Why ‘Teenage Alien Ninja Turtles’ is a Terrible Idea

You’ve most likely heard by now that the  Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles are about to become the Teenage ALIEN Ninja Tur­tles in the upcom­ing 2013 film pro­duced by Michael Bay.

In a video quote that has got­ten TMNT fans’ col­lec­tive panties in a bunch to the point where even ex-TMNT celebri­ties and major news out­lets are weigh­ing in on the back­lash, Bay said:

“These tur­tles are from an alien race , and they are going to be tough, edgy, funny, and com­pletely lov­able.” [Source]

As a huge TMNT fan, I’ve been furi­ous   since I heard about it  on Twit­ter, and the fact that Michael Bay has a track record of ruin­ing beloved fran­chises from our child­hoods doesn’t help.

But I under­stand that Bay is just the pro­ducer and didn’t write the ‘Ninja Tur­tles’ script, so I’m not here to bash Michael Bay specif­i­cally (at least not today). So con­sider this blog post directed at who­ever is respon­si­ble for the idi­otic, hor­ri­bly ill-conceived idea that the Tur­tles should be aliens.

Image credit:  Goon­gas­nootch  @ Techn­odrome Forums

Now that I’ve had a few days to calm my ner­drage and col­lect my thoughts, it’s time we discussed:

6 com­pletely ratio­nal rea­sons why Teenage Alien Ninja Tur­tles is a ter­ri­ble idea:

1. Their name is Teenage MUTANT Ninja Tur­tles for chris­sakes. It’s obvi­ous, I know, but let’s not over­look the basic facts, ok? Because who­ever wrote the new script sure as hell did. I guess now we know why the new film will just be called ‘Ninja Turtles.’

2. It’s a com­pletely unnec­es­sary change to one of the core ele­ments of the Turtle’s mythol­ogy. How would you feel if Spi­der­man was never bit­ten by a radioac­tive spi­der? Or if Super­man wasn’t from planet Kryp­ton? (Feel free to sub­sti­tute any of your favorite superhero’s ori­gin sto­ries here.) The Tur­tles are, and always have been, actual tur­tles  who were trans­formed into what they are by muta­gen ooze. This is an essen­tial com­po­nent of the ori­gin story that you’ll find in every incar­na­tion of TMNT, includ­ing the comics, films, TV shows, and video games.

3.  If the Tur­tles are aliens, it means they weren’t cre­ated by acci­dent.  The shock of dis­cov­er­ing the fact that they were essen­tially cre­ated by acci­dent and the result­ing strug­gle to find their place in the world is a cru­cial part of the Tur­tles’ back­story. It’s a major theme that has shaped each of the Tur­tles’ per­son­al­i­ties and story arcs in some way. Take that away and you’ve removed one of the most essen­tial dri­vers of the Tur­tles’ char­ac­ter development.

4.  It means the Tur­tles are much less unique.   “Alien race” implies there could be lots of other Tur­tles out there. If there’s sud­denly a whole home planet of Tur­tles, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles don’t really seem so spe­cial, do they? The idea of adding more Ninja Tur­tles beyond the orig­i­nal four into the Turtle­verse is an idea that TMNT co-creator Peter Laird describes on his blog as a “weak, facile, cre­atively bank­rupt idea.” Ouch. Then again, I sup­pose that’s what he gets for sell­ing the franchise.

5.  It down­plays the impor­tance of Splinter’s role in the Tur­tles’ lives.   Splinter—a rat who is of course also a mutant and not an alien—is the Tur­tles’ sen­sei, care­taker and father fig­ure who raised them since they were babies, hav­ing been mutated from the same pud­dle of ooze. Shar­ing the Tur­tles’ same fate is what gives them such a strong bond. How does Splin­ter fit into the new alien ori­gin? Would the Tur­tles still look upon him as a father if they have an alien fam­ily chill­ing back on the home planet? Is there another whole planet full of rat peo­ple?? (Again—unnecessary com­pli­ca­tions to to an ori­gin story that is already quite com­pli­cated enough.)

6. It makes the actual alien stuff in the Turtle­verse a whole lot less inter­est­ing.   Now I know some of you are sit­ting there think­ing, “But wait a minute, the Tur­tles already kind of have an alien ori­gin!” Yes, it’s true that the Turtle­verse is already rife with aliens (e.g. Krang, Tricer­a­tons, Utroms…). Even the muta­gen that trans­formed the Tur­tles is an alien sub­stance cre­ated by (wait for it…) aliens . The point is there’s already ALL KINDS of alien crea­tures, char­ac­ters, plot lines, uni­verses to draw from if they want to go that route. Do we really need to make the Tur­tles aliens too?

To sum up:

If Bay and com­pany want to put aliens in the new Ninja Tur­tles flick, I’m totally fine with that. Krang, Bee­bop and Rock­steady? Awe­some! But for God’s sake–

LEAVE THE TURTLES ALONE!!!

Review: ‘Starry Starry Night’ is a Beautiful, Imaginative Coming of Age Film

You’ve prob­a­bly never heard of the Tai­wanese film Starry Starry Night , a com­ing of age drama directed by Tom Lin that was released in late 2011. I had cer­tainly never heard of it until a few weeks ago when it popped up in my DVD rec­om­men­da­tions over at YESASIA , and every­thing I read about it just seemed so appeal­ing to my inter­ests that I couldn’t resist pick­ing it up.

The film is an adap­ta­tion of a children’s book by Jimmy Liao , a Tai­wanese illus­tra­tor and pic­ture book author renown for his melan­choly depic­tions of child­hood using vivid col­ors and strik­ing visuals.

The story cen­ters on Mei, a bright, sen­si­tive but lonely 13-year-old girl who is deal­ing with a lot of issues in her young life. She’s quiet and with­drawn at school, her par­ents are on the brink of divorce and barely notice her, her mother is grow­ing increas­ingly dis­tant and drinks too much, and her grand­fa­ther, whom she loves more than any­one else in the world, is in very poor health.

Mei is a very imag­i­na­tive girl who fills her days with art, puz­zles, day­dreams, and yearns for the days when she used to live with her grand­par­ents at their cot­tage in the moun­tains. One day around Christ­mas­time, Mei hears beau­ti­ful recorder music out­side her bed­room win­dow and sees that its being played  by a young boy, who is at the win­dow of a neigh­bor­ing apartment.

The boy turns out to be Jie, a new stu­dent at Mei’s school who is a bud­ding artist also deal­ing with many issues of his own. His artis­tic tal­ents and cocky atti­tude make him an easy tar­get for the other boys at the school who con­stantly bully him. Mei can’t help but feel drawn toward Jie, and after a series of rocky events in both their lives, the pair begins a tremu­lous friendship.

As Mei and Jie’s rela­tion­ship blos­soms, they both begin to over­come their lone­li­ness and adver­sity while try­ing to cope with the ongo­ing harass­ment of their class­mates. There is a strong under­cur­rent of desire between the two leads, who grow closer and closer and even­tu­ally run away together on a fan­tas­tic adven­ture. Their sum­mer romance is short-lived, but sets in motion the events that will for­ever change both of their lives.

Starry Starry Night has been described as a “visual feast” for its beau­ti­ful cin­e­matog­ra­phy that blends together rich, imag­i­na­tive visu­als with dra­matic light­ing and shadow play.  The film is punc­tu­ated by gor­geous CGI fan­tasy sequences where Mei’s imag­i­na­tion takes over, as she envi­sions inan­i­mate objects—her grandfather’s wooden ani­mal carv­ings, col­or­ful pieces of origami, fan­tas­tic shadow beasts—coming to life all around her. This focus on Mei’s imag­i­na­tion as an exten­sion of her character’s hopes and dreams is a beau­ti­ful way of look­ing at the world through a child’s lens.

The mes­mer­iz­ing score is another ele­ment that adds to the dream­like qual­ity of the film. It’s a mix­ture of del­i­cate music box melodies, and sweep­ing, ethe­real lul­la­bies that really makes the imagery soar.

There are a few flaws, how­ever, such as the film’s some­times labo­ri­ously slow pac­ing; but at least the film’s unques­tion­able beauty makes the jour­ney worth­while. There are also some direc­to­r­ial choices that pile on too much unnec­es­sary melo­drama, and visual metaphors that are too obvi­ous.  These are only minor com­plaints, though.

Starry Starry Night may not wow you with its uncom­pli­cated plot and sim­ple spe­cial effects, but if you enjoy ten­der com­ing of age sto­ries and deep char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, I can­not rec­om­mend this film highly enough.

ShezCrafti’s Rating:

7 out of 10 stars.

‘Turtle Power’ Documentary Coming Soon, Has a Kick-ass Trailer

If you have ever con­sid­ered your­self a TMNT fan in any capac­ity, then this doc­u­men­tary needs to be on your radar.

Tur­tle Power: The Defin­i­tive His­tory of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles is an upcom­ing indie doc­u­men­tary from Cana­dian pro­ducer Isaac Elliott-Fisher of i.Productions in col­lab­o­ra­tion with  Faux­Pop TV  that cel­e­brates over 25 years of TMNT history.

“Cur­rently we have col­lected well over 100 hours of con­tent, hun­dreds of stills, and over 60 in-depth inter­views with the peo­ple who cre­ated the Tur­tles, the artists behind the orig­i­nal comics, the design­ers of the toys, the voices and tech­ni­cians of the car­toons, the magic mak­ers of the movies, and the loyal fans world wide.”

It has a totally kick-ass trailer that debuted a few weeks ago, which you can watch right here:

If you’re not even just a lit­tle bit excited after watch­ing that, then clearly you’ve got some­thing shoved up your shell.

One of the most inter­est­ing things about TMNT has always been how it started as a joke and grew into a wildly pop­u­lar world­wide phe­nom­e­non, or as the film puts it, a series of “happy accidents.”

With the Tur­tle Power doc­u­men­tary in the works, Nickelodeon’s new TMNT ani­mated show just around the cor­ner, and a new live-action TMNT film set to hit the­aters in 2013, it’s an awe­some time to be a Ninja Tur­tles fan.

‘Dark Shadows’ Trailer is a Big Pile of Suck

Well, I was   look­ing for­ward to Tim Burton’s upcom­ing film Dark Shad­ows …

After wait­ing months and months for any hint of a teaser, the full blown trailer arrived out of nowhere last night. And man what a fuck­ing dis­ap­point­ment it is.

Ok seri­ously, Tim Bur­ton, what the hell? This was your chance to make a seri­ous film for Dark Shad­ows fans and you’ve com­pletely blown it.

I mean this has to be some kind of joke, right? Nobody asked for  “Austin Pow­ers with Fangs,”  as the Boston Her­ald puts it.

Yes, we know Dark Shad­ows was a campy, low-budget soap opera, but it wasn’t this ( what­ever the hell “this” is).  The orig­i­nal TV show had more integrity than that.

Despite its lim­i­ta­tions, Dark Shad­ows  at least tried to be a seri­ous show and stuck to its unique (at the time) for­mula of hor­ror, mys­tery and romance. It was never con­sid­ered a com­edy (well, at least not inten­tion­ally) and never had to resort to cheap jokes.

I love Tim Bur­ton and all, but this makes two films in a row now ( Alice in Won­der­land ) where he’s com­pletely missed the mark and ruined beloved char­ac­ters and fan­doms with his flam­boy­ant, style-over-substance treat­ment of the material.

Oh well. I guess we’ll always have the orig­i­nal Dark Shad­ows  to fall back on.

All of Raphael’s Badassery in One Video [TMNT]

The news that we’ll be get­ting a new live-action TMNT film for Christ­mas in 2013 has totally put me in Obses­sive TMNT Fan­girl mode this week now that there’s like an actual release date to look for­ward to.

Though the film will be yet another reboot of the TMNT ori­gin story (sigh), I’m still stu­pid excited about it because OMFG NINJA TURTLES!

The pos­si­bil­i­ties of what the next TMNT film could  be got me think­ing yes­ter­day about how much I’d love to see a TMNT movie star­ring just Raphael , my all time favorite turtle.

Since that will prob­a­bly never hap­pen, I had to resort to the next best thing: cre­at­ing a badass Raphael fan video.

For the music, I set­tled on Hys­te­ria  by Muse. It ended up work­ing really well for both the lyrics and the mood I was going for.  And because I like to pre­tend I live in a world where the embar­rass­ment that is  Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles III  was never made, I only used clips from the first two Tur­tles  films.

It’s a trib­ute to all the things Raph does best: brood­ing, mouthing off and kick­ing ass. Hope you like it!

An Honest Review of ‘Love Never Dies’ from a Non-Phan

There are gen­er­ally two types of  Phan­tom  fans:

The crazy, obses­sive vari­ety who hold every­thing to impos­si­ble stan­dards and will pick apart every per­for­mance and adap­ta­tion of  Phan­tom  like vul­tures (these are the same peo­ple  who write tawdry phan-fiction and believe  Joel Schumacher’s  2004 film ver­sion  is a pile of rub­bish), and those like me who sim­ply enjoy  Phan­tom,  in all of its var­i­ous forms, for what it is—a damned good story no mat­ter ho w it’s told .  Like Robin Hood or The Count of Monte Cristo , it’s one of those clas­sic sto­ries that will be retold and redis­cov­ered through the ages, with or with­out Andrew Lloyd Webber’s help.

As the sequel to one of the most beloved and obsessed-over musi­cals of all time,  Love Never Dies   was bound to ruf­fle a few feath­ers, but the real­ity is that it has been plagued with prob­lems almost since its incep­tion. Die-hard Phan­tom fans, or “phans” if you will, have been on some­thing of an anti-LND cru­sade . Feel­ing betrayed by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s deci­sion to extend the canon of his mas­ter­piece by essen­tially “mak­ing shit up,” they argue that the sequel takes too much lib­erty with the story and char­ac­ters of Gas­ton Leroux’s orig­i­nal novel. Many phans sim­ply choose not to acknowl­edge that a sequel even exists.

The crit­ics have not been kind either, pan­ning every­thing from the libretto to the chore­og­ra­phy.  One even cru­elly dubbed the show ” Paint Never Dries .”  After a dis­ap­point­ing run in London’s West End, Love Never Dies was almost com­pletely over­hauled and the pro­duc­tion moved to Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia, then later to Syd­ney, where it’s cur­rently set to run until April.

Despite the the harsh crit­i­cism and phan back­lash, the reworked show seems to have found its audi­ence in Aus­tralia where its get­ting rave reviews and play­ing to sold out venues.  The Sep­tem­ber 15, 2011 8:00 PM per­for­mance of the Mel­bourne  pro­duc­tion was filmed for release on DVD and Blu-Ray  and is cur­rently play­ing in the­aters, so that is the ver­sion I will be reviewing.

Synopsis

Beware: lots of spoil­ers below. You’ve been forewarned!

Set ten years after the events in Phan­tom ‚  Love Never Dies shifts us from the majes­tic Paris opera house set­ting to the  car­ni­va­lesque spec­ta­cle of 1920’s Coney Island. We learn that The Phan­tom has estab­lished a new artis­tic base of oper­a­tions in Phan­tasma, a musi­cal menagerie of sorts, with the help of famil­iar char­ac­ters Madame Giry and her daugh­ter Meg, who smug­gled him out of Paris. Known only to his per­form­ers and patrons as “Mr. Y,” The Phan­tom is the mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure behind Phantasma’s—and Meg Giry’s—success.

Yearn­ing to hear his beloved Chris­tine Daaé sing for him once again, The Phan­tom sends her an anony­mous invi­ta­tion to make her Amer­i­can debut at his the­ater. Now mar­ried to the Vicount de Chagny, Chris­tine accepts the invi­ta­tion and arrives by boat to much fan­fare with her hus­band Raoul and young son Gus­tav in tow. Evi­dently Raoul has become a dis­tant hus­band as well as father, is in dire finan­cial straits, and is also quite fond of the drink.

The Phan­tom soon reveals him­self to Chris­tine in her hotel room, who is of course shocked and bewil­dered, but still unable to resist him. In “Beneath a Moon­less Sky” we learn that Chris­tine and The Phan­tom once shared a secret night of pas­sion, and that “Once Upon Another Time”, Chris­tine was pre­pared to break her engage­ment with Raoul for her masked lover. But it was The Phan­tom who in fact rejected Chris­tine, break­ing her heart.

Their semi-romantic inter­lude is inter­rupted by Gus­tav, who awak­ens from a ter­ri­ble night­mare. Chris­tine intro­duces him to “Mr. Y”, say­ing that he’s an old friend of hers. The Phan­tom is enchanted by the boy, and Gus­tav likewise.

Gus­tav grows increas­ingly enthralled with Phan­tasma as The Phan­tom intro­duces him to his world in “The Beauty Under­neath.” When Gus­tav plays a beau­ti­ful melody on the piano, his extra­or­di­nary musi­cal tal­ent causes The Phan­tom to begin to sus­pect that he’s really the boy’s father. Believ­ing that Gus­tav will accept him, he takes off his mask which causes Gus­tav to run away, scream­ing. He retreats to his mother, who when con­fronted by The Phan­tom, admits that Gus­tav is his son. He makes Chris­tine promise not to ever tell Gus­tav that he is his father, but promises to leave him every­thing he owns. Unfor­tu­nately, Madame Giry over­hears all of this.

As the reign­ing star of Phan­tasma, Meg con­sid­ers her­self Mr Y’s pro­tege. When she learns of Christine’s oppor­tu­nity, she can barely hide her jeal­ousy.  Madame Giry is none too thrilled about The Phantom’s obses­sion with Chris­tine, hav­ing a vested inter­est in her own daughter’s future and feel­ing betrayed after all she’s done for him. She exposes The Phan­tom and his plans to Raoul, who storms off in a fit of rage and later goes to drown his sor­rows at the bar, ques­tion­ing Christine’s love for him.

The Phan­tom drops in on Raoul and makes a bet: if Chris­tine does not sing for him, she is free to leave with Raoul and her son. If she does sing, how­ever, Raoul must leave alone. To make a long story short (because this syn­op­sis is already get­ting ridicu­lously long), Chris­tine does end up stay­ing and singing for The Phan­tom, despite Raoul’s plead­ings that they leave together as soon as possible.

After her stun­ning per­for­mance of “Love Never Dies,” Gus­tav mys­te­ri­ously dis­ap­pears. Meg Giry, in a jeal­ous rage, has kid­napped him and taken him to the docks, threat­en­ing to drown him. The Phan­tom, Chris­tine, and Madame Giry arrive just in time, and The Phan­tom is able to get the boy safely away from her. How­ever, Meg pulls out a pis­tol and threat­ens to kill her­self instead. In the midst of a lengthy, emo­tional tirade where Meg reveals all sorts of unsa­vory things about her­self, The Phan­tom tries to wres­tle the gun away from her and she acci­den­tally shoots Chris­tine in the stomach.

As Chris­tine lay dying in The Phantom’s arms, she tells Gus­tav that he is the boy’s real father. Gus­tav runs off to find Raoul, who arrives on the scene too late. Chris­tine and The Phan­tom pro­fess their undy­ing love and then kiss their final kiss. As the cur­tain closes, Gus­tav removes The Phantom’s mask and embraces him.

First, the not-so-good stuff:

To appre­ci­ate Love Never Dies, you have to sort of let go of any pre­con­ceived notions you might have about the char­ac­ters. The Phan­tom a lov­ing father fig­ure? Raoul an abu­sive drunk? Meg Giry a pros­ti­tute? Accept­ing these new real­i­ties requires putting aside the out­comes of the events in The Phan­tom of the Opera . And peo­ple can cer­tainly change a lot in ten years.

Admit­tedly, the plot is kind of a mess, espe­cially toward the end. If I hadn’t known what to expect from hav­ing lis­tened to the sound­track so many times, I prob­a­bly would not have fully grasped what was going on. One of the main crit­i­cisms of the show’s orig­i­nal pro­duc­tion was its non­sen­si­cal plot. I com­pletely under­stand why it had to be reworked. On the other hand, it feels strange to watch some­thing that you know has been sig­nif­i­cantly tweaked because the edits tend to seem all the more obvious.

Being reworked also means that some musi­cal themes from The Phan­tom of the Opera were injected into the score. In between the new songs, you’ll hear hints of Phan­tom songs like “Angel of Music” and “Prima Donna.” Sup­pos­edly the cur­rent iter­a­tion of the show includes many more of these inva­sive musi­cal inter­ludes than the orig­i­nal pro­duc­tion. It’s dif­fi­cult not to notice these melodies when you hear them, and I found myself won­der­ing if they were nec­es­sary additions.

And now on to the good stuff:

My first intro­duc­tion to Love Never Dies was through its sound­track (the full orig­i­nal cast record­ing is  avail­able on Spo­tify ), which I fell imme­di­ately in love with and ended up lis­ten­ing to on repeat while at work.

Musi­cally,  Love Never Dies  is excep­tional. It’s full of haunt­ingly beau­ti­ful themes (“Beneath a Moon­lit Sky” , ” Once Upon Another Time” , ” ‘Till I Hear You Sing”) and grand, sweep­ing waltzes (“The Coney Island Waltz”, “Look With Your Heart”) that, when they bloom, will make your heart swell with emo­tion.  Andrew Lloyd Web­ber has described it as being the most beau­ti­ful score he’s ever writ­ten, and I don’t believe he’s exaggerating.

It’s also one of the most visu­ally stun­ning musi­cals ever pro­duced. Coney Island pro­vides a vibrant, spec­tac­u­lar back­drop to the drama unfold­ing on the stage. The cos­tumes, espe­cially those of the cir­cus per­form­ers, are lush and imaginative.

I won’t pre­tend to know more than I do about the­ater (which is very lit­tle) but I must com­mend the extra­or­di­nar­ily tal­ented cast. The singing, danc­ing and act­ing were all top notch. The show opens with Ben Lewis’ (The Phan­tom) pow­er­ful per­for­mance of “‘Till I Hear You Sing”, which kicks off the first in a long series of big, ambi­tious musi­cal num­bers to come.  I was espe­cially impressed by Anna O’Byrne (Chris­tine Daaé), whose vocals on songs like “Once Upon Another Time” took my breath away.

In terms of the over­all mes­sage or moral of the story, I much pre­fer  Love Never Dies’   mature view of life and love  over the impos­si­bly ide­al­is­tic “hap­pily ever after” end­ing of  Phan­tom.  Christine’s “safe” choice of suit­ors has always both­ered me, and the sequel attempts to explore what might have been had Chris­tine given in to her true desires. It’s a flimsy basis for a sequel to be sure, but it does man­age to pro­vide answers to the ques­tions we’re left with at the end of Phan­tom . For the peo­ple who were root­ing for The Phan­tom and Chris­tine, Love Never Dies is like a beautifully-wrapped gift.

The bot­tom line:

Though Love Never Dies doesn’t quite man­age to cap­ture the same magic as the orig­i­nal (and let’s be hon­est, sequels rarely, if ever, do) it’s still a highly enjoy­able pro­duc­tion that is well worth watch­ing. But even if the show doesn’t man­age to cap­ti­vate you, the music prob­a­bly will.

Does the world really need a sequel to  The Phan­tom of the Opera , the most suc­cess­ful musi­cal of all time? Most peo­ple would prob­a­bly say no.  But those peo­ple would be miss­ing out on some­thing really special.

ShezCrafti’s Rating:

8 out of 10 stars.

Sneak Peek at Nickelodeon’s Upcoming Animated TMNT Show

Via Scoop.it — Adven­ture Games

We’ve known for a while that Nick was plan­ning a new ani­mated Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles show for 2012, but today we finally get some screenshots!

Some stills of the new TMNT CGI car­toon have turned up on the Toyark. Though some designs of the show were revealed at last week’s Toy­fair, this is really our first look at other char­ac­ters’ actual appear­ance on the show.   The show which will pre­miere on Nick­elodeon, still has no clear release date other than it’ll be show­ing up some­time in 2012. A sneak pre­view has been con­firmed be shown some­time after the Kid’s Choice Awards on March 31, 2012.

Via www.theouthousers.com

Click the link above to check out the full set.

Is Jim going to cheat on Pam tonight? [The Office]

You know, I’ve been say­ing how bor­ing Jim and Pam are get­ting lately.

Last week’s episode of The Office ended on a very inter­est­ing note, which you may not have noticed unless you stuck around to watch until the very last three sec­onds.  In the final scene, Kathy is over­heard talk­ing on her cell­phone about Jim, and pretty much flat out said she plans to try to sleep with him.

Jim and Kathy are part of a small task force of Dun­der Mif­flin employ­ees (which con­ve­niently doesn’t include Pam) who were cho­sen by Dwight to go on a busi­ness trip to Tal­la­has­see, Florida, to help open up a chain of new Sabre stores.  Hmm, let’s see—the beach, hotel rooms, and Robert Cal­i­for­nia.  Obvi­ously this is the per­fect setup for infidelity!

Kathy Simms (pic­tured right), oth­er­wise known as “the new girl”, was intro­duced ear­lier this sea­son in the episode clev­erly named with the dou­ble enten­dre  “Pam’s Replace­ment.”  Pam has been on mater­nity leave since the birth of her sec­ond child with Jim, and has been notice­ably absent for most of this season.

I was pretty sus­pi­cious right off the bat when Kathy’s char­ac­ter was intro­duced. She wasted no time cozy­ing up to Jim, and in gen­eral just comes across as a back­stab­ber.  The show has dropped a few small hints before that Kathy was kind of into Jim, but noth­ing quite so bla­tant as what we saw last week.

I can’t wait to tune in tonight to find out what hap­pens. The next few episodes should get real interesting

Update 2/17/12:  Well, it didn’t hap­pen last night, but Kathy sure couldn’t take her eyes off Jim. They’re going to be in Florida for a few more episodes, and I’m sure it’s just a mat­ter of time before she puts the moves on him.  And when she does, I have faith Jim will stay true to Pam; that’s a rock solid rela­tion­ship.  How­ever, I’m pre­dict­ing some kind of Three’s Company-like mix-up where Kathy goes for it, gets shot down by Jim, but some­one else catches wind of what’s hap­pen­ing and com­pletely mis­in­ter­prets the sit­u­a­tion, word gets back to Pam, and shit­storm ensues.  Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Spoiler Alert!

Update 2/24/12: OMG Kathy is such a whore!  Last night she was all over Jim like Stan­ley on pret­zels. After invent­ing some totally lame excuse about her room being too cold (yet she’s pranc­ing around in box­ers and a tank top), she invited her­self into Jim’s room and tried her damnedest to get him to sleep with her. Of course Jim didn’t go for it, and Kathy tried to pre­tend he was mis­read­ing the sit­u­a­tion. But that sure didn’t stop her from try­ing.  Some­where in the mid­dle of all that, Stan­ley stag­gers drunk­enly into Jim’s room to raid his mini-fridge and totally gives Jim a lit­tle wink/nudge, much to Jim’s dis­may.  What hap­pens after that might be one of the fun­ni­est “Dwight to the res­cue” moments ever. The only ques­tion now is whether word about Jim’s close encounter will get back to Pam…

Well there you have it, folks. Did I totally call this or what??

Review: ‘Chronicle’ is Surprisingly Good for an Angsty Found Footage Teen Film

Chron­i­cle is a sci-fi thriller about three teenage boys who come into con­tact with a strange, radioac­tive sub­stance found in a well near their Seat­tle home, and weeks later dis­cover that they’ve devel­oped telekinesis-like abilities.

The story cen­ters on angsty high­schooler Andrew Det­mer, who begins doc­u­ment­ing his trou­bled life with video.  He con­stantly gets picked on, his dad is an abu­sive drunk, and his mother lay dying of can­cer.  It doesn’t get much worse than Andrew’s life.  And so he finds solace behind the cam­era, con­stantly film­ing at every oppor­tu­nity (much to the annoy­ance of his friends and classmates).

The first part of the film is pretty much what you’d expect: through Andrew’s lens, we get a good intro­duc­tory glimpse of his life, his friends, and his prob­lems. About 12 min­utes in, every­thing changes after he and his friends Matt and Steve stum­ble across the mys­te­ri­ous well.  From there after­ward the boys begin doc­u­ment­ing their pow­ers on video, test­ing the lim­its of their abil­i­ties with gen­uine awe at what they’re capa­ble of, often in humor­ous ways (for instance play­ing pranks on unsus­pect­ing peo­ple).  With the new­found sense of belong­ing that Matt and Steve pro­vide, Andrew’s per­sonal life begins to trans­form as well, gain­ing more con­fi­dence and con­trol in his social life even when things are falling apart at home.

And this is where Chron­i­cle  really gets inter­est­ing. Rather than focus­ing too much on the “Hey, look at my awe­some super pow­ers, isn’t this cool?” aspect of Andrew’s story, the film takes a much darker turn as we learn that Andrew’s inten­tions and moti­va­tions aren’t exactly pure.  Tired of being bul­lied and his mis­er­able home life, Andrew beings to rec­og­nize that hav­ing such power also means hav­ing the abil­ity to pun­ish those who would do him harm.  And power in the hands of some­one who is so obvi­ously dis­turbed is a very dan­ger­ous thing.

The film’s unspo­ken ques­tion: if you sud­denly devel­oped super pow­ers, what kind of per­son would you  be?

Shock­u­men­tary hor­ror films like Blair Witch and Clover­field that favor the shaky, first-person hand­cam method to tell the story as if it were “real” footage usu­ally come across as highly unbe­liev­able because, hon­estly, what kind of fuck­ing idiot would keep the cam­era rolling in ter­ri­fy­ing life-or-death sit­u­a­tions? (For what it’s worth,  REC  was one of the only films to get the ‘found footage’ for­mula right.)  But In a non-horror film like  Chron­i­cle,  the found footage style makes more sense to me. In the age of YouTube, I have no prob­lems believ­ing that a bunch of bored teenagers who sud­denly develop super pow­ers would want to film all the awe­some things they can do.

That’s why I was pleas­antly sur­prised by how well Chron­i­cle  works. Direc­tor Josh Trank, who is only 26 years old, by the way, is to be com­mended for putting his unique twist on the found footage trend with this direc­to­r­ial debut. Rather than mind­lessly mimic the first-person shoot­ing style like so many other films have done, he cre­ates char­ac­ter sit­u­a­tions that allow for dif­fer­ent film­ing per­spec­tives, bet­ter cam­era angles, and more inter­est­ing frames of reference.

For exam­ple, there’s a pretty insane action sequence toward the end of the film where we get to wit­ness the events unfold through traf­fic and secu­rity cam­eras posi­tioned all around down­town Seat­tle. In some other cases, how­ever, it felt like the film­ing sit­u­a­tions were far too con­trived.  But over­all I think the direc­tion was appro­pri­ate and var­ied enough so that you don’t feel like you’re trudg­ing through loads of raw footage wait­ing for some­thing cool to hap­pen (fuck you, Para­nor­mal Activ­ity ).  Cool stuff def­i­nitely hap­pens in this movie. I don’t want to give too much away, but I can promise there are some fan­tas­tic “WTF” moments that come out of nowhere, and awe­some action sequences that must be seen to be believed.

I believe Chron­i­cle  is an amaz­ing achieve­ment in low-budget film­mak­ing.  If you can put aside your expec­ta­tions of what found footage films are typ­i­cally like and just let your­self get immersed in the story, this movie can be a lot of fun.

ShezCrafti’s Rating:

7 out of 10 stars.

New ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Live Action Film in the Works, Jonathan Liebesman to Direct

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

Hey, remem­ber a few years ago when we heard there’d be a new live-action Ninja Tur­tles film in 2011 and I got all excited about it ?  Just when I was start­ing to give up hope, I saw the news this morning:

Para­mount is in devel­op­ment on a live-action reboot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles. It has been a rough tran­si­tion so far from comic to fea­ture, but the stu­dio is tak­ing the project in an unex­pected direc­tion. Michael Bay, Brad Fuller, and Andrew Form of Plat­inum Dunes—the pro­duc­tion com­pany behind hor­ror remakes such A Night­mare on Elm Street and Fri­day the 13th—are shep­herd­ing the reboot. The stu­dio assigned the script to Josh Appel­baum and Andre Nemec, the writ­ers who most recently penned the whip-smart Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble – Ghost Protocol.

Now Vari­ety reports Jonathan Liebesman is in nego­ti­a­tions to direct. Liebesman directed Bat­tle: Los Ange­les, and his next project is Wrath of the Titans. He’s the up-and-comer you call when you want a big action film. Tone will always be tricky when your main char­ac­ters are anthro­po­mor­phic tur­tles who know mar­tial arts. But if they can rein­vent TMNT on the level of, say, Bay’s Trans­form­ers… well, that sounds like a blast.

Via collider.com

Cow­abunga says it all.

Is ‘Doomsday Prepper’ Kellene Bishop a Scam Artist?

After Tues­day night’s pre­miere of  National Geo­graphic channel’s new show Dooms­day Prep­pers , I was com­pelled to write this humor­ous blog post pok­ing fun at some of the crazy prep­pers fea­tured on the show, com­par­ing their ridicu­lous stock­pil­ing habits to that of hoard­ers.   Kel­lene Bishop  is one of the prep­pers I wrote about, whose Orem, Utah home is prac­ti­cally a labyrinth of hoarded food stashes.

Kel­lene prides her­self on being self-reliant and finan­cially inde­pen­dent.  She makes her liv­ing as owner of Pre­pared­nessPro , a prep­per blog and com­mu­nity site “devoted to pro­vid­ing guid­ance and encour­age­ment for Peace­ful Pre­pared­ness,” where she also sells expen­sive video-based classes on top­ics such as cheese preser­va­tion, sur­vival san­i­ta­tion, and cook­ing with solar ovens.  She also teaches self-defense classes to women for rape pre­ven­tion, cit­ing that when soci­ety falls apart it is often women who are the first victims.

Watch­ing Kel­lene on Dooms­day Prep­pers , I got the sense the lady was a lit­tle kooky, but I could appre­ci­ate what she was try­ing to do and even admired her sense of pur­pose in help­ing other peo­ple to prepare.

But that was before I heard Kel­lene Bishop might be a scam artist.

Today a ran­dom blog reader alerted me to this Ripoff Report about Kel­lene Bishop ‘s shady past run­ning her own com­mer­cial lend­ing bro­ker­age, in which she appar­ently swin­dled peo­ple out of hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars.  She later filed for bank­ruptcy to the tune of 2 mil­lion dol­lars in 2009.

Here’s a sam­pling of some of the claims made against Kel­lene Bishop and her hus­band Scott, which I’ll let speak for them­selves:

“It is offi­cial! The ugly cou­ple have had their ille­gal debts dis­charged!  They had over 2 mil­lion dol­lars dis­charged after offer a course that guar­an­teed $750,000.00 dol­lars a year to their cus­tomers! My oh my how the Ter­ri­ble Two know how to man­age money!  SHE NEVER CLOSED A COMMERCIAL LOAN IN HER LIFE AND PORTRAYED HERSELF AS A GURU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“Kel­lene Bishop, a scam­mer who ran a course called Com­mer­cial Career, now runs Preparednesspro.com.  She recently wrote a despi­ca­ble blog about the hard money world and the loan com­mit­ment fees involved.  THIS CRAZY PIG DID THE SAME EXACT THING AND MORE WITH HER COMMERCIAL CAREER COURSE. SHE TOOK HUGE RETAINER FEES THAT THE HARD MONEY PEOPLE COULD ONLY DREAM OF AND DIDN’T HAVE ANY SOURCES TO FUND THE LOANS!  She then claimed bank­ruptcy for over TWO MILLION DOLLARS!”

“What did the Big K do after she got sued by hun­dreds of peo­ple whom she took huge retainer fees from?  She claimed bank­ruptcy for 2 mil­lion dol­lars!”

“Take a look at the bank­ruptcy papers. Her list of cred­i­tors were a mile a long and she scammed every sin­gle one. She lied to Nat Geo about work­ing in Cor­po­rate Amer­ica because she never did. She ran scam busi­nesses out of her house that was worth less than $200,000.00.”

And here are some of their reac­tions to Kellene’s appear­ance on Dooms­day Prep­pers :

“Kel­lene Bishop has been filmed show­cas­ing thou­sands of dol­lars worth of food at her home in Utah. She does not men­tion that fore­clo­sure pro­ceed­ings have started and the fore­clo­sure on her home fea­tured in the show is highly prob­a­ble.  Once again, she has por­trayed her­self as being a right­eous and self-relying per­son yet the truth is the com­plete oppo­site. She claims the end of days are near. The real­ity is that her days are num­bered in her home because she spent all of her money on food instead of ful­fill­ing her oblig­a­tion to pay her mort­gage.”

“It is ironic that Ms. Bishop has stock­piled enough food to fill a super­mar­ket because she has come up with the per­fect recipe for her dis­as­ter.  Why on Earth would Kel­lene actu­ally sign on with Nat Geo to allow them to film her stock­piled food so all of the good­ies saved for dooms­day can aired on national tele­vi­sion after claim­ing Chap­ter 7? Think about it because her bank­ruptcy papers do not lie. They clearly show that her new busi­ness, Pre­pared­ness Pro, did not make any money as recently as 2009. The ques­tion for her cred­i­tors, the attor­neys for her mort­gage com­pany and the bank­ruptcy trustee should be: Where did Kel­lene & Scott Bishop get the money to buy that much food?”

“Per­haps Nat Geo should do a fol­low up on the Bish­ops when the fore­clo­sure is com­pleted on their home in Utah. If might turn into a Dog Day After­noon when Kel­lene and Scott defend the bun­ga­low like it is the Alamo when the bank shows up to take it back. They clearly demon­strated how they are heav­ily armed and ready to com­mu­ni­cate by Morse code under the cover of dark­ness.”

Did National Geo­graphic fail to do a back­ground check on this woman?  Is it eth­i­cal to put Kel­lene Bishop on a national tele­vi­sion show where she’s por­trayed as a cham­pion of moral­ity, self-sufficiency and finan­cial freedom?

Fur­ther read­ing:   Scar­ing Peo­ple for a Liv­ing — Kel­lene Bishop

Update 2/24/11:

One of the com­menters who spoke up against The Bish­ops on this blog has requested via email that I remove their com­ment, due to being threat­ened by The Bish­ops with legal action.  All com­ments by this per­son as well as ref­er­ences to this person’s name in other people’s coments have been removed upon request.

I’ve also noticed that com­ments made in defense of The Bish­ops seem to be com­ing from an IP  address located in Orem, Utah–the same city where  The Bish­ops reside. Isn’t it ironic…don’t you think?

Doomsday Preppers vs. Hoarders: Who Will Survive the Apocalypse? [Poll]

Did you catch the series pre­miere of Dooms­day Prep­pers  on National Geo­graphic chan­nel last night?  Talk about bat­shit.  Did the pro­duc­ers intend for the show to be this hilarious?

( skip ahead to the poll )

Watch­ing the show and see­ing how most of these peo­ple live, it’s hard not to draw com­par­isons to  Hoard­ers .  You might even call the Prep­pers’ lifestyle “hoard­ing with a purpose.”

Take prep­per Kel­lene Bishop , for exam­ple, who gave view­ers a tour of her Orem, Utah home.  She eagerly pointed out her mul­ti­ple food clos­ets: one for canned goods, one for snacks, one for meat… Yes, she has a fuck­ing meat closet.   She was also keen on spout­ing off ran­dom fac­toids that I assume were meant to jus­tify her food hoard­ing habits, for instance, how the price of cocoa has “risen 300% over the last few years.” (It hasn’t.  As NatGeo’s help­ful on-screen info­graphic informed us, it’s actu­ally gone down 30% since the end of 2011.)

Then there are prep­pers like 20-something Megan Hur­witt , whose tiny apart­ment is cov­ered floor to ceil­ing with her “bugout” sup­plies.  She’s got duf­fel bags full of knives, MREs, suri­val kits, and con­doms, which she seems to feel are impor­tant in an end-of-the-world sce­nario.  Then she casu­ally jokes how when Shit Hits The Fan™ she’ll have no prob­lem putting a bul­let in her cat’s head to spare him the agony of liv­ing.  How about just set­ting him free, bitch? I’m pretty sure if shit ever does hit the fan, cats will long out-live any human sur­vivors. Later in the episode she puts her own sur­vival skills to the test and fails miserably.

Prep­pers vs. Hoarders

Who will sur­vive the apoc­a­lypse?  My money’s on hoard­ers. Here’s why:

#1. Hoard­ers are already liv­ing in a dooms­day sce­nario.  The Prep­pers may have more food and guns stashed away, but don’t Hoard­ers already have the edge when it comes to sur­vival? In many cases, their gas, elec­tric­ity and water has already been cut off.  They’re used to liv­ing day-to-day, scrap­ing by on what­ever (prob­a­bly expired) food they have stashed around the house. And when that runs out, there’s plenty of stray cats around.

#2.  Prep­pers are too fat. It’s hard not to notice how obese most of these dooms­day prep­pers are. Do these peo­ple look like they could eas­ily run?  Is David Sarti a.k.a. ” the Hill­billy Prep­per ” going to ride his trac­tor to safety?

#3. Hoard­ers are cra­zier.  Yes, the prep­pers are pretty bat­shit, but hoard­ers can get down­right scary con­fronta­tional when they feel threat­ened. I wouldn’t fuck with those people.

#4. Have you seen how dis­gust­ing Hoarder homes are? Between the dead cats, feces, and rot­ting food, who would even want to go scav­eng­ing there? Like whales that shit in the ocean to ward off preda­tors, human filth is a hoarder’s most reli­able defense mechanism.

#5. Keep on prepping—I’m tak­ing notes.   By being a prep­per, you’re mak­ing your­self a tar­get for the rest of us. Thanks to Dooms­day Prep­pers , we now know  who these peo­ple are  and where they live.  When shit hits the fan,   guess whose house I will be raid­ing first?

‘Breaking Bad’ Gets the 8-Bit Treatment

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

FACT: Sell­ing meth is more fun in 8-bits.

Col­lege Humor has pro­duced a fan­tas­tic faux role-playing game ver­sion of the twisted AMC meth cooker hit. Too bad it’s not the real thing. But beware: Spoil­ers lie within.

Via news.cnet.com

Watch the video below to watch Walt & Jesse kick some pix­ely ass (but BEWARE MAJOR SPOILERS if you haven’t’ seen all of the show):

5 New Midseason TV Shows for Geeks & Comic Book Fans

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

ComicBook.com has a good round-up of 5 new(ish) TV shows that comic book geeks would prob­a­bly enjoy.

The hol­i­day sea­son is over, which means the Char­lie Brown Christ­mas spe­cials are done, and new episodes of return­ing shows and mid­sea­son replace­ments are start­ing.  Of course among return­ing TV shows, comic book fans have The Big Bang The­ory, Fringe, and The Walk­ing Dead.

How­ever, the excit­ing news is that there are sev­eral brand new mid­sea­son shows that should be of inter­est to comic book fans. Here’s our list of the top new TV shows for comic book fans.

Via comicbook.com

Here’s what’s on the list:

• Napoleon Dyna­mite (pre­miered Jan. 15 )  —  The quirky ani­mated com­edy series based on the pop­u­lar movie, voiced by the orig­i­nal film’s actors.
• Celebrity Appren­tice (pre­miers Feb. 12)  — Why is this on the list? Mainly because this sea­son stars Lour Fer­rigno & George Takei.
• The River (pre­mieres tonight/Feb. 7)  — A new paranormal/horror adventure-ish series that takes place along the Amazon
• Comic Book Men ( pre­mieres Feb. 12) — Another new AMC show, pro­duced by Kevin Smith. Must-see TV for comic book fans.
• Alca­traz (pre­miered Jan. 16)  — This JJ Abrams & Jorge Gar­cia “Lost-esque” show is based on the dis­ap­pear­ances of over 300 inmates and 40 guards, and gov­ern­ment cover-ups sur­round­ing the mys­te­ri­ous prison. Looks awe­some, but I haven’t had the chance to see it yet.

I’d also add to this list Touch , the new super­nat­ural show on Fox that stars Kiefer Suther­land. It pre­miered on Jan. 25 as a “spe­cial pre­view” and will begin reg­u­larly on March 19.

Are you watch­ing or do you plan to catch any of these? I want to know your thoughts about them.

‘Room 237′ Documentary Explores Fantastic Theories Behind Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

The Shin­ing  is one of my favorite hor­ror movies of all time, if not favorite movies , period .  Room 237  is a doc­u­men­tary about The Shin­ing  that recently debuted at the 2012 Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val, and it sounds sim­ply fascinating:

“If Stan­ley Kubrick were still alive, Room 237 would make him extremely happy. Directed by Rod­ney Ascher, the exper­i­men­tal doc­u­men­tary gives the leg­endary film­maker a ton of credit, maybe too much at times, as it explores sev­eral wild, and not so wild, the­o­ries about his 1980 hor­ror mas­ter­piece The Shining.”

Via www.slashfilm.com

And now for the bad news: Room 237  may not ever get a the­atri­cal release, due to uncleared footage, copy­right issues, and other pieces of red tape.

Must Watch: ‘The Hunger Games’ Epic New Trailer

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

Jen­nifer Lawrence, Eliz­a­beth Banks and Wil­low Shields come together in an epic new trailer for the Hunger Games. It pro­vides a fresh look at the dreary cap­i­tal of Panem and some new action shots of Kat­niss, and we also get to hear more of the film’s score.

Now I REALLY can’t wait to see this movie!

Via www.theimproper.com

Amateur Documentary ‘IRL’ Tackles Online Game Addiction

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

Count­less doc­u­men­taries have inves­ti­gated gam­ing addic­tion and the sup­posed dan­gers lurk­ing in mas­sively mul­ti­player titles, but it’s not often that some­one who’s expe­ri­enced an addic­tion talks about it him­self. Third year film stu­dent and ex World of War­craft junkie Anthony Ros­ner looks back on his six years in the game in a new short doc­u­men­tary on the effects of MMO addic­tion. With help from friends Dave Novis and Arron Amo, Anthony pro­duced, directed, wrote, and edited the film him­self, ensur­ing that he had the oppor­tu­nity to tell his whole story and tell it from his own per­spec­tive.
Via massively.joystiq.com

‘Safety Not Guaranteed’ Meme is Now a Movie

One of the great­est inter­net memes of all time is now a movie.   Safety Not Guar­an­teed  is a film based on the mys­te­ri­ous real clas­si­fied ad pic­tured above, which first appeared in a weekly Dan­ish news­pa­per.  The ad was later paired with the accom­pa­ny­ing photo of a rather serious-looking young man who seems to have stepped straight out of 1986, mul­let, turtle­neck and all.  The orig­i­nal YTMND that started it all has over 1.2 mil­lion views as of Jan­u­ary 2012.

What will a movie based on an inter­net meme be like?  The film, directed by Colin Trevor­row,  is about two mag­a­zine employ­ees (Aubrey Plaza & Jake John­son) who set out on an assign­ment to find and inter­view the quirky man who placed the clas­si­fied ad seek­ing a time travel com­pan­ion (Mark Duplass).  Accord­ing to an early review in  Vari­ety ,   Safety Not Guar­an­teed is “a sci-fi-tinged odd­ball com­edy about love as the ulti­mate risky adven­ture” that fea­tures “some nice soul-searching moments along­side a steady stream of laughs.”  Indeed.

Does axl­bon­bach  (the per­son who cre­ated the orig­i­nal YTMND) deserve com­pen­sa­tion?  What about the unknown man in the photo?

I sup­pose it’s only nat­ural that the film indus­try would start min­ing the annals of the inter­net for movie ideas, since they seem to have exhausted most other resources.  Last month we heard about  Bad Ass , a movie star­ring Dany Trejo based off the ” Epic Beard Man ” viral video.  It’s hard not to feel like these types of movies are only being made to cash in on the mil­lions of hits and social media buzz these dig­i­tal curiosi­ties have gen­er­ated over time.

One of the best doc­u­men­taries I’ve seen in the last few years is a film called  Win­nebago Man , in which the film­maker sets out on a quest to find out what became of the tem­pera­men­tal, potty-mouthed RV sales­man whose unin­ten­tion­ally hilar­i­ous sales train­ing video out­takes  ended up on the inter­net  and became wildly pop­u­lar.  It was a heart­felt and fit­ting trib­ute to a sim­ple man who did not real­ize the extent of his own fame, but whose recorded moments of weak­ness gave us so much joy.  It’s doubt­ful that movies like  Bad Ass and Safety Not Guar­an­teed  have their sub­jects’ best inter­ests at heart.

My Top 10 Most Anticipated Movies of 2012

I hope you’re pre­pared to fork over a lot of cash to Hol­ly­wood, because 2012 is going to be a kick-ass year for movies.  Our first year of Life After Harry Pot­ter™ will be one filled with promise.  New trilo­gies will begin, beloved trilo­gies will end, and some of the biggest and best direc­tors are expected to unveil mas­ter­pieces. If the world’s going to end on Decem­ber 21st, at least we’ll die sat­is­fied know­ing we’ve finally seen  The Hob­bit.

Here are the 2012 movies I’m most look­ing for­ward to:

(ordered by release date)

The Woman in Black

Release  Date:  Feb­ru­ary 3, 2012 
Direc­tor:   James Watkins

Based on the 1983 novel by Susan Hill, The Woman in Black is the woe­ful tale of a young busi­ness­man, Arthur Kipps  ( Harry Pot­ter  Daniel Rad­cliffe), who is sum­moned to the Eng­lish coun­try­side to set in order a deceased elderly woman’s affairs and estate when he soon becomes haunted by a men­ac­ing pres­ence.  I love atmos­pheric hor­ror films, espe­cially when they take place in big, secluded old man­sions.  If you’ve never seen it, I also highly rec­om­mend the orig­i­nal British made-for-TV film ver­sion from 1989, which oozes atmos­phere and dread.  I have high expec­ta­tions for this mod­ern remake.

The Hunger Games

Release Date:   March 23, 2012
Direc­tor:  Gary Ross

Finally, a  hugely pop­u­lar young adult fic­tion film adap­ta­tion that isn’t Twi­light (with­out candy-ass vam­pires, and bet­ter writ­ing)!  Set in the future dystopian North Amer­ica (now a nation called ‘Panem’), The Hunger Games is an annual tele­vised bat­tle between young boys and girls from each of Panem’s twelve dis­tricts.  These 24 “trib­utes” must fight to the death until only one remains stand­ing.  The story cen­ters on Kat­niss Everdeen (Jen­nifer Lawrence), and her strug­gle to sur­vive.  I prac­ti­cally devoured these books at the beach last sum­mer, and I’m hop­ing this first film does the series justice.

The Raven

Release Date:   April 27, 2012
Direc­tor:  James McTeigue

Being a hor­ror fan from Bal­ti­more means you can’t not  love Edgar Allen Poe.   The Raven  is a fic­tion­al­ized account of the last days of the writer’s life, in which Poe (John Cusack) tries to track down a ser­ial killer whose mur­ders are eerily sim­i­lar to the ones he wrote in his sto­ries.  Will the film also por­tray Poe’s rag­ing alcoholism?

Dark Shadows

Release Date:  May 11, 2012
Direc­tor:  Tim Burton

Another love child between Tim Bur­ton and his go-to lead­ing man, Johnny Depp.  The three or four peo­ple who read this blog already know I’ve been look­ing for­ward to  Dark Shad­ows  since I first heard about it .  Other than cen­ter­ing around Baran­abas Collins (Depp), the plot descrip­tion on IMDB is dis­ap­point­ingly vague.  But I’m sure we can expect a delight­fully Burton-esque mix of char­ac­ters and sto­ry­lines bor­rowed from Dark Shad­ows’ many incar­na­tions.  Hope I can fin­ish my  Dark Shad­ows marathon  project before then!

Prometheus

Release Date:  June 8, 2012
Direc­tor:  Rid­ley Scott

Prometheus might turn out to be the film everybody’s been hop­ing Rid­ley Scott would make since Alien .  It looks dark, unset­tling, full of alien crea­tures, and obvi­ously, set in space (although Scott has con­firmed this isn’t a pre­quel, and is only loosely based on his pre­vi­ous Alien films).  A team of explor­ers set out to unearth the ori­gins of mankind, but instead unknow­ingly unleash our poten­tial destruction.

Brave

Release Date:  June 22, 2012
Direc­tors:   Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman

Pixar does fairy tales.  Set in the myth­i­cal high­lands of Scot­land,  Brave  is the story of a coura­geous young princess named Merida (Kelly Mac­Don­ald).  Deter­mined to carve her own path in life, she defies an age-old sacred cus­tom, result­ing in a curse that unleashes chaos and fury upon her kingdom.

Abra­ham Lin­coln: Vam­pire Hunter

Release Date:  June 22, 2012
Direc­tor:   Timur Bekmambetov

There are two movies about Lin­coln com­ing out this year, but this one’s bound to be the most fun.  Adapted from the best­selling novel, Abra­ham Lin­coln: Vam­pire Hunter  is a mélange of his­tory and hor­ror in which our beloved 16th pres­i­dent leads a secret dou­ble life as van­quisher of the super­nat­ural.  It’s as nutty as it sounds, but the book was great.  And at least it’s not another god damn remake/sequel/prequel/reboot/etc.

The Dark Knight Rises

Release Date:   July 20, 2012
Direc­tor:  Christo­pher Nolan

The end of Chris­t­ian Bale’s reign as Bat­man, and the final chap­ter in Nolan’s tril­ogy.   The Dark Knight Rises takes place eight years after the events of the last movie.  Bat­man resur­faces when the ter­ror­ist Bane arrives in Gotham City after tak­ing the fall for Har­vey Dent’s crimes. Even though I’m def­i­nitely look­ing for­ward to it, I don’t know if any new Bat­man movie will be able to top The Dark Knight .

The Hob­bit: An Unex­pected Journey

Release Date:  Decem­ber 14, 2012
Direc­tor:  Peter Jackson

It’s The Hob­bit !  It’s the pre­quel to The Lord of the Rings!   It’s directed by Peter Jack­son!  What more is there to say?

Lincoln

Release Date:  TBA, Decem­ber 2012
Direc­tor:  Stephen Spielberg

Never mind that Lin­coln is being directed by Stephen Spiel­berg. Any­thing star­ring Daniel Day Lewis is fuck­ing win.

Abraham Lincoln Kicking Some Undead Ass In New Vampire Hunter Image

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

Not one to be con­fused with Steven Spielberg’s devel­op­ing Lin­coln project, Bekmambetov’s genre splice re-imagines our 16th pres­i­dent as a vam­pire slayer stomp­ing through the Civil War-era United States.
Via www.cinemablend.com