Feel the Beat

Everything in today’s comic is 100% true. As the books from the current continuity of the DCU winds down, instead of finding myself less excited about The New 52. Since there is supposed to be a completely clean break between the current DCU and The New 52, all of the books that are ending have that note of finality that doesn’t lead me to wonder “What’s Next?” and want to get the equivalent issue in The New 52. While I’m not planning to pull every issue of The New 52, I was going to get quite a few of them. My increasing disinterest in The New 52 won’t make me change those September pulls, but the new issues will have to really grab me for me to keep pulling the book. Of course, one can take all this posturing with a grain of salt because this might be as exciting a change as DC claims it is.

One of my favorite genres of movies is the Hot Girls Killing Monsters With Guns movies. Milla Jovovich and the Resident Evil series has definitely fit that bill for me with Kate Beckinsale and the Underworld movies coming in as a close second. I completely skipped Underworld: Rise of the Lycans because Beckinsale wasn’t involved, but news of her return for a fourth film is quite welcome. While I always thought that Scott Speedman was pretty weak in the first two Underworld movies, I am disappointed to see that Bill Nighy won’t be returning. Still, Kate Beckinsale in black leather and guns sounds promising to me.

Not to be outdone, there’s also news of a fifth Resident Evil film. I haven’t had a chance to check out Resident Evil: Afterlife, but I might look into it now so that I’m ready for Resident Evil: Retribution. The return of Anderson to direct makes me wonder if the series will return to being more horror and less of an action film like RE parts two and three. This movie will see the return of Jill Valentine (recast) plus Barry Burton and Leon Kennedy. Can’t wait to see who they get to play Leon.

In the Awesome Movies Staring Men department, casting has begun for the third Riddick movie. I loved Pitch Black and thought Chronicles of Riddick was much more enjoyable than people make it out to be. However, it sounds like that this third film will be taking much more of its inspiration from PB versus CoR, which will probably be a good thing.

Finally, quick reviews from the Planet of the Apes marathon. The original film and Escape are still my favorites, mainly because of the perfect chemistry between Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter. Beneath definitely suffers from a lack of those two and the Charlton Heston clone just does not pull things off as well as Charlton Heston. There’s a good core of a movie in Conquest but it suffers from bad pacing and an inability to light a night scene well enough for it to clearly be night but light enough to see what’s going on. Also, I had missed how they had changed up the ending until The Gnome pointed it out. I think it would have been better with the real doom and gloom. Battle seems tacked on and unnecessary with a very nebulous ending. Tim Burton’s movie is still bad, but Rise was surprising good. The plot made a lot of sense (even more so than Conquest) and Andy Serkis + CGI always makes for a great character. Bonus points for David Hewlett as the Douchebag Neighbor.