Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment have announced the release dates for three of their upcoming projects that include Despicable Me 3, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and an untitled comedy from writer-director Garth Jennings (Son of Rambow, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy).

Despicable Me 3 will be released in theaters on June 30th, 2017. It's coming from the same team who brought us Despicable Me and Despicable Me 2. There's no details about what the third film would entail, but it will continue the adventures of Gru, Lucy, Margo, Edith, Agnes, and of course, the Minions. 

Then we have a new animated adaptation of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The movie is set for release on November 17th, 2017, and it will be directed by Pete Candeland from a script written by Michael LeSieur. You all know the story for this, it's just another reimagining. 

As for the original animated untitled comedy, it's about courage, competition, and carrying a tune. It will hit theaters December 21st, 2016.

Check out this incredibly cool piece of fan art featuring Metroid's main character, Samus. The character illustration was done by CGHUB artist wakkawa, and it turned out to be really slick. 

Via: Variety

Harrison Ford will star alongside Blake Lively in a film called Age of Adaline. The movie is being directed by Lee Toland Krieger, who previously made Celeste & Jesse Forever and The Vicious Kind. The script comes from J. Mills Goodloe and Salvador Paskowitz, with revisions by Allison Burnett.

The movie has a very interesting premise in which Lively will play a 29-year old girl named Adaline, "who stops aging after recovering from a near-fatal accident. Over the course of the 20th century she embarks on an epic journey, keeping her secret until she meets a man who forever alters her life."

I'm intrigued by the plot, and I'm looking forward to learning more. The film is scheduled to start shooting in March with Lionsgate set to release the film in the U.S.

Matt Taylor

Mondo has unveiled a couple of great new movie posters for Rian Johnson's Brick and Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are. The posters were created by artists Matt Taylor and Ken Taylor. I enjoy the prints that Mondo releases, and it baffles me that studios don't commission artists like them to do design awesome art for their movies. Cool looking, big budget movies deserve amazing posters, not the crap that the studios are rushing out to us. Make sure to follow @MondoNews.

Ken Taylor

Thanks to the Veronica Mars movie, it looks like creator Rob Thomas is going to be able to launch a digital spin-off series. It was announced by The CW president Mark Pedowitz, and it will premiere on the network's digital arm, CW Seed. At the time of the announcement, Pedwitz said, 

“The Veronica Mars movie got it going. Rob Thomas is very excited about doing this at CW Seed… He hasn’t committed to any concept or characters yet.”

Until now… Thomas took to his Twitter and revealed that the series will focus on Ryan Hansen and his Dick Casablancas character. 

The CW web series: a comedy featuring @HiRyanHansen attempting to put together a Dick Casablancas spin-off of #VeronicaMars. No date yet.

When asked if the series would be a 'behind the scenes in hollywood' thing? or Ryan Hansen as Dick? Thomas replied with,

Ryan as version of Ryan trying to put together a Dick Casablancas series.

So it's a spin-off about putting together a spin-off? That should be kind of interesting. I guess we'll have to wait and see how it all plays out. 

The series will most likely consist of six to eight episodes, with each one running between five and ten minutes. There's no premiere date set yet, but it's expected to hit sometime after the film’s release on March 14th.

Lionsgate has released the first trailer for their upcoming sex teen comedy called Date and Switch. The movie was directed by Chris Nielson, and the story follows two friends who make a pact to lose their virginity before prom. Their friendship is tested when one of them comes out of the closet and they have to change their approach on how to accomplish their goal. 

The movie stars Dakota Johnson, Nicholas Braun, Hunter Cope, Sarah Hyland, Nick Offerman, Gary Cole, Megan Mullally and Wendi McLendon-Covey. The movie is set to be released on February 14th, 2014, and I've got to say I'm not really sold on it.

Gareth Edwards' Godzilla looks absolutely fantastic, and I love the way they plan on telling the story. In a recently released video from the set of the film, Bryan Cranston talked about how excited he is to be a part of it, and said that they have used the same techniques in the movie that Steven Spielberg used to create Jaws. He explains,

"They're taking a very restrained approach to this, much like Jaws did. Steven Spielberg didn't always show the beast. The essence is present, it's there and it's moving, you know and it's creepy, so the tension will mount for sure."

Godzilla comes out on May 16th. You can watch the trailer again here if you want. Check out the interview below!

Before I get into Tales of Xillia, I dare you, DARE YOU, not to say that headline in Yoda speak.

You know you want to.

Fine, back to business. This would be a full on review, but unfortunately for me about 50% of the way through my PS3 (a refurbished original style one) decided to die on me, and because I didn't have my files backed up on a flash drive, I lost all of my saved data.

Cue the Debbie Downer sound.

While, thankfully, I got a sleek and slimmer version of Sony's console swapped out for it, unfortunately there was nothing that could be done for my lost save, and while I truly enjoyed my time with the game, it might be a minute before I can play my way back there and beyond. That said, I had a great experience with Tales of Xillia, and I feel like talking about it.

While I wouldn’t call Xillia a slow start, its not quite lightning fast either. Depending on which character you pick, either Milla or Jude, the game starts you in a different location, but ultimately the two end up together for most of the adventure. Still, I love the idea, and hopefully this will be expanded upon for Tales of Xillia II.

One of the hallmarks of any JRPG worth its salt is the... let's call it "uniqueness" of the squad you control, and Xillia delivers a well-rounded, if not spectacularly different, group of heroes. There are several stand outs, such as Milla, Leia, and Alvin, and Jude actually does grow on you over time, but Teepo is a poor replacement for Repede and should be banished to the island of misfit sidekicks. Even if the other characters fall neatly into their respective roles, what Namco Bandai does extremely well in almost every Tales game is make the banter and camaraderie between them all so entertaining, not to mention endearing, that you can’t help but love them. Even someone like Teepo, who is just pixelated hate bait, goes from a papercut to just a hangnail. Annoying yes, but at least it's not bleeding.

Teepo does have his upsides, but then he starts talking and all good will earned goes out the window

The combat has always shined in Tales games, and it excels here too. The Artes system contains some slick abilities, and being able to link with a partner during combat, each with a different boost or ability, livens things up. For example, when Milla is linked with Jude he will heal you if knocked down. If she’s linked with Alvin and an enemy is blocking he will charge up and knock the enemy out of its defensive stance, allowing you to knock him into the air. Each set of characters also has artes that can be comboed and linked, allowing for some devastating and graphically impressive effects.

Meet the crew

While we’re on the subject, this game is beautiful, as are the animated cutscenes that pop up throughout. The art is distinctly stylized, but I love that sort of thing. The game also allows you to customize your characters in some unique ways, including random things like dog tails and stuffed dragons. I admit I had alot of fun with this, and its nice to see that the game doesn't take itself too seriously.

As for the story, the game has a solid premise (up until the great PS3 crash of 2014 anyway, and no, I’m not being dramatic) to get things going, and there is one point in the game that I admit blindsided me, as it was something that I truly didn't expect. That event actually leads to some nice character moments, but other than that I can’t say I was too surprised with how things progressed. What truly keeps your interest is the likable cast. You end up caring about what happens because you care what happens to them. You care that party member who will remain nameless recovers, you care about Jude and why he constantly takes abuse from his dad (who, spoiler alert, is a giant tool). You care about the fact that someone should tell Alvin it's 80 degrees outside so stop wearing the scarf! Okay, maybe not that one, but you get the point.

seriously with the scarf?

For those who haven’t experienced the game, do yourself a favor and grab it as part of PlayStation’s 14 for 14 sale, going on now. The game is $20 and just $10 for PS Plus members, so there really is no excuse. You’ll love the combat, you'll laugh out loud a few times, and you’ll be left with a fantastic gaming memory to start 2014.

Do I even need to tell you why you would want to watch Benedict Cumberbatch drunkenly dance to a Michael Jackson song? I don't think I do, but I do feel obligated to say that there's really no evidence Ben is drunk in this video besides the fact it looks as though he's at a formal event (wedding maybe) and his face and dance moves would imply he's been doing something all night. There's also some mud on his shoe that got analyzed and junk, so now that I've gotten my obligatory Sherlock reference out of the way, enjoy this for all it's worth. 

"What started as a friendship became an obsession."

Lionsgate has released a new TV spot for their crazy-looking murder/sex thriller Nurse 3D. The movie stars Paz De La Huerta as Nurse Abbey Russell, who "lures fellow nurse Danni into her plot to seek revenge on cheating men." The movie was directed by Doug Aarniokoski from a script written by David Loughery and also stars Katrina Bowden and Corbin Bleu. 

Nurse 3D is a thriller/horror film directed by Doug Aarniokoski and written by David Loughery starring Paz de la Huerta, Katrina Bowden, Corbin Bleu. By day Abby Russell is a dedicated nurse, someone you wouldn’t hesitate to trust your life with. But by night, her real work begins…using her smoldering sexuality she lures cheating men to their brutal deaths and exposes them for who they really are. When a younger nurse starts to suspect Abby's actions and compromises her master plan, Abby must find a way to outsmart her long enough to bring the cheater you’d least expect to justice.

The movie is set to be released on February 7th, 2014. What about cheating women? Women cheat too… just sayin'.

For those of you wondering if the name Nate Hallinan sounds familiar, he's the guy who did all the artwork of medieval X-Men we posted not too long ago. Now he's back again with more impressive artwork with reimaginings of various enemies and allies found in the Legend of Zelda. In this set he shows us reworkings of Deku's, Gorons, and my personal favorite: the Skulltula. Skulltulas used to give me nightmares when I would play Ocarina of Time before bedtime, so it's really cool to see them getting some love in this brilliant set.

I hate the kind of movie posters that studios are pumping out these days. They're so damn lazy! Anyway, here's the international poster for DreamWorks Pictures Need For Speed, and the poster should be a hell of a lot cooler looking. It should give the viewer some kind of adrenaline rush. Instead, it's boring as hell. I just don't understand why they wouldn't want to give audience something something cool to look at! Movie posters should be art, not shit. 

Good news, everyone! DOH! Wrong show...FX announced recently that starting this summer all 530 episodes of The Simpsons will be available via the FXNOW app. All episodes will be available at the same time, which means no cycling or waiting for the season you want to appear. As of now the service will operate for many people like HBO GO or other network subscription services. This means you'll be able to watch it via app definitely, but FX is also arranging deals with cable providers. According to QZ, the network paid 1 billion dollars to have the episodes for the next ten years for streaming, which FX executives say will be key to future mobile ad revenue....which they believe will spike in the future. Gear up boys and girls, with the announcement of this and the WWE Network, it sounds like the app based TV future is rolling our way.

Art by Ninja2ASSN

Sony Pictures announced about a month a go that they would be developing a series of Spider-Man spin-off films that would focus on some of the various villains that Spider-Man has taken on in his career as a superhero. I'm excited to see how the creative team will build on this universe when bringing the Sinister Six and Venom to the big screen. In an interview with IGN, Roberto Orci, who is currently writing The Amazing Spider-Man 3 and Venom, talks about the challenges of developing other villains like Electro, Rhino, Green Goblin, Vulture, and Doc Ock as feature films. 

That’s the discussion we’re having right now; how exactly do you do that, and how do you do it without betraying the audience and making them all mean? Drew Goddard is going to be writing that one, so it’s kind of his problem. [Laughs] I’m kidding. We’re all working on each other’s stuff. So we want to be true to it, but there are some antiheroes in this day and age. There’s been examples of that even on TV — Vic Mackey on The Shield, one of the great antiheroes of all time. There are ways to milk that story. Audiences have seen everything. They’ve seen all the good guys who never do anything wrong. Is there a story in seeing the other side? That’s the challenge, and that’s the fun. I’m not sure how we’re going to do that yet.

When asked if the new universe they are creating is overly ambitious, he said:

No it doesn’t, actually. It feels very familiar, because Alex and I started in television. In television, you get a great team of writers together, a writing staff, and you’re working on five episodes at once. You’re prepping one, you’re shooting one, you’re writing one, you’re posting one, and you’re trying to make sure they’re consistent over 13 or 22 episodes. That’s how we learned how to do things. So it’s funny in the movie business, and you have different things being done by different teams and they’re not all communicating with each other. So when we talked about our interest in all this stuff, we said, “Well, the way would want to do it is kind of go to a TV model,” and then the distinction between the quality of TV and film has gone away. They’re both equally viable, awesome storytelling formats. So the idea of, let’s get a core group of writers and producers and directors — and even though I might not be the one writing Venom, I’ll be in the meetings talking about how to make it interesting. We could be putting in easter eggs and planning ahead in the previous movies, and then that guy over there is going to write that movie, and Ed Solomon’s gonna write another one with us. So having a committee, a board, of people who are creative, who are filmmaker, who just keep it all together, that’s kind of going back to the way we started.

He then goes on to talk about why they decided to focus on Spider-Man villains:

Oh, I see. You mean focusing on the villains. One of our old sayings always is “Whatever you’re afraid of, go there. Follow the fear. Don’t turn away from the fear.” So what you’re saying is exactly the reason why we’re doing it. Like, let’s try and challenge ourselves. Do we think of ourselves as ballsy? No. We’re the luckiest guys in the world. There’s no courage involved in this. [Laughs] But thank you for saying so. But you’re raising the correct point, which is head towards the difficult stuff.

Everything is still in the early stages for these movies, but they are coming. I imagine we won't see any of these new films until after The Amazing Spider-Man 3, which is supposed to be released in 2016. Even though there are going to be challenges developing these projects, I'm sure in the end they'll figure it all out and give us a series of movies that we'll all be able to enjoy. 

Paranormal Activity 5 is gearing up to shoot in Los Angeles next month so that can be released in time for the 2014 Halloween season. The movie is being directed by Gregory Plotkin from a script written by Jason Pagan and Andrew Stark. 

For some reason the last movie, Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, got decent reviews. I personally thought it kind of sucked. But in an interview with Comingsoon writer and director Christopher Landon, talks about the fifth installment of the franchise, saying,

"Gregory Plotkin, who is directing, he's been the editor on all of these and if there's anyone who knows these movies, it's him because he has to sit with all of the footage all day long. I think he's going to take it in a cool direction. We obviously have discussions about it because we want the movies to be connected. So, we were talking at the end of [The Marked Ones] because it's going to be tied to what they're doing in the fifth film."

I'm not really expecting anything mind-blowing from the next movie, but I hope it will provide some decent horror entertainment. Thanks to Moviehole we have some of our first details on the film and the characters that will be included,

Ryan, Emily, their 6-year-old daughter Leila, and Mike, Ryan’s younger brother (essentially a less fitter, less funkier version of his brother) essetially.[sic]

Ryan, 26-31, is described as a ‘big kid’, he’s a video-game designer who has relocated his family from New York to Pala Alto for a cushy gig at Rockstar Games.[sic]

Though somewhat of a hippie (she’s into organic food, loves the arts and music, won’t let her daughter eat Gluten, and sports tattoos), Wife Emily is considerably more serious than her young husband – she’s constantly on the go, does Yoga, and though loving, has an air of maturity about her. Her sister died a year before.

Their daughter Leila seems to be a mixture of both – a bit of a fearless, opinionated tomboy.

And it goes without saying, Ryan and Emily’s family quickly realizes something is not OK within their new house.

Also expect Katie Featherston to return as Katie.

There is an end game to the franchise, and I'm curious to see how this all plays out with the bigger picture. It's that curiosity that will keep me watching. 

Here's a great set of Game of Thrones posters inspired by the propaganda posters of World War II. They were created by Olivia Desianti, and if you're interested in purchasing them, you can get them over on Society6. The fourth season of Game of Thrones is set to premiere on HBO on April 6th, and I'm so ready to watch it! Thanks to io9 for the heads up!

Via: THR

I wasn't very happy with the way Showtime ended Dexter. It was a very disappointing conclusion to an amazing series. That being said, if they ever get a spin-off into development and made I would watch it! It's something the network wants to do, but according to Showtime entertainment president David Nevins, it's not going to happen unless Michael C. Hall is involved. 

During a recent press conference he told reporters the following,

"We continue to talk about it. If we were to do it, we have to have a very good reason to do it. It has to feel like it's a new show. I'm not interested in doing it if it's just a continuation. If we were to do it, I would only do it with Michael."

He went on to say that all options are on the table of what this series could potentially be, and then continued,

"We're at the very preliminary stage. That show is that character … and if I were to do something, I would do Dexter in a new concept and configuration. I want the show to feel different, not just a continuation of the old show."

If you've watched the series then you all know how it ended. (SPOILER!) He sacrificed his relationship with Hannah (Yvonne Strahovski) and his son, Harrison, and then faked his own death so he could start a new life in Oregon as a lumberjack so that he could protect them from who he really is. Even though a lot of fans hated the ending, Nevins praised it, saying,

"The fundamental design of where they ended Dexter was really well-conceived. He had to sacrifice the one person who was closest to him in the world (Deb) and he had to leave. That was where it was headed for a very long time.

We never discussed the idea of killing [Dexter]. The people who are really in the center -- Michael, Scott Buck, [EP] Sara Colleton -- no one even brought up the idea. It was never discussed. … It remains to be seen whether they're going to want to do [a spinoff] or whether I'm going to want to do it. They never felt like killing Dexter was the right end."

If they can bring the team back together to follow Dexter in his new life it would be very interesting to see how they plan on doing it, and making it different from what it was. If they actually make the series awesome, I'll watch it. If they don't, that's fine too. 

Via: Cine 1

In true Warner Bros. fashion the studio has released another character poster from their upcoming historical action film 300: Rise of the Empire. I imagine we'll see two or three more sets of character posters before the movie comes out on March 7th. Studios love their characters posters, but I think the WB is notorious for the number of posters they release for their films. Regardless of how many posters they release, they still continue to pump out good movies, and this is one that I'm excited about watching.

Writer & Director: Damien Chazelle

Starring: Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons

Synopsis: A young musician struggles to make it as a top jazz drummer.

Emily Dunbar, Joey Paur, and Free Reyes review Whiplash.

Make sure to read the written review by Elijah Reyes here.

Sony Pictures has released two new cool-looking, high-voltage character posters for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 featuring Spider-Man and Electro. We've been seeing a lot of new Spider-Man stuff recently… Makes me wonder if we are going to see another trailer for the film soon. The movie comes out on May 2nd, 2014, and I'm excited to see where the filmmakers plan to take this cinematic universe.