Today’s news that Summit Entertainment has already chosen a release date for Eclipse, the third entry in theTwilight series, suggests the studio is in a hurry. With New Moon, the second entry in the series, currently in a production surge under the direction of Chris Weitz for a November 20 release date, Summit’s latest decision raises the bar even higher, by placing Eclipse right in the heat of summer 2010’s blockbuster season. What’s the rush?
Former New Line marketing chief Russell Schwartz, whose resume includes a steadily successful franchise about hobbits and rings, offers one piece of advice for the newbies at Summit: Slow down.
It certainly is a weird time to be a creative user of YouTube, as robotic programs troll user data in search of copyright materials, putting the users who submit it at risk of being banned or silenced. But over the course of nearly two years, Michael Agrusso has steadily picked up a die-hard geek following making videos that use his voice, action figures and nearly every bit of Apple software known to the world. He moves beyond pandering to fans with lame comic jokes, and instead plays up to inside jokes and broader commentary on the state of films and how comics have taken so long to break into that market.
Perhaps you know him better by his alter ego: It’sJustSomeRandomGuy. The series started with I’m A Marvel/I’m A DC, a creative response to the news that DC Comics had canceled their proposed plans of Wonder Woman and The Flash live-action films on the same day. Agrusso continued the parody ads between a Spider-Man and Superman action figure with Batman, Iron Man and even the Hulk. As he wrote the words, his partner and girlfriend Brianna Li (neé It’sJustSomeRandomGal) would wrangle figures and provide the ever-important ‘motion.’ Beyond the ads, the spin-off series After Hours and Happy Hour would emerge, drawing on fan reactions to recently released comic book films while remaining true to developments in the actual comics themselves–for example, Captain America visiting Superman as a ghost, or playing up the aspect that no one remembers Spider-Man was married after the controversial One More Day storyline.
More endearing than Robot Chicken’s take on “action figure comedy,” it’s been a geeky word-of-mouth phenomena, resonating with fans of both the comics and their film adaptations (even Jon Favreauadores Agrusso’s work). Recently, Agrusso has even been discussing the idea of “fan donations” for toys–the Spider-Hulk figure used in his NYCC promo was donated by a fan–-and may soon establish a means for fans to send him their figures. After Agrusso premiered the two-part Happy Hour season finale at a panel at New York Comic Con on Saturday, he took the time to chat about returning to NYCC, concerns about YouTube’s recent crack down on original content based on copyright material, and whether or not he’s yet a “web celebrity.”
Voy a Explotar (I’m Gonna Explode) is the contemporary Mexican teenage Pierrot le Fou. It knows this, and it wants you to know it, and it doesn’t care if this makes you hate it on principle. The third feature by Gerardo Naranjo (director of Drama/Mex, co-writer and star of Azazel Jacobs’ The GoodTimeskid), it’s the rare love letter to influence that’s infused with enough personal style and sentiment to transform the stolen into something thrilling and moving.
15 year-old Maru (Maria Deschamps) is a prep school bad girl with a mangy mane of hair and, apparently, a drinking problem. When Roman (Juan Pablo de Santiago), the spoiled little rich boy son of a right-wing politician gets kicked out of his school and introduces himself at Maru’s suburban Mexico school via faking his own hanging at a talent show, the girl is instantly besotted. “He exists, but I also made him up,” she writes in a letter to a friend which doubles as internal monologue. “The best part is that he’s angry.” Roman is equally smitten, and soon the pair are scheming to run away together.
Or so they want their parents to think; really, they’re camped out in a tent on the roof of Roman’s father’s mansion. Maru’s hysterical mother and sister come over to the house to become part of the rescue effort––which, under the oversight of Roman’s distant dad, consists mainly of drinking tequila and waiting for clues to come to him. With a stolen cell phone, Roman calls daddy’s security detail with false leads to get the grown ups out of the house so that he and Maru can crawl downstairs and collect provisions. It’s only when the pair decide to finally really leave home that their saga starts to hew to the traditional tropes of love-on-the-run.
While the San Diego Comic Con has been for some time a significant part of Hollywood’s marketing calendar — and it only continues to grow, as was shown with last year’s very heavily covered event — there hasn’t been as much emphasis put on the New York Comic Con, despite its logical opportunity and its more pertinent proximity to the opening of the blockbuster movie season. Compared to San Diego’s convention, which takes place in July, too late to really showcase the present year’s releases, New York’s is in April, right before the first of the big summer release dates.
But Hollywood’s presence seems to be more noticeable at this year’s event. Looking at a list of some of the previews and attractions, located at Super Hero Hype, there’s promotions going on for movies like X-Files 2, Hellboy 2 and The Incredible Hulk, all of which could use the extra buzz from its core demographic of comic book and movie geeks. There’s also the world premiere of the new teaser trailer for Frank Miller’s adaptation of Will Eisner’s The Spirit, a jump on San Diego’s usual tradition of being the place to introduce such way-in-advance materials (the film doesn’t come out until 2009).
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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