Ironclad
Directed by Jonathan English
Starring James Purefoy, Paul Giamatti, Kate Mara, Brian Cox, Derek Jacobi, Vladmir Kulich, Charles Dance, Jason Flemyng, Mackenzie Crook, Aneurin Barnard, Jamie Foreman
Release Date: June 8th, 2011

The name Jonathan English may not mean jack squat to you now, but after you see his latest film, Ironclad, you’ll remember it for goddamn sure. English is the writer (with Erick Kastel and Stephen McDool) and director of this latest entry in the medieval action genre that has gotten a major adrenaline fix recently with the success of the HBO series A Game of Thrones and the literal onslaught of blood and steel battle epics like Neil Marshall’s Centurion and Christopher Smith’s Black Death.

Armed with a tight script, a fantastic cast ready to chew scenery and kick ass, and buckets of blood and severed limbs, English saddles up to take on that hoariest of cinema sub-genres that’s easiest to do if you have little funding to work with: the siege movie. [...]

One of the most common complaints about the movie industry is that the majority of the films getting released contain not a shred of originality and feel more like assembly line products than anything approaching entertainment that a person with an I.Q. larger than double digits can enjoy without feeling the need to injure the nearest house pet. Every year Hollywood talent agencies compile a “Blacklist” of the best screenplays making the rounds at studios and not getting made, and on occasion some of those scripts manage to make it to the big screen. Entire books have been written about great scripts that sat on the shelf for years for various reasons that defy all manner of logical thought.

Yet despite all this it is still possible for a movie about a killer car to be made, and for that movie to be called Super Hybrid. And because it is possible, it has happened; a movie called Super Hybrid has been made.

You can watch the trailer and several clips from the film below this article. [...]

We’ve already seen a bunch of photos of Twilight star Taylor Lautner in action in his new conspiracy-thriller Abduction, as well as the first trailer for movie.

Now, Lionsgate has released the second trailer for the film, directed by John Singleton. Watch the new trailer here below.

In Abduction, Lautner plays a teenager who finds his baby photo on a missing persons website, which makes him question his background, and eventually he becomes a target of the CIA and the Serbian Secret Service [...]

30 Minutes or Less
Directed by Ruben Fleischer
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Danny McBride, Nick Swardson, Aziz Ansari, Michael Pena, Fred Ward, Bianca Kajlich, Dilshad Vadsaria
Release Date: August 12, 2011

Director Ruben Fleischer has a variety of unorthodox ways to evoke action, rampage, and chaos. After only two feature-length films (first being Zombieland) we can see that his forte may already be established and that his vision has become distorted by things that go boom. Innumerable are his whacked out and distinct ideas that somehow and some way get made into a film that either succeeds or misses the mark somewhat. Refer to Zombieland, in which that film sufficiently mapped out and exhibited more than a dozen extravagant ways to execute an approaching zombie.

His approach to 30 Minutes or Less is even more chaotic yet less coherent and blatantly contrived. The lack of regard for more details that he displays here (this deficiency can be attributed to the 83–minute run time) may represent his inability to structure a fully believable tale that consists of mindless individuals in incomparable circumstances. [...]

Metallica
Metallica – The Black Album
U.S.: CD | MP3
UK: CD | MP3
Recorded October 1990 – June 1991
Released August 13, 1991

At the end of the 1980s, an epic battle was about to take place. Grunge was wafting its sweaty cardigan in the direction of the drainpipe-trousered metallers hoping to lay claim to their throne. One band was not about to concede the new decade to any pretenders and set about writing not only one of the defining albums of the decade, but one of the greatest metal albums of all time. The almighty Black Album arrived, and nobody was going to remove Metallica’s crown.

Officially titled Metallica, it became known as the Black Album thanks to the cover art. It’s black. Released August 13, 1991, it demonstrated a marked change for Metallica. The band’s thrash-heavy, white-hot relentless riffs were replaced by a slower, heavier sound that was less like a machine-gun attack and more like a steady series of hammer blows. On previous albums like …And Justice or All and Master Of Puppets, Metallica showcased their songwriting abilities through epic, challenging musical pieces. This time, however, they went in the opposite direction and kept everything much more simple. The riffs were shorter and catchier and in “Nothing Else Matters” they even have a love song that is actually my favourite track on the album. The galloping riffs of “Through The Never,” “The Struggle Within,” and “Holier Than Thou” prove that Metallica is still the same band. Much of this praise — or blame — was laid at the feet of producer-of-the-moment Bob Rock [...]

There’s been plenty of whispers of a new Austin Powers movie over the years, but—despite the fact that it looked like we’d be getting the movies in bulk for years to come much like the Saw and Fast and Furious franchises—they just kind of ended after 2002′s Goldmember.

Yes, it’s been almost a decade since the last installment, but it would appear that the time has come for Austin Powers 4 to become a reality. HitFix is reporting that Mike Myers has officially signed on to return to the role(s) for a fourth time, elevating the project from a rumor (that some wanted to see come true and others very much did not want to see come true) to a reality.

It’s not yet known if other stars will be back to join Myers or if Jay Roach will return to direct, nor is it known what kind of storyline will be used to try and one–up the previous films while attempting to keep things fresh. [...]

News is breaking that The Walt Disney Company has made the shocking decision to completely shut down production on one of their huge upcoming projects, The Lone Ranger.

We’ve been hearing about the movie for a few years now with Johnny Depp attached to star as Tonto (alongside The Social Network‘s Armie Hammer in the title role), Gore Verbinski in the director’s seat, and Jerry Bruckheimer as a producer—all three of which were integral in bringing billions (plural) of dollars to Disney with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.

Apparently Disney didn’t want to spend any more than $200 million (around the norm for a blockbuster) on the movie, but it was hovering at around $230 million, cut down from an original $250 million mark. The company is already throwing around big bucks with Andrew Stanton’s John Carter running around the astonishing $300 million mark after a bunch of re–shoots were required, and the Sam Raimi Wizard of Oz prequel, Oz: The Great and Powerful, looking at about a $200 million price tag. [...]

Flash Fact #1: People love cheap comics.

Flash Fact #2: You, my gentle reader, are a person.

Therefore, you love cheap comics.

Okay, I’m prepared to accept that some of you may be robots or talking gorillas or even mad geniuses from the future, but you should still be excited because starting at midnight when it turns Saturday, August 13 and running through 11pm EST on August 14, DC is putting over 100 digital issues of The Flash and Flash-related comics on sale.

See below for the list of digital comics included in the sale.

So, if you have an iPad or you like reading comics on your computer, be sure to snag some of these issues. You don’t even have to run out to get them. You could probably stand to go for a run though. It’ll make The Flash happy [...]

The latest title from id Software—creators of the first–person shooter and games like Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake—RAGE takes everything the company has learned over the past couple of decades and puts it all into trying to make the best game they’ve ever made. To prepare for its release, six behind–the–scenes videos have now been released and are here for all to see.

The game, which is being published by The Elder Scrolls and Fallout gamemasters, Bethesda Softworks, is not too unlike Fallout as it takes place in a post–apocalyptic setting. Though this catastrophic event was caused by a meteorite striking the planet. The player begins their game by awakening from a cryogenic sleep in an underground facility built to protect important people who might be able to rebuild Earth, only to discover that they’re the only one who has survived.

Click on over to the other side to check out the videos! [...]

Drew McWeeny over at HitFix is reporting that David Yates and Steve Kloves, the director and writer team who collaborated on Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Parts I and II, will reteam for a cinematic adaptation of The Stand, Stephen King‘s epic novel of fantasy and horror depicting humankind’s struggle to endure in a world ravaged by a virus and preyed upon by a dark figure known only as Randall Flagg (a.k.a. The Walkin’ Dude).

The book was first published in 1978, but in 1990 King published an expanded edition, which subsequently served as source material for a television miniseries directed by Mick Garris that aired on ABC in 1994 and starred Gary Sinise, Molly Ringwald, Ruby Dee, Rob Lowe, Miguel Ferrer, Shawnee Smith, and Jamey Sheridan as Flagg. Prior to that, George Romero attempted a single film version with a screenplay by Rospo Pallenberg (Excalibur), but the project never got off the ground. [...]

By Paul Malmont

The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown, my new novel, is what I like to call faction — a hybrid of fact and fiction. A fact: Thanks to editor John W. Campbell, golden age science fiction writers Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and L. Sprague de Camp were hired by the Navy to work on military research at the Philadelphia Naval Yard during World War II. A fact: L. Ron Hubbard was a pulp science fiction writer, a friend of Heinlein’s, and was court martialed for, well, basically incompetency during the war — yet he always claimed he was off on super-secret missions in the Pacific. A fact: Nikola Tesla built a strange communication tower at Wardenclyffe, Long Island. A fact: a legend has grown up since the 1960s that experiments in Philadelphia may have led to a ship being transported from the harbor, to Virginia, and back again. A fact: a spring-fed river appears under the Empire State Building and runs underground to Washington Square. Somewhere beyond those facts, my fiction begins.

I do a tremendous amount of research preparing for my novels. I have a responsibility to the real lives of the people I’m turning into characters; to plausibly connect what we know about their lives with what we don’t. One thing I really like to do, whenever possible, is visit the locations I’m writing about. Two things that I write about often in describing a locale are smells and sounds — two things that I don’t have to imagine if I visit a place. So, I thought for this Geeks of Doom guest blog post that I’d share some of the real world settings I visited and photographed (and one I visited but didn’t photograph and had to borrow photos from) [...]

In BioShock, Andrew Ryan had a dream: “No Gods or Kings. Only Man.” And from this dream, the underwater city of Rapture was born. A place where people could escape the grasps of government and social guidelines. A place where people could become whoever it is they most wanted to be. You see, in Rapture, a thing called “plasmids” exist, and these plasmids can rewrite your genetic code to give you abilities beyond your wildest dreams. It all sounded too good to be true, and, unfortunately, it ultimately was.

But that’s just science fiction. We live in reality, of course.

Researchers at Cambridge University have successfully taken a nematode worm, and expanded its genetic code. In a living organism, there is 20 amino acids which are assembled in various combinations to make thousands and thousands of proteins. These protein molecules are required to sustain an organism’s life. Sebastian Greiss and Jason Chin took this nematode worm, and redesigned its genetic code to include a 21st amino acid, which is found nowhere else in nature. [...]

If you’re familiar with the Final Destination movie franchise, then you know the films are basically good for one thing — the deaths.

Yes, it’s one of those horror franchises where you watch and wait for the next grotesque death to occur. If you watch the movies in a packed theater, you can expect a lot of “OH SNAP!”s being exclaimed from your fellow movie-goers.

While some of the movies in the series have been less than stellar, Final Destination 5, which comes to theaters [oh snap!] this weekend, promises to be a return to form, from what I hear. But that doesn’t leave a lot of time to catch up with the series if you haven’t seen the previous movies. So, instead of trying to sit through about 6 hours’ worth of Final Destination films, you can instead watch this video here below that contains every death sequence from the first four movies [...]

The $10 t-shirt deal of the day over at TeeFury today is the Monty Python-themed shirt called “The Optimist” by artist Teo Zed.

The sale began at Teefury today, Friday, August 12, 2011, at midnight EST, and will continue for 24 hours from then, and once it’s over, it will not be sold on the site anymore [...]

The $10 t-shirt deal of the day over at RIPT Apparel is a Girl with the Dragon Tattoo-themed shirt called “Salander’s Dragon” by artist Heartjack.

The sale at RIPT began today, Friday, August 12, 2011, at midnight CST, and will continue for 24 hours from then, and once it’s over, it will not be sold on the site anymore [...]

TMZ is reporting that rocker Jani Lane, former singer of the band Warrant, was found dead this evening at a hotel in Los Angeles. He was 47.

The singer’s body was reportedly discovered at the Comfort Inn hotel in Woodland Hills, CA. So far, no official cause of death has been released or any further details about Lane’s recent activities.

Lane was born John Kennedy Oswald in Akron, Ohio on February 1, 1964. The blond long-haired singer began fronting the hair metal band Warrant in 1986 and wrote some of their biggest hits, like 1990′s “Cherry Pie,” as well as “Heaven” and “Down Boys.” The band enjoyed great success with their first two albums, but eventually their popularity waned and in 1993, Lane left Warrant to pursue a solo career [...]

Filmmaker Jonathan Demme has optioned the film rights for 11/22/63, the upcoming novel by Stephen King, with plans to write, direct, and produce the feature, according to Variety.

The story centers around Jake Epping, a 35-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who discovers a portal that allows him to travel back in time to attempt to prevent the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

King’s book, 11/22/63: A Novel, is scheduled for release on November 8, 2011 (seems like a missed release-date opportunity, doesn’t it?) [...]

While discussing the London riots on The Daily Show, host Jon Stewart and senior European correspondent John Oliver took a bit of a detour.

After mentioning how horrible the riots are and how bad European wars are in general, Oliver notes that some good has come of them as well, such as the various movies about them including Saving Private Ryan.

After declaring Ryan a Best Picture Oscar winner, Stewart corrects Oliver and informs him that Shakespeare In Love was in fact the winner that year. This hilariously sets off the two on a mini–tirade about the atrocity that not only the Saving Private Ryan upset was, but also the loss of Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas to Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves.

Check out the video below now. [...]

For decades, Trekkies everywhere have surely fantasized about a special place dedicated to the world of Gene Roddenberry‘s legendary creation, Star Trek. A place where they could escape their own boring lives, and become their favorite Trek characters for a day or two.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, just such a place is on its way…though there’s a bit of a catch that comes with it.

As it turns out, Jordan’s King Abdullah II once appeared in a non–speaking role on Star Trek: Voyager while he was still a prince (you can see it here), and he remains to this day a massive, massive Trekkie. So much so that he’s willing and ready to drop a chunk of the jaw–dropping $1.5 billion cost to make the theme park a reality. [...]

Earlier today, Entertainment Weekly revealed the cover for its upcoming Fall 2011 Movie Preview issue, which features a sexy photo from The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part 1.

While the cover is taken from the highly anticipated “honeymoon waterfall” scene with a bikini-clad Bella (Kristen Stewart) and shirt-less Edward (Robert Pattinson) in an embrace, two new images of the newlyweds have been released. Check them out here [...]