Category Archives: News

Film & TV News: June 21

News

  • Matt Damon’s return to the Bourne franchise is enticing the rest of the band back, too, as Julia Stiles is now said to be onboard the 2016 release. Viggo Mortensen is apparently in negotiations to play the villain, which is an addition that would no doubt wash the taste of The Bourne Legacy away for good.
  • First he says he’s down to play Wolverine “until he dies”; then, word that Hugh Jackman’s time as Logan would come to an end after the next solo film. Now rumor has it that X-Men: Apocalypse will feature Jackman in a smallish role, maybe even just a cameo, showing that they haven’t quite learned that X-Men movies sans Jackman aren’t as interesting as the alternative.
  • Vin Diesel is making a Kojak movie, so. Yep.
  • Hall H regulars Marvel, Sony and Paramount are all skipping San Diego Comic Con this year, presumably because leaked documents are doing all of their marketing for them. Motion State Review will be skipping Hall H, too, which is yet another crippling loss for convention superfans. Next year.

Continue reading Film & TV News: June 21

Film & TV News: June 15

News

  • The great Christopher Lee passed away earlier this week at 93. He’ll be remembered for countless roles, for Dracula, for Saruman in Lord of the Rings, for Count Dooku in Star Wars, and for his symphonic metal concept albums (yes).
  • Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight will be screened in 70mm, meaning theaters near you will either have to outfit their booths with new projectors or decide against screening a Tarantino flick. It’s a great power move by Tarantino, because once major theater chains have that capability alongside their digital projectors it opens the door for more films on actual film.
  • Videosyncrazy, David Fincher’s HBO series about the music video industry in the 1980s, has mysteriously halted production. No word on what the primary issue is, but as Fincher’s the perfect guy for a series like this we really hope the pieces get reassembled soon.
  • Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur, having already completed all of the voice work, has now turned around and completely recast nearly every voice actor. Production on this one has always been rocky, but Pixar’s no stranger to that. As long as it’s not called Cars, we’re safe.

Continue reading Film & TV News: June 15

Film & TV News: June 7

News

  • The limited revival of The X-Files begins shooting this coming week. A strange casting announcement came in the form of Joel McHale, who will apparently be playing a popular news anchor in a guest role. I’m a fan of X-Files and I’m a fan of McHale, but I’m finding it hard to imagine how they’d taste in the same recipe.
  • Stephen King’s The Stand is set for an eight-part miniseries at Showtime followed by a feature film, which at this point is really only dredging up the heretofore-repressed memory of the abysmal 1994 Molly Ringwald version. Thanks, Showtime!
  • The second season of Daredevil is allegedly courting Jason Statham for the role of the assassin Bullseye, which is one of the most perfect comic book casting rumors I’ve heard in a while.
  • Speaking of comic book films, James Wan has been officially announced as the director for DC’s Aquaman.

Continue reading Film & TV News: June 7

Film & TV News: June 1

News

  • Rumor has it that the casting for the new Spider-Man will be announced this week, as the character is scheduled to appear in the already-filming Captain America: Civil War. Also on the Marvel superhero front, the Ryan Reynolds jaunt Deadpool has wrapped filming this past week.
  • The Trevor Noah Daily Show handoff will occur on September 28th, less than two months after the late Jon Stewart passed aw…wait, he’s not dead? He left on purpose? Why, Jon, why?
  • Kung Fury is pretty hilarious, provided you’re in the right frame of mind (or, I suppose, the wrong frame of mind). The beginning is dumb, but the ending is more or less bliss:

Continue reading Film & TV News: June 1

Film & TV News: May 25

News

  • The jury at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival (which included the Coen Brothers, Jake Gyllenhaal, Sienna Miller, Guillermo del Toro, Xavier Dolan and a few more) selected champions yesterday as the festival comes to a close. The Palme d’Or went to Dheepan, the Grand Prize went to the Holocaust drama Son of Saul, acting awards went to Rooney Mara and the fantastic Vincent Lindon, and the best screenplay award went to Michel Franco for Chronic. Whew!
  • Ex Machina‘s Alicia Vikander is rumored to be in talks for both Assassin’s Creed and the next installment of the Bourne franchise. If she doesn’t get either role, we’ll be more than content to just watch Ex Machina again.
  • Empire has released the first pictures from Ridley Scott’s The Martian, starring Matt Damon and everyone else who’s in every movie these days. From the looks of the photo above, The Martian may touch on the theme of man’s singular place in the vast and unknowable universe. Shocking.

Continue reading Film & TV News: May 25

Film & TV News: May 18

News

  • The Cannes Film Festival is well under way, and buzz is strong on a lot of the films screened thus far. Yorgos Lanthimos presented The Lobster (Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz), Woody Allen presented Irrational Man (Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone) and Stéphane Brizé presented La loi du marché (with Vincent Lindon of La mustache), all of which played favorably. On the other end of the spectrum is Gus Van Sant’s Sea of Trees (Matthew McConaughey, Ken Watanabe), which was met with a sea of boos.
  • Jude Law has joined the tentatively-titled The Young Pope, a speculative HBO series about an American pope. That premise would be only vaguely interesting were it not for the presence of director Paolo Sorrentino, helmer of 2013’s The Great Beauty, as Pope‘s showrunner.
  • David Lynch does another 180° and says the Twin Peaks revival is happening after all. At this point we’ll believe it when we see it, and even then we might not care.

Continue reading Film & TV News: May 18

Film & TV News: May 11

News

  • Brad Bird has announced (sort of) that The Incredibles 2 will be his next feature film. Any day Bird announces a new project is a good day, but it’s particularly sweet for him to be returning to The Incredibles. We’re eagerly awaiting his latest feature Tomorrowland (debuts May 22) and also eagerly awaiting any and all arguments about Incredibles being the best Pixar movie. Yeah, we said it.
  • Fall television season will mark the cancellation of the likes of Constantine, The Following and The Mentalist and the happy renewal of Better Call Saul and American Crime. Between the renewed series, the new series (Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl), the revival series (X-Files, Twin Peaks, Heroes Reborn) and all those shows we’ve been meaning to watch for years — [head explodes].
  • In casting news, Daniel Radcliffe and Dane DeHaan have reunited with Kill Your Darlings director John Krokidas for Young Americans, in which they’ll play Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, respectively. Darlings was only okay, but come on — DeHaan as ’70s-era pip-squeak Rove? That’s cool.

Continue reading Film & TV News: May 11

Film & TV News: May 4

News

  • May the Fourth be with you! A bunch of Star Wars news dropped this week, including the arrival of the first season of Star Wars Rebels online and the departure of director Josh Trank from the upcoming “anthology” film. Both are good!
  • Collider has the first pictures from David Ayer’s Suicide Squad, which the director tweeted last night. If you’re wondering what in the hell is going on with some of these costumes, you’re not alone. Killer Croc needs a touchup. Badly. But the solo portrait of Will Smith’s Deadshot is promising, even if he’s still a weird choice for the role.
  • CSI, one of the longest-running cable television shows in history, has been officially cancelled by CBS. The question is now whether a farewell season is in order, or whether that last season finale is actually the series finale, or whether anyone actually gives a shit about CSI anymore.

Continue reading Film & TV News: May 4

Film & TV News: April 27

News

  • It’s Marvel Week here at Motion State! In preparation for Avengers: Age of Ultron, we’ll be giving the comic book movie giant more attention than it deserves usually receives.
  • Daniel Bruhl confirmed this morning that he’ll be playing Baron Zemo in the upcoming Captain America: Civil War, a film which is rightly being dubbed Avengers 2.5 due to the burgeoning cast.
  • The shortlist for the new, younger, quippier, Marvelier (more Marvelous?) Spider-Man includes Tom Holland, Timothee Chalamet, Asa Buterfield, Nat Wolff, and Liam James. Our pick is Holland, but we likely won’t have to wait long for the official announcement.
  • David Ayer released the first picture of Jared Leto’s nu-punk Joker from next year’s Suicide Squad film. Our humble opinion on the look is…sorry, what? Squad is a DC film, not Marvel, you say? You can’t defile Marvel Week so willingly, you say? Fair enough. Thankfully, the other 51 weeks of the year are pretty much DC Weeks.

Continue reading Film & TV News: April 27

Film & TV News: April 20

News

  • Plot details for Star Wars: Rogue One reveal that the rumored Death Star connection is in fact at the center of the 2016 spinoff. This means the events will take place between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, which is simultaneously exciting and worrying.
  • Tribeca Film Festival continues this week, closing on April 26th. Western-themed highlights of this year’s festival include William Monahan’s Mojave and the Michael Fassbender frontier flick Slow West.
  • John Michael McDonagh’s follow-up to last year’s excellent Cavalry, a New Mexico-set black comedy called War on Everyone, began filming this week. Check out the first image over at Empire.

Continue reading Film & TV News: April 20