He gave a quarter and his order, “Small fries, Big Mac!” Yo, Money, it’s the 25th installation of the Pop Culture Roundup. We were out last week with the Independence Day festivities; it was a slow pop culture week anyway. We have a plethora of stuff to dump on you as the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con is underway; we’ll be updating this post throughout the week.
With The Dark Knight Rises premiering next week, if you’re brain-dead and not already hyped for this thing, here’s a wave of stuff to whet your nerd appetite. Check out the entertaining 13 minute featurette at the header. Los Angeles Times’ Hero Complex (Geoff Boucher) talks about the film in ‘Dark Knight Rises’: Christopher Nolan takes Batman to new place. GeekTyrant has some great close-up shots of the costumes. EMPIRE has the soundstrack; stream the powerful score by Hans Zimmer. ABC News Nightline has an interview with Nolan and a sneak peak.
Here’s an amusing spot with Bruce Wayne’s doctor played by comedic actor Thomas Lennon.
The IMAX television spot.
An intriguing mashup of the Batman film and the Immigrant Song redux from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Some goofiness to counterbalance all of the seriousness and doom. Two mashups of the campy Adam West show with the modern incarnation of the Caped Crusader.
Badass Digest has the SDCC exclusive Dark Knight Rises prints by Jock from Mondo.
Favorite artists Daniel Danger and Olly Moss have combined forces and released these silly Batman pieces via their Tumblr Defective Comics. They’re great.
UPDATE: Hilarious. Pee Wee voices the trailer. Lalalalala.
UPDATE 2: Olly Moss drops an exclusive Mondo print for the epic.
Here’s a mediocre mashup, but great segue. Breaking Batman!
The fifth and final season of Breaking Bad starts this Sunday. AMC has a list for you to get primed. There are also these vids, like the first minute-and-a-half of the first episode. GQ, you’re goddamn right, we do meth better; Blue Sky!
Where Season 4 Left Off:
A Look Ahead at Season 5:
A fantastic new print from Breaking GIFs. It’s Lily of the Valley by Phantom City Creative.
UPDATE: A couple of decent Grantland pieces; one from Andy Greenwald where he examines the approach of the narrative and the other from Amos Barshad concerning a possible Saul Goodman spin-off.
UPDATE 2: Wow, what an opener. Totally worth the wait. It was a good move going with the absurdly entertaining, “Three Bald Amigos” giant electromagnet caper. Immediately carrying over the intensity of the ending of last season would have been way too much. That cold open with the 2 year later (since beginning of series) flash forward was bananas though. Here’s the season trailer that debuted at Comic-Con, a few peaks into the second episode and a couple looks inside the episode we just watched Sunday evening. Need I remind you how much I love this show? Also: The Hollwood Reporter: Bleak, Brutal, Brilliant ‘Breaking Bad’: Inside the Smash Hit That Almost Never Got Made.
The AMC show, The Walking Dead, will have a presence at Comic-Con. The show’s third season debuts this coming fall. Here’s some cool stuff from AMC and there’s material from Image Comics end also.
/Film has the limited-edition SDCC poster by Mark Englert titled This Is My Farm…I’ll Die Here.
Walking Dead fan favorite Michonne will make her first her appearance in Season 3. Here’s actress Danai Gurira as Michonne admiring her exclusive action figure which is also available at SDCC. How meta.
The 100the issue of Robert Kirkman‘s The Walking Dead comic put out by Image Comics debuted the other day. To celebrate they put out several different covers. Comicosity has them all.
A cool walk-through of the studios with practical effects master Greg Nicotero.
UPDATE 2: The revealing teaser trailer for the third season coming this fall.
While we’re still on the subject of bitchin’ geek tv, here’s a great series by Yvan Degtyariov aka Vanadium. What if all of the families in the Game of Thrones universe were sports franchises? It might look like this.
Entertainment Weekly has the exclusive SDCC Game of Thrones Mondo prints. The first is by Martin Ansin, the second is by favorite Daniel Danger, and the last one is by Vania Zouravliov.
Boom. (hat tip to Kris C. for this classic mashup. May the Force be with you.)
Aight, let’s jump back to the movies. Did anybody catch The Amazing Spider-Man? I’m genuinely excited to see it. Although it didn’t do Avengers numbers, Spidey did pretty damn well. Here’s the sleek IMAX poster, the Mondo poster features the art of Laurent Durieux.
Looper, starring Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon Levitt, and Emily Blunt, opens September 2012. In 2072, when the mob wants to get rid of someone, the target is sent 30 years into the past, where a hired gun awaits. Someone like Joe, who one day learns the mob wants to ‘close the loop’ by transporting back Joe’s future self.
Featurette on the work of composer Nathan Johnson from Looper.
Did you know they’re rebooting Robocop with Joel Kinnaman (as Alex Murphy), Gary Oldman and Samuel L. Jackson? Why not, right? Here’s some viral teasers to hold you over until 2013. Be sure to check out OmniCorp.com.
Frankenweenie, a heartwarming tale about a boy and his dog. After unexpectedly losing his beloved dog Sparky, young Victor harnesses the power of science to bring his best friend back to life–with just a few minor adjustments. He tries to hide his home-sewn creation, but when Sparky gets out, Victor’s fellow students, teachers and the entire town all learn that getting a new “leash on life” can be monstrous.
UPDATE: A new trailer with new footage.
UPDATE: Kinda pumped for this one. It’s like the Who Framed Roger Rabbit of the video game set. This one will be fun. The official trailer for Wreck-It Ralph starring John C. Reilly, Jack McBrayer and Jane Lynch. The bad guy character in a classic game who longs to be a hero brings trouble to his entire arcade after sneaking into a new first-person shooter game and unleashing a deadly enemy.
UPDATE: The official Disney trailer for Oz The Great and Powerful directed by Sam Raimi. This looks fucking amazing. Wow.
UPDATE: Today at SDCC, Disney also dropped a sizzle reel for Gore Verbinski’s big screen adaptation of The Lone Ranger. Armie Hammer (Winklevoss!) stars as the titular hero and Verbinski/Pirates-regular, Johnny Depp, as the legendary Indian sidekick, Tonto. I dunno. I predict a $250 million bomb; box office poison. The next Wild Wild West? Even the teaser image looks ridiculous.
Gangster Squad, a chronicle of the LAPD’s fight to keep East Coast Mafia types out of Los Angeles in the 1940s and 50s.
Lawless is the true story of the infamous Bondurant Brothers: bootlegging siblings who made a run for the American Dream in Prohibition-era Virginia. In this epic gangster tale, inspired by true-life tales of author Matt Bondurant’s family in his novel “The Wettest County In The World,” the loyalty of three brothers is put to the test against the backdrop of the nation’s most notorious crime wave.
The latest in Spike Lee‘s Chronicles of Brooklyn anthology–which also includes She’s Gotta Have It (1986), Do the Right Thing (1989), Crooklyn (1994), Clockers (1995), and He Got Game (1998); Red Hook Summer tells the story of Flik Royale (Jules Brown), a sullen young boy from middle-class Atlanta who has come to spend the summer with his deeply religious grandfather, Bishop Enoch Rouse (Clarke Peters, it’s Lester Freamon, Yo!), in the housing projects of Red Hook. Having never met before, things quickly get off on the wrong foot as Bishop Enoch relentlessly attempts to convert Flik into a follower of Jesus Christ. Between his grandfather’s constant preaching and the culture shock of inner-city life, Flik’s summer appears to be a total disaster–until he meets Chazz Morningstar (Toni Lysaith), a pretty girl his age, who shows Flik the brighter side of Brooklyn. Through her love and the love of his grandfather, Flik begins to realize that the world is a lot bigger, and perhaps a lot better, than he’d ever imagined.
Jack Reacher, A homicide investigator digs deeper into a case involving a trained military sniper who shot five random victims. Based on a book in Lee Child’s crime series.
Six shots. Five dead. One heartland city thrown into a state of terror. But within hours the cops have it solved: a slam-dunk case. Except for one thing. The accused man says: You got the wrong guy. Then he says: Get Reacher for me.
And sure enough, ex–military investigator Jack Reacher is coming. He knows this shooter—a trained military sniper who never should have missed a shot. Reacher is certain something is not right—and soon the slam-dunk case explodes.
Now Reacher is teamed with a beautiful young defense lawyer, moving closer to the unseen enemy who is pulling the strings. Reacher knows that no two opponents are created equal. This one has come to the heartland from his own kind of hell. And Reacher knows that the only way to take him down is to match his ruthlessness and cunning—and then beat him shot for shot.
Compliance, when a prank caller convinces a fast food restaurant manager to interrogate an innocent young employee, no-one is left unharmed. Based on true events.
Why Stop Now, The story of Eli Smith (Jesse Eisenberg), a piano prodigy, dealing with his troubled mother, Penny (Melissa Leo), and enlisting help from a hapless drug dealer, Sprinkles (Tracy Morgan), on the day he has an audition for a prestigious music program. Events spiral comically out of control as this gang of misfits faces the mistakes of the past, the challenges of the future, and the possibilities of love.
Iron Sky, exclusive U.S. trailer debut for the Nazis in space sci-fi pic.
UPDATE: Cosmopolis trailer.
UPDATE 2: After Earth, viral teaser from M. Night Shyamalan and Will Smith, after a crash landing, a father and son explore a planet that was evacuated by humans 1,000 years earlier.
Here’s the random fun stuff…
Deja vu?
Even superheroes get old.
You cray?
Superslice friend Patrick Peris has created another video mash-up.
So that’s the rub, super sized for ya. We’ll be updating this as stuff leaks from the 2012 SDCC. Have a good week.
–@teemunny
