Dennis Willis talks 2019 Oscars on KCBS
An Oscar statue is pictured during the Oscars Foreign Language Film Award Directors Reception in advance of the 88th Academy Awards in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California February 26, 2016. The Oscars will be presented February 28, 2016. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri – GF10000325443 Dennis Willis chats with Peter Finch about the 91st annual Oscars, whether having no host was better, the surprise wins, and why Netflix made...
Zootopia (Review)
About two months ago, an extended scene for Disney’s latest animated film Zootopia hit theaters as a sort-of trailer. I’m talking about the scene where a bunny police officer and a fox go to the DMV in “Zootopia” (A human-like world inhabited by animals all living together in relative harmony) to run a license plate and discover the entire organization is run by sloths. While, yes, that in and of itself is kind of clever, the way the...
J.K. Simmons Is the New Commissioner Gordon
As the world prepares for just exactly what Batman Versus Superman: Dawn of Justice is going to be like, the DC Comics movie universe is still plugging along with director Zack Snyder at the helm. The Hollywood Reporter broke news this week that the upcoming Justice League (Ie; DC Comics The Avengers) films will feature surly grouch J.K. Simmons as Commissioner Gordon. Honestly, that’s pretty solid casting even if he already played J....
Pete’s Dragon (Teaser Poster)
Over the past few years Disney has been releasing live-action versions of some of their popular animated films to varied success. Some were pretty great (Cinderella, Maleficent while other, eh, not-so-much (Alice in Wonderland). But like it or not, there’s up to 15 planned Disney live action remakes of animated films coming our way with John Favreau’s The Jungle Book hitting next in early April. One of these films I’ve been keeping a...
Batman v. Superman Turkish Airlines . Wait, what? (Trailer?)
Sigh. More weird ass marketing from DC Comics for their upcoming Batman VS Superman: The Dawn of Justice movie. First we had the truly strange “trailer” featuring Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) and Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) measuring their ding-dongs before Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) pops in to break the intense sexual tension. It just wasn’t really a trailer inasmuch a really oddly chosen scene from the movie. But, whatever. They made...
The Hateful Eight (Review)
Aside from Star Wars: The Force Awakens the movie I was most looking forward to at the end of 2015 was Quentin Tarantino’s eighth film, The Hateful Eight. Like most cinephiles, I love Tarantino and have loved every one of his films. And let us not forget this one almost didn’t happen after someone leaked the script back in 2014. Luckily QT cast aside his anger, put together a simply fantastic cast and got to work. Like many, I...
The Force Awakens passes Avatar in US
Star Wars: The Force Awakens has now passed Avatar’s $760 million on the all-time domestic box office list. In just 20 days. Let’s think about that for just a second. The seventh film in the legendary series was front-loaded to do an amazing amount of business, but most realistic estimates put it on track to do $500 million by the end of the year. But The Force Awakens has maintained a stunning daily hold, with many fans seeing the...
The 12 Days of Star Wars: Day Seven
As any Star Wars fan worth his Midichlorians will tell you, the release of the original Star Wars back in 1977 kicked off the grand era of the movie tie in merchandising, with enough licensed toys, games, costumes, etc. to fill the Death Star. Of course, you can go back to the late ‘60s and early ‘70s to find tie-in toys for the original Star Trek series, many of which I had, like the infamous choke-hazard mega-toy, the Star Trek...
The 12 Days of Star Wars: Day Six
As we count down to The Force Awakens, there are a million think pieces across the interwebs about what Star Wars has meant to fans for the past four decades. Here at Flick Nation, the conversation has been a fun one as we recall toys, first-time viewing experiences, and the like. But here is an enduring aspect of the Star Wars experience that people tend to forget about: how many times we have purchased the damn things! A few days...
Batman Versus Superman: Dawn of Justice (Trailer 2)
As we talked about earlier this week, a new trailer for Batman –VS- Superman: Dawn of Justice was coming this week and right on time, it plopped Wednesday night. And the Internet comic book kingdom collapsed upon itself in a massive freak-out of negativity. I’m typically not the kind of person who either looks at other “critics” opinions before voicing my own nor am I a writer who gets caught up in Internet Bandwagon Bashing. That...
Huge Info Dump in Regards to Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Look people, here’s some hard and fast information about what could potentially be the biggest cinematic event ever. It’s in regards to Star Wars: The Force Awakens and most official info dropped this weekend. Pay attention, Fuzzballs. Yesterday (Sunday) the official poster for Episode V11 (that’s SEVEN for the Roman Numerically Impaired) was released and it’s wonderful. That’s it down below there. We get a good look at many...
Cuss Yeah!! A New Wes Anderson Stop-Motion Film is Coming!
Many people will say that Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox is one of his best films and, I agree. I’d also take it a step further and say it’s one of the best films of the past decade. It’s imminently watchable, masterful in its story and design and simply, well, fantastic. However stop-motion animation is time consuming and expensive and many thought Anderson would be one-and-done with stop motion. Well throw that idea to the dogs!...
It’s Time for the Mill Valley Film Festival
The 38th Annual Mill Valley Film Festival kicked off last night featuring Tom McCarthy’s film Spotlight as it’s main premiere. While I won’t be in attendance until next week friend and colleague David Templeton said the film was “brilliant [expletive removed]-ing brilliant.” Strong words for what will probably be an Oscar contender come spring. Which brings me to my pre-festival review of the Mill Valley Film Festival. As a filmmaker...
Hail Caeser! (Trailer)
February 5 cannot get here fast enough. Why? Because that’s when The Coen Brothers latest film Hail Caesar! opens. This is the brothers’ latest film after their best film, Inside LLewyn Davis which I still refuse to believe didn’t win Best Picture in 2013. In fact, I refuse to believe it wasn’t nominated either. Now I’m getting angry. Back to Hail Caesar! Which looks funny and thinking about it is already cheering me up. The film...
All I Wants a Pepsi! Just One Pepsi!
According to this report from 2011, it costs give or take 50 cents to make and manufacture one can of Coke. So they about double their profits on single cans and I’m too lazy to do the math for 6-packs and so forth. However now fans of fizzy sugar water are going to get a chance to pay just over $20.00 for a 16oz bottle all in the name of fandom. Yes, Back to the Future II fans, on October 21 you can all help me celebrate myself and...
Everest (Review)
History shows again and again how nature points of the folly of man… “Godzilla”- Blue Öyster Cult Cinema has long been a wonderful place to bring to life true stories of brave men and women from all corners of the globe who overcome incredible odds in order to survive life-threatening situations. Films of this nature are so multiple and varied it can be hard to narrow it down to a few but Apollo 13, 127 Hours, Rescue Dawn...
A-Team returns to television
According to this article on Deadline, the iconic ‘80s juggernaut known as The A-Team is being developed for a return to TV. Fast & Furious writer-producer Chris Morgan will executive produce alongside original series creator Stephen J. Cannell’s daughter, Tawnia McKiernan with a script written by Sleepy Hollow executive producer Albert Kim. Who saw that coming? Rebooting projects with strong brand recognition isn’t exactly...
Bryan Singer Goes 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
When X-Men franchise director Bryan Singer recently said he was pretty much done with the mutants many wondered what he might do next. Here was a guy who burst on the scene with The Usual Suspects and then did some Nazi type stuff…errr….Nazi type FILMS like The Apt Pupil and Valkyrie, both of which, while quite good, were fairly overlooked. His Jack the Giant Slayer was also overlooked which made many people wonder if he could do...
The Jungle Book (Trailer)
From the company that brought you Pirates of the Caribbean (aka, Disney) comes the first look at the latest entry of live-action Disney cartoons, The Jungle Book and I gotta say, it looks pretty awesome. While I’ll probably never be completely sold on CGI the animals on display here (save Kaa, the snake) look pretty amazing. I also love the sprawling, epic, action packed angle the film is taking then they tie it all back in at the...
We Know What the New Christopher Nolan Film (Won’t) Be
Look, a lot of the cool-guy blogs out there are trying to make blind guesses as to what the newly announced (set for July 21, 2017) Christopher Nolan film will be. We here at Flick Nation are going to do you one better. We’re going to name some films it certainly will NOT be. Here goes… It won’t be a Batman movie. Nolan said he‘s done with that and Affleck has the next one as director. It won’t be a remake of Annie because that just...
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