It’s becoming a sort of yearly occurrence to have a Marvel Studios film premiere a special trailer during the live-broadcast of the NFL’s latest Super Bowl event. Last year, it was a special Super Bowl trailer of Iron Man 3 (an extended version soon coming out after). This year it will be Captain America: The Winter Soldier that will get the special Super Bowl treatment.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier has been gaining some major buzz since the release of its first teaser trailer from a couple months back. Where Thor: Dark World used fantasy as an overall theme for its look and story, with the sequel to Captain America: The First Avenger the filmmakers have taken on the look and feel of a techno/conspiracy-thriller. TheWinter Soldier looks to be like something that wouldn’t seem out of place if made during the cynical and distrustful era of the 1970’s when conspiracies and distrust of those in power dominated the headlines.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier is set for an April 4, 2014 release date.
Also, we have the UK and Ireland version of the trailer which show a brief glimpse of Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp) who is the descendant of Peggy Carter from the first film.
I’ve been pretty open about my love for anime and, of late, my love for the incredibly funny and irrelevant anime series Nichijou.
This is a series where it runs on it’s own logic that may not makes sense to us, but definitely adds to the hilarious scenes, moments and overall tone of the show. This particular scene is from episode 16 and has Yukko visiting the new coffee shop to try the place out. Ok, nothing funny about it so far, but this is no ordinary coffee shop but one that serves all those fancy espresso type drinks.
So, this scene just ends up even more hilarious when one thinks of their very first time entering a Starbucks or an espresso cafe having no idea how to order those fancy drinks. For most people not in their 20’s coffee was either black or with cream and served small, medium or large. We didn’t know what that “Tall” meant small or that “Grande” meant medium and don’t even get me started on “Venti”.
This scene just brought back memories of seeing people new to such coffee houses trying to order their coffee and acting as if they know what they’re doing when everyone around them, especially the barista, knows they have no clue what’s going on.
The latest “Song of the Day” is dedicated to a great film composer who passed away today. Riz Ortolani is well-known in the virtual and brick-and-mortar halls of Through the Shattered Lens. In fact, I would say that his work would be a perfect soundtrack for the site if it ever decided to have one.
Ortolani was born in March 25, 1926. Music seemed to be in his blood as his musical career first began as part of an Italian jazz band before he eventually move to composing scores for Italian films. While many grindhouse and exploitation film fans got to know Ortolani through his work on Ruggero Deodato’s famous (infamous in some circles) cannibal exploitation film Cannibal Holocaust ( especially for it’s serene-like opening theme) his film scores ranged through several genres from mondo films, spaghetti westerns, eurospy flicks and Italian giallos.
For someone in elite circles would considered as beneath their notice for doing work in the so-called video nasty genre, ORtoani’s work has been hailed as genius and one of his compositions even won him an Academy Award in 1964. It’s this award-winning song that I’ve chosen to focus on.
“More” from the shockumentary Mondo Cane won Ortolani an Oscar in 1964 and even had an admirer in the Chairman of the Board himself that he would cover the song the very same year.
With each passing year the film and entertainment community loses one more of the earlier generation who were instrumental in making many at this site in falling in love with film and music. Time to appreciate what they’ve contributed to film and music and remind ourselves that sometimes just because something is old and dated doesn’t mean it’s still not better than something newer and more advanced.
R.I.P. Riz Ortolani and thanks for the music and memories.
Even the Ol’ Blue Eyes covered the song…
More (Theme From Mondo Cane)
More than the greatest love the world has known, This is the love I give to you alone, More than the simple words I try to say, I only live to love you more each day. More than you’ll ever know, my arms long to hold you so, My life will be in your keeping, waking, sleeping, laughing, weeping, Longer than always is a long long time, but far beyond forever you’re gonna be mine. I know I’ve never lived before and my heart is very sure, No one else could love you more.
[musical interlude]
More than you’ll ever know , my arms they long to hold you so, My life will be in your keeping, waking, sleeping, laughing, weeping, Longer than always is a long long time, but far beyond forever you’ll be mine, I know that I’ve never lived before and my heart is very sure, No one else could love you more, no one else could love you more.
The Raid 2: Berandal premiered today at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. We’ve already gotten two previous trailers and teasers. We now have a third one that just adds to the awesomeness of what I will now dub as the best film of 2014.
The Raid 2: Berandal will make it’s wide release in the United States on March 28, 2014.
It’s just less than a month away until the second half of The Walking Dead season 4 begins.
This fourth season of AMC’s massively popular survival-horror series has had a sort of resurgent year. New showrunner Scott M. Gimple has done a good job in fixing some of the issues that popped up during previous showrunner Gen Mazzara’s tenure during the final stretch of season 3. While Gimple has done a good job the show still has some issues when it comes to stand-alone episodes as we saw with the two-parter that reintroduced the Governor.
The ultimate payoff of that two-parter led to the ending that should’ve been the season finale of season 3. The showdown and final attack on the prison was as exciting as how Kirkman wrote it for the comics. There were even scenes that seemed to have been lifted from the pages. With Rick and those who survived the prison assault now thrown to all points of the compass it brings up some interesting prospects of seeing the group trying to survive on the road not as a coherent veteran team, but in piecemeal.
With the Governor and most of his people dead the show will now have room to introduce some new characters. These characters should be familiar to fans of the comics and it will be interesting how Gimple and his stable of writers will be able to translate them from pages to the small screen.
The Walking Dead returns on AMC on February 9, 2014.
One of my guilty pleasure films of the past 20 years was this little martial fantasy flick called Storm Riders. I think most everyone of my generation who heard about it ended up seeking it out.
I have a feeling the same thing will happen for this latest generation when they hear whispers and ever-growing tales of Donnie Yen’s The Monkey King. It has Yen in heavy make-up to look ike The Monkey King from the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West. It has Chow Yun-Fat as the Jade Emperor. What else does one need. Plus, it’s in IMAX 3D!
The Monkey King has been given a September 14, 2014 release date for North America
I think it’s not a secret that the anime series (and now the three films) Puella Magi Madoka Magica is one of my favorite anime. It’s not just me who has a major fondness for this anime. Site anime editor pantsukudasai56 also shares my passion for this series. Over a couple years ago I profiled several AMVs featuring this series. One of them was Chiikaboom’s Devil’s Game.
That very same editor decided to go back and re-edit the AMV using scenes from the series and the three films and what we get is a vast improvement over a video that was already a classic in the AMV scene. The animation from the films are much more crisp and the detail shows from the increased budget.
This “Devil’s Game 2.0” has now become one of my top AMVs ever and I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way.
Anime:Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Puella Magi Madoka Magica Movie 1: Beginnings, Puella Magi Madoka Magica Movie 2: Eternal, Puella Magi Madoka Magica Movie 3: Rebellion
To say that 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes went a long way in washing out the taste out of fans mouth after having seen Tim Burton’s reboot of Planet of the Apes would be an understatement. Rupert Wyatt was able to bring the franchise back to prominence by actually treating the story as a sort of scifi allegory instead of a platform to once again exercise one’s filmmaking quirks.
It was a no-brainer that a sequel will follow up the success of the 2011 film. But with a fast-moving schedule there were several casualties. Rupert Wyatt didn’t think he had enough time to shoot the film the way he wanted to so he was replaced by Matt Reeves. James Franco is also gone from the project. Instead we get several veteran actors like Gary Oldman, Jason Clarke, Keri Russell and Kirk Acevedo joining Andy Serkis.
The film seems to take places a decade or so after the release of the deadly virus at the end of the first film. Humanity has survived both the virus and the wars which followed it, but civilization as we know it now are a thing of the past. With humanity trying to rebuild it must now deal with a rising nation of genetically-enhanced apes led by Andy Serkis’ Caesar. With Gary Oldman on one side seeming to be the leader of humanity’s survivors I don’t see peace as being a goal in this film.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is set for a July 11, 2014 release.
One of the biggest surprises for 2012 was the fact that a remake of an 80’s TV show on the fledgling Fox Network ended up being a major hit for the year. The show was 21 Jump Street and the film that stared Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill was a laugh riot from beginning to end.
So, just like any hit that comes out of Hollywood there’s bound to be a sequel and the producers were quick to make it happen. This is why in the summer of 2014 we will get the sequel to 21 Jump Street which will be called 22 Jump Street. It would seem the Korean Catholic Church being used in the first film was sod so now they move across the street to the abandoned Vietnamese Catholic Church on 22 Jump Street.
Will this sequel catch lightning in a bottle once again? Will Channing Tatum finally realize that his true calling is to be a comedic action star?
22 Jump Street will answer all these questions and more you probably didn’t realize you had on June 13, 2014.
This past summer saw the return of kaiju to the film vernacular with the release of Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim. The very same studios which released this film, Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures return next summer with a similar film, but this time with the return of the granddaddy of all kaiju: Godzilla.
Godzilla is a reboot of the kaiju franchise with Gareth Edwards trying to make up for the travesty that was Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla of over a decade ago. This time around it looks like (at least from the teaser) that Edwards is going the serious route with this reboot. It helps that he has quite the cast to play around with. This Godzilla will star Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Olsen, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ken Watanabe.
We also get a brief glimpse of Godzilla itself right near the end followed by the iconic monster scream that’s as recognizable as the tweets and twoots of R2-D2.
Godzilla will return to the big-screen on May 16, 2014.
Through the Shattered Lens 