More remakes, a fan trailer, and a film option that blows... bubbles?
Disney is going to re-make "Flight of the Navigator," a film from an era when CGI was still pretty new and where trailers were seemingly designed to make people think movies were boring. This is one of those films that I should have not re-watched as an adult if I wanted it to remain "totally awesome" in my memory. It's still got some good stuff going on (the controls for the ship were neat, and I liked the computer's reply of "COMPLIANCE" whenever it executed a command) and the ship was one of the ones I wanted in my "fleet" if I ever got to command one.
The kid-star of the film, Joey Cramer, went on to only a few roles after 'Navigator, the last being in 1996. Those wondering where he wound up might find the answer here, if that is, indeed, Joey.
And as has been shouted all over the 'net, they're remaking "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," without (at the moment) Joss Whedon. Other than the obvious response, some are asking everyone to hold off on torching 20th Century Fox as they haven't made a final decision on the writer yet.
What links these two films is Paul "Pee Wee Herman" Rubens. Not only did he play Amilyn, the (eventually) one-armed vampire in Buffy, but he was also the voice of Max, the ship's computer, in 'Navigator. If they decide to re-make "Moonwalker," I'm calling a conspiracy... and questioning some studio head's grasp on what the market wants. :)
Speaking of questioning sanity, someone has greenlit a script for a movie based on Bazooka Joe. My own memories of Joe consist of wondering what happened to his eye, chewing Bazooka gum until it was the consistency of road tar in December, and getting totally shafted when I turned in the requisite number of wrappers to get a trick lighter that had a snake jump out of it and instead received a "magic card trick" from a box of Captain Crunch. The card trick (with two cards. That was all) came with a letter telling me that the lighter had been deemed unsafe and that this was a substitute. Anyway, the source material for this film can be seen here. Unless they're making Joe a cursed pirate, doomed to walk the Earth as an immortal teenager, forever working a creaking jaw on a wad of ancient gum, I'm not sure what they're going to do with it. I suppose the sequel could have him duke it out with Double Bubble's Pud.
Another thing making the rounds is this very well-done fan trailer for a hypothetical Green Lantern movie. I can't argue with the casting of Nathan Fillion as Hal Jordan, and while I recognize several of the movie clips this was spliced together from, I can't imagine a cooler Green Lantern film.
In the arena of video games, it's been a while since I dusted off the ol' Wiimote. The Wii is an odd duck, lacking the next-gen graphics of the more robust consoles while managing to at least initially storm the marketplace on more casual fare, it appears to still be in search of an identity. The few FPS-style games on the system seem a little lackluster when compared to the other two in the console trinity, so it really can't compete there. But then I saw something that just might help Nintendo find the niche its latest gaming system is trying to find: games that are totally insane. The previous link is for a game called "Muscle March." You are one of a large crowd of shiny, speedo-wearing muscle-guys, whose canister of protein powder has been stolen by a football player. You have to run after him, striking the same pose as he does when he creates holes in walls as he runs. Here's a clip of six minutes of the game, with loads more Katamari-style wackiness to try to comprehend. It's disturbing, funny, mind-blowing, and that's what the Wii needs to stand out: "Games That Should Not Be." You know they'd be standard dorm equipment in colleges the world over, at the very least.
Oh, and we're getting a bit more Tennant as Doctor Who than we thought this year, and it looks like a Doctor Who movie is in the works! I wonder if it will please this segment of the audience?
But now, it's linktime. Everyone pretend to be working!
- It's now possible to calculate a thousand d6's worth of damage using real dice. Thank you, science!
- Spider-Man sold his marriage to the Devil (or at least, Mephisto) to reboot his comic book. However, the newspaper comic strip refuses to reboot, giving us yet another alternate universe for the next mega-crossover event to originate from.
- Just how big is J.J. Abrams' Enterprise compared to the old one?
- I didn't realize that George Lucas took six whacks at the script for "Star Wars" before it was made. They're linked to here, and the first draft is compared with the final one.
- Squirrels are slowly gaining intelligence and must be stopped before they learn how to use katanas and shiruken.
- Shoot-'em-upgrade is the name of the game in Heavy Weapons, a spaceship-based game that has a "Robotron" feel to it.
- Is there drama happening near your computer? Be sure to accompany it properly.
- Beware the tiny yet overwhelming cuteness of the Pygmy Jerboa.
- Alert reader Tony (a different one than the last one) sends us a page about the Vasquez Rocks, also known as "The Wilhelm Scream of Hollywood Scenery."
- Shooting and tower defense? Core Defense gets two great tastes in one.
- And we close on hilarity: the "I'm a Marvel, I'm a DC" guy gives us the best reason I can think of as to why there should be a Deadpool movie.