Movie Review – The Three Musketeers (2011)

Paul W.S. Anderson’s take on The Three Musketeers is a completely over the top nonsensical remake that tries to bring a new perspective to the classic Alexandre Dumas tale yet only manages to disappoint by saddling the narrative with far too much modern dialogue and a weak attempt at humour that elicits more groans than laughter.  Technically the film does look convincing enough due to the expanded budget that provides for some attractive location work and ornate costume design.  A degree of kudos has to go to the creative team for at least attempting some truly different takes on the tired wooden ship fighting formula that has to be seen to be believed yet overall the movie never really gels nor presents compelling enough characters for audiences to invest their time.

Game Trailer – Grand Theft Auto 5 (2013)

Now that arguably the two biggest video game releases of the year are out in Halo 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 we now turn our attention to what will surely be the big dog next year in Grand Theft Auto 5 which is scheduled to launch sometime next spring 2013.  Rockstar released their newest trailer today showing the updated graphics and, more importantly, the three main characters.  At the same time it certainly looks like there is much more humor involved this time around which is a breath of fresh air considering the last installment was mainly devoid of anything remotely funny.

Movie Trailer – Oz The Great and Powerful (2013)

Disney dropped a brand new trailer for its Wizard of Oz prequel entitled, Oz The Great and Powerful, which is one of, if not the biggest, release scheduled for next March 2013.  With a rumored budget of over $200 million USD the film is helmed by Sam Raimi who most will know best as the director of the first three Spiderman movies.  Not able to bring his vision of Spiderman 4 to fruition he summarily left that franchise and made the horror movie Drag Me to Hell (2009) before turning to the Oz project.  Raimi is once again reunited with James Franco as well as composer Danny Elfman who makes a surprise reappearance considering both he and Raimi had a falling out of sorts during Spiderman 2.

Update – Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013) Footage Incoming

Today it was announced that J.J Abram’s next Star Trek installment will be getting the The Dark Knight Rises treatment by having a special 9 minute preview attached to the biggest movie of the Winter season namely The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.  This preview is essentially the first 9 minutes of the new film and will be attached to special IMAX 3D showings of The Hobbit in about 500 theatres come December 14.  This is excellent news and shows that Paramount is more than serious as well as confident that the new film will meet or exceed expectations of the original.

Update – Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Movie

News is breaking today that Tom Hardy has been cast as Sam Fisher for the upcoming Splinter Cell movie based on the famous video game franchise owned and published by Ubisoft.  This news comes hot on the heels of the announcement that Michael Fassbender has been cast to co-produce as well as star in Ubisoft’s other big franchise, Assassin’s Creed.  Tom Hardy is certainly one of Hollywood’s biggest upcoming stars who has seen his exposure explode this year with his star turn as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises as well as starring in Lawless with Shia LaBeouf and in the MMA inspired film Warrior at the start of the year.

Movie Trailer – The Host (2013)

With the Twilight series of movies nearing its end with the upcoming release of Breaking Dawn Part 2 it comes as no surprise that Hollywood would attempt to kick start another franchise based on one of Stephenie Meyer’s books.  Therefore, next March 29 2013 comes The Host (2013) the film adaptation of one of Meyer’s novels this time by Andrew Niccol who is no stranger to science fiction considering he wrote and directed cult favorite Gattaca (1997) as well as penned the script for the critically acclaimed The Truman Show (1998) starring Jim Carrey.

Wii U – Mass Effect 3 Launch Trailer (2012)

Because you just can’t have enough Mass Effect news in one day here is the launch trailer for Mass Effect 3 for Nintendo’s upcoming Wii U console scheduled to hit retailers this coming Sunday November 18 in Canada and the USA.  As much as I loved Mass Effect 3 this is one of those decisions that make me wonder just what top brass at Electronic Arts is trying to accomplish as they are launching the third game in a franchise on a new platform without any avenue in which to play the previous two games.  I mentioned in my Mass Effect 3 review that gamers who are new to the franchise are going to be completely lost and without any context as the character relationships and events presented in the game lose nearly all emotional impact.

Update – Mass Effect 4

Yes, although Mass Effect 3 only dropped this past March we are finally getting more information as to where Bioware will take the franchise going forward.  Although there are precious story details at least we now know that Bioware has effectively moved production of the next game from its Edmonton studio to Montreal which was primarily responsible for the multiplayer aspect of Mass Effect 3.  At the same time Bioware’s Montreal studio was the one which coded much of Mass Effect 2’s post game DLC and the upcoming ME3 Omega single-player DLC .