Today's News: devils and beasts get some, lose some

More news from everybody's favorite movie website (for those who have heard of it, that is):

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/155901/deknight_vervangt_goddard_voor_daredevil

Apparently Marvel and Netflix traded talent for talent here. Both writers/producers have had their fair share of hits, and both stem from Joss Whedon's pool of creative talents. Both Goddard and DeKnight worked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Similar backgrounds must yield similar results, the powers-that-be at Marvel probably thought. They're probably right. Personally I lamented the loss of the ingenious mind that came up with The Cabin in the Woods - if you haven't seen that hilariously inventive movie, that's something you ought to remedy - but I can surely live with the showrunner of Starz' delightful Spartacus series tackling a Marvel project. I would wager coin it won't be as vulgar as those raunchy Romans, but with DeKnight's evident capability to write intriguing character and plot twists, Daredevil doesn't necessarily take a turn for the worse. Also, DeKnight didn't burn his fingers on that one show called Lost, which might otherwise have left a sour taste in his career. And of course Goddard won't be gone entirely, as his scripts for the first two episodes will remain in use, plus he'll stay on as a 'consulting producer', whatever the hell that's supposed to be. So there's definitely gonna be a touch of Goddard to be felt at first. For now, I see more gain than loss here. And either way it's more likely to give the Daredevil his due than Ben Affleck's less than daring flick back from 2003.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/155926/alfonso_cuaron_wijst_fantastic_beasts_af

Too bad, but I kinda saw it coming. Cuaron has spend the last five years working on Gravity, after all. To great effect to be sure, but I'm positive he's in definite need of a creative break from all that digital blue-screen material. Cuaron cares about characters and drama far more than about effects, as his quote makes abundantly clear. I'll say Gravity is the odd-one-out on his resumé in that regard: even though it was basically about two people trapped in space, the technical element to that film far outweighed the acting component. It was the effects that made the experience, not the story. So it's about time he changed back to his former routine, where the opposite held true. Even though not much is revealed about the specific plot contents of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, its very title suggests it's all about the fancy creatures and the exotic locales they inhabit, which are heavily dependant on visual effects to make them come alive on screen. Characters clearly seem to come second here. So that really doesn't sound so appealing to a director who has spent half a decade exploring the digital realm. Cuaron is better off returning to his roots and doing something small for a change, or indeed spending time with his actual biological kids rather than his silver screen babies (I've heard from parents that you have to make time for children for their own sake). And even though Cuaron is out for the first installment of this upcoming fantastic franchise, there's nothing that stops him from expressing his interests for one of the already announced sequels somewhere in later years. In the realm of Potter - which still is where we are in this otherwise Potterless project - anything is known to be possible by now.