This year - perhaps even more than any other year in history - has contained its fair share of cinematic disappoints, likely because we're all getting way too enthralled with the power of franchises, and because trailers are manipulating our thoughts and expectations in ways that just aren't fair. I mean, what happened to the days of hearing about a movie on a whim and just, you know, checking it out? I'll tell you what happened: those days died a horrible, agonising death, and we're all to blame for it.
Unveiled fresh from Los Angeles this morning with about as much self-importance, as, well the Golden Globes, the 70th Golden Globe nominations are upon us, and the list appears exactly as one might have expected - save for multiple nominations for that Ewan McGregor flick Salmon Fishing In The Yemen, which I thought we'd all agreed to forget about.
Now that his first entry in The Hobbit trilogy officially hits theatres in the UK today (and in the US tomorrow), fans of the New Zealand director might be forgiven for thinking that Peter Jackson has his hands full putting together the remaining chapters, what with that being his job and such. Until next year that is, when Jackson will begin work on his sequel to Steven Spielberg's Tin Tin. Which means that there'll be more motion capture over the next few years than you can shake an Andy Serkis at.
Pixar fans worldwide have their fingers crossed that Monsters University - next year's sequel to the brilliant Monsters Inc. - will mark a return to form for the studio after a genuine tragedy and a middling flick that just didn't have all the usual magic. Set during Mike (Billy Crystal) and Sulley's (John Goodman) alma mater days, this sequel doubles as Pixar's first prequel, a movie that will hopefully grant the studio a chance to innovate what it means to go back in time and tell a story.
The return of Arrested Development on Netflix is, like, the greatest news ever, news that might only ever be improved through the promise of even more episodes - and we all know how unlikely that would be, because the world isn't that kind, and Netflix aren't that good. Except no, Netflix are that good, and it's actually happening, and maybe we'll get world peace and the polar icecaps will stop melting and...
Not that anybody much cares or respects what actors have to say about this year's films, the Screen Actors Guild insists on getting involved with their own list of nominations, all of which you can read below. And apparently they were hugely enamoured with Silver Linings Playbook, probably because of all the great performances, but also because they could really use a gig working with David O. Russell: he's winning people Oscars these days, right? Despite the fact that Silver Linings has been nominated in almost all of the "good categories", Jennifer Lawrence is bizarrely missing from the Best Actress category, which to us, denotes a whole bunch of jealousy. Now that's not very actor-ish, is it?
Given that two of this month's most highly anticipated movies - Les Miserables and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, didn't quite resonate with the critics as much audiences might've hoped, the attention has turned to Quentin Tarantino's spaghetti western homage Django Unchained to pick up the pieces. And given that Tarantino movies aren't for everyone, it was expected that this particularly bloody tale of violent revenge - one that deals with America's dark past with slavery by taking a hammer to it - would undoubtably divide the critics, given the subject matter.
In what is rumored to be Steven Soderbergh's last movie for a while (before he decides to unretire again), Side Effects looks be taking its cues from Hitchcock, Polanski and the works of Nabokov, and also Channing Tatum has landed a role because that means the film will actually make money. While we've already been treated to some stills of Rooney Mara, Jude Law, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Channing Tatum, the first poster for the upcoming psychological thriller has been unveiled - and it's a doozy. Check it out below.
Keeping things totally relevant and not at all taking a huge financial risk given that we probably won't even be using mobile phones in 2016 (we're predicting futuristic brain transceivers), the creative geniuses over at Angry Birds have announced a feature film adaptation for just around then.
Comedy is probably the hardest genre to get right. You never know just how people are going to take joke, despite the fact that it sounds hilarious on paper. Many films try admirably to have audiences rolling in the aisles, only for them to snigger occasionally and fake guffaw purely because they feel bad for the filmmakers or actors they like. Because writing funny jokes on paper and then hiring actors who can deliver said jokes exactly as intended - enough to make audiences believe as thought that's the first time the joke has ever been said - is freakin' tough.
