Saturday, September 19th, 2009: International Talk Like A Pirate Day

Arr me hardies! I hope the massive consumption of grog, raping and pillaging of International Talk Like A Pirate Day hasn't completely exhausted your impulse to be an angry riotous group. What I mean by this is, I keep trying to take up for The Walt Disney Company. Because of them we have Pixar, we have Miramax's money supply, and we have American distribution of Studio Ghibli films. Still, the bastardry went a little too far late last night, when on the eve of ILAP, Disney told the man responsible for the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise to walk the plank, or in more precise terms, the Los Angeles Times reports that Disney chairman Dick Cook was fired last night with an immediate impact being seen as Johnny Depp gave an interview showing his concerns and doubts on going forward with Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides without Cook's involvement with the company. To put out the largest swashbuckling film franchise on the holy day might as well been the equivalent of allowing Mickey Mouse to defecate on any of the religious relics found sacred to The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Just terrible.

Before I get angrier at Disney's mockery of the one day we can truly reach out to people in hopes of them being touched by thine noodly appendage, and despite the fact that instead of any real rape or adventurin', I was reduced to daydreams of swords, busty wenches, barrels of rum and battling mythical sea monsters while writing twenty pages of notes on barbiturate abuse. Still, I can further slip into the imaginary fantasy via a few clips of great pirates in cinematic history. First, is the great sword fight/fencing scene from the 1935 Errol Flynn vehicle, Captain Blood. Next, I included a rather inappropriate clip of bad acting from the first big budget porn, the swashbuckling hardcore Pirates. Lastly, I'll end with all of our favorite movie pirate... the Dread Pirate Roberts, and his battle of wits against the Great Vizzini. Also, as a bonus, here's a link to the LastFM page featuring the best pirate of song of all time, The Sex Pistols' "Friggin' in the Rigging".




P.S. I know it breaks the entire piratey theme, but Mania has an article arguing to whom should be cast in the beloved role of Bilbo Baggins in Guillermo del Toro's The Hobbit adaptation. It will give you enough reason to bitch for the next week or so. David Tennant and Martin Freeman are feasible by the way. Maybe not right, but feasible.

Saturday, August 1st, 2009

Last year, Universal Pictures hit big with the Abba musical Momma Mia!, setting records over in the United Kingdom, and raking in a decent amount stateside as well, and almost inevitably opened the flood gates for Hollywood to begin a musical craze to try to capitalize on the film's earnings. So no surprise that Universal, via RiskyBusinessBlog, announced that there is a remake of the 1970's funky controversial look at the Biblical life of Jesus and Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar. I don't really see a remake of this cashing in nearly as much as Momma Mia! did. Can you imagine the religious groups already? In a post-The Passion of the Christ world even? There is so many people now just looking for a reason to be angry or offended at a film such as this. Yet, there is one good thing. It is rumored that Marc Webb, the man behind the wonderfully reviewed film (500) Days of Summer, may be helming the project. I have yet to see his latest effort that stars Zooey Deschanel, but if the trailer and reviews are worth anything to go on, a quirky re-imagining of this may actually be an entertaining idea. Probably not a popular one, but entertaining nonetheless.

In more remake news, Variety reports that a remake of the 1935 swashbuckling classic Captain Blood may be re-worked into the fabric of un-needed films. I do enjoy Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, but I would have to agree that a film that is nearing its 75th anniversary may be remade without a terrible argument, no matter how great it was during the original release. However, it isn't the fact that the film is being remade that bothers me, it is the direction of the story in which the new film will take. The directors, Michael and Peter Spierig, of the upcoming Daybreakers film, and writer John Brownlow is switching the tale from the high seas to outer space. Here's hoping that Daybreakers fails, and this goes straight to Syfy.

MovieWeb had an interview with Eric Bana, in which the actor reveals that he will not return as Captain Nero, the Romulan villain of the latest Star Trek film, in the sequel. If there is much to say bad about J.J. Abrams' adaptation, it is that the villainous time-travelling Romulans wasn't strong enough, speaking of course in terms of Ricardo Montalban as Khan. Not that Bana was bad, but I'm not too crushed of the grand possibilities that could come from the next film.

As you can clearly tell, it is a very, very slow news Saturday. So, if you're like me, and none of the aforementioned news bits keeps your interest alive long enough to go and have a fight on message boards across the web, you can entertain yourself by going over the San Diego Comic Con exclusives on ToyRocket. A few from Star Wars, as well as an Indiana Jones fertility idol from Mighty Muggs, some G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra stuff and a figure from Coraline make it all relevant enough to put on this blog.