Joker
(release date 4 October 2019)
So it seems that this Joaquin Phoenix Joker movie isn’t an elaborate practical joke that we’ve been led to believe, and is actually a proper movie made by proper cameras and featuring actual people doing acting.
This week we got a first poster and a 2min 25 second teaser trailer (some people would say that 2:25 is less of a ‘teaser’ and more of ‘the whole performance’, but not me. Definitely not me), and some footage was shown at CinemaCon too.
But while the trailer mostly consisted of The Joaquer getting beaten up, director Todd Philips has explained that what we think we know about the film may not be correct:
“I don’t have a lot to say about the filming because it’s still taking shape, but also I want it to be a surprise.
“That said, there’s been a lot of chatter about what this film is and isn’t and most of it hasn’t been very accurate.
So there’s more to the film than Joaquin Phoenix looking forlorn into a mirror? I would hope so.
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (release date 7 February 2020)
More Joker news, this one from the rubbish, tattooed joker that everyone hated.
Undeterred from mailing used condoms and dead pigs to his co-stars in order to ‘get in character’ and then having nearly all of his performance cut from the finished film, Jared Leto has dropped a very, very loose teaser on Snapchat that he may be returning as The Clown Prince of Crime in the Birds of Prey movie:
Yeah, that’s it.
I did say it was very, very loose… like your mum.
It: Chapter 2 (release date 6 September 2019)
This week Las Vegas played host to the annual CinemaCon – it’s like most other conventions, except for, instead of nerds in fancy dress trying to inconspicuously touch the arses of hot scantily-clad girl nerds (gerds?) in fancy dress, it’s important cinema people getting to watch a lot of footage of new films that aren’t coming out for a while.
One of the films that had some footage shown this week was the sequel to It, and it features Jessica Chastain as a grown-up Beverley Marsh as she returns to Derry. Here is a passage describing the footage that I have copied directly from CinemaBlend and then edited down:
Having returned to her hometown after spending years away, adult Beverly Marsh (now Beverly Rogan and played by Jessica Chastain) makes the decision to return to her childhood home – albeit while filled with intense dread about the possibility of seeing her father again, but an elderly woman greets her.
After Beverly notices this, she asks about her father, and Mrs. Kersh dourly explains that he passed away – but then kindly invites her to come in, look around, and have a cup of tea. As Mrs. Kersh walks into the living room, and she gives Beverly a cup of tea as they sit opposite one another.
Breaking the silence, Mrs. Kersh asks what it’s like being back in town, and Bev replies that it’s strange – suddenly noticing the nasty chest wound that her host is sporting when the collar of her blouse shifts. Before she can ask a real follow-up, there is a ding from the kitchen that indicates that cookies are done. As she leaves, her guests starts looking at and asking about the photos on the wall.
As Beverly stares at one particularly creepy photo, things escalate when it’s revealed that Mrs. Kersh is now standing naked – though obscured – in the kitchen. She calls from the room, “I was always daddy’s little girl. What about you? Are you still his little girl, Beverly? ARE YOU?” Hearing the horrifying words of her father come out of the elderly woman’s mouth, Bev quickly becomes frightened, and the situation further escalates as Mrs. Kersh begins an all-out naked sprint towards her.
I was going to write a bit here about sexy naked old people, so I looked up the term for sexual attraction to elderly people (Gerontophilia), and that resulted in a bizarre and largely unpleasant Wikipedia adventure into the world of strange sexual attractions, here are some of the highlights:
- Nasophilia – Nose fetishism
- Apotemnophilia – a sexual desire to lose a limb
- Acarophilia – sexual arousal from scratching
- Dacryphilia – aroused by tears or sobbing
- Emetophilia – sexual arousal from vomiting, or watching others vomit
- Dendrophilia – sexually attraction to trees
- Homeovestism – the arousal of a person by wearing clothing appropriate to their gender; aka ‘reverse transvestic fetishism’
Thanks for being with me on this journey. Now I don’t really want to think about anything really.
Terminator: Dark Fate
(release date 23 October 2019)
Arnold Schwarzenegger shared a picture of him the next Terminator film. Turns out that he will also be playing Grindelwald’s dad in the next Fantastic Beasts film after stealing Henry Cavill’s Mission: Impossible moustache.
Director Tim Miller showed some unfinished footage to the crowds at CinemaCon, with a teaser about the new villainous cyborg:
“Our cool new feature … is he can split. So he’s twice as deadly.”
I’m sure we can all look forward to the trailers ruining every twist before the film’s release.
The Gentlemen
(release date TBA)
It has been revealed this week that Guy Ritchie is set to return to his London gangster roots with his new film The Gentlemen, with CinemaCon been given a first glimpse this week.
Starring Charlie Hunnam, Matthew McConaughey, Colin Farrell and Hugh Grant, it is supposed to be in the same spirit as Lock Stock and Snatch, which is a good thing, as since those two films, Ritchie’s films have been:
Terrible Madonna romcom – terrible pseudo-philosophical nonsense – terrible not-Snatch London gangster caper – Sherlock Holmes – worse Sherlock Holmes – The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (which was pretty fun) – terrible historical fantasy crime nonsense – blue Will Smith.
We’ll also get to see what accent Charlie Hunnam brings out of his big bag labelled “I can’t do accents”. I mean, he grew up in Newcastle (he started his acting career on Byker Grove) and can’t even do that accent properly.
Dark Phoenix
(release date 5 June 2019)
The perennially-shunted Dark Phoenix may finally be getting its release date, and the press is being stepped up to promote the final X-Men movie of this iteration before they are absorbed into the MCU.
X-Men producer Hutch Parker, whose name only exists in a 1970s cop show, has been speaking at comic book convention WonderCon to promote the Dark Phoenix, and has labelled the new film as “like a Hitchockian psychological thriller.”
Lofty expectations indeed. Perhaps he thought that he’s go with his own thoughts, rather than repeating those of The DisInsider (your no.1 source for Disney film news) editor-in-chief Skyler Shuler’s :
The opinions of an exec who actively wants you to go and see a film, versus the rumours told to a journalist whose interests are in this franchise being swiftly finished.
It’s like choosing between a punch in the face and a kick in the nuts.
Call me a maniac, but I’d probably go for the kick in the nuts (I’ve always been scared of getting my nose broken). But which side of the Dark Phoenix debate is the kick in the nuts side?
Cats
(release date 20 December 2019)
So the question that we’ve all been wondering about the onscreen version of Cats has been answered:
Did you know: Cats director Tom Hooper got his start as a director on episodes of Byker Grove?
This has been a very Byker Grove-heavy week.
Trailer of the Week
A sparse week that saw Dave Bautista’s new spy comedy My Spy, A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon, a ‘special look’ at Avengers: Endgame and a possibly spoiler-filled new one for Pet Sematary.
But this week’s pick of the bunch is the unexpectedly star-studded zombie comedy The Dead Don’t Die – Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, Chloë Sevigny, Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover, Iggy Pop, Selena Gomez and Tom Waits could give Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead a run for their ‘best zombie comedy’ crowns.
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