Home Entertainment Extras! 07 November 2014

Extras! 07 November 2014

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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!

  • Since we opened today with Star Wars news, we might as well do the same in Extras. Symmetry! Back in the dark, internetless days of the 90’s, before the release of Episode I, Star Wars fans were genuinely excited at seeing George Lucas doing a prequel. Little did we know… mainly because back then we could only rely on a few publications, most of which were just raving about Lucas making more Star Wars again. One man that did know was Hitfix’s Drew McWeeney, who heard some bad stuff from the crew on set that should have warned us about what’s to come. And now, a couple of decades later, McWeeney is once again hearing rumblings, this time from the set of the newly titled The Force Awakens. Only this time, those rumblings are slightly different.

“I’ve been covering movies online since the days when the “Star Wars: Special Editions” were only a rumor. During the production of “The Phantom Menace,” I had a lot of contact with people working on and around the film, and if I had to characterize the attitude that most of them had, it was “I don’t know what we’re making.” There were plenty of people who seemed nervous about various elements or characters or ideas in what they were making. This time around, every single thing I’ve heard has been, “Holy cow, I think we’re doing this right,” and this Tweet from Daniels is just the most public example of that.”

  • The Daniels mentioned above is Anthony Daniels, the actor who plays C-3PO, and the tweet was this incredible bit of praise for The Force Awakens.

  • Before today, I had never heard of the upcoming animated movie Animal Crackers. I will probably be paying more attention though, now that the movie’s voice cast has been revealed:
    Sir Ian McKellen, Danny DeVito, Sylvester Stallone, Patrick Warburton, Gilbert Gottfried, Raven-Symoné and Harvey Fierstein. The movie tells of a family who inherit a rundown zoo, but then discover a mysterious box of Animal Crackers that transforms anybody that eats any of the animal-shaped biscuits into the animal they’ve just eaten.
  • Chris Pratt started off this year as total nobody Emmet in The LEGO Movie but he’s finishing it as Guardians of the Galaxy‘s Star Lord, one of the most popular heroes in years. It appears though that LEGO Batman has not yet found out about this transformation in his one-time reluctant teammate.

  • The 80’s was a glorious microcosm of manly movie madness that is one of my favourite periods in film history. We’ve recently had a couple of throwbacks to that era, but very few have captured it as brilliantly as those comic geniuses Key and Peele with their parody Strike Force Eagle 3.

  • We’ve featured the Ohio State Univesrity Marching Band before, and for very good reason: They freaking awesome and love movies. And now they’re back with another film inspired act, this time tackling sci-fi movie themes.

  • The prospect of Noomi Rapace and Michael Douglas starring in a espionage action-thriller would have been enough to get me interested in Unlocked, but now the Michael Apted directed flick has gone and upped the ante by also including John Malkovich, Toni Collette and Orlando Bloom in the cast. Most of the roles are being kept under wraps, but we know that Rapace will play a CIA agent who inadvertently leaks important info to terrorists and now has to try and stop their plan of launching a bio-attack on London.
  • Ask most people to name the original Ghostbusters, and they would probably be able to rattle off Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis easy. But what about Ernie Hudson, the fourth Ghostbuster? Well, not only didn’t he have as much to do in the movie as the others, but he also never became the international stars that they did. But that could have been way different if Ghostbusters had actually used its original script which had Hudson’s character as the lead. Instead, the script was changed at the 11th hour, with Hudson pushed much further into the background, much to the actor’s everlasting regret.

“When I originally got the script, the character of Winston was amazing and I thought it would be career-changing. The character came in right at the very beginning of the movie and had an elaborate background: he was an Air Force major something, a demolitions guy. It was great… The night before filming begins, however, I get this new script and it was shocking. The character was gone. Instead of coming in at the very beginning of the movie, like page 8, the character came in on page 68 after the Ghostbusters were established. His elaborate background was all gone, replaced by me walking in and saying, “If there’s a steady paycheck in it, I’ll believe anything you say.” So that was pretty devastating.”
“I was a single dad, and we were struggling to kind of hold on and pay the rent. I still needed to do this job. 30 years later, I look back at the movie and it works very well the way it is. I think the character works with what he has to work with. But I’ve always felt like, “Man, if I could’ve played that original character…” Winston wasn’t included in the movie poster or the trailer and all that stuff. I felt, had the original character been in play at the beginning, that would’ve been different because it would’ve clearly been four guys.”

  • Did you collect movie-merchandise toys back in the 80’s? Well, then you may want to take a squiz at this infographic showing what some of them are worth now. Who knows, that G.I. Joe you’ve been sticking up your butt for years could make you rich! (Also, if you don’t get that joke, you were clearly not a fan of Eddie Murphy in the 80’s).

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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: November 7, 2014

3 Comments

  1. Too much awesome today, thx Kervyn! Best Extras! I think I’ve ever read/seen.

    Reply

    • Kervyn Cloete

      November 8, 2014 at 09:15

      Aw shucks…

      Reply

  2. Spaffy

    November 10, 2014 at 08:32

    Holy crap. Some expensive junk that there. 😀

    Reply

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