It won't be better than this one

Every time you think the movie industry is completely out of ideas, they prove that there are even more unoriginal concepts than you can possibly imagine, and producers will throw money at. Thus is Medieval Times, the restaurant where you get to watch live jousting, on its way to becoming Medieval Times: The Feature Film.

Well, right now it's in the shopping around stage. I suggest that if it does get picked up, a competing studio should immediately buy the movie rights to the Excalibur Casino in Las Vegas, which has a restaurant that's exactly like Medieval Times in the basement. Competing joust-restaurant movies - how can we lose?

And just to tie everything together, since the best Medieval Times reference was in The Cable Guy, how long before it occurs to somebody to cast Larry the Cable Guy in a Cracker Barrel film?

It's too bad the creepy Burger King and the Taco Bell chihuahua are retired.

Wait, did I really just write that? No! We must not accept chain-restaurant movies as a fait accompli! They need to stick to killing our arteries, and not expand their lethalness to our eyeballs and brain cells as well.

Although, to be fair, there is one that worked. And I give the company a ton of credit for going along with the joke.

Nothing about this news makes sense. Which is why it's amazing.

Ahnuld remaking a Troma movie is weird enough. But if it is to happen, there's a bizarre kind of logic to it - the Toxic Avenger is a large, muscular character, so you want to cast a guy who matches that description.

Except...he's playing a different character in it?

I can't think of any Troma character he'd be perfect for - Kabukiman? Bozo? - but I suppose if they use any elements of the Toxic Crusaders cartoon, he could be Major Disaster.

Dork Dimension

Vodori

UPDATE: Sadly, not Major Disaster. Deadline says:

Schwarzenegger would play "the Exterminator," a former black ops agent, who trains Toxie to use his powers for good. Together they take on the lurking menace created by the polluters, and the polluters themselves.

Exterminator. Ex-terminator. Yep, that's a bad pun worthy of Lloyd Kaufman.

First up, we have the controversial My Little Pony theatrical spin-off movie Equestria Girls, which looks for all intents and purposes like Hasbro wanted a piece of the Monster High pie and sandwiched in an existing property regardless of how well it does or does not fit.

But if you think ponies becoming teenage girls is odd, how about Robin Wright playing Robin Wright, in a movie where she sells all the legal rights to herself and becomes a cartoon? It's from Ari Folman, whose last animated feature was Waltz With Bashir, a cartoon docudrama about the Israeli-Lebanon war. Weirdness, thy name is The Congress.

Both trailers after the jump. (For those who don't know, I do the "after the jump" thing so often because too many vids on the main page = slower load times)

I am consistently amazed by the creativity the NECA folks display in coming up with variants. From Kenner mail-away Robocop to fan-film Predators, and now this...you also have to give it up to the license holders for going along with it.

I don't remember Jason appearing quite this garish in the game, but he should look great under blacklight.

Figures.com has the full-body image and more details.

I'll just give you a minute to let that image sink in.

Tick...

Tock...

You know...

Okay. I get that Living Dead Dolls are supposed to be disturbing - it's their whole reason for being. But there's a difference between "evil doll gonna come to life and kill you" disturbing and "classic movie scene that combined titillation with gender-confusion and psychosis, now starring what would appear to be five year-olds."

There is a difference, right?

...just as he did in the film, Norman is wearing pants underneath Mother's dress.

Good to know. Really, really good to know.

And since he was in silhouette the whole time, exactly how do you know that? Yes, the actor may have worn them, but who knows what the character was doing? Like, you could also include "chocolate syrup like they used in the movie," except the syrup was playing the role of blood. See the difference?

Are the pants mentioned so we're reassured of his manliness? Are you reassured? Is Norman himself a slur against the transgendered? Can we get a Norman Bates versus Madea movie someday, ideally with Norman winning decisively? Wait, that's probably a bad idea.

Meanwhile, you can preorder these dolls for $64.

He's only eleven years old, but Ty Simpkins' career already spans more than a decade, as he made his acting debut at three weeks old on One Life to Live. Since then, he's faced Martians in Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds, appeared in such critically acclaimed dramas as Little Children and Revolutionary Road, and creeped us out as the lead in Insidious and (presumably) its forthcoming sequel.

Though the addition of a kid to the Iron Man saga was a controversial move with fans who thought it might be a cheap tactic to soften things - at the L.A. press conference, Shane Black described Simpkins' storyline as a weird Frank Capra movie in the middle of the action - it works because both Simpkins and Downey refuse to play it over-sentimentally. Tony Stark is a bit of a dick to Harley the kid, but the boy fights back by being as deliberately annoying to him as only a kid can.

Simpkins doesn't know as many big words as Downey, but he has some big answers - in person, it was palpable how he was trying to express larger ideas with a vocabulary he may not quite have yet. We hear so often about what kids think that I had quite a few questions for him to see how true those assumptions are.

Luke Y. Thompson: I understand you're a pretty big comic book fan. How cool is it for you to realize you exist in the Marvel universe?

Ty Simpkins: It's pretty cool that I exist in the Marvel universe, because I love comic books. I love reading them, and they're much easier for me to read than regular books. So it's just awesome that I'm a Marvel character now!

LYT: Do you think that when your character grows up, he'll become a superhero himself?

TS: I hope so! Yeah, that would be awesome.

LYT: When you're older, would you like to play a superhero, and if so, which one would you be most suited to?

TS: If I could play a superhero, I would probably want to be one from - everyone knows the Avengers, so probably a less-known superhero, and make it big. I'm not sure all of the superhero squads that there are, but a single superhero, a less-known one than Spider-Man, and then maybe a new superhero. That would be cool. Any small superhero, and make it big.

The director of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Children of Men brings us George Clooney and Sandra Bullock in Holy Shit Our Spaceship Just Exploded and Now We're Drifting FuckFuckFuck - IN 3D IMAX!!!

And the stars look ve-ry diff-a-rent...TODAAAAY!

Watch after the jump. This is pretty much a perfect teaser - I expect you'll see it in front of Star Trek.

I have to be honest and say I wasn't blown away by the smaller figure reveals at Toy Fair, but even in unpainted form, I think NECA has sold me on this sucker, which they just revealed.

Gipsy Danger will feature lights and sounds, and is clearly quite articulated. Scale-wise, I don't know who you'd play it with, except maybe Mezco's 18" King Kong or giant Godzilla figures. With what appears to be a fully finger-articulated hand, I imagine more than a few will be posed making certain gestures at the kaiju which fully suggest how we feel about their coming to kill us.

So far NECA has suggested this will be the only 18" Pacific Rim figure - but great sales might persuade them otherwise...

...Big Hero 6.

Big Hero what?

Marvel's Japanese super-team, featuring The Wolverine movie villain Silver Samurai (like so many popular villains, he gets his "babyface turn") and a supporting cast with ever-so-slightly stereotypical names like Honey Lemon, GoGo Tomago and Wasabi-No-Ginger. The L.A. Times story announcing the project doesn't mention any ties to The Wolverine, but suggests the movie will focus on young robotics prodigy Hiro and his mechanical bodyguard Baymax.

It's from the director of Winnie the Pooh, which was honest-to-God a great cartoon. For the movie, the action will be set in a futuristic hybrid city called "San Fransokyo." Sounds on paper like a bit of unneeded silliness, but the proof-of-concept footage of the city looks pretty cool.

Letting animation handle concepts that are both lesser-known and potentially budget-busting if done in live-action seems like the right way to go. If Disney's future dips into the Marvel library for animation follow suit, what would you like to see next?

h/t SlyDante

8-bit poster by Jesse Eisemann. Movie release date not final!

It can be a challenge to review something that so many people don't want to know anything about before they go in - save whether it's good or not. I'm not one who believes in giving away major revelations, and plan in the body of the review to dance around the big surprises as deftly as possible. For those who wish to be maximally protected, however, here's all you need to hear:

Star Trek Into Darkness is the most visually spectacular film in the franchise, thanks both to Imax 3D and Scott Chambliss' intricate production design, which brings us the most elaborate future Earth to date, another alien planet best left unnamed for now and lots of great space-debris fields. Narratively, however, it's more problematic - for a film series that attempted to so "boldly go" in a new direction last time around, its incessant references and cribs from predecessors are a disappointment, making many aspects of the tale all-too-sadly predictable.

I still liked it overall, but it has issues I cannot overlook.

Want to know more? I promise not to be too spoilery, but even hints of things may clue the savvy Trekker in. Click onward if you're sure...