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.
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.
In 2011, a little action film from Indonesia directed by Welsh filmmaker Gareth Evans took the world by storm. The film was called The Raid (The Raid: Redemption in the West). It out-actioned every Hollywood blockbuster action film of that year and still manages to hold its own against other action films since.
So, it’s no surprise that a sequel was already in production by the time that film’s theater run was winding down in the West. Gareth Evans will return as director of The Raid 2: Berandal and so will the survivors of the first film.
With filming all pretty much done and the film moving on to post-production the first official teaser trailer for the sequel has been released and all I can say is…WOW.
The Raid 2: Berandal will be punching people in the face sometime around 2014.
We take a brief break from all things horror here at Through the Shattered Lens to bring to you the first official trailer for Marvel Studios second film in their Phase 2 of their Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier sees the return of Steve Rogers aka Captain America (The first Avenger) post-Battle of New York. He’s now an official member of S.H.I.E.L.D. but soon realizes that his 40’s ideals may not mesh well with the all-encompassing and super-secretive intelligence organization. From the look and feel of the trailer it looks like the film’s directors, Anthony and Joe Russo, are going for the conspiracy thriller tone for this new Captain America entry.
This is a good choice considering that the screenplay has been heavily influenced by Ed Brubaker’s run on the Captain America comics which also introduced the Winter Soldier of the film’s title.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier is set for a Spring, April 4, 2014, release date.
The second film of Marvel’s Phase 2 for it’s Cinematic Universe comes in the form of Thor: The Dark World. I’m sure the title should give as to which of the Avengers character is front and center for this Phase 2 film.
Above is the official theatrical poster for the film which has a strong fantasy, Drew Struzan feel to it. That’s more than appropriate since Thor bridges the gap between the more grounded superheroics of Midgard’s (that’s Earth to the layman) heroes (Captain America, Black Widow, Hawkeye and Iron Man) and the more fantasy and scifi denizens of Asgard like Thor and the upcoming film, Guardians of the Galaxy.
While this latest trailer released by Marvel is not the footage that was shown to Hall H attendees during Marvel’s panel at this year’s Comic-Con, it still manages to show some new footage in addition to one’s already shown at the initial teaser earlier. For one, it has more Loki (which is smart of Marvel since Loki has become this Cinematic Universe’s resident bad boy everyone seems to love or hate to love.) and it also shows some hints at the darker, grittier look that Alan Taylor looks to bring from his time as director of episodes of Game of Thrones for HBO.
Natalie Portman’s character, Jane Foster still seems to come off as not belonging to this ensemble, but there’s still chance that the finished product will flesh her out and her relationship with Thor to everyone’s satisfaction.
Thor: The Dark World is set for a November 8, 2013 release date.
This past week saw the largest collection of nerd, geek and comic book fandom gathered in one magical place. The place in question is San Diego and the event is called San Diego Comic-Con or simply just uttered in awed whispers as Comic-Con. It is a place that many outsiders have shunned as a place that has no place in good, normal society yet they continue to arrive in larger numbers to ply their products to those they shun. Even this blog has it’s shamers and ignorant individuals who spew insults yet they too continue to visit because deep in their subconscious they know, like those who ridicule Comic-Con and those who attend them with a passion, that they’re the ones out of step with whats not accepted in society.
What does this mean when it comes to the latest trailer for Kick-Ass 2 that just came out of Comic-Con?
Absolutely nothing other than the trailer and the film itself is just another weird meeting of the two cultures. It’s a film that celebrates the ridiculousness and absurdity of the comic book culture, yet it’s one that’s funded by the very same people who insulted the scene just a decade ago.
The first film was a revelation and helped introduced the world to one Chloe Grace Moretz, but it also showed that comic books and films made from them didn’t have to be PG or even PG-13. There was a place for ultra-violence in our comic book films. It also helped bring the name of Matthew Vaughn into the forefront of comic book fandom. While he’s not directing this sequel (he elected to go with X-Men: First Class and we’re all the better for it), he did help in bringing it to life and hand-picked his successor in Jeff Wadlow.
While Kick-Ass 2 is not getting the same sort of buzz from Comic-Con the original film did it is still one film I’m quite interested in seeing just to find out what has happened to our young superheroes and vigilante crime fighters since the last film. Plus, it’s main villain likes to call himself “Motherfucker”.
In 2000, a small little scifi-horror film came out starring that guy from Saving Private Ryan. We didn’t really recognize him as the household name of Vin Diesel we know now. It was still that guy who was in that Spielberg WWII film. Pitch Black was a modest success, but modestly enough that a sequel was greenlit right after with a much bigger budget. This sequel was less scifi-horror and more of an epic scifi film that was trying to be the Dune of it’s time. The Chronicles of Riddick wasn’t a modest success this time around and plans for a third film to finish off the trilogy never got off the development stage.
Vin Diesel has since become a big star of some caliber with his Fast and Furious franchise. With the success of the latest film in that franchise it looks like Universal had given the Diesel the go-ahead to make a third film in his scifi franchise simply titled, Riddick.
With a more modest budget than the second film, Riddick looks to return Vin Diesel’s character back to something more similar and thus safe. Riddick is back on a death world of a planet inhabited by dangerous critters who mayor may not hunt once an prolonged darkness sets in. Riddkc must also deal with a pesky band of mercenary bounty hunters after his hide. Where the second film tried to build on the character’s background and further his story in a space opera-like way this red band trailer shows that Riddick is best when playing the anti-hero who may or may not be the villain as well as the hero of the story.
Riddick is set for a September 6, 2013 release date.
Dreamworks Animation’s How to Train Your Dragon was one of those films for 2010 that caught me completely off-guard. I had dismissed it as another Dreamworks attempt to try and take the crown from Pixar. So, it was quite a surprise when I finally saw it and realized that Dreamworks had out-Pixared Pixar with this latest offering.
The film did great in the box-office and made the names Hiccup and Toothless names to remember fondly. So, it was a given that a sequel was going to be made and now it is 2013 and we finally have the first teaser trailer for How to Train Your Dragon 2 which will splash across all big-screen theaters around 2014.
To say that this teaser trailer evoked all the fun of the original would be an understatement. I would say that this simple teaser showing Toothless just flying around with Hiccup gave a better sense of the joy of flying than this year’s Man of Steel.
“Rise before Zod…kneel before Zod.”
The latest reboot of Superman by DC and Warner Brothers has now arrived. It’s bound to rake in the dollars and shake the foundations of cineplexes worldwide with its dizzying array of genocidal-level action and mayhem. Yet, we must not forget that before Michael Shannon donned the mantle of General Zod for Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel the megalomaniacal Kryptonian general was played by none other than The Limey himself, Terrence Stamp.
In one of the best scenes (and a favorite of mine) from Superman II (itself a film shouldering a continent-sized and kryptonite-laced amount of controversy over it’s filming) we find the original Zod easily subduing the defenders of the White House and matter-of-factly instructing the President of the United States to rise and kneel before him. Thus an iconic piece of pop-culture dialogue was born that day.
Through the Shattered Lens 