Category Archives: Uncategorized

Movie trailer round-up: ‘A.C.O.D.’, ‘+1’ & ‘Carrie’

Adam Scott (Step BrothersParks And Rec) stars in A.C.O.D. as an Adult Child of Divorce. Richard Jenkins, Catherine O’Hara, Amy Poehler, Clark Duke, Jessica Alba, and Jane Lynch make up the rest of the comedy all-star lineup. A brief synopsis reads:

A.C.O.D. follows Carter (Adam Scott), a seemingly well-adjusted Adult Child of Divorce. Having survived the madness of his parents’ (Richard Jenkins and Catherine O’Hara) divorce, Carter now has a successful career and supportive girlfriend (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). But when his younger brother (Clark Duke) gets engaged, Carter is forced to reunite his bitterly divorced parents and their new spouses (Amy Poehler and Ken Howard) for the wedding, causing the chaos of his childhood to return, including his wacky therapist (Jane Lynch).

A.C.O.D. releases October 4. The poster was too good to miss, so you’ll find the trailer after the break.

Jump after the break to view more trailers. Continue reading Movie trailer round-up: ‘A.C.O.D.’, ‘+1’ & ‘Carrie’

‘OUAT in Wonderland’ scoop: a longer season promised with hope for more stories to tell

Once fans, perk up! Originally envisioned as a standalone, limited series to bridge the gap during Once Upon A Time‘s winter hiatus, spinoff Once Upon A Time In Wonderland is spinning into a more traditional series for the alphabet network. At the Upfronts, ABC announced that Wonderland will air concurrently in the fall alongside the flagship series; OUAT remains at Sundays at 8 and Wonderland slides into the Thursday at 8 timeslot. And now, EW reports that the original episode order of 13 is being expanded; a final count is still unknown but it will fall between 14 and 21 in total. Traditionally, a show will get a 13 episode order and if it fares well in the ratings it will get “picked up” for a “back nine” or 9 additional episodes usually rounding a full season out at 22 installments. ABC is so confident in this spinoff, however, that it is allowing creators Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis to craft a story with exactly the right amount of episodes required to tell it.

“We really want to tell the story without having to worry about how to stretch it for five years,” says Kitsis. “The upfront order will be it for the season.” Adds Horowitz, “This is not meant to be a 22-episode season. Whatever it ends up being, we’ll have told a complete story, with a beginning, middle and end.”

So Wonderland remains a standalone tale, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t come back for more. “If the audience responds and people love these characters, the plan would be to bring it back next year and tell a whole new story,” Horowitz says.

The creative duo describe the difference between the flagship series and its spinoff. Once from the beginning was imagined as a long, intricate tale with multiple story arcs that necessitate more than one season to properly pull off. Wonderland, on the other hand, is inherently designed to open and close a major arc inside a single season, much like FX’s American Horror Story does.

On Wonderland Horowitz remarks, “The DNA of this show is different and consciously so. The idea is you can just come on in and enjoy the ride.” Adds Kitsis, “If you’ve seen Once, you’ll be rewarded; if you haven’t, you won’t miss a beat.”

OUAT returns and OUAT In Wonderland premieres this fall on ABC. Watch the Upfronts trailer for Wonderland here.

First look: Spidey’s updated costume in ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’

Courtesy of ComingSoon.net, here is our first look at Peter Parker’s updated costume as seen in the upcoming sequel The Amazing Spider-Man 2. You can compare the new, very comic book-like look to the first movie’s attempt at the web-slinger’s identity concealer. Most notably the eyes are significantly bigger and white, the black spider positioned across the chest has a new design, and the suit’s texture has changed.

Director Marc Webb’s Spidey sequel is set to release May 2, 2014 starring Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone once again, with new entires Dane DeHaan (as Harry Osborne), Jamie Foxx and Paul Giammatti (as villains Electro and The Rhino), and Shailene Woodley (Mary Jane Watson).

‘Wonder Woman’ short teases the potential for a TV/movie adaptation

Is it time to bring Wonder Woman back to the screen? After watching this gritty, action-packed take on the DC Comics superheroine, I’d say so. This (too) short film made by director Jesse V. Jackson and starring Nina Bergman teases the potential of a Wonder Woman comeback, either to the big screen or the one in your living room. Jackson is merely a fan of the famed comic book hero with an urge to make Diana Prince relevant again in this age of male-dominated superheros (read: Batman and The Avengers). The guy’s got a compelling argument here if you ask me. I 2011, David E. Kelly attempted to revive Wonder Woman with a TV series developed for NBC starring Adrianne Palicki; it ended up not working out. Most recently The CW wanted to bring Diana back in an origin story series titled Amazon but its development was pushed to the 2014-15 TV season. Hopefully Jackon’s short here will prove to fans and TV/movie execs alike that the time is now bring back the strong and sexiest member of the Justice League back into the spotlight.

TCA 13: Melissa Rosenberg teases a satisfying run for ‘Red Widow’ with lots of potential for more

In my humble opinion, unlike Zero Hour‘s trailer the one for Red Widow bodes well for the upcoming ABC drama from Melissa Rosenberg (Dexter, the Twilight saga) and starring Radha Mitchell. The show revolves around Mitchell’s character Marta Walraven, a stay-at-home mom who gets tangled up in a bloody and dangerous tale involving her husband’s death and organized crime. Specifically, she must assume the role of her organized crime husband Franklin after he is assassinated in a drug-related incident.

At the TCAs Rosenberg made it a point that if you tune in you will get answers to some of the series’ big questions that are introduced inside the string of the first season’s eight episodes. “Having learned from The Killing, we are answering the questions of who killed Franklin and where is the coke.” (If you didn’t know, there was a huge backlash when AMC’s The Killing failed to reveal the season’s murderer in the finale.) “The question of how Marta is going to get herself out of this is a series-long question. And each effort will lead to the continuing story line,” Rosenberg expanded.

Red Widow is based on the 2010 Dutch series Penoza. After a successful run, Penoza (which was originally deemed an eight episode mini-series) received an order for more episodes but its writers had killed off many the characters and so they had a harder time reinstating the show. Rosenberg is more than aware of this and said, “By the end of the season, we’ll have a satisfying answer to the season, but I’m not giving anybody up. I’m not killing everyone, and I’m not letting anyone off the hook. Some people die, but not all of them. For me, it’s all about building characters and relationships you can cling to for five or seven years.”

Rosenberg envisions Mitchell’s Marta to eventually transform into a dark, deeply flawed antiheroine. She said the character is inspired by such flawed characters as Breaking Bad‘s Walter White and Dexter‘s Dexter Morgan. “She could go as bad as Walter White,” she said. “We don’t go that far in the [first season], but there is definitely room to evolve.” Mitchell compared her character to Luc Besson’s creation in La Femme Nikita by describing Marta as “a character under duress. I always thought the character was iconic, and a kind of character I wanted to explore if I had one more character in my career.”

Red Widow premieres Sunday, March 3 at 9PM.

[Via Deadline; THR]

Apple reports 2012 Q4 earnings: $8.2b profit, $36b revenue, Macs up 1%, iPhones up 58%, iPads up 26%, iPods down 19%

On Thursday Apple reported its fourth quarter financial results, and it’s another record-breaker for the company. Apple posted a $8.2 billion profit on $36 billion in revenue. Compare this to one year ago, that’s up from a profit of $6.62 billion on $28.72 billion in revenue. Says CEO Tim Cook: “We’re very proud to end a fantastic fiscal year with record September quarter results. We’re entering this holiday season with the best iPhone, iPad, Mac and iPod products ever, and we remain very confident in our new product pipeline.”

Now let’s break it down by product category. Apple sold 4.9 million Macs during the quarter (representing a 1 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter); 26.9 million iPhones (representing an 58 percent unit growth); 14 million iPads (representing a 26 percent unit growth); and 5.3 million iPods (representing an 19 percent unit decline). Their “hobby” known as Apple TV sold 1.3 million units generating revenue that Cook admits is “quite small” but he is still dedicated to the streaming product.

Looking ahead to the first fiscal quarter of 2013, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer expects revenue of about $52 billion and diluted earnings per share of about $11.75.

[Via Apple; Engadget]

‘The Walking Dead’s Robert Kirkman developing heist drama for AMC

The ratings boon that is AMC’s The Walking Dead isn’t enough for Robert Kirkman, the comic book writer and executive producer behind the zombie hit. He is preparing to bring a new series to the network based on another one of his graphic novels called Thief of Thieves. Per Deadline, this new comic “centers on master thief Conrad Paulson who, while attempting to reconcile with his estranged wife and son, vows to walk the straight and narrow, only to discover he’s completely addicted to the thrill of stealing. Now he must feed his addiction by stealing only what has been stolen, as the “Thief of Thieves.”

Says Kirkman: “Much like The Walking Dead brought horror to television in a unique and groundbreaking way, I feel Thief of Thieves can do the same thing for heist stories, showing the humanity of all the characters, including the criminals.” Unlike The Walking Dead, Theif of Thieves is “going to be very grounded in the real world,” Kirkman spilled to EW. “No zombies, no space aliens, no superheroes. It’s just going to be real human characters doing somewhat horrible things to each other.”

Kirkman will executive produce alongside fellow Walking Dead collaborators Charles Eglee (The Shield, Dexter) and David Alpert. If AMC picks up the show, Eglee will also serve as showrunner. More as this story develops.

[Via Deadline]

Unreleased track: Kid Cudi – “Dose of Dopeness” (Produced by Dot Da Genius)

Kid Cudi fans, here it is, at long last, the mastered version of “Dose of Dopeness.” Fans of Cudder have been waiting four years for this track to release, ever since he performed it at an intimate session that got posted to YouTube way back in 2008. The Dot Da Genius-produced banger carries a vibe similar to J-Kwon’s “Tipsy”, but obviously it does enough to distance itself from anything you’ve heard before. This is classic Cudder; in fact it was originally invented in ’08 when Cudi was about to blow up with another Genius-produced song “Day ‘N’ Night.” The beat is fire and the raps have an introductory swagger. In “Dopeness” Cudi talks, “Some people call me Cudi, some people call me Scott; it don’t matter what you want to call me as long as you call me something.” And at the very end he even teases the name of his debut album: “Where are we going? The moon.” Listen to and download the stellar track below. Cop the official album artwork (designed by Dat New Cudi’s DP) above.

You can expect to hear a whole lot more from Kid Cudi and Dot Da Genius soon. Their collab album WZRD drops February 28.

Download: Kid Cudi – “Dose of Dopeness” (Produced by Dot Da Genius)

[audio: Kid Cudi – Dose of Dopeness.mp3]

[Via DatNewCudi]

NBC nabs J.J. Abrams’ ‘Revolution’; ABC gets ‘Stronger’ by way of Carlton Cuse

The connective tissue tying together these two TV news bites: the pedigree behind the new respective projects come from a show you probably heard of…Lost.

First let’s see what’s up with the creator of the Island. J.J. Abrams has much on his plate already. This TV season he has three shows airing: Fringe (FOX), Person of Interest (CBS), and Alcatraz (FOX) premieres in midseason. He’s also working on the Star Trek movie sequel. But all of this isn’t enough for the mastermind behind some of the greatest shows produced for TV. He’s ready to dip his wand in a new Warner Bros. TV/Bad Robot project and it’s called Revolution. According to Deadline, the show is being described as “an epic adventure thriller.” Since it’s an Abrams project, don’t expect the plot to leak until the man behind the curtain allows that to happen. Abrams has teamed with Supernatural creator and executive producer Eric Kripke for Revolution; Kripke will pen the pilot script which recently got pilot production commitment from NBC. More as the story develops…

In other news, Lost showrunner Carlton Cuse has a new project up his sleeve too. His is titled Stronger and Deadline describes it as “a drama project with spiritual overtones.” Cuse’s partner in crime is author/pastor Rob Bell, and he will serve as co-writer and executive producer. Bell is leaving Michigan’s Mars Hill Bible Church (which he created) to develop the series which was recently sold to ABC. Deadline reports that the show “revolves around Tom Stronger, a musician and teacher, and his spiritual journey as he becomes a benefactor and guide to others.” Stronger won’t hide its autobiographical roots; Bell is in fact a former musician and he will likely incorporate his experiences into the script. Now don’t forget–like his former Lost cohort Cuse is keeping busy with multiple projects in consideration, too. Look out for his ABC civil war drama Point of Honor on the horizon.

[Via Deadline 1, 2]

TV Reminder: Entourage premieres tonight at 10:30PM on HBO

The boys are back for one last hurrah. The eighth and final season of Entourage premieres tonight at 10:30PM on HBO. The shortened six episode season will air every Sunday at this timeslot; the series finale falls on August 28.

In an interview with Vulture, creator Doug Ellen says longtime viewers can expect a return to original form. “I wanted to get back to the early roots of the show, and get back to the guys sticking together, really looking out for each other” he says. “I wanted it to be a little lighter this season; obviously, the third episode is pretty dark, but I think we come out of that in a good way that’s realistic but also comedic.” As for the post-HBO run Entourage movie that’s in the works, Ellin says that the final season will not lead into the movie simply because the storyline for the feature film has not been decided yet. In his words: “I wish I was smart enough — everybody’s like, ‘Oh, you gotta leave it open, and do this and this.’ Every year I do the best I can and it ends somewhere and hopefully it satisfies. But it has nothing to do with any plan for the movie, because at this point there is no plan except [that] we’re gonna do one.” The plan is to ship the boys off to Europe in the movie, but beyond that Ellin’s taking his time in creating a satisfying conclusion for Vince and his friends.

Jump after the break to watch the season 8 poster animate and the latest trailer that teases what’s in store for the six-episode story arc ahead. Continue reading TV Reminder: Entourage premieres tonight at 10:30PM on HBO

Microsoft scoops up Skype

Skype, the ubiquitous video chat client, is now owned by the makers of Windows. Microsoft acquired Skype this week; it cost them a whopping $8.5 billion in cash to finalize the deal. According to the official press release:

The acquisition will increase the accessibility of real-time video and voice communications, bringing benefits to both consumers and enterprise users and generating significant new business and revenue opportunities. The combination will extend Skype’s world-class brand and the reach of its networked platform, while enhancing Microsoft’s existing portfolio of real-time communications products and services.

But what does this mean for you? Microsoft says Skype will come to support Xbox and Kinect, Windows Phone and a wide array of Windows devices and will connect Skype users with Lync, Outlook, Xbox Live and other communities. Communication across these Microsoft products and services is about to get a whole lot better and mainstreamed, so long as CEO Steve Ballmer and co. don’t screw things up. And don’t worry about losing your current Skype experience you’re accustomed to. The press release goes on to state that “Microsoft will continue to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms.”

Effective immediately Skype is a new business division within Microsoft, Skype CEO Tony Bates is now president of said division and he will report directly to Ballmer. Full PR after the break.

[Via Engadget] Continue reading Microsoft scoops up Skype

Star Wars comes to Blu-ray September 16, with bonus content galore

On May the 4th Lucasfilm and Twentieth Century Fox outed a press release detailing the impending Star Wars: The Complete Saga on Blu-ray. The nine-disc ultimate collection releases September 12 internationally and on September 16 in North America. All six films can be viewed in 1080p high definition and 6.1 DTS Surround Sound. The collection includes over 40 hours of bonus content like “vintage documentaries, audio commentaries, behind-the-scenes moments, interviews, prop and costume turnarounds, retrospectives and more.” Jump after the break to find the aforementioned PR to get the full lowdown. Also, make sure you open up the gallery below to get a look at the fantastic box art for the original and prequel trilogy Blu-ray bundles. Oh, and May The 4th be with you!

[Via StarWars]

Continue reading Star Wars comes to Blu-ray September 16, with bonus content galore