Screenhead

Remember how, when I wrote about The Haunting of Winchester House, how GREAT I thought it was that The Asylum was finally getting out of the mockbuster trend and no longer Asylumizing movies?

Sadly, that’s all gone as The Asylum releases 2012 Supernova, which is pretty much taking on 2012.  The only problem is that, of course, The Asylum doesn’t have anywhere NEAR the cash required to make those kind of special effects.

The plot, though, is actually pretty interesting–two hundred years ago, a star exploded and launched an enormous wave of radiation.  Sadly, two hundred years ago was apparently during the War of 1812, because it’s about to hit in much-popularized 2012.  So now a group of scientists is out to launch a whole load of nukes into the upper atmosphere so they can augment the Earth’s natural anti-radiation shielding.

I’ll admit, though, that The Asylum clearly does the best it can with what it has to work with.  What baffles me, though, is that they try to take on this monster projects with the most minimalist budgets you can imagine.  It’s like trying to eat a Ho-Ho the size of a Buick, and doing it with a knife and fork.

The result, however, of trying to load a bunch of AA batteries in a space designed for a Diehard is that the whole thing has this vaguely repetitive feel in which a simulated disaster happens, then we react to that disaster, then another one happens, and so on and so forth without much in the way of an overarching plotline to hold it all together.

There will be plenty of thrills here–watching people try to escape from things blowing up and whatnot–but are these thrills going to be enough to hold the overall picture together?  Well, that’s your call, in the end.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, meanwhile,  isn’t so impressed and thus hands the newest Asylum knockoff a fair enough five out of ten.  it clearly tried, but it just couldn’t tackle what it set out to try.

Watching Astro Boy, the mostly new remake of the original anime / manga, was a lot like using a new version of Windows for the first time.  It’s got a whole lot of fancy bells and whstles, and it’s downright charming in some senses, but it’s also got a whole lot of serious problems that get in the way of realizing its full capability.

The plotline is where most of these problems crop up.  When young Toby Tenma, an unaccountably brilliant lad who’s so hated by his classmates that they’re throwing things at him when he leaves a room, is accidentally killed by a new military robot, his grieving father (who, just incidentally, happens to be the father of modern robotics as well) decides that he’s going to build a replacement son.

Naturally, it’s not long before what he has a “what hath science wrought??” moment and figures it’s for the best to just shut the boy down.  But after the Toby-robot, later called Astro Boy, escapes and makes his way to the wreckage outside the town (actually BENEATH the town if you want to be specific) he briefly grew up in, he discovers that most everything and most everybody serves some purpose in life…even those things that were formerly unwanted.

Let’s get the problems out of the way first.  The plot has so many holes in it it’s a wonder how it manages to stay in one piece.  Enormous segments of events will be left utterly unexplained.

For instance: if the surface dwellers could just fly up to Metro City in any old hovercar, as they’re shown doing in the end, why didn’t they just pack up a few dozen busloads and take back the town themselves?  And while I’m at it, how did Cora manage to leave Metro City in the first place?  Don’t even get me started on why the Peacemaker robot, which is clearly absorbing EVERYTHING IN SIGHT when we first see it, up to and including the barrier in front of it, suddenly becomes SELECTIVE about his absorption capabilities in the final minutes.  He could’ve absorbed the entire city at the rate he was going.  And where did that ALIEN come from in the last thirty seconds?  Seriously?  Can we get a few BIGGER plotholes?  It’s almost blocking daylight at this point!

But.

But…Astro Boy is, let’s face it, a charming little romp with a hyperkinetic boy robot that features lots of high-speed action and sufficient gunfire to keep any anime or action buff occupied.  The only bad things that happen in the end are to the people who deserve them.  The ending could not be much happier.  They will even SAY as much IN THE FILM ITSELF.  You can’t telegraph a punch any more clearly than this one was.

The Screenhead Ten Scale likes a feel-good movie you can’t help but feel good about, but at the same time realizes that this dog will NOT hunt in terms of plot, and thus hands it a thoroughly mixed-bag five out of ten.

I think I just about swallowed my own tongue when I heard the baffling and downright shocking news that George “Total Wackjob” Lucas was about to stage a new Star Wars trilogy.

But that was what I spotted mere minutes ago, folks, and it’s downright cringe-inducing.

Be advised, however, that this is GOSSIP.  From an outfit called Market Saw comes the following chunklets of possibility:

1. An actual three-part live-action Star Wars series is possibly coming out.

2. George Lucas will NOT be directing said titles. He will be producing only.

3. All three titles would be released in 3-D.

Well…anything’s possible, I suppose.  Considering the sheer amount of money these movies made, and considering the fact that there’s a whole lot of strangeness that could be happening either between episodes Three and Four or after Six or even before One or even at the same time in another part of the Galaxy Far Far Away, well, we could do just about anything with this.  And with George Lucas just signing checks, they might even be good.

Remember when I said it was the dumbest idea ever to put some UFC fighter in charge of the role of B.A. Baracus in the upcoming remake of The A-Team?

Well, as it turns out, it may not be that bad an idea after all.  Check it out above–the pic with the text is old B.A., otherwise known as Mr. T.  The other pic is NEW B.A., Quintin “Rampage” Jackson.  You may well notice that, well, they look pretty darn similar.

Sure, it’s not an EXACT translation.  That’s never going to happen.  But there’s something to be said for “close enough”, and this just might qualify, or at least it does from where I’m sitting.

Take a look at the two pics then hit the comments section.  Do you think this new B.A. is going to work out all right?  Or is his lack of acting experience going to be too noticeable?

Well, folks, it was really only a matter of time, and I do mean the above sincerely, because we’re going to need all the help we can get to ensure that Resident Evil 4: Afterlife doesn’t suck sour frog ass.

We can take some small comfort in the reported knowledge that both Milla Jovovich and Ali Larter will be reprising their previous roles as psychic Alice and Claire Redfield, and we can take some further consolation in the knowledge that we’re still going to be in the post-apocalyptic desert on this one ensuring us the best possible chance at full-on dystopia.

However, this being the Resident Evil movie leaves every chance that it’s going to suck, especially considering the lousy time we had with the first two, when it was still crystalline clear that the video game really had nothing to do with the movie except to provide a name for the script.

We’ll get to see how this all comes out when it hits theaters next August.

Once again we’ve got a special super-secret advance preview for you, folks–today we’re talking about Pandemic, which will be available for you to see just in time for Halloween, October 27th.  And though it will be familiar ground to say the least, you should still get something out of it.

Pandemic brings us a small town veterinarian who’s discovered something very odd about the local wildlife.  It’s developing a particularly nasty bug that kills within hours (and not too many of them) of exposure.  Worse, this bug not only does horrendous things to critters, it also does likewise to humans. And once the army gets wind of it, well, here we go on the trail to Quarantine Town, with stops in Eventually We’re Going to Commit Mass Murder Village.  So now, our veterinarian is going to have to get to the bottom of all this and hopefully manage to get out alive in the process.

Yes, the comparisons between this and other pandemic titles like Outbreak and The Crazies and such will be so inevitable as to make most folks wonder what took them so long getting there, but they’re no less accurate for the inevitability.  If you couldn’t get enough of scientist heroes, then Pandemic is going to be right up your alley.  It’ll seem familiar, but this shouldn’t be interpreted as bad.  They don’t seriously screw anything up here and play it all very strictly by the numbers.

Advance warning, however–this sucker could not be much more depressing if it tried.  Of course, for those of you out there who believe that the United States government is actually capable of testing biological weapons on humanity, you’ll get a sort of cold vindication out of this movie.

The Screenhead Ten Scale hands Pandemic a six out of ten for a lot of unoriginal material, but for at least not bungling what it stole very hard.

It’s hard to pin down exactly how I feel about volume two of Primeval, which just came out yesterday from the folks at BBC America.  But we’ll go through exactly why in a minute.

First, a plot recap.  There’s an organization in England, the ARC,  that’s devoted entirely to hunting down various beasties that emerge from some kind of time-dilation portal known as an anomaly.  These anomalies spew beasties like a dime store gumball machine spews toy beasties when you put in a credit card.  So needless to say, there are a whole lot of beasties running wild in and around London at any time.

This is where our fearless collective of heroes steps in and takes care of business in the grandest possible sense, ushering the beasties back through the anomalies wherever possible and occasionally killing a few when it’s not.  Meanwhile, the ARC is being hounded in every possible direction, like dealing with overzealous journalists and former operatives who are convinced that they have seen the enemy, and the enemy is ARC, just not right away.

Alternately thrilling and baffling by turns, Primeval is going to do a whole lot of interesting things, some of which even manage to make sense.  But it’s not just science fiction in here, no sir–there will be some laughs and some occasional romantic bits that will actually allow guys, who came here for the beasties and the sheer staggering array of hot English chicks, to convince their girlfriends to see it too, because there will be plenty of drama and romantic tension among our leads.

In other words, Primeval is one of those really, really rare collections that manages to be a whole lot of different things to a whole lot of different people.  And that’s part of its great appeal.

Whether you’re here to watch beasties try and eat people or see if those two favorite characters of yours will EVER manage to kiss, Primeval pretty much has everything you’re going to be wanting.

And that’s why the Screenhead Ten Scale hands it a hefty seven out of ten, because even though it’s a bit niche, it’s nowhere near as niche as anyone expected.

It might surprise you to know that both Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwartzenegger will be back to take on the action movie world in 2010’s The Expendables. It might be especially surprising since, at last report, California was one bus token away from complete fiscal Armageddon, so what is the governor doing running around in movies?

But anyway! A trailer was successfully bootlegged out of Venice for The Expendables, and we’ve got it directly below thanks to the magic of YouTube.

If you think it looks a lot like every other movie Stallone was ever in, then you’re probably not too far off.  Except, of course, this one has Jason Statham.  And Jason Statham is pretty much always awesome.

The teaser trailer, meanwhile, is of relatively poor quality but such is the way that all bootlegs pretty much go.  You will, however, get to see how very cookie-cutter this action flick will be in advance, so you’ll know in advance if you want to see it.  Frankly, I’m probably in because I enjoy this kind of mindless eye-candy.  And somewhere, an entire studio hopes against hope that you will be too.

Special note to Will Smith and company: ENOUGH ALREADY.

Yes, it’s apparently true that for some reason (probably a desperate push for more money) there will indeed be a Bad Boys 3.  What is this, Old Home Week for Martin Lawrence?  First it’s Big Momma’s House 3, now we wind up with Bad Boys 3?  And yes…just in case you might have held out hope, Michael Bay is hoped by the studio to be back directing.

This means you at least know what to expect going in–plenty of explosions and special effects with short shrift given to anything that might accidentally resemble a coherent plotline.  But at least you know what to expect, so I figure that if this sucker manages to get off the ground it’ll either be a summer movie or dumped neck-deep in January.  There’s no word on script or release date or anything like that; everything’s still real early stage.   It might take us until 2011 to get this one in theatres, so brace yourself just in case.

Normally when I say “Rose McGowan was in a big hit”, you think maybe it was  a movie or TV show.  You might be thinking Charmed.  But as it turns out, it took on a whole new meaning on the set of Red Sonja–a literal one.

“I had wrist and elbow surgery and they took part of my elbow out. I had really bad nerve damage from doing stunts – I do a lot of my own stunts,” McGowan recently told Tarts. “I could no longer use my arm, but now I can hold a fork and drive so we’re working our way up. It’ll probably be another six months of rehab, but It’s the price you pay for being really limber and being able to do back flips!”

I just READ about that and it’s enough to make my arm hurt.  I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for her.  It’s especially strange, though, that technically shooting for Red Sonja isn’t slated to begin for a while yet, so how’d she get the injuries on set?  Pre-filming training?

We don’t know, but we’ll keep an eye out and let you know when the Red Sonja filming gets back in play.