From the twisted minds of producers Peter Farrelly (Hall Pass, Shallow Hal) and Charles Wessler (There’s Something About Mary, Dumb & Dumber), comes Movie 43 — the outrageous new ensemble comedy starring some of the biggest names in Hollywood. Movie 43 is not for the easily-offended and contains jaw-dropping, sometimes shockingly disturbing, but always entertaining intertwined storylines you’ll have to see to believe. The all-star cast includes Emma Stone, Kate Winslet, Justin Long, Jason Sudeikis, Kristin Bell, Gerard Butler, and Halle Berry.
Special Features:
BD & DVD
Theatrical Trailer
BD Exclusive Features
Find Our Daughter
For a chance to win a copy of Movie 43, simply answer the question below:
Which Farrelly brother co-directed and co-produced Movie 43?
Peter Farrelly
Bobby Farrelly
Long lost brother Jack Farrelly
Post your response by 11:59 p.m., Saturday, June 22 and the decision of ComicMix‘s judges will be final. Open only to residents of the United States and Canada.
Founded in 2007, Radical Studios is a multimedia company that incubated comic books for exploitation in other forms. Among their earliest releases was Hercules, boasting a Steranko cover, and it came with high production values and a bit of a buzz., The character returned for a second miniseries in and this interpretation captured Hollywood’s fancy. After years in development, production on the movie adaptation began today. Thew film enters a crowded summer 2014, especially for super-hero films, coming after Captain America: The Winter Solider and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and just before X-Men: Days of Future Past and Guardians of the Galaxy (raising the question whether or not four Marvel Universe films in five months will reach the saturation point).
Here’s the formal release:
HOLLYWOOD, CA (June 10, 2013) Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, a division of MGM Holdings, Inc., and Paramount Pictures, a division of Viacom, Inc., announced principal photography began today on “HERCULES,” starring Dwayne Johnson (“G.I. JOE: RETALIATION,” “FAST AND FURIOUS” franchise) and directed and produced by Brett Ratner (“RUSH HOUR” franchise, “X-MEN: THE LAST STAND”). Filming takes place in Budapest, Hungary.
“HERCULES” will be distributed worldwide by Paramount Pictures on July 25, 2014 with select international territories as well as all television distribution being handled by MGM.
“HERCULES” also stars Golden Globe-winner Ian McShane (“Deadwood,” “PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES”), Rufus Sewell (“LEGEND OF ZORRO”), Joseph Fiennes (“SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE,” “American Horror Story”), Peter Mullan (“War Horse,” “Top of the Lake”) and Academy Award®-nominee John Hurt (“HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS”). Rounding out the main cast is Rebecca Ferguson (The BBC’s “The White Queen”), Ingrid Bolsø Berdal (“HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS”), Aksel Hennie (“HEADHUNTERS”) and Reece Ritchie (“PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME”).
“HERCULES” is produced by Beau Flynn (“JOURNEY 2: THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND,” “HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS”), Barry Levine (“OBLIVION”) and Ratner. Executive producers are Peter Berg (“BATTLESHIP”), Sarah Aubrey (“BATTLESHIP”), Ross Fanger (“IRON MAN”) and Jesse Berger (“OBLIVION”).
Based on the graphic novel Hercules: The Thracian Wars, the ensemble-action film is a revisionist take on the classic myth set in a grounded world where the supernatural does not exist. The screenplay is by Ryan Condal and Evan Spiliotopoulos.
Everyone knows the legend of Hercules and his twelve labors. Our story begins after the labors, and after the legend…
Haunted by a sin from his past, Hercules has become a mercenary. Along with five faithful companions, he travels ancient Greece selling his services for gold and using his legendary reputation to intimidate enemies. But when the benevolent ruler of Thrace and his daughter seek Hercules’ help to defeat a savage and terrifying warlord, Hercules finds that in order for good to triumph and justice to prevail… he must again become the hero he once was… he must embrace his own myth… he must be Hercules.
The behind-the-scenes creative team led by Ratner includes: Academy Award®-nominee director of photography Dante Spinotti (“THE INSIDER,” “LA CONFIDENTIAL”), editor Mark Helfrich (“X-MEN: THE LAST STAND”), production designer Jean-Vincent Puzos (“10,000 B.C.”), costume designer Jany Temime (“SKYFALL”), 2nd Unit director Alexander Witt (“SKYFALL”), VFX supervisor John Bruno (“AVATAR”), SFX Supervisor Neil Corbould (“BLACK HAWK DOWN”) and stunt coordinator Greg Powell (“FAST & FURIOUS 6,” “HARRY POTTER” franchise).
MGM and Paramount most recently partnered on the release of the blockbuster “G.I. JOE: RETALIATION,” also starring Dwayne Johnson, as well as the global box office hit “HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS.”
CHARLES BOECKMAN PRESENTS JOHNNY NICKLE, recently released from Pro Se Productions, is the first volume in a fantastic, already popular new imprint from the cutting edge Publisher. The imprint centers on characters created by classic Pulp Author Charles Boeckman in original stories beginningin the 1940s being written in new stories by some of today’s best authors. CBP PRESENTS JOHNNY NICKLE contains tales by Richard White and Brad Mengel and focuses on a jazz musician with a penchant for getting into trouble and mystery around every corner. Even more amazing than Boeckman’s wonderfully colorful characters is the fact that Johnny Nickle, as well as others, have their origins in a real musician. Charles Boeckman himself.
A renaissance man in many ways, Boeckman is a self-taught man of many skills. He taught himself to play his horns, about music theory, to write, and about photography and darkroom work, as well as many other talents. Knowing a great deal about music theory, Boeckman wrote all the arrangements for his own Jazz band. He used lead sheets. The real Dixie musicians didn’t need them, but he had them for all the instruments in case he had to get a substitute who needed them.
Boeckman (left) and Pete Fountain
92 year old Boeckman literally wrote the book on Jazz. “Cool, Hot and Blue’, published in 1968, is a history of Jazz aimed at young readers. Another book by Boeckman, “And the Beat Goes On,’ has been used as a text book in universities. He also wrote a novel, THE LAST JAZZ BAND, based on some wacky musicians he knew and played with on bands where he was a sideman before he started his own band..
Performing professionally since 1938, Boeckman is remembered as the founder of the 1970s tradition of Sunday evening Jazz marches down Starr Street in Corpus Christi. According to Charles’ wife, Patti Boeckman, “As a matter of fact, at its height, the Dixie band played in a smoky dive (the perfect venue for Dixieland) in downtown Corpus Christi, and during the evening, the band played The Saints, marched out the door with customers following in a long line, marched to the end of the sidewalk and back, and then finished the tune back in the dive. After a few months, the police noticed what we were doing and said we needed to get a parade permit. So Charles went to police headquarters every week for the permit, until they finally told him not to bother anymore.”
Charles Boeckman’s Band, featuring Patti Boeckman
Boeckman’s band, which Patty was a member of as a Bass player and a Charleston dancer, played in various locations in the area. According to Patti, “The band played in some of the most prestigious locations in town, the Country Club, the Town Club (for rich folks), in church, etc. We did play other kinds of music. For example, we put on two gospel concerts. We also had two locally promoted concerts with our band and the Jim Cullum band from San Antonio, well known in jazz circles, in a battle of the bands contest.”
Charles Boeckman was awarded a star on the SOUTH TEXAS MUSIC WALK OF FAME in 2009. This honor is the South Texas version of Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, but for musicians, recognizing those who were born in or have lived in Texas and who have made a lasting contribution to music in South Texas. Boeckman received over 300 nominations for his Star.
Inductees include the likes of Selena, Kris Kristofferson, Freddy Fender, and more. The star is embedded in concrete in the courtyard of a complex called Water Street Marketplace in down town Corpus Christi.
I’m not sure we’ll get every story of heroism, bravery, and ingenuity that made World War II so endlessly fascinating, but by now we seem to have gotten the best of them. The war had a scope involving millions of people on a global scale never seen before so the stories of the atrocities and acts of mercy continue to be uncovered and justly celebrated. And yet, one of the most enduring tales was not about a battle. Instead, the true story of the massive escape from Germany’s Stalag Luft III demonstrates a never-say-die attitude that demoralized the enemy. Thinking themselves clever, the Nazis collected their most troublesome prisoners and placed them in one facility, thinking they would be able to keep a better eye on them. They were all officers and treated a such, with the expectation that they would not cause trouble.
What the Germans forgot was that a prisoner’s first job was to escape and that’s exactly what these disciplined, highly-trained and clever men managed to do. It was an international effort that saw them survey and engineer three tunnels (cheekily nicknamed Tom, Dick, and Harry) that would allow 250 soldiers flee captivity. Paul Brickhill who was there, immortalized the effort in his 1950 nonfiction account The Great Escape.
It was a story ripe for Hollywood but studio after studio turned it down until finally John Sturges finally convinced United Artists to finance the production. Sturges both produced and directed from a screenplay credited to James Clavell, W.F. Burnett, and Walter Newman. Compromises had to be mader to make it palatable to Hollywood and its audiences. The American POWs who helped dig the tunnels were relocated seven months before the escape so reality was twisted to keep the yanks on hand. Additionally, characters became composites of real people, so it had the look and feel of what happened without the exact details.
The film is headlined by Steve McQueen, looming large in the marketing but small in the grand scheme of things, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, James Donald, Charles Bronson, Donald Pleasance, James Coburn, and David McCallum. (McCallum at the time was married to future Star Trek guest star Jill Ireland, who fell in love with Bronson during the shoot.) The Stalag was reconstructed with frightening attention to detail in Bavaria and the film benefitted from a fine Elmer Bernstein score. Technical advisor Wally Floody, a former prisoner at the dreaded place, was stunned at how real it felt.
A movie about digging tunnels for much of its 172 minutes might sound dull, but Sturges kept thigns interesting by showing how the men forged bonds and overcame fear and adversity. None of the characters were especially deep but all were idiosyncratic enough to remain interesting. Some action pieces, such as the iconic motorcycle, were added. When released in 1963, it was a surprise hit and has showed enduring staying power, referenced in countless pop culture sources and is credited as an inspiration for the questionable sitcom Hogan’s Heroes.
Now 50 years old, the film remains entertaining viewing and 20th Century Home Entertainment has just released it on Blu-ray for the first time. Unfortunately, they did not use the occasion to remaster the film; merely transfer it from the 2004 two-disc release. As a result, it looks fine but should look better.
The film was great fun and serious drama but it won no awards except from the men who were there, who later told Sturges what a fine job he did. Those anecdotes, recorded in 1974, survive on one of the many commentary tracks that were also ported over from the last release. Coupled with the fine lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 audio, it is satisfactory but not what the movie and today’s viewers deserve.
The bonus features from the 2004 release are here with the exception of the trivia track and the photo gallery. But we do get:
Commentary with Director John Sturges, Cast and Crew, as Steven Jay Rubin, author of Combat Films: American Realism, 1945-1970, stitches together a series of interviews into this track. He managed to speak with Sturges in 1974 and later Coburn, Garner, McCallum, Pleasance, Jud Taylor, Sturges’ former assistant Robert Relyea, stuntman Bud Ekins, art director Fernando Carrere, and McQueen’s one-time manager Hilly Elkins.
The Great Escape: Bringing Fact to Fiction (12:21) which originally ran on History Channel, narrated by Burt Reynolds.
The Great Escape: Preparations for Freedom (19:50): Another History Channel featurette looking at how the escape was really executed.
The Great Escape: The Flight to Freedom (9:22): Another History Channel featurette compares the reality versus the Hollywood version of events.
The Great Escape: A Standing Ovation (5:58): Another History Channel featurette examining the 1963 reaction by POWs to the film.
The Great Escape: The Untold Story (50:47): Made for British audiences, this used a mix of interviews and re-enactments.
The Great Escape: The Untold Story—Additional Interviews (9:35).
The Real Virgil Hilts: A Man Called Jones (25:01): American Army pilot David Jones, who participated in the famed Doolittle Raid, was the template for McQueen’s character and gets a nice profile here.
Return to The Great Escape (24:09): Rubin directed this 1993 Showtime entry with Garner, Pleasance and Coburn, reminiscing.
In yet more proof that Hollywood is looking for comic book properties and talent, Seth Meyers will be the next host of NBC’s “Late Night,” the network announced Sunday. Mr. Meyers will succeed Jimmy Fallon, who is moving up one hour to take over NBC’s “Tonight Show.”
Meyers is best known for writing 2009’s Spider-Man: The Short Halloween, co-written with Neil Gaiman impersonator Bill Hader and Justice League and Worlds Finest artist Kevin Maguire. Meyers also currently has a job as the head writer on “Saturday Night Live” and host of its “Weekend Update” segment.
This is not the first Spider-Man/Saturday Night Live crossover, as Spidey first met the Not Ready For Prime Time Players in Marvel Team-Up #75, featuring a climactic katana battle between the Silver Samurai and John Belushi, and (of course) the inevitable Stan Lee cameo.
While Tom Cruise flogs the so-so reviewed Oblivion, his last feature effort, Jack Reacher, is coming to home video on May 7. According to the PR:
One of the most compelling heroes ever to step from novel to screen makes his highly-anticipated home entertainment debut when JACK REACHER blasts his way onto Blu-ray, DVD and On Demand on May 7, 2013 from Paramount Home Media Distribution. The film will be available for Digital Download on April 23rd. Tom Cruise tackles the title role with the brute force his character is known for and his “tightly controlled performance holds our attention all the way through to the tense finale” (Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News). Based on best-selling author Lee Child’s wildly popular series of novels, JACK REACHER was adapted for the screen and directed by Academy Award-winner Christopher McQuarrie (Best Original Screenplay, The Usual Suspects, 1995). Filled with heart-pounding action, thrills and a “killer chase scene” (Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News), JACK REACHER is “hard-boiled detective story entertainment” (Richard Corliss, Time) that “will have you gasping in surprise at the velocity and ferocity of the action” (Marshall Fine, Huffington Post). The film also boasts “a top flight ensemble cast” (Claudia Puig, USA Today) including Robert Duvall (Apocalypse Now), Rosamund Pike (Die Another Day), Werner Herzog (Rescue Dawn), David Oyelowo (Rise of the Planet of the Apes), Richard Jenkins (The Cabin in the Woods) and Jai Courtney (A Good Day to Die Hard).
In anticipation of the home entertainment release, journalists from around the globe gathered on the Paramount lot in Hollywood, California to step into the shoes of world-renowned author Lee Child’s legendary anti-hero, Jack Reacher. From the brutal, no-holds-barred street fight to the heart-pounding and high-octane car chase, experts demonstrated how they helped bring these unforgettable scenes to life in the action-packed film Jack Reacher.
Veteran fight coordinator Robert Alonzo provided expert training in the Keysi Fighting Method to prepare participants for their own choreographed fight. Stunt coordinator and 2nd unit director Paul Jennings gave an inside look at how the killer car chase was filmed.
Stunt driver Joey Box showed off the actual Chevelle from the movie.
The JACK REACHER Blu-ray/DVD combo pack with UltraViolet™ is bursting with compelling bonus features including an in-depth look at Reacher’s journey to the screen, the filmmakers’ devotion to remaining true to the essence of the character and their drive to create an action-thriller that harkens back to the landmark films of the ‘70s. The combo pack also includes a look at the training and stunt choreography behind the gritty and intense fight sequences, an exploration of the Reacher phenomenon around the world with Lee Child, as well as commentaries by Tom Cruise, director Christopher McQuarrie and composer Joe Kraemer. The film will also be available as a single-disc DVD.
The Blu-ray release available for purchase will be enabled with UltraViolet, a new way to collect, access and enjoy movies. With UltraViolet, consumers can add movies to their digital collection in the cloud, and then stream or download them – reliably and securely – to a variety of devices.
Mayim Bialik (Blossom, The Big Bang Theory) has been cast to voice the Inspector’s time traveling ship the BOOTH in Travis Richey’s second web-adventure of Inspector SpacetimeUntitled Web Series About A Space Traveler Who Can Also Travel Through Time.
Mayim’s first major role (if you don’t count Pumpkinhead, and believe me I debated that) was in the Bette Midler film Beaches, playing the 11-year-old version of The Divine One, an uncanny similarity only surpassed by Bette’s actual daughter Sophie. Her TV fame came with the series Blossom, which ran for five years. After a number of voice roles in cartoons and video games, she pulled back from Hollywood to (now get this) get her bachelors, and eventually her PhD in neuroscience. AND raise two kids. She’s now appearing on The Big Band Theory as Amy Farah Fowler. And clearly, she is awesome.
Travis Richey first appeared as The Inspector on NBC’s Community in a 30-second parody of Doctor Who. The Internet took the thirty seconds to its bosom and cultivated it into a full continuity seemingly overnight. The past Inspectors, the villains, and Jeffrey, who everyone hates. Actor (and officially the 11th Inspector) Travis saw the potential of the character and submitted a script for an Inspector adventure, a project which was met with resounding apathy by the producers. When Travis chose to self-produce a web series, NBC and Sony suddenly… exhibited reticence. He plowed ahead with a cannily de-branded version, raising the funds via Kickstarter.
The second series is beginning production now, including Bialik as the voice of BOOTH, which is smaller on the inside, but is able to reconfigure its interior dimensions so “there’s always room for one more”.
From Travis’ press release:
Travis and Mayim reconnected by chance after being seated next to each other on a flight from Milwaukee to LA in November 2011, and the conversation included talk of Inspector Spacetime and looking for opportunities to work together. “I am thrilled to be part of the Inspector Spacetime world,” said Mayim. “As a Doctor Who fan, Inspector Spacetime satisfies all of my theatrical and nerdy desires. Putting on an admittedly poor fake British accent and working with the awesome and talented Travis Richey made me feel like a bonafide nerd-girl.”
More details about the series, including upcoming new like plans for toys and a comic book, are available at the website, TheInspector.TV.
Denys Cowan, Dwayne McDuffie, Derek Dingle, Christopher Priest and I founded Milestone Media 20 years ago.
Really.
I know to some that feels impossible, but it’s true. 20 years ago Milestone Media was formed and still to this day is the most successful African American owned comic book company in history. It’s hard to believe and even harder to believe that I was just five years old when Milestone began.
Heh.
Over the last 20 years Milestone has continued to make history. The amazing success of Static Shock on television, continued publishing of the Dakota Universe over the years and a ever growing and loyal fan base.
This year the legend of Milestone will be cemented for all time when Comic Con International, the biggest pop culture event in the world, honors Milestone 20th anniversary.
That’s huge but what I’m about to reveal here is even bigger.
Milestone is back.
The rumors are true, Milestone Media, although never really gone, will begin publishing monthly in September of this year under the Marvel comics banner.
The press release goes out this week but as promised some time ago in this column I’m breaking the news here.
Not only will Marvel comics be the new home of Icon, Static, The Blood Syndicate and Hardware next February in celebration of Black History month Marvel will launch Blackout, the event to beat all previous event.
Blackout will be the month every single Marvel superhero will become black and we are talking about their race, not their costumes although they will be black also.
Marvel’s commitment to the project is incredible.
Keeping with Milestone’s promise to its fans to “keep it real.” all of the super villains in the Blackout event will be white. “Keeping it real” is something that Milestone is known for, and that’s why the cost of Blackout will be half of what it would be if the superheroes were still white.
In addition all the storylines of Blackout will center around an inner city family where the father is not just absent but also in jail or on the streets involved in drugs. Because we are concerned with stereotypes, the drug storyline will not feature an absent father stung out on drugs.
The storylines will depict the father as the drug dealer.
Duh.
Because he’s black in Blackout the drug dealer will be seen as a hero in the black community because we all know that’s real and we know that because that’s how Hollywood keeps it real and Hollywood only depicts what’s real and we do want a movie deal so…
I can’t really go into too much more detail as I may have given away way too much. I will tell you this, the black Tony Stark will still date only white women.
J.R.R. Tolkien was fascinated with language and mythology, scratching only the surface when he sat down in 1937 to pen The Hobbit. When his publisher asked for a sequel, the professor really dug deep and built on the foundations established in his children’s novel. As a result, he took over a decade to write what became Lord of the Rings and along the way, crafted new languages, cultures, and myths, creating Middle Earth from the essence of English and European folklore.
Tolkien mistrusted Hollywood, which certainly explains why it wasn’t until the 1970s before any adaptation of his works made it to the screen. There’s the somewhat cute Rankin-Bass take from the era, but really, the studios and technology weren’t up to the demands of the source material. Within the last two decades, though, that all changed. Once Peter Jackson struck gold with his trilogy of films, it was inevitable that the public would cry for the first book in the cycle to be adapted. Of course, there were the usual legal entanglements followed by MGM’s financial free-fall which cost the production the talents of Guillermo Del Toro. Jackson stepped behind the camera once more, helming an adaptation that was more in keeping with his interpretation of Middle Earth than del Toro apparently had in mind. Now, having seen The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journeyin the theater and on disc, the fresh eye may have been warranted.
Not that there’s anything wrong with the film — being released on home video in a variety of packages from Warner Home Video on Tuesday – but the familiarity with it all robs the story of its magic. Wisely, the opening is a frame, setting up the novel itself; using Ian Holm’s aged Bilbo Baggins with Elijah Wood once more as his nephew Frodo. Seeing them brought a smile to my heart but once the dwarves began to arrive, and the journey get underway, we’d seen the vistas, the mountains, and roads. As a result, the journey felt beleaguered and longer than necessary.
What did work, though, was really making this Thorin Oakenshield’s (Richard Armitage) story, aided by the dwarves and guided by Gandalf the Gray (Ian McKellan). The tension and suspicions the handsome dwarf had towards Baggins (Martin Freeman) is a nice undercurrent until it reaches a climax.
In watching the story unfold, it’s very much like a saga from days gone by and it’s interesting to note how many of the dwarf names were taken straight from Norse mythology. It’s a pretty straightforward tale with nice sets pieces such as the meeting with Gollum (Andy Serkis) and the forthcoming battles with Smaug. Expanding this initially to two films raised some eyebrows and then he came out with word that two had morphed into three. Suddenly, the single novel was being given the same weight at the trilogy and most howled. In watching the movie, it’s safe to say about 60 percent of it was the novel and the remainder was drawn from the appendices and notes Tolkien left behind. To be fair to the producer/writer/director, there’s tremendous material worthy of adapting and exploring cinematically. It worked with the emphasis on Arwen in the trilogy so he earns the benefit of the doubt for now.
He did take a throwaway line about Gandalf needing to speak with others and the book skipped that while the film uses that moment to being us to a council where familiar friends Galadriel (Cate Blanchet), Elrond (Hugo Weaving), and Saruman the White (Christopher Lee) provide wisdom and foreshadowing. It was fun seeing them as all one big happy family, knowing that even sixty years before LOTR, the dark shadows were already creeping from Mordor.
We also get to see some other wizards for the first time, including Necromancer (Benedict Cumberbatch) in the stronghold of Dul Guldur and the amusing Radagast the Brown (Sylvester McCoy).
Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Jackson used some magic to find ways to give each of the thirteen dwarves some personality and the cast and costumers ran with it. While you couldn’t necessarily name them on sight, you could tell one from another. Character reigns supreme once more for which we fans should be thankful. As fanciful as Tolkien was, he remained far more interested in lore and language than he did in interesting characterization.
Jackson is an old hand at the setting and pacing, which may be why he was more interested in the technical aspects, notably the 48-frames-per-second experiment that too few people got to witness as theaters, already paying the bills for 3-D and digital projectors, were reluctant to support. The film, therefore, is lush and rich in color, sight, and sound.
An extended edition with extra footage, which was anticipated before the film hit theaters, is now expected in time for the holiday season, following the previous pattern. So, be cautioned when getting this. So, what do you get with this edition? Well, the video transfer is most excellent, rich in color so Hobbiton to Lothlorien to the mines are sharp and clear. The visuals are equally matched by the amazing DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 surround track.
While there some two and a half hours of bonus material, diehard fans have seen most of it online during the film’s production and release. Clearly, the most interesting stuff is being held back for the extended version. The specials are voluminous to merit its own disc, which is nice.
Early purchasers can use The Desolation of Smaug Sneak Peek Access Code: to watch the exclusive online sneak peek at The Desolation of Smaug, hosted live by Peter Jackson on March 24th at 3pm EST/12pm PST.
There’s another look at New Zealand: Home of Middle-Earth (7 minutes) demonstrating the challenge facing Jackson and his team as they had to find new countryside to show off new portions of Middle Earth.
The bulk of the extras are the ten Video Blogs (127 minutes):
Were we about to pitch this book as a possible movie to a Hollywood studio, we would present it as a super amalgamated cross between Stephen King’s “Salem’s Lot” and Lawrence Kasdan’s “Silverado.”
If you are an avid reader, then we no need to tell you that the new pulp genre known as the Weird Western is extremely popular these days. From anthologies and novels, it is a fantasy theme that has captured the fancy of readers everywhere. “The Six-Gun Tarot” is the best Weird Western book on the market today.
The setting is post-civil war in a Nevada mining town called Golgotha. For reasons known only to a select few, it is the nexus of good and evil at the heart of the universe. Locked up its mountains lies an ancient evil that existed before creation and here Belcher dives into Lovecraft territory head-on setting forth the book’s primary plot conflict. The beast, known as the Black Wurm, is about to be released from captivity and if it succeeds it will destroy the world.
Thus is falls upon a handful of truly memorable characters to save creation. These include Sheriff Jonathan Highfather, a man who cannot be killed; his deputy, a half-breed Indian coyote-changeling called Mutt, a young fifteen year old boy, Jim Negrey, on the run from the law who possesses a mysterious all-powerful eye said to contain unimaginable power and the beautiful but deadly Maude Stapleton, a Southern Belle secretly trained in ancient martial arts and occult practices.
That is only a sampling of some of the fantastical citizens of Golgotha that play an active part in this cataclysmic battle between light and dark, good and evil. There’s also Auggie, the local shop merchant who keeps his dead wife alive in a vat of chemicals put together by the town’s eccentric inventor and Malachi Bick, the saloon owner who just may be a fallen angel sent to protect mankind at the beginning of time.
“The Six-Gun Tarot” is one of those rare books that kept surprising us from chapter to chapter. Just when we thought it couldn’t get any weirder, it did just that until we became totally enraptured by Belcher’s daring and exuberant imagination. It certainly has no bounds. This is a book we recommend to all lovers of fantastic fiction and assure you once you’ve ridden into Golgotha, you won’t want to leave.
From the twisted minds of producers Peter Farrelly (Hall Pass, Shallow Hal) and Charles Wessler (There’s Something About Mary, Dumb & Dumber), comes Movie 43 — the outrageous new ensemble comedy starring some of the biggest names in Hollywood. Movie 43 is not for the easily-offended and contains jaw-dropping, sometimes shockingly disturbing, but always entertaining intertwined storylines you’ll have to see to believe. The all-star cast includes Emma Stone, Kate Winslet, Justin Long, Jason Sudeikis, Kristin Bell, Gerard Butler, and Halle Berry.
