Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure by developer Furniture & Mattress is the kind of delightful, genre-blending game that words can feel inadequate to describe when it’s much more easily understood in motion. Yes, telling you that it’s an adventure game which you navigate via a grid that moves the environment with you…
The fact that there was going to be a Blade reboot as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, starring Mashershala Ali in the title role, came as a huge surprise when the announcement was made at the San Diego Comic-Con back in July of 2019… but now we’ve reached the five year anniversary of that announcement, and we still haven’t seen a new Blade movie. The closest we’ve gotten is Ali making a vocal cameo as the character at the end of Eternals back in 2021. Marvel Studios producer Kevin Feige is currently doing the press rounds for the latest addition to the MCU, Deadpool & Wolverine, and while speaking with BlackTreeTV, Feige said they’re taking their time on this project to make sure they’re making the right Blade movie.
Feige was asked, “Now that Deadpool & Wolverine is going R-rated, does it change how you can make Blade (at Disney), as opposed to when you first decided to start developing it?” He answered, “I think that’s right. I mean, for the last few years as we’ve been trying to crack that movie, the most important thing for us is not rushing it and making sure we are making the right Blade movie. Because there were some great Blade movies years ago, and they were all rated R. So I think that’s, like Deadpool, inherent with the character of Blade.“
Director Yann Demange was attached to direct Blade for a while, and confirmed last November that the film will be rated R. Demange recently stepped away from the project, but it sounds like the movie will be rated R even without Demange at the helm. He was the second director to sign on for Blade and then drop it, following in the footsteps of Bassam Tariq. We’re still waiting to hear who’s going to replace Demange.
We recently heard a rumor that Mahershala Ali is getting “increasingly frustrated” with the long development process on this one. Delroy Lindo and Aaron Pierre have been cast alongside Ali as the years have gone by, but are no longer involved, as their characters have apparently been written out. Co-star Mia Goth, who is rumored to be playing the villainous Lilith, is still attached – and she’s fine with the delays, because it shows that Marvel really cares about the project.
What do you think of Marvel taking so long to figure out the new Blade movie? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.
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For the last couple of years, PC gaming has sought to escape the rigid confines of its electric-outlet bound, RGB-coated monolithic towers with fast framerates at massive resolutions for something a little more modest and portable.
For the last couple of years, PC gaming has sought to escape the rigid confines of its electric-outlet bound, RGB-coated monolithic towers with fast framerates at massive resolutions for something a little more modest and portable.
He wasn’t kidding when he said he’ll be back. To mark the sci-fi classic’s 40th anniversary, The Terminator will be returning to theaters this summer courtesy of Park Circus, complete with a 4K restoration. And while any theatrical release of a fan favorite is certainly something to get excited for, those who have been following James Cameron’s other 4K releases might have reason to be cautious…
As we have reported on throughout the various releases of some of James Cameron’s best films, there has been quite a bit of controversy over the transfers of said movies. The main problem here is the use of AI to clean up the images, doing so to such an extreme degree that the films not only lose grain structure but authenticity. When viewing these films on their 4K home video releases, it’s so obvious that the image has been touched up to the point that they’re hard to enjoy. Sure, the action and storytelling isn’t changed but the distracting touch-ups throughout can easily pull you out of the experience. So, yes, it’s reasonable to be concerned about the upcoming 4K of The Terminator, which was approved by Cameron himself.
James Cameron certainly sees the benefits of AI, once saying, “As you go down levels of magnitude you see more and more patterns, and you realise that greater pattern, the grand pattern, is made up of all these kinds of fractal details that need to be there. And this is where I think AI can be helpful because it can fill in some of the some of those detail levels and allow us as artists to stay at a higher level.” But that right there is a perfect demonstration of just how AI can be misused when it comes to transfers, as relying on it for these minute details can easily serve as a shortcut that gets out of hand. And that’s how you end up with the horrendous transfers of great films like True Lies and Aliens, giving us pause on getting too excited for The Terminator.
But others have defended all of these. Film preservationist Robert Harris was kind enough to reach out to JoBlo about these issues, writing, in part: “There should be no problems with the original elements. The work performed was a re-visualization. An entirely new digital product, which (to varying degrees of success) appears to have achieved Mr. Cameron’s goals. If these were attempts at restoration, they would fail in all regards.” You can read his entire thorough defense here.
The Terminator returns to theaters on July 25th.
Are you concerned about this upcoming release of The Terminator? Do you think James Cameron has gone too far with his transfers? Chime in below.
The post The Terminator returns to theaters with 4K transfer…Will AI ruin another James Cameron film? appeared first on JoBlo.
Down at the Universal Studios offices, the staff are undoubtedly doing The Twist in celebration of Twisters much higher than expected opening weekend. Indeed, they have reason to celebrate, with even the most optimistic box office predictions estimating the film would only open in the $50 million-ish range (including ours). To everyone’s surprise, the movie rallied to an incredible $80.5 million opening, which makes it the third biggest opening of the year behind Inside Out 2 and Dune: Part Two.
This is a major win for Universal, with the film posting Oppenheimer-level numbers and a rock-solid A-minus CinemaScore. If word of mouth is good, this could leg out to a North American total in the $200 million plus range, although it will face steep competition next weekend from Deadpool & Wolverine. It’s also a major win for Glen Powell as a leading man, with Hollywood hyped on his potential for stardom following Top Gun: Maverick and Anyone But You. This marks his third major box office hit.
In second place, Gru and his Minions held up pretty well, with the Illumination sequel Despicable Me 4 grossing $23.8 million, with a North American total of $259.5 million. It should end its run in the $340 million-ish range. While a huge hit, it’s nowhere near as big as Pixar’s gargantuan hit, Inside Out 2, which added another $12.8 million to its coffers with a $600 million domestic take. WOW.
Neon’s breakout horror hit from last week, Longlegs, ended up posting a much better hold than anyone anticipated. It earned $11.7 million this weekend, meaning it only declined 48% week-to-week, which is almost unheard of for a horror title. It’s grossed $44.7 million so far against a budget in the mid-teens. However, the outlook wasn’t quite so rosy for Apple and Sony’s Fly Me to the Moon, which posted a shocking 65% drop to earn only $3.3 million. Expect this to hit streaming within a matter of weeks. It was easily beaten by Paramount’s horror hit, A Quiet Place: Day One, which grossed $6.1 million for a $127 million domestic total.
Bad Boys: Ride or Die came in seventh place, with $2.6 million and a $189.3 million total. Will Sony keep it in theaters until it surpasses the $200 million mark? In eighth place was Bad Newz, another Bollywood hit earning just over a million dollars.
A24’s MaXXXine posted another big decline this weekend, dropping 60% to an $819k weekend, with the grand total only $13 million. While it will still be the highest-grosser of the Maxine Minx trilogy, I’m sure A24 is disappointed this didn’t break out in the same way as some of their other word-of-mouth hits. It seems too niche for mainstream horror fans.
Finally, in a shocking return to the charts, is one of my favourite movies of the year, The Bikeriders, which saw its business increase by 75% this weekend despite losing over 400 screens. It made $700k for a $21 million domestic total. Now that it’s on VOD, hopefully people will discover Jeff Nichols’s magnificent film.
With Deadpool & Wolverine opening next weekend, does Twisters have a chance of an under 50% decline at the box office? Let us know in the comments!
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With Twisters burning up the box office, here at JoBlo, we couldn’t help but get a little nostalgic about a short-lived disaster movie revival that happened in the mid-nineties in the wake of the original Twister. Take our poll below and let us know what your favorite movie is in this mini-cycle. I wasn’t totally sure what to include, so I left the action-driven Speed off the list but including the disaster movie sequel, Speed 2: Cruise Control. Take the poll and let us know!
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Long before Kevin Costner ever set foot onto the Yellowstone Ranch or danced with wolves, he became a rising star with Lawrence Kasdan’s Silverado!
THE STORY: Fresh off a five year stint in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, Emmett (Scott Glenn), a cowboy, heads to a small town called Silverado to pick up his kind-hearted but deadly younger brother, Jake (Kevin Costner), picking up a gambler, Paden (Kevin Kline) and a black cowboy named Mal (Danny Glover) along the way. Once in Silverado, they realize the town is being ruled by Emmett’s old nemesis, who’s in-league with a former friend of Paden’s – the town sheriff – Cobb (Brian Dennehy). Eager to settle down, all four men find themselves challenged by the ruthless factions that run the town, and will have to unite to save the day.
THE PLAYERS: Starring: Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, Kevin Costner, Danny Glover, John Cleese, Jeff Goldblum, Jeff Fahey, Rosanna Arquette, Linda Hunt & Brian Dennehy. Music by Bruce Broughton. Written by Lawrence Kasdan & Mark Kasdan. Directed by Lawrence Kasdan.
THE HISTORY: The spaghetti western movement of the late sixties was, arguably, the genre on its last legs. Throughout the seventies, unless it starred Clint Eastwood, westerns sank like a stone at the box office, but that didn’t mean Hollywood didn’t try to revive the genre. The Missouri Breaks enlisted Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando, but the results were disastrous, and the SAME STUDIO made an even bigger western bomb a few years later, Heaven’s Gate, which almost killed the genre for good. Even Eastwood stopped making westerns.
“Westerns were very much out of style at that time and generally have had a very spotty commerical record since, with a few exceptions. But we wanted to remind people of the pleasures that we had had from westerns growing up…it’s a post-modern western in that its very much aware of it’s antecedents and tries to use them in ways that are fun and interesting.” – Lawrence Kasdan – “The Making of SILVERADO
Yet, in 1985, a mini-revival of sorts took place. Eastwood returned to the genre with his Pale Rider, while writer-director Lawrence Kasdan, riding high off the success of Body Heat and The Big Chill (not to mention his work on the screenplays for The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi and Raiders of the Lost Ark), made his own western epic. Very much in the mold of golden age, John Ford-era westerns, Silverado took the fun-loving, high adventure vibe Kasdan brought to his Lucasfilm classics, and adapted it to the genre, making a throughly entertaining oater that should have been a hit. Instead, it did very modest business, grossing $32 million on a $23 million budget – not a disaster, but not a hit either – unfortunately opening the same weekend as Back to the Future. Nowadays, it’s best remembered as Kevin Costner’s first big role.
WHY IT’S GREAT: Silverado is so much fun that it’s insane to think that the movie never spawned a western franchise that would have sustained a whole series of films. Kasdan should still be making Silverado adventures thirty years later. For one thing, this was Kasdan in his prime, so the writing and craftsmanship is right-on, right from the opening, which finds Scott Glenn’s Emmett descended upon by a gang of hired killers, who he makes short work of. After dispatching them, he opens the door to display the grandeur of John Bailey’s scope cinematography, leading us on an adventure that doesn’t let up for over two hours.
“That was written for me. I was doing a movie in Germany at the time that was… not my favorite. [Laughs.] And Larry Kasdan sent that script and said, “I hope you do this film. I wrote the part of Emmett for you.” And I literally led out a “yee-ha!” when I finished it. And I called up my agent, and I said, “Do not fuck this one up. I’m doing this. This is like… I mean, what a gift!” And the whole experience of working on that film was just phenomenal. It really was a great adventure.” – Scott Glenn – Random Roles– AV Club
Beautifully cast, Scott Glenn makes a case for himself as one of the great screen cowboys, playing the Henry Fonda-like Emmett, a moral, upstanding hero (a stark contrast to the Spaghetti Western anti-heroes that were more in-vogue) who can always be relied upon to do what’s right. He’s ably supported by an atypically cast Kevin Kline, as the smart-mouthed gambling man who’s constantly at war with his own good nature, making him the one with the real hero’s quest. Kline rarely did action, but he looked cool as a cowboy, and, like Glenn, seemed born for the role he wound up playing. Ditto Kevin Costner, who was actually cast in this by Kasdan as a way of making up for excising his role from The Big Chill (he’s the corpse being dressed in the first scene). What a favor he did for him, as you couldn’t pick a better star-making part than this, with Jake the live-wire young hero, with more energy than brains, but also a kindly nature that makes him easy to root for (he also gets the coolest antagonist – Jeff Fahey’s Tyree) It’s no wonder Silverado led to him being cast in The Untouchables, which instantly established him as a megastar. The western genre has been good to Kevin Costner, with him currently riding high on Yellowstone. Well, for now anyway.
The heroic foursome is rounded out by Danny Glover as a black cowboy (still a rare figure in American films) who winds up being the deadliest of them all, with him having a grudge against Jeff Goldblum’s diabolical card-sharp, leading to a cool moment of vengeance that, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised, must have paved the way for his eventual casting in Lethal Weapon. The supporting cast is just as strong, with Brian Dennehy an oddly likable villain (he kills a young(ish) Richard Jenkins early in the film), John Cleese, atypically cast as an old-west sheriff (and not half-bad), the always cool James Gammon, and more. Of the cast, only the female roles get short-shifted a bit, with it seeming like Rosanna Arquette’s role wound-up on the cutting room floor. Oh well.
“We developed a script for a sequel, but I gotta tell you, my heart was never in it. Despite having written THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and RETURN OF THE JEDI, I’m not the world’s greatest believer in sequels. I think you outta just make one good movie and move on.” – Lawrence Kasdan – “The Making of SILVERADO
One also needs to single out the amazing score by Bruce Broughton, with it helping make him the defacto western composer of his day (with Tombstone being another of his great western scores). Kasdan would eventually get a chance to return to the genre with star Kevin Costner in Wyatt Earp, but despite some good moments, it doesn’t hold a candle to the great Silverado.
SEE IT: Silverado is available to rent/buy on most digital services, and on Blu-ray/DVD with some good special features. If you’ve never seen this one but like the cast or genre, this is worthy of a blind buy.
PARTING SHOT: While it never spawned a franchise, Silverado remains a western classic just aching to be rediscovered, and hopefully those of you who haven’t seen it will give it a watch. It’s a real gem, and especially worth watching if you’re a newcomer to the charms of Yellowstone now that CBS is airing the first and second season in primetime.
The post Silverado (1985): The Best Movie You Never Saw appeared first on JoBlo.
Plot: When the disappearance of a young girl grips the city of Baltimore on Thanksgiving 1966, the lives of two women converge on a fatal collision course. Maddie Schwartz, a Jewish housewife seeking to shed a secret past and reinvent herself as an investigative journalist, and Cleo Johnson, a mother navigating the political underbelly of Black Baltimore while struggling to provide for her family. Their disparate lives seem parallel at first, but when Maddie becomes fixated on Cleo’s mystifying death, a chasm opens that puts everyone around them in danger.
Review: Cultural divides and parallels have always been fascinating material for dramatic series. The similarities between Jewish and Black communities are far more than many realize, as both groups have been subjugated over the years. By contrasting two very different journeys for the main characters in Lady in the Lake, Natalie Portman and Moses Ingram chronicle the countless similarities the two protagonists face within and outside their societal borders. Based on the best-selling novel of the same name, Lady in the Lake is a slow burn that is less mysterious and more commentary on the burgeoning rights of women and minorities during the Powderkeg era of the 1960s. While not always as interesting as it thinks it is, this series boasts strong performances from Portman and Ingram that more than make up for the inconsistent pacing.
Based on the novel by Laura Lippman, Lady in the Lake opens with the kidnapping and murder of a young Jewish girl in Baltimore. The child becomes a focus for housewife Maddie Schwartz (Natalie Portman), a former journalist who feels stuck in a listless marriage of convenience. As Maddie contends with her daily malaise in the affluent suburb of Pikesville, Cleo Johnson (Moses Ingram) strives to make a life for her children while working as a department store window model by day and accountant for criminal Shell Gordon (Wood Harris) by night. While Maddie and Cleo unknowingly cross paths, it is when Cleo’s dead body is discovered and becomes known as the Lady in the Lake that Maddie’s interest in the woman deepens. The overlap between the two women’s lives converges and deviates in ways that blend the child murder and the death of Cleo in a way that forces Maddie to reflect on her own decisions and life choices.
Told over seven episodes, Lady in the Lake is fascinating and frustrating. As much as it delves into the Black culture of the 1960s, the series is heavily focused on the Jewish community in the Maryland suburb. Much of Maddie’s life led as an affluent Jewish college student turned wife is analyzed through her marriage to Milton (Brett Gelman), her relationship with her son Seth (Noah Jupe), and her former romance with Allan Durst (David Corenswet), the father of the murdered child. Maddie also develops a friendship with police officer Ferdie Platt (Y’lan Noel) and reporter Bob Bauer (Pruitt Taylor Vince), which push Maddie’s journalistic instincts towards both Cleo’s case and the accused child murderer Stephan Zawadzkie (Dyland Arnold) and his mother (Masha Mashkova). With Natalie Portman in the role, I expected more from the Oscar-winning actress, but Portman seems to be floating through this series carried by the narrative’s momentum rather than a driving force in the story.
The real star of this series is Moses Ingram. After a breakout role in The Queen’s Gambit and a high-profile turn in Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ingram steals every scene she is in of Lady in the Lake. Ingram has a presence and energy that propels this story, including Natalie Portman’s Maddie, as she lives vicariously through Cleo’s tale. Moses Ingram holds her own opposite the Oscar-winning Portman. He works exceptionally well with co-stars Byron Bowers, who plays Cleo’s husband, Slappy Johnson, Wood Harris as Shell Gordon, and Tyrik Johnson as her son Teddy. Ingram shares some emotionally gut-wrenching scenes with Jennifer Mogbock as Dora Carter and Josiah Cross as Reggie Robinson. The subplot involving Dora and Reggie and how it connects to Cleo is mesmerizing, but it feels forced to fit alongside Maddie’s character arc. It is easy to see how author Laura Lippman drew parallels between Maddie and Cleo. Still, Cleo is the far more interesting personality on screen, and her story feels muddled by including Maddie’s arc.
All seven episodes of Lady in the Lake are directed by Alma Har’el, who is also credited as a writer of three episodes. Har’el’s ex-husband, writer/director Boaz Yakin (Remember the Titans, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time), wrote two episodes with Briana Belser, Nambi E. Kelley, and Sheila Wilson on the remaining chapters. The novel, which spanned three hundred and fifty pages, feels watered down to fit a seven-episode limited series. Breakout actress Mikey Madison has a character who fits into Maddie’s arc and seems unnecessary in service of the overall narrative of the series. With the two storylines unfolding alongside each other, there is competition for priority in the stories, forcing the final two chapters of the series to feel rushed and underwhelming. There is something missing in this series’s structure that cannot be made up for by the performances and fantastic soundtrack.
It is a shame to say that what negatively impacts Lady in the Lake is Natalie Portman, but Maddie’s storyline is the less interesting of the two threads in this series. As good as Portman always is, she is as underwhelming and, at times, annoying as Maddie Schwartz. On the other hand, Moses Ingram is absolutely fantastic as Cleo, and if these stories had been told in two distinct series, Cleo’s tale would have been the clear winner of the two. There are a lot of interesting stories mixed together in Lady of the Lake. Still, the finished product feels like it is trying too hard to cater to different types of series, neither of which is given the priority it deserves, resulting in a good but not great show.
Lady in the Lake premieres with two episodes on July 19th on AppleTV+.
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Looking to take your first steps into Square Enix’s acclaimed and newly expanded MMO, Final Fantasy 14? We’ve got you covered with some great beginner guides. We’ve also got tips for Palworld, Once Human, and The First Descendant, as well as recommendations for games to pick up before the Xbox 360 online store shuts…