Home Entertainment Extras! Say goodbye to a Muppets legend, Kimberley Pierce is starting a brand, Cowabunga Will Arnett, Jennifer Garner gets drafted, and Robert Redford is the head of S.H.I.E.L.D?! Plus much more!

Extras! Say goodbye to a Muppets legend, Kimberley Pierce is starting a brand, Cowabunga Will Arnett, Jennifer Garner gets drafted, and Robert Redford is the head of S.H.I.E.L.D?! 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!

We unfortunately have to start things off on a bit of a sombre note today. Jane Nebel Hensen, who along with her husband Jim helped created the Muppets as well doing the puppeteering effects on so many movies and TV series, has passed away from cancer at the age of 78. Despite separating from him in 1986, after Jim passed away in 1990, Jane created the Jim Henson Legacy foundation to preserve her ex-husband’s contribution to world of showbiz, and has been helping to run the Jim Henson Company, which to this day still create the best puppetry in the business.

Thanks for all the memories, Hensons. You’ve done amazing work, brightening up the lives of many a child, young and old.

And now we head into whatever the complete opposite direction brightening up lives is, with a newly released second trailer for James “Insidious” Wan’s ghost story, The Conjuring.

I’m pretty sure that Wan is in league with the underwear companies.

The only acceptable reason for why you haven’t seen Rian Johnson’s Looper yet, would be the fact that you are actually Helen Keller. The rest of you have no excuse. And for those of who have seen it, and can’t wait to see what the writer/director does next, we finally have some info in that regard. Speaking to Slashfilm, Johnson revealed that his next project is going be a cyberpunk film, but despite it’s shared sci-fi genre, it will be “completely different” to Looper.

Jennifer Garner has had to sit and watch as hubby Ben Affleck has just been racking up the accolades and just got better and better as a filmmaker, while she made stinker after stinker unto the point where she’ll soon just be known as that chick that starred that thing that JJ Abrams did 10 years ago. But the better looking half (at least to my heterosexual male eyes) of Beniffer is not going down without a fight, as she has been touted to star opposite Kevin Costner in the Ivan Reitman directed Draft Day. The script for the drama – which follows the manager of the Buffalo Bills baseball team as he tries to recruit the no.1 pick on draft day – was one of the top picks on the highly vaunted screenplay Black List and was co-written by Pulitzer prize nominated playwright Rajiv Joseph, so at least there’s some guarantee that she’ll have some decent material to work with.

Just a week after its cast was announced we get our first look at Disney’s Planes, the new movie that is totally not a blatant cash-in on the merchandising opportunities that arose from Pixars’ Cars, promise, courtesy of this new clip.

Despite all my hastily scribbled letters (scented with my irresistible natural manly musk) pleading him to the contrary, acclaimed British director Danny Boyle just does not want to do a James Bond movie. Speaking to Collider about Bond he had this to say:

“They’re not really for me. The budgets are too big. I’m better working at a lower level of money really because I like that discipline of not having enough money to pull off whatever it is you want to pull off. So I wouldn’t be the best person to do those. No. And anyway, I’ve made a Bond film with a great stellar cast.”

That “Bond film” he’s referring to, is of course the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics during which 007 and the Queen of England made an appearance. But not content to just ruin one of my dreams, he then went on to say that it’s not just Bond that he has a problem with, but rather all big tentpole movies, particularly current Holllywood craze, comic book adaptations.

“No, I’m not a big fan actually. I was never a devotee of them. I kind of missed out on that really. I’m always amazed when I meet the people who love them.”

“…But they’re not my world at all. It doesn’t appeal to me at all.”

Speaking of people out of place in a comic book world… It was revealed last week that Robert Redford may be joining the cast of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Well that casting has now been confirmed, but you’ll never guess what role he’s going to play.

“Well, the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. The head of S.H.I.E.L.D. The Captain America thing is just a very simple thing. I wanted to do something different. I wanted to do something just to be different. Something bold, different. And that felt like a good thing to do. That was it, nothing more to it than that. Well, it’s bold in terms of expectations, I guess.”

Wait, what? The head of S.H.I.E.L.D.? Now as everybody knows, Samuel L. Jackson’s depth perception challenged, bad-ass motherf@#$er Nick Fury is the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the Marvel universe. So either Redford means one of those silhouetted folks on the TV screens whose orders Fury is always ignoring, or something else is going on here. Maybe Redford = 616 Nick Fury, while Jackson = Ultimate Nick Fury? Also, if you understood that previous sentence, then you’re a bigger geek than you’d like to admit.

The first trailer is out for Funny or Die’s parody Steve Jobs biopic iSteve, which will see Justin Long as the late head of Apple and champion of cardigans and sneakers everywhere. And the trailer is every bit as non-serious as you would expect.

Seems that as a result of making the Chloe Moretz starring Carrie remake, director Kimberley Pierce has developed a bit of a thing for crazy white people who like to burn stuff. According to Deadline, Pierce has signed on to helm the Aryan Brotherhood drama The Brand, a true story based on David Grann’s 2004 New Yorker article “Annals Of Crime”, which explored the Brotherhoods influence on the US prison system.

And after all the heroes on a half shell (turtle power!) were revealed last week, another name has been added to Jonathan Liebesmann and Michael Bay’s Ninja Turtles. This time it’s Arrested Development funnyman Will Arnett who will be joining Megan Fox in the “not an amphibious reptile” section of the cast. While Fox has been pegged for the role of feisty reported April O’Neil (though that’s still not officially confirmed yet), there’s no word on exactly what role Arnett will play. Shredder anybody? It will certainly fit with the WTF-ness of the rest of this production.

I, like most people who didn’t spend their childhood huffing turpentine, am not a fan of 3D re-releases. However, if there was one movie that I always maintained could be pretty amazing as a three dimensional do-over, it would be Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. Well that’s exactly what we’re going to be getting pretty soon in the form of  Jurassic Park 3D. Unfortunately, early buzz indicates that like most 3D re-releases of classic films, while the “Jurassic Park” part is still a white-knuckled ride of thrills and chills, the “3D” part really doesn’t add much. And thus the folks over at Honest Trailers have responded to that news with their very own flavour of hilarious truth.

Last Updated: April 3, 2013

One Comment

  1. That Jurasic Park made me snort. Hehe. Good stuff. Thanks.

    Reply

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