Home Entertainment Extras! Ninja Turtles star responds to Michael Bay's alien plans, Prometheus trailer shot-by-shot breakdown, Disney's 1957 John Carter cartoon, Expendables are rated R again and Toy Story Jurassic Park?! Plus much more!

Extras! Ninja Turtles star responds to Michael Bay's alien plans, Prometheus trailer shot-by-shot breakdown, Disney's 1957 John Carter cartoon, Expendables are rated R again and Toy Story Jurassic Park?! Plus much more!

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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!

Remember yesterday how I mentioned that I might do an in-depth analysis of the new Prometheus trailer? Well, as it turns out Scott Meyers has beaten me to it with a shot-by-shot breakdown of the trailer. He does a pretty great job of it, so instead of me just duplicating his work, I thought I’d just link you guys to it. Also, I am lazy.

Another addition to my ever-burgeoning WTF file: otters that look like Benedict Cumberbatch. Yeah, I got no idea either.

The Hunger Games is almost upon us. Just a few more weeks until we get to witness Jennifer Lawrence do a dramatic reenactment of Friday nights on the Cape Flats. And with the very positive early buzz for the film, my excitement levels are at max. One of the things that helped build up this excitement was the very well paced and pretty creative promotional campaign that Lionsgate ran for the film over the last year.

Vulture has a very cool breakdown by numbers of some of that campaign’s more interesting aspects:

Number of free posters handed out: 80,000
Number of Hunger Games-themed magazine covers: 50
Several examples: Entertainment WeeklyPeopleSeventeen, AustralianGQ
Billboards and bus shelters used to advertise: 3,000
Size of production budget: $80 million
Size of marketing budget: $45 million
Amount studios often spend marketing blockbusters: $100 million
Barred promotional phrases: “23 kids get killed” and “let the games begin”
Promotional phrase used: “only one wins”
Number of people to make digital IDs on TheCapitol.pn800,000
Number of views on Capitol TV YouTube channel: nearly 18 million
Number of views of November-release trailer: 8 million (first 24 hours)
Number of puzzle pieces a poster was broken into: 100
Number of websites each given a piece, told to post on Twitter: 100
Ploy’s effectiveness: “It was a silly little stunt, but it worked — bam.” (Palen)
Number of websites that took part in ticket giveaway: 50
Sign that merchandising is fully underway: Hunger Games cookbook

Michael Wilkinson, costume designer on Zack Snyder’s Superman reboot, Man of Steel, recently spoke at the 5D FLUX convention at USC, about the work he did in helping to realize Snyder’s new vision of the classic superhero. Immersed in Movies was on hand and reported back on some of what was said:

 Wilkinson explained that since they created a “neo-medieval” back story for Krypton (which included the creation of a new language), it made sense to utilize the suit design as part of the mythology.

“Everyone on Krypton wears this suit,” he suggested. Using ZBrush and rapid prototyping, Wilkinson came up with the blue/gray color and chainmail look. “It has function and purpose and a logic to this fantastical world,” he added.

That actually makes kind of sense, and I’m happy to see that they’re going about this logically instead of taking the approach that Snyder did on Sucker Punch. You know, just pulling stuff out of his bunghole.

Before Andrew Stanton came along, the story of John Carter had actually been stuck in developmental hell for decades. All the way back in 1957, legendary Walt Disney animator, Ward Kimball, did work on creating some of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoomian creatures, and now you can finally see them in this ABC Disneyland special titled Mars and Beyond.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t it Sylvester Stallone himself that came out to confirm the talk that his mega-machismo-mashup movie (+10 Bonus alliteration points), The Expendables 2, was going to be aiming for a PG-13 rating as per human roundhouse machine, Chuck Norris’ request? Well now Stallone Zone has a statement from Sly himself that says different.

 “After taking in all the odd rumors and hearsay, EXPENDABLES II is an R.”

Rumours and hearsay? How can it be rumours and hearsay, when he said it?! Either way, I think this is a much better course for the film.

There’s a new Amazing Spider-Man viral video out, showing Dennis Leary’s police captain Stacy being interviewed by Daily Bugle TV about the new masked vigilante in the neighbourhood:

I’m not entirely sure who is responsible for this creation, but may Xenu bless his/her life with much sex and bacon, because this is simply hilarious. It’s a Toy Story/Jurassic Park mashup that makes so much sense, that I have no idea why nobody else hasn’t done it yet:

And finally, we end today on something that I have to admit, warms my heart. I wasn’t exactly impressed with Michael Bay’s assertions that the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie will be rebooting the turtle’s origins to make them aliens. I was not in the minority in this regard, as a fair number of articles sprung up denouncing the news. Now IMDB has posted up a letter written by Robbie Rist – the actor who played Michaelangelo in the 1990 live action film – addressed to Michael Bay. And frankly, Robbie is not happy:

“You probably don’t know me but I did some voice work on the first set of movies that you are starting to talk about sodomising.

Look man, I think you have some pretty nifty action ideas… but seriously, Teenage Alien Ninja Turtles?

I know believing in mutated talking turtles is kinda silly to begin with but am I supposed to be led to believe there are ninjas from another planet?… Oh what the hell am I talking to you for? The rape of our childhood memories continues…”

And that’s all from me, tonight. Tomorrow is a public holiday, so it’s probably going to be pretty quiet around these parts. That suits me fine as I need to polish up the spec script I’m working on called Pumpkin Patch: The Later Years. It’s about an ex-mayor, twisted up by the loss of his lofty position, who now runs a travelling freakshow circus, the star of which is a wild and violent 6 foot tall talking dog named Woofles, who is only ever at peace when he is playing his trombone. There’s also a set of lowlife twin pimps called Freckles and Speckles who force local wannabe singer Claire to turn tricks, so as to support their ravenous cocaine addictions. They all get thrown into a dark tale of violence and sex when career criminals Rhubarb and Bubblegum, steal Mayor Bill’s prized gold necklace to use as collateral on unpaid debts to Freckles and Speckles. But Mayor Bill isn’t going to stand for this, and soon sets his humanoid hell hound on their trail. But what happens when the crazed Woofles meets the lovely but damaged Claire? Will beauty tame the beast?

I think I’m really onto something here.

Last Updated: March 20, 2012

6 Comments

  1. Justin Hess

    March 20, 2012 at 18:05

    “The Hunger Games is almost upon us. Just a few more weeks until we get to witness Jennifer Lawrence do a dramatic reenactment of Friday nights on the Cape Flats.” 

    Lololololol

    Reply

  2. James Francis

    March 21, 2012 at 14:41

    Did anyone think that the rumours of a PG13 Expendables would be true?

    Reply

    • Kervyn Cloete

      March 21, 2012 at 19:50

      But that’s just it. Nobody believed the rumours, and the Sly himself came to say it was true. And now he’s saying that it isn’t.

      Reply

      • James Francis

        March 22, 2012 at 14:34

        Maybe he never said it’s true. It’s just that nobody could understand what he said. The botox ain’t helping…

        Reply

  3. James Francis

    March 22, 2012 at 14:33

    -repost deleted-

    Reply

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