Olympus has fallen… again…

In the latest from director Roland Emmerich, the White House is under attack for the second time this year, and as much as I liked Olympus Has Fallen and gave it 4 stars when I talked about it on the podcast, White House Down almost wants to make me downgrade Olympus Has Fallen, by a half star. The reason is because I don’t feel this film merits 4.5 stars, but I also feel like it’s a little better than Olympus Has Fallen. So it’s sort of that strange in-between place for me. I’m sticking with 4 stars for both of them.

Roland Emmerich At It Again

Man, Roland…

How does one judge a zombie film? I’ve personally never had any interest in the genre; in fact, I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a zombie film or television show about zombies before now, excluding 2007′s I Am Legend (which I’m not counting because the “creatures” in the original book by Richard Matheson that the film was based on were actually vampires). It’s a genre that I’ve always been skeptical of, so I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to see World War Z…frankly speaking, the trailers didn’t make me at all interested. However, I finally saw it, and, guess what? Wow.

Based on the book by…

Lily Collins, actor in the upcoming fantasy flick The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, gives us a sneak peak at the upcoming fantasy drama. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again, this looks like the missing link between Buffy, and Twilight. Frankly, I’d kind of rather see the Sara Michelle Gellar (holy cow, can you believe Buffy is 36 years old now? Has a slayer ever lived that long?), and the Buffy scooby gang back together with high, world ending stakes on the big screen (Dear Mr. Whedon, where do I send my money to make this happen?), but I love fantasy so I’ll take what I can… Read The Rest

It’s hard to imagine or remember a time when Boba Fett was not in the public consciousness, but this black and white video will help remind us. This video from 1978 is hosted by sound designer Ben Burtt, and it is basically a walkthrough of the character for the first time onscreen.

Boba Fett apparently made his first appearance in the Star Wars Holiday Special. I have never seen it, but apparently it is universally reviled. I just watched a few minutes of what I could find of it on YouTube and I can see why, it’s terrible (no really!). But apparently that was the world’s introduction to…

I’m finally getting the idea that Pacific Rim might be about people and not machines crashing it out. So much of the marketing material, trailers, promos and the like were geared toward big machines and mighty monsters crashing around, and there was no discernable evidence of a plot. More recently, the marketing has been shifting to focus on people and that makes me much happier. I didn’t want another mindless Transformers robot thing with different trappings.

Don’t get me wrong, the large scope, the machines, the crashing around is all still present, but that added human element to the…

If you’ve been keeping up with The MovieByte Podcast (as you should be!!!), you know that Joe is stepping down as my co-host due to life circumstances and other commitments. And he wrote a little something about it here on the site which you can (and should) read. As he mentioned there, he’s taking a more active role in the producing and interacting with Movieology because it provides him the flexibility that he needs right now.

In the meantime he left me high and dry on The MovieByte Podcast... Okay, so this is not actually true, I’m just poking fun at the guy (you read Joe? I’m just…

June of 2012, TJ Draper and I were hard at work to create our cool podcast about movies. At the time, we found a decent sponsor (Liberty Alliance) and felt we were set to run the talk show for years to come. Forty-nine episodes later, as TJ’s co-host, I have said “goodbye” for the last time on the live show.

You know how it works. You create something new to you and for a moment you feel like it might be the last thing you ever create. It will be your magnum opus. But that is rarely how it works for us creative people. Give yourself a little time, as long you stay true to yourself, you…

Skepticism. That’s the one word that describes my state of mind in relationship to this film. It feels like they are trying to go for the same sort of charm as many of the Pixar films, and it certainly looks from here like it’s going to be a fail on that level.

I will be happy to be surprised and find out that it is good, but I’m not holding my breath. Also consider that these same filmmakers have put out Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda, so this film’s greatness is not guaranteed in my estimatinon. On the other hand, this is also the team that put out Shrek and Shrek 2, two pretty great…

The Dark Knight trilogy star Christian Bale is speaking for the first time about his potential involvement with the planned Justice League movie, stating he won’t be a part.

“We were incredibly fortunate to get to make three [Batman films],” Bale told Entertainment Weekly when asked if he could slip into the role of Batman once more. “That’s enough. Let’s not get greedy. Chris [Nolan] always said he wanted to make it one film at a time. And we ended up sitting there looking at each other, saying ‘We’re about to make the third.’ We never really knew if we were going to get to be there,…