The upcoming issue of Entertainment Weekly will feature the above cast shot of The Avengers on it's cover, as well as include some behind-the-scenes pics as well inside the magazine. No, I know a magazine cover like this is going to be photoshopped to hell, and this one certainly is no exception, but I couldn't help noticing a few things about the team thanks to this pic.
Thor obviously has the hots for Black Widow, given the way he's eyeing her.
Tony Stark looks like he's trying really, really hard to appear sober.
Giving Scarlett Johansson that short, red hairdo has turned her from already super hot to "Girl of Pat's Dreams" status. Well done Avengers makeup and hair team!
It's no wonder Black Widow has to point guns at both Thor's and Tony Stark's heads. That's probably the only way to get them to stop trying to put their hands on her.
Cap looks determined and intense, as he should.
Hawkeye looks appropriately self-assured and dickish.
Bruce Banner is obviously a fan of Derek Zoolander, as he's giving us his most fierce Blue Steel!
The interior sneak peak picks are nothing too big, really. If you want to see them, you can find them all here. These are the two I liked the most though.
How many times have we seen a shot just like this on a comic book page? Cap and Tony standing near each other and working together on something. Seeing it in real life though is just giving me a major case of the Squees! Love it!!!
All I can really say here is . . . Mmmmmmmmmm. She can blow up my skyscraper anytime!
Yesterday marked the 25th anniversary of the granddaddy of all horror video games, the original Castlevania for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Although, technically the game didn't come out on the NES until 1987, it was originally released in Japan on September 26th, 1986 for something called the Family Computer Disk System (FDS). The NES release was a port over from this release.
I can't be 100% honest here and say that I remember Castlevania totally fondly because the game was hard as hell. I've never actually managed to beat it and I remember spending hour upon frustrating hour dying over and over as a result of badly timed jumps or those damned little hunchback creatures.
Overall though, I really did love the game. For a kid whose favorite holiday is Halloween, Castlevania was like a dream come true. You got to play the brave adventurer Simon Belmonst as he made his way through a creepy gothic castle filled with ghosts, zombies, skeletons, flying medusa heads, giant vampire bats and more. Along the way you'd face some of the biggest monsters in all of horror including The Mummy, Frankenstein, Medusa and the man himself . . . Dracula!
It was the perfect game for 10 year old me. I can't even count the number of hours I spent playing that game as a kid. To this day I can still hum the game's soundtrack from memory. I'd even go so far as to say that it is very much responsible for making me even more of a fan of Halloween and monsters than I already was before.
Thank you for all the good times Castlevania! Hell, even the frustrating times were still fun deep down too. Happy Birthday!
Oh, and if you like that totally sweet art above from the original game, I've posted a bigger version of it to the Geek-tastic Flickr pool. It makes for a great desktop wallpaper.
Oh thank god! Some behind-the-scenes set pics have been leaked from the still in-production Dark Knight Rises that show Anne Hathaway in her full Catwoman outfit, and guess what? She actually looks like Catwoman!!!
This is a vast improvement on the picture that was released earlier, where she didn't look in any way catlike at all. This time, not only is she wearing a black face mask, but she's actually wearing full on cat ears! The outfit is even reminiscent of the classic 60's Catwoman outfit worn by Julie Newmar, Lee Merriwether and Ertha Kitt. This makes me very happy.
From what I can gather, those cat ears of hers are actually those same goggles that she was wearing in the earlier picture that was released. That's just what they look like when they're pushed up onto her head. If that's the case, making the ears an actual functioning piece of tech that she uses as a burglar is pretty cool. I just wish that they would have released something more like this when they sent out the first official promo pic of her. That would have gotten the fanboys into much less of a hissy fit than what happened before.
Over the last few years, I've been hearing a lot of bitching and complaining from people everywhere about how all Hollywood is doing these days is remaking or rebooting old franchises, and how these new versions are never as good as the originals. While I certainly won't argue with the fact that Hollywood does indeed have the remake/reboot engine running at full throttle, I do feel like I should point out that not all remakes or reboots are bad things. In fact, sometimes these new versions are pretty damned awesome.
To that end, I would like to present 8 films here that are either remakes or reboots of something else, and which are all bonafide bad ass. Whether or not these films are as good, greater or worse than those that came before them is, of course, up to personal opinion, but all of these films have rather high rankings on Rotten Tomatoes, and are generally loved by the overall movie-going audience.
The next time someone complains to you about how horrible remakes or reboots are, be sure to tell them about these films.
This is a fairly recent one, so if you haven't seen it yet, that's ok. You really should give it a try though. I wasn't originally planning on going to see it myself, but I went with some friends and was really surprised at just how good this was. Colin Farrell is an absolute blast to watch as the Vampire-next-door Jerry. Throughout the film you can seriously feel just how much fun he's having playing the role. Dr. Who fans should also take note because David Tenant is hilarious as a Midori-loving Vegas magician named Peter Vincent. For something that is a remake of a beloved 80's film, this new version stands on it's own as a great time. It's at times both funny and genuinely frightening and stays consistently entertaining from beginning to end.
Did you honestly think that Hollywood's obsession with remakes was a recent phenomenon? Hardly. Remakes have been taking place since the dawn of the filmmaking industry. It's so prevalent, in fact, that sometimes a film pops up that's a remake of a film that's so old, no one even recognizes it as a remake. Such is the case with the comedy classic Airplane. It's actually a remake of a classic black & white film called Zero Hour. And more than that, it's almost a shot-for-shot of that film too. Don't believe me? Just watch the above video comparing the two.
Casino Royale is actually a double whammy. It is both a remake and a reboot. It's a remake of the 1967 original and is also a reboot of the James Bond franchise after the uber-popular Pierce Brosnan stepped down from his role as 007 after having played him in four films. This film took us back to Bond's origins, before he was even a Double 0 agent. He may not have had his license to kill just yet, but this new bond was tough as nails and won over fans around the world. Don't get me wrong, I still love Connery the best, but Daniel Craig is fighting with Brosnan as my second favorite bond, that's for sure.
Speaking of Pierce Brosnan, he starred in the remake of the 1968 film and it's one of the most stylish films I've ever seen. This is an art theft caper for the ages, filled with nothing but class from beginning to end. And let's not forget Rene Russo in some of the steamiest sex scenes ever put to celluloid. I could watch this film a hundred times and still be entertained by it.
Remaking a George Romero zombie film is not an easy task. Romero is the man who basically invented the genre of the zombie film and introduced it to popular culture. He's the godfather of zombie stories, yet somehow Zack Snyder manages to take his original story of a bunch of survivors holed up in a mall and turns it into a movie worthy of the name Dawn of the Dead. This movies has everything you want in a zombie story, blood, gore, sex, massive devastation and even zombie babies. The intro to the film alone, set to the music of Johnny Cash, makes this one a horror masterpiece.
You'd think that making a good Batman film would be an easy task, right? I mean, come on, it's Batman! He's one of the most popular comic book characters of all time. How could you screw that up? Well, I've got two words for you. Joel Schumacher. That man put out two of the worst comic book films of all time and managed to sully the name of the caped crusader so badly that he killed the successful movie franchise begun by Tim Burton in 1989. For eight solid years, there was no Batman to be seen in the summer movie lineup after the unforgivable travesty that is 1997's Batman & Robin was released. But then in 2005 Warner Brothers took a gamble on an artsy filmmaker named Christopher Nolan and the rebooted the whole franchise to Bruce Wayne's early days, before he'd even thought of becoming the Dark Knight. The result was one of the best, most realistic comic book movies ever made. Yes, it was even enough to make us forget about such things as nipples on the Bat-suit, for a little while at least.
Star Trek is a pop culture phenomenon of unrivaled proportions. As a franchise, it recently celebrated it's 45th anniversary. During that time, it has spawned five live-action TV series, one animated TV series and more movies than you can shake a Tribble at. However, by the year 2005 the franchise was in decline. Overexposure and a few bad shows and films had made fans bored with the United Federation of Planet. The last of the running Star Trek shows was cancelled and further movies starring the Next Generation cast were cancelled due to low box office performance. It was a dark time for Trekkies everywhere. Then in 2009, a brand new Trek film was released in theaters. Paramount hired the nerd-favorite director JJ Abrams to helm it and tasked him with breathing new life into what was seen by many as an old and tired franchise. Breathe life into it he certainly did. 2009's Star Trek is an action packed, edge of your seat adventure that thrills with visual spectacle, but at which no point forgets that Star Trek is about the characters and their relationships to one another. This, to me, is the film by which all other franchise reboots should be compared to. It's the finest example of a reboot I've ever seen.
The Thing was originally a 1951 film titled The Thing From Another World. As with most 50's monster movie horror films, it's a bit heavy on the cheese factor. Is it fun? Sure. Is it scary? Not at all. Then comes along a guy named John Carpenter in 1982 who decides to remake this fun 50's B-film. The result is one of the greatest horror films of all time. I have never before and never since found another film that so masterfully displays the feelings of isolation that its characters are going through. One by one the unknown monster kills its victims and assumes their form, leaving the survivors to wonder which of their friends is actually their enemy in disguise. Everything about this film is brilliant. From the casting to the costumes to the sets to the bloody special effects, it's quite simply a perfect film.
Just looking at these totally amazing wedding rings makes me all giddy inside. I want these so badly. Now if only I could find a woman who would love these rings as much as I do.
The next DC Animated feature scheduled to be released is an adaptation of the Batman: Year One storyline, in which we go back to Batman's early days where he is just starting out as a costumed crime fighter. Sadly, Kevin Conroy won't be voicing Bruce Wayne/Batman, but I guess he can't be the only guy to ever play Batman for as long as he's alive (although I wish he was).
Otherwise though, this clip makes me very happy. Keeping up with DC's long line of high quality animated films, Batman: Year One looks beautiful and I'm sure will be fun to watch as well. Now if only Warner Brothers was half as good with their live-action outings as they were with their animated ones, the world would be a better place.
I'll be honest here. Due to my age, my knowledge of the Pokemon franchise isn't all that great. Pokemon came out in 1996, when I was 18 years old. As a result, I just never got into it since it was geared towards younger kids. That doesn't mean I don't know anything about the franchise though. I know that it's a super popular series for geeks slightly younger than myself. I also know that the monsters go through evolutionary changes during their life cycle, becoming larger and more powerful forms of themselves.
To that effect, the wonderful folks over at Drunken Moogle have put together this amazing set of three drinks, named after the different stages of the Charzard pokemon. This leads me to the following question:
If the standard Pokemon catch phrase is "Gotta catch 'em all", would the catchphrase for Pokemon based drinks then be "Gotta drink 'em all"?
I think it really has to be at that point, right?
Ingredients:
Charmander
1 splash of grenadine
1 oz Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey
.5 oz Bacardi 151
Directions for the Charmander shot: Pour a slash of grenadine into the bottom of a shot glass. Add the Fireball, then top with the Bacardi 151. Light it on fire, then extinguish before drinking.
Charmeleon
1 spash of grenadine,
1 splash of scotch
1 oz Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey
Fill with ginger ale
Directions for the Charmeleon cocktail: Mix all the alcoholic ingredients and then pour over ice in a lowball glass. Top with ginger ale.
Charizard
2 oz Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey
2 splashes of grenadine
2 splash of scotch
1.5 ounces Bacardi 151
Fill with ginger ale
Directions for the Charizard drink: Mix all of the alcoholic ingredients, pour into a highball glass and top with ginger ale. If you plan on lighting the Charizard on fire, add the Bacardi 151 last, after the ginger ale, on top of everything else. As always, be careful with flames and don’t try to drink flaming cocktails while still on fire! Fire burns people and stuff and faces.
If Charzard isn't your particular favorite Pokemon, Drunken Moogle also made drink recipes covering the different stages of Bulbasaur and Squirtle as well.
