Life lesson #1: Never trust DVD menus. They are programmed by humans, and humans lie. Therefore, DVD menus lie. If you buy one and the menu looks wrong, do not show fear. Just stand firm and call your player a filthy liar. Life lesson #2: Don't teach your newborn a fictional alien language instead of English. That is cruel. What's the matter with you? Life lesson #3: Don't take life lessons from a man on the internet. Wait, what's going on? Oh, right, movie updates. Here they are.
THE GOOD
• The other two posters for Alice in Wonderland were released on Facebook last week, completing the set of three. Your sharp eyes do not deceive you: the three posters can indeed be combined to form this image:
• I'm going out on a huge limb here by giving this movie the benefit of the doubt. This trailer for Jump doesn't exactly look any better than your typical Hollywood dance movie, but it's written by Stephen Chow and it seems to feature some of Chow's brand of humor. It's a little weird, though: the first half of the trailer plays it like a spoof, but then it doesn't. Oh well, at least it'll probably have above average breakdancing.
• According to this interview, Broken Lizard is close on getting Super Troopers 2 off the ground and Brian Cox will definitely return to reprise his role. Just a matter of time, meow.
• In an interview with io9, The Road director John Hillcoat revealed that when he showed the film to Cormac McCarthy, the author didn't find an issue with the film, other than asking for a few lines to be added—which Hillcoat did.
• I'll admit that I can't warm up to the idea of a musical remake of 8½ (even if it was a Broadway show first), and Rob Marshall doesn't exactly fill me with any confidence... but you know what? Fuck it. This Nine thing looks like it could be a blast.
THE BAD
• When you've got a good thing going, why stop at one? Roland Emmerich spoke to MTV and revealed that he's not just planning on an Independence Day sequel, but TWO Independence Day sequels, making it a trilogy. The sequels will follow Will Smith and Bill Pullman's characters in present day, which means it's impossible for Pullman to still be President. Or is it? You never know with Emmerich.
• Robert Zemeckis is not going to rest until all classic Christmas stories are mo-capped. The Polar Express and Christmas Carol director is said to be planning on doing his next, based on The Nutcracker. At least it'll be toys and rats and not humans. Wait a minute, why isn't Pixar doing this?
• I don't really know what the point of this is, but I guess sometimes people just do weird things. A Chinese animation company inexplicably decided to remake Pixar's short Presto, nearly shot by shot.
• Director Dominic Sena's last three movies were regrettable miscalculations (Gone in 60 Seconds, Swordfish, Whiteout), squandering what coud've otherwise been entertaining flicks. With that in mind, I don't really expect Seasons of the Witch to be any better. This trailer already looks like an Uwe Boll movie with a slicker hand.
• A new trailer for Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lighting Thief. Since it's directed by Chris Columbus and all, any tonal and visual similarity to Harry Potter is to be ignored. What can't be ignored, however, is just how boring this thing looks.
THE WTF
• A Klingon-to-English translator iPhone app is pretty cool if you ride this side of nerd. There's a more interesting side to the story, though. The app was developed with the help of linguist d'Armond Speers, which dug up an old story of how he taught his son Klingon instead of English as some kind of social experiment. Here's the original 1996 Wired article, and its 1999 follow-up. The kid is now 15 and doesn't speak a lick of Klingon, the father says.
The surprising part? Speers claims that he is not even a Trekkie, and that his interest in the Klingon language is simply because he's a linguist.
• In bizarre remake news, acclaimed director Zhang Yimou (Hero) has adapted the Coen Brothers' first film Blood Simple into a Chinese period film, except he seems to have taken his inspiration from a different Coen Bros movie. The remake is being called A Simple Noodle Story, and here's the trailer.
• If you bought the new Fight Club Blu-ray this week, you might've noticed a little gag that David Fincher has inserted into it, as a reference to something Tyler Durden might do. When you start up the disc, it loads up the menu for another 1999 movie, Never Been Kissed. The joke being that it's a movie that's a far cry from Fight Club, yet made a boatload more money at the box office when they came out. Fincher even made sure to ask permission to do this from the movie's star and producer, Drew Barrymore. Pretty cool of them, I say, although I think Tyler Durden sense of humor would've chosen Japanese porn or something.
• I'm not sure I'm understanding this trailer correctly. The French drama Ricky appears to be a movie about a flying baby. Yet this trailer shies away from that fact and tries to keep the baby's wings a mystery. Even more bizarre are scenes where the baby is obviously flying around in a supermarket and later made into a balloon—yet we never see him, we just see his parents looking up and reacting.
• Kenneth Branagh's Thor is building up a pretty impressive cast. The latest to join is the great Idris Elba, who will be playing the Asgardian god Heimdall. This casting decision makes me giggle, because Heimdall is not only white in the comics, but in Norse mythology he's nicknamed "White God," for he is the whitest skinned of all.
I refuse to believe this was unintentional on Brannagh's part.
