The latest news from the somewhat grimdark Daredevil and Fantastic Four reboots? They may not, in fact, spend their respective series or movie clad in nothing but black. We’ve discussed this in the past in our Geekly Roundup podcast with takes on Daredevil (looks awesome!) and Fantastic Four (warily waiting).
io9 brings us the latest on each; in the case of Fantastic Four, the director points out that to avoid the FF’s iconic blue outfits would be “very odd”, going on to say, “There is some servicing there. You've got to give that to the fans. That's what it's all about.”
Regarding Daredevil, we could see a somewhat Arrow-esque transition from a cobbled-together outfit to the DD we know and love. As showrunner Stephen DeKnight brings us, “The idea was to back the story up to the point before Matt is Daredevil. Then we could take him to a place where some version of the red suit works in a grounded world.”
Murdock will begin with a tied back black mask, much as the character did in the original show. Will we see the old black and yellow DD? Probably not, but we will see the costume develop over time as Matt learns and adds pieces to make it better — eventually evolving into the classic red suit as he continues taking on the thugs of Hell’s Kitchen.
Fantastic Four is set to hit theaters August 7th in the US, while Daredevil comes to Netflix starting April 10th.
Ben Fried-Lee is a blogger, podcaster, retail employee, and board game enthusiast living in the San Francisco Bay Area. His favorite sport is baseball, and so he has high hopes for the Daredevil series using Bullseye.
Comic book movies are more prevalent today than ever. And where there's a comic book movie, there's a casting company needing to fill scenes with extras. And where there's a casting company needing extras, there's a horde of geeks ready to strike.
It's like "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie," but far more annoying for working professionals in film.
With Captain America choosing to shoot in my town of Atlanta, the geek community has been blowing up my Facebook and email. With that comes all manner of annoyance at the attitude being an extra is being treated with. So time to air some grievances, and give some tips for those of you insisting on applying.
I truly wanted to like Kingsmen. Adapted from a comic by writer Mark Millar (Kickass, Civil War) and directed by Matthew Vaughn (Kickass, X-Men: First Class) it looked like the comic book action flick I've been dying for this winter. True, the movie had gadgets, eccentric villains, an unlikely hero and a secret society... but when it all came together not only did it fall flat, it made me feel gross for watching it.
Why do all the "best" assassins have a thigh gap these days...
One of John Hughes' most iconic 80's films turns the big three-oh this month! Originally released in February of 1985, The Breakfast Club is coming back to theaters for limited engagements on March 26th and March 31st. Screening with it will be a featurette with interviews from cast members Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, and and John Kapelos as well as film makers Diablo Cody (Juno), Amy Heckerling (Clueless), and Michael Lehmann (Heathers). The Breakfast Club 30th Anniversary Edition will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on March 10th.
30 years ago, I was out of high school and still trying to piece my life back together after a traumatic event. I needed a distraction, so I went to a movie. A friend of mine was into John Hughes' films - "Pretty in Pink" was her favorite. She recommended I go see "The Breakfast Club" because she thought I would enjoy it. She was right. I enjoyed it... so much so that I bought tickets to the next three showings and just stayed in the theater, watching it over and over.
When I left the theater, I had Simple Minds stuck in my head singing "Don't You (Forget About Me)" on a loop, and I decided to take a long walk instead of going directly home. I walked from the theater down the main drag along the beach, and stopped at the beach park across the street from the zoo. (The bonus about growing up in Hawaii is that everything is across the street from the beach.) I sat on the wall, and I felt like life had become so surreal. I had just watched a movie that could have been about my own high school life. And now I was gonna sit on a wall at the beach and reflect for a bit. I knew at least one of these characters personally. They all live inside my head, and I know at least one real person for every personality type represented in this movie.
So there we were in detention, with Principal Verne. A jaded, angry man. He once enjoyed his job as an educator but not anymore. He gives everyone a lecture with the rules - "no talking, no laughing, no sleeping." He gives them an essay assignment. He wants them to write an essay telling him who they think they are.
Brian Johnson was the "brain" of the group - the "neo-maxi-zoom-dweeb." He was probably the one most likely to have a comic book collection that included Action #1 in pristine, mint condition. He was also under a lot of academic pressure from his parents. This resulted in Brian's brief suicidal depression over a failed shop project, and he did something that landed him in Saturday detention.
Andy Clarke was the "sport" of the group. Back in the 80's (at my school, anyway), a "sport" was someone who was on the track, wrestling, or swim team. A "jock" was someone who was on the baseball, basketball or football team. In today's vernacular, they would all be "jocks" or just plain athletes. Andy was on the wrestling team, and his father put a lot of pressure on him to win. This resulted in an unfortunate peer pressure situation that Andy didn't handle well, and he ended up in Saturday detention as well.
Claire Standish was one of the popular girls. Her parents were going through a messy divorce, and she was milking it for all she could get. A spoiled rich kid, she was in detention for skipping class to go shopping.
Allison Reynolds was the "weirdo." She made a pixie-stick and Cap'n Crunch sandwich (she may have added some Fritos in there too, I couldn't ever really tell, even after watching it four times in a row on the big screen and countless times on DVD) after tossing her lunch meat up in the air. Like the others, she also had issues - at one point she claimed to be a nymphomaniac. Nobody knew why she was actually in detention until later.
John Bender was the delinquent. He was in detention working off a string of offenses, none of which were ever made clear. What was made clear ("Crys-taaalll!") was that he would be having 7 more weeks of it. He had a reputation as being the campus bully. It turned out that Bender's behavior was masking some pretty serious issues at home. At first the group didn't believe him when he said he was being abused. Then he showed them the scars.
The movie as a whole takes us through a day in detention for these kids. Andy and Claire already knew each other, they ran in the same social circles. Everyone knew who Bender was, he was the campus "waste-oid," the one all the burners would hang out with. Allison was the loner, and Brian hung out with the math club.
During the course of the movie, the kids get to know a little more about each other, albeit the hard way. They start by insulting and picking on each other. But, they have a common enemy in Principal Verne and they start covering for each other whenever Verne comes in to check on them. At one point, Verne asks if anyone has to go to the lavatory.
The group takes this opportunity to go to Bender's locker to get his stash. As they are trying to get back to the library undiscovered, they have to duck and hide several times as Verne is roaming the halls too. Bender stuffs his weed in Brian's pants, and takes off toward the gym to draw Verne away while the group gets back to the library. This works, and Bender is busted in the gym.
Verne locks him in a storage closet. He gets up into the ceiling, and crawls back to the library. When he crashes down through the ceiling tiles, Verne comes in to see what the ruckus was. Bender ducks under the table where Claire is sitting. They all pretend to not know what the ruckus was. When Verne leaves, Bender retrieves his stash from Brian.
The group bonds over Bender's weed, and they have a melancholy group heart-to-heart, during which Brian, Andy, and Allison reveal the reasons that they are in detention. Brian failed a shop project. Due to pressure from his parents, he felt a deep guilt over it. He brought a flare gun to school, but it was discovered when it went off in his locker.
Andy was under pressure from his dad (a bully of a former athlete, trying to live vicariously through his son) to be a winner - be the popular guy, be the champion wrestler, be everything. He gave in to locker-room peer pressure and taped a hairy kid's ass cheeks together. He knew it was wrong to do it, and he is now contrite and has many regrets and feels much shame and remorse over it. Allison... simply had nothing better to do.
Brian asks if they will still be friends on Monday. Claire says she doesn't think so. She tries to justify her answer by attempting to explain how the campus social pecking order works, but the group isn't buying it. They all promise each other that they won't treat each other like how the rest of the school treats them - like freaks.
That scene was probably the most emotionally painful scene of the whole movie for me, because the opportunity for them to lay it all on the table was there. The thing that hurt the most for me was that this kind of soul-baring moment did happen more than once for my group of friends (without the weed), and yet not a single one of us realized the significance of it. In fact it all just ended up being empty words. So my pain was for the loss of what I felt could have been truly defining moments, however fleeting, for my group of friends.
Bender crawls back to his storage closet, and Claire gives Allison a makeover. Then she goes to make out with Bender in the storage closet. By the end of the day, Allison and Andy have paired off as well. They have all talked Brian into writing a single essay for Verne from all of them, and it goes something like this:
Raven Knighte is an avid movie, TV, and cosplay fan.
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Today, the full list of Academy Awards nominations went out. You can find them at the bottom of this particular post, but I assume by now, you've seen them, as well as all of the well-deserved internet rage that came after them. Why? Well, this looks to be the single most white-bread, boring Academy Awards in years. Possibly, it will be the single least interesting Oscars I've ever seen. Let's dive into why:
This is it, folks. The last day of 2014. A day when we sit back and reflect on all of the awesome things we saw and did this year. We hope it was as awesome for you as it was for us, and thanks for tuning in each and every day to the Ace of Geeks. We couldn't be doing this without you, and we appreciate every since one of you guys. Next year, look for brand new content, new shows, more articles, and more coverage of conventions around the world. But for now, let's look back and reflect on the best of this year. Here, by popular vote, are our staff's picks for the best of 2014:
Disney's Maleficent was released on Blu-Ray and DVD on November 4th. I'd been waiting for a chance to watch it, since I didn't see it in theaters, and just based on what I saw in the trailers I knew it was something I wanted to own.
So I bought it. And I have to say, I don't love it. I don't hate it, either. And I don't regret spending the money on it.
We are well aware that consumerism is rampant in our society. There is a constant pressure to buy this, watch this, eat that, do this, do that, and try not to have your head spin while doing so. Most people get by just fine feeding into that machine minimally, but we, the few, the proud, the geeks, we buy into it whole hog. We consume media at an alarming rate, where binge watching is the norm. We are the orphan boy who says "Please, Sir, may I have some more?" and instead of the gruff Orphan Master's incredulous "MORE!?", we are greeted with something more akin to "Sure. Go ahead kid, knock yourself out." I'm not saying this is entirely a bad thing, but the question is, how can we make sure that we are not overloading ourselves and yet still enjoy all of our wonderful geekery? Is there a way to still devour the things we love, without having it take over our entire lives? Here are some thoughts for a more conscious kind of consumption:
Hello there. It has been some time since I've graced this here website with an article, and I'm sorry about that, but I have been busy with creative endeavors elsewhere. That and Mike hasn't asked me to write an article since we got into that argument about who would win in a fight, Godzilla or Galactus. (Devourer of Worlds my ass -Ed) Chairs may have been hurled, egos bruised and an understanding on why us geeks don't fight each other: we get tried quickly and look ridiculous.
Anyway, my short hiatus was due to the fact that, aside from mocking films on the internet, I actually do try and make them myself in what spare time I have. My last film, Devil May Care was almost entirely crowdfunded, and went on to win some Best Of Awards at a couple of film festivals. I am currently in the middle of crowdfunding my next picture, a fantasy film-noir comedy called A Bad Luck Guy In A Bad Luck Town. Let me tell you, it's a freaking nightmare from which you cannot wait to wake up from.
This image might as well be Bumblebee flipping the AoG off.
After weeks of stalemates and disappointments, the Movie Draft Super War is starting to finally heat up. The universally-reviled, Michael Bay directed, Transformers 4: Please Like Us We've Got a New Lead This Time, was released. Was it enough to change the face of the game? Hit the jump to find out.
Welcome back! It's been a shocking and tumultous two weeks in the movie war. We're not even into July yet, but this one might be over for one major competitor. Plus! A surprise hit closes the gap! All this and more in this week's update!
Your favorite podcast, The Ace of Geeks, and their ugly stepsister-podcast, Found in the Alley, have gone to battle over the summer movies. We each had 100 points, and used them to draft films from a list of thirty of the biggest releases coming out this year...and The Protector 2. Listen to the podcast that began the war for all of the rules and prizes, and check out Updates 1, 2 and 3 for everything that's gone down so far! Hit the jump for the details on this week!
When I heard that Marvel wanted to make an Ant-Man movie, I named about twenty other Marvel characters I'd rather see. Characters like Moon Knight, Cloak and Dagger, Iron Fist come to mind. Or, I dunno, any other D-List super hero really. Ant-Man's thing is he gets really really small or really really big. Last time I checked, there weren't a lot of Kaiju in the Marvel universe, but maybe if Bruce Banner got a tick bite or something then he'd be useful.
Then I found out that Edgar Wright was going to be directing it. The guy behind the Cornetto Trilogy and Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World? And got Paul Rudd and Michael freaking Douglass to star in it? Ok, Marvel, your ability to get interesting directors and actors has made me want to see the Ant-Man movie and I'm a little pissed that you duped me into it. I don't like being tricked into things, you damn crafty Marvel bastards!
Beast seriously looks like he's photobombing here.
Warning: This post will contain spoilers for the end of Days of Future Past.
The Avengers should never have worked. By conventional logic, a major summer tentpole movie that requires audiences to have seen at least three other movies is insane. Centering a good chunk of the movie on characters who hadn't been in a film in years (Hulk) or were only bit players in films before (Black Widow) is just as insane. Audiences just aren't that smart, conventional wisdom says. You have to hold their hands at every stage of the game and just hope they can follow even the least convoluted plot line. Movies must be simple.
