Terminator 5 Announced

Terminator 5: Family Die will be perhaps the most unique and original of the series, although Arnold is absent from the script. Inspired by Family Guy, the plot begins with the singularity (that moment when computers become sentient, often suggested as being 2045.) Instead of SkyNet, the entity is one massive ego—Sky Guy—who offers humans (and this means you) one year to either commit suicide with a katana (a la Tarantino) or download your consciousness into a machine to become a robot (with quantum help from Sky Guy, who figured out how in under an hour.) Meaning no one ever needs to eat or pollute or sleep again. Would you do it? Could you give up Coke and Pepsi, after so many billions spent in commercial brainwashing? What about French fries? Your party’s political views? In the movie, the Way family (in Shanghai) is the First Family, the test case family everyone is tweeting about. Because you can’t kill them, no matter how much you might want to. They are bullet and bomb proof. So…what’s it gonna be? Wanna be like them? Time is running out to decide. Humm. Do we hold onto our vices and delusions or live forever with a sky high I.Q.? Now there’s a plot.       

Matrix 4: Evolutions will also hit the big screen on the same day, April 1, 2014, with all your favorites reprising their roles. Unfortunately, it’ll be a spoof with cheaper special effects. The plot revolves around people giving up on looking for work or risking more babies, and taking the red pill (instead of the little blue one), then staying in their alien cubicles to watch reality TV, particularly Duck Dynasty and Mob Wives. J.J. Abrams will direct, since his command of science is on the level of Daffy Duck.   

Max Payne INTERVIEWS Max Brooks
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And now an interview with World War Z writer Max Brooks, interviewed by video game gunman Max Payne.
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Max Payne) So, dude, I see you were on Sons of Guns and The History Channel, talking about weapons to buy to use against zombies. And you’re not even a cartoon character like me. What gives?
Max Brooks) I love guns. Sue me.
MP) Okay, I just did on behalf of Marvel Comics and Rockstar Games.
MB) That was quick.
MP) Not really. Any twelve year old can change the clip of a Bushmaster quicker. …So, the Discovery Channel and History Channel believe in zombies, do they?
MB) Actually, I was talking about hordes. You know, crowds of young men attacking castles and caves and places like that throughout history. Hordes.
MP) Oh, I see. You mean like at soccer matches or monster truck rallies. But why are the examples shown all dead men come back to life? Where exactly has that happened lately?
MB) Congress, returned from recess? Just kidding. Okay, well…how about right now? You, for instance.
MP) I was never alive, Max.
MB) What about the other guy, Mark Wahlberg?
MP) He’s not here right now. I am. And I’m not a horde, looking to eat only very rare and never ever medium or well done meat for some nutjob reason no one has ever explained. It’s just me, here, right now, Max…with your weapon of choice.
MB) Stop aiming that thing at me!
MP) Why not? I’m not real. I’m just a character in a violent video game played by kids whose dads ignore them. So this gun can’t be real either, right? Stop sweating! You’ll be fine. Here, let me show you…
MB) Wait!!!!
MP) Oh, I know what you’re thinking… Did he fire thirty shots or only twenty-nine. Tell the truth, in all this excitement I kinda lost track myself. But bein’ this is the most popular assault rifle in the world…

FURY starring Brad Pitt (Exclusive Movie Preview)

What are you lookin’ at?

That’s right, Brad has signed onto another Nazi hunter epic, this time joining a tank mission at the end of WWII. The thriller will be directed by David Ayer, whose movie TEN will hit theaters early next year with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sam Worthington. Who else besides Pitt will star in FURY is anyone’s guess, and how the plot will play out is known only to Ayer, who also wrote the script. (He also did End of Watch, Training Day, and The Fast and the Furious.) Pitt, of course, did Inglourious Basterds (a movie misspelled on purpose), Killing Them Softly, Moneyball, and the upcoming World War Z (to name a few.) Below is a sneak peak without any actual footage (since the movie hasn’t been filmed yet.) Walter Witty doesn’t much care for zombies, gun-toting survivalists, or war games, but he is a Pitt fan (Babel, Fight Club, Snatch, The Tree of Life, upcoming The Counselor.) And a fan of architecture, as is Pitt. Alas, until 2015, well, you’ll have to use your imagination on this one…  

“Are we out of ice yet?”

After Earth VS Pacific Rim

Here’s a first. The movie AFTER EARTH (June 2013) is based on a story by Will Smith, which also stars his son Jaden. M. Night Shyamalan co-wrote the script with Gary Whitta (The Book of Eli.) Will Smith first imagined it as a bonding story set after a car crash in the desert, then moved it forward 1000 years with an SF plot. Earth has been abandoned for Nova Prime, a planet around a nearby star. Smith returns with his son on a training mission, and crashes. Life on Earth has since evolved, and is hostile to humans. As you can see, there’s the Avatar influence again. And again in PACIFIC RIM (July 2013), a film that stars Charlie Hunnam (and other relative unknowns.) Directed by Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy), who also co-wrote the script, the story is about a monster that arises from an ocean crevice (from another dimension) and attacks humanity (as if we didn’t have enough to deal with already in the form of nutjob legends-in-their-own-mind dictators.) Naturally, the Pentagon futilely throws up what they have (as in Battleship) until a couple heroes find a way to defeat the monsters inside massive avatar robots. (Hints of Stephen King’s “The Mist”?) Industrial Light and Magic comes into play (since they can’t find a more original plot) with what the director hopes will provide “a sense of awe.” Aw shucks, who would’ve guessed that? As to which is likely to be the better film, who knows yet. The first seems more adult oriented than the latter. Despite their homage to Avatar, however, neither is likely to come within light years of that film’s power. (A better homage would be Ridley Scott’s proposed adaptation of “The Forever War” by Joe Haldeman.) Now, could you have written these two? Depends. Alas, in Hollywood, it’s all about who you know. I’ve interviewed other authors, such as James Lee Burke and Clive Cussler and David Baldacci, and they basically said the same thing. Writers are Hollywood’s garbage collectors. It’s more about actors and deals and agents and marketing partnerships. In the audiobook field within which I’ve worked for over a decade, it’s also more about performers than writers. If your uncle is a major film producer, though, you’re in luck. Or, if like Shyamalan, you make one hit film, you get to make more movies, with or without inspiration. . . in hopes of more big bucks. Story takes a back seat, unfortunately. So if any producers are reading this, here are opening chapters from a novel for which I have a script. If, however, you decide to go with what your nephew has in his sock drawer, then the same side effect warnings apply as to certain statins: memory loss, liver malfunction, sexual dysfunction, acidosis, fever, cataracts, brain cancer, diabetes, and stroke. (Or even worse, bad reviews and little “buzz.”)

Olympus Has Fallen (Shocking Deleted Scenes)

In a scene deleted from Olympus Has Fallen (but which may be included in White House Down), the invasion of the President’s privacy by terrorists interferes with the Republican National Committee’s bugging of President Obama’s bedroom, using The Bachelor to leak the audio tape to the press. At the same time, John Boehner’s bedroom was being bugged by Democrats, and Kim Jong Un’s bedroom was being bugged by Dennis Rodman. Meanwhile, the North Korean wingnut has promised to blow up the White House himself if he can raise enough money to buy a decent gyro for his rocket (along with basketball lessons from Rodman.) The movie scenes were deleted, due to time and coherency restraints. Alas, Kim Jong-un is still adding to his script, and has a lifetime to get his vaudeville act together.

Congrats to brother Sean! –J. Lowe

Django’s Shocking Alternate Ending

Available only on the Blu-Ray edition (in the Deleted Scenes section of the Special Features), an alternate ending can be assessed by answering nine questions with the word “Bushmaster” and one with the Toby Keith Bar & Grill chain’s recipe for their Fried Bologna sandwich. The scene involves a December 26 shooting in a Bal Mart of a descendent of Django attempting to return a semi-automatic assault rifle given him for Christmas by his grandfather. Instead of a box but no receipt, Reggin has a receipt but no box, which sparks a slow motion shootout leaving thirty-eight dead and fifty-six wounded. Here is the controversial scene’s opening:
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INT. Bal Mart Sporting Goods Section. DAY.
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        Richard Speck
Attention Bal Mart shoppers, all candy and
soda is now twenty percent off. Peanut brittle
is half off. Say the N word fifty times fast to
our clerk Broomhilda and you get a free box
of ammo. If you live that long. Quentin, you
have a cleanup on aisle six. Oh, and Shultz?
Please put Unchained Melody on the speaker.

And now, here’s our favorite scene from the movie The Rundown, featuring a hero who tries (at first) to do his job without using guns…