Extras! Sony revs up Gran Turismo, Jimi 3000, Christopher Walken is a Jersey Boy, Hercules vs Spartacus, Jennifer Lawrence meets The Dude, China likes blue not yellow and Na na na na na na na na na na na na na Sixth Sense! Plus much more!

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!

Despite the fact that I’m a happily married man, I have to admit that I love me some Jennifer Lawrence. And I am definitely not alone in this affection towards the Oscar winning actress, who has become the darling of Hollywood over the last couple years. And she’s claimed that title through the most simplest of means: just being normal. She’s a little goofy, doesn’t mind laughing at herself, and geeks out just as badly as us plebs would were we to meet certain celebrities. Like for example, that time she met Jeff Bridges at last week’s Comic-Con and nearly ran away.

Skip to the 02:30 mark if you’re impatient.

There are still a number of unanswered questions regarding All By My Side, the upcoming Jimi Hendrix biopic: Can relatively untested writer/director John Ridley deliver on the goods? Exactly what will be the tone of the film? And will somebody be playing the guitar with their teeth? While we still have some time until those mysteries get resolved, there’s one thing about the film that is simply not in any doubt right now: Rapper turned actor Andre “3000” Benjamin’s uncanny resemblance to the guitar god, as can be seen in this first official image from the film.

EA and Dreamworks busy throwing Aaron Paul behind the wheel for Need for Speed, Legendary setting up the ramps for Hot Wheels and Universal running out of garages to store all the sports cars they bought with their Fast and Furious money, it’s understandable that Sony would also like to get in on the action. And now they’re booking their place at that table with just two words: Gran Turismo.

There’s no casting announcements yet, but Sony have tapped Social Network and Fifty Shades of Grey producers Mike De Luca and Dana Brunetti to officially develop a live-action feature film based on the insanely popular racing sim video game. As the single biggest franchise in Playstation history, with over 70 million copies sold, they couldn’t have asked for a better built-in audience. Now lets hope they can actually make a good movie. Er… one that doesn’t involve BDSM? That would be swell.

Contrary to what you may think, the following images are actually not for recently completed TV series Spartacus (the lack of blood geysers and random people having explicit  should have been the giveaway), though they do feature Liam McIntyre, the star of that show, back to doing the sword and sandals thing again. These are actually the first pics for Renny Harlin’s Hercules 3D, which stars Kellan Lutz (he’s the shoulder pad wearing, animal skin-draped one) in the title role.

If you saw the story I posted earlier today about the new trailer for Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity, you would have seen me mention the incredible single-take car chase that is pulled off in Cuaron’s Children of Men. Its ambitious, complicated, flawlessly executed and still not the most impressive thing in that movie. That belongs to the film’s final 17 minute long single-take shot right through the middle of an all out war zone; an insanely difficult shot that was very nearly ruined by a couple of drops of blood as Cuaron explains in this amazing anecdote.

Squint-off! Squinty-eyed Clint Eastwood has apparently signed fellow slit-visioned Christopher Walken to star in Jersey Boys, Eastwood’s live action adaptation of the award winning Broadway musical that tells the true story of 1960’s pop legends Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons. Walken is set to play Angelo “Gyp” DeCarlo, a mobster who tries to steer the quintet early in their careers.

We all live such busy lives, who has time to do anything anymore.? I mean, I’m thinking of getting myself adult diapers so I don’t have to waste time going to the loo anymore. Also, I hear urine is a great insulator again the cold. Score on my electricity bill!

So for all you other time-strapped individuals, I present this 1-minute long horror movie that will still scare your pants off, despite taking only as long as it took you to put them on.

If you haven’t noticed, China appears to be bankrolling every second major Hollywood blockbuster lately. The reason for this is because with their strict film regulations as to what is/isn’t allowed to be shown in the country, studios stand a better chance of getting their movie’s foot in the door when there’s a local financial stake in it. Don’t ally with the Chinese money and you stand to go the same way as Despicable Me 2, which may be cleaning up at the box-office everywhere else, but had to talk to the hand when they wanted to open in China. As a relatively harmless animated film for kids, it’s pretty difficult to figure out why it was given the boot. Especially since Smurfs 2, which also features brightly coloured little critters, has now been given permission to be screened there.

 Apparently if you want to get into China, you need to be blue and not yellow. Huh, who knew?

Ex-Attack of the Show presenter and current Newsroom star Olivia Munn, arguably the sexiest nerd on the planet, loves Wonder Woman. And people love her dressing up as Wonder Woman (not hard to see why). So much so that they would love her to dress up as Wonder Woman for realz in when the character finally graces the big screen in either Justice League or a solo movie. And while Munn would like nothing more than to just that, there’s just the little problem of her heritage.

“It would be great, though, if the producers could make Wonder Woman an Asian-American, but that’s probably not what they would do. I don’t know a lot of Asian-American women who are getting great opportunities yet, and the other actresses (vying for the role) are probably really famous and Hollywood tends to go for the girls who are already in the big movies.

Batman makes everything better. This is an unchangeable law of physics. Take for example this pair of clips featuring the Dark Knight inserted into famous scenes in classic movies. Think Casablanca is old, overrated and melodramatic? You clearly haven’t seen the Batman version.

Last Updated: July 25, 2013