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 fact that The LEGO Movie wasn’t even nominated for Best Animated Feature at this year’s Oscars is widely considered to be a gigantic snub. This is unfortunately not the first time that the Academy has failed to recognize movies that are arguably the best entries of their particular year, as can be seen in this Cracked video aptly titled “The Best Movies Ever (Got Screwed At The Oscars).
- Ask many people to describe Kristen Stewart and you’ll probably get that she’s that horrible “actress” from Twilight whose permanently sour facial expression makes it seem as if it causes her traumatic pain to smile. Except that’s not the case anymore. Since her sparkly vampire days and her time in Snow White and the Huntsman, Stewart has actually been doing several small indie flicks that has shown that she can actually act. So much so, that she’s just made history by being the first American actress to ever win a Cesar (France’s version of the Oscar) for her role in Clouds of Sils Maria! What’s more, when Stewart accepted the award, she showed genuine, human emotion in public, something that most of her haters thought she was physically incapable of!
- Last week, I got pranked by Darryn with a link to fake story about how Marvel had reached out to Jayden Smith to play the Miles Morales version of Spider-Man in their upcoming movies. Besides for the fact that Darryn is a tosser, this also reminded me that we shouldn’t be so quick to get excited over “stories” before we’ve actually confirmed them. It appears that a huge portion of the movie news fraternity forgot this yesterday, as several of them posted “rumour” articles about the fact that the new Spider-Man will almost certainly not be white. The source for all these stories was a podcast from The Wrap’s Jeff Sneider, in which he claimed 95% surety of the new Spidey’s non-whiteness. Many people who wrote about the story claimed that while Sneider posted no proof, he’s such an industry veteran that he must have some major scoop.
Turns out, that’s completely untrue. Taking to his Twitter account last night, Sneider explained over a series of tweets that he was purely speculating with zero evidence whatsoever, saying that people should “Feel free to discuss whatever y’all want, just don’t label it as NEWS that I never reported.” So yes, Spider-Man may still be a white guy. Or he could be a half-black, half-latino kid named Miles Morales. Or Marvel could pull a Catwoman and create a character completely from scratch that everybody will hate forever and ever.
- Poster of the day: Fan created Masters of the Universe reboot
- Note to self: If you ever want to sneak into a swanky A-list event in Prague, just pull funny faces and keep telling people “Alrighty then!”. I know this little tidbit thanks to a man who pretended to be Jim Carrey at the Czech Republic’s most prestigious movie awards ceremony held on Sunday night, and was waved right in by security, eventually being ushered up on stage to be showered in confetti. Despite having only the slightest resemblance to Carrey, Czech officials continued to insist that the intruder was indeed Carrey before eventually admitting that they had been had. The real Jim Carrey was understandably pretty amused about the whole mix-up.
Look! I’m more interesting than the Oscars while plunked on my couch eating chips. MY SPIRIT WILL NOT BE IGNORED! ;^P http://t.co/ey6CnmbwEE
— Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) February 23, 2015
- I sense a disturbance in the geek force, as some major spoilers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens may just have been unveiled. You can read about them HERE and HERE, but as usual, click at your own peril.
- So the rumours have been swirling for the last few weeks about Chris Pratt perhaps being up for the role of a rebooted Indiana Jones (perhaps to be directed by Steven Spielberg?). We’ve seen lots of people weigh in on the prospect, but has anybody actually spoken to Chris Pratt about it yet? It turns out, no. This was discovered at this weekend’s Oscars when he was asked about it on the red carpet by MTV News, and based on his answer, while there’s been nothing official, it certainly sounds like he’s thought about it a fair bit.
- It’s been four years since David Fincher’s English language take on The Girl With The Dragoon Tattoo, and if you’ve been holding your breath for a sequel since then… well, you would be dead. And apparently so too are the chances of that sequel ever happening. That’s according to star Rooney Mara, who explained the project’s non-status to E! Online.
“I don’t think it’s going to happen, I’m sad never to do it again, but it just doesn’t seem like it’s in the cards.”
- Showgirls is a terrible, terrible movie. I can’t even recommend it for just the sexytime bits as Paul Verhoeven’s 1995 clunker features some of the most anatomically incorrect movie sex seen outside of Team America: World Police. Couple that with bad acting, poor writing and an incessantly long runtime, and you have a movie that is prime fodder for the folks at CinemaSins.
- I’m not completely sold on Neill Blomkamp’s latest, Chappie, quite yet. Besides for the fact that film’s plot appears to be a bit derivative, there’s one other big issue with the movie that rankles me every time I see any trailers: Die Antwoord. While I actually enjoy plenty of the Zef group’s music, I just can’t see them doing anything else but grind my bones in a full length movie. And judging by some of the comments I’ve seen on this site alone, many of you feel the same way. So how did Blomkamp end up casting non-actors Ninja and Yolandi Vi$$er in a high-profile blockbuster? Well, it’s all explained in this new featurette for the movie.
- Did you know that in the recent Fantastic Four trailer there’s a shot of a computer screen, with the numbers 23.21.190.125 briefly visible in the corner of the screen. That, as many IT folks should know, is an IP address. Enter it in your browser and it actually takes you to site that gives you the history of Latveria, the fictional Eastern European kingdom that is the birthplace Victor Von Doom, the FF’s nemesis. That incredible little nugget is only one of the many cool things you can discover on JoBlo’s list of their Favourite Movie Easter Eggs.
- As many times as I’ve seen the Harry Potter films, I still love it when Aragorn charges the gates of Hogwarts to buy Frodo enough time to destroy the last of Sauron’s Horcruxes. Oh wait… that’s not right. Simple mistake to make really, seeing as Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings are so darn similar.
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 24, 2015
