I'm not a huge anime guy (I leave that to our buddy Mick), but even I have to admit that this is pretty damn awesome. We've written before about animator Paul Johnson (YouTube user OtaKing77077) and his anime-style Star Wars TIE Fighter fan film, but what we covered a couple of years ago was only a short segment of the finished product. Johnson animated this on the weekends for the past four years, and he's finally completed the short now, resulting in a seven minute movie that looks at Star Wars from the perspective of Empire pilots.

What if there was an Empire-focussed short Star Wars animation, drawn with the crazy detail and shading of classic 80s anime that's all but vanished from Japan nowadays? 
Well, I tried my best. Apologies in advance for not living up to Venus Wars standards.
Drawn and animated by yours truly over 4 years' worth of weekends, with music by the living guitar solo Zak Rahman and sound design by up and coming audio technician Joseph Leyva. Fans of Lucasarts' seminal 1994 TIE Fighter game may notice a few familiar sights and sounds. That “incoming missile” noise gives me horrible flashbacks to this day...

The music is rockin' — I love that guitar — and it is a little unnerving to see those X-wings go down in flames, but this is a fan-made project that I'm guessing a lot of people will absolutely love. Let us know what you think below.

Via: ComingSoon

After a few years away, Bryan Singer returned to his X-Men franchise last year and made perhaps the most entertaining X-film to date, Days of Future Past. He's currently gearing up to shoot X-Men: Apocalypse, which begins production next month, and though we've heard that the film takes place 10 years after the events of DOFP and will focus primarily on young versions of the team (including new versions of Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Storm), there was still some question as to whether or not the "classic" cast would have room for an appearance. We heard that Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen weren't coming back, so we assumed this was going to be strictly a young person affair. But that may not actually be the case.

Latino-Review's El Mayimbe is back with another Instagram rumor, this time focusing on potential cameos in X-Men: Apocalypse. I'll let him take it from here:

RT! BONUS #HOT #MARVEL #SCOOP Source tells me that X-MEN: APOCALYPSE begins principal photography in Montreal on April 28th & will feature cameos of Hugh Jackman's #Wolverine, Halle Berry's #Storm & get this...Channing Tatum's #GAMBIT! BOOM! #XMEN #APOCALYPSE #SCOOP #2016

So it sounds like there will be room for some of the older cast members after all. The question now becomes: how exactly will they fit in? The previous film had time travel as a major part of its narrative, so that explained how Patrick Stewart's Charles Xavier was able to interact with James McAvoy's younger version of the character. I'm not sure, but if DOFP could balance the insane amount of characters it had, I'm not too worried about Apocalypse. In fact, with the addition of Oscar Isaac and now the idea of getting our first look at Tatum's Gambit, I'm pretty stoked about it. What do you think?

Artist Yaphleen has used mixed media to draw three art pieces inspired by Princess Mononoke. I really love this film because it was the first Hayao Miyazaki film I had ever seen. Since then I've watched most of his back catalog and all his movies released after 1997. Mononoke's epic scale and story are magnificent. It also left me with the desire to ride a gigantic wolf, something I will sadly never be able to do.

H/T: The Art of Animation

By now I'm sure you know that Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, and Breaking Bad producer Sam Catlin are bringing Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's controversial comic Preacher to the small screen on AMC. The lead role of Reverend Jesse Custer is still up for grabs (although Agent Carter and Captain America star Dominic Cooper is rumored to be the frontrunner), but the show has been busy on the casting front, setting Ruth Negga as Tulip and Ian Colletti as Arseface in the past week.

Now another major addition has been made. Deadline reports that actor Joseph Gilgun (Harry Brown, Lockout) has been cast as Cassidy, a hard-drinking Irish vampire who befriends Custer and his ex-girlfriend Tulip. Cassidy was one of the most entertaining parts of the comic series, and though I'm not super familiar with Gilgun's work — like Negga, he also starred on Misfits, which I still haven't seen — I'm hoping he's able to do the character justice. The creative team definitely has a very tough job ahead of balancing the tones of the comic, and Cassidy often adds some much-needed levity, so I'm guessing Gilgun will be used in a similar fashion in the show. But he also has a pretty dark past, which would be great to dive into if the show has enough time to fill the character out more.

Preacher follows Reverend Jesse Custer, a tough Texas preacher who has lost his faith, and has learned that God has left Heaven and abandoned his responsibilities. He finds himself the only person capable of tracking God down, demanding answers, and making him answer for his dereliction of duty. Accompanying Jesse on his journey is his former girlfriend and a friendly vampire who seems to prefer a pint in the pub to the blood of the innocent. On his tail is one of the most iconic bad guys in print – an immortal, unstoppable killing machine named the Saint of Killers —a western lone gunman archetype whose sole purpose is to hunt and kill Jesse.

With Furious 7 coming up in just a couple of weeks, I'm rewatching the films of the Fast & Furious franchise to get revved up for the sequel. I love the mythology and world-building in this series, and I get a kick out of going back and revisiting the little connections in earlier films with the knowledge of the relationships that would form later. (Example: I just watched Fast & Furious last night, and I had totally forgotten that Gisele was essentially a bad guy to begin with, and that she flirted with Dom before ultimately getting together with Han.)

The team at Cinefix is back with a new entry in their "Things You Probably Didn't Know" series, and they're shining their high beams on the Fast & Furious films, giving one fact (and sometimes more) for each movie in the series thus far, including one for Furious 7. Even though I was already a big fan of this franchise, I still learned something from this video, so refill your NOS boosters, buckle up, and check it out for yourselves below.

The two previous Ip Man films are arguably Donnie Yen's best films. They really tread a line between fantastical wire work and a more grounded reality — either gets boring if it's tipped too much one way or the other. Ip Man 3 is starting up production and has cast Mike Tyson of all people.

THR reports on how this came to be:

"Two years ago Mike Tyson opened up a Weibo [the Chinese microblogging site] account and the first question he asked was, 'Who is the best fighter in China?'" Pegasus chairman and Ip Man 3 producer Raymond Wong told THR. "Someone answered him 'Donnie Yen,' and that gave me an idea. For the third installment in the Ip Man series, we want to have an explosive fight, and Mike Tyson versus Donnie Yen fits the bill."

Tyson said in a statement: "Who is the best boxer and kung fu master in China? Wait for me, I am coming. Thank you for introducing me to Chinese kung fu."

Tyson will play a property developer who is conveniently also a street fighter.

Ip Man popularized Wing Chun and had Bruce Lee as a pupil. We saw a very young Lee in the second film. Lee will be featured in the film at some point and reportedly, "the film's producers were unable to find an actor to portray Lee's intensity onscreen so have decided to use computer graphics to re-create the most authentic Lee in the film." This makes me wonder how old Lee and Man will be in this third film and if Lee will fight Tyson's character.

We posted a couple CGI Bruce Lee's in the past. The most impressive CGI rendering was directed by Joseph Kahn, who also directed the recent gritty Power Rangers fan film. I've attached both the commercial by Kahn and short film titled "A Warrior's Dream" that coincidentally has a CGI Lee and Yen fighting. The effects looking believable in Ip Man 3 is entirely up to the size of their budget and how and how much they use it.

H/T to /Film for pointing out the CGI Bruce Lee detail

Most Americans probably aren't familiar with James Corden outside of his role as The Baker in Into the Woods, but the comedian has taken over The Late Late Show and made a splash (pun intended) with Tom Hanks when the actor stopped by to reenact his filmography in a quick 7-minute video.

It's fun to see Hanks essentially swede through his own career with ridiculously low-budget recreations in front of a blue screen, and the guy is just so damn likeable that it's impossible not to watch this video without a big smile on your face. (And it's pretty impressive that they both pulled off that song from Big!) Also, his appearance as Woody means he can be added to this list of 15 voice actors dressed as their characters.

In the movies, Vin Diesel almost always plays badasses, but the real guy is sort of goofy. My buddy Vince at FilmDrunk says he typifies the "existential buffoon," the kind of guys like Jaden Smith and Steven Seagal who spout philosophical nonsense but truly believe they're being deep. Diesel comes off sort of like a puppy - kind of dumb, but his heart is in the right place.

So when he tells Variety that he thinks Furious 7 will win Best Picture at next year's Oscars, it's one of those situations where you just sort of have to shake your head and smile.

“Universal is going to have the biggest movie in history with this movie,” Diesel said in a lengthy interview with Variety for this week’s cover story. “It will probably win best picture at the Oscars, unless the Oscars don’t want to be relevant ever.”

Diesel took a breath, before offering his prediction for a second time. “This will win best picture,” Diesel said. “There is nothing that will ever come close to the power of this thing.”

“We were successful in one-upping the action sequences, and adding an interesting dynamic to the world,” Diesel said. “But what the world won’t anticipate is how emotionally powerful the movie is. The head of the studio, Ron Meyer, often said when ‘Fast 5′ or ‘Fast 6′ came out, ‘If there was no number attached to these movies, they would be contenders for best picture.’ And when people see ‘Furious 7,’ they are going to agree.”

Look, I haven't seen Furious 7 yet, but anyone who knows anything about how the Oscars actually work knows that the movie has roughly a zero percent chance of winning Best Picture. Unless there's an entire subplot about a nerdy British guy who discovers something amazing, someone with a disability overcoming tremendous odds, or a studio executive character telling Dom and the rest of the gang that they should make a movie about their adventures (ooh, so meta!), it's not happening. But there have been some discussions recently about bumping the number of Best Picture nominees down to five again (it was kicked up to 10 after The Dark Knight failed to earn a nod), and this year's Neil Patrick Harris-hosted ceremony was a huge ratings disappointment, so maybe Furious 7 actually has about a 1% chance of taking home the gold after all.

This video not only features some amazing tech, but its emotionally rewarding, and really makes you think. Valspar Paints worked with EnChroma to help color blind people see color for the first time using specially made corrective lenses. I had no idea these lenses existed and I'm guessing most don't either. Science is amazing!

H/T: Laughing Squid

It's sort of crazy to think that only a few years ago, no one really knew who Michael Fassbender was. But with strong performances in Inglourious Basterds, X-Men: First Class, Shame, Prometheus, and 12 Years a Slave, he's made the jump to the A-list and never looked back. He's been in action movies, superhero films, and WWII pictures, but one genre Fassbender hasn't tackled yet has been the classic western. That changed with the debut of Slow West at this year's Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury prize in the World Cinema Dramatic category. The film stars Fassbender as a man who helps a 16-year-old immigrant (Kodi Smit-McPhee) travel across America to find the girl he loves, and they run across a gang of outlaws and a sketchy drifter (the always-on-point Ben Mendelsohn).

The best actors can traverse genres without batting an eye, and it looks like Fassbender is right at home in the Old West, confirming him as one of his generation's most versatile talents. Slow West arrives in theaters on May 15th, and you can check out the trailer below.

After becoming angry at how bad Transformers: Age of Extinction is, I've decided that I'm never going to watch another Michael Bay-directed Transformers movie again. (If someone else comes along to direct, I'll probably give it another shot.) But even though I'm not a fan of those films, I can still appreciate the iconography behind them, and the craft that a father and son put into building huge Transformers of their own out of used car parts.

Yu Zhilin and his son, who live in the Hunan province of China, have created a whole business out of building these statues. I can't seem to find out if Zhilin is the same guy who created this life-sized Optimus Prime a few years ago, but it seems like he and his son have a pretty good handle on the novelty market over there right now. Nice work!

Via: LaughingSquid

It's going to be some time until we see Jason Momoa as Aquaman and Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Until then, we got a couple interviews with the aforementioned actors about the experience of being cast as superheroes.

Momoa sat down with AP and talked about how Zack Snyder convinced him to take the role despite the complete lack of a script. Momoa is giddy and a bit of a ham during the interview, but is very confident in what Snyder has planned for his character and future the Aquaman movie.

Gadot did a big interview with Israel This Week and SuperHeroHype forum user Omermer translated it into english. The interview is long and honestly very hard to read. Thankfully Den of Geek pulled out the most interesting bits.

She almost gave up on acting completely due to the grueling process of getting almost cast but ultimately rejected for many roles post Fast and Furious. But then Gadot got tapped for a secret audition for Wonder Woman, then didn't hear back for a month and a half, which she described as torture.

When the studio finally reached out to tell her the good news, she was in the middle of a flight to New York, completely unaware until she landed. Seeing that she had a bunch of missed calls, she called her agent who told her, "congratulations, you got the part!" She might have had a minor freak out as the passenger next to her asked if she was okay, she was absurdly excited.

Gadot then talks about the backlash she received:

"They said that I was too skinny and my boobs were too small. When I was younger, I would take criticism really hard. But it mostly amused me." 

Apparently she gained a thick skin from dealing with Israeli press:

"They asked me here, in Israel, if I have eating disorders and why am I so skinny. They said my head was too big and my body was like a broomstick. I can take anything. It’s just empty talk. I understand that part of what I’m doing means being exposed. And part of being exposed is being under fire."

Gadot adds:

"Playing Wonder Woman is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I can't describe to you how much I wanted to play this character without even knowing I wanted to play her. I don't want to play a damsel in distress that needs to be saved. I don't like it when women in the movies are shown as the victims. I always thought that if I could send out a message I want to show the strong side of a woman and how she can handle tough situations."

I really like the casting of Momoa and Gadot and also trust that Snyder knows the universe he's building. I'm really hoping to see some crazy Batman v Superman footage during this year's Comic-con.

"You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world." — Tyler Durden

Fight Club is the movie that made David Fincher my favorite filmmaker and he's yet to let me down. The message of Fight Club is debatable and can be interpreted to mean a lot of things, but the one thing everyone can agree on is that it hit a nerve. This video by ScreenCrush does not analyze the film but brings some obscure facts to the surface, a couple of which I'd never heard before.

It's been three months since we heard anything new on the Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them. What we know so far is that it will be at the very least a trilogy but could be many more films than that. Harry Potter alum David Yates is directing, and J.K. Rowling is writing the script, which everyone is raving about.

According to U.K. paper The Sun, Matt Smith, the actor best know for playing The Doctor on Doctor Who, has been "tipped for the role" of Newt Scamander, the "magizooligist." Even so much as to call him the "favorite." Smith is brilliant actor who would fit perfectly into the Harry Potter universe. In this run as The Doctor he played the character with just a depth of wiley endearment and true cleverness. Fantastic Beasts: "You had my curiosity… but now you have my attention." I really hope this turns out to be true.

This fan made-poster by Laura Racero for Avengers: Age of Ultron features some great design. I really like the dual-tone, the framing composition of the Avengers logo, and the way the characters are layered together. If you like the design too, you can buy a print at Society6.

I'm not thrilled about the concept of an Entourage movie because I think the show wrapped up on a lazy note, and the fact that they're asking HBO subscribers to fork over another $15 to see how the story ends is a douche move.  (I wrote more about that here.) But the movie is coming out this summer anyway, so I'm just going to have to get used to it. We've already seen a teaser trailer for the movie, but now Warner Bros. has released the full trailer, which gives us a much better look at the storyline, humor, style, and celebrity cameos that will be on display here.

Basically, it looks very much like a season of Entourage condensed down into two hours. That should please fans of the show, and the big names attached might be enough to draw in the casual audience member as well. Check it out below and let us know if you plan on seeing the movie when it hits theaters on June 5th.

Movie star Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier), together with his boys, Eric (Kevin Connolly), Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) and Johnny (Kevin Dillon), are back…and back in business with super agent-turned-studio head Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven). Some of their ambitions have changed, but the bond between them remains strong as they navigate the capricious and often cutthroat world of Hollywood. 

If you're going to be in or around Brooklyn, New York from March 27th until April 15th and you're a fan of pop culture art, you should definitely drop by the Bottleneck Gallery to see Matt Ferguson's Distant Lands art show. We've featured his work on the site a bunch of times, but this show (his first ever solo show) will feature 10 new screenprints and 24 original pieces of art showing characters in huge, alien environments — from other planets to Middle-Earth and beyond.

/Film has a few of the new images from the show, and you can check some of those out below in the event that you can't make it to New York any time soon. Ferguson is one of the most talented artists in the pop culture game right now, so I'm bummed I won't be able to see these in person. Do you have any favorites from this set?

2001

The Fifth Element

Forbidden Planet

Krypton

NeverEnding Story

Silent Running

The Hobbit

Maggie stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as a father whose daughter gets infected and slowly becomes a cannibalistic zombie. During this slow transformation he stays by her side. Abigail Breslin plays the title character. If this movie is as good as the trailer, this could be emotionally devastating to watch, especially for fathers with daughters.

Maggie will open in limited released May 8th (USA).

This science fiction spaceship size comparison chart is massive. Because its creator, Dirk Loechel, keeps updating it, I'm not going to embed the image, but link to the Deviantart page. This is seriously impressive, and I can't even think of the numbers hours required for research and layout.

H/T: Geek x Girls

Entertainment Weekly has scored the first photo of Jesse Eisenberg in character as Lex Luthor from Zack Snyder's upcoming Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, and it looks...well, it looks a lot like Jesse Eisenberg with a shaved head. There's really not too much to unpack in this one. The photo was taken by Clay Enos, the set photographer who is responsible for those fun back-and-forth images between Snyder's camp and the Star Wars team last year.

Snyder gave a description of Eisenberg's character to the magazine to accompany the picture:

“He’s not any of the Lexes that you’ve seen, that’s for sure, other than him being a captain of industry and one person to the world and another person to himself. And bald, of course.

"Our Lex is disarming and he’s not fake. He says what he believes and he says what’s on his mind. If you can unravel the string and decipher what he means, it’s all there.”

I suppose it makes sense that Luthor says what's on his mind — when you have billions of dollars, you can pretty much say whatever you want without fear. It'll be interesting to see two billionaires in the same movie (Luthor and Ben Affleck's Bruce Wayne) and see how they stack up against each other. What do you think about Eisenberg's new look?