Fans of Naughty Dog's Jak and Daxter series who fancy their gaming on the go may be delighted to hear the series' trilogy of classic PS2 platformers is scheduled for release on PS Vita later this year. In what has to be one of the oddest ways to kind-sorta-promote-without-anyone-really-noticing The Last Of Us, the games will make their handheld debut following their recent classification by the ESRB, though if last year's Vita port of Metal Gear Colid Collection is anything to go by, it won't include the series' PSP entries Daxter and The Lost Frontier.
As if Doctor Who wasn't enough of a phenomenon already, rumors of an episode directed by none other than The Hobbit's Peter Jackson have begun to circulate as the buildup to the show's 50th anniversary continues. The Australian, known also for his hand in horror classics Bat Taste and Braindead, is a known fan of the English sci-fi series and during an interview with EW and claimed he'd even do it for free: "They don’t even have to pay me. But I have got my eye on one of those nice new gold-colored Daleks. They must have a spare one (hint, hint)."
Riddick fans rejoice, for its star and occasional Rock-botherer Vin Diesel has rewarded his Facebook followers with a trailer for the film which we've snuck out of the social network's entirely imagined vaults to present here for your immediate enjoyment. Enjoy immediately:
Townies is shaping up quickly to be something I want to see. Seth Rogen's forthcoming comedy, in which he'll play a regular Joe and family man forced to confront the local bros from a nearby frat house, has already nabbed the 100% dependable Zac Efron and has most recently added Dave Franco and Christopher Mintz-Plasse to its lineup. There's a whole bunch of six degrees action to be found there if you figure in Superbad, Freaks & Geeks, 21 Jump Street and a host of other Rogen projects and the film, directed by The Five Year Engagement's Nick Stoller, already looks considerably more promising than any of the bearded Canuck's most recent endeavors.
Kiefer Sutherland is reportedly in talks to star as the villain in the upcoming Pompeii, Paul W.S. Anderson's 3D disaster movie about the 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Rome.
Though Anchorman: The Legend Continues is still in production, star Kristin Wiig is already set to work with writers Will Ferrell and Adam McKay again in Welcome To Me, an independent picture directed by Shira Piven (Fully Loaded) and written by Eliot Laurence (The Big Gay Sketch Show). The film is about Wiig's character spending her lottery winnings on a cable access talk show about her life living with associative personality disorder. Silver Linings Playbook's success means that now's the best time to get a project like this running, given the pairing of mental illness and comedy being as close to 'in vogue' as it'll ever be.
Transformers 4: you didn't ask for it, but by god you're gonna get it. Michael Bay's next entry in the studio franchise that's come to define 'diminishing returns' sees the director team with future Pain & Gain collaborator Mark Wahlberg, though until now that's just about all we've known about it. With the reveal of the vaguest of plot details as covered below, we can now add 'ingenious scientists' and 'ancient...Transformer' to the list of participants in a story yet to appear, but which Bay claims will move "in a full, new, different direction".
Not content with their deconstruction of the American superhero in ode to violence Drive, Nicolas Winding Refn and Ryan Gosling reteam for this summer's Only God Forgives, from which several new stills have emerged today. The film, in which Gosling's Thai boxing underboss is tasked by his mother to avenge his brother's recent death. Sounds like more of the same from the pair whose fascination with the nature of violence, its influences and its influence made Drive a deceptively deep film about a man driving fast cars.
For a while, the cinematic landscape seemed a little bleaker as the likelihood of a new Bond Film, (capital F) was jeopardized by MGM's bankruptcy and the gap between the cooly-recieved Quantum of Solace and any potential follow-up grew ever larger. Quite unbelievably, Skyfall did eventually emerge as not only a commercial smash of significant enough proportion to guarantee the series' future but as a critical darling, embraced by a great many Bond Fans (another capital F) as one of the greatest ever. Director Sam Mendes has opted not to return, instead acting as arguably the series' most positive influence in 50 years with his inheritance of a flawed franchise and restoration of its roots. Skyfall was like a mechanic in a bad metaphor: it didn't just tune up the engine - it replaced it with a superior model built to the original car's specification.
You know how it goes: the trailer (or the trailer for the trailer) for a big new release is shown at some highly-publicized nerd mecca, someone nabs a copy and sticks it on the Internet, whoever's making the film shuts the whole thing down before finally capitalizing on the publicity by releasing the thing in high quality within the week. Hot Fuzz director Edgar Wright's Ant-Man has so far enjoyed half of this rite of passage and I reckon we'll all be treated to the trailer teaser trailer (for the film's trailer) sooner'n you can say "how's that for a slice of fried gold?"
