Alpha's Doggone Best Elements Are Also Its Most Original Tendencies

Stories about a boy and his dog (or some kind of other creature standing in for the dog) are a dime-a-dozen in the wide world of cinema, but Alpha looks to set itself apart from the pack by telling the story that explores the very first time man and canine bonded. Such a tale occurs during the ice age thousands of years ago as Keda (Kodi Smit-McPhee) travels with various members of his tribe, including his father, chief Tau (Johannes Haukur Johannesson), to hunt buffalo. It's an important mission for a number of reasons, including the fact that Keda see's this as a potential rite of passage of sorts that can prove to his father that he has what it takes to be a proper chief.

Ready Player One Is, For Better And For Worse, A Traditional Action Blockbuster

After a whole decade of being absent from the realm of American blockbuster cinema, director Steven Spielberg returns to the genre he helped bring into existence with Ready Player One, an adaptation of a 2011 novel penned by Ernest Cline. Given just what a tremendous track record Spielberg has with blockbuster fare (I'd personally say his only two real misses in that subgenre would be Temple of Doom and The Lost World), the idea of him returning to rollicking escapism science-fiction blockbusters sounds like a winning prospect, though the excerpts I've read from the Ready Player One book (which, for full context, I've never read in full) did make the source material he was adapting seem more creepy than exciting, thus diluting my excitement for this newest Spielberg fetaure immensely.

Here's All The News Announced At The 2017 Warner Bros. Comic-Con Panel

Warner Bros. is back at Comic-Con this year and come 1 PM Central time, I'll be live-blogging their Comic-Con panel. No, I'm not cool enough to actually attend the panel but I'll be keeping tabs on all the big announcements and reveals that go down and post them here for you to enjoy. Plus, WB has been, starting with the first Mad Max: Fury Road trailer three years ago, putting their Comic-Con trailers online too, so expect a bunch of new trailers today, particularly the first trailer for Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One and the new Justice League trailer. Maybe we'll even get some footage from Aquaman's movie, who knows...

Before we get to all the Comic-Con craziness, WB held a panel for The LEGO Ninjago Movie yesterday and premiered a new trailer for that film. It actually looks better than the last film and the way they pay homage to classic Kaiju movies with a live-action "monster" is clever. Check the trailer out below!

OK, the panel began with Chris Hardwick doing the moderating (shocker, I know), and the first thing WB stepped up to the plate with was....

READY PLAYER ONE

Spielberg is here at Comic Con to tout READY PLAYER ONE #comicon2017 pic.twitter.com/b8yYo724PA

— Kyle Buchanan (@kylebuchanan) July 22, 2017

Steven Spielberg returns to his summer blockbuster roots for the first time (discounting Indiana Jones 4) since War Of The Worlds and Spielberg himself showed up to promote this new science-fiction feature! Before the trailer even started, Hall H (the location where this panel took place) had massive screens popping up showing off all kinds of pieces of 1980's pop culture. Looks like they're totally going all in on the 1980's pop culture references that the book it's based on was apparently drowning in. The cast of the film also showed up once they got done showing off an extended trailer for the movie, which, in true WB Comic-Con fashion, the studio has released and you can watch below!

This looks neat! I wish some of it was brighter so I could see all of the video game coolness better but this feels total go-for-broke fun and I love that in one trailer Spielberg's action sequences have so much personality in life to them. Really good teaser too in terms of clearly establishing the world of the protagonist and what he does for escapism while also leaving plenty for us to discover. Not sure about calling the source material a "holy grail of pop culture" (I haven't read the book for the record) but if anyone's earned the right to be called a cinematic game-changer, it's Spielberg!

Next up is...
BLADE RUNNER 2049

We already got a new trailer for this earlier in the week (I'll embed it below since I haven't linked to it anywhere), so no new publically released footage here, but lots of new plot details showed up and plenty of footage was shown to attendees of the panel. Here's that new trailer that went up earlier in the week, it's a truly spectacular trailer!

After Blade Runner, it was time for...

THE DC EXTENDED UNIVERSE

After three movies that got receptions ranging from mixed to vehemently negative, the DCEU finally got itself a critical and financial smash hit with Wonder Woman, a movie that's well on its way being a bigger domestic grosser than all but two of the films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe! Today, gave us a peek at the future of their cinematic universe. To wit, they confirmed the following movies are happening in the DCEU:

Shazam!
Suicide Squad 2
The Batman
Justice League Dark
The Flash: Flashpoint
Flashpoint
Wonder Woman 2
Green Lantern Corps.
Batgirl

Loooots of movies on that slate, no release dates for any of 'em as of yet. I guess Flashpoint is what that solo Flash movie has become. Interesting that Gotham City Sirens (which has a director, writer and lead actor) and a new solo Superman movie (which has a script and was in talks with Matthew Vaughn to direct) are nowhere to be found on that slate as far as I know. Anywho, after that opening salvo showing off the future of the DCEU, they showed off some brief footage from Aquaman and then had the Justice League cast (sans Henry Cavill) come out to chat it up before showing off a new trailer that you can watch below.


I like some of what I see here and also remain apprehensive about what's to come. Smart move heavily emphasizing Wonder Woman and her mythology (looks like her home island is the one that inadvertently brings Steppenwolf to Earth) into the trailer given how popular her movie is, more Wonder Woman can't be a bad thing! Cute Batman Returns reference, Jeremy Irons looks fun and more color showing up here is also good to see, particualrly in the big superhero vs. Parademon showdowns which now take place against a red sky instead of the nighttime backgrounds of the initial teaser that made scuffles visually incoherent.

Some of the stuff still isn't quite gelling for me, namely in how they keep telling the audience how Superman stood as a beacon of hope without offering the slightest bit of evidence to that in the last two movies. Classic case of "telling instead of showing" there. Steppenwolf I'm worried about too, not only have they gone and altered actor Ciaran Hinds voice digitally for the role (I've always said you should always keep the voice of actors doing motion-capture roles so the audience has something clearly human to relate to instead of adding more digital trickery to the proceedings) but the brief glimpses we get of him in the trailer make him look indistinguishable from the likes of Ares and Ronan The Accuser. Some clunky looking sets, over-use of slow-motion and a bungled final trailer tag teasing the return of Superman (Though good luck on general audiences knowing that's him) and I must say this trailer is very much a mixed bag for me, though it's a notable improvement on that dumpster fire of a teaser we got a few months back. If nothing else, Ezra Miller and Jason Momoa look like a lot of fun as The Flash and Aquaman respectively.

Alright folks, that's it for WB at Comic-Con this year! Tune in tonight when I live-blog the Marvel Studios panel!

The BFG Review

At this point, Steven Spielberg knows the name of the blockbuster game. Hell, he pioneered it with Jaws, which was far from the first movie to bring spectacle to the big screen, but it was the first movie to utilize release patterns and box office grosses that are all too familiar today. And while his newest The BFG isn't technically a "summer blockbuster", instead being a family movie, it's still got oodles of visual effects and a prime 4th of July summer release date, both elements that are familiar terrain for one of cinema's rightfully most celebrated auteurs. Returning to the realm of family fare for the first time since Hook (not counting his 2011 effort The Adventures Of Tintin), one might understandably query if the man's absence from this avenue of storytelling might leave him rusty, perhaps out of touch with the times.

Steven Spielberg Adds Another Movie (Starring Mark Rylance And Revolving Around Catholicism And Kidnapping) to His Bustling Slate

Steven Spielberg is not a man known for having a light workload. Remember how, back in 1997 and 1998, he had three directorial efforts (The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Amistad, Saving Private Ryan) released in the span of 13 months?  Oh he'll take prolonged breaks occasionally but whenever he comes back he's always got multiple films up his sleeve. It looks like he's on one helluva roll right now, as, hot off the heels after releasing Bridge Of Spies last Fall (which you should see ASAP if you haven't yet, it's great), he's got The BFG lined up for this summer, Ready Player One set for March 2018 and he'll also be handling a fifth Indiana Jones feature in July 2019.