Elias Koteas, Stephen Moyer, and Amy Ryan. The movie premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival where it was met with mixed reviews, but it looks to me like it's going to be a solid film. Here's the detailed synopsis.

Atom Egoyan dramatizes the fallout from the notorious 1993 West Memphis murders, focusing on the grieving mother (Reese Witherspoon) of one of the murdered boys as she grows increasingly troubled by the lynch-mob fever that grips the town.

When three young boys were brutally murdered in the small community of West Memphis, Arkansas, in 1993, their deaths led to shock and outrage in this tightly knit religious town. It wasn’t long before three teenagers were arrested, tried, and sentenced — two of them to life imprisonment and one to death — despite the fact that they all claimed innocence. This story of wrongful conviction roiled the American justice system, brought a number of prominent movie stars and rock musicians to the defence of the three young men, and resulted in a trilogy of documentaries, Paradise Lost, that did much to keep the case in the public eye.

Atom Egoyan has revisited the story of the West Memphis Three and dramatized it for the screen in a film as compelling and disturbing as the truth itself. Egoyan is a master at telling tales about deeply misunderstood outsiders, their families and communities, and their darkest fantasies. In Devil’s Knot Egoyan is completely at home sketching the small-town lives of ordinary people befuddled and angered by the senseless killing in their ostensibly safe town. Reese Witherspoon plays Pam Hobbs, mother of one of the murdered boys, whose grief and shock is palpably felt and subtly depicted. Into her life comes Ron Lax (Colin Firth, also at the Festival in The Railway Man), a private investigator for whom the sum of the case’s parts doesn’t quite add up, and who is driven to get at the truth.

While much of Devil’s Knot focuses on the adults embroiled in the case, Egoyan is also highly sensitive to the young accused, whose lives are shattered by the deaths and who must face the scorn of the town. The three are cast by a series of witnesses as deviant satanic cultists, as all sense of justice and proportion is abandoned in the rush for a convenient scapegoat.

There's no U.S. release date yet.

Halo armor has been a cosplay staple almost since Halo’s initial release. Although decent-looking suits are rather prolific, it is a special suit that impresses me this much. Cosplayer AsgardianHammer created the Noble 6 (multiplayer version) armor, and it is incredible. The bio claims that it is his first attempt at cosplaying, which blows me away. I've seen plenty of second and third suits that don’t look nearly this good.

Good job, Asgardian Hammer! Keep them coming! (Via: Daily Cosplay)

Findmyorder

Here are a couple of really cool looking action figures for the upcoming RoboCop reboot. The figures come from Square Enix in their "Play Arts [KAI]" line, and they will be distributed by Sideshow Collectibles. The two designs feature RobCop 3.0 and RoboCop 1.0!

The Falcon's Hangar has them both on pre-order at SGD$135 each for a February 2014 drop date. Sideshow Collectibles has both Version 1.0 and Version 3.0 available at US$89.99 each.

There are a ton of big, highly anticipated films set to be released in 2015, including Zack Snyder's Batman Vs. Superman and Duncan Jones' Warcraft. In a recent interview with Variety, the producer of those films, Charles Roven, talked about their statuses,

“On ‘Batman vs. Superman,’ we started soft prep in June, and we’ll be shooting eight months later....We felt that we accomplished our goals with ‘Man of Steel, our intention was to bring Superman into the 21st century with a contemporary character and a different kind of superhero than what’s out there right now...We knew we had created a world and we had left Easter eggs in the movie that let people know that in the universe that Zack was creating, there was the possibility of other DC characters besides Clark Kent."

He went on to reveal that the idea of the sequel has been around for awhile,

"We had a sketch of an idea, the beats of a story that David Goyer worked on with Zack. We have a first draft, and we’re continuing to work with it. Those scripts are never fully finished until the movie is in the theaters. We love the characters — we think that Ben (Affleck) is going to be a really great and interesting Batman.”

He went on to discuss why they cast Ben Affleck in the role of Bruce Wayne/Batman.

“We wanted a guy who had a certain age and a certain gravitas to what he had done in terms of his recent work. If you take a look at ‘The Town’ and ‘Argo,’ he plays a couple of serious guys in those movies. He’s a big man. He’s also a mature man. As you see him and Henry together, one definitely has much more experience just by looking at him. That’s what we wanted, particularly juxtaposed against our Superman.”

He then moves on the Warcraft film saying that it will begin production this January.

“I have a great partner in Alex Gartner, who’s in Vancouver with our director Duncan Jones. I was there last week. I’m in an editing room on ‘American Hustle’ and in the production office in Pasadena on ‘Batman’ and flying up to Vancouver for ‘Warcraft,’ which will start in early January.”

Batman vs. Superman is set to be released in theaters July 17th, 2015, and Warcraft will open on December 18th, 2015. I'm excited to see both of these films, and they are sure to be huge successes!