Home Entertainment Extras! 07 January 2015

Extras! 07 January 2015

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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!

  • Everybody knows that Liam Neeson has a particular set of skills, but so do I: Making jokes about Liam Neeson’s particular set of skills. The folks over at Honest Trailers seem to have the same skills (jinx!), and today they’re focusing their jokey attentions on the first two movies in the Taken series.

PS: I’ll be watching Taken 3 tomorrow, so expect a review up on Friday. Unless I get taken, of course.

  • Have you checked out the trailer for Ant-Man yet? It’s not quite what we expected, especially if what we expected was something closer to an Edgar Wright movie. The director’s controversial departure from his superhero passion project is well documented, but here’s something that isn’t. When Wright left the production, his and Joe Cornish’ script was handed over to Adam McKay to rework. Soon he and star Paul Rudd were getting together to tweak the script more to Marvel’s liking in the short time they had before production started. So how much tweaking did they actually do? Apparently enough that the script is now officially being credited to McKay and Rudd, with Wright and Cornish only getting a “Story  by” credit.
  • Poster of the day: Ant-Man

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  • Elle Fanning, the younger, less screechier sister to Dakota Fanning, may need to take some screaming tips from her older sibling. The Maleficent star has signed on to star in The Neon Demon, an upcoming horror flick from director Nicolas Winding-Refn (Drive, Only God Forgives). Not much is known about the movie’s plot, but Fanning will play “an aspiring model who is caught in a world of beauty and demise.” Shedding virtually no further light on that, here’s Winding Refn’s description of how he came up with the movie:

One morning I woke and realized I was both surrounded and dominated by women. Strangely, a sudden urge was planted in me to make a horror film about vicious beauty. After making Drive and falling madly in love with the electricity of Los Angeles, I knew I had to return to tell the story of The Neon Demon. This movie is a manifestation of the strong ties between us and will lead to many more adventures.

  • Even though I’m more of a Star Wars than Star Trek fan, I’ve still always enjoyed both and never got the hate that the respective fanboys threw at each other. However, as Scrubs Donald Faison explained to Jimmy Fallon, it’s really hard to argue in favour of this:

As a rebuttal though, I’d just like to say this: Star Wars Christmas Special. I rest my case.

  • And speaking of Star Wars, it appears that just like the rest of us, when The Force Awakens it takes a leak. Yes, some new details of the upcoming flick has once again leaked, this time it’s concept art Kylo Ren, the (we assume) Sith with cross-guard lightsaber. SPOILER WARNING, obviously.
  • And just to prove that Deadpool really is happening this time and its not just some fan-imagined vapourware, the long-gestating Ryan Reynolds led comic book movie is actually starting to fill out its cast. Funny man TJ Miller and up-and-coming star Es Skrein are apparently in talks to join the cast in undisclosed roles. Miller, who has had a great year appearing in Silicon Valley, Transformers: Age of Extinction and How To Train Your Dragon 2, is said to possibly be playing to his strengths as some more comic relief. The less well-known Skrein, who is set to step into Jason Statham’s shoes suit in the upcoming reboot, The Transporter Legacy, is said to be much further along in negotiations and could possibly be the film’s villain.
  • Quiet down, boys and girls and whatever Darryn is. School is in session. And today we’re learning from the great master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock!

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  • If you think it’s just North Korean despot Kim Jong-Un and his government that isn’t impressed with The Interview, then you may be in for a bit of a surprise. It appears that most of the North Korean people who have been able to see the controversial Seth Rogen and James Franco comedy about a couple of US TV personalities roped into assassinating Kim Jong-Un don’t get the joke either.

Kim Seong Min, a North Korean defector in Seoul, told South Korean media that residents in Sinuiju, a North Korean town near the Chinese border, have seen The Interview. Kim runs runs the Seoul-based, anti-Pyongyang broadcaster Free North Korea Radio.

“North Korean defectors living in South Korea have helped North Korean citizens see the film online, through Kakao Talk [a South Korean mobile messenger service], and we were able to hear some of their reactions,” Kim told South Korea’s CBS. A handful of North Koreans are known to be able to use South Korean telecommunications services through mobile phones smuggled in through China.

Many North Korean viewers were disappointed, according to Kim.

“Some North Korean viewers found it offensive that Kim Jong-un was being ridiculed and that the North Korean culture was portrayed in a very inaccurate way,” he said. Pyongyang has a tradition of idolizing its leaders for the public. “Some have asked us if [Kim Jong-un] really was being mocked overseas,” he added.

One North Korean resident expressed heartbreak, however, over the human-rights issue the film touches upon. “One viewer felt brokenhearted by the scene where the foreign journalist asks [Kim Jong-un] why he won’t distribute food to the people,” said Kim.

  • I don’t care what this Honest Trailer for Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones says, it was still the first time we had ever seen a proper Jedi “army” battle and my geeky mind still hasn’t recovered from the awesomeness!!

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: January 7, 2015

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