Home Entertainment Extras! Live action Akira storyboards, Borat spoof anthem played at sporting event, Simon Pegg tells us nothing about Star Trek 2 and James Cameron goes deeper than anybody else! Plus much more!

Extras! Live action Akira storyboards, Borat spoof anthem played at sporting event, Simon Pegg tells us nothing about Star Trek 2 and James Cameron goes deeper than anybody else! Plus much more!

5 min read
0

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!

Sacha Baron-Cohen is possibly the greatest troll alive today. His films and characters are nothing but pisstakes of various cultures and few have been as abrasive (and funny) as Borat, the bumbling Pamela Anderson obsessed Kazhakstan journalist whose film, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, was banned in pretty much every Arab country out there. This weekend though saw what would possibly be Borat’s greatest troll achievement, and yet the mustachioed man was not even involved.

At the 10th Arab Shooting Championship, Kazakhstan athlete Maria Dmitrienko won a gold medal for her country and was proudly waiting for her national anthem to play during the award ceremony, when she was instead greeted by the sound of Borat’s fake version. A version that included such choice lyrics as “Kazakhstan’s prostitutes are the cleanest in the region, except, of course, for Turkmenistan’s.”

It seemed that the event organizers had somehow accidentally downloaded the incorrect version from the internet. You can view Dmitrienko’s embarrassing moment down below:

Entertainment Weekly has a great gallery of posters imagining what the Hunger Games would have looked like if the film had a different director. They’ve got a whole ton of them; everything from Christopher Nolan to Terence Malick to Alfred Hitchcock, but here are a few of my favourites:

It’s not often that I feel the need to report to something NOT happening, but with a JJ Abrams film that’s more than likely what you’re going to get. In an industry that stupidly insists in giving away every single plot detail about a film in its trailers, Abrams has been one of the few directors that understands that more often than not, we like to be surprised. Just look at the Star Trek sequel he’s currently shooting: except for some sneaky leaked set pics, we know next to nothing about the film, not even it’s title. And now thanks to this Total Film interview with Simon Pegg (who plays Scotty), we know even more nothing:

“It’s all about space. Yep – it’s about the final frontier. And the one before it. I know it’s boring, but one thing JJ installed in all of us is the importance of giving the audience everything they can get from the experience itself.”

Thanks for that insight, Simon.

The live action Akira film has been stuck in development Hell for ages now (and in that sulfurous fiery abyss it where it should remain, if you ask me ), but a few attempts have got pretty close to getting off the ground. One of the earliest, that never really got out of the idea phase, was director Ruairi Robinson’s 2008 attempt. Now we can see some storyboards depicting his vision. It’s a combination of images lifted straight from the graphic novel, with a couple of new twists, specifically the Caucasian Kaneda (because that’s definitely a white boy name) with a much more regular looking motorcycle. Considering the fact that Kaneda’s futuristic red bike is one of the original manga and anime’s most striking images, that is certainly a odd choice for a change.

Star Wars Identities is a new interactive museum exhibit that will be held at the Montreal Science Centre from April 19th, and will feature elements from the Lucasfilm archives as well as real world scientific material, to provide insight into the development of the Star Wars characters. To this end, a number of character-centric posters have been developed and they are nothing short of jaw dropping. I’m not much of a drooler, but man there is a deluge running down my jowls right now.

Geek Tyrant has all the posters up for your viewing pleasure, but here is just a sample of the awesomeness.

There are 2 new pics out for G.I. Joe: Attack of the Punctuation, and they really don’t show us much except Joe (Bruce Willis) and Lady Jaye (Adrianne Palicki) holding guns. To be fair though, that is all I needed to hear.

Film School Rejects has an informative article up on how Hollywood is now trying tap the previously elusive Chinese movie-viewing market. As was shown in the case of John Carter, international box-office takings can help a film quite a bit, and these types of emerging markets are driving that.

And finally, we end on a story of just plain old human triumph. Not content with just beating everybody at the box-office, Oscar nominated director James Cameron has to now also prove that he’s better than the ocean itself. At around midday yesterday, about 500 km southwest of Guam, Cameron clambered out of the 109cm wide cockpit of his one-manned submarine, the Deepsea Challenger, after having spent hours venturing down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest chasm on planet Earth.

Cameron becomes only the 3rd person to ever travel to the 11 km deep valley floor (which is further than height of Mt Everest), and the first person to do have done it solo. According to National Geographic, the sub contained ” a sediment sampler, a robotic claw, a “slurp gun” for sucking up small seacreatures for study at the surface, and temperature, salinity, and pressure gauges” all of which will was used to study possibly the most alien environment on Earth. Also in true Cameron fashion, the sub was equipped with 3D cameras which recorded every second of the voyage.

This type of human achievement and scientific exploration truly restores my faith in humanity. Though I’m sure that just a single bout of reading Youtube comments will destroy it all again.

And so it comes to an end, a little later than usual, I know, but blame it on an acute case of the Mondays. After reading about James Cameron’s exploits I’ve decided that I too need to do something like that. Conquering nature using nothing human ingenuity and a peerless drive. Yes indeed, I am finally going to cut my lawn!

Hey, don’t judge me. Baby steps.

Last Updated: March 26, 2012

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Check Also

Bruce Willis takes on corrupt cops – again – in the trailer for Out of Death

Bruce Willis is back to doing what he does best in shooting up some bad guys in yet anothe…