Is This GRIMLOCK?

The assumption for awhile has been that The Dinobots would be the new showpiece toys characters in the fourth Transformers movie, and I mean before they were officially calling it "TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION." Now, JoBlo.com (yes, I'm aware that they finally took the "Chud meets Maxim" routine revoltingly far a few months back - but a source is a source) says they've snapped some merchandising art that appears to show our first look at Dinobot leader Grimlock in his T-Rex alt-mode... and that's apparently the newly-redesigned Optimus Prime riding on his back.

I'll say this much: You have to be pretty bad at... well, everything if you can fuck up as simple a concept as Robot Dinosaur (car-robots are actually quite easy to fuck-up: just look at the Go-Bots) ...and it doesn't look like they fucked this up. I mean, I'm sure his robot mode looks just as bad as all the other live-action Transformers, but this looks about like it should look.


Assuming that this isn't just crappy merch-art that couldn't be assed to keep to scale, by far the most interesting thing about this is that Grimlock appears to be about 2 1/2 to 3 times larger than a real T-Rex, which Prime (going by the previous films) would be either at eye-level with or a bit taller when it's hunched-over like that. All the Autobots are supposed to be getting major design-overhauls for this one, which is supposed to be a break from the story and human characters from the first three (no one has seen a good image yet, but the chatter has been more solid-looking bots with fewer moving-bits and exposed parts and they've said Prime is blue now) but Prime was confirmed to still be a truck and even if not it's hard to believe they'd be shrinking him down to near human size. The simpler answer is likely that Michael Bay is exactly the filmmaker who would look at dinosaurs and say "No, no - we need to make them BIGGER!"

Against my better judgement, I'm holding out a certain amount of hope for this one. I really do regret the immature cheap shots I took at Bay (absolutely as a person and, to a lesser extent, as a filmmaker) back when Escape to The Movies was still finding it's voice; and "PAIN & GAIN" was a potent reminder that whatever you think of his aesthetic predilections he really is something when he wants to be. The previous three Transformers movies all failed at least in part because of the tug of war between the Amblin-wannabe Sam story he was stuck with and the stuff that actually seemed to interest him - maybe (maybe!) now that that's over with (Mark Whalberg is the new human lead) this will finally "work," even if it still won't likely be the Transformers movie some are still hoping for.

Escape to The Movies: THOR - THE DARK WORLD

Good, maybe moves a little too fast.

ALSO: So long to Blockbuster.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Thor: The Dark World

86th Academy Awards Animated Shorts Shortlist

A few days ago the Academy announced that from the fifty-six (56) films that qualified, ten (10) Animated Shorts will advance in the voting process.

After watching all available materials my first impression is that Feral and Mr. Hublot are the ones that absolutely call my attention for the story and the execution.

The following are the shortlisted films.

Feral, Daniel Sousa, director, and Dan Golden, music and sound design (Daniel Sousa), USA, 13 minutes
A wild boy is found in the woods by a solitary hunter and brought back to civilization. Alienated by a strange new environment, the boy tries to adapt by using the same strategies that kept him safe in the forest.



Get a Horse!, Lauren MacMullan, director, and Dorothy McKim, producer (Walt Disney Feature Animation), USA, 6 minutes
Get a Horse! begins traditionally enough: Mickey and friends are enjoying a ride through the great outdoors when they are waylaid by antagonist Peg-Leg Pete. Till this point, the picture mimics the look and feel of vintage, Steamboat Willie-era Disney: black and white, simple shapes, and a rubbery consistency to the limbs and movements of the characters. This portion of the short features hand-drawn animation supervised by veteran Eric Goldberg, who designed the Genie in 1992's Aladdin, and the picture is intentionally degraded with artifacts and filters to give it a vibe of authentically aged film stock. Completing the illusion is Walt Disney himself as the voice of Mickey Mouse, a feat accomplished by piecing together audio recordings from studio archives. Shortly after Pete arrives on the scene, the fourth wall is broken, and things really get interesting. As Mickey and his cohorts jump off the screen, out of their black-and-white world, they dive into a widescreen universe of color where they become fully realized as CG-animated characters. A series of chase scenes finds them quickly alternating between the two realities, with the hand-drawn and CG elements deftly mixing in a surprisingly seamless way.

Gloria Victoria, Theodore Ushev, director (National Film Board of Canada), Canada, 7 minutes
Recycling elements of surrealism and cubism, this animated short by Theodore Ushev focuses on the relationship between art and war. Propelled by the exalting “invasion” theme from Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony (No. 7), the film presents imagery of combat fronts and massacres, leading us from Dresden to Guernica, from the Spanish Civil War to Star Wars. It is at once a symphony that serves the war machine, that stirs the masses, and art that mourns the dead, voices its outrage and calls for peace.

Gloria Victoria par Theodore Ushev, Office national du film du Canada

Hollow Land (Terre d'écueil), Uri Kranot and Michelle Kranot, directors (Dansk Tegnefilm, Les Films de l’Arlequin and the National Film Board of Canada), Denmark, Canada and France, 14 minutes

With their old bathtub in tow, a displaced couple arrives in a new land, where all is not as they expected it to be. Awaiting the birth of their first child, and in their effort to adjust to an oddly oppressive environment, they are challenged by cultural/gender roles and customs. “Hollow Land” is a brilliant animated film that captures the disruptions, and corrosive anxieties that are part of daily life for so many immigrants, refugees and misfits around the world. Asburd, dark and awkardly playful; it is an insightful story about humans.




Watch full short here.

The Missing Scarf, Eoin Duffy, director, and Jamie Hogan, producer (Belly Creative Inc.), Ireland, 7 minutes

On a quest to find his missing scarf, Albert the squirrel unearths problems far beyond his own.


The Missing Scarf – Teaser from Eoin Duffy on Vimeo.

Mr. Hublot, Laurent Witz, director, and Alexandre Espigares, co-director (Zeilt Productions), Luxembourg and France, 11 minutes

Mr Hublot is a withdrawn, idiosyncratic character with OCD, scared of change and the outside world. Robot Pet's arrival turns his life upside down: he has to share his home with this very invasive companion...




「九十九」 Tsukumo (Possessions), Shuhei Morita, director (Sunrise Inc.), Japan, 14 minutes

One night in the 18th Century, deep in the mountains, a man loses his way and comes across a small shrine. As he enters, the space transforms into a room of a different world. (Short is part of Katsuhiro Otomo and Sunrise's anthology Short Peace at Annecy film Festival)



Requiem for Romance, Jonathan Ng, director (Kungfu Romance Productions Inc.), Canada, 8 minutes

A modern-day couple’s secret love affair comes to a bittersweet end during an evening phone call. Cell phone static creates distance between them as they anguish over details of their relationship. But the visuals of the film reveal something entirely different: the epic re-imagining of their relationship set in feudal China, where family influence, cultural pressures and their lust for adventure makes more sense. Coming this spring, love goes to war over art.



Room on the Broom, Max Lang and Jan Lachauer, directors (Magic Light Pictures), UK, 25 minutes

To the annoyance of her cat a kindly witch allows a dog,a bird and a frog who have helped her retrieve things she has lost to ride on her broomstick,making it top heavy. The broom is destroyed by a fire-breathing dragon who threatens to eat the witch but the creatures band together to impersonate a monster and save her. As a result she fashions a luxurious new broom with seats on which they can all ride comfortably.



Watch full short here.

Subconscious Password, Chris Landreth, director (National Film Board of Canada with the participation of Seneca College Animation Arts Centre and Copperheart Entertainment), Canada, 11 minutes

In this short animation, Oscar®-winning director Chris Landreth uses a common social gaffe - forgetting somebody’s name - as the starting point for a mind-bending romp through the unconscious. Inspired by the classic TV game show Password, the film features a wealth of animated celebrity guests who try (and try, and try) to prompt Charles to remember the name. Finally, he realizes he will simply have to surrender himself to his predicament.

Subconscious Password by Chris Landreth, National Film Board of Canada

Short Films and Feature Animation Branch members will now select three to five nominees from among the 10 titles on the shortlist. The 86th Academy Awards nominations will be announced live on Thursday, January 16, 2014, at 5:30 a.m. PT in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater.

Here's The American MISS UNIVERSE Contestant Dressed As OPTIMUS PRIME

The Miss Universe Pageant held it's preliminary National Costume Show a few days back, a pre-pageant publicity event where the contestants show off early builds of their outfits for the "National Costume" portion of the event - aka "dress up as the Sexy Halloween Costume interpretation of your country's national identity." You can imagine how this is supposed to go: Miss Sweden as a Viking, Miss Denmark as The Little Mermaid, etc.

Well, pictured at your right: Miss USA Erin Brady in her national costume interpretation of... Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots faction of The Transformers. Which were, of course, were Japanese toys - but that's really the least silly thing about this, isn't it?

The pageant itself will be held on Saturday, so there's presumably some time for them to possibly get her into something else... but I kind of hope they don't. This is us, America. Might as well just wear it.

WRITTEN REVIEW: 7th Day

By CORY CARR

It wasn’t too long ago that we at Slaughter Film shared our thoughts on 7th Day, back when we first saw it at this years Eerie Horror Film Festival. A brief chat during a podcast is fine, but why not do the film justice and treat it to a full written review? Well, here it is.

CONTINUE READING

Here's Another ROBOCOP Trailer

Well, this still looks like shit. Nice to know some things are constant.



At least we've now got some kind of new-ish story to work with: In this version, OCP makes it's money selling drones to every country but the United States; which apparently has either a law or at least a big cultural apprehension toward the use of robotic security within its borders ("Robophobia" waka waka waka fuck you.) and Robocop is a way around that: Ostensibly an augmented-human with bonus "second lease on life for a cripple" sob-story that's actually little more than a corpse being remote-controlled by OCP and tricked into thinking it's making its own decisions. But then he remembers to be human in time to get in elaborate (and PG-13 friendly!) CGI battles with other robots - i.e. exactly the sort of stuff the original movie devoted two entire sequences to making fun of.

Amusingly, the idea that near-future America is still considered a really important consumer market to "crack" immediately makes this a more optimistic movie than Verhoeven's film. This will be out next year, so everybody remember to get just as psyched as you did for "The Thing" and "Total Recall," both of which I'm sure we all have on fondly-displayed Blu-Ray and watch at minimum once or twice a week.

MARVEL'S DEFENDERS To Netflix

Where are all the black people, differently-abled and (other) women in the Marvel Universe? Netflix, as it turns out. Today's big news: The ubiquitous streaming service will follow-up it's year of turning the TV drama game upside-down with the breakout mega-success of "House of Cards" and "Orange is The New Black" by getting into the superhero game with Marvel/Disney.

The plan is produce four seperate series (each with a 13-episode initial run) based on Luke Cage (black guy, really strong) Iron Fist (white guy, does kung-fu) Jessica Jones (former superhero, now a private detective) and Daredevil (blind, also a defense attorney); and a team-up "miniseries event" that will bring the four together as THE DEFENDERS (the name is borrowed from a hodgepodge 70s/80s Marvel group that randomly tossed together Doctor Strange, The Hulk, Ghost Rider and Silver Surfer for no particularly sensible reason.) The rational for all this is almost certainly to be that these are all regular/"street-level" heroes who

So, basically it's "The B-List Avengers" as a streaming content-dump. But it's also a canny move that makes the Marvel brand immediately part of the huge story that is the rise of the Netflix model as a viable platform for serial television - they're now the streaming action-show brand. The characters are all well chosen, since none of them generally have the kind of adventures (on their own) that would befit a singular big blockbuster but might work better handling 13 smaller-scale scenarios an hour at a time.

Presumably they'll rope one or two of The Avengers into a walk-on for the publicity at some point (Devin at BAD thinks it's plausible that Jones might debut as her superhero self "Jewel" on "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D" first, which makes a lot of sense) but I wonder if this might start to work like a franchise farm-system; where if (for example) Luke Cage is the breakout hit we'll see him called up to the majors for "Avengers 2" (or 3)?

Sounds interesting, at least. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to light a candle for whatever unfortunate mid-level guy at Warner Bros/DC is currently dodging office equipment thrown by a boss bellowing "WHY DIDN'T YOU THINK OF THIS???"