Extras! 03 September 2014

Welcome to The Extras! A daily dose of all the smaller movie related news, clips and just plain cool stuff that you might have missed!

• Do you feel young and full of life? Allow me to rectify that: Keanu Reeves turns 50-years old today. You may now proceed to cry.

• India. The land of curry, call centres and HOLY CRAP, WHAT THE CRAPPING HELL IS HAPPENING IN THIS MOVIE?!!

• So about those Escape From New York reboot casting rumours… It seems that we should be taking them with a truckload of salt, as Dan Stevens, one of the actor rumoured to be up for the role of Snake Plisken, has just shot those talks down, saying he’s never heard a damn thing about it.

“(Laughs) I just heard [the rumours] this morning. It’s the first I’ve heard of it. It’s hilarious if it’s true! I don’t know anything about it. But it’s lovely to have it bandied about.”

• Poster of the day: Inner Demons

• So there was a rumour going around yesterday that current Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat would be exiting the series soon to be replaced by novelist and BBC screenwriter Anthony Horowitz (the Alex Rider novels, The Adventures of Tintin). However, Horowitz has now spoken out on Twitter, debunking all the speculation.

@philiplickley Unlikely.

— Anthony Horowitz (@AnthonyHorowitz) September 1, 2014

• There are some that would argue that Michael Bay movies make you dumber, but unfortunately they wouldn’t have the scientific proof to back up those claims (unless they met Darryn, of course). However, they can now prove scientifically that Michael Bay makes you snack more. Researchers at Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab conducted a study to find if movie watchers consumed more food when watching a fast paced action movie like Bay’s The Island or a slow paced talk show like The Charlie Rose. The study was conducted on 98 undergraduate students and their results show that people “ate 98% more food and consumed 65% more calories” when having their mind Baysploded. Interestingly, those numbers dropped to 36% more and 46% more calories when the sound of the movie was turned off. They are still to establish whether the fast editing of the film – The Island featured 24.7 cuts per minute as opposed to the talk show’s 4.8 – had anything to do with the extra strong case of the munchies.

• And while I can’t claim that this next pic on the Anatomy of Film Genres was scientifically researched, I can say that it appears to be very accurate.

• It’s official! Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe are nice guys. Yes, even Crowe, despite a certain incident with a hurled telephone. Warner Bros have now confirmed the recent rumours that Gosling and Crowe would star in Nice Guys, the next movie from writer-director Shane Black (Iron Man 3, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Lethal Weapon). And no, that “next movie” is not a typo. Black is juggling several projects at the moment, including Doc Savage as well as a Predator reboot/sequel, but WB have slated the movie for June 17, 2016, probably making it his next production. The film is a noirish action-thriller “set in 1970s Los Angeles and follows a private eye (Gosling) and a hired leg-breaker (Crowe) who must work together to solve the case of a missing girl and the seemingly unrelated death of a porn star.”

• It turns out that yesterday’s rumour about HBO remastering The Wire in HD to air this month is only half truth. IndieWire reached out to the cable network who confirmed that they are indeed giving the Emmy nominated show the HD treatment, but they have no plans as of yet as to when they will be releasing them.

• If you’re a fan Netflix’s creepy werewolf tale (tail?) Hemlock Grove, then here’s some good news to howl at the moon about. The Eli Roth produced show has been renewed for a third season, but the catch is that this will be its last. Here’s what Roth had to say about the announcement:

“We are so grateful to the fans of ‘Hemlock Grove’ who have championed the series so intensely over two seasons. We are looking forward to taking the last and final season into some dark and unexpected places, and to giving viewers the killer finale you’d come to expect from ‘Hemlock Grove.’”

• These 10 Movie Villain Affirmation posters by professional artist Christopher Ables are incredibly awesome. They also feature some salty NSFW language, but hey, since when do villains speak nice?

If you have anything you would like to contribute to Extras, whether it be interesting stories, funny videos, or artistic photos of yourself in morally questionable poses, feel free to drop a mail to kervyn@themovies.co.za.

Last Updated: September 3, 2014