Extras! 10 July 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!

• Ever notice how on Star Trek: The Next Generation, they always ran into the most important stuff when Picard and his Scooby gang were on duty? I mean, besides for Data, they all had to sleep some time, right? So what was happening all that time when they were pulling some Z’s?

• Looks like Alec Baldwin and Rebecca Ferguson have seen their mission and chosen to accept it. And then quickly threw that very dangerous piece of exploding paper away before it injured somebody (worst HR memo ever!). The pair are set to join the cast of Mission: Impossible 5, with Baldwin reportedly in talks to play high-ranking CIA officer that now oversees Ethan Hunt’s new division. The much less well known Ferguson, who received a Golden Globe nod last year for her role in Starz’s The White Queen, is said to be up for the female lead role, one that was passed up by Jessica Chastain. The specifics of the role is being kept under wraps, but she will reportedly be some sort of assassin.

• If you read just one film review today, make sure it’s Drew McWeeny at HitFix’s incredibly personal and kind of gut wrenching review of Richard Linklater’s equally personal and gut wrenching Boyhood.

• Poster of the Day: The Zero Theorem

• In Doctor Who, the Doctor and his companions can travel literally to any point in space and time in his TARDIS. As such, I’m sure that on one of these adventures, he must have traveled to a planet made entirely of salt. Hopefully you can share the location, because that’s how much sodium chloride you’ll have to take with this next rumour which states that Doctor Who and Sherlock showrunner Steven Moffat is being courted by Disney to make a Star Wars film.

• Speaking of Doctor Who, screw Peter Capaldi and whatever he’s up to, somebody get me more of this 1970’s Japanese Doctor Who parody now! SONIC SCREW SWORD!!

• Movies.com (no relation) think that Planet of the Apes is the greatest sci-fi franchise of all time (and have the maths to back it up), and after people get to experience the absolutely masterful brilliance of the latest film tomorrow, I don’t think there will be too much arguments against that belief.

• And the CW just keep recruiting those heroes. With the (Super-)Atom(-Man) showing up in Arrow, their Flash spinoff is getting it’s own science-based superhero in Firestorm. The misleadingly named hero (no, he’s not the son of the Human Torch and Storm) has the ability to transmute any elements, and is one one of the most powerful heroes in the DC universe. Firestorm’s unique hook though is that he is actually two different people who can become fused, and transform into this new super powerful being. And one half of that nucleic duo, Ronnie Raymond, will be played by Robbie Amell, real-life cousin to Arrow lead star Stephen Amell. What’s that? I’m sorry, but I can’t hear your cries of nepotism over the sound of all the girls shrieking at the prospect of twice as much Amell abs on TV now.

• This limited edition Marvin action figure from Pulp Fiction, may just be the coolest thing I’ve seen for sale on the internet in ages.

• Sorry, Elsa. You don’t just get to freeze over your entire hometown and then get away with it. People will not just *cough* let it go. So it’s time for you to go meet some new friends. Friends wearing orange.

• Looks like your excitement for Pacific Rim 2 may need to take a chain-sword to the chest for a bit, as the super busy Guillermo Del Toro has revealed that he will be tackling a small, “bizarre” movie first before heading back into that big budget, Kaiju blockbuster world.

“Right away, in February/March I should [start on] another very small movie, black and white, really, really bizarre, before starting—we start pre-production on Pacific Rim 2 in August, and then I interrupt it briefly to go into the first of next year to do this strange little movie, and then I restart it and go all the way until we start shooting Pacific Rim 2 at the end of 2015 for release in 2017.”

“It’s a very small cast.  I would love to have John Hurt, and there’s an actress that I have in mind that is not well-known but I’ve seen her in a short film.  That’s all she’s really done, one feature and one short, but she has an incredibly interesting taste and I’m gonna try her out for the main role.”

“There’s one great creature in it.”

• While overall I enjoyed the taut suspense and thrills from The Purge, I will admit that it had a few mistakes. Did I say a few? I meant 118 mistakes, as this video for Everything Wrong With The Purge shows.

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: July 10, 2014