Home Entertainment Extras! 25 September 2014

Extras! 25 September 2014

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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!

  • X-Men: Days of Future Past is a fantastic film, and the mutated cherry on top of it, is undoubtedly the slow-mo sequences featuring speedster Quicksilver. With the movie’s Blu Ray release around the corner, a new featurette has been made available giving us a peek at just how director Bryan Singer created those incredible sequences.

  • In case you were wondering if older gentlemen still liked to play with teddy bears, the answer is a resounding yes. At least that’s the case based on the evidence that both Liam Neeson and Morgan Freeman have joined the cast of Seth Macfarlane’s Ted 2. The writer/director/star/producer/probably caterer tweeted the announcement himself.

  • When it comes to Nicolas Cage thrillers nowadays, the biggest problem is usually that it’s a Nicolas Cage thriller. But there appear to be far bigger concerns when it comes to director Paul Schrader’s Dying of the Light, in which Cage plays a veteran CIA agent on the trail of a terrorist, while simultaneously losing his vision due to a congenital disease.

Schrader shot the pic from his own script earlier in the year without much hassle, but that quickly changed when he recently handed his first cut over to producers who found that Schrader had made a movie much different to the script which he had promised them, and also one they weren’t happy with. They provided Schrader with a list of changes to improve the film and bring it more in line with the original script, but Schaefer refused to comply. Cue a back and forth editing battle that saw Schrader eventually quit the production, leaving an un-scored, un-edited workprint that the producers themselves have now had to finalize themselves. Well, that’s according to the producers, but not Schrader who has a different version of events.

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  • And the -super-spy battle between MGM and Universal continues. And unfortunately, this features no real spies, but rather just a court case about them. MGM recently took Universel to court, claiming that the script for their upcoming spy flick Section 6, which shows the origin of British Intelligence MI-6, is a copyright infringement on their very own James Bond franchise. Universal has argued that the suit should be thrown out as Section 6 may have to do with British spies, but the characters and story have nothing in common with the modern 007 movies. But apparently they haven’t argued hard enough as a judge has decided to not dismiss the case as Universal wanted. Since the court docs are still sealed at this stage, its uncertain just what convince the judge to make his decision.
  • Pay careful attention. This is one of the few times in your life you will see me type the word “genius” in close proximity to Adam Sandler’s name. Sandler’s Happy Madison production company will apparently be rebooting classic 1980’s Val Kilmer comedy Real Genius as a TV series for NBC. Described now as a single-camera workplace comedy, the new show will focus on “the relationship between a rock star-like genius — the character Kilmer played in the movie — and a sheltered, naive co-worker.”
  • I’m a bit of a single take junkie, so when I saw this video on how the opening single take shot from one of my favourite movies of all time, Back to the Future, was pulled off, I had to give it a share.

  • So Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s second season premiered in the US on Tuesday, and based on early buzz, the show has kept up that incredible momentum from the end of last season and then some. This premiere boasted several new faces, but we’re still going to have to wait a few more episodes until we get to see Adrianne Palicki as SHIELD Agent Bobbi Morse aka Mockingbird. And based on this new pic and write-up from EW, she’s not quite what we may have expected.

Courtesy of ABC, here’s your first look at Palicki as Bobbi Morse, the head of Hydra Security and the future Mockingbird. But will she be friend or foe to Coulson and S.H.I.E.L.D.? The Mockingbird part suggests friend, but the Hydra part…things might get complicated.

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  • We’ve been hearing the rumblings and rumours for ages now, but Oscar Isaac may just have given us our first real confirmation that the Empire is indeed still around in Star Wars: Episode VII when he spoke about the attitude being adopted for the film and dropped a mention of everybody’s favourite favourite least-accurate soldiers.

“Everyone’s having a really good time. J.J. [Abrams] sets that tone. There’s a lot of enthusiasm [on the set] and it’s being done with a lot of heart. There’s nothing cynical about the way we’re doing this. Even in the way he’s shooting it — he’s shooting on film and actually building the sets, so you’ve got hundreds of Stormtroopers or whatever, and hundreds of extras and all the ships. You actually see it. It’s all real. Everyone can interact with the world.”

Along with Stormtroopers who can’t hit anything, a few of the criticism leveled at the much loved original trilogy was that the acting got a wooden in places, and the dialogue sometimes came with a healthy helping of camembert. Don’t expect that tradition to continue on the new film though.

“Yeah. [Laughs] I’m constantly looking for a cheesy line to say to harken back to the old ones. No, what they’re trying to do and what’s really great is J.J.’s been loosening it up a little bit and trying to make it alive and energized. It’s not formal. They’re messy, energized people. We’ve all intentionally tried to do that. Just make it a little more fiery and messy.”

  • So despite having some great moments, I wasn’t completely bowled over with Denzel Washington and director Antoine Fuqua’s latest collaborative effort The Equalizer. So to make myself feel better, lets take a funny look back at their first joint venture, with the Oscar winning Training Day.

If you have anything you would like to contribute to Extras, whether it be interesting stories, funny videos, or artistic photos of yourself in morally questionable poses, feel free to drop a mail to kervyn@themovies.co.za.

Last Updated: September 25, 2014

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