Disney loses John Carter rights

Walt Disney's adaptation of Edgar Rice Burrough's "John Carter" was a massive critical and box office disappointment. Which obviously led to Disney's rights to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter series of sci-fi novels, being reverted back to Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., which intends on moving forward with further films. [hit the jump to continue]

MOVIE GUIDE FOR THIS WEEK

by Reymundo Salao

Some people often ask me if I should recommend this movie or that movie; if I think this movie would be great, or if that one would suck. Well, I thought I should put out my pre-view opinions on some movies that are opening this week, and notes on movies that are on extended run.

MIRROR, MIRROR is a fantasy adventure movie adaptation of the fairy tale SNOW WHITE (AND THE SEVEN DWARVES) It’s directed by Tarsem Singh, who directed “The Cell”, “The Fall” and “Immortals”, and stars Lily Collins as Snow White, the ever-funny Nathan Lane, Armie Hammer, and Julia Roberts as the wickedly amusing Evil Queen.

There are two Snow White movies coming off of Hollywood this year. This one looks like the better and more fun version. What with the film’s light, cartoony tone, mixed with Singh’s knack for visual enhancements. Julie Roberts takes a role this time as the villain, and from the trailers, she looks like she’s deliciously enjoying every moment of it. With Roberts’ fun approach and with comedians such as Nathan Lane in it, laughs are a sure thing to expect from the movie as well.

At least MIRROR, MIRROR looks like a more sincere approach to Snow White than the other movie “Snow White and the Huntsman” which looks like it’s a hipster attempt to tell a pretentious alternate “extremely unique” story; it wants to be desperately different. In MIRROR, MIRROR, when Snow White wields a sword, she looks like she does it in a more classical swashbuckling type, and still has that girly poise, while in the other movie; Snow White is Conan the Barbarian (with armor!).

John Carter

JOHN CARTER FROM BOREDOOM
by Reymundo Salao

Everything that you saw from the JOHN CARTER movie looks like a mash-up of various different carbon-copies of things you already saw in other sci-fi movies. Even in the trailers, JOHN CARTER looks like it was a montage of different sci-fi movies; nothing in it stands out to be unique or interesting.

The setting and action sequences looked like one of the atrocious “Star Wars” prequels, the feel of the story was very much “Avatar” and the love story was exactly like one of those idiotic Walt Disney princess love stories. Oh right, this IS a Disney movie. And Disney has such an expertise in the field of shallow and superficial definitions of love. In the end, the love story stood out as just annoying and made the characters less appealing.

READ THE FULL REVIEW

Taylor Kitsch clumsily put the Philippines in a bad light on the Letterman Show

by Reymundo Salao

“John Carter” lead actor Taylor Kitsch talks negatively about the Philippines on The Letterman Show. Problem is that it wasn’t the Philippines that he was talking about.

While he was on the David Letterman Show to promote the upcoming movie "John Carter" Taylor Kitsch talked about the shooting of his other upcoming movie (wherein he co-stars with John Travolta, Benecio Del Toro, Uma Thurman, among others), entitled "Savages" which is directed by Oliver Stone. And in this interview, he said that the movie was shot in the Philippines, and began to recount how he was stopped at the airport and was given a hard time by a customs official. What's worse is that the customs official made a pass at asking for Taylor's iphone unit.

[READ MORE after the jump & check out the video of the interview]