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!
- Veteran actor Rod Taylor has died at the age of 84, as a result of a heart attack suffered at his home in Los Angeles. The Australian-born is best known for starring in two of my favourite movies of all time, George Pal’s adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine and Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. Taylor was last seen onscreen in 2009 playing Winston Churchill in Inglourious Basterds. Taylor is survived by a daughter from his second marriage, as well as his third wife who he has been married to since 1980.
- I was admittedly a bit underwhelmed with the Ant-Man trailer. It’s just so… dull and generic. Marvel has a charmingly offbeat director in Peyton Reed, really funny guys in writer Alan McKay and star/co-writer Paul Rudd, and has been pushing this “exciting heist story” angle since day one. And yet the trailer has no offbeat charm, barely any humour and not a single frame hinting at a heist. Instead we have this super-serious tone that just drains the life out of it. And the internet agress with me, which is why somebody went and recut the trailer with different music and title cards and the difference in tone is astonishing!
- Oh and if you don’t actually know what the fuss is about, because you don’t know this Ant-Man guy anyway, then you may want to go read Darryn’s primer on the character over here.
- There used to be a time when Hollywood actors only appeared in TV shows when they had really bad agents or really bad drug habits. But nowadays TV has risen to and sometimes surpassed big screen quality, which is why we have guys like John Travolta signing on to star in American Crime Story, the latest miniseries from prolific showrunner Ryan Murphy (American Horror Story, Glee). The drama is set to be an anthology show, focusing on an adaptation of a different true-crime case each season, and they’re going for a whopper on their maiden voyage: the OJ Simpson trial. Travolta is set to play attorney Robert Shapiro, a member of Simpson’s defence team. He’s joining the already cast Cuba Gooding Jr. as Simpson, David Schwimmer as Robert Kardashian and Sarah Paulson as Marcia Clark.
- Poster of the day: Lord of the Rings
- Are you a die-hard, life-long Star Wars fan who’s a bit nervous about The Force Awakens? Well multiply that nervousness exponentially until you can’t tell your Jawas from your Jar-Jar’s and you’re probably not even close to how nervous director/co-writer JJ Abrams is about this whole thing.
- Long, long ago in 2008, Alexander Payne was putting together a really intriguing sounding satirical sci-fi comedy called Downsizing, set in a not-so-distant future where the technology to shrink humans to 1/8 size has been developed by Norwegian scientists to curb overpopulation and drastically reduce the drain on our natural resources. People who volunteer for the process – “Smalls” – are rewarded financially (1 big dollar equals 500 smaller dollars) and live in special shrunken down communities, protected by nets to keep the bugs out. But when Europe gets so overpopulated that a bill is passed forcing 40% of the population to become “small” drama ensues. It’s a really cool sounding concept, and at the time boasted a very talented cast, including Reese Witherspoon. Since then though, Payne went on to make other award-winning movies instead (Descendants, Nebraska) and the project kind of got lost in the shuffle. But now it’s not only back on the table, but it’s been confirmed that Witherspoon is once again attached and set to star opposite Matt Damon.
- Ever wondered what Ghostbusters would look like as a 1980’s anime? Of course you haven’t, because your name isn’t Darryn Bonthuys and you don’t of weird stuff like that! But apparently our lovable Darryn isn’t alone in his thinking though, which is why this clip exists.
- Speaking of ghosts… When you think of Beetlejuice, Michael Keaton is probably the first name that pops into your head. Understandable since he plays the title character. But did you know that out of the film’s 92-minute running time, he’s actually only onscreen for about 17 minutes? Or maybe that Beetlejuice was originally supposed to be a winged, reptilian demon that transformed into a Middle Eastern man? You didn’t? Well, then clearly you’ve not read GeekTyrant’s very informative list of 13 Fun Facts About Beetlejuice!
- Guns don’t kill people. Amanda Waller with a gun kills people. At least that’s how veteran actor Viola Davis sees the character that she’ll be playing in writer-director David Ayer’s upcoming DC Comics adaptation, Suicide Squad. The movie follows a government sanctioned team of imprisoned villains consisting of Tom Hardy’s Rick Flagg, Will Smith’s Deadshot, Jared Leto’s Joker, Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn and Jai Courtney’s Captain Boomerang, forced to go on missions in return for commuted sentences. And Davis’ Waller is the one that has to keep them all in line, a job that the character doesn’t take lightly, despite being just a normal woman.
“I’m fascinated by her. I’m fascinated by her in this world of superhero-ness because she is not a woman that you would expect. I think that she is a massive contradiction. She’s this big powerful black woman, hard, ready to pick up a gun and shoot anyone at will. I’m fascinated in exploring her psychology, just put it that way. And I’m excited to pick up a gun.”
- We’ve already seen two different versions of the Ant-Man trailer, and when watching both did you notice the massive spoiler at the end? Conan O’Brien, and he’s not happy that Marvel have given away this much about the movie.
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 9, 2015
