Today's News: lots of little news items

Plenty of news this week, but nothing really major. The usual atmosphere in January.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/158650/trailer_penny_dreadful_seizoen_2

Bring it on! If Season 2 is anywhere near as creepy and offbeat as Season 1, I'm game. The trailer sure indicates the eerie, Gothic mood of the show remains unchanged. It's just the characters that get mixed up in new plot twists which causes the major change in pace. From the looks of it, Eva Green's Vanessa Ives takes centrestage again. I don't mind, as Green is a very appreciable actress, though I do think a little more attention to some of the other characters would have been and remains most welcome. It would have made the revelation about Josh Hartnett's character a little easier to digest, since it now came mostly out of the blue, though I reckon Season 2 will definitely address matters more on that front. But hey, anything involving supernatural characters in Victorian London very much piques my interest. If the second season proves half as intriguing as the first, I won't complain.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/158651/tom_hardy_verlaat_suicide_squad

I predicted this was gonna happen in my previous discussions of casting for this DC movie (look them up via the tags below, if you disbelieve me). Suicide Squad is an ensemble movie filled with colourful characters, and its ranks have been filled with some big A-list actors to portray them. Of course, egos were bound to come into conflict with one another over how much screentime their character featured and what the exact nature of their supervillain of choice ought to be sooner rather than later. And so Hardy is the first one out, as new sources (not mentioned in my article) claim was the result just because of creative differences over his character. I expected it to be Will Smith, so that at least is a little surprising to me. I would also have liked to see Hardy stay on board more than I would Smith, as I consider him to be the more interesting actor (since he's not yet a superstar, unlike Smith). However, I wouldn't be surprised to see more of the cast follow Hardy's example soon. I hope they won't, since the majority consists of solid actors who might do very well with the subject matter. But it's hard to deny director David Ayer might have bit off more than he could chew with a cast as loaded with impressive names as this one.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/158664/eerste_foto_cast_now_you_see_me_2

The big trick this first movie, about a bunch of rebellious illusionistsbreaking into banks, pulled out of its hat was introducing its franchise ambitions. Its ending sure revealed there was much more going on behind the scenes than at first believed. It proved quite an incredulous close which strongly required wanting to be fooled to accept it. Many audiences didn't, and therefore condemned the film's finale as a ridiculous and illogical cop-out. But the movie performed well enough in a summer of weak blockbusters, which makes the studio hopeful this franchise will spawn a few blockbuster installments of its own. At least they got a decent cast to make it happen. Most of the veterans from the first move are back for more magic shenanigans, while this first cast photo shows Daniel Radcliffe and Lizzy Caplan have been added to the cast. Decent additions for sure and at least one of them knows his way around the world of wand waving magic tricks. Otherwise, I remain skeptical about this project. It seems it's gonna go down the road of Ocean's Eleven, except with illusionists robbing banks rather than with gentlemen con artists pulling off casino heists. Which is fine for many audiences, but not my cup of tea.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/158666/fox_wil_meer_x-files_

Not overly fond of this notion. The X-Files was a good show, but its curse was it overstayed its welcome, continuing for two more season than felt obliged. Similarly, one movie was warranted at the peak of its popularity, but the second one was an exercise in redundancy, which barely even felt like connecting to the series proper. Why bother digging up such fossils? Well, money, obviously. As noted, the show was a smash success back in its days. There's still plenty of fans who crave their weekly dose of extraterrestrial and supernatural mystery. However, I think the majority would agree that this is basically just blatantly repeating past glory. Though I'm usually not high on reboots, I think it would be the wiser way to go in this franchise's case. Duchovny and Anderson have moved on, and I doubt they would feel much for anything other than a limited series, as Duchovny already suspected to be the case. Why not have a new duo of talented actors take over for them? If the new take on the show is indeed a limited series, that would be a great opportunity to have the torch be passed from the old cast to the next generation, while also testing the waters and see whether The X-Files premise still connect to modern day audiences who are more used to an ungoing narrative rather than old fashioned episodic storytelling. However, a limited series can't address the mythology of the original show much, since that was basically concluded, nor does it have much opportunity to introduce a mythology of its own if there's only gonna be a handful of episodes. I bet we'll see a miniseries at first, which tells a rounded story but keeps options open for a follow-up regular running series which stars main characters other than Mulder and Scully. No mystery that's probably the safest way to go, and I want to believe Fox feels the same.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/158696/nieuwe_promo_the_walking_dead_seizoen_52

I won't discuss this particular preview much here, simply because I can't. I have yet to catch up with The Walking Dead Season 4 and the first half of Season 5. So I have no idea what tragic events preceded this trailer. It's the downside of living in the Golden Age of Television: there's too much good series to go round and not enough time to watch them all. I'm not following TWD as closely and obsessively as some other shows, though I hope to return to the zombie apocalypse soon. But until that time, I try to stay away from any information regarding the show, so as to avoid potential spoilers. Fortunately this 30-second teaser didn't show too much, and what it did reveal, I missed to such an extent that I don't feel spoilered. Thankfully, since this is often an unfortunate side effect of the job of posting news about movies and TV.

Today's Double News: Now the Panopticon Sees You

Here's two bits of news I posted on MovieScene yesterday:

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/149192/now_you_see_me_2_in_de_planning

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/149193/tarsem_singh_regisseert_sci-fi_film_the_panopticon


Panopticons! I like panopticons! I used the term in my master thesis on science fiction films between 1968 and 1977 (with Hal 9000 as the prime example of a panopticon, but certainly not the only one from that era). From the plot synopsis given of this film, I don't see the panopticon yet (it might be the protagonist himself, but if so, he has forgotten it), but I'm pretty sure it'll be made clear in the movie itself. I'm looking forward to this film, I have liked Tarsem Singh's films so far, or at least the two I've seen, The Fall and Immortals (but then, he hasn't made many movies at all). Granted, he's all style over substance, a visual artist though not so much a narrative genius, but his visuals are gripping and evocative enough to keep intriguing me. It'll be fascinating to see him do some more science fiction-ey fare no doubt. So far there's little more to say on the topic, since all we have is a director and a brief plot breakdown. I'll keep track of this one for sure though.

I still haven't seen Now You See Me. I wish I had that one night at Pathé de Munt, where they launched 3,000 euros in 5-euro bills into the theatre when the same thing happened in the actual movie, as a promotional stunt. Now that is what I call a convincing 3-D effect! Nevertheless, the mixed things I heard about this movie have kept me from seeing it so far in favor of other films and I'll probably miss it entirely as it's on its last legs here. It seems the movie doesn't need my money though (if it were to get any at all, since I don't have to pay for my dose of movies anymore, like the regular audience does), it's doing well enough without me. But that doesn't justify rushing a redundant sequel into theatres, though the term 'redundancy' is itself redundant when Hollywood smells money. They better be careful not to go overboard in terms of budget like the big blockbusters Now You See Me is currently beating at the box office. After all, the film may not have been that expensive - though 75 million dollars isn't exactly cheap either - but it has a surprising abundance of big names (Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Jesse Eisenberg, Melanie Laurent and Mark Ruffalo among them), and if those need to be back for the second installment, they'll want more money: it's an inescapable natural law. Of course they can go the alternative route and reintroduce the same concept with a new cast of characters, but I doubt the audience would take kindly to that if it's really titled Now You See Me 2, which also remains to be seen. In fact, just like is the case with The Panopticon, there's not enough confirmed information to go on just yet in order to either discard this sequel as a bad idea (though many, if not most, sequels are), or to hail it as a welcome addition to the first film. Right now, we simply see nothing yet.