Some cliche somewhere said that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’ This has proven to be the case for me and especially when it comes to fan art. I have always sought out great fan art and have wanted to share it with as many people as possible. “Awesome Art We’ve Found Around The Net” is the outlet for that passion. In this column, I will showcase the kick-ass artwork of some great artists, with the hopes that these artists get the attention they deserve. That’s the aim. If you have any questions or comments, or even suggestions of art or other great artists, feel free to contact me at any time at theodorebond@joblo.com.
After being found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins following a two-week-long trial, Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed will remain in jail while awaiting sentencing.
During a virtual hearing on motions filed by Hannah Gutierrez-Reed’s defence team for her release from jail and a new trial, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer said, “Keep in mind there was a death that the jury determined was caused by her, so I’m not releasing her.” Judge Sommer also denied the motion for a new trial. Gutierrez-Reed faces a sentence of up to 18 months and $5000 in fines. She is set to be sentenced on April 15th.
During the production of Rust, a live round was discharged from a revolver used by Alec Baldwin, which killed Halyna Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza. The prosecution claimed that it was Gutierrez-Reed, who they alleged was wildly negligent, who was responsible for six live rounds getting onto the set. “She had six, six live rounds on that movie set, the earliest date that I can track them for you is October 10,” said special prosecutor Kari Morrissey during closing arguments. “Six, and she failed to ferret them out for 12 days. What that means is that she wasn’t shaking any dummy rounds, she wasn’t testing anything.“
Morrissey continued, “If she’s not checking the dummy ammunition during the pendency of the filming to make sure that those rounds that are designed to look like live rounds are in fact dummy rounds, this was a game of Russian roulette every time an actor had a gun with dummies.“
Alec Baldwin is also facing charges of involuntary manslaughter, with his trial set to begin in July. Morrissey mentioned the actor in her closing statements: “Alec Baldwin’s conduct and his lack of gun safety … on that day is something that he’s going to have to answer for. Not with you and not today,” she said. “That will be with another jury, on another day.” Baldwin has pled not guilty to the charges and has maintained that he did not pull the trigger.
Clone Club will be back in session this summer as AMC Networks have announced that Orphan Black: Echoes will premiere on June 23rd on AMC, AMC+, and BBC America.
Orphan Black: Echoes is an original sci-fi series starring Krysten Ritter (Jessica Jones) set in the world of Orphan Black. “Set in the near future, Orphan Black: Echoes takes a deep dive into the exploration of the scientific manipulation of human existence,” reads the official synopsis. “It follows a group of women as they weave their way into each other’s lives and embark on a thrilling journey, unravelling the mystery of their identity and uncovering a wrenching story of love and betrayal. Ritter plays Lucy, a woman with an unimaginable origin story, trying to find her place in the world.“
In addition to Krysten Ritter, Orphan Black: Echoes stars Amanda Fix (Broken Diamonds), Keeley Hawes (Bodyguard), Rya Kihlstedt (A Teacher), Hiroyuki Liao(Barry), Reed Diamond (The Mosquito Coast), and Avan Jogia (Zombieland: Double Tap).
The original Orphan Black series aired for five seasons and made a star out of Tatiana Maslany (She-Hulk), who played multiple roles throughout the series. Original creator John Fawcett is on board as an executive producer, but Anna Fishko serves as the creator and showrunner of Echoes. She also executive produces alongside Krysten Ritter, David Fortier, Ivan Schneeberg, Nick Nantell, Kerry Appleyard, Kattie O’Connell Marsh, and Fawcett.
“We started our journey down the Orphan Black rabbit hole when Sarah Manning watched Beth Childs inexplicably jump in front of an oncoming train. Since then, a passionate fandom has joined us for a wildly entertaining ride,” said David Fortier and Ivan Schneeberg, Co-Executive Chairmen of Boat Rocker Media when the project was announced. “We’re delighted to be partnering with AMC and Anna Fishko and joining forces again with John Fawcett to boldly reenter the Orphan Black universe. Once again, we welcome Clone Club along for the ride and look forward to adventuresome new fans taking the leap. Strap yourselves in and hold on!“
Although the premiere of Orphan Black: Echoes is still a few months away, all ten episodes of the first season actually debuted in Australia on Stan last November.
Next week will see the release of Dev Patel’s directorial debut, Monkey Man, but the action movie had a rough road to theaters, with Patel saying that the production faced “absolute catastrophe” each and every day.
During a Reddit AMA (via Variety), Dev Patel called Monkey Man “the most demanding thing I’ve ever done in my life.” Just weeks before principal photography was slated to begin, Patel had to beg their financier not to shut them down. “We were meant to shoot in India then COVID hit,” Patel said. “I lost my initial production designer and [cinematographer] and the film was basically dead, then we pivoted and went to a tiny island in Indonesia where we could create a bubble in an empty hotel for the whole crew of nearly 500 people. It was a gruelling nine months of absolute joy and utter chaos.“
During production, Monkey Man faced about every hurdle imaginable. “All of the locations we prepped for months at — we lost day of — so we had to adapt last minute,” Patel explained. “The borders closed also, so I couldn’t bring in lots of supporting characters. I ended up having to put every tailor, lighting guy, accountant etc. in front of the camera. Speaking of cameras, most of our equipment broke and we couldn’t fly in new stuff so we literally shot stuff on my mobile phone, go pros — when a crane broke we ended [up] creating this camera rig from rope which I termed the ‘pendulum cam,’ which swings over a large crowd of people then detaches and the operators run through the crowd whilst it was rolling.“
Money was also scarce, and the production even had to rebuild break-away tables from scraps of wood. “We only had three or four break away tables so once I would perform a huge bulk of stunts I would scream CUT and then immediately all of us would get on our hands and knees looking for all of the broken pieces of wood to glue the tables back together for the next shot,” Patel said. “In a very long nutshell, every obstacle provided us with a new opportunity to innovate.” It all seems to have paid off, as Monkey Man received rave reviews following its premiere at SXSW.
The official logline for Monkey Man reads: “Inspired by the legend of Hanuman, an icon embodying strength and courage, Monkey Man stars Patel as Kid, an anonymous young man who ekes out a meager living in an underground fight club where, night after night, wearing a gorilla mask, he is beaten bloody by more popular fighters for cash. After years of suppressed rage, Kid discovers a way to infiltrate the enclave of the city’s sinister elite. As his childhood trauma boils over, his mysteriously scarred hands unleash an explosive campaign of retribution to settle the score with the men who took everything from him.” The film will hit theaters on April 5th.
The Oxford English Dictionary (aka the OED) runs an update to its repository four times every year. Like DLC for games, these quarterly patches can introduce new words, features, and definition changes. Well, the first quarter of 2024 is about up, and the OED has just updated its linguistic repository to add 23…
The Oxford English Dictionary (aka the OED) runs an update to its repository four times every year. Like DLC for games, these quarterly patches can introduce new words, features, and definition changes. Well, the first quarter of 2024 is about up, and the OED has just updated its linguistic repository to add 23…
For over thirty years, I would have said that director Tony Scott’s 1986 classic Top Gun should be left as a standalone movie… but then the sequel Top Gun: Maverick came along in 2022 and turned out to be surprisingly awesome, proving that the story of Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (played by Tom Cruise in both films) was worth returning to after all. Continuing his story also paid off at the box office, with the film pulling in almost $1.5 billion at the box office. So it’s no surprise to hear that Cruise, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski, and Paramount Pictures are already moving forward with a Top Gun 3. While talking to Screen Rant about the upcoming release of his spy action comedy The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Bruckheimer gave a small update on the sequel, saying there’s a “wonderful story idea” in place.
Bruckheimer said, “It will be Tom Cruise (back in the lead). Tom is amazing. We spent time with him. We have a story. Joe Kosinski had a wonderful story idea for it, and he (Tom Cruise) said I really like that, so we’re developing it. But you never know when it’s going to get made because Tom is so busy. He’s doing Mission: Impossible right now, he’s got a picture after it. Hopefully, we’ll get a screenplay that he loves, and we’ll be back in the air again.“
Puck previously reported that Top Gun: Maverick co-writer Ehren Kruger is writing the screenplay, and the story is said to reunite Cruise’s Maverick with Lt. Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw (Miles Teller) and Lt. Jake “Hangman” Seresin (Glen Powell). Kosinski is expected to return to the helm as well.
A couple months ago, Glen Powell told Variety, “There is going to be some fun stuff being announced soon… but it was confidential to me. I talk to [Joseph] Kosinski, Cruise and Jerry [Bruckheimer] all the time. There is stuff happening and it sounds very exciting. I don’t know when I’ll be going back…I’m sure there is a jet waiting for me sometime in the future.“
Are you looking forward to Top Gun 3? Where do you think the story of Maverick should go next? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Guy Ritchie, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is set to reach theatres in the United States on April 19th.
While Godzilla has faced off against a large assortment of monsters over the decades, King Kong has never really had his own notable adversary beyond Godzilla. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire director Adam Wingard wanted to change that with the Scar King.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire introduces audiences to the Scar King, the tyrannical ruler of a hidden civilization of apes found deep within the Hollow Earth. It’s safe to say that Kong and the Scar King aren’t exactly buddies, and Wingard broke down the new villain while speaking with Entertainment Weekly.
“What’s exciting about that is knowing that, as apes, these aren’t just reactive animals; they have a higher intelligence,” Wingard explained. “The Scar King is a major threat because, unlike most giant monsters, he’s not just doing things in an instinctual way. He’s doing it in a very evil, contemplative way. He’s making decisions, and he’s ego-driven. In that way, he’s very much a dictator character. It was a lot of fun to be able to play with a character that’s both a giant monster but also a conniving presence.“
Wingard also ensured that the Scar King was physically different from Kong, with the new ape coming across as rather lanky compared to Kong’s muscular physique. “The idea with him was always that his agility gives him an advantage in a one-on-one fight, but he’s also in possession of the Titan equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction,” Wingard said. “So he’s a very multifaceted villain in that sense because he’s a threat in lots of different ways. He commands an army, he commands this even bigger monster, and he’s a jerk. He’s very much the anti-Kong.” It remains to be seen how the MonsterVerse will continue, but I’d love to see Kong face off against his own villains.
Although Godzilla x Kong has been receiving mixed reviews, it does sound like it’s a lot of pure fun bursting with monster mayhem. However, our own Chris Bumbray did have one complaint. “While the trailers made it look like it’s a non-stop brofest between Godzilla and Kong, the two are kept apart for close to ninety minutes, and this movie is just under two hours,” Bumbray wrote. “All of the scenes you’ve seen of them doing their thing together are from the last chunk of the film. While that’s a bummer, I must admit that I found myself surprisingly engaged by the build-up.” You can check out the rest of Bumbray’s review right here.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is now playing in theaters.
Late last year, it was reported that Destiny 2’s upcoming expansion, The Final Shape, was getting delayed amidst struggles and layoffs at Bungie. The expansion, which was initially supposed to release by February, was then officially pushed back to June, leaving a tremendous gap of time between what was supposed to be…
Late last year, it was reported that Destiny 2’s upcoming expansion, The Final Shape, was getting delayed amidst struggles and layoffs at Bungie. The expansion, which was initially supposed to release by February, was then officially pushed back to June, leaving a tremendous gap of time between what was supposed to be…
