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The Ultimate Avengers: Will it happen?

Phase one, phase two, phase three. All these “phases” Marvel keep telling us they are going through is getting pretty confusing. It all began with Iron Man, back in 2008. Captain America, Thor, The Incredible Hulk and a second Iron Man all followed before culminating in Joss Whedons’ £220 million dollar blockbuster The Avengers hitting the screens in 2012.

Whedons outstandingly successful film marked the end of phase one, and the beginning of phase

image via www.thegeektwins.com

image via www.thegeektwins.com

two for Marvel, which has now already seen a third Iron man and sequels for both Thor and Captain America. With Avengers two expected to round off Marvels latest efforts under one big umbrella, how long will it be until we expect more of a favourite superhero’s joining the Avengers roster?

Well, they may not have the answers, but online bloggers Maurice and Nigel, better known as “The Geek Twins”, have provided a visual representation of the current Marvel landscape. Their charming guide illustrates Marvels movie rights for each individual and/or group of superheroes.

During the 1990’s, Marvel began selling their character rights to different movie studios, including Universal and Sony.  This allowed 20th Century Fox to begin producing their X-men films; whilst Sony began work on a new Spiderman franchise.  The success of these franchises, alongside other superhero films such the Fantastic Four and Daredevil, led Marvel to begin making their own films independently and thus, Marvel Studios was born.

Marvel managed to re-obtain rights for Iron Man, Thor and Captain America from Artisan, who had not used the rights in anyway. They also re-claimed the rights for the Incredible Hulk and Namor the Submariner, who has yet to be used, from Universal.

However, Sony refused to give up their rights for Spiderman, as they were planning yet another reboot, albeit this time for the Amazing Spiderman. Fox also decided against selling their rights for X-men, with their films, and stand-alone Wolverine films, continuing to provide moderate success.

It became the comic book world’s worst kept secret in late 2013 that Sony and Marvel failed to reach a deal on some form of crossover movie, but Andrew Garfield has said that he would like to appear in the Avengers universe, stating “I would love that, the fans would love that. Obviously, big business and lawyers and rights issues are an obstacle. In my naiveté I’m all ‘let’s put all that aside and just do it!’.”

As it stands, we are still far away from a truly complete Avengers movie. Although not an original member, Spiderman would be expected to join up with the Avengers somewhere during the second or third instalment, yet with Marc Webb already confirming the completion of the Amazing Spiderman trilogy in 2016, Marvel may yet struggle to fulfil their fans desires despite recent rumours. Marvel themselves appear more focused on adding more strings to their bow, with Guardians of the Galaxy on the way and plans to also reintroduce Ant Man to a younger audience.

However, X-men producer Lauren Shuler Donner has given cause for hope, telling Crave Online that “I would love it. I would love it…to take our characters and mingle them in the way that they were written, yeah, absolutely.” Joss Whedon was also the author of twenty five issues of the critically acclaimed Astonishing X-men and also lent a hand in the writing of The Ultimate’s, the ultimate avenger’s team. So for comic book fans, there may still yet be reason for hope, but for us and the Geek twins, we’ll just have to wait and see.

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This week in history: 27th January – 2nd February

Philip Seymour Hoffman, a middle aged blonde man stands in a suit
Phillip Seymour Hoffman, a middle aged blonde man stands in a suit

Image via parade.condenast.com

This post has been edited since publication in light of recent news.

This Sunday, February 2nd 2014 Philip Seymour Hoffman passed away. The 46 year-old actor was found dead in his bathroom on Sunday evening. Reports suggest that his death may be linked to taking drugs. Hoffman has talked about his drug abuse in the past, and has previously sought treatment.

Let us remember him as a brilliant actor. With more than 60 film credits to his name, including Mission Impossible III, The Master, and Capote. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and won the Best Actor Academy Award for Capote.

Personally I loved Hoffman as ‘The Count’ in The Boat that Rocked a period comedy about a pirate radio station. More recently I’ve enjoyed his performance in The Hunger Games, I look forward to seeing him in the final two Hunger Games films.

Adam Burt has written a feature celebrating Philip Seymour Hoffman’s life.

On January 31st 1975, Walt Disney Productions sued the producers of The Life and Times of a Happy Hooker. The film follows the life of Dutch secretary then Call Girl, Madam and Memoirist, Xaviera Hollander. In one scene, while a group sex act is being performed, the Mickey Mouse March plays in the background. Walter Stratton, Disney attorney, alleged that the use of the march constitutes “substantial and irreparable, injury, loss and damage to ownership rights”. The producers lost the case.

100 years ago on February 2nd Charlie Chaplain’s first film Making a Living was released. The short stars Chaplain as a swindler who courts a wealthy young lady with a ring he conned from her admirer. Chaplain then steals his camera after he takes shots of a car crash.

This was Chaplains first film role, the start of a huge film career which made him a household name. In 1914 he appeared in a total of 36 short films, he was in just 50 further films in his acting career which spun to 1967.

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Things you didn’t know about Lord of the Rings

Three posters for the Lord of the Rings trilogy side by side featuring profiles of the cast.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy is a series that could be considered one of the most ambitious film projects made. The production of these three films was huge with an overall budget of $280 million. All three films were shot simultaneously in New Zealand and the project took eight years to complete. The extended editions of the three films total 682 minutes (6hrs 22m), the longest being Return of the Kings with is over three hours.

A moving image of Peter Jackson in in a small rainy village at night-time, walking across screen taking a bite from a carrot =.

Peter Jackson in The Desolation of Smaug. Image via Metro.co.uk

If you’re a big Lord of the Rings fan then you may have noticed director Peter Jackson’s cameos in the films. In The Fellowship of the Ring Jackson appears in Bree, he was originally supposed to be smoking a pipe but it made him feel sick so he holds a carrot. In The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug Jackson again appears in Bree talking across screen taking a bite from a carrot, a nice reference to his cameo over a decade earlier.

In The Two Towers Jackson defends Helms Deep as a Rohan soldier. During the battle he can be seen throwing a spear at an Uruk-hai. Jackson actually has two cameos in the extended edition of The Return of the King Jackson plays one of the Corsairs of Umbar who is killed when Legolas fires a warning shot. Jackson also appears as Sam’s hands when he faces Shelob. Sean Astin was temporarily absent and Jackson stepped in so that filming wouldn’t slow down.

Jacksons son and daughter, Billy and Katie Jackson, also make appearances in the trilogy several times. Firstly as young hobbits in The Fellowship of the Ring, Billy was actually the only ‘hobbit’ not to wear a wig as he had ‘perfect hobbit hair’. The children also appear as refugee children in the caves of Helms Deep in The Two Towers, and children at Minas Tirith in The Return of the King. 

Fanghorn forest, the forest beneath the Misty Mountains where Merry and Pippin meet Treebeard and Aragorn Gimli and Legolas encounter a white wizard. In The Two Towers, Fangorn is entirely artificial, made up of miniature, CGI and a studio set. It was decided that Fangorn would not be shot on location as director Peter Jackson could not find anything suitable in New Zealand.

As part of creating the studio set, Dan Hennah (art director) and Brian Massey (greens department) would visit local botanical gardens and ask to collect their leaves, “We’d fill up all these great big woolsacks full of leaves and take them and cart them away and stash them very carefully”. Driftwood collected from beaches nearby was used as roots for the trees. Treebeard was a 14 foot tall puppet, operated by five people.

Many of the Lord of the Rings sets were actually miniatures. The Numenorian ruins in The Fellowship of the Ring, Amon Henwhich is seen at the end of the Fellowship are recycled polystyrene structures from Weathertop. Several of these ‘miniature’ sets were, although small in terms of scale, so large they became known as ‘bigatures. This name was inspired bur Barad-Dur miniature, which was 15ft tall. The bigature of Orthanc actually filled a whole car park.

 

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Quentin Tarantino sues for $2million over script leak.

An image of Quentin Tarantino holding an award.
An image of Quentin Tarantino holding an award.

Quentin Tarantino.
Source: Wikipedia

Oscar winning director and screenwriter, Quentin Tarantino is seeking at least $2million in damages down to the leak of his script for his movie The Hateful Eight.

Tarantino is suing the gossip website Gawker for contributory copyright infringement after it posted a link to the leaked screenplay.

Last Monday (20th January), the first draft of Tarantino’s ensemble Western was published to the world after the director trusted it into the hands of only six people.

The lawsuit, filed by Tarantino’s lawyers today, seeks damaged of $1million (£603,000) against Gawker and $1million against the anonymous file-sharing website where the leaked script was hosted.

The director, who last year won an Oscar for Best Screenplay for Django Unchained, has since decided to shelve the product which he had previously planned to film in the winter of 2015.

Instead, he said that he will probably publish the script as a book instead, a practice that in the past has seen him rack up some impressive royalties and advances.

With the release of Django Unchained in 2012 and Inglorious Basterds in 2009, the director is certainly not struggling for funds as they were both box-office smashes, accumulating over $740million worldwide.

As well as an impressive box office, the two films achieved 12 nominations and 3 wins at The Academy Awards.

As for what Quentin Tarantino has planned next, he said “I’ve got 10 more where that came from.”

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IMDb voters move Disaster Movie off the bottom of the pile.

Directors Friedberg and Seltzer image via www.listal.com

Directors Friedberg and Seltzer
image via www.listal.com

On the 31st of August 2008, Disaster Movie was named by IMDb as being the worst movie of all time. With an average rating of just 1.9 out of 10 after over 63,000 votes, Disaster Movie out flops titles such as Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2, Zombie Nightmare and even Birdemic: Shock and Terror, a film in which a two survivors fight off a platoon of eagles and vultures who had partnered up in murdering most of the residents of a small town. Yes, really.

The parody, starring Matt Lanter, Vanessa Minnillo, Carmen Electra and even an acting début from the multi-talented Kim Kardashian, received six nominations at the 29th annual Golden Raspberry Awards for Worst Picture, nominations for both Electra and Kardashian in the Worst Supporting Actress category, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay, and Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel.

The only positive review of the film came from Australian newspaper critic Jim Schembri, who described the film as being “dumb but also undeniably funny in more spots than a right-thinking mature person feels comfortable admitting” giving it a rating of 3 ½ stars out of 5.
Schembri’s was himself subjected to criticism from peers and Rotten Tomato website visitors for the review.

Directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer are used to negative reviews. Disaster Movie and Meet the Spartans were voted the two worst films of 2008 by the Times. Empire released their own list of “the Worst Movies of All Time”, in which all but one of Friedberg and Seltzer’s films made it into the countdown.

Although it did manage to recoup nearly $40million in box-office and DVD sales, Disaster Movie was considered by many as being the worst movie ever made, but not anymore.

With a rating of only 1.3 after over 40,000 votes, Indian action crime thriller movie Gunday has “overtaken” Disaster Movie on IMDb’s list of worst rated films.

Directed by Ali Abbas Zafar, Gunday received mixed reviews with many critics admitting the movie had a credible storyline, but was structurally poor. Whilst reviewing the film, Bollywood critic Saibal Chaterjee said that “It really is difficult to keep a two-and-a-half-hour film from losing its wheels when its engine room is bereft of the propellant of genuine inspiration. Gunday is like the dusty minefields it is set in. Its loud explosions deliver loads of coal, but no trace of any diamonds.”

Although far from being a classic, Gunday is seen by many as a commendable effort, and it’s position on IMDb’s list seems quite frankly, a little harsh.

However, for the directors who have been described as being the “”evildoers, charlatans, symbols of western civilization’s decline” and “a plague on our cinematic landscape, a national shame, a danger to our culture, a typhoon-sized natural disaster disguised as a filmmaking team, a Hollywood monster wreaking havoc on the minds of America’s youth and setting civilization back thousands of years”, Friedberg and Seltzer, for now, are no longer the directors of the worst movie of all time.