Home Entertainment Extras! Twilight TV, James Bond owes Batman one, Days of Future Past may get sentinels, More Paranormal Activity, Another Band of Brothers possible, and Ant-Man will kick your ass, one bad slogan at a time! Plus much more!

Extras! Twilight TV, James Bond owes Batman one, Days of Future Past may get sentinels, More Paranormal Activity, Another Band of Brothers possible, and Ant-Man will kick your ass, one bad slogan at a time! Plus much more!

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Welcome to The Extras! A daily dose of all the smaller movie related news, clips and just plain cool stuff that you might have missed!

Right, time to get things flying around here. Flying fish, that is. Director Ang Lee has made available this first clip from his technicolour epic Life of Pi available for viewing.

For some reason there’s been a flurry of superhero movie news over this past weekend, so if you’re not a fan of the underpants on the outside crew, then you may want to skip further down the page. Like, way further down the page. First up, there’s a rumour going around that Famke Janssen will be reprising her role as Jean Grey for a cameo in The Wolverine. As it’s still unclear as to where exactly director James Mangold’s film will fit into the movie continuity, a little thing like the fact that the last time we saw she was dying in Logan’s arms shouldn’t really hamper matters much. Also, this is Jean Grey. She dies and comes back more often than Darryn changes his underwear. So at least once a month.

If you’re wondering where Loki fits into Thor: The Dark World, especially considering his lack of mention in the newly revealed synopsis for the film, well then you better keep on wondering. Actor Tom Hiddleston, who portrays the Asgardian trickster god, recently tweeted this cryptic clue, while shooting a rumoured “big fight scene between Thor and Loki in Iceland:

@twhiddleston: “Sometimes the answer is to climb the nearest mountain and everything is better. Literally. Not a metaphor. 

And while checking out something for that previous story, I suddenly noticed that ComingSoon.net is suddenly sporting a synopnis for Edgar Wright’s Ant-Man, as well as a tagline so bad that it’s making me want to break out my magnifying glass and hope for a clear summer’s day.

“Ant-Man will kick your ass, one inch at a time!”

The film is about biochemist Dr. Hank Pym using his latest discovery, a group of subatomic particles, to create a size-altering formula. Though his first self-test goes awry, he develops an instrument that helps him communicate with and control insects.

I’ve yet to see anything official from Marvel, so I’m hoping that that awful tagline is just somebody’s practical joke.

Mark Millar spoke to FX magazine about his new job as creative consultant for Fox’s Marvel properties and gave a little morsel for the X-Men fans to chew on, when he spoke about Matthew Vaughn’s First Class sequel, Days of Future Past.

“Vaughn is going for a big sci-fi style thing with X-Men: Days of Future Past. It’s X-Men meets The Terminator, You’ve got robots, you’ve got time travel, you’ve got superheroes – it’s got everything in one film.”

Robots? You mean sentinels, don’t you Mark? Please say you mean sentinels!

Following on the gold and red heels of this morning’s teaser for the Iron Man 3 trailer comes the first official promo shots of Tony Stark as armoured superhero and Gwyneth Paltrow as his ever loyal love interest and confidante Pepper Potts. You can get all four pics over on Indiewire, but here’s a sample of what to expect.

If you’ve been wondering about the state of the Deadpool movie, then worry no more. Tim Miller, who drafted the script for the first major cinematic outing for everybody’s favourite fourth wall breaking merc with a mouth, gave Nerd Reactor this update:

“We’ve turned in an amazing script and done some early tests and visual development that–I’m confident–would get the fans stoked. And Ryan still loves the project. So it’s really up to Fox as to whether or not the film happens–all I can do is hope (and beg periodically) that it be allowed to move ahead.”

So amazing script? Check. Ryan Reynolds? Check. What are you waiting for Fox?

And that concludes all our superhero news for today. Now let’s get back to the real world with it’s big, real stuff… So you know how Paranormal Activity 4 just opened last week in the States? Well, never ones to waste time on counting their money, Paramount have already announced and greenlit Paranormal Activity 5. Surely, if a certain activity becomes this commonplace, it’s now just considered normal?

We don’t normally cover commercials around here, but when they’re this unintentionally hilarious, then they deserve to get mentioned. Starring cinema heartthrob Zac Efron, the commercial is apparently advertising a denim brand, but if nobody told me that I’d swear it was promoting blatant douchebaggery and a “Need for Speed” videogame. Also, sorry Justin Timberlake. All your hard work in trying to prove that white boys can in fact dance just got undone, surprisingly by that kid from High School Musical.

Ben Affleck’s Argo has been garnering just as much critical praise as it has box office receipts, and deservedly so (unfortunately, I’m not allowed to post my full review until it’s closer to the film’s release date, which was recently shifted from 23 November 2012 to 1 February 2013) as Affleck has crafted one of 2012’s best film that will have you on the edge of your seat as much as it has you laughing at the absurdity of the entire operation. But it was an operation so absurd, that it had to be true (well, except for a little bit of dramatic licence of course).

Affleck spoke to Total Film about how he made this ridiculous “based on a true story” film work as a contemporary thriller as well.

“I thought, ‘this is insane, it can’t be true.’ And then I went on the internet and looked it up and found out it really was true.

“I called [Warner Bros] up and said I had to do it and three months later we were prepping the film.”

“There was the CIA All The President’s Men tone at the beginning. Then there is the Hollywood satire thing in the middle, which was almost like a Cassavetes Killing Of A Chinese Bookie thing, and then there’s the Costa-Gavras grittier, punchier, grainier stuff for Iran.

“My challenge was to try to navigate those tones so that it didn’t feel like three short films but was one cohesive movie.”

And trust me, he pulls it off.

Although, technically not a movie, the HBO mini-series Band of Brothers – and its spinoff The Pacific – has always been considered a companion piece to Steven Spielberg’s Oscar winning WWII masterpiece Saving Private Ryan, especially since Spielberg and Ryan star Tom Hanks produced them. The two series are some of the finest pieces of television of the last decade, and also featured a future who’s who of current top talent (like Tom Hardy, Michael Fassbender and Damien Lewis among others) and now it looks like we might get one more chapter. HBO is apparently considering a third series, but other than the fact that Spielberg and Hanks would once again be on-board, not much else is known about it at this point.

Speaking of Spielberg… One of the big reasons why Jurassic Park has aged so well, was due to some of the amazing animatronic work done by Stan Winston and his workshop bringing the various dinosaurs to life. And while most of the dinos were just huge puppet heads or limbs, some of the scenes were actually, amazingly, guys in velociraptor suits.

This newly unveiled behind the scenes look at the development of the raptor suit, explains it all.

While I have all the respect in the world for the visual artists who are all about the green screens and polygon counts, things like this  – for me –  is still the true movie magic.

An anonymous source over at Blastr is apparently saying that US television network CW is apparently considering a TV spinoff of the Twilight franchise. Given the type of programmes on CW’s schedule and the fact that Summit Entertainment would find it hard to break their habits of swimming in money Scrooge McDuck style, this is certainly not that far fetched.

“They’re already onto the [Breaking Dawn] follow-up … [a] TV show or film spinoff, merely set in the same world as the one in the movies but not featuring the main trio, is being seriously considered, [with] The Wolf Pack [as] one area of interest.”

Oh dear gods, a weekly installment of shirtless men in denim shorts.

Apparently, the new James Bond owes a lot to Batman, and no I’m not just talking about fancy gadgets, cool cars and a penchant for dressing up in full body leather suits at night. OK, that last bit may have been from that James Bond fan fiction I read. Skyfall director Sam Mendes spoke to The Playlist, and revealed how what Christopher Nolan did with his Dark Knight trilogy actually influenced him on his film.

“In terms of what [Nolan] achieved, specifically The Dark Knight, the second movie, what it achieved, which is something exceptional. It was a game changer for everybody.”

“What Nolan proved was that you can make a huge movie that is thrilling and entertaining and has a lot to say about the world we live in, even if, in the case with The Dark Knight, it’s not even set in our world… That did help give me the confidence to take this movie in directions that, without The Dark Knight, might not have been possible.”

And we on today on of the coolest bit of marketing I’ve seen in a long time. Coke Zero set up this amazing PR stunt for James Bond’s latest adventure Skyfall in a Belgian train station, and… Well, see for yourself.

I sincerely hope that that wasn’t staged (and judging by Coke’s track record of hidden camera advertising antics, it probably wasn’t), because that was phenomenal.

Last Updated: October 22, 2012

One Comment

  1. I would honestly put BoB over Saving Private Ryan for the sole fact that BoB is a true story (albeit, a few artistic changes made). And I agree, I’d honestly say it’s the best mini-series ever made. The attention to detail, cast, script, set direction….were all unparalleled in my opinion. After watching BoB, I read Richard Winters’ and David Kenyon Webbster’s books (Biggest Brother, and Parachute Infantry). And also read Leckey’s and EB Sledge’s Books. Pretty amazing stuff. I’m all for a 3rd mini-series, however, I’d hope that it exceeds the level that the Pacific reached (I don’t think anything can touch BoB).

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