Pop Culture Roundup 33 / The Superslice

Yo, don’t be trippin’ ’cause I be Scottie Pippen. It’s Pop Culture Roundup 33, Money.

UK songstress Adele was pegged to do the film title track for Skyfall, they released it yesterday. Take a listen at the header. It has been getting slightly mixed review, a small minority think it’s forgettable. I don’t know what the problem is, I like it very much, especially considering the pantheon and the rest of the catalog of Bond title sequence tracks. In context of some of the borderline awful, phone-it-in title songs we have heard, this one is well done. It has an apropos 007 tone, it has the gravitas, soul and classiness that you would recognize from an Adele song.

Here are the new extended international trailer, television spot, on-set videoblog and a host of gorgeous teaser images. I’m actually looking forward to this Bond film more than, say, The Hobbit, Cloud Atlas and Lincoln. I have an aching feeling that that trio of blockbusters will be mild duds, at least, underwhelming; I dunno, the footage I have seen so far (of The Hobbit, Cloud Atlas and Lincoln) has been laughable to me. Of course, this is the same critic that hyped up Cowboys & Aliens for months. I think am jinxing Sam Mendes and Skyfall now, I will stop. Anyway, here are some things to get you revved up for Skyfall.

For good measure…

Here’s an onslaught of The Lone Ranger teaser material. With all of the out-of-control-production rumblings aside, I am definitely warming up to this one. As in, a straight-up DVD rental.

Happy Halloween! The Walking Dead Season 3 premieres Sunday, October 14th. Here are some promos and fetchingly distressed cast portraits from the upcoming season. Also, join host Scott Ian (Anthrax) as he spends a day with legendary FX Artist Greg Nicotero at the KNB EFX Group Inc.‘s studio. See Nicotero’s vast prop collection from throughout his career and also experience an awe inspiring bit of blood and guts.

Which reminds me, I need to catch up on the comic books. I think I’m hovering around issue #92 at this point.

25-year old Trevor Grove is an über talented and skilled sculptor for Sideshow Collectibles. He continually displays an uncanny knack to capture the exact, eerily likeness of various characters from the film and television world; while doing it on a cramped inch-and-a-half head. These sculpts are reserved for high-end, 1/6th scale, 12″ action figures. Grove, himself, a fan of Breaking Bad, decided to create a series of action figures of Walter White (aka Heisenberg) played by the masterful Bryan Cranston. Each figure comes with fitting (in more ways than one) clothing and applicable detailed accessories; perfect scaled down versions of your favorite characters. As a gigantic BB follower/superfan and toy fanatic, I can’t even express how radical these action figures are; I was elated when it popped up on the Nerdist Facebook newsfeed, utterly mind-blowing. You must see the rest of his work at his deviantART gallery.

Last year I sculpted up a few portraits of Bryan Cranston as Walter White from my favorite show “Breaking Bad”. I was finally able to put the finishing touches on 3 custom figures of Walt, all of which were given to the creators of the show this past week.

It’s been a helluva lot of fun, and a tremendous thrill to get to meet the artists behind this terrific show that has been so inspiring to me. Kinder people you will not meet!

So here’s a look at the finished custom figures. These were pieced together from various sources, using Hot Toys bodies, and clothes I found on ebay and then altered. The heads were all painted by some talented friends of mine, and they really brought Walt to life. It’s been a lot of work to try and piece these together in my free time, but I really enjoyed doing it.

Haha. Breaking Ned.

Some interesting Thanos concept art from The Avengers.

The cast of Arrested Development reunites and strikes a pose, Renaissance style.

TRAILERS and TEASERS

‘Thank You’ Trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master. Prepare for some brief NSFW nudity and unseen footage from the film. (previous)

Lincoln is in theaters November 9th, 2012 (Limited) and Nationwide November 16th, 2012.

A Good Day to Die Hard (Die Hard 5) HD Teaser Trailer

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey poster

Zero Dark Thirty posters

Martin McDonagh‘s Seven Psychopaths (Behind the Scenes)

Beautiful Creatures

Cloud Atlas, TV Spot 2 and 3.

The Croods, the world’s very first prehistoric family goes on a road trip to an uncharted and fantastical world.

Flight

Great Expectations, young orphan Pip is given a chance to rise from his humble beginnings thanks to a mysterious benefactor. Moving through London’s class ridden world as a gentleman, Pip uses his new found position to pursue the beautiful Estella; a spoilt heiress he’s loved since childhood. Yet the shocking truth behind his great fortune will have devastating consequences for everything he holds dear.

The Guilt Trip, An inventor and his mom hit the road together so he can sell his latest invention.

Movie 43, Official Red Band Trailer. WTF?!

Nature Calls, Official Red Band Trailer.

Sinister, Official Red Band Trailer.

Smashed, A married couple whose bond is built on a mutual love of alcohol gets their relationship put to the test when the wife decides to get sober.

Wreck-It Ralph, Trailer 2

MASHUPS and SUPERCUTS

The Wire Role Playing Game

Every onscreen drink on Mad Men.

Happy HALLOWEEN. This is great…

This is actual AUDIO (with the appropriate video scenes added — a little out of sync, sorry) taken inside a Hollywood Boulevard movie theater in October 1979. I lived in Hollywood, California at the time. But failed to see the film in 1978 when it originally came out. The following year, in October 1979, it was re-released and playing at the Vine Theater (on Hollywood and Vine), where it was doubled-featured with The Toolbox Murders (also from 1978). I took an old Radio Shack cassette tape recorder inside the theater with me and sat in the front row to try and capture some of the music audio from both films. The Toolbox Murders’ audience was quiet. HALLOWEEN’s audience was not.

Haha. This newly discovered deleted scene from John Carpenter’s 1978 classic HALLOWEEN explains the major plot hole in the story as to how exactly Michael Myers learned how to drive a car while locked up in Smith’s Grove Sanitarium.

Did you know Rian Johnson’s Looper (2012) is actually a remake? In this installment of SuperCuts – we unearthed the 1994 trailer for Disney’s Looper – starring a much younger Joseph Gordon-Levitt and a younger, hairier Bruce Willis.