Category Archives: Absolute Horse-shit News

Sesame Street: The Movie & Other Bad Ideas

20th Century Fox has picked up the rights to a film based on the 40+ year old Sesame Street television series and plan on turning it into a film.  I guess my first question is: How? The greatness of Sesame Street is that it is one of the first shows to prove that educating kids can also be fun.  It has music, sketches, and commercials that run through each episodes relatively light plot, but it works.  It keeps childrens attention just long enough for them to not realize they are actually learning.  It’s the perfect crime.

I can’t for the life of me imagine how this gets adapted into a film that works.  If the intent is to keep it exactly like the TV show, with music, sketches, and commercials etc., then I can’t imagine that working on film.  Just make a TV special and put it on prime-time or something in the summer.  However, if the intent is to make it into a pure plot driven kids film then I really think this is an uninspired idea.  You basically are mining the franchise purely for the familiarity of Bert, Ernie, Cookie Monster, and Big Bird, but changing the nature of the show.  Maybe I am being overly pessimistic, but I just really don’t see how this works without resorting to stupid sight gags and farts , and a plot featuring an evil old man who wants to close down Hooper’s store or something.  In which case, just give us another referential, self-aware Muppets film.  But they can’t, because Fox doesn’t have those rights, Disney does.

This is where I get confused.  How doesn’t Disney have the rights Sesame Street? They have the Muppets, and the Muppets and Sesame Street characters have pretty much always lived in the same world and cameo’d back and forth.  I can’t believe I’m drawing this parallel, but it’s like Disney has the Avengers and Fox has the Xmen, and never shall the two meet all over again!  Just with characters for kids.  Maybe I’m territorial over Sesame Street because I grew up with it, but I’d much rather see some other property get strip mined.  Wheres Gullah Gullah Island the movie?

Leave Cookie Monster alone!

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Mortal Kombat Theme is stuck in your head now

The Mortal Kombat films came out at the perfect time of my life. Video games ruled my life and if a film was over 60% fights it was my favorite movie. Rumors are circling about a reboot.
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The Man Without Fear Should Terrify Marvel

The Ben Affleck starring ‘Daredevil’ was the first Marvel failure. The first two ‘Blade’ films came out with some success, though few knew its comic origins. ‘X-men’ blew everyone away showing the potential of a comic based film. ‘Spider-man’ destroyed expectations.

After DD was ‘Hulk’, ‘Fantastic Four’, ‘Blade: Trinity’, ‘The Punisher’, and a continued list of disappointments until ‘Iron Man.’ Now they want to try it again.

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Tonka Tough News To Ruin Your Day

‘Transformers’ worked. That hurts to say but it connected with kids and made transforming boat loads of cash.

‘Battleship’ didn’t work. That feels nice to say. The public said no, movies based on toys are stupid.

So why was a Tonka Truck movie just greenlit? But wait, it gets worse…

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Venom and Why I Dont Care About This Movie

Making a Venom movie at this stage of the film re-incarnation is a really bold concept.  You already butchered the character in an unnecessary sequel, and you are in the process of relaunching Spiderman as what appears to be an unnecessary franchise.  So with this new incarnation barely off the ground, it’s a really dumb idea to try and give Venom his OWN movie for many reasons

1) Avi Arad stated that the Venom of these films would be both Eddie Brock and a heroic Venom.  He wouldn’t be bad or anything until he saw Spiderman.

2) a Venom standalone movie doesn’t work because his entire origin is tied far too closely to Peter Parker, so unless Venom shows up in this new Spiderman series, and then gets spun out, it wont work.

3) Venom is not nearly the household name people think it is.  He also looks like a monster which means, you will continually have to use CGI for your main character who is an A-level spidey character, but a C-level Marvel Universe character.  Hulk all CGI works cause everyone on earth knows hulk.

4) Venom is kind of a brat.  “I want to be a hero too, but fuck that guy [spiderman]”.  I don’t know how you get people behind that character unless you drastically change his motivations, origins, and intrinsic characteristics.  At that rate is it really worth it.

The basic issue at hand is that Sony owns the rights to the Spiderman universe and they can’t make a Spidey movie every year, so they have to get creative with how they monetize that world.  If I were them I would just sell the rights back to Marvel at a PREMIUM and use that cash to go and buy some other franchise.  Marvel can do it better than you, and you can go use that money keep other projects afloat.

I should be an exec, cause I would kill this movie in a heartbeat before it becomes an uninspired stillborn wreck.

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Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Bullshit

Did you like ‘Green Lantern’? I bet you did. Did you like ‘Contact’? Who didn’t?! Well good news, writer Michael Goldenberg is combining his masterful skills of writing superheros and strong women into a ‘Wonder Woman’ script.

I hate Warner Brothers. They don’t get it. Green Lantern was such a colossal fuck up. It was a rushed and jumbled mess. The main character wasn’t clearly defined and came off as weak. This can not happen with WW. I can not stress enough how badly this will turn on them if they make her weak.

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Justice League of Extraordinary Mistakes

Apparently today will be Comic Comic Day on here at Movie Movie. Russ is bringing you some ‘Black Panther’ rumors later and now we have more news of a ‘Justice League’ script.

This is a horrible idea

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X-Men:Days of Future Past and Timelines That Dont Work In Film

There is a rumor, which I hope is just that, that the latest Xmen film will center heavily around the early 80’s “Days of Future Past” story written by Chris Claremont.  The jist of that story was in the future mutants were put into internment camps run by Sentinels (which would be cool to see on film), and Kitty Pryde had to go back in time like John Connor, to stop it all from happening with Wolverine’s help.

Now if this is supposed to be reworked for the First Class movie-verse, I have serious issues with it.  First off, despite Havok having nothing to do with Cyclops or even hinting at a relationship and being older than Cyke, which is not true, the film did a good job of stripping away all the other bullshit and telling a story that made sense and kind of rebooted the awful continuity that has plagued the franchise.  My fear is that introducing time-travel and alternate timelines will simply be an excuse to add in more useless mutant cameos, instead of really having much to do with the plot.  Also neither Kitty Pryde or Wolverine really figure into this current rebooted x-world, so you are either adding them, and rendering all the other characters minus Magneto, Xavier, and Mystique (cause it’s Jennifer Lawrence), useless.  Also Kitty Pryde was in Xmen 3, so she couldn’t be in this unless she was a super fetus.

If this is the proposed sequel to the original Xmen franchise, fine, cause I don’t care about those.  But Matthew Vaughn did such a good job establishing an A+ world, with B team characters, that I would hate to see his world reduced to a shitty adaptation.  But you have to remember Xmen rights are owned by 20th Century Fox and they are notorious for fucking up most genre stuff these days.  I blame Tom Rothman.

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Leprechaun Origins and Other WWE Bullshit

I forgot I even knew this was a real bit of actual news, but WWE Films is getting back into PG-13 and R rated film game.  They have spent the last 3, maybe 4 years making dramas and comedies exclusively for families.  Why? Because if you still watch wrestling (ok, that might just be me) you know that for the last few years WWE has been all about a PG rated franchise.  They love the youth movement.  However, the fans have grown restless with a watered down product and now the WWE is starting to show more teeth in it’s wrestling, but also in its films again.  Well one of the next WWE Films to show their return to darker films is LEPRECHAUN: ORIGINS.  Yup. That’s happening.

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Piranha 3DD And Why I Don’t Understand Hollywood

Yesterday Peter posted his dismay about Piranha 3DD being released in basically no theaters this Friday (It’s actually playing in 75 theaters, and ONE in NYC) and it got me curious as to what the hell is going on.  Well it turns out that The Weinstein Company and Dimension Films are trying out a new release strategy.  They are releasing Pirahna not only in theaters Friday, but also on VOD services as a rental.  So essentially if your cable provider allows new releases On Demand, you will be able to rent it right from your cable, or from services like Playstation Video Store, VUDU, or Amazon Instant Video.  It also has the distinction of being the first-ever Facebook 3D film release.  If you still want to watch this in 3D they will have  a version available that works with the old school red and blue glasses.  If you don’t have them, they will also have directions on how to ghetto-rig some.

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