Now that Golden Globe winner Octavia Spencer’s sitting pretty with her Best Supporting Actress trophy, the L.A. Times breaks out a choice quote from an October visit to the set of her Sundance 2012 pic Smashed: “You do a movie like [The Help] to get a movie like this,” she said of her new film, which sees her go from spitting retorts and baking special pies as The Help’s Minny to helping Mary Elizabeth Winstead battle alcoholism. “It’s nice… to play roles when I’m not just a sassy black woman.” Hear, hear. Now let’s get Spencer the Oscar, already. [LAT]
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As we all know by now, Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.’s The Thing is not a remake of John Carpenter’s 1982 The Thing, which in turn wasn’t really a remake of Howard Hawks and Christian Nyby’s 1951 The Thing from Another World. So now we have two Things that are only tangentially related to the first Thing, although the thing about the third Thing is that it explains how the Thing of the second Thing demolished the Norwegian explorers who were dead by the time that Thing was even a thing. The Thing of the third Thing basically does the same thing we saw it do in the second Thing, so the third Thing probably isn’t for you if the second Thing wasn’t your thing.
Or maybe even if it was. The Thing — Heijningen’s Thing — comes from a world where everything needs to be explained in meticulous, knowing detail. If Carpenter’s movie opened with the mystery of an Antarctic camp filled with dead Norwegians, it’s no longer good enough to take that as face value: We need to know what happened to them, and how, and Heijningen has taken it upon himself to explicate. The movie does a lot of talking, figuratively speaking, without really illuminating — to the extent that illuminating matters at all in a work of horror or science fiction.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead is Kate, a bright paleontologist-in-training who’s summoned to the Antarctic by poker-faced Norwegian scientist Dr. Sander Halvorson (played by Danish actor Ulrich Thomsen). Some explorers have…
Full Story »The Joel Edgerton-Mary Elizabeth Winstead prequel The Thing hits theaters this Friday, so if you need a refresher on the events of the John Carpenter 1982 original — which takes place three days after the new film — what better way to relive it than through the Cliff’s Notes version, as sung in the style of Frank Sinatra from the point of view of the dog? Just go with it. Watch Jon and Al’s John Carpenter’s The Thing: The Musical, then stick around for more Buzz Break.
[Buzzfeed]
• Resident Evil 5 has found its Ada Wong. As star Milla Jovovich Tweeted, Chinese actress Li Bingbing (most recently seen kicking ass in Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame) will play the mysterious spy/assassin in the upcoming sequel. [@MillaJovovich via Coming Soon]
• Meanwhile, 16 zombie extras were injured on the Resident Evil 5 set when a platform on wheels suddenly moved, dropping them 20 feet to the ground. Must… not… make… joke… [TMZ]
• Director Adam McKay (Anchorman, The Other Guys) is taking a brief detour from making you pee your pants with laughter to produce a documentary about the drop-out epidemic in the American public school system. Which will… make you pee your pants with sadness? [Deadline]
• Hugh Jackman says Wolverine could be rated R. Or not. But maybe. Whatever. [MTV]
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With less than a month until The Thing — the prequel to John Carpenter’s 1982 sci-fi classic — hits theaters, Universal is upping their marketing ante with a spoileriffic red band trailer that not only reveals The Thing, how it is discovered, how it attacks, who it attacks and who it kills, but it also shows off some of the climactic special effects. Subtle much? Click through to see the red band trailer at your own risk.
Taking place three days before the events in Carpenter’s original film, Mary Elizabeth Winstead stars as an American paleontologist who joins a Norwegian team of scientists to examine a crashed extraterrestrial spaceship that is buried in Antarctica. When an experiment unexpectedly frees the alien, Winstead joins Joel Edgerton’s crew pilot to prevent the creature from killing them all. Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.’s The Thing finds its way into theaters October 14.
What do you think? Is the spoilery marketing campaign killing your build-up buzz for The Thing or do spoilers for a prequel not matter when you technically already know the film’s outcome?
Full Story »While the poster for the prequel/reboot of The Thing was pleasingly old school, the new trailer is old school in the worst way possible. Packed with jump scares, corny monster noises, and enough parkas to fill out a section at Eastern Mountain Sports, the new trailer seems like something Dimension might have cut together for Phantoms 2. Alas! Scott Pilgrim muse Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Animal Kingdom star Joel Edgerton, you deserve better.
Video: ‘The Thing’ Movie Trailer
OK, so: scary. But, also, kinda lame. It even seems to spoil more of the film than the trailer for Contagion, a difficult feat considering that one shows [REDACTED] dying a horrible, avian-flu death. On the plus side, MEW seems like a sturdy post-Neve Campbell horror heroine, and Edgerton’s beard looks nice.
The Thing hits theaters on Oct. 14.
VERDICT: Getting colder.
Full Story »Forget The Dark Knight Rises; what you’re really interested in this morning is some fresh artwork for the remake of The Thing! OK, probably not. But! The Thing remake is coming — excuse me, The Thing “prelude” to the 1983 John Carpenter film is coming, and it finally has a teaser poster. One that does a good job of recalling the original, without sullying its name (cough, Straw Dogs). Click through for a look.
“It’s not human. Yet.” Shiver! Though, is “it” ever really human? The thing’s a shape-shifting alien after all. Something to ponder while you eat your Apple Jacks.
The Thing with Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Ramona 4eva!) and Joel Edgerton arrives in theaters in October.
[via Coming Soon]
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Hasn’t Margot Kidder been through enough?! I’m already cringing at the news that Kristen Stewart may play Snow White (more like Weed Green) on screen, and now here’s a rumor that she’s just one of the names being thrown around as a possibility for the role of Lois Lane. Shut everything down, so this doesn’t get to Margot Kidder!
Zack Snyder has already found a hot piece to stuff into Superman’s Spandex jeggings, and now he’s focused on finding the perfect Lois Lane who will hopefully have better hair than the sad mousy mop of dried shit string that was on Kate Bosworth’s head.
What’s Playing says that Anne Hathaway was offered the role, but she pushed it off her table in order to play Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises. Since Zack’s first choice isn’t into that shit, he’s auditioning almost every young trick who’s been on the cover of Elle, Cosmo, Vogue or whatever in the past month including Malin Akerman, Rachel McAdams, Jessica Biel, Dianna Agron, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and KRISTEN STEWART!
This rumor must have originated in the brain of a Twihard before spreading all over the Internet. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Superman ever dropped Lois Lane midair, because he could no longer take looking down and seeing her face twitch like she’s getting an enema in slow motion. Kryptonite is supposed to be Superman’s only deadly weakness. Unless, details got mixed up and Kristen is REALLY in talks to play a piece of Kryptonite. Now that I can see.
