Pop Culture News, Reviews, and Opinions
Michael Bay brings his signature “everything in the shot must be moving and the camera must be moving and something must also be exploding” style back to the Transformers franchise. He keeps promising to stop making these. I wish he would.
Ted 2 is coming whether we like it or not. Here’s a thing new trailer for it that make it seem like it might be pretty funny, so there’s that. This is a red band trailer so be sure to use headphones or, you know, just don’t watch it at work.
Continue reading “Ted 2 Red Band Trailer + Poster: Thunder Buddies For Life”
There’s going to be a vocal contingent that argues that Age of Extinction is the best Transformers movie. It isn’t. It’s not the worst (here’s looking at you Revenge of The Fallen) but it’s really not the best either. That whole discussion is kind of ridiculous though because when you stop and think you’ll realize that you’re arguing which f these terrible movies is the least terrible. If you think that’s _Age of Extinction more power to you because the movie does fix a few of the problems that the previous three had but it also introduces a bunch more problems to deal with.
Continue reading “Review: Transformers: Age of Extinction Is Bad”
Say what you will about Michael Bay. His style is shallow. He focuses too much on style over substance. He’s rather choreograph an explosion than direct and actor. Much of this is likely true when he’s making action films. Turns out though that when you take his shallow, vapid style and apply it to a story about shallow, vapid people things crystallize in a way that I don’t ever remember them doing so for Michael Bay in the past.
Pain & Gain is the story of three body builders in Miami who kidnap and torture a local businessman until he signs over all of his assets to them. Mark Wahlberg plays the ringleader Danny, a sociopath who thinks he’s both a winner and a nice guy but is actually a despicable asshole, Dwayne Johnson plays Paul, the dumb but nice one who gave up cocaine in prison for Jesus but then found cocaine again once out of prison, and Anthony Mackie plays Adrian, the one with ‘rood rage who ends up liking beating up on Tony Shaloub’s Victor Kershaw, the victim. Ed Harris rounds out the cast as the private investigator who eventually cracks the case.
I want to tell you more about this movie but I don’t want to spoil anything if you haven’t seen it. You can look up the actual events if you want to but I would do that after (the events in the movie are fictionalized). It’s really something to see Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson’s performances here clean, they’re both great as Wahlberg is fantastic and making terrible thing he does seem like he’s trying to do it from a good place and Johnson is hilarious as dumb and high for most of the movie.
Next week we’re all going to see Transformers: Age of Extinction and likely go back to not really liking Michael Bay so in the mean time you should check out Pain & Gain to remind yourself he’s capable of making… well maybe not great works of art but certainly films to which his voice and style is suited perfectly and if you use the links below you’ll help us keep the lights on here at our World Headquarters.
Thanks and have a great weekend!
Holy shit this actually looks good.
Continue reading “Transformers: Age of Extinction Trailer: We Need A New Army”
There’s a few posters for Transformers: Age of Extinction and they’re kind of boring but also have a few interesting tid bits to mull over. Let’s take a look!
Continue reading “Transformers: Age of Extinction Posters Are Interesting AND Boring.”
Transformers 4 is happening and now there’s some marketing so we can get a sense of whether the people selling it are any good at sales. They kinda are. Let’s watch.
Continue reading “Transformers: Age of Extinction Trailer + Viral Poster Are Getting My Hopes Up”
Good news everyone!
Angie Han writing for Slashfilm
The 3D IMAX camera wasn’t the only new addition to Transformers 4 announced at CinemaCon yesterday. Michael Bay also revealed that Stanley Tucci had boarded the cast, joining Mark Wahlberg, Nicola Peltz, and Jack Reynor.
Character details have been kept under wraps, but an earlier report suggested that the film could center around a young woman, her dad, and her racecar driver boyfriend. Peltz, Wahlberg, and Reynor seem to fit those descriptions, but it’s harder to say how Tucci fits in.
I’m holding out basically zero hope that Transformers 4 will be any good, but adding Tucci to any movie is a welcome bit of news. Him and Wahlberg both know how to be fun to watch, so maybe this one will turn out better than the last three.
Not that that’ll be hard….
Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg starring as an undercover DEA Agent and an underecover special forces soldier who don’t dont know the other is undercover and then get blown and then have to work together to figure out who set them up while bullet fly and things explode in the background of their petty bickering and brotherly fighting?
Where do I sign?
What do you guys think??
Aquaman star Vinnie Chase is back, baby. Warner Bros has tonight given the green light on a movie version of Entourage, the HBO series that ran from 2004-2011. That gives a reprise for the inside Hollywood exploits of the up and coming film star, his manager and agent, his under-appreciated TV actor brother and the childhood pal/driver who form his inner circle.
The film will be directed by series creator Doug Ellin, who wrote the screenplay and who exec produced the series with Mark Wahlberg and Stephen Levinson.
As a long time fan of the show this is great news to me. I know the show got a little less consistent towards the end but I still loved it start to finish, and the end of the show –with Vince running off to get married and Ari being offered a position as studio head– was a pretty clear opening for the story to continue.
Deals haven’t been made with anyone yet but it’d be hard to imagine this going ahead without any of the primary stars. I just find myself wondering which of the awesome recurring cast they might wrangle into it as well.
Either way, I’ll be there opening day.
Good news everyone! This week you’re getting a double dose of awesomeness! Episode 29 made it to iTunes but didn’t publish on this site due to a glitch, and in the mean time we recorded our thirtieth episode! So here’s both for your listening pleasure!
Be warned that both of these episodes do contain spoilers for some of the things we talk about but we do make a great effort to warn you before we start with the spoilers.
In episode twenty nine we discuss an awesome new Canadian TV series called Continuum and the movies Wrath of the Titans and TED.
In episode thirty we are joined by our good friend New York Matt and we discuss Lockout (again), The Witcher 2 and The Amazing Spiderman.
Like what you hear? Don’t like what you hear? Tell us! email at comments at awesomefriday.ca, leave comments below, and you can also follow us on twitter: @ManBitesWonders is Simon and @posterboy81 is Matt and @pmattgardner is New York Matt
The 16th President as a vampire hunter? Joseph Gordon-Levitt at Bruce Willis? Old games made new again? It’s must be Awesome Friday!
This week we tackle all of the above, plus a fairly significant update on The Year of Living Gamelessly, Simon’s now half over endeavor to not spend any new money on games as well as a reaction to Radical Games closing and the state of the game industry in general.
Like what you hear? Don’t like what you hear? Tell us! email at comments at awesomefriday.ca, leave comments on this episodes page, and you can also follow us on twitter: @ManBitesWonders is Simon and @posterboy81 is Matt
