So yeah.  Universal Studios is planning a reboot of a reboot of the reboot of The Mummy.  Why?  I have no idea.  Let’s just hope Brendan Fraser has nothing to do with.

It’s being penned by Jon Spaihts, the original screenwriter behind the Ridley Scott Prometheus before being taken over for rewrites by LOST‘s Damon Lindelof.

Is this a good idea?  I mean, we already have 12+ movies based on the original.  Do we need another?

I’m not watching this unless George Clooney, Jesse Eisenberg, or Zooey Deschanel is the mummy.

Related articles

• PROMETHEUS Co-Writer Jon Spaihts to Reboot THE MUMMY Franchise (collider.com)

 “I have never been so

overwhelmed and humbled

at the same time.”

 

 

About a mile later in the afternoon sun we arrived at this large run down group of buildings set around a dusty yard  with a corrugated building labeled “toilets”.  The headmaster welcomed us and invited some pupils to meet with us.   All the children were eager to hold the books, tell us their names and shake out hands.  We were thanked and then left the school.

 

We took a tuk tuk back to the town centre and then a taxi to Kebele 16.  The landscape was of unmade narrow roads, mud or corrugated structures for homes/shops and a total air of decay and poverty.  At the school, after a few moments with the security guard we went to the office to meet the headmaster and the director who were absoloutely delighted with the books and wanted details of the senders.  We showed them the Pelican Post logos inside with the personal messages written by supporters.  

 

 

 

 Again a group of children materialised and we had a great photo session – word got out and more children came!  Then we were shown around the school…  

 

…There are over 2,850 pupils who attend in morning and afternoon shifts.  A classroom we went into had over 85 children seated 12 each side of 3 long tables and the rest crammed in at the top on stools or on the floor at the front.  A small bookcase with half a dozen books, a blackboard, chalk and a rubber.  

 

On the teachers table (not a desk) was a small jar.  The teacher explained that when orphaned pupils needed a new pencil they could buy one using  the donated  money in the jar.  (Naturally we put some in).  When we went in to the class the children all stood up and sang us a welcome song.!  We noticed that when the teacher turned her back the children remained silent until she spoke to them.  The good behaviour in the face of all the poverty was a salutary lesson.  We went to the library.  A few bookshelves with some books and a couple of tables.  The science lab again had a couple of tables, and one wall housed the physics equipment – charts on the wall and some magnets;  the biology cupboard had some test tubes, diagrams of the human body and one microscope;  the chemistry wall had a sink and some charts.  Once children reach secondary school age all lessons are conducted in English, so to get any form of education they must understand English.  All text books (maths, physics, chemistry, geography, computing etc is all in English).  

 

The whole school was essentially a group of huts.  Yet the outside of each building was painted with  world maps,  alphabets,  periodic tables and loads of other useful information.   Not a spot of graffiti in sight.  

 

One evening we went to a class at another school where children pay  to attend for 2 hours just to improve their English.  I have never been so overwhelmed and humbled all at one time.  These children want to learn.  Some walk miles to school each day, others do evening work to pay for their uniforms (the law states no child may go to school without a uniform – and it is only a pair of cotton trousers/skirt and top) .   All in all it was a fantastic experience…

Perfect Alibi is a bit Twilight Zone in feel and it plays with the concept of time. Manney is suppose to go to a house at a specific time and crack the safe therein, but instead find a dead women. When he gets back to the theatre, everything is back to that morning. The second time he goes through this routine he gets a look at the killer’s legs and shoes. The third time around he known who the killer is, stops him, but then get hit by a police car when he does no go back to the theatre.

This is then a morality dilemma – Manney gets three tries to get the situation right, but it is unclear if he ever does as the ending is not concrete. In this way the short film also shows us our own morality as we – not the director – who are the ones making the judgement call about the situation an whether or not we agree with Manney’s actions. This short film also asks of us to consider what we would change or redo in life if we had the chance – and if we would be willing to accept the new reality that would result in our lives taking on. The concept of “right” or “wrong” courses of action are very arbitrary, artificial ideas agreed upon somewhere along the line by the masses. Yes they keep civil order, but they can also constrict people’s viewpoints to the specific points of time they are in or are imagining rather than seeing the whole picture of events.

This student short film can be watched on Sommers’ website below:

http://stephensommers.com/site/?p=534

Ok soooo… I don’t remember the last time I went into a theater trying to psych myself up, but when I went to see G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, I went in chanting, “This is gonna be good!  This is going to be good!  GOOOO JOE!”  Mostly just trying to convince myself.

The movie is based off of one of the most loved comic books and cartoon series ever from Marvel and Hasbro.  Which means $$ca-ching$$ huge fanbase to start with!  This movie was everything I expected, sorry to say… Joes fighting the baddies and the Joes winning, but not before Cobra Commander (played fantastically by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) slips away at the last second.  And come on guys did I predict the love story between the pretty people; Sienna Miller as the Baroness and Channing Tatum as Duke!?!  Who knew the story lines from my G.I. Joe action figure battles as a kid would be big screen gold!  I’ll be expecting a check in the mail Mr. Sommers. 

 We’ve got Stephen Sommers directing, who also directed The Mummy, and you can definitely see the influence of that film, not only with cameos from Brendan Fraser and Arnold Vosloo, but with the desert scene special effects!  And I have to say Sommers took the fight scenes in this movie to a whole new level! 

The fight between the young boys playing Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow was fantastic!  Maybe even the highlight of the movie!  The chase scene in Paris in the accelerator suits!  Epic!  But, here is an example of where I think the movie fails…  The cartoon had humor about what was going on and I don’t think the movie ever found the right balance of; Hey these guys are real American heroes trying to save the world with the humorous fact that this stuff COULD NEVER HAPPEN because MOST of the things they do are pretty ridiculous.  I mean they were tying to save Paris and during the chase probably ended up killing just as many people with car crashes and train accidents as if they had just let the bad guys destroy the Eiffel Tower!  And the joke they choose is… “I told you to read the manual.” ???  Come on!  What a let down…

I will admit the casting wasn’t bad.  I mean I’d definitely say it wasn’t the acting that took anything away from this movie for me…  So mission accomplished there Team Joe!  Because it was the plot that was bad!!!  Let’s get real the cartoon didn’t really give a whole lot of back story for these characters, so in the movie to create DRAMA they were constantly trying to pack in back story, and it took away from a movie that was supposed to be just a fun action flick!

For a summer movie that requires little to no thought, umm it wasn’t horrible.  And YOU KNOW since they hit the jackpot with all that casholla there is going to be a sequel…  Mr. Sommers get in touch, I think I can still remember a few plotlines from my G.I. Joe play dates!!!