Awesome Friday!

The original Blade Runner is held up by many as the gold standard of dystopian existential science fiction films. It asks questions about the nature of humanity and what it means to truly live while at the same time painting a picture of a world that seems to have broken under the weight of more people being alive than ever before. It’s an acknowledged masterpiece –even if it took a decade or two and two different directors cuts to get to that status– and that’s a lot to live up to.

And I’m here to tell you that it does. I’m also here to tell you that you should probably go into it as cold as possible, so maybe bookmark this and come back to it after you’ve seen the film to see if you agree with me. I’m not going to say any major spoilers but regardless, this is your warning.

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Earlier this morning, director Sam Mendes pulled the sheet off the latest entry in the James Bond franchise – Spectre – and the Internet exploded in a flurry of Sean Connery  jokes. Daniel Craig is back as the titular agent and the rest of the revealed cast is a great collection of beauty and danger.

Schplendid.

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It’s time for another episode of the Awesome Friday Podcast! In this episode we’re joined by our new contributor Kat to talk about _The Southern Reach_ Trilogy of novels, the game _Lollipop Chainsaw_, and the movies _Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles_ and _Guardians of the Galaxy_.

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I haven’t blogged about this before but the seminal 1989 Jean Claude Van Damme martial arts movie (that’s a pretty apt description of all his work, really) Kickboxer is being remade –because of course it is– but on the up side they seem to be casting a lot of awesome people in it.

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The marketing for Guardians of the Galaxy has basically been omnipresent for the last few months. Hardly a day went by without a new poster or image or teaser or whatever. The reason for this is simple: this is the first real test of Marvel’s brand. Guardians, like it or not, is a lesser known property and while this film connects with the over reaching continuity of the established Marvel Cinematic Universe it doesn’t actually feature any characters that we’ve already met meaning that they can’t trade on the popularity of Iron Man or Captain America they have to rely on the corporate brand. In this world of “new things are risky let’s remake something from the 1980s” that’s kind of a big deal.

So it’s a good job they knocked it out the fucking park with this movie otherwise they’d be in trouble. Yes, it’s great and you should see it. No need to even finish reading this review. Just go. Or finish reading this review and I’ll give you a few reasons why.

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Here’s another trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy. This one is (slightly) longer and features more of the Guardians themselves rather than people talking about them plus if you don’t blink you’ll catch a glimpse of Michael Rooker as Yondu (who looks awesome) and hear a line from Lee Pace as Ronan The Accuser. Lots of characters in this movie have the name “The”. It’s a thing we’re going to have to get used to if the MCU keeps heading down the cosmic path.

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It’s only one joke, but it’s enough to sell me on the idea that the film isn’t going to just be the Rocket & Groot Show.

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Guardians of the Galaxy is out in just over a month so it’s time for marketing to kick into overdrive. Here’s the latest trailer from the UK which has a slightly more traditional, for lack of a better word, trailer feel to it.

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Two new posters today. And here I thought they were going to drag this out as long as possible!

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The first full trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy is finally online! We get a better sense of the characters, dialogue from Rocket, and the to hear Grott say “I am Groot”, all set to more classic rock. Let’s watch!

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See the shiny new poster for Marvels next big movie.

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Remember the awesome teaser poster for Guardians of the Galaxy we saw a while back? The character assets from the poster are now available so we can get a better look at Star Lord and his rag-tag group of anti-hero frenemies.

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And that feeling is “batshit crazy”. I was looking forward to this movie already but this trailer means i’m now legitimately excited. Let’s watch!

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Apologies for the tardiness of this, I’m on holiday again.

You know it’s been 13 years since Pitch Black hit theatre screens. Not an amazing movie by any measure, but entertaining enough that it made a bunch of money and put Vin Diesel on the map.

In the movie a transport ship crashes and the few survivors have to deal with Richard B. Riddick (Diesel), a sociopathic mercenary who happens to have night vision being transported in said ship but then it turns out that the planet is infested with monsters that only survive in the dark and that there is an eclipse coming, so they have to work with Riddick to survive. Talk about shitty contrived luck.

Both of these facts lead to a sequel in 2004 in which Riddick turns out to be the prophesied hero who will stop an army of dead guys who are killing their way across…. you know what? I’m not even going to finish that because it doesn’t matter. Chronicles or Riddick wasn’t that good, and this new movie basically doesn’t pay any attention to it. In fact this movie is pretty much literally just Pitch Black 2. Or maybe Pitch Black Again.

Is that such a bad thing? Well…. yes and no.

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