Film School Rejects gives us a reality check: Ghost In The Shell is going to suck.  Makes the ethnicity issue seem pretty unimportant.

No, casting Margot Robbie was a headscratcher, casting ScarJo makes perfect freaking sense, there's very few people who can open a movie and only a sliver of those are women.  ScarJo is one of them, so yeah, of course they're minds are going to go there.  I wouldn't have thought of her, but I think she might be the ONLY actress who could really do that part.  And honestly, I'm not offended like I am by the idea of a white-washed Akira.  Why?  Because Akira is about being Japanese, Ghost In The Shell is about being human.  The character is barely human, let alone Asian, so I think in this case it's okay. 

There's a movie I love called Hachi, it's the story of Hachiko, a famous Japanese folk tale, transposed to modern day New York with Richard Gere in the role of the Professor.  No outrage, first because it's not a well-known film, but also because that film isn't about being asian either, it's about a man and his dog.  It's universal.  The dog, I will point out, is still Japanese.

You also had The Grudge, Ringu and a bunch of Asian horror flicks adapted into American films with American leads.  No outrage.

But then you have sh*t like Godzilla.  We've never been able to make a good Godzilla film in the states, and that's because Godzilla is inherently Japanese, so much stuff goes into it even at an unconscious level.  Japan reveres nature, but nature was constantly destroying them.  They had been annihilated by a nuclear weapon and were still frightened to the core by it, and the people who dropped the bomb were now in the country protecting them.  That's an insane thing to get your head around.

Anyone else think that movie theaters will be a thing of the past and that VOD will eventually take over 100%?

Anyone else think that movie theaters will be a thing of the past and that VOD will eventually take over 100%?

Anything can happen. I think my generation will keep movie going alive. I don't know the younger generations view on theaters. Hell, I'm not sure of their support for movies in general.

While I'm not looking forward to it, the casting (and concept) of Adam Sandler's Ridiculous Six has a few things that I find interesting (Vanilla Ice as Mark Twain, for example).

If it marks a return to at least semi-decent parody movies, I'll be happy.

If I could say this about that





and

I got free passes for Kingsmen tomorrow.  Psyched about that, I've heard it's awesome as f*ck.

Hopefully this will hit Netflix, as I enjoy these flicks (even the American one).



The Visitors: Bastille Day set for 2016 release.  This film would have the idiot knight and squire jump into the future to the French Revolution and presumably screw things up.  Honestly, this is one of those franchises I never expected to be revisited, so I'll be at least interested in seeing how it turns out.

So I made a list of all the upcoming movies I'm interested in, it's rudimentary and I'm sure there will be plenty I'll opt out of and just wait for DVD, but it's long and kind of daunting.

The next release (outside of "Kingsman" which I'm keen on seeing again) is "Hot Tub Time Machine 2."  I love the original, but I didn't dig it on first viewing.  And comedy sequels usually aren't that hot, so I'm wondering if I should hold out for the blu-ray release where I can see an unrated cut as often as I like or not.  I've been waiting for five years, so it's not like six months is THAT long to wait (I want the price to go down a bit, naturally), but at the same time... it IS six months.  And the theatrical pickings are going to be few and far between until the film festival in spring.