Alright, so we have known for a while now that the Wall Street sequel, Money Never Sleeps would involve the infamous Gordon Gecko (Michael Douglas), his daughter, and the young stock trader she’s engaged to (Read: Oliver Stone & Michael Douglas Set To Return For ‘Wall Street 2′). What we have not known is who exactly would be playing this daughter — a question that we now have an answer to.

Latino Review — who has been the one true source for exclusive Wall Street 2 news — has now learned that actress Carey Mulligan has been cast as Winnie Gecko. Mulligan is an up-and-coming actress whose biggest roles are 2005′s Pride and Prejudice as one of Keira Knightly’s younger sisters, as well as an appearance in this summer’s Johnny Depp and Christian Bale action/crime drama Public Enemies. These two films are highlights of an already-impressive resume for the 24-year old from England, who with a handful of projects in production, is looking to make a name for herself in the near future. [...]

Right around the time that we found out that Australian actor Chris Hemsworth would follow up his short stint in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek with the possible career-making turn as the title role in the Kenneth Branagh-directed comic book adaptation, Thor (Read: Kenneth Branagh Finds His ‘Thor’ In Chris Hemsworth), we also learned that Hemsworth would be filling the shoes that Patrick Swayze once filled in the Red Dawn remake.

Entertainment Weekly is now reporting that the producers of the new Red Dawn have now cast two more actors to join Hemsworth. Taking on the role that was the very first for Charlie Sheen will be Josh Peck (Mean Creek, The Wackness), and the actress that they’ve cast in the Jennifer Grey role is Adrianne Palicki (Friday Night Lights).

On top of this, some brand new news from Latino Review, who have discovered that Tony Gilroy, the writer/director of Oscar-winning Michael Clayton, as well as writer of the Bourne trilogy, is now rewriting the script for this Red Dawn remake. [...]

Préliminaires
Iggy Pop
Produced by Hal Cragin
Astralwerks Records
Release date: June 2, 2009

For over 40 years, James Newell Osterberg, Jr. has shrieked, crowd surfed and wriggled his wiry, leathery torso for our entertainment. His music is often ahead of its time, even providing a catalyst for at least one significant music genre and his influence continues to shape the music of his contemporaries. Iggy Pop has not released a studio album since 2003′s electrifying Skull Ring but now the ‘godfather of punk’ is back with…a jazz album? Quite frankly, Préliminaires is nothing like I expected.

The album opens with a French jazz song from the 1940s. “Les feuilles mortes” sounds like ‘Whats Going On’ by Marvin Gaye over Serge Gainsbourg’s ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’ with Iggy performing the vocals in spoken French. Unfortunately the language of love sounds a little like the language of the creepy old man as he talks his way through it.

What at first listen sounds like the creepy old man in English, “I Want To Go To The Beach” is actually beautifully melancholic. Iggy sounds great with a big band orchestra which he uses to great effect on the swaggering “King Of The Dogs” and this is one of the best tracks on the album [...]

One of the more exciting remake projects in the ever-growing pile of remakes is the Guillermo del Toro remake of the classic monster movie, Frankenstein — a remake that looks to be slowly moving toward finally getting made with the announcement that del Toro regular Doug Jones is going to be playing the giant resurrected monster man (Read: Ian McKellen & Others Officially Returning In Guillermo del Toro’s ‘The Hobbit’; ‘Frankenstein’ Casting Already Begun?). Now comes news that one of the first ever spinoff/sequels in Bride of Frankenstein (another project that’s been hovering around for a long time) is also moving forward again toward a remake treatment.

The movie, from Universal and Imagine Entertainment, is currently in looking into hiring Neil Burger to both write and direct the remake. Burger is best known for his job writing and directing the beautiful Edward Norton magician movie, The Illusionist. If Berger is officially signed, he and his writing partner Dirk Wittenborn would be the latest team to try and bring the movie to the big screen. [...]

Battlestar Galactica mastermind and general science fiction genius Ronald D. Moore has had another project in the works for a while now called Virtuality. Moore sold the property to Fox as a movie-length pilot for a new series, but since then, it’s been unsure whether it would actually become a full TV series, or if it would just be a TV movie. At the moment, it appears Fox wants to see the movie and how it does first and then decide on the show’s fate. This is not good as the movie’s premise is built specifically for a TV series, meaning this movie will merely set the series up, and many, many…if not all answers will remain mysteries unless a show is ordered. It’s hard to believe that any station — including Fox — would think twice about whether to order a new Ronald D. Moore show or not, but this appears to be the case here.

Virtuality tells the story of twelve astronauts who embark on one of the most important space missions of all-time — a decade-long task to find a habitable planet after it is discovered that Earth will no longer be able to support human life in one hundred years. [...]

Many fans still lay in bed at night, unable to sleep due to the end of Battlestar Galactica a few months back. We all know about and are excited that the new prequel series Caprica is on the way and has already started out with a fantastic opening movie (Read: DVD Review: ‘Caprica’); but when it comes to our beloved BSG, only one more story is yet to be told, and that story is called Battlestar Galactica: The Plan. Thankfully there’s now a new trailer and a video clip from the movie.

The Plan will combine old footage and new footage to revisit crucial points in the series and present them from the perspective of the Cylons. It’s presented by the usual suspects in Ronald D. Moore and David Eick; and it’s directed by Admiral Adama himself: Edward James Olmos.

Where the show ended is blanketed in finality and it would be nearly impossible to pick up from there and do something the fans would accept. However, there are so many layers and storylines to this world that they have created, it would not at all surprise me if more prequel movies like this come along down the road. [...]

In one of the more random announcements of recent memory: Sean Penn has decided to drop out of not one, but two of his bigger projects. Penn has informed producers that he will no longer be appearing as Larry in The Three Stooges, and that he also will not be appearing in Cartel — a movie about a man protecting his son from a gang of drug cartels who killed his wife. It appears that the actor has decided to step away from acting for a while after his Oscar-winning performance in Milk to spend more time with his family. Penn has two movies currently in post-production that are on the way, and also another project in pre-production called This Must be the Place, but no word on his leaving or staying with that film.

Universal seems to be fine with this and is going to recast his role in Cartel, which is still in the process of being written. MGM, on the other hand, has a little bit more of a problem to figure out. The Three Stooges movie has been up and down for years now, and it was only last November that it was announced that the Farrelly Brothers had moved the property from WB to to MGM and were finally moving forward with the movie. [...]

This is about as simple and subtle a news story as there can be, but considering the topic, it is indeed well worth a mention.

While promoting Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen over in the U.K., the BBC was able to obtain a tiny little morsel out of star Shia LaBeouf in regard to potential next Indiana Jones movie. Oddly enough, you can actually hear everyone take a deep sigh while reading that last line. When asked about the next movie, LaBeouf seemingly announced that director Steven Spielberg had actually figured out what the next story would be and that he was “gearing up” for it. This of course does not confirm or guarantee another movie is going to actually be made, but consensus seemed to be: if they figured out a good enough story, they would be up for doing another movie.

After the critically crucified fourth installment in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, fans were enraged and heartbroken and it was all just a really large mess. If they do plan on making a fifth film, it’s going to have to be remarkably better in order to win hearts back. [...]

Warner Brothers has sent out five new images from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. After a mammoth delay that spanned long enough to conceive, develop, and deliver a newborn child, we are finally within one month of the film’s release on July 15, 2009.

Among these images, you’ll find a few shots of the boy wizard Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) filming various scenes; a peek at director David Yates walking through the library where Harry finds the book of the Half-Blood Prince; and a close-up of Hermione (Emma Watson) for good measure. We’ve seen many images and a trailers for this movie already, so these anti-action shots may not exactly make you dance; but again, with only one month to go now, the excitement is building and even pictures like this help to pass that evil thing we call time!

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince also stars Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley; Michael Gambon as Albus Dumbledore; Alan Rickman as Severus Snape; Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange; Jim Broadbent as Horace Slughorn; and Robbie Coltrane as Rubeus Hagrid, along with all of your other favorite returning cast members. [...]

Transformers has taken over the Luxor on the Las Vegas strip.

A huge wrap of Transformers is currently covering an entire side of the Vegas casino hotel, which looks like the film’s main bot Optimus Prime is bursting out of the 500-feet-high pyramid-shaped building. The Optimus Prime image is over 100,000 square feet.

Click the image here at right for the larger, full version of the Luxor’s Transformers takeover.

The takeover, which is the world’s largest building wrap to date, is in promotion of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the upcoming sequel to 2007′s Transformers. Directed by Michael Bay, the sequel sees returning stars Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, and of course, Optimus Prime and his band of Autobots [...]

This past February, the Marcus Nispel-directed Friday the 13th reboot was released to mixed criticism and mediocre box office numbers. Though these are never good things and a sequel has not yet been approved, fans of Jason Voorhees still hope for more movies and the franchise’s producers are preparing for one. Thankfully, it can’t hurt to have one of the wealthiest directors in the world in Michael Bay as one of your producers.

While on the set of the new A Nightmare on Elm Street reboot (both Friday and Nightmare are produced by Platinum Dunes), Shock ‘Til Ya Drop spoke to producer Brad Fuller who shared where the potential sequel stands. From the sound of it, there is no script and there’s not even a guarantee that the sequel will ever happen, but they do have a solid plan that they’re working with writers Damion Shannon and Mark Swift to figure out where they want to go. [...]

We all clearly remember the massive leak of X-Men Origins: Wolverine a month before the movie was released, as well as the firing of Roger Friedman — who openly admitted to watching the bootlegged copy and then reviewing it for Fox (Read: In Case You Missed It: A ‘Wolverine’ Leak Recap). It appears that the story doesn’t end there, as Friedman and his lawyer Martin Garbus are preparing to sue Fox for wrongful termination, and they sound fairly confident in their winning.

The shocking part in all of this, is that there are now reports that the actual leak is being traced back to Rupert Murdoch, owner of 20th Century Fox. Not someone working at a company that was contracted to add effects, or music, or cut a trailer — no, no, it may just be the man at the top himself. A massive twist of the plot, indeed.

The NY Daily News spoke to the lawyer Garbus who claims that Murdoch wanted to see an early copy of Wolverine and asked to have a copy slapped onto a DVD. In this request, someone else decided to make a copy for themselves, which was then leaked. [...]

The original Sentinel of Liberty Steve Rogers will resume his role as Captain America when he returns to the Marvel Universe just in time for Independence day, according to Marvel Comics veteran Senior Editor Tom Brevoort in a recent interview with UGO.

Rogers will make his debut in Reborn #1, the first issue of a new series written by ongoing Cap scribe Ed Brubaker with art from Bryan Hitch and a cover by Alex Ross. The series is reported to hit comic shops on July 1, Brevoort said, and it will reveal all of the ground work that was laid out years before.

It made headlines two years ago when Steve Rogers met his untimely death in Captain America #25 at the hands of former lover Sharon Carter during the Marvel Universe Civil War, preceding a massive Skrull invasion [...]

Sci Fi Channel’s Warehouse 13 premieres on Tuesday July 7th at 9/8c. Starring CCH Pounder (The Shield), Eddie Mclintock (Bones), Joanne Kelly (Vanished) and Saul Rubinek (Eureka), the show follows a group of government agents assigned to retrieve strange supernatural objects for the U.S. Government. Once obtained, they are housed and safeguarded in a super-secret facility known only as Warehouse 13. According to the Sci Fi Channel, the show is a cross between the X-Files and Moonlighting, two very awesome shows in their own right.

In celebration of this super show, we came up with the Top 13 coolest objects from the comic-verse that would fit perfectly on the vast shelves in Warehouse 13. Get it? Because there’s 13 items and the Warehouse is numbered 13…and it is…uhh…funny…ha..umm..hah…..moving along…

On June 21, 2009 at 8PM EST, the hit BBC miniseries Merlin premieres in the U.S. on NBC — and not a moment too soon. We live in a world where TV is ruled by disgusting amounts of cop/authority dramas and hospital dramas and what we really need, is some good old fantasy! With Merlin, we will get just that.

As it is known, Merlin is the legendary wizard who is most-often associated with the tales of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table in Camelot. The truth to the character is hard to even put into words. He was first written about in the year 1136 and has shown up in an infinite amount of movies, TV shows, cartoons, games, artworks, and who knows how many other things. Quite simply put: when you think of a wizard, you most likely think of the greatest wizard of them all: Merlin..

So as not to be unoriginal, the creators of this 13-part miniseries, starring Buffy‘s Anthony Head and Michelle Ryan (from the Bionic Woman reboot), have basically rebooted the world and the character to offer many fresh, wonderful new adventures to existing fans, and any new ones that may come [...]

/Film found a great interview that the BBC Radio (click to listen to the full broadcast!) had with Mr. Guillermo del Toro. During this interview, most of the topics associated with del Toro were covered: The obvious being his two-film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien‘s The Hobbit; as well as Frankenstein, Hellboy 3, and others.

Most importantly is of course The Hobbit. The interviewer asked Guillermo if Andy Serkis would be returning for the role to which he confirmed what we all pretty much knew already: Serkis, Sir Ian McKellen, and Hugo Weaving will all be returning in their Lord of the Rings roles. The director also admitted that one of the most intriguing of the characters from the novel, Smaug, may take fourteen to fifteen months before film-ready; they’ve been working on him for eight months already and are just denting the surface. This attention to detail and quest for perfection now promises amazing things for Smaug. We already know that an announcement is expected soon in regard to who will fill the younger shoes of Bilbo Baggins, so it’s nice to have official confirmation of the returning faces. [...]

X-Men: Manifest Destiny
Written by Jason Aaron, Mike Carey, Frank Tieri
Drawn by Michael Ryan, Stephen Segovia, Takeshi Miyazawa
Marvel Comics
Release date: May 13, 2009

Having been decimated, become an endangered species, and developed a Messiah Complex, it is safe to say that the X-Men have had a rough couple of years. The years have not been kind to the merry mutants as their population dwindled and the hatred toward them increase twice fold. In their latest storyline, Manifest Destiny, with their home in ruins and with no allies to be found, the X-Men have decided to abandon their home in Westchester and set up shop in mutant friendly San Francisco. It is there with Warren Worthington’s (aka Angel) money, they set up a new facility to house any mutant in need of shelter, sort of like a new age Xavier Academy.

The storyline is actually pretty entertaining but too bad it is not in this hardcover. X-Men: Manifest Destiny hardcover does not collect the main story but rather the back stories and various mini-series that spun off from the storyline itself. One of the mini-series that it collects are Wolverine: Manifest Destiny, where fists fly and kung fu chops are thrown as Wolvie must confront his past in the heart of San Francisco’s Chinatown. In Nightcrawler: Manifest Destiny, our favorite elf heads off to a museum dedicated to him and the monster that lurks the area. Other back up stories revolving around Iceman, Mystique, and Boom-Boom that were presented as back up stories are also published in this book [...]

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
Directed by Tony Scott
Starring Denzel Washington, John Travolta, James Gandolfini, John Turturro
Rated R
Release Date: June 12, 2009

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is a remake of the 1974 film of the same name, which also spawned a made for TV remake in 1998; all of which were based on a novel. So there’s a book, two movie versions, and a TV version. The most obvious question beyond why it was even made in the first place is what was being brought to the table to make it worth my time? Let’s try and forget for a minute that this is yet another cog in the wheel of the Hollywood remake machine (an argument for another day) and focus on the specifics of this current incarnation.

The problem with a movie like The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is that it is not the type of movie you can just like on its own merit. It’s a heist movie — and a fairly boring one at that — so you have to find something else to like about it. Because the film isn’t strong enough on its own to let this happen, your level of appreciation will be strongly dictated by any comparisons you are able to draw from the pieces of its construct.

There is potential to be found in that this is the fourth time director Tony Scott has teamed up with Denzel Washington (Déjà Vu, Man on Fire, and Crimson Tide). With the exception of Déjà Vu, this pairing has been pretty good. Washington is usually as reliable as it gets. Even in an inferior film he has the ability to rise above a mess and stand out. And while one could argue that substance isn’t a spice Scott often takes out of the pantry, when he’s on his game and the project warrants his spastic style, he can turn out a decent movie [...]

So, the last time I told you about the Second Player’s handbook, this time I’m going to go into what it feels like to play a game of Dungeons and Dragons in it’s new style, that we like to call 4th edition. I’m also going to go into what you need to start a game of your own, and where the best resources are, and if there are any good places I don’t mention, feel free to leave a comment, because I can always use them myself.

The first thing you’ll notice when actually playing a game of 4th ed is the strategic and board game elements that have been added to the game. This is the first time that the D&D miniatures game has been fully integrated into the game-play of the RPG, and I kind of enjoy it, but I can see the problems. Gone are the days when you had to picture the entire scenario of battle in your head, and then move and attack according to that picture. Now all the players have a pseudo-3D representation of where the enemies are, exactly how many there are, and where they are in relation to the players. You might say that half of the fun of the game was the imagination you put into creating the environments in your head, and I’d be forced to agree with you. However, what you get for more reliance on the miniatures is an increase in strategic elements for battles. Positioning has become very important as there are many bonuses that come from being certain distances from characters, bonuses for flanking enemies, you have to be aware of how many spaces you are away from enemies, and so on. If you’ve ever played a collectible mini-game such as Heroclix or Mage Knight, you’ll have a good understanding of what battle looks like now. Getting back to the player’s use of imagination to establish the action, I’d say you still use it to a certain degree, just that some of the heavy thinking has been removed. This is going to be a recurring element in 4th edition.

UFC Classics, Volumes 11 & 12
Directed by Mark Lucas
Starring, Tank Abbott, Mark Coleman, Dan Severn, Jerry Bohlander, Vitor Belfort
Lionsgate Home Entertainment
Release Date: March 10, 2009

For all of you hybrid geeks out there, such as myself, who love sports as much as they love movies and games — here’s some more good old fashioned Ultimate Fighting Championship action for you. This time we’re looking at the 11th and 12th volumes of UFC Classics.

The last time I reviewed UFC Classics, it was for volumes 5, 6, 7, and 8. When I did that review, there was oh, so much I could say about the UFC as a very passionate fan of mixed martial arts. Unfortunately, I didn’t know that I would have the chance to do more of these reviews, which leaves me with much less to say. This becomes a problem, as it’s very difficult to actually review fights. You can read my previous review here to catch up: DVD Review: UFC Classics Collection Volumes 5-8

These classic events are still back when the UFC was still a no rules competition that was banned in many countries. Being a big fan of the sport, I can watch these and find entertainment, but if you’re not a super-fan, you may not be as impressed. [...]