Author: Maurice Mitchell
Movie posters of The Last Airbender (that other Avatar movie) have been released and they look nifty. The film, based on a popular children’s animated television show, follows a young boy named Aang that discovers he has the power to control the four main elements of earth, air, fire and water. He is pursued by the evil “Fire Lord” and “Fire Clan” who wishes to destroy the last “Avatar”. But, we asked ourselves, what are the chances that M. Night Shyamalan will make a good film? So, we set out to scientifically chart his career in hopes of prognosticating how…
This is an unusually nostalgic week here at Geek Twins as we flashback to both the Topp’s Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back stickers and various other toys my brother and I played with in our youth. All we need now is to have a remake of the 80’s cartoon show M.A.S.K. to make my life complete. Cast Will Smith as Matt Trakker, Christian Slater as Stiletto and Hugo Weaving as Miles Mayhem. On with the news. TOSS-UP: You’re forced at gun point to choose one costume to wear to the Source Awards: would it be the Star Wars Tie-Fighter…
Sometime Google Ads (Adsense) scans our posts and has some unintentionally hilarious connections. The best is the one from This Week in Geek 10/30/2009 (which talks about a guy looking for an amputee to complete his Chewbacca costume) which offered an ad for “Amputee Dating”. The best one I’ve found since then is James Cameron Calls Out the Raincoat Brigade for Avatar which proudly offered up an ad for “Trenchcoats – Huge Sale”. Have you spotted any funny ads in our blog? Let us know in the comments!
Sony has officially announced the Spider-Man franchise will be directed by former music video director Marc Webb. Let’s take at the legacy of Sam Raimi’s directorial masterpiece: the Spider-Man trilogy. A self-confessed Spider-Man fan, when Raimi took the director’s chair he was just transitioning from the world of independent film to big Hollywood. He still had the style and grace of his early days, but had a few dramatic flicks under his belt with The Quick and the Dead (1995 ) and A Simple Plan (1998) to persuade the suits he could make a big budget action film. From the very…
Pic of the Week by Funnyjunk.comNow that’s a movie I’d like to see. The Nav’i are in outer space because they’re too scared to be on the same planet as Chuck Norris. On with the news. I was excited about The-Network-Formerly-Known-as-SciFi’s Battlestar Galactica spin-off, Caprica, until producer Ronald Moore said, “It’s setting out to tell a very different story… It’s planet-based, instead of space-based, it’s not action-adventure, it’s much more centered on two families than a military environment. We wanted it to be much more about contemporary society and problems that are coming up on a social front as well…
For some reason, one of our most popular posts to date is “TV Movie The Phantom Images Released”, so here’s an update: It’s dead. Syfy made a big splash about the upcoming mini-series based on Lee Falk’s purple-suited comic character “The Phantom” last year with a sneak peek and then quietly snuck off hoping no one would remember it. Imdb says the film is in post-production with a Canadian air date of December 20th of last year. Ryan Carnes, who plays the hero, Chris Moore, lists this film as his last project. This is not surprising considering everyone hated the goofy…
The news just broke Monday morning on Deadline.com and was confirmed by Sony in a press release that afternoon: Spider-Man 4 will not be a sequel, but a reboot of the franchise without Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire or any other member of the current franchise. Apparently, Raimi said he couldn’t maintain creative integrity and meet the release date. Sam raised with a pair of twos and Sony called his bluff, deciding just to drop the whole thing and start fresh. They already have an early script by James Vanderbilt that focuses on “a teenager grappling with both contemporary human problems and amazing super-human crises.” Sony is…
[Pic of the Week by Tronguy.net]The amazing thing about the above picture is not that we have a big fat guy dressed in a white spandex bodysuit, but that there is a big fat guy dressed in a white spandex bodysuit who’s proud of it. Jay Maynard actually does personal appearances all over the world. You have to love that kind of self-confidence. On with the news.I’m going to make up a term I’m calling the “Titanic Effect” which describes the power that tween and teenage girls have on popular culture. It was this singular affect that pushed Titanic to…
AVH: Alien vs. Hunter (2007) is a masterpiece of poor film making with boring characters, lazy special effects and a pedestrian plot ripped off from a mediocre film, but still manages to be worth watching. William Katt, famous for his role in the 80s hit Greatest American Hero, stars as a washed up writer in a small California town who leads a ragtag band of whiners from one place after another getting decimated by the “Alien” and the “Hunter”. The motivations of the characters are so obscure that when one character kisses Katt on the forehead she goes into an…
Tron Legacy, the sequel to the 1982 film Tron, is being released in December and anyone born in the last 10 years probably has no idea why. Looking at it from 2010, the film looks cheesy, boring and ugly. So, to help put the film in context, I’ll give a brief overview of why Tron is one of the best science-fiction films ever made. The movie follows Kevin Flynn, a video game programmer played by Jeff Bridges, who is abducted to a surreal “world” inside computers where programs are people fighting in games. He joins “Tron”, a security program played…
Being rich means never having to say “I’m bald.” Last year James Cameron said, “[Avatar] makes ‘Titanic’ look like a picnic,” and it seems he was right. Avatar, which cost $430 million to finance, has already made over $1 billion in three weeks. Along with Sherlock Holmes, it led to a record breaking weekend and is nominated for four 2010 Golden Globe awards, including “Best Director” and “Best Motion Picture.” He still has a ways to go before eclipsing “Titanic’s” $1.8 billion, eight Golden Globe nominations and three Oscars, but it’s still an amazing achievement. Personally, I hope he wins so he can…
[Pic of the week by Springfield Punks via Gizmodo] It was kind of weird writing the date as 010110. In hex color code it’s, basically, black. In binary it’s 22, and the 22nd letter of the alphabet is V. Coincidentally, we talk about a black guy named Laurence Fishbourne and the TV show V. I tried to find some kind of news using the number 22, to round it out, but couldn’t come up with anything. Next year the date will be 01/01/11 (00010111 is 23 in binary) and I’ll bet people go all “woo-woo” about what it portends. Speaking of…
Avatar (2009) is a flawed, but gorgeous film with heart that revolutionizes cinema as we know it. When my wife and I went to see the movies last Friday we ordered our tickets online, dropped our son at the babysitter and raced to the local Harkins cinema. We were convinced we were going to be in the front row, because everyone knows you don’t go to a big movie less than an hour before show time. At T minus 45 minutes we nervously ventured into the theater…to find it virtually empty. Later, we found out the reason the place was…
While I hate to talk about movies that aren’t even filming, it’s interesting to watch the Thor (2011) movie come together. So, here’s what we have so far: Chris Hemsworth is the “Mighty Thor”, and I’m presuming is bulking up to 300 levels of machismo (“This is Asgaaaard!”). Rene Russo is signed on to play Frigga, step-mother of Thor and wife of Odin. Sir Anthony Hopkins is almost a given as the powerful Asgardian king Odin, although I think he’ll do a lot of hunching and whispering. Samuel Jackson has a cameo as Nick Fury, which makes sense since this…
The Internet is full of lists of sexy babes in science-fiction, but who has time to go through them all and find the best ones? Apparently we do. Since we’re not above the desire to generate traffic, we now present a list of the 21 best lists of women in science-fiction. We’ve tried to rate them based on content and, of course, picture quality. Some of these lists had ratings and some were just unordered lists. For the ones that didn’t use ratings, we just figured they saved the best for last. 21 – A Pakistan News’ “Sexiest Sci-Fi Women”…
[Pic of the Week from HotTopic] Yes, the pic above is real. As much as I hate Snuggies (make that Snuggies for dogs specifically) the above image borders on the psychopathic. I like how the model is trying desperately to make it look cool by sporting metro-sexual hair and an erring. Sorry man. You’re still wearing a Snuggie. This is what you get when you put Snuggies and Underoos in Jeff Goldblum’s teleporter. On to the news. It’s kind of a slow week really… With the upcoming remake of Clash of the Titans I’m getting nostalgic for stop-motion, which is…
His MoMA Don’t Dance and his Daddy Don’t Rock N’ Roll We’ve been a fan of Tim Burton since “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” and always enjoy his quirky view of the world. My personal guilty pleasure is to see all the bizarre, yet beautiful, sketches he does for his movies and see how closely he was able to capture them on-screen. I even liked “Planet of the Apes” for the ornate sketches he did on the costumes. So, it’s with joy that I found out about his new exhibit “Tim Burton” at the “Museum of Modern Art”. The show features over 700…
Pic of the Week from movie-moron.com Again, we present our opinions on this weeks’ top news. Bryan Singer, the director of the only good X-Men movies, has signed on to do “X-Men: First Class” and has ordered an entirely new script. The film, a prequel to the previous X-Men fims, will now focus on the relationship between Professor X (Charles Xavier) and Magneto (Erik Lehnsherr) and the development of the school for mutants. This film will now restore my faith in the franchise and finally remove the taste of bile that still lingers from seeing Hugh Jackman’s naked butt. [/Film] TOSS-UP: If you…
The first trailer for “Iron Man 2” is online and geeks everywhere are rejoicing. The Internet almost collapsed under the collective weight of all the announcements and reviews of the trailer last night declaring it “so kewl”. One rule about trailers I follow is that good movies have trailers that focus on the plot, while bad movies have trailers with lots of shiny, pointy things. “Watchmen” is probably the best example of this. This trailer is almost entirely plot driven with some dancing hotties thrown in to keep the menfolk interested. Here’s the official synopsis: “Paramount Pictures and Marvel Entertainment present…
Last year, DC announced that they were merging the Milestone Dakotaverse into the world of Superman. This is sad. Milestone truly lived up to it’s name in comic book history as the first attempt – make that only attempt – to create a truly diversified comic book world made up of complex characters. In 1993, during the heyday of independent comic book companies, a group of African-American artists and writers set out to create a series that would redefine minorities in comic books. While it was published by DC, the comics were completely independent. I fondly remember reading the first…
Pic of the week This week’s geek news is “Spider-Man 4” heavy, which shows I’m more excited about Spider-Man than I’d like to admit. In unrelated news, Paul Ruebens is making a new “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse” stage show which proves his career has ended where it first began. I’m not sure if it’s going to be as funny to see a 57-year-old guy prancing around in short pants. Sony CEO, Howard Stringer, says that the upcoming “Spider-Man 4” sequel will not be in 3D. I hope more studios fight against this trend since, most of the time, it’s nothing more than…
Why anyone would want a sequel to the horrible Will Smith homeless superhero film “Hancock” is beyond me, but the movie made $682 million dollars so someone must care. When news broke that they had solidified Will Smith and Charlize Theron’s involvement in the sequel, everyone was excited. But, now, it looks like the movie is stalled by scheduling issues and I couldn’t be happier. Peter Berg said, “There are so many people involved in that, from Will to his partner James Lassiter to Akiva [Goldsman] to Michael Mann, myself and to get us all in the same room just…
Men watching “Avatar” will be hopelessly frothing at the mouth for James Cameron’s CGI women. In an interview with Playboy magazine, Cameron said that men watching his new movie won’t be able to help themselves from being overcome with licentiousness. “They will have actual lust for a character that consists of pixels of ones and zeros. You’re never going to meet her, and if you did, she’s 10 feet tall and would snap your spine. The point is, 99.9 percent of people aren’t going to meet any of the movie actresses they fall in love with, so it doesn’t matter…
The international poster for the “Iron Man” movie – due May 7, 2010 – was released to Yahoo last week, and it looks awesome, but raises some questions. The idea of shortening the title to the sequel number is bizarre, but I guess they’re hoping the designs are recognizable enough to speak for itself. For those not familiar with the characters, in the Marvel comics Tony Stark’s African-American friend, Jim Rhodes, took on the role of Iron Man occasionally and became a super-hero called “War Machine”. The movie design of the “War machine” armor is darker, angrier and more functional…
Pic of the week: “My Little Slave Pony”The first person to die on the Marvel Comics Theme Park Spider-Man ride will probably get a slew of goofy titled obituaries like “Web-head Kills Local Rider” and “J.J Jameson Was Right: Spider-Man is a Menace”. Actually…those are pretty good, so I’m going to file those for a future post. After watching “The Greatest American Hero” on Hulu I had two thoughts: First, it’s time to remake this series. Concept: A slacker encounters what he thinks may bee aliens and discovers a red leather costume that gives him superpowers. Since his laptop with…
This blog post deals with the most exasperating part of the show “Smallville”: the cardinal rule of “No flights. No tights”. When the show first aired, the producers, Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, felt their target audience wouldn’t be able to accept a hero in a cape and tights. They wanted a hero that young people could relate to, and watching a guy fly around wearing spandex seemed preposterous. More importantly, the rule showed me they recognized that this was not Superman, but they wanted to show how he would become the hero we know. But, nine seasons later, we…
In the past, when trying to watch the adventures of the time-traveling “Doctor Who”, the time difference in Britain and America has been annoying. At one point, BBC was a whole season ahead of “The-Channel-Formerly-Known-As-Sci-Fi”, which made it impossible to get news without a tsunami of spoilers like “Can you believe Doctor Who has a daughter?” The same is true of the final episodes of David Tennant as the tenth Doctor and Russell T. Davies’ as its executive producer and lead writer. According to rave reviews I am forced to evade from “the Guardian” and “The Telegraph” it’s stupendous. While “Doctor…
James Cameron hired a team to create an entire alien language and planetary biology for his movie “Avatar”. This will only be interesting to the type of people who listen DVD commentary, and will be meaningless on-screen. Thankfully, I am one of those people. The last thing we need is another Ang Lee “Hulk”. We dodged a bullet now that John Woo has come out and said he’s not interested in comic book movies. The guy who created a “wrist-mounted flamethrower” to replicate “Pyro’s” superpowers must have spent eight months burning himself to a crisp. I’d market my DIY Wolverine claws, but I only have ten…
An absolutely brilliant take on “The Portait of Dorian Gray” set against a backdrop of cloning. eidolon.net: The Extra by Greg Egan
“The latest report offers a revealing look at why ‘Spider-Man: Turn off The Dark’ will be so expensive—the elaborate staging alone requires at least 40 stage hands to operate the musical’s backstage rigging” – MTV Splashpage about the upcoming Spider-Man musical. This conjurers up images of forty sweaty guys hanging from cables desperately trying to prevent Spider-Man from doing a face plant into the front seats. Image courtesy of MerryWankster