Home Entertainment Extras! 29 May 2014

Extras! 29 May 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!

  • Did you know that that when Idris Elba is not busing cancelling the Apocalypse/Apartheid, he’s busy making his directorial debut with a funkadelic 70’s based short film for Pepsi? You didn’t? Well, then check this out.

  • David Tennant has one of the saddest cry-faces in TV history, so when his run ended on BBC’s Doctor Who and he unveiled that insta-bawl mug in his final episode, the whole world nearly experienced a second great flood as a result of all the subsequent fan tears. Tennant had given the iconic role a boost in popularity like it hadn’t seen in decades, so it was kind of understandable that a few people thought that the show just could not go on without him. Surprisingly though, some of those people were at the BBC, as current showrunner Steven Moffat explains:

“I think there were plans maybe to consider ending it. It was [then showrunner] Russell T Davies saying, ‘You are not allowed to end it’ [that kept it going]. David owned that role in a spectacular way, gave it an all-new cheeky sexy performance and became a national treasure. So the idea that Doctor Who could go on at all in the absence of David was a huge question.”

  • You’ve seen Jurassic Park, right? And you definitely remember the famous scene where the T-Rex first escapes from his pen and starts playing hackey-sack with some jeeps, right? Well, then you would also remember that to get out, Rexie snaps the fencing and steps over a low wall. A wall that Dr Grant and co then climb over to escape the rampaging dino, only on the other side of that low wall is about a 40m drop. And at this point your brain starts going “But…but… but…. the T-Rex was just standing there! Can T-Rexes fly?!”

Clearly, you never read Cracked’s list of 26 Huge Editing Errors in Famous Movies or you would have seen that coming.

Adam-Simpson-French-Connection

  • With onset clashes between director Marc Forster and cast/crew, bungled set pieces, budget creep and an absentee leading man,World War Z‘s very publicized production was nearly as disastrous as the zombie apocalypse it was about, with Damon Lindelof being called upon in the 11th hour to rewrite huge portions of the film. And it worked, with the film earning solid reviews and becoming star/producer Brad Pitt’s biggest earner ever. Clearly though, Paramount would just like to avoid all of that mess for the film’s sequel if they could.

Which is probably why Steven Knight has been tapped to provide the screenplay for the sequel, which is being helmed by JA Bayona (The Impossible, The Orphanage). Knight penned David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises, and recently earned massive praise for Locke, a Tom Hardy starring drama that he wrote and directed and which takes place entirely inside one car with only Hardy onscreen. And if Knight can make something like that work, then giant rolling balls of crazed zombies chasing Brad Pitt as the world’s luckiest man should be a cakewalk.

  • The opening scene of cult classic anime film Ghost in the Shell is one of the most memorable in all of anime. And a group of talented folk spread across the world, led by director Ash Thorp, are currently trying to painstakingly recreate it in live-action. This is quite the endeavour, and they are very far from the finished result, but the group has unveiled a teaser/behind the scenes look that shows just how well it’s coming along.
[Note: This is a very accurate recreation, and since the anime featured a naked Motoko Kusanagi, this one gets pretty NSFW as well]

A respectful homage to Shirow Masamune’s manga and Mamoru Oshii’s seminal film “Ghost in the Shell”, this is a modernized direction that still tries to stays true to the original creator’s vision. What started as a photo tribute directed by Ash Thorp and Tim Tadder (photography), soon became a worldwide collaboration of more than 20 artists from around the world, with each and everyone coming together to help breath life into the project, resulting in the artistic interpretation you see below.

For a film that was a comment on the uber-connected society of the future, Project 2501 ended up being itself an example of how this collaborative group of creatives are so connected ourselves. Many of us never met beyond the communications provided by the vast and infinite net, but still came together to make the ultimate tribute to “Ghost in the Shell”. Everyone of us wanted the opportunity to pay homage to a ground-breaking film that gave us so much.

We sincerely hope you enjoy our effort to capture the energy and beauty of the original film’s title sequence.

  • Looks like Anthony Mackie is trading in his wings for running shoes. The Captain America: The Winter Soldier star is attached to star in a still-untitled biopic about Olympic athlete Jesse Owens. The African American Owens gained international acclaim and became a sporting icon when he competed in and won 4 gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, essentially throwing Adolf Hitler’s claims about the genetic superiority of the Aryan race back in his mustachioed face. The Fuhrer was not pleased, as expected, but what was worse is that US President Franklin D. Rooseveldt refused to shake Owens’ hand for his accomplishment, causing an international uproar.

Mackie is teaming up with his We Are Marshall collaborator Jamie Linden to produce a script by George Olsen – which will cover the run-up to the Olympics, his wins, and then public snubbing by the President –  which they hope to start shopping around to studios soon.

  • Morgan Freeman possesses one of the world’s most recognizable voices. His softly timbred vocal pipes has arguably become more famous than he is, so you would think that getting the opportunity to talk the veteran actor at length about anything would be an unforgettable experience. And just so, says Jonah Hill, but just not for the reasons you may be thinking of.

  • And the fight for independence continues… Independence Day 2, that is. Roland Emmerich and Devlin’s long-awaited sequel is getting some touching up, as newcomer screenwriter Carter Blanchard has been brought in to rewrite the film’s script, which had earlier drafts by Emmerich and Devlin, and then James Vanderbilt. The general consensus is that the rewrite is to address the absence of Will Smith, star of the first film, who definitely does not look he is coming back, but my money is still on Blanchard just adding more national monuments to blow up. So long Mt. Rushmore!
  • And people say that “Made in China” products are worthless. A very rare Chinese Star Wars comic book has been discovered by an assistant history professor at a Shanghai book fair in a Confucian temple. George Lucas’ Star Wars was never released in China in 1978, so Guangzhou Publishing House decided to release an unauthorized comic book adaptation of the film in the form of a palm-sized picture book. While a mostly accurate adaptation, the comic boasts some pretty weird inconsistencies, like the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida showing up on a map of Death Star targets Darth Vader was using.
  • If you’ve ever watched the classic scene in Stanley Kubrick’s seminal 2001: A Space Odyssey and thought “Man, that killer AI HAL would be so much cooler if he had the same voice as Sterling Archer from that hilarious animated show”, then you’ve definitely come to the right place. Screenrant had Archer voice actor Jon Benjamin over, and decided to put his talents to good use by getting him to do a voiceover on some iconic movie scenes. The results are hilarious.

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: May 29, 2014

One Comment

  1. Now I feel like seeing Major Kusinagi kick ass and spew philosophies again!

    Reply

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