Another week, another teen supernatural romance movie. But it’s quite possible that Vampire Academy represents the nadir of the genre, and I’m aware that we’re talking about a field that’s already seen the likes of Twilight, The Host and The Mortal Instruments drag themselves across theater screens and leave a trail of moviegoing agony behind. Coming after all of those, Vampire Academy just seems to rehash every cliché of those films imaginable, mixed with a little Heathers, a little Buffy, some Mean Girls and a whole lot of artless filmmaking.

Based on Richelle Mead’s “worldwide best selling series” (of course), Vampire Academy takes place at St. Vladimir’s, a hidden boarding school attended by Moroi (nice vampires who can come out in the day – sort of – and are generally fun to be around) and Dhampir (half-vampire/half-human guardians who are trained to protect the members of the 12 Moroi families). It is here that we meet spunky 17-year-old Rose (Zoey Deutch), guardian to Lissa (Lucy Fry), the last in line of the royal Dragomir family. On the run for two years, they are caught and returned to the Academy despite Rose’s strong feeling that Lissa is in danger there from the Strigoi, evil vampires who long to eradicate the Moroi lines and take over society. Or something.

When a film has to start by explaining who everyone is, that’s generally a sign of trouble. Not only does Vampire Academy use voiceover to let us know the differences between its three main groups of characters, but it uses those characters to deliver reams of exposition about the story’s little world. There are so many rules and explanations to sort through in the movie that I just sort of gave up after a few minutes: I didn’t care who could use which elemental power or how a Moroi could turn into a Strigoi because it was just too boring to contemplate.

Anyway, there is indeed a plot to kill Lissa, and Rose must complete her training and become a full-fledged Guardian before this happens. Of course, she’s distracted by her interest in her teacher, Dimitri (Danila Kozlovsky), a living block of stone who probably wouldn’t change his expression even if Rose threw herself naked into his arms – and as a matter of fact, that happens later and sure enough, his face doesn’t change. Lissa has her own romance to deal with as well, in the form of Christian, played by one of those Robert Pattinson clones they mass produce at a factory somewhere in Burbank.

If you’re semi-paying attention, you’ll figure out who the villains are not too long into the movie, and then it’s a long, slow slog to the finish line, because Vampire Academy offers nothing in the way of suspense, interesting characters or even a compelling argument for its existence. There’s also nothing to look at: director Mark Waters, who has apparently lost his edge since helming Mean Girls, shoots everything in a bland, flat style that befits his been-there storyline.

And then there’s that dialogue. When not outlining the many by-laws of the Vampire Academy “mythology,” screenwriter Daniel Waters (Mark’s older brother and also a long way from his own Heathers and Batman Returns days) has decided to fill our characters’ mouths (mostly Rose’s) with a stream of already congealing pop culture references. There’s even an aside about sparkly vampires which seems old before Rose even finishes saying it.

Speaking of Rose, Ms. Deutch is probably the best thing about Vampire Academy: bearing an uncanny resemblance to Ellen Page, she does have a presence and energy that is missing from the rest of the cast and the movie itself. Her younger colleagues are forgettable, while vets like Gabriel Byrne and Joely Richardson are wasting time and know it; Byrne in particular is just there to collect a check. But I almost can’t blame him for not trying. By the time the CG wolves came into play, it wasn’t vampires I was thinking about but Frankenstein’s monster: a distorted, soulless creation made out of parts of many other bodies.

Can we please, please call a moratorium, if not on young adult supernatural tales, then at least teen vampires? The whole concept makes no sense and has thoroughly destroyed the true terror and awe of one of horror’s greatest archetypes. It’s time for bloodsuckers to return to their gray-skinned, stinking-breath, red-eyed roots. With any luck, that process will be speeded up by audiences doing the right thing and putting a stake in Vampire Academy at the box office.

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It’s startling to think that World War II, perhaps the most documented event in human history, can still yield true-life stories that are only just emerging after nearly 70 years. One of those stories is that of the Monuments Men, a group of historians, restoration experts and artists who scoured Europe in the waning days of the war to rescue thousands of works of art, along with churches and other artifacts, from the destructive grip of the Third Reich as it went through its final convulsions. That story was first brought to life in the book The Monuments Men by Robert Edsel (with Bret Witter) and has now been adapted to the screen by George Clooney, who directed the film in addition to co-writing the script and starring as team leader Frank Stokes.

The Monuments Men (which opens Friday) follows Stokes as he gets permission from President Franklin Roosevelt to assemble the group, rushes them through basic training and heads straight into the European conflict to save the art before Nazi Germany either steals or destroys it all. At a recent press conference in Los Angeles, Clooney said that his goal was to make a film that entertained despite its grim subject matter. “We were not all that familiar with the actual story, which is rare for a World War II film. Usually you think you know all the stories. And we wanted it to be accessible. We liked all those John Sturges films.  We thought it was sort of a mix between Kelly’s Heroes and The Train, and we wanted to talk about a very serious subject that’s ongoing still. We also wanted to make it entertaining. That was the goal.”

The primary entertainment value in the film almost certainly comes from the cast that Clooney has assembled, including Matt Damon, John Goodman, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Cate Blanchett and Jean Dujardin. The famously selective Murray addressed why he decided to work on the picture. “George told me the story that he was going to do about a year before, and I thought, ‘Gosh, that really sounds like fun,’” the actor recalled. “And then, suddenly about a year later, he said, ‘Would you like to be in this film?’ I’d thought about it for a whole year, so I said yes. The story is so fascinating, and as they say, untold. Most people don’t know this story. And to do it with this group of people was not just ennobled because they’re all so good, and everyone is such a good actor, but they’re so much fun.”

“Fun” would seem to be an odd word when talking about a movie that deals with the possible loss of 1,000 years of European culture, but that’s the word that Clooney himself used when discussing the casting of the movie. “It was really fun. I think pretty much to a man…Grant (Heslov, co-writer and producer) and I, when we sat down, we were writing it, we hadn’t thought of Bob (Balaban) yet, and we went to an Argo party. We saw Bob and we had this part and we knew that we wanted Bill (Murray) in it. We kept thinking, ‘Who are we going to put opposite Bill that Bill can give a really hard time to?’ And then, we were at this party with Bob, and I looked over, and I was like, ‘Oh, it’s perfect’ and Grant said, ‘It’s perfect.’ We called Bob the next day.”

While the Monuments Men were real (five of the originals are still alive), the characters in the movie have either had their names changed or are composites of several of the real life unit members. “We changed the names of the characters because we wanted to give some of them some flaws for entertainment purposes, quite honestly, for storytelling purposes,” admitted Clooney. “You don’t want to take somebody who’s real and heroic and give them a drinking problem. It’s not really fair to do. So we changed the names because we wanted to be able to play with the story some. But these are all based on real men.”

[related article: The Monuments Men review]

“Oddly enough, the man that my character was based on was from my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri,” said John Goodman when asked by Den Of Geek about his role. “He did a sculpture in downtown St. Louis that I would drive by on the city bus every time I went downtown with my mother. To me, that was something very remarkable and it touched something in me and grounded me in that way. I used what I knew of the gentleman from the book and from other things that I read about him, and the script tied everything together for me.”

Cate Blanchett’s character, Claire Simone, was based on a woman named Rose Valland, a French art curator who kept track of the works that the Nazis looted from Europe and funneled through the Jeu de Paume, an art museum in Paris. Valland risked her own life and provided critical information to the Monuments Men. “What I found really inspiring about her and I think about all the characters is that they were such unlikely heroes and heroines,” explained the Oscar-nominated actress. “Rose Valland was utterly alone and would write all this stuff down on the back of her cigarette papers and put them into this book which any day could have gotten her killed. I found that the fear that she had to serve under on a daily basis was very inspiring.”

An inspiring story was, apparently, what Clooney wanted to make from the start: “I wasn’t really looking to make a statement on things,” he replied when asked if he wanted to say something about modern-day greed with the film. “Grant and I tend to make films that are somewhat cynical at times, and we sat down specifically saying, let’s not do that for once. Let’s do one that doesn’t have any of that in it and that has a real positive outlook at things. That’s what we sought to do with this.”

But there’s no question that The Monuments Men does say something – about the value we place not just on human life, but on human culture. “One of the things that attracted me to this was I’d always known about the stealing of the art, but never really the extent of it,” said Bob Balaban, who plays art historian Preston Savitz. “The question that the movie poses specifically and I thought it was great, is why is it so important that you should kill so many people but also try to eradicate their culture? It is so significant, and it’s something very hard to get across in another piece of art, in a movie. I thought the script and then the movie did it beautifully. I think it’s a question we are struggling with all the time. Is it just pretty? What does art do for us? How does it represent us?  It’s our whole inner life out there for people to see and it’s subtle. I think it’s very hard to depict and I thought that the movie did it really well.”

While a good deal of the art stolen by the Nazis has found its way back to museums, the original owners, or their descendants, a large amount of it remains unaccounted for or in the hands of others who came upon it either accidentally or as part of the spoils of war. With repatriation of that art still an ongoing process, and with similar, vast losses having occurred in Iraq and even now possibly in Syria, Clooney feels that the message of The Monuments Men is a timely one. “One of the scenes when we were writing, we wrote about where you say you can kill them, you can murder their families, but if you take away their culture, that’s when the society breaks down. I’d spent a lot of time going through these villages in the Sudan and in Darfur where it wasn’t enough that you killed them and you killed their children. You had to destroy the things that they had created from generations before. You had to destroy what made the village theirs.

“We started to understand, when we didn’t protect the art at the beginning of the war in Iraq, when we didn’t protect those museums, those artifacts and a lot of those things were lost forever, how that can actually affect the community in a very deep way,” Clooney continued. “We keep relearning how important those things are and how important those pieces are. What are you fighting for if it’s not for your culture and your life? So it’s a hard thing when you’re doing a movie, as you can imagine, when you say you’re going to write a script about saving art, it doesn’t sound all that fun. You have to remind people that what we’re talking about isn’t just these paintings on a wall that some people can look at and get and some can’t.  It’s also about culture. It’s about these monuments and it is about these sculptures, but it’s also just about the fabric of our culture and our history. It is mankind’s way of recording history.”

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British filmmaker Ben Wheatley has, over the course of three previous independent features, established himself as a director who likes to jump from genre to genre – often right within a film itself, sometimes from scene to scene. His fourth film, A Field in England, follows that same template but is also something new: a surreal, experimental effort that bends time, space and logic while abandoning conventional narrative structures for a more abstract sensory experience. While cryptic and occasionally maddening, A Field in England is also relentlessly gripping and thoroughly unsettling, marking another overall triumph for this fascinating talent.

It’s 1648 AD and England is locked in its bloody Civil War. A handful of men stumble away from an unseen battle into a vast, windswept field, banding together as deserters. Whitehead (the excellent Reece Shearsmith) identifies himself as an alchemist’s assistant, pursuing the person who stole his master’s formulas. A second man named Cutler (Ryan Pope) has a hidden agenda of his own: he secretly feeds the others – except Whitehead -- mushrooms from the field that cause them to hallucinate, allowing him to draft them into pulling something out of the ground with a heavy rope that turns out to be a fifth man, O’Neil (Michael Smiley, from Wheatley’s The Kill List) – a sinister figure and the object of Whitehead’s pursuit.

O’Neil quickly brings the quartet under his power, using Whitehead as a human divining rod to hunt for a treasure that he believes is buried somewhere in the field. Once the men start digging, however, it seems that even more powerful, elemental forces are being unleashed from beneath the ground – forces that lead the men even further into madness and chaos.

Laurie Rose’s black and white cinematography evokes Ingmar Bergman, while Wheatley’s use of tableaux-like imagery and stark sound and music bring forth echoes of Kubrick. The bucolic setting, on the other hand, is reminiscent of pastoral British horror gems like Witchfinder General and Blood on Satan’s Claw. Haunting sequences abound, the most unsettling being a scene in which we only hear Whitehead’s excruciating screams as he is being tortured into submission by O’Neil inside a tent, followed by a slow-motion shot in which we watch Whitehead emerge from the tent, an utterly deranged rictus on his otherwise unseeing face.

Wheatley distills all this into something unique and almost beyond classification, constantly challenging the viewer to keep up. The script by Amy Jump (Wheatley’s regular collaborator and wife) does not offer any easy answers yet retains some of the trademarks from their previous films, including moments of shocking violence and sharp, witty exchanges of dialogue. It’s a credit to Wheatley and Jump, not to mention their terrific little ensemble of actors, that they can make you laugh out loud with a throwaway joke about the Devil being an Irishman amidst the film’s grueling twists and turns.

A Field in England is being released in theaters, on VOD, on DVD and on TV (the latter in the UK) at the same time, a rather bold distribution campaign that makes the movie’s aggressively uncommercial approach all the more surprising. The film is decidedly not for everyone; even if you like it, as I did, you may find it to be slow and frustrating going at times, with an ending that seems like more trickery than resolution. Overall, however, if you are able to stick with it, the experimental nature of the movie suits its bizarre story and becomes one with it; from a man vomiting runestones to a black sun swelling in the sky to an unexpected reanimation or two, the film is never predictable yet specific within its own vision.

And it’s the fourth straight success from Wheatley, who is definitely a filmmaker to keep watching. He recently directed the first two episodes of the next season of Doctor Who, which should give us an interesting look at how he works within a larger, more mainstream framework. Sooner or later some studio will give him a crack at a big-budget Hollywood effort, and it remains to be seen whether his own voice will take a back seat in that setting. For now, however, fans like me are more than happy to watch him plow new territory in films like the hypnotic A Field in England. 

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“Noble failure” is the best way to describe The Monuments Men, director and star George Clooney’s new World War II drama. Noble because the story the film tells is absolutely an important one, and also because Clooney attempts to present an old-fashioned, earnest tale of heroism that is sorely needed in these cynical times. But the movie ultimately fails because the director cannot keep a tight grip on the narrative and the tone, resulting in a sprawling, ramshackle mess whose positive attributes cannot overcome its many weaknesses.

Who were the Monuments Men? According to the book by Robert Edsel on which the film is based, they were a group of art historians, museum curators and other like-minded individuals who went voluntarily to the front lines of World War II in Europe – long after many of them were of fighting age or shape – to track down and reclaim the countless numbers of works of art that had been stolen by the Third Reich, either from museums or private collectors. With the Nazis in retreat, the task of the Monuments Men – as the team was called – became even more urgent as the Germans were destroying everything in their wake as they fled.

The movie creates fictionalized versions or composites of real members of the Monuments Men, starting with Frank Stokes (Clooney), a Harvard art historian who, as the film opens, makes the case to President Roosevelt that 1,000 years of human culture is in danger of being lost unless action is taken. With the president’s approval, Stokes assembles a team that includes art restoration expert James Granger (Matt Damon), architect Richard Campbell (Bill Murray), sculptor Walter Garfield (John Goodman), art dealer Jean Claude Clermont (Jean Dujardin), art historian Preston Savitz (Bob Balaban) and an Englishman named Donald Jeffries (Hugh Bonneville), whose job is never quite made clear.

The film’s first problem surfaces right away: the paragraph I wrote above is pretty much all we get to know about the seven Monuments Men (we also find out that Jeffries is an alcoholic with unresolved father issues – but that’s all that defines him). Little attempt is made to flesh out these men at all, save for a passing reference here or there to their lives back home. We know that Murray has grandkids; we learn that Damon is a faithful husband. But these are just broad strokes that don’t add any real depth or complexity to these men. They go about their mission, once they get to Europe, with hardly a complaint, doubt or sense of fear – despite the fact that none of them are exactly what you would call battle-hardened. In fact, we barely even know their names; I didn’t realize that Clooney’s character was called Stokes until about two-thirds of the way through the film, and had to look up Balaban’s in the press notes later on.

To be fair, there have been great war movies that don’t spend a lot of time exploring characters’ histories, and it’s clear from the get-go that Clooney wants to make something in the vein of The Bridge Over the River Kwai or The Guns of Navarone or Kelly’s Heroes – a big, old-fashioned war movie right down to the nostalgic score from Alexandre Desplat. Yet Clooney and Grant Heslov, who wrote the film together, can’t decide if they want a jauntier tone or something with more gravitas, like Saving Private Ryan. They end up with a jarring mix of episodic sequences, some played half-heartedly for laughs while others are meant to be stirring or moving – one sequence in which the team discovers barrels of gold teeth taken from Jews and hidden in a mine seems to have been dropped in from a far more solemn picture.

[related article: Interview With George Clooney and The Monuments Men cast]

The movie also lacks a clear goal for the men. In The Guns of Navarone, the German fortress had to be destroyed; the quest of The Great Escape was right there in the title. Yes, the Monuments Men were in Europe to rescue as many works of art as they could, but their objectives are so spread out, so vague (many of the treasures were tucked away in mines or keeps) that the screenwriters narrow it down to two: the Bruges Madonna by Michelangelo and the Ghent Altarpiece, a priceless, historic panel painting housed in a Belgian church. There’s little suspense or doubt about whether the men will find either. The movie’s finale seems so anticlimactic that Heslow and Clooney tack on a contrived race to get out of a mine before some Russians show up – but it’s not even clear what will happen if they don’t get out in time.

Also contrived is the subplot involving Granger and Claire Simone (Cate Blanchett in a thick French accent), a curator at the Jeu de Paume museum in Paris who ends up secretly keeping a record of all the loot that the Nazis move in and out of the place during their occupation. Granger shows up to ask her for her records, which could be key to knowing what was stolen and where to look for it; Simone is so stubborn and unreasonably angry at Granger – she seems to think that the Americans will just steal the art again – that you would almost think she was trying to protect the Nazis. Sure, maybe you don’t trust the Americans, but whose hands would you prefer to have the art in? By the time she abruptly has a change of heart and even makes an attempt at seducing Granger, you have to wonder what the hell the writers were thinking.

I’ve seen three out of Clooney’s four previous pictures as a director (Leatherheads has eluded me, or perhaps it’s the other way around), and he does his best work – in Good Night, and Good Luck and The Ides of March – with tight, small, character-driven pieces. This time around, he attemped to make an epic and just couldn’t get his hands and head completely around the material. The Monuments Men is technically proficient, well-photographed by Phedon Papamichael, and boasting that excellent score. All the principal cast members do the best they can with the thin material they’re given. But it’s edited like a montage of scenes from a much larger piece of material and never takes on a life or energy of its own.

Perhaps The Monuments Men should have been, ironically, even bigger: not a two-hour movie in which the filmmakers try to cram in too much information, too many emotions and too many incidents, but a 10-or-12-hour cable miniseries, with each episode focused on finding a different work of art and the whole thing giving the story and characters room to breathe and develop. That would have been just as noble, and perhaps might have saved this ambitious but deeply flawed film from its own uncertain and disappointing fate.

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Jurassic World is kind of like a sequel to Jurassic Park. Jurassic World starts 22 years after Jurassic Park happened. The dinosaurs are reprising their roles, but all the human characters are new. That’s why we can give them a pass for thinking, cloning dinosaurs? What could go wrong? Chris Pratt talked about his character in the upcoming Jurassic World. Chris says that he drew from Alan Grant and Ian Malcolm for the role.

In a conversation with  MTV News, Christopher Pratt opened up about his method. Pratt is keenly aware of the shoes Sam Neill’s Dr. Grant and Jeff Goldblum’s Dr. Malcolm wore that he has to fill. Pratt says “He’s got a little of both.  He’s got a little bit of the Goldblum cynicism but also the Sam Neill excitement at the wonder of the biology of it all, so it’s a combination.”

Jurassic World will be Colin Trevorrow’s first large franchise film. Chris Pratt told  MTV News that Trevorrow, who also directed Safety Not Guaranteed, has a “great vision for the movie… It’s awesome that Steven Spielberg is taking a chance on this guy because he’s got a really clear vision.  I sat down with him and it was kind of like with me and ['Guardians of the Galaxy' director] James [Gunn], we just kind of started getting excited about this.”

Pratt talked about the wisdom of dinosaur cloning in a post Jurassic Park world “What I liked about it was it answers the question of ‘Why would you do that?’ Like, how do you suspend disbelief to be like, ‘Oh yes, let’s make this mistake again. We haven’t learned our lesson about dinosaurs, we should definitely live with them and see how that works out!’ after like three tries at it.  They answer the question really well through the script.  Colin did a great job of writing it and justifying it and in his own way having fun with that, so anybody who goes in with that question will be really amused – the way I was – about how they answer that.”

Pratt is joining Bryce Dallas Howard, Ty Simpkins and Nick Robinson. Jurassic world will be shot on the Hawaiian islands of Oahu and Kauai. Jurassic Park also used these locales for their Isla Nublar. Jurassic World is coming out on June 12th, 2015.

SOURCE: ScreenRant

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If you've heard of The Runaways, the story of the heroic children of supervillains, you certainly are familiar with the writer, Brian K. Vaughan. And if you've read Brian K. Vaughan's Runaways, you certainly love it. Despite recent talk that any hope of a Runaways movie might be dead, Mr. Vaughan himself still holds out a shred of hope that it might see the light of day in Marvel phase three. He's not alone. The man who write the currently shelved Runawaysscript (who also wrote Iron Man 3), Drew Pearce, thinks that the project still has a pulse, too.

Speaking with Total Film, Mr. Pearce said that "I wish I knew if The Runaways had a place in Phase 3. I'm not close enough to the core. I don't work for Marvel, so I don't have a sense of the Master Plan other than when tiny crumbs are passed to me! I'm still super-proud of the script. I think it's a brilliant film in the making - not necessarily because of my script, but because of Brian K. Vaughan's excellent idea. I know Kevin's still a big fan of the script that's there in the vault. Whether it finds its way onto the runway for Phase 3, I have no idea, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed." 

For our part, we think Runaways would work much better as a TV series, and we'd be just as happy to see Mr. Pearce do some work on that! Mr. Pearce also weighs in on Damage Control, Jessica Jones, the Marvel One-Shot "All Hail the King" and other Marvel properties he'd like to get his hands on in the full interview at Total Film. 

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Jason Statham memorably played Arthur Bishop in 2011’s The Mechanic. During that film, Bishop lived by a strict, selective set of rules as an elite assassin, and one of them is apparently to double-tap for a sequel: Mechanic 2 is a go.

The Hollywood Reporterhas revealed that Dennis Gansel, director of The Wave and Before the Fall, has signed up to helm a sequel to the 2011 R-rated hit. Gansel, a German filmmaker, will make his first trip to Hollywood with this effort that already has Expendables star Statham onboard. Indeed, it was Expendables 2 director Simon West who helmed the first effort. THR also reports that it is unclear whether the original’s co-star Ben Foster will return, but seeing as his character died at the end of that film, we’d deem it unlikely.

The Mechanic, the story of how Statham’s Bishop could murder anyone and make it look like an accident—including his eventual co-star—was a remake of a 1972 Charles Bronson star vehicle and made $22 million internationally.

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Producer Michael Uslan is no stranger to fanboy unrest. As possibly the first person in Hollywood to take Batman seriously, it was a decade of hard work and campaigning before he got Batman to the big screen in the 1989 Tim Burton classic of the same name. Since that time, Uslan has stayed on as a producer of the character from the low-lows of Batman & Robin and nipples, to the Everest heights of The Dark Knight sequels. Now, he finds himself again in an era of transition as he comes on to produce Batman vs. Superman, just as fans wring their hands at the prospect that Zack Snyder has cast Ben Affleck as the Caped Crusader. Uslan, had some soothing words for the fans on both counts when he talked with EP Daily about the project.

“I feel great. First of all, Zack’s a fanboy, and he loves these characters as much as any of us do,” Uslan told EP Daily. “Everybody grows as filmmakers, as actors, all of us in life, if we don’t continue to evolve, something is radically wrong. It’s so interesting to see the evolution for everybody involved and to see the evolution of Batman. It’s exciting and everybody is pumped up about it. It’s a chance for a new direction, and it’s going to be something that people, I think, will be just excited about.”

[related article – Batman vs. Superman: Everything We Know]

Uslan continued, “It starts with us. I’ve lived this in the past before and I’m speaking now really more as a Bat-fan than as the Bat-producer. We went through it all with Michael Keaton. I led the charge from the first time that I heard Tim was thinking of hiring Michael to play Batman. I’d go, ‘Oh my God, all that work, I’ve in all these years to do a dark and serious Batman! He’s going to hire a comedian!’ I could envision the posters: ‘Mr. Mom is Batman!’ But then he explained his vision. He had a vision, and he was right. This is all about Bruce Wayne. It’s not about Batman; it’s all about Bruce Wayne. If you’re trying to do a serious, dark superhero, people have to believe in Bruce Wayne as that obsessed, driven guy, to the point maybe of almost being psychotic. A guy who would get dressed up as a bat and do what he did. So, we went through the hoopla with Michael Keaton. The fans were the same reaction that I had initially, except I had the benefit of hearing a vision right away. Then when they actually went to see the movie, they never wanted anyone else to play Batman, never.”

[related article - Seven Actors Fans Thought Would Suck]

Uslan goes on in the below video to also compare the casting backlash to that of Heath Ledger (once referred to as “the gay cowboy”) playing the Joker. Uslan astutely draws the parallel of fans reacting harshly to an accomplished actor—or also filmmaker in Affleck’s case—due to the surprise of the situation. Uslan again draws a parallel to Keaton and Burton, and how Burton said it is all about Bruce Wayne. That is also Snyder’s logic in casting Affleck as a grizzled, 40-something Batman veteran.

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It has been a short trip from announcement to game launch, as we only first heard about The Lego Movie Videogame back in December. But now the launch is upon us and, timed with The Lego Movie’s AWESOME release, comes this Launch Trailer.

In the game, rated E10+, gamers will be able to get their hands on Emmet, Wildstyle, Uni-Kitty, Batman, and more as they follow their quest to become a Master Builder and travel to lands as far and wide as the Old West and Cloud Cukoo Land.

Following the plot, of the gnarly Lego Movie, the game will include 90 playable characters inspired by the film in a quest that will also include 15 levels for the console version and 45 missions for handheld. It also includes the voices of Chris Pratt as Emmet, Elizabeth Banks as Wildstyle, Morgan Freeman as Vitruvius, Will Arnett as Batman, and of course Will Ferrell as evil Lord Business. It is available for purchase today on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Wii U, Windows PC, PSVista, and Nintendo 3DS.

And if you still are grooving on all things Legos, check out our awesome awesome-est review of The Lego Movie here.

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The rats always come back, and the story of Whitey Bulger is just too good not to root out once again. Thus enter Scott Cooper’s Black Mass. The director of Crazy Heart and Out of the Furnace is helming the Hollywood version of hallowed Boston crime lore, and Johnny Depp has now signed on to star as the infamous Southie kingpin turned FBI informant, turned FBI fugitive in the film.

As reported in Deadline, the project has been long brewing for Depp, who originally was interested in playing Bulger for Barry Levinson before that movie fell through due to financial issues. Now with Cooper onboard, the wheels are turning in a movie that is set to be produced by Cross Creek Pictures and is to be adapted by screenwriter Mark Mallouk from the 2001 Dick Lehr/Gerald O’Neill bestseller Black Mass: The True Story of An Unholy Alliance Between The FBI and The Irish Mob.

Also, Tom Hardy is in talks to co-star as FBI Agent John Connolly, a childhood pal of Bulger who tipped him off that he was about to be indicted by the feds after Bulger graciously ratted on a rival gang’s activity. This led to Bulger’s infamous decades-long on-the-lam run from the law.

This also likely has put two in the back of the head of Ben Affleck’s planned Whitey Bulger film, which was being written by The Wolf of Wall Street and Boardwalk Empire scribe Terrence Winter with the intention of Matt Damon to star as the infamous gangster. Affleck instead opted to adapt Dennis Lehane’s period gangster drama They Live By Night first and foremost. However, Affleck was able to somewhat adapt Bulger before as a composite character played by Pete Postlethwaite in 2010’s The Town. Still, Bulger was most famously “adapted” in fiction through the maddening visage of Jack Nicholson in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, which featured a more violent conclusion to “Frank Costello’s” relationship with the FBI and other law enforcement.

Black Mass is being produced by Brian Oliver and Tyler Thompson of Cross Creek, John Lesher, and his LeGrisbi banner.

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Arnold Schwarzenegger is in an R-rated action movie where he plays a DEA agent on a vendetta. Let me rephrase: Arnold Schwarzenegger is in an R-rated action movie! Watch the three-minute red band trailer for Sabotage below.

Sabotagefollows an elite DEA task force that becomes the target of a deadly drug cartel after a successful raid. Being picked off one-by-one, the team must figure out who’s the trailer, and who’s next. Schwarzenegger stars alongside Sam Worthington, Olivia Williams, Terrence Howard, Joe Manganiello, and Mireille Enos in the shoot-em-up thriller.

Sabotage busts into theaters April 11, 2014.

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Syfy announced that they signed writing partners Todd Slavkin and Darren Swimmer to run their new supernatural drama Dominion. Syfy named Slavkin and Swimmer as Executive Producers and co-Showrunners. Dominion wil be executive produced by Vaun Wilmott. Dominion is being made by Universal Cable Productions and Bold Films. Syfy plans to premiere Dominion this June.

Dominion is based on the 2010 film Legion. Legion’s director and co-author, Scott Stewart, is directing the pilot and producing. The pilot was written by Vaun Wilmott, who is also producing, executively.

Slavkin and Swimmer have been working with Syfy and Universal Cable Productions for a while now. They write and executive produce Defiance, which they used to consult for and they were consulting producers on the second season of Syfy’s original drama, Alphas.

Slavkin and Swimmer went from feature film screenwriting into television on WB/CW’s Smallville and then ran the Melrose Place reboot for the CW. Their names are on ABC’s No Ordinary Family and the 2004 thriller Control starring Ray Liotta and Willem Dafoe. They have been best friends since sixth grade.

Dominion features the characters from the 2010 movie Legion, only 25 years later. A war between angels and people has changed the world and they have to rely on one rebel soldier to save humanity.

Anthony Stewart Head plays David Weel, the president of the Senate of Vega, which we know as Las Vegas. He butts heads with the city’s military leader, General Rysen. Anthony Stewart Head, who was Buffy’s mentor in the long-running Joss Wheedon TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Head has also appeared in Merlin, Little Britain, Manchild and Free Agents and on the TV series Highlander, Doctor Who, NYPD Blue and Spooks. Head’s last role was on Syfy’s Warehouse 13. Head has appeared in the films The Iron Lady, Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, Repo! The Genetic Opera and Imagine Me & You. On the British stage, Head has acted in Six Degrees of Separation at the Old Vic and the London revival of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He was also a musician, I learned that on Buffy.

Roxanne McKee, who plays Doreah in Game of Thrones, plays General Rysen’s daughter, Claire Rysen, who’s like some kind of a princess. Roxanne McKee appeared on British TV as Louise Summers in the series Hollyoaks and on BBC in Lip Service. McKee appeared in the movies Ironclad: Battle for Blood and Fox's Wrong Turn 5.

Luke Allen-Gale plays William Weel, from Vega’s other ruling family. Weel is the Head of the Church of the Savior. Luke Allen-Gale trained at The Drama Centre London made his acting debut in 2008 on Wallander. Known in England as Dr. Springer in Monroe and in America from his recurring role in The Borgias.

Shivani Ghai plays Arika, who is a diplomat sent from Helena, which used to be known as Salt Lake City, but is now a militant matriarchal society. Shivani Ghai was first noticed in the Bollywoo musical Bride & Prejudice. She appeared on American television in HBO’s Five Days and House of Saddam, and the History Channel’s The Bible miniseries.

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How will you spend your WarriorFest? The ultimate NYC movie is The Warriors, which captures New York during a much more dangerous era - where gangs ruled the city and terrorized people while wheeling around on rollerskates or drssed in baseball uniforms. Can you dig it? We follow the Warriors as they battle their way back to Coney Island. Director by Walter Hill (who also brought us 48 Hrs.), the movie is 35 flippin' years old! To celebrate, Saturday Feb 8th is WarriorFest: a cinematic extravaganza marking the most iconic cult movie in New York history. Question: Will the Warriors come out to play-yay?

The gang at Rocks Off are throwing the party at Le Poisson Rouge this Saturday to expeience New York City when it was terrorized by the likes of Turnbull AC's, The Orphans, The Warriors, The Lizzies, The Punks, and The Gramercy Riffs. DJ Small Change will be spinning the tunes from The Warriors soundtrack before and after the movie. Prizes and random free drinks will also be given out to those who represent the best dressed members of the gangs from the film! Q+A with Apache Ramos from The Orphans and other stars of the film! Hosted by NYC punk rock icon John Joseph!

We spoke with Rocks Off's WarriorFest founder, Jake Szufnarowski about the craziest event of the weekend!

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Captain America: The Winter Soldier is closer than you think. Scheduled to hit theaters on April 4th, the marketing machine appears to be in full-swing for the Captain America sequel. And with good reason. Based on one of the most acclaimed Captain America stories of all time, Captain America: The Winter Soldier reportedly will lead directly into Avengers: Age of Ultron and has already seen strong votes of confidence from Marvel, who are planning on bringing directors Joe and Anthony Russo back for Captain America 3. This latest action-packed TV spot is a good indicator of why they might be so confident in the film!

Captain America: The Winter Soldier stars Chris Evans, Anthony Mackie, Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Robert Redford, and Samuel L. Jackson. 

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