Geek News You Should Know: 5/21/14

1) The Man of Steel sequel, Batman vs. Superman has undergone another name change to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, basically signifying officially that this movie will be the launching point for the Justice League.  It is scheduled to hit theaters in May 2016 (probably).




2) Doctor Who Season 8 has started filming and we have some shots as Peter Capaldi (in a lovely orange spacesuit) with the Tardis.  No real meaning to the pictures other than I could not be more excited for some new Doctor Who episodes.

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 3) If you are an Amazon Prime subscriber today is the first day that you can access HBO's vast library using that service.  It includes shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, Six Feet Under, Enlightened, Flight of the Conchords, and Extras which I all recommend as well as lots of other series, HBO miniseries and films, and comedy specials.  Current shows like Girls, The Newsroom, Veep, True Blood (first 3 seasons available) and Boardwalk Empire (which the first season is up) will be added over time.  Guessing there's going to be something along the lines of a 3-year gap between when content airs and when it goes to Amazon Prime, which can be sped up if the series ends or something like that.  You can check out the content here.

4) Gillian Jacobs, who played Britta Perry on the recently cancelled NBC sitcom Community, has been announced as the newest recurring character on the HBO smash-hit Girls.  No word on what character she'll be playing but as a big fan of both Gillian and Girls, I am excited!

5) In a movie right up the AB Convo's alley, a new romantic comedy directed by David Wain and starring Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler titled They Came Together released it's first clip online today and it looks like a more grown up version of Wet Hot American Summer (that is still completely immature).  The movie also features Cobie Smulders, Jason Mantzoukas, Michael Ian Black, Ed Helms, and I'm sure a gaggle of other awesome people.  It is hitting VOD and select theaters on June 27. Check out the clip below.

Geek News You Should Know: 5/20/14

1) Disney has announced that starting this September, going on tour will be Frozen on Ice.  That makes a tremendous amount of sense as an Disney on Ice event and the perfect time to capitalize on their mega-smash hit.  Frozen on Ice will be hosted by Mickey and Minnie Mouse and also feature cameos from other Disney characters.  The tour will start in Orlando in September and make it's way around the country.  The show will feature 39 skaters and will have six different versions going around the United States in 2014 and 2015.  Ticket information can be found here.



2) Sadly, there are going to be no Pixar movies released in theaters this year, however that doesn't mean we are going to be without any new Pixar content as Disney released a new Cars short titled "The Radiator Springs 500 1/2" as streaming content on their Disney Movies Anywhere service.  While I'm not the biggest Cars fan, I definitely look forward to checking this out and you can to by going here.

3) A very underrated and canceled gem of a show, Enlisted, will have it's four remaining episodes aired on FOX starting June 1 and over the next 4 weeks.  If you haven't checked out this very funny military family based comedy, I recommend doing so as most of the episodes can be found on Hulu.

4) The trailer for the new Mark Millar (Kick-Ass, Wanted) comic book adaptation of The Secret Service will be titled Kingsman: The Secret Service and has hit the internet today along with a poster for the movie.  I'm a huge fan of the comic book and can't wait to see the movie, should be a lot of fun and Colin Firth is great casting for the main character.





5) The the sequel to The Lego Movie is being worked on, it was announced today that the "spinoff" project based on Lego's popular Ninjago line of toys will be hitting theaters in Fall 2016.  I really have no idea what Ninjago is, other than seeing some of the toys in stores.  I'm guessing this leans towards a younger audience, but hopefully will have elements that appeal to all audiences.  I mean, they're ninjas, it can't be all bad.

Geek News You Should Know: 5/19/14

Happy Monday!  Hope you all had a chance to check out episode 106 of the podcast, we had a lot of fun talking about Godzilla, the new Fall TV shows, and a lot more so check it out!

1) The teaser trailer for Zach Braff's Kickstarter backed project, Wish I Was Here, launched a couple of weeks ago and now finally the full trailer was released online.  I'm very impressed by how good this movie looks at this point and I'm glad I threw a couple of duckets towards making it because it is truly entertainment like this that I would like to see get made.  As a bonus before watching the trailer on the website, they had me type in my e-mail so Zach Braff could give a special message for helping make the movie, a very cool touch.  Probably the highlight for me was to see Zach Braff and Donald Faison back together again. Eagle!  This movie hits theaters July 18, 2014.

2)  In other trailer news, the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer was released online as well.  This upcoming Marvel sci-fi adventure will help blend the cosmic aspects of the Marvel universe, especially the Thanos teaser at the end of The Avengers, into the continuity of the Marvel films.  Guardians lands in movie theaters August 1, 2014.  You can check out the trailer on the Guardians Facebook page.

3) In news, that makes me amazingly happy, Nikki Finke is reporting that Alfonso Cuaron is deep in talks to direct the Harry Potter spinoff Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them.  Cuaron is no stranger to the Potterverse having previously directed my favorite of those movies, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, in addition to Gravity and Children of Men.  Needless to say, this is a terrific choice and I can't wait to see what Cuaron brings to this movie, which is currently planning on a November 2016 release.

4) AT&T is set to purchase DirecTV, which has some pretty huge ramifications as this will provide a greater alternative to cable as they can sell their television, data, and telephone packages on a much bigger scale now.  This will also provide a better infrastructure to offer high-speed bandwidth to more rural areas. 

5) AMC has released the full first episode of their new series Halt and Catch Fire on Tumblr of all places.  It will be available on Tumblr up until May 31, before it premieres on the network June 1.  The Tumblr tie-in isn't completely out of left field as the show does deal with the rise of the PC in the 1980's shortly after IBM released their first computer and in premise kind of sounds like Mad Men meets a more serious version of HBO's Silicon Valley.  The show stars Pushing Daisies' Lee Pace in the main role and if AMC puts it on the air (or in this case the internet) I'm going to give it a chance.  You can give it a chance by going here.

Geek News You Should Know: 5/18/14 Weekend Edition

1) Godzilla stomped on the competition this weekend opening up to an estimated $93 million.  The other new movie that hit theaters, Million Dollar Arm, finished up at 4th place behind Neighbors and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 with an estimated $10 million, which has to be a little disappointing for Disney.  Here is the top 10 movies this week courtesy of BoxOfficeMojo.com.

TW	LW	Title (click to view)	Studio	Weekend Gross	% Change	Theater Count / Change		Average	Total Gross	Budget*	Week #
1	N	Godzilla (2014)	WB	$93,205,000	-	3,952	-	$23,584	$93,205,000	$160	1
2	1	Neighbors	Uni.	$25,991,000	-47.0%	3,311	+32	$7,850	$91,517,000	$18	2
3	2	The Amazing Spider-Man 2	Sony	$16,800,000	-52.7%	3,991	-333	$4,209	$172,170,000	-	3
4	N	Million Dollar Arm	BV	$10,511,000	-	3,019	-	$3,482	$10,511,000	$25	1
5	3	The Other Woman (2014)	Fox	$6,300,000	-34.4%	3,054	-252	$2,063	$71,664,000	$40	4
6	4	Heaven is for Real	TriS	$4,400,000	-41.2%	2,893	-155	$1,521	$82,249,000	$12	5
7	6	Rio 2	Fox	$3,800,000	-24.4%	2,371	-602	$1,603	$118,051,000	$103	6
8	5	Captain America: The Winter Soldier	BV	$3,759,000	-34.6%	2,271	-430	$1,655	$250,627,000	$170	7
9	8	Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return	CE	$1,952,000	-47.9%	2,578	-80	$757	$6,559,000	-	2
10	7	Moms' Night Out	TriS	$1,900,000	-55.9%	1,046	+2	$1,816	$7,327,000	$5	2

2)  Speaking of which, a sequel for Godzilla is in the works at Warner Bros. & Legendary Pictures, which surprises absolutely no one.  I'm sure more details will be released over upcoming months.

3) IGN has released their review for the highly anticipated Mario Kart 8 game coming out May 30th.  They gave it a very solid 9 out of 10.  You can check out their review here.

4)  As we talked about at the end of episode 106 today, AMC has picked up 3 new series to debut on their network.  The first of which is Chris Hardwick's All-Star Celebrity Bowling, where Chris and his friends battle different groups like the cast of Mad Men and Breaking Bad.  This was originally shown on the Nerdist YouTube channel but it will be redone for TV with Randy and Jason Sklar hosting.  Here is one of my favorites as they battle some WWE superstars.



5) Also being picked up by AMC is a reality series circling around Smashing Pumpkins' frontman Billy Corgan's Chicago based wrestling promotion, Resistance Pro, focusing on the behind the scenes aspects of running a wrestling promotion, which in many cases are sometimes even more interesting than what happens during the event.

Episode 106 Notes

Here are the official show notes for Episode 106: Move That Hashtag.

Geek News You Should Know: 5/16/14

1) The new Christopher Nolan movie, Interstellar, hits theaters this November and the first trailer hit the interwebs today, and it looks AWESOME!  It stars Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain, Anne Hathaway, Casey Affleck and Michael Caine and takes place on Earth in a not so distant future where food becomes scarce and McConaughey and a few other explorers go into space to try to find a solution for humanity.  This trailer is absolutely beautiful and I could not be more excited to see this film.



2) The first cast picture from Pitch Perfect 2 was posted on Rebel Wilson's twitter account yesterday and shows the gang, along with Director Elizabeth Banks, rocking some Barden Bellas jackets.  Hey, it's a slow news day and Pitch Perfect was an amazing movie, plus it's nice to see Banksy, Anna Kendrick, Rebel Wilson, Brittany Snow, and the rest of the gang re-united.



3) A new poster for Guardians of the Galaxy was released online today and you have to believe that this will be the official theatrical poster for the movie.  It is completely bad ass. Also, there will be a new trailer for the movie released on Monday, which I'll post up here in Monday's article and Anthony will be posting in his twitter all day and watching about 927 times.



 4) The reason to buy an X-Box One is only a year and a half away as Microsoft has officially announced Halo 5: Guardians for the system to be released in Fall 2015.  Very few details have been released as they plan on making a more formal presentation at E3 in a few weeks but here a promo image.  The Halo TV Series produced by Steven Spielberg will be available to watch on the X-Box One around the same time.




 5) Dark Horse Comics has released it's August 2014 Solicitations and this notes the last month that Star Wars will be releasing individual issues of comic books, they'll still have some trades in place to be released in later months of 2014 but it is the last month of floppies until Marvel takes over the license in 2015.  Also coming out are a continuation of Buffy: Season 10 as well as a new Blacksad: Amarillo collection, which Anthony gave rave reviews of the first book.

 

Movie Reviews: 4/29/14

Labor Day: A single mother played by Kate Winslet lets an escaped convict (Josh Brolin) move in with her and her son.  While the premise sounds like a very interesting romantic movie with some tension thrown in, not knowing what the fugitives great intentions are, it never really gets above being dull.  Considering it's by Jason Reitman who makes interesting movies like Juno and Young Adult, I was expecting to not be completely bored by this, however I was.  The characters just didn't click with me and while the acting was good, I just don't think they had enough to work with to make the audience feel an emotional investment in the characters.

Review: 2 Escaped Convicts out of 5.




I, Frankenstein: Should have been called I, Boring.  I should have figured when the tagline says "From the Producers of Underworld" to just run away but the completist in me that wants to watch every movie said try it you might like it.  Well I didn't.  It looks just like Underworld too, I think they used the same lighting crew and same 1800's London sets to create a very blueish atmosphere, because if you didn't know the lights are extra blue when there are monsters present.  If you're into the Underworld and Van Helsing movies, you'll probably enjoy this.  If you didn't it's not a terrible movies to watch with friends and make fun of, but that's about all.

Review: 1 Monster out of 5.



Endless Love:  This movie is a classic example of why I watch try to watch every movie I can.  I totally thought this was going to be a huge bust strictly released to try to make some money in theaters for Valentine's Day and it surprised the hell out of me.  It's not a very good movie and falls into cliches far too often but I couldn't find myself physically rooting and being emotionally invested when things would happen. The acting was good, especially the overprotective father played by Bruce Greenwood was particularly awesome.

Review: 3.5 Love Stories out of 5.