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!
- The Writers Guild Awards happened over the weekend, and The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Imitation Game, two of my favourite movies of this year and last, ended up taking home the biggest prizes of Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay respectively. Other big winners on the night were True Detective, Louie and John Oliver’s brilliant Last Week Tonight.
- Congratulations, incredibly detailed Millennium Falcon cake! You win the Internet for today!
- We’ve heard Fantastic Four director Josh Trank saying that the body-horror sci-fi work of David Cronenberg influenced the movie heavily, now here’s David Cronenberg talking about the fact that Josh Trank says that his work is an influence.
“It’s fine. Once you’ve contributed your voice to the cinematic conversation, it’s out there and it’s up for grabs, absolutely. So I don’t complain. In fact, I take it as a compliment.”
“When you come up with something original and it really strikes a chord in people, it’s going to imitated, it’s going to be appropriated, and it’s actually kind of nice when someone just flat out admits it. That’s actually pretty good. Not everybody does.”
“As far back as Alien, for example, which totally ripped off things from my movie Shivers – Shivers featured a parasite that lives in your body, bursts out of your chests, jumps onto your face, and jumps down your mouth, and suddenly you see this in a studio film, which was hugely successful, Alien. The writer of the script, Dan O’Bannon, had seen Shivers, we know that he had seen my movie and, shall we say, appropriated it. So this is not new stuff for me.”
- Poster of the day: The Imitation Game
- After just about everybody and his dog and even his dog’s fleas was thrown into the mix to replace Tom Hardy as Rick Flagg in Suicide Squad, it looks like we may finally have a pick in place. It’s being reported that Robocop reboot star Joel Kinnaman is in early talks to play Flagg, the leader of a dysfunctional group of supervillains forced to work as a government task force. If those “early talks” turn into more, he’ll join Will Smith’s Deadshot, Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, Jared Leto’s Joker, Jai Courtney’s Boomerang, Carla Develigne’s Enchantress and more.
- Everybody’s still talking about Fifty Shades of Grey, and unfortunately for fans of the BDSM flick, a lot of it is bad. And also funny. Like this list from /Film on 10 Things Christian Grey Does That Would Be Creepy If I Did Them.
- Ladies and gentlemen, Grodd is coming. Ooh!
- It’s official: Production on video game adaptation Assassins’ Creed has begun. A work-start party is probable not the only celebration going on on the production though, as there appears to be a little reunion happening as well. Oscar winner Marion Cotillard (The Dark Knight Rises, Inception) has reportedly joined the cast in a lead role, reuniting with star Michael Fassbender and director Justin Kurzel, with whom she worked on Kurzel’s yet to be released live-action Macbeth. Cotillard’s role in Assassins’ Creed is uncertain, but it’s believed to be a major one that will see her show up in several films if the film successful kicks off the franchise like producers hope it will.
- The Big Lebowski is an iconic film, with many, many memorable scenes. Like that one, where Jeff Bridges looking up a string of ladies’ unkempt private parts.
- Know how the Game of Thrones book readers are always laughing at the Game of Thrones TV show watchers whenever somebody is killed in some big surprise? Yeah, looks like season 5 is going to bring some payback – and lots and lots of death – according to author George R.R. Martin.
“People are going to die who don’t die in the books, so even the book readers will be unhappy. So everybody better be on their toes. [Showrunners] David [Benioff] and D.B. [Weiss] are even bloodier than I am.”
- X-Men: Days of Future Past was incredible. But of course, no movie is perfect and there’s always room for improvement. Like, more Quicksilver, for example. Yeah, they definitely could have done with more Quicksilver.
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: February 16, 2015
