Short version for those of you who won’t read all this: The MovieByte Podcast will continue, but I’m taking a break from writing.

The written portion of MovieByte is going on hiatus. I really hate to do it. I love writing reviews, and finding news to make witty and/or sarcastic comments about, and I love doing MovieByte in general. But in all candor and honesty (which I always strive for) I have not been able to get any traction with the site. Readership is lower than it has ever been. In fact, I doubt many will read this and even fewer will care. The most visitors the site had last week was 46. In addition, I’m not getting much sleep because I work a regular job, and I have side freelance projects to try to make ends meet. Then when all that is done, I write stuff for MovieByte. It is not sustainable and my health has been the victim of this lifestyle to some extent.

I have always been told, and I have believed my whole life that: if you build it they will come. I built it, and I showed up every day and wrote for over two years. It turns out that they didn’t come — at least not so far.

Don’t take this post as a bitter farewell. For one thing, it’s not a farewell. I suspect I and the (written portion of the) site will be back at some point in the future. I’ll try to come up with new ways to make it interesting and better ways to position the site and get more of you to read it. I had always wanted to bring on a small team of writers and Podcasters — it’s just impossible to do when I can’t even make it work for just me.

And The MovieByte Podcast will continue. When the idea of MovieByte came about, the podcast was the only thing we were talking about. It’s what I love doing the most and it consistently gets about 200 downloads per episodes (sometimes more). It’s not much, really, but it’s enough to keep me making the podcast because I love doing that the most. I have dreams and ambitions for the podcast, and I hope to make others. I also have at least one other in mind that I hope will get more listeners for the theologically minded.

I’ve learned a lot from my ventures with MovieByte so far, and I hope the journey will continue.

Subscribe to the podcast to keep up with me now, and keep an eye on me on Twitter to see what I get up to next. And of course, you can always subscribe to the site RSS feed or follow MovieByte on Twitter to see when I revive the writing — if following me personally on Twitter is a bit much for you or you think all my political tweets suck.

To the few of you who stuck around and read my stuff, thank you so much and I hope we can continue a relationship into the future!

So this is a trailer, or whatever. Honestly, nothing about any of the trailers for Insurgent have interested me much. The first film was passable, I expect this to be a hot mess.

Great, as always. Look, I loved X-Men: Days of Future Past, but it was not without it’s plot flaws. Most of the great movies have plot holes you could drive a semi-truck (or three) through. The good ones just make you not care, and I didn’t care when I was watching the film.

I do love how HISHE is becoming a self-aware parody of itself with the super cafe. Great stuff.

I’m back to thinking that this is not going to be a great film. This trailer really makes it look formulaic and like it has nothing to add to the lore of the Cinderella story. As such one wonders why it is being made. I enjoyed the re-telling of Sleeping Beauty from Maleficent’s perspective far more than I thought — but that is chiefly because the film surprised me and was not (as) formulaic as it might have been. I don’t think we’re going to end up getting the same thing here. And the modern song underscoring the entire trailer was very unpleasant. If that’s the way the music for the film will be count me out! I hope that’s not the case.

We’ll find out on March 13.

Russ Fischer — /Film »

The most trusted name in fake news is preparing to walk away from his desk. During the taping of tonight’s The Daily Show, host Jon Stewart told his studio audience that he will be leaving the show. Tweets from those who attended the taping first spread the word, and Comedy Central quickly followed with an official statement. Read that below.

This is disappointing, but not entirely a surprise. Stewart has been at this a long time.

I’m not being (very) facetious or satirical when I ask the question: where will be turn for real news and fearless reporting.

Oh, I know! I know! We’ll get our news from Brian Williams (now I am being facetious).

Quite frankly, Jon Stewart played a very important role in the modern American landscape. He wasn’t afraid to call conservatives or liberals on the carpet and he will be sorely missed. We talked about it a little on the latest MovieByte Podcast.

Clark Douglas — 365 Movie Guy »

The term “space opera” gets thrown around every time a big-budget fantasy set in space rolls into theatres, but Jupiter Ascending actually earns the title: whatever you may think of it, there’s no denying that it’s pretty damn operatic. There’s a pure-hearted earnestness here which might have felt run-of-the-mill thirty years ago but feels fairly bracing in 2015. It’s a movie filled with flying dinosaur soldiers, shape-shifting aliens, genetic splicing, bonkers performances, grandiose concepts, political statements, royalphile bees, anti-gravity roller blades, Brazil references and a metric ton of world-building lore. Is it good? Not in any conventional sense, no. Is it an entertaining and memorable theatrical experience? Oh yes.

I may not be able to write my review of the film this week (though we will be recording a Podcast tonight where I’ll share some thoughts) so I thought I would link to Clark’s review, which which I largely agree. Overall I think he’s a bit harder on the film than I am. I loved this film a lot despite its flaws.

Rob Keyes — Screenrant.com »

Marvel boss Kevin Feige and soon-to-be-ex-Sony-boss Amy Pascal will be co-producing thew new Spider-Man venture and after the character makes his introduction in the MCU, he’ll get his own movie on the release date previously held by Thor: Raganarok. To fit it in, Marvel’s Phase 3 plans – as announced in October 2014 – have now shifted back to accommodate the change with the exception of the third and fourth Avengers installments which will hold their summer opening dates in 2018-19. Four movies change dates.

Here’s a screen shot of the previous release dates timeline, followed by a listing of the new release dates. The four that have changed are: Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Inhumans.

Current Dates:

Phase 2

2015

• May 1, 2015 – The Avengers: Age of Ultron
• July 17, 2015 – Ant-Man

Phase 3

2016

• May 6, 2016 – Captain America: Civil War
• November 4, 2016 – Doctor Strange

2017

• May 5, 2017 – Guardians of the Galaxy 2
• July 27, 2017 – Spider-Man
• November 3, 2017 – Thor: Ragnarok

2018

• May 4, 2018 – The Avengers: Infinity War – Part 1
• July 6, 2018 - Black Panther
• November 2, 2018 – Captain Marvel

2019

• May 3, 2019 – The Avengers: Infinity War – Part 2
• July 12, 2019 – Inhumans

Marvel.com »

Marvel’s Kevin Feige to Produce Next Installment of the Spider-Man Franchise with Amy Pascal

Sony Pictures Entertainment and Marvel Studios announced today that Sony is bringing Marvel into the amazing world of Spider-Man. 

Under the deal, the new Spider-Man will first appear in a Marvel film from Marvel’s Cinematic Universe (MCU). Sony Pictures will thereafter release the next installment of its $4 billion Spider-Man franchise, on July 28, 2017, in a film that will be co-produced by Kevin Feige and his expert team at Marvel and Amy Pascal, who oversaw the franchise launch for the studio 13 years ago. Together, they will collaborate on a new creative direction for the web slinger. Sony Pictures will continue to finance, distribute, own and have final creative control of the Spider-Man films.

Marvel and Sony Pictures are also exploring opportunities to integrate characters from the MCU into future Spider-Man films.

This is pretty exciting news, all things considered, and ends months of intense speculation. The speculation goes further back than a few months, but the heavy speculation and “smoke” is what I am referring to. Where there is smoke, there is almost always fire. It turns out that this was no exception to the rule.

This is exciting because Marvel has consistently been able to take their characters to really good places. I believe this can very largely be attributed to Kevin Feige’s involvement. Of course there are many other creative minds at work making the MCU good as well and I hope many of them get a chance to be involved as well.

On the other hand, Sony has been pretty consistent — at least with the Marc Webb incarnation of Spidey — at producing bland and lackluster stories in the Spider-Man universe. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was a particularly awful installment in the franchise.

I now have a reason to appreciate the Marc Webb series: the awfulness of that mess led directly to Marvel regaining a semblance of control over the character.

So let’s look at the specifics we know.

1. ”...the new Spider-Man”: This indicates a break in any continuity with any known Spider-Man on screen — which is a good thing in my opinion. Marvel remaking him is going to be a great thing.
2. ”...will first appear in a Marvel film from Marvel’s Cinematic Universe (MCU)”: This could mean one of two things. Either 1). he’ll appears in the first MCU film that is still being filmed (Captain America: Civil War), or 2). he’ll appear in The Avengers: Infinity War. I think both of these idea have their merits, but I lean toward him appearing in Civil War because that’s coming in 2016 and I’m sure Sony is anxious to get cracking on their own new Spidey movie. The Marvel press release says he will appear first in an MCU film. Middle of 2018 may be a bit long to wait. But either way, there is little doubt Spidey will join The Avengers in phase three.
3. ”...on July 28, 2017”: So we have a solid release date — as solid as these things can be I mean, but it’s in print — for the second reboot of the Spider-Man franchise. This just bolsters my idea that he’ll appear first in Civil War. Let’s hope they get it right. Speaking of getting it right…
4. ”in a film that will be co-produced by Kevin Feige and his expert team at Marvel and Amy Pascal, who oversaw the franchise launch for the studio 13 years ago.”: All good signs. But…
5. ”Sony Pictures will continue to finance, distribute, own and have final creative control of the Spider-Man films.”: Noooooooooooooo. Bad plan. Just let Marvel have final say, please!
6. ”Marvel and Sony Pictures are also exploring opportunities to integrate characters from the MCU into future Spider-Man films.”: In general. the future here seems bright.

Overall, I’m excited about all the possibilities!

Some of these old “making of” documentaries are so great. While Return of the Jedi is easily the least of the three original Star Wars films, it’s still quite good. Among the good things is the fact that they just didn’t have access to modern CGI filmmaking and so were forced to do things that were physical, and in my opinion, more real. In fact, in this documentary, they say that even at the time, George Lucas wanted to use CGI but they just couldn’t do it because of the limitations of the time. He was unhappy with the look and the puppetry. Well, I have to tell you that Jaba looks the most real in Return of the Jedi and he looks terrible in his CGI appearance in the special editions of Star Wars and in The Phantom Menace. He looks far less real in both of those films as a CGI creation. Here, he looks substantial.

One of the things that Lucas said is he wanted Jaba to be able to move around on his own. But frankly, I think he works best as an overlarge slug who has grown so fat that he can’t get around on his own. Until I saw Phantom Menace, I had always assumed Jaba had grown so fat that he could not move around, that’s why he was on that pedestal being wheeled around in Jedi.

Anyway, let’s just say that I’m a fan of the work and puppetry that went into Jaba here. And this documentary is a lot of fun to see how they put him together and coated him with slime and the like (which again, add realism and physicality to the character which just isn’t present with CGI).

Check it out:

Kevin Jagernauth — The Playlist »

“The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water” opened to much larger than expected $56 million dollar haul this weekend, far beyond the expected $30 million folks predicted.

...

But the bigger headline belongs to “Jupiter Ascending.” With a price tag in the neighborhood of $175 million, the first whiff of trouble arrived last year whenWarner Bros. abruptly pushed the film from a scheduled summer slot, just weeks before it was due to be released. The line trotted out was that more time was needed on post-production, but it would seem the studio had good reason to be worried for the movie. This is the Wachowskis’ worst opening since “Speed Racer,” and while “Cloud Atlas” did even lower numbers, it also bowed in one thousand fewer cinemas on its first weekend.

What. Is. Happening?!? The American populace have lost their minds.

Kevin Jagernauth — The Playlist »

Feltheimer says the studio is “actively looking at some development and thinking about prequel and sequel possibilities” because, obviously. Granted, the world of Panem is potentially interesting to explore, but before they rush on anything to make a fast buck, let’s hope they really consider the possibilities and don’t just rush out “The Hunger Games: The Chronicles Of Gale.” How about the story of Haymitch before he became lovingly jaded? I’d watch a whole movie of Beetee and Wiress being super dorks, but maybe it’s a good think I’m not in charge of a studio, because that would make zero dollars.

Oh. My. Word. This is SUCH a bad idea. I like the films and the story (genearlly), but don’t push it. Just stop it and make new stuff.

Germain Lussier — /Film »

He played not only a Stormtrooper, Rebel Soldier, TIE Pilot, a Tauntaun wrangler and more in the Star Wars films; he co-starred as Nien Nunb, co-pilot of the Millennium Falcon during the attack on the second Death Star.

Beyond that, the actor had roles or performed stunts in other films such as Flash Gordon, Highlander, Rob Roy and Doctor Who, among others. Bonehill was a master fencer, and it connections from that community announced the sad news Thursday that Richard Bonehill had passed away at the age of 67.

Well that is sad news indeed. And he certainly was prolific and will be missed.

When one considers the modern cinematic landscape, one must often ask hard questions, like; “why oh why was a second installment into a stupid comedy franchise such as this necessary?” I saw the first Mall Cop against my better judgment because it was Christmas, and my wife’s aunt got the movie for Christmas and she really wanted to watch it and so she put it on for everyone. The film was not without it’s humor or merits. But I utterly fail to see the point in another one — at least creatively and cinematically.

But that doesn’t matter, because we’re getting a second one whether it’s a good idea or not.

The concept of these films has always been silly — but they surely do have broad appeal. And people that I like and respect a lot like the films well enough, even if they don’t think they are pure gold. We’re going to get to see more antics with cars on April 3^rd and we even get to see Vin Diesel drive a car OUT OF A SKYSCRAPER. They may be stretching believability a little here.

Do not watch this if you are opposed to gruesome horror scene explorations. In some ways this is more yucky than actually seeing it in the film — though the shock factor is toned way down because you know it’s coming and the music and story is not affecting you.

I love seeing how some of this classic stuff came to live and this is a great exploration of what all went into this. And I’m not just talking from a technical point of view here, they also explore some of the dominos that had to line up to even get to this point. Great stuff.

“I’m just trying to make my city a better place.” Sounds an awful lot like Arrow if you ask me. I know litterally nothing about the comic book series this Netflix original TV show will be based on (as is usually the case with comic book properties), but this is Marvel we’re talking about so hopefully it will be good.

The entire series will be available to binge watch on April 10 for Netflix subscribers.

I haven’t posted every single Super Bowl trailer because some of them did absolutely nothing at all for me (such as the Minions trailer, or the Pixar Inside Out trailer). But while this trailer doesn’t really do a lot for me, it actually worked better than the two parenthetical I mentioned. I loved the original run of Heroes all the way through. There were times of frustration, yes (what TV show doesn’t have those?), but it was a pretty great show over all. And while I think this reboot or restart — or whatever it is — is likely to fail and be awful, I can’t help but be a little bit excited by the possibilities. Also, MR HORN RIMMED IS BACK! And that theme, it gets you right here (kidding… kind of).

Kevin Jagernauth — The Playlist »

Out doing press for his latest movie of the week, “Outcast,” Cage singled out his co-star Christensen’s work in the “Star Wars” prequels while sporting the greatest hair ever. “And so, I watched George’s movies, and the work Hayden did with George, and I was very impressed with Hayden’s sort of edgy, dangerous, dark and still soulful performance,” Cage explained to IGN. “I thought it was superb. And so I really connected with him.”

I don’t even…

But what…

I can’t…

What is happening?!?

Forgive me J.K. Rowling fans, I have let you down. Though the Harry Potter series may just be my favorite fantasy series, I know nothing at all about J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy. It’s a shame, I suppose, because — at least from what I know of her Harry Potter series, I consider Rowling to be one of the best modern writers of our time. I have no doubt that The Casual Vacancy is good, but I know nothing about it.

Now maybe I’ll at least learn about it through this BBC series — though if it’s anything like the relationship between the Harry Potter books and films, the live action drama will not come anywhere near the level of the book. But we’ll have to let people who are familiar with both be the judge of that.

Be aware that while Harry Potter can be considered a children’s book series — I am given to understand that The Casual Vacancy is no such thing at all. It deals with adult themes. Here is the official synopsis:

The Casual Vacancy centres on Pagford, a seemingly idyllic English village with a cobbled market square and ancient abbey. Behind the pretty façade, however, is a town at war: rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils.

The sad news is that, while it airs in the U.K. later this year, there is no word on the U.S. release date. I’ll keep my ear to the ground.

This will be the second time I’ve posted an ‘Every Frame a Painting’ episode. I really need to subscribe to that or something. Anyway, I have not, sadly, seen Drive, but now I really, really want to. It came out just before I really started paying attention to film and wanting to write and podcast about it. So I need to correct this lapse in my education.

But, as regards this video, this really shows the craft of framing and cinematography. When I was an indy filmmaker full time, I could tell when a shot was well composed, and I’ve composed a few shots fairly well myself, but I was never great at coming up with the composition and telling a story in the way this film obviously does. I was a much better editor than a cinematographer. But I love the craft and I love this analysis. Drive — at least the scenes shown here — make such great use of cinematography and composition. It makes me want to go back into filmmaking full time again. Have a look:

First they took his daughter, then they took him and his wife. Now, they didn’t just take his wife, they killed her.

It’s interesting, looking at the slow and steady march down the rankings that this film series has taken. The first film sits at 58% on the Tomatometer. The second at 21%, and this the third film sits at 10%. The critics are none too pleased about this series. And it’s understandable and predictable, if nothing else.

Modest Beginnings

I think the thing I liked most about this film is it didn’t try too hard to drag us in. I didn’t feel as if the film was forcing something down my throat. This is in contrast to the second film which really didn’t have a leg to stand on and tried oh so hard to convince us otherwise. It’s most apparent that this film doesn’t try too hard to convince you that it’s a good action/spy thriller. It spends time with its characters, letting us get a little bit involved in their lives. Bryan Mills is still an inept father who doesn’t quite know what to do with his now early twenties daughter. He still really doesn’t have much of a need for the spy life.

I think this film learned from its immediate predecessor. Where the second film really misunderstood what made the first one a success and just tried to throw every trick in the book at us, this film feels much more subdued. This is to this third installment’s credit in my opinion. While none of this entire storyline has ever been plausible, I think the second film really broke the spell of any believability, and this film returns to it.

The film takes place entirely in one general location — which again, is a bit of a refreshing change of pace. It’s not at all connected to what happened previously — no one wants to take out their revenge vendetta against Bryan Mills, no one is seeing if the guy is really that tough. It only tangentially happened because of Bryan’s skill set.

Avenging His Wife

This is also a return to what made Taken work so well. In the first film, Bryan will stop at nothing to save his daughter. He was not about to let her die because some gas-bag of a politician decided that it wasn’t in his best interest to help out. Who wasn’t cheering for Mills to save his daughter? Here, Bryan returns to his roots by avenging the death of his (ex) wife. You don’t mess with Bryan’s family. You just don’t do it. Here again, I think I was able to cheer him on a bit more than that horrid second film because we all have an innate sense of justice and we wanted to see Bryan take out her killer.

Dumb Mills

Let’s explore, shall we? How does a man do all the things that Bryan does in this film, and get to walk away free at the end of it all? He injured cops, he most assuredly caused serious injury and death in the second act car chase scene, he hijacked an officer and his car, and he flagrantly broke many, many laws. No way he gets to walk away from that. But Bryan does.

And that’s not even the dumb part here. The dumb part is that Mills comes upon the body of his ex-wife in his bedroom. She’s dead, there’s a knife and blood. The cops come in to arrest him. Rather than go with them and prove his innocence (which would have been quite an easy thing to do, with witnesses at the bakery), he attacks and escapes so that now, in addition to hunting down the real bad guys, he has to keep the cops off his tail too. It made no sense that Mills would take the route he took.

Dumb Cops

Franck Dotzler can seemingly focus on nothing else than Bryan Mills even tough he finds out what happened to Mills before, and he knows the man will go to any length — and has — to protect his wife and daughter. Why then would he kill her in cold blood? Given that, Dotzler should be focused on finding the real killers, but he spends most of the film trying to catch up with Mills.

Dumb, dumb, dumb dad

Mills leaves a note for his daughter Kim on a bottle of her favorite drink in the store that says, drink all of this now. This makes her nauseous so that she must leave her class and go to the bathroom. Bryan meets her there and gives her a magic potion that cures the nausea. Why not just leave a note that asked her to pretend sickness and go to the bathroom? Goodness!

Surviving Car Crashes Unscathed

There’s no way that Mills walks away from both of those car crashes and lives — particularly the second crash over the side of the hilly mountain area. And yet, he does. What’s worse is that director Megaton thinks he can sell us this load of horse manure by going back to the crash and playing it in slow motion while Mills tells us what happened. But all I saw was the car rolling much more slowly with Mills in it, then, inexplicably, as the car passes through the frame, rolling, Bryan Mills is left behind in the crevice of the hill. Nope. Still doesn’t work. I like big dumb action sometimes, but don’t treat us like we’re stupid. We like to pretend the action makes sense and is well put together, and I had a hard time doing that in some places of this film ¹.

I don’t know why Forrest Whitaker was in this film

This film made a big point about Franck Dotzler, but in the end, he really offered this film nothing. All it amounted to was Dotzler being one step (sometimes half a step) behind Mills at all times. And when Mills finally catches the bad guy, Dotzler and co. show up and cuff him. The end.

I thought, the way things were unfolding for a while, that Dotzler was going to put something big together and be a big ally and hero along with Mills. But it never paid off. He told Mills at the end that he always more or less knew Mills was innocent because of the warm bagels (no, really). My thought was, so? And that did what for us? Yeah, Forrest Whitaker’s Dotzler could have been interesting — they certainly gave the character enough personality and quirks — but it just never went anywhere.

Meh

In the end, I really can’t recommend this film. There are some nice, tender moments that play well in the drama. And there’s the whodunit aspect of the film that is slightly intriguing. The interactions between Bryan and Kim as father and daughter can be sweet and poignant at times, but for the most part, I don’t know what they were trying to accomplish with this film and I generally consider it to be a failure.

Haven’t had much to say about this film yet, but I’m most definitely looking forward to it. All the signs point to a great film from a great director. This is the guy that brought us The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol so I’m quite willing to bet that Bird is going to knock this one out of the park. The concept is quite intriguing, and as I said in a previous post, I’m a sucker for a good fantasy film. This one looks like it’s going to be a doozy of a fantasy film.

Here’s the official synopsis from Disney:

From Disney comes two-time Oscar® winner Brad Bird’s riveting, mystery adventure “Tomorrowland,” starring Academy Award® winner George Clooney. Bound by a shared destiny, former boy-genius Frank (Clooney), jaded by disillusionment, and Casey (Britt Robertson), a bright, optimistic teen bursting with scientific curiosity, embark on a danger-filled mission to unearth the secrets of an enigmatic place somewhere in time and space known only as “Tomorrowland.” What they must do there changes the world—and them—for ever.

The film makes its way to theaters on May 22.

Seventh Son is opening this weekend, and I’d kind of like to see it. But I don’t expect it to be that good and I have other films I’d rather see first.

It has been moved from prior release dates twice, originally scheduled to be in theaters this month last year. Along the way it has also changed studios. These are not good signs that this film will have anything of value to show us. But I’m a sucker for a good fantasy film and I’ll probably check it out at some point.

Kingsman: The Secret Service is receiving better than expected reviews — and I’m certainly looking forward to it — but calling it, “More bad ass than James Bond” in this Super Bowl TV spot is just a bit more than I can handle. This film better be really, REALLY good and have a few aces up it sleeve to say that. Honestly.

This trailer is pretty much what you can expect from a short TV spot needing to incite hype amongst an already hyped up Super Bowl sports-watching crowd, but it’s not a bad spot and I’m still looking forward to seeing the film in a couple weeks.