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Watch McConaughey and Harrelson Lead New HBO Series TRUE DETECTIVE

Ahh HBO. You are a breathe of fresh air in a putrid pool of network television. You have signaled the turning of the tides, the relocation of true adult entertainment, providing the catalyst that has marked a significant reinvention of what TV could be. And you, like a fine wine, you only improve with age. Sure, you may not currently be in the best run of all time, but the library of media you’ve amassed is unwaveringly impressive as you continue to provide some of the best things around year after year. And now you offer us a look at your next promising bit, True Detective, a story that follows Rust Cohle and Martin Hart whose lives become entangled during a 17-year hunt for a serial killer in Louisiana and we are oh so intrigued.

Aside from the inspired casting of Sean Bean as Eddard Stark on Game of Thrones, Steve Buchemi as Nucky Thompson on Boardwalk Empire, and whoever Jeff Daniels plays on The Newsroom HBO series have largely launched their own talent. Think James Gandolfini and, sigh, Lena Dunham. This is why their next move seems somewhat unprecedented. Not only will True Detective have one massive star in Woody Harrelson but the series has also scooped up Hollywood A-Lister (a man currently hot on a streak that very well may lead to an Oscar nomination, if not a win) Matthew McConaughey.

McConaughey and Harrelson star opposite each other in the first eight-episode slotted season. From what we see in the chaos, they are men on two sides of a fence but the same side of the law. Although this type of cop procedural is no new news, there is something about this that still screams fresh.

The question is, with McConaughey in such high demand, how reasonable is it to expect this show to continue much past the first season? The synopsis clearly delineates a timeline lasting 17 years which really seems to open up the show and almost require it to continue but I wonder. All I know is that from this first look, I am already geared up for episode one and hope that it manages to fill the dark hole that will open up once Breaking Bad blacks out to its final credits.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8i5CR4kDjM

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Out in Theaters: SHORT TERM 12

“Short Term 12”
Directed by Destin Cretton
Starring Brie Larson, John Gallagher Jr., Kaitlyn Dever, Stephanie Beatriz, Rami Malek, Alex Calloway, Kevin Hernandez, Lydia Du Veaux, Keith Stanfield 
Drama
96 Mins
R

 

The truth is often more horrifying than fiction and although Short Term 12 isn’t based on a true story, it unearths a harsh reality of displaced youth, offset from the spotlight but boiling under the surface of society. Replicating the many broken homes in modern American families, director/writer Destin Cretton has sole custody of this project. Thankfully, he takes this responsibility seriously and delivers a masterclass in realism complimented with standout performances from Brie Larson, John Gallagher Jr., and Keith Stanfield.

 
Thanks to a charged-up level of emotional maturity, the film tackles difficult issues with careful footing – immediately establishing a reverent tone, dipped with charm and laced with smiles. The psychological trauma uncovered within the character’s brick-walled hearts is likewise handled with tender precision. Each reaction the film garnishes is no accident. Every bit has its place, a building block towards a grand scheme that ultimately delivers a big pay-off for those willing to engage in the bumps along the road.
 
Short Term 12 takes its name from the facility where the film unfolds. A solace for unwanted foster children, abuse victims, and abandoned kids, this is a place with its own set of rules, even if those rules do often stand on shaky grounds. While the employees may come down on cussing and fighting, one rule they let slide is the mandate that youth are only to stay for one year, with some of the residents having shacked up for up to three. Keith Stanfield’s Marcus is one of those lingerers but he’s about to turn 18 and will be forced to face the world outside the emotional security of Short Term 12.

 

His journey is perpendicular to newcomer Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever) who fights tooth and nail to be anywhere but here. While Jayden battles to leave and Marcus tries to work through the backlog of his own demons (with a powerful rap offering a raw view into the tattered loss of his youth), we realize just how short term the stay is here.

It may be limbo but it’s not without it’s guardian angel.Larson’s Grace is that angel. She’s a twentysomething running the ins-and-outs of the joint with the infinite patience of Mother Theresa and a thorny soul buried with secrets. Her heart is invested in the pocket of each and every tenant shuffling through the facility, entombing herself in their trauma, becoming a fiber of their tragedy. Grace puts her physical and emotional well being at the bottom of the totem pole and it’s in part because of this that she is so great at dealing with this gang of lost boys…and girls. But her constant need to play the savior hints at something troubled lingering within her – an undead memory that haunts her every breath.

 

Grace sustains a borderline manipulative relationship with co-worker and underling, Mason (John Gallagher Jr.) who is both her devoted lover and emotional rock. On the flip side, Grace is as hot and cold as the object of a Katy Perry song. Theirs is a shaky boat of love with Grace always maintaining the upper hand, unwilling to let Mason ascend her tower of secrets. Their physical and emotional relationship have obviously parallels to their work positioning with Grace always on top, the solitary king of the castle flanked by skyhigh stone walls.

But to paint Grace as a domineering presence is to misrepresent her. In showing the turbulent nature of this part of her life, Cretton aims to illuminate how broken she is. Her throttling affections are a window into her soul. A key to the realization that doesn’t see herself as even deserving of love. Cretton plants little psychological clues like these throughout the film, prompting our curiosity for what scars these characters are hiding and how, if at all possible, they can be undone. The joy in the film is not the end of the journey but the road to it as Cretton handles his character’s soft-shelled insecurities both gently and honestly instead of putting it in autopilot and expecting the subject to bungle down tear-road.

One of the great rewards of watching the film is seeing how the jigsaw pieces composing Larson and other characters fit together. Unlike lesser films that utilize baggage as a means of emotional manipulation, every reveal, every turn, every batting off or acceptance of affection feels earned. It’s a difficult journey but one that lends credence to the cast’s standup acting ability andCretton‘s talent to skirt past manipulation into a much more rewarding realm of genuineness.

 

What remains the most fascinating portion of the film is Cretton’s willingness to go someplace dark and stir around in the pot. In doing so, a motif that rises to the top is the idea that people reveal themselves through their art. Grace draws, Marcus raps, Jayden writes stories. In these moments of expression, their deepest sense of self shines through perhaps showing more than they ever could in mere conversation. In creation, there is the capacity to destroy, to move beyond. Almost Nietzschian in effect, creation and destruction are symbiotic here. Two faces of one Janus, two sides of the same coin.

Another, more difficult, thing to take away is Cretton’s interpretation of self-inflicted pain. Many wounded souls hurt themselves not to inflict pain but to make the pain go away. This cathartic nature of destruction helps mask the real trauma stirring within them. The only way to move beyond this cycle of abuse though seems to be in a form of acceptance – a self-imposed yard sale of everything nasty hidden away. And so it is in Short Term 12. Only when we show the darkest parts of ourselves are we able to start moving towards the light.

A-

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Out in Theaters: RIDDICK

“Riddick”
Directed by David Twohy
Starring Vin Diesel, Jordi Mollà, Matt Nable, Katee Sackhoff, Dave Bautista, Bokeem Woodbine, Raoul Trujilo
Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller
119 Mins
R

Vin Diesel possesses some uncanny voodoo that allows him to be a bad actor who people excuse for bad acting. His smarmy tough guys are marked by a well-measured dose of self-awareness, sometimes so third-wall breaking that they almost plays as cutesy – like a shaven-headed, muscle-bound Ferris Bueller. He tries to make us laugh with him, not at him, and for the most part, it works. Even in Riddick, which is no doubt a bad movie, his oily glances and meat-and-potatoes asides work to entangle us in this world, trying to lift the pulped story from the screenwriters trash bin where it belongs. But even Diesel’s ‘hardy hars’ can’t salvage a plot that’s so disjointed and thrown together it feels more like a violent mosaic than an actual movie.

Complying to the traditional three arc tango just was not the right play here, as this metaphorical pigsty of a film is essentially three movies crammed into the same two hour runmtime.The first act is Riddick – battleworn loner stranded on hostile alien planet. Here, straggling baby dragons, working up an immunity to enlarged scorpion’s venom and montaging his way towards a space station in hopes of rescue at least give the character some semblance of purpose.

While I’ll admit to having missed the first two installments in the Riddick franchise, this first act gave me a sense of the shell-hardened ruffian on screen in addition to the sun-baked world on which he’s stranded, with all its creeper crawlers scurrying to-and-fro. There was a sense of stakes behind this action – a survival of the fittest joust between man and beast. But the sense of meaning that this opening scenario presented was quickly dissolved entirely from the film into a mindless boggle of soldier’s hoorahs, asinine body counts and ugly sexism.

The second act is an us-vs-them skirmish between Riddick and a band of mercs who’ve just touched down on the unnamed planet’s surface to hunt down Riddick and collection on his insurmountable bounty. While it serves to develop a new set of characters, it is pretty much entirely absent of the titular antihero. He lingers in the shadow, proving his worth as a cold-blooded murderer while we meet a crew of meat heads with little to no appeal.

 Katee Sackhoff‘s Dahl is the most interesting of the crew but having a strong female lead in this sci-fi actioner seems more like cannon fodder than progress. You’ll see what I mean shortly. The only other character worthy of mention is Johns (Matt Nable). He’s the father of one Little Johns (apparently a character in an earlier film) and the only part of the crew who’s mind isn’t eternally gutter bound. An inkling of a common thread is woven between Johns and Riddick but it’s not nearly as meaningful as the film supposes it is. “You’re son was spineless,” Riddick says to Johns, “like father like son.” As you may guess, the growing consternation between the two leads to a macho-a-thon between the buff dudes, each trying to one-up the other’s slo-mo feats of alien-slaying.

Finally we get to the third act, which amazingly enough, is the only portion featured in the trailers that you may have seen. That’s right, the sequence of a captured Riddick comes in the final act of the film. But again, it feels like an entirely different movie at that point so why bother trying to sell the movie as an entire package? Hell, just pick out your favorite act and make a trailer for that because that’s what the marketing crew seemed to do.

David Twohy, director of Pitch Black and Chronicles of Riddick, returns to direct a screenplay from Oliver Butcher and Stephen Cornwell (Unknown) so stuffed with sexual repugnance that it’s astonishing. Sackhoff plays the one female character with a name and her sexual preference for other women is so often degraded that the lack of comfort created feels like a sitting down and listening to one of grandma’s racist stories (but she’s old so we let it slide there.) Constant threats to rape a lesbian are unsettling – not to mention unnecessary. And aside from creating that rapey-vibe that is so popular in the movies these days, it’s just pure bizarre. Surely, the threat to go “balls deep” in her was played for a laugh but, geez, it was quite a dropping of the proverbial ball. I’m no arbiter of political correctness but the line in the sand is certainly crossed here mostly because we feel little more than uncomfortable watching it. We want to turn to the woman next to us in the theater and point out that we’re not laughing. “Excuse me ma’am, just wanted to point out that I’m not chuckling at all the gang rape jokes.”

While it’s hard enough to recover from a fumble of that degree, the story deadends so abruptly and severely that your head is left spinning. It’s hard to think of a movie in recent history with such a nonsensical, truncated conclusion. Literally everything leading up to it suggested one thing and then, just for the hell of it, the tracks shift and we’re left with a wildly different conclusion than we could have ever imagined. Earned twist this is not, as there is not one shred of evidence suggesting anything that could be confused for coherency is at play in the final five minutes.

You have to stick the ending. It’s the lynch-pin of the entire film. Unknowingly, Twohy must have mistaken “stick” for “skewer” as his conclusion is as half-baked as a no-bake cookie. That’s right, it’s so half-baked that it ain’t even baked at all. Running full speed into a brick wall, Riddick exits on the least graceful of notes. Aiming for resolution, the film seems to say, “We ran out of movie. Fin.”

On a technical side, Riddick achieves some minor level of potency. The scorched cinematography from David Eggby (Mad Max) actually looks pretty good considering the limited budget, particularly in the expansive sprawl of the first act. Original music from Graeme Revell thumps and pounds along, giving a backbone to the piece but disappearing entirely from our minds the minute the credit roll stops. But the real star of the film is Riddick’s weapon of choice – the bone saw. And by bone saw, I mean a bone that’s been crafted into a jagged-edge switchblade. So at least there’s that.

With reckless abandon, Twohy throws too much at the screen, desperately hoping for it all to stick. Fortunately for him, some of it does. There’s enough absurdity to cull some chuckles, a handful of interesting action beats, and a pet tiger-dog that is surely the audience’s favorite character. But so much is constantly sliding down off the wall that we’re left with a big pile of goop that doesn’t add up to much. Without a doubt, Riddick is B-movie territory but it’s handled with direct-to-video finesse.

D+

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Benedict Cumberbatch Rumored for Sith Lord in STAR WARS 7

Benedict Cumberbatch, known by many as the villain “John Harrison” in Star Trek into Darkness and by few as the leading man on BBC‘s Sherlock, has some pretty massive rumors swirling about his strangely shaped head of late. Although nothing is confirmed, Cumberbatch is said to be in talks with Disney to play a “Vader-type” for Star Wars Episode 7. Now my understanding of this description – them using Vader-type instead of Sith – seems to come down to do a perceptions that the general public lacks familiarity with nerdtastic terms like “Sith Lord” – which is clearly all that they’re trying to get at with the description of anyone being “Vader-like”.

Any main villain in this next installment is sure to be a different beast than the iconic shiny-black-suit-wearing, respirator-box-chatting surrogate of the Dark Side. Who or what exactly he may be – if he is indeed involved in the project at all – is entirely at a speculatory point for now.

As for Cumberbatch’s involvement, a statement he made prior seems to suggest that he may be more than willing to be a part of a new part of the franchise:

“I was much more connected to [Star Wars] as a kid, in the way that a lot of kids are because it’s immediate storytelling, very simple – a beautifully, outrageously simple narrative in a way – and a wonderful three-act melodrama, opera,” Cumberbatch told Total Film. “And I loved them. I really, really loved those films and I always wanted to be Han Solo.”

Good choice on Han Solo, Cumbie. That’s who I wanted to be too. Mr. Cumberbatch however isn’t the only name rumored for this Disney-charted trip back to the stars as Alex Pettyfer (I Am Number Four, Magic Mike) and Rachel Hurd-Wood (Peter Pan) have both auditioned for roles. 

Hurd-Wood supposedly auditioned for the role of the daughter of Princess Leia and Han Solo, presumably the lead in the new trilogy. Pettyfer is said to be up for the role of Luke Skywalker’s son. Although both these characters feature heavily in canon, there’s no saying exactly which plot lines will be used for the offspring of the Skywalkers and Solos.

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Red Band Trailer for NEIGHBORS Pits Rogen Against Efron

If you didn’t already have a certain disdain for frat bros, this trailer for Neighbors is sure to spark that special hate in your heart. Starring Seth Rogen and Rose Byrneas an ordinary couple married with a baby, Neighbors asks what it would be like if the house next door was turned into a frat house. With Zac Efron, Dave Franco and Christopher Mintz-Plasse filling out the frat pad, the resident lads feud with the family next door in a series of one-up-manship only known to the fraternal world.

Directed by Nicholas Stoller of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, this red band trailer looks pretty promising and is packed with a premise that sees to keep the gags at the forefront. If Stoller’s track record is anything to go by, this is sure to be good time.

Definitely take a look at the trailer but don’t forget that it’s red band and thus not safe for work

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a96ELbUeHA

Neighbors is directed by Nicholas Stoller and stars Seth Rogen and Rose ByrneZac Efron, Dave Franco andChristopher Mintz-Plasse, Lisa Kudrow. It hits theaters May 9, 2014.

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Michael Bay Returns with First TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION Poster

After Michael Bay‘s alleged retirement from the Transformers franchise, a little bit of fancy footwork from the Paramount studio (and by fancy footwork I mean Heisenberg-styled drums of cash) has the man back behind the camera for Transformers 4, which is now officially titled Transformers: Age of Extinction.

Although original-trilogy star Shia LaBeouf has stepped away from this fourth giant robot punching each other film, Bay has filled his shoes with wildcard Marky Mark Wahlberg. While there is no official synopsis yet from the studio, a “leaked” idea of the film, per RopeofSilicon, has the Autobots and Decepticons out of the picture: 

“As humanity picks up the pieces, following the conclusion of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Autobots and Decepticons have all but vanished from the face of the planet. However, a group of powerful, ingenious businessman and scientists attempt to learn from past Transformer incursions and push the boundaries of technology beyond what they can control – all while an ancient, powerful Transformer menace sets Earth in his crosshairs. The epic adventure and battle between good and evil, freedom and enslavement ensues.”

Early reports point to the newest faction of shape-shifting-robots will involve a species known as the Dinobots who, you guessed it!, are dinosaurs/robots. While I’m all for injecting dinosaurs into the mainstream as often as possible, the fact that dinosaurs are, uh, extinct kinda makes them stick out more than, say, a 18-wheeler truck or a Toyota. It’s not like we’d walk down the street and think, “Nothing to worry about here. That’s definitely not a robot, just a T-Rex.”

 Transformers: Age of Extinction is directed by Michael Bay and stars Mark Walhberg, Nicola Peltz, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammar, T.J. Miller and Sophia Myles. It hits theaters on June 27, 2014.

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ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE Trailer is a Joke

“It’s not scary,” reads my F review for All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, “It’s not funny. It’s not ironic. It’s white bread soaked in water. It’s such a dullard that it’s almost confusing. I really do think that [director Jonathan] Levine must have assumed that there was something ironic about doing exactly what we expected him to do but in reality, it works about as well as the Hindenburg. That is, it blew up in his face.” Thankfully, you now have a chance to judge this bottom feeder for yourself.

My biggest problem with the stilted horror film is that it seems to want to send up the genre but winds up doing nothing more than adhering to it tooth-and-nail, clinging to familiarity like a toddler’s first day at kindergarten. Starring Amber Heard as Mandy Lane, the story follows a young beauty of budding popularity who goes on a weekend excursion with the cool kids. As suggested by the trailer and the slasher premise of it all, people start dropping like flies.

The only reason that people continue to talk about this movie is because it was filmed all the way back in 2006 and has been kept shelved, only to resurface with the success of Jonathan Levine’s more recent work. Word of mouth has a strange way of bubbling up for no reason and withholding here has certainly seemed to work for All the Boys Love Mandy Lane. I will caution you to avoid the movie like scabies (full review here) but there’s no harm done in laughing along at the trailer. Trust me, there is nothing beyond the surface on his dead-eyed snoozer.

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is directed by Jonathan Levine and stars Amber Heard, Anson Mount, Whitney Able, Michael Welch, Edwin Hodge, Aaron Himelstein, Luke Grimes, and Melissa Price. It finally opens in theaters, seven years later, on September 6.

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Out in Theaters: GETAWAY

“Getaway”
Directed by Courtney Solomon
Starring Ethan Hawke, Selena Gomez, Jon Voight, Rebecca Budig

Action, Crime
90 Mins 
PG-13

“Get in, get out” Getaway‘s tagline reads – an obvious parallel to the ideology that went on back in the writer’s room in this fart-and-hairspray fireball of a movie. Repping ADHD filmmaking at its most nauseous and nonchalant, Courtney Solomon (Dungeons and Dragons) directs Getaway like an 11-year old waving around a smart phone, clicking the camera on and off with no intent and no semblance of artistry. Each sequence leapfrogs between an unmeasured amount of angles, demonstrating Solomon’s lack of faith in his framing and making the experience of watching it akin to a scatter-shot montage lingering on for 90 minutes. It’s a grueling slog intent on leaving a wake of smashed-up vehicles – I counted 23 un-inventively totaled police cars, countless wrecked civilian automobiles and five exploding motorcycles – but not much else.

 
Even star Ethan Hawke‘s devilish charm couldn’t savage this Titanic of a sinking ship. Getting his leg snagged, Hawke is pulled down to the festering depths where the terminally “playful” mind of Solomon vacuously dreams of smashing and whooshing and banging and boom booms.

 
 

I’ve become an increasingly avid fan of Hawke’s – and found his work in this year’s Before Midnight to be the finest performance of 2013 to date – but he is saddled with some dialogue that’s so clunky that I feel I have to begrudge him simply for not outright refusing to say them at all. A late stage, “I know where she is!” (spoken to himself and no-one else) is the type of wrong-kind-of-laugh-inducing ringer that invites a level 5 face-palming. It’s just embarrassing for everyone involved and it’s nothing short of sad to see such a talented actor stoop to such lows.

I guess this brings us to what would be referred to here as the “plot”. Since about 95% of the film takes place inside a moving Shelby GT500, you can imagine that the plot lacking in both quantity and quality. Hawke is Brent Magna – a retired racecar driver, disgraced from the tracks for his recklessness and a tendency to destroy cars. On Christmas Day in Bulgaria (because where else would a disgraced racer want to spend the holidays?) his wife is nabbed by some faceless baddies and Magna is told that he’s got to drive a car into a bunch of stuff or they’ll kill her. Without a bat of an eye, Magna’s in the car, skidding his car into the midst of crowded parks, missing the mobs of holiday-cheerers by inches and thinking none the less of it.

The screenplay undercutting this vapid turd reads like a cheap, pointless and, worst of all, unasked for mashup of Saw and Fast and Furious. It involves a metric fuck-ton of driving, a heft of smashing, a dastardly villain who we only get to know by his (non-intimidating) voice, and a pinch of walking for good measure. Just kidding. We never once see Hawke move his legs, unless he’s a-shiftin’ with those racey feet of his. Like a road trip to hell with all the relatives we like least, we’re trapped inside the car for what quickly starts to seem like an eternity. The worst part of it all, Selena Gomez somehow snuck herself along for the ride.

 
 

But at least one consolation comes from this ten-car pileup of a film –  Gomez’s acting career can officially be swept under the rug once and for all. A young hacker known only as “The Kid”, Gomez is plainly more of a hack than a hacker. Name me one real life hacker whose idea of hacking means jamming their sausage fingers at an iPad with buttons like “Override” on the main screen and I’ll withdrawal my complaint. Perhaps hacking in the 21st century really is that easy but I seriously doubt it.

On the “hack” side of the equation though, there is overwhelming evidence that Gomez couldn’t act her way out of a bologna sandwich. There is not a single second (not the teensiest, tiniest crumb of time) where we believe that Gomez is capable of a tenth of the technological feats her character is supposedly carrying out. I could more easily believe that my friend’s dog Lucy could carve an ice swan than this curmudgeon do anything technical beyond tweeting a rave pic. Perhaps even more offensive are her completely unwarranted personality swings. Shifting on a dime scene-to-scene without any connection to past progress, Gomez can’t seem to keep her character straight. Never has it been so evident that a movie is not made front-to-back as Gomez seems incapable of keeping her arc linear without retreating into territory she’s already supposed to have moved beyond. 

 
 
 

Another character who gets the old writers block treatment is Jon Voight‘s strangely brewed criminal mastermind. With a nonspecific accent about as intimidating as a stale cupcake, and just about as flavorless, Voight’s grin is the only believable thing he’s selling here. Why? Because he’s laughing his way to the bank. His performance calls for so little that he may as well have been sitting in a sound booth and munching on bon-bons. That is the gist of his performance: sitting around, munching on bon-bons and grinning at the idiots handing him money to do it.

Like 70s exploitation without the sly, sarcastic sense of fun, Getaway leaves its trail of half-baked destruction but buries any sense of charmed wit along the way. Instead, this thriller on life support has its excitement pumped in at the rate of dial-up

internet. With only one long-shot in the entirety of the film worth mentioning at all, the result is so watered down that there’s hardly any taste left in it at all. Unfortunate proof that Solomon is a powder keg of a director, Getaway is little more than a generic waste of time and money. It may strike a chord for Shelby enthusiasts with a love-hate (but mostly hate) relationship with Bulgaria, but everyone else: do yourself a favor and steer clear.

D-

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James Spader Cast as Villain in THE AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

You can probably guess from the post-colon title of Joss Whedon‘s follow-up to the $1.5 billion  earning superhero collective that at some point a dude named Ultron is going to be involved. Heralded as a beloved Marvel supervillain, Ultron is a sentient robot, who will now be played by James Spader.

It’s yet unclear where Spader will solely be providing the voice for a CGI character or if he will someone be incorporated physically into his robo-counterpart but one thing is clear: this is a bit of inspired casting from the quip-slingin’ Whedon. Spader has a penchant for fast talking (Lincoln) but has also proved that he can be calculating, cold and completely lack sympathy (The Office). Put that talent behind Whedon’s knack for dialogue and I think you cook up a winning recipe.

While the suits over at Marvel are claiming that Ultron will have his own sort of origin story for the sequel, not necessarily pulled from the comics, his powers might be similar to those quoted on his Wikipedia page:”Common powers include superhuman levels of strength, speed, stamina, durability, and reflexes; flight at subsonic speeds; and various offensive weapons such as concussive blasts of energy fired from its optical sensors and hands, and an “encephalo-ray”, which places victims into a deathlike coma. The latter ray also allows Ultron to mesmerize and mind-control victims, or implant subliminal hypnotic commands within their minds to be enacted at a later time.”

The Avengers: Age of Ultron is directed by Joss Whedon and stars Robert Downey Jr, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Mark Ruffalo, James Spader and Samuel L. Jackson. It hits theaters May 1, 2015.

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Matt Damon Joins Frickin' Stacked Cast in Nolan's INTERSTELLAR

 

You thought that Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar cast couldn’t possibly spend another dollar on its acting budget…but you were wrong. Hollywood A-lister Matt Damon has joined what can only be called a frickin’ stacked cast in the intergalatic sci-fi movie from the blockbuster king. Although Damon will reportedly only play a small supporting role – the shooting schedule only accounts for two weeks of Mr. Damon’s time – his presence is a massive pull in collecting one hell of an ensemble.

Damon was Nolan’s first choice to play the Harvey Dent/Two Face character in The Dark Knight, which eventually went to Aaron Eckhart, so it’s fair to say that Nolan has had his eye on Damon for quite some time. Damon joins Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine, Casey Affleck, Ellen Burstyn, Mackenzie Foy, John Lithgow, Bill Irwin, Topher Grace, Wes Bentley, David Oyelowo and David Gyasi.

As I noted in a previous post:Nolan is noted for returning to cast members such as Christian Bale, who has starred in four films with him, Cillian Murphy, also in four, Ken Watanabe, four again, with Marion Cotillard, Tom Hardy and Joseph Gordon Levitt all having boarded The Dark Knight franchise after working with Nolan on Inception. This time around though, Nolan seems to be dropping his troupe of regulars and working with a whole new slew of talent. Most notably in Nolan’s stable though is Caine, who has been in all of Nolan’s films but one, who will continue that streak here again alongside fellow Dark Knight Rises cast member Anne Hathaway.

Interstellar is directed by Christopher Nolan and stars Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Casey Affleck, Bill Irwin, Michael Caine, John Lithgow, Ellen Burstyn, Timothée Chalamet and Mackenzie Foy. It hits theaters November 7, 2014.

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