Before 2020 if you were pondering the form of a coming apocalypse, odds are it would look something more like the trailer for Greenland than wearing a mask and staying at home. Thanks to Hollywood the next big-budget, CGI spectacle that may or may not make it to movie theater screens taps into the disaster genre yet again. A stuntman-turned writer-director of movies like Angel Has Fallen, Ric Roman Waugh directs Greenland, which will not only have you asking “why that title for this movie?” but why do we keep returning to the disaster movie altogether. It stars recent go-to disaster thriller guy Gerard Butler, whose secret service agent character has headlined three movies in the “Fallen” series, plus there are a few other favorite actors of genre TV and film involved. Check out the first trailer for Greenland below.
20th Century Fox’s second Deadpool film now has a real trailer, or as “real” as Deadpool would tolerate. Deadpool 2, which doesn’t seem to have a catchier subtitle yet, brings back Ryan Reynolds’ merc with a mouth superhero (Green Lantern, RIPD) and his girlfriend Vanessa, played by Morena Baccarin (Firefly, Gotham), with the returning support team of Colossus (Stefan Kapicic), Negasonic Teenage Warrior (Brianna Hildebrand), Weasel (T.J. Miller), Blind Al (Leslie Uggams)–and that taxi driver. The sequel to the #2 highest Rated R box office moneymaker of all time introduces the fan-favorite borg from the comics, Cable, to the Marvel movie realm, and this trailer shows Josh Brolin looks to be the perfect casting choice.
The two new trailers were hijacked by Deadpool, as was the promotional summary for the film, which really says it all:
“After surviving a near fatal bovine attack, a disfigured cafeteria chef (Wade Wilson) struggles to fulfill his dream of becoming Mayberry’s hottest bartender while also learning to cope with his lost sense of taste. Searching to regain his spice for life, as well as a flux capacitor, Wade must battle ninjas, the yakuza, and a pack of sexually aggressive canines, as he journeys around the world to discover the importance of family, friendship, and flavor – finding a new taste for adventure and earning the coveted coffee mug title of World’s Best Lover.”
The movie also has a new teaser poster mocking 1983’s Flashdance. The international trailer is an edited version from the U.S. release, with an added glimpse of Colossus. Check out both trailers of the new trailers for Deadpool 2:
When we last saw Gotham, Fish Mooney (Jada Pinkett Smith) was returning to the series to lead a group of denizens from Indian Hill, a motley band of “enhanced” people created by Dr. Hugo Strange (BD Wong). Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie), no longer with the police force, is still working with Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue), but he’s now in bounty hunter mode, investigating the Court of Owls.
Gotham dials up more villainy in Season 3, beginning next week, with The Mad Hatter (Benedict Samuel), Poison Ivy (Maggie Geha taking over from the younger Clare Foley), Calendar Man from The Long Halloween, a Bruce Wayne doppelganger (David Mazouz), and more of Oswald Cobblepot (Robin Lord Taylor) and his rise in power, Edward Nygma (Cory Michael Smith) and his downward spiral, Selina Kyle (Camren Bicondova), Barbera Kean (Erin Richards), and Fish Mooney. Morena Baccarin is also back as Gordon’s girlfriend Dr. Leslie Thompkins, along with Sean Pertwee as Alfred Pennyworth and Michael Chiklis as Nathaniel Barnes.
What Ant-Man was for Marvel Studios’ Avengers franchise, Deadpool is for 20th Century Fox’s X-Men franchise, proving that a good story and good delivery can outperform big budget, team-up blockbusters. Ant-Man stepped away from the standard superhero movie tropes to give us a flawed human trying to do right by way of some good tech, and Deadpool went to the next step and took the superhero story that much further away from the norm. As the #1 box office success of any Rated R film, it also proved you cannot predict what will fail and what will succeed.
But all the press that distinguished Deadpool as something completely new and different was really just feeding into the marketing hype. Seemingly collectively shocked by the impending change-up of “the first Rated R superhero movie,” press and critics ignored so much. From an over-the-top action standpoint was Deadpool that far different from RoboCop, The Crow, or V for Vendetta–all also carrying the R rating? And from a crude humor standpoint, is Deadpool any different from the similarly hilarious Kick-Ass and Kick-Ass 2, or if darkness is your thing Sin City or Watchmen–also Rated R?
The reality is that the success of Deadpool can be found in the melding of all the elements you need for any good superhero movie. If you skipped this one or only watched it in the theater, now is a good time to revisit it on Blu-ray or DVD. You no doubt missed some great elements during your first watch, and the special features that accompany the home release point out plenty that will likely elevate whatever view you already have about this release.
The Blu-ray we reviewed included both the Blu-ray and DVD as well as a digital Ultraviolet code for viewing on your Vudu or Flixster account. Deadpool includes the best behind the scenes coverage of any Blu-ray we’ve reviewed this year in its “From Comics to Screen… to Screen” segment. Who knew how much stunt work was required for all the elaborately choreographed action sequences and how much was actually CGI? Sure, we knew star Ryan Reynolds was in the “Deadpool red” supersuit for part of the film, but his two stuntmen really carried a lot of the film with one stuntman tearing his ACL for one of the less-involved sequences. And like the movie’s in-joke, the two other X-Men that appear may well be lesser characters when compared to the team in X-Men: Apocalypse, yet the fact we get to focus on far fewer means we got to know Colossus that much better. Plus director Tim Miller and costume designer Angus Strathie made sure Negasonic Teenage Warhead wore the classic X-Men yellow supersuit.
Our annual “All the Movies You’ll Want to See…” series has been one of the most viewed of all of our entries at borg.com each year. So this year we again scoured Hollywood and its publicity machine for as many genre films coming out in 2016 as have been disclosed. Usually we select the 24 that look like the biggest hits, but we’re going all out for 2016. The result is a whopping 48 movies, many you’ll probably want to see in the theater or catch on video. We bet you’ll find a bunch below you’ve never heard of. Bookmark this now for your 2016 calendar!
Most coming out in the second half of 2016 don’t even have posters released yet, but many do. We’ve included descriptions and key cast so you can start planning accordingly.
What do we think will be the biggest hits of the year? How about Star Wars: Rogue One? Or Star Trek Beyond? You’ve heard endlessly about Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, but 2016 will also see Doctor Strange, Captain America: Civil War, and X-Men: Apocalypse. There’s even a handful of Westerns, with The Hateful 8, Jane Got a Gun, and another remake of The Magnificent Seven heading our way.
The Hateful Eight – January 1
Tarentino’s Western! Ennio Morricone score! Kurt Russell, Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Channing Tatum!
The 5th Wave – January 8
Chloe Grace Moretz and Liev Schreiber in an alien invasion.
400 Days – January 12
The CW’s Brandon Routh, Caity Lotz, and Tom Cavanaugh in a movie about astronauts that seems to be a play on Ender’s Game.
Firefly was a unique television series and that can be demonstrated many ways, including simply by looking at the new companion volume to the series, Firefly: A Celebration. Appropriately marketed as “a big damn book” its 544 pages recount in full color the most complete review of an entire series ever created in a single volume. Not only is it rare for a movie or TV series to have such a series bible, it’s unthinkable that one would be created for a series that was cancelled after only 14 episodes. But as sci-fi’s universally pronounced “most unfairly cancelled” sci-fi series, it makes sense that the show’s creators went the extra mile to put something like this together for its large, loyal fan base.
Presented in a foil-stamped, leather-effect hardcover binding, the new edition collects three previously released volumes Firefly: The Official Companion books (Volume One, Volume Two and Firefly: Still Flying). So if you already have those you don’t need this one. But if you don’t, then you’re in for a treat. Firefly: A Celebrationcelebrates the 10th anniversary of Firefly, and includes an enormous amount of material in texts and photos in addition to a pocket in the back cover with nine full color prints of cast members and a replica prop piece of Alliance paper money from the show.
This past July at San Diego Comic-Con the panel generating the most buzz before and after was the 10th Anniversary of the cult sci-fi TV series Firefly, featuring the first reunion of most of the main cast since they created the 2005 movie Serenity. The panel opened to thousands of fans that camped out overnight (re-live all the fun we had there again here) and featured creator Joss Whedon, and writer/producers Tim Minnear and Jose Molina, and cast members Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk, Adam Baldwin, Summer Glau, and Sean Maher. The panel was hosted by the Science Channel, which was producing a one-hour TV special that aired Sunday night. The TV special celebrating the anniversary of the series, titled Firefly: Browncoats Unite, was filmed right before the Comic-Con panel, and included excerpts of the panel, as well as scenes from the series and interviews with show stars who did not attend the panel: Gina Torres, Morena Baccarin, and Jewel Staite.
Science Channel’s one-hour production of Firefly: Browncoats Unite proved yet again the incredible popularity of the short-lived series, which continues to garner new fans each year in a sort of grassroots fan movement driven by the idea that maybe Joss Whedon can one day “put the gang back together again.” Firefly: Browncoats Unite was watched by 1.2 million distinct viewers–the night was the single most watched Sunday ever for the Science Channel, and the second highest-rated telecast of the year among 25-54 year-olds. Chatter about the series also tallied 25,000 tweets on Twitter, generating 26 million impressions.
If you missed Season One of Showtime’s TV series Homeland, now is a good time to catch up, as Season 2 begins September 30, 2012. I didn’t watch Homeland until the season wrapped, but once I started, it was really hard to walk away. It’s nothing like anything I normally like–it’s a real-life drama, which usually I find boring and not “escapist” enough for me. But tight writing and good actors made this one stand out. Like Django Unchained this year, Homeland was last year’s biggest promoted new thing at Comic-Con–its banners were almost billboard sized and could be found everywhere you looked. Why promote something that is not “genre” at Comic-Con then? I think it goes back to the actors.
The lead is Damian Lewis, star of the short-lived but brilliant two-year series Life, where he co-starred with Sarah Shahi, who went on to star in USA Network’s successful series Fairly Legal. Lewis is British, but you wouldn’t know it from his roles in Life or Homeland. In Life he was a cop wrongly convicted of a crime and jailed for it, to later get off and come back to the force after winning a giant settlement against the state. In Homeland, he is an American soldier held captive in war in the Middle East. In captivity he converted to Islam, and when he returns to the States he is a hero, but was he “turned” to become a double agent? We find out answers to several questions in Season One.
His co-star is the award-winning actress Claire Danes (Stardust, Terminator 3, Princess Mononoke, Shopgirl), who is brilliant as a CIA agent who is tracking a message from an informant that she believes points to Lewis’s character as a spy. She is a mess. She has a mental disorder that she takes medicine for and this contributes to what may be paranoia or an incredible insight into the reality of what is happening. She uses illegal and uncommon methods to make her case, which land her out of the system and left to sign up for electric shock therapy to try to repair herself.
Then you get to the two key supporting actors. None other than Inigo Montoya from Princess Bride, Mandy Patinkin (Alien Nation, Castle in the Sky) plays Danes’s character’s boss, who looks after her but only so far, has his own life problems by being overly devoted to his job, and commits a strange and unthinkable act toward the end of Season One. Firefly’s own Morena Baccarin (V, Stargate SG-1, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Justice League) plays Lewis’s character’s wife, who waited for her MIA husband to return before becoming romantically involved with his best friend, leading to much of the conflict at home for Lewis’s character.
So the actors alone–familiar in several ways to genre fans–are enough to give Homeland a try. Once you do, you will probably get hooked, too. And if you don’t believe me, trust Jonathan Frakes, who recently commented that he and his wife get excited about each episode of the series.
Here is a brief trailer for Season Two of Homeland, released by Showtime (the original version was pulled by Showtime from YouTube for some reason):
. Appropriately marketed as “a big damn book” its 544 pages recount in full color the most complete review of an entire series ever created in a single volume. Not only is it rare for a movie or TV series to have such a series bible, it’s unthinkable that one would be created for a series that was cancelled after only 14 episodes. But as sci-fi’s universally pronounced “most unfairly cancelled” sci-fi series, it makes sense that the show’s creators went the extra mile to put something like this together for its large, loyal fan base.
, 
and 
). So if you already have those you don’t need this one. But if you don’t, then you’re in for a treat. 
