Extras! A strong rumour about Lex Luthor castings, Ang Lee wants to box, Cold Play feels the hunger, Captain America gets a synopsis, Hit-Girl has no problem with violence, and The Rock goes clubbing! Plus much more!

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!

Had a bad case of the Mondays today? Let’s help to get rid of it with some overly violent teens dressed up in gawdy clothing punching each other. No, its not that cellphone video I made of the kids at Cavendish Mall, its a new international TV Spot for Kick-Ass 2 which contains a few snippets of new footage.

Speaking of Kick-Ass 2, you may recall that star Jim Carrey wasn’t all too chuffed with the violence being displayed in the movie, especially in the light of American school shootings that happened after the film had wrapped. Chloe Moretz aka diminutive ass-kicker Hit-Girl doesn’t agree. See the 16-year old Moretz seems to have figured out something that the 51-year old Carrey still hasn’t: It’s just a movie.

“It’s a movie. If you are going to believe and be affected by an action film, you shouldn’t go to see ‘Pocahontas’ because you are going to think you are a Disney princess.”

“If you are that easily swayed, you might see ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ and think you are a serial killer. It’s a movie and it’s fake, and I’ve known that since I was a kid … I don’t want to run around trying to kill people and cuss. If anything, these movies teach you what not to do.”

Hey guys, did you know that most porn sets are actually not laugh-a-minute gag fest like some movies depict? Okay, maybe “gag” was a bad choice of words there, but you get my point. That point – which is actually IndieWire’s point – is that Hollywood Gets Porn Wrong.

If you’re into photos of weirdly coloured people with strangly stretched and pulled faces running, well then you should camp out with a camera on Clifton Beach to take snaps of all the cougars. Otherwise, you can have a look at these first Guardians of the Galaxy set pics, showing off a group of beings, human and alien, running across London’s Millenium Bridge, which is doubling as some extraterrestrial location.

This weekend past Disney held their D23 Expo. An expo, much to my and plenty of Star Wars fans’ dismay, that was filled with only one bit of Star Wars: Episode VII news: There was no Star Wars: Episode VII news. This announcement didn’t go down well in the packed hall of fans, who loudly booed the non-announcement, before going on a rant on the internet. Badass Digest’s Devin Faraci was one of these upset folks, and gave a rather well written “rant” on why it was such a huge slip-up by The House of Mouse (Disney had just missed the last opportunity to break news at their own event (there will be no D23 or Star Wars Celebration expos next year, and they will only happen again after Episode VII is out).

Over at Bleeding Cool though, they had a completely different response to all hoopla. See, Disney never said they would be making any announcements. “Entitled fans” just assumed they would be, and now they’re pissed off for not getting something that nobody ever told them they would be getting in the first place.

While Star Wars was MIA at D23, there was some Marvel stuff show, specifically Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Directors Joe and Anthony Russo showed of footage of how they’re tackling the film’s close-quarters combat (apparently using some new technique that allows them to stay in close, but not rely on Bourne style shaky cam) as well provide a new synopsis for the film.

After the cataclysmic events in New York with The Avengers, Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier finds Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, living quietly in Washington, D.C. and trying to adjust to the modern world. But when a S.H.I.E.L.D. colleague comes under attack, Steve becomes embroiled in a web of intrigue that threatens to put the world at risk. Joining forces with the Black Widow, Captain America struggles to expose the ever-widening conspiracy while fighting off professional assassins sent to silence him at every turn. When the full scope of the villainous plot is revealed, Captain America and the Black Widow enlist the help of a new ally, the Falcon. However, they soon find themselves up against an unexpected and formidable enemy—the Winter Soldier.

There’s a [air-quotes] new [/air-quotes] international trailer out for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. I threw up the air-quotes, because for the life of me, I can’t see what’s new about this one, but maybe you’ll have better luck.

What is new though, is that along with the trailer, it’s been announced that rock band Coldplay will be writing a song titled “Atlas” specifically for the film’s soundtrack. They also posted the handwritten lyrics to the song on their official Twitter account.

Click to embiggenate.

Now that Ang Lee’s has his aquatic adventure with Life of Pi, it’s time for a rumble in the jungle. Specifically the Rumble in the Jungle. Lee has apparently signed up an untitled movie for Universal that will take “an epic look at the boxing world of the 1960s and 1970s, as seen through the prism of its biggest rivalries and greatest fights”, including the famous bout between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. The film is supposed to have a narrative that threads all these fights together, but no details have been given as to what this is. What has been said though, is that Lee will be using the film for “the exploration of 3D technology and cutting-edge visual effects,” much like he did with Life of Pi.

The cinema cleaning ladies had barely got a chance to clear up the popcorn spewed on the floor when Superman did you-kn0w-what, and already the internet was abuzz with who would play Lex Luthor when he made his inevitable appearance in the Man of Steel sequel. Latino Review’s El Mayhimbe thinks he knows who’s getting the bald nod: Bryan Cranston. His evidence for picking Cranston. Er…. Breaking Bad is about to end and he really likes Bryan Cranston? Yeah, not the most compelling of rumours, but another one also popped up this weekend. One that has some *ahem* strong *ahem* chances of actually being true.

Professional bald badass Mark Strong – who already played a comic book villain in the form of Sinestro in WB’s abortive Green Lantern – has had his name mentioned in the same breath as Lex Luthor for a while now, and when Digital Spy managed to corner and ask him about it, Strong replied with this teaser of an answer.

“All I can say is… watch this space.”

Oh, we’ll be watching alright.

Looks like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson should change his nickname to The Club (though that would make Usher’s song “Love in da club” rather awkward) judging by the size of the rather stout stick he’s carrying in this new behind the scenes pic for Brett Ratner’s Hercules that he tweeted. Johnson also accompanied the pic with this bit of rather eloquent and flowery prose.

“No ‘over-intellectualized actor speak’. Straight gut talk..bring it on motherf*cker. #EpicWar #HERCULESMovie”

I was really very excited for the Steven Spielberg produced Under The Dome. I am no longer excited for the Steven Spielberg produced Under The Dome. Apparently though, my ever lower opinion of the CBS drama doesn’t really count for much (who would thunk it?), as the show has been a ratings beast. So much so that the network has put in a straight-to-series order for another drama show from Spielberg titled Extant. The show is billed as “a futuristic thriller about a female astronaut trying to reconnect with her family when she returns after a year in outer space. Her experiences lead to events that ultimately change the course of human history.”

Hey look, It’s Chloe Moretz saying stuff again! Yay! Well it is yay for you, if you’ve been looking forward to Kimberley Pierce’s Carrie remake with Moretz in the title role. You may recall that it was announced a while back the film’s release date had been pushed back from March to October to allow for some reshoots. Now normally reshoots are considered a bad thing indicative of a problem. In this case though, it seems it was a good thing indicative of them wanting to scare the red corn syrup out of you even more.

“We actually prolonged the film. “We did some reshoots, and added three extra scenes with Julianne [Moore] and I to make the movie even deeper and darker.”

“We prolonged a couple of scenes that needed to have an extra moment or an extra beat just to make it even deeper. It wasn’t about cutting anything out or trying to edit around things; it was about adding more to make the movie scarier and more intense.”

Amp is the title of this wonderful little short-film written and directed by Adam Marisett, that features a top notch CG-created character, and some very Half-Life-esque visuals. Also a girl with great cleavage. Check it out!

“10 years after leaving a war his father started, Quinn and Amp live in the slums selling illegal custom-tech just to afford the batteries that keep Amp alive. When an old childhood friend tracks him down, Quinn is confronted with the dilemma of choosing to remain idle in a city run by the corrupt Coreley Corporation or finally finish the war he never wanted to be a part of.”

Last Updated: August 12, 2013