The peeps at GameSpot Universe went through Rogue One trailers and combined them into this supercut:
Trailer Supercut: All Rogue One Clips In Chronological Order by GameSpot Universe
Their goal was to put the clips in chronological order, by which I’m guessing the order they will appear in the movie. Looks like a reasonable guess to me!
Two weeks—can’t wait!
Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.
Trailers for the second season of The Expanse are out!
THE EXPANSE | Season 2 Trailer | Syfy
THE EXPANSE | Season 2 Trailer #2 | Syfy
I saw the first season well after it had broadcasted. It’s clear that it merely scraped the surface of the story, but I liked it enough to want more. The writing managed quite well to avoid infodumps while giving us enough to understand any given situation. Most of the cast was new to me, but I enjoyed their performances. Detective Miller was the most boring character of all; I liked the crew of the Rocinante, though, especially Nagata and Burton.
Season 2 will be out February 8, 2017.
Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.
A new Arrival screen ad is out! (Published today, in fact!) In an atypical move, the trailer (if you can call it that) starts with several completely unrelated clips of people in an experimental situation:
Arrival (2016) – “Common Ground” – Paramount Pictures by Paramount Pictures
…except that, of course, the clips aren’t unrelated. They show two strangers with no shared language trying to figure out what they have in common. It’s quite clever; see for yourself.
Two weeks to go till opening night!
Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.
It’s now just over a week until Doctor Strange opens. (Gosh, November is so close!) There are a bunch of trailers on the InterTubes, for instance the official ones by Marvel:
Marvel’s Doctor Strange Teaser Trailer by Marvel Entertainment
Doctor Strange Official Trailer 2 by Marvel Entertainment
The tv spot from the end of September, however, is my favorite:
Doctor Strange TV Spot by Marvel Entertainment
Kaecilius: “Mister…?”
Strange: “Doctor.”
Kaecilius: “Mister Doctor.”
Strange: “It’s Strange.”
Kaecilius: “Maybe. Who am I to judge?”
Harf! 🙂
I have to say I know next to nothing about Doctor Strange. The character was referred to from time to time in the translated X-Men I read in my youth in Finland, but “odd name” and “magic user of some sort” was pretty much what I got out of them.
The cast is something to look forward to. I loved Chiwetel Ejiofor in Serenity and The Martian, and Benedict Cumberbatch should be marvelous (I’d listen to him pretty much just reading a phone book). Mads Mikkelsen looks like the quintessential bad guy. Perhaps too much so; I fear I might find his character too corny, but we’ll see.
Tilda Swinton I’m conflicted over. I’ve enjoyed her past performances. Her character in this movie, The Ancient One, has been gender-swapped, which is really cool. However, apparently the role is whitewashed. I guess we’ll see.
I also know nothing of the director Scott Derrickson; again, we’ll see. It’s been such a slow latter half of the year, movie-wise, that I’m looking forward to Doctor Strange even if I’m not sure whether it’s exactly my cup of tea.
Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.
At some point when I wasn’t looking, it got to two months till Rogue One. The second official trailer is out:
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Trailer #2 (Official) by Star Wars
“They are requesting a call sign.”
“It’s a… rogue. Rogue One.”
Whee!
Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.
Jareth: “You remind me of the babe.”
Goblin 1: “What babe?”
Jareth: “The babe with the power.”
Goblin 2: “What power?”
Jareth: “Power of voodoo.”
Goblin 3: “Who do?”
Jareth: “You do.”
Goblin 4: “Do what?”
Jareth: “Remind me of the babe.”
This year marked the 30th anniversary of the release of Labyrinth by director Jim Henson. This past weekend FantomEvents ran some special Labyrinth showings in theaters. We didn’t go due to schedule issues (=work, work, work) but instead watched it at home.
As a geeky kid of the 80s, I have very fond memories of the movie. It’s mostly because of its visuals, but I do like the fantastic lines—great for learning English with—and voice acting as well.
Sarah: “Did you say ‘Hello’?”
Worm: “No, I said ‘allo’, but that’s close enough.”
(The worm was one of my very first tastes of dialectal / regional English!)
If my memory serves, the puppetry effects in Labyrinth are mostly better than in The Dark Crystal, Jim Henson’s previous fantasy movie. (Note to self: Find out if I can rent / stream The Dark Crystal. Local library to the rescue!)
Some of the songs, too, have become long-time favorites, especially “As the World Falls Down” by David Bowie.
Ballroom Scene – Labyrinth – The Jim Henson Company
As a kid, I didn’t really understand how someone could like Bowie’s music, but that one song opened my eyes. (Ears?) I still love it, and the ballroom scene with its floating props.
Bonus find: Stephanie at Make and Tell shares her “the babe with the power” wall art printable.
What’s your favorite Labyrinth memory?
Images: Labyrinth DVD case by Eppu Jensen. The babe with the power printable by Stephanie at Make and Tell.
This post has been edited.
In the Seen on Screen occasional feature, we discuss movies and television shows of interest.
A short video compilation of raw footage from director George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road has surfaced:
Fury Road – Crash & Smash via ESPORTS TV
Included are shots of practice runs of some of the vehicle stunts. The skill of those production designers, explosion experts, cinematographers, stunt people, and drivers is staggering.
Found via io9 / Gizmodo.
Elsewhere in the Fury Road related Internet, there’s this music video by violinist, dancer, and artist Lindsey Stirling:
The Arena – Lindsey Stirling
It comes from her third full-length album, Brave Enough. I know Stirling from her Star Wars mashup video with Peter Hollens.
Awesome, awesome, awesome.
Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.
Have you heard of Arrival? It’s a forthcoming science fiction movie about a first contact situation on earth, and the more I read about it the more curious I get.
The story is based on Ted Chiang’s 1998 novella “Story of Your Life,” adapted to screen by Eric Heisserer and directed by Denis Villeneuve. Chiang won both the Nebula and Sturgeon Awards with it.
The main interest for me is that Dr. Louise Banks, the character played by Amy Adams, is a linguist. Since we don’t generally get much screen time, it’s exciting, as is having languages / linguistics as a story focus. There’s also a little bit of Nordic involvement: the score is by Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson.
The first official trailer is looking great:
Arrival Trailer #1 (2016) – Paramount Pictures by Paramount Pictures
I love the fact that for a change the UFO that lands in the U.S. touches down in Montana, not New Frigging York City. That horse is thoroughly, properly dead, ladies and gentlemen of Hollywood. Thank you for not going there.
Judging by the trailer, the movie also avoids one of my pet peeves. It looks like finding a way to communicate with the aliens is going to take a lot of effort and a good, long while. We get glimpses of various graphics on computer screens, but it’s clear that the bulk of the work consists of human effort assisted by computers. In other words, people are doing the actual analyzing while computers number-crunch. Compare it, for instance, with the mothership scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (a clip of the scene here). As fascinating as the tonal-color language is, I’m so disappointed with the perfunctory and hand-wavy treatment the linguistic mystery got. I do hope that the Arrival trailer is accurate in acknowledging the effort that not only communication but of all kinds of intellectual work require.
And it may indeed be: The USA Today sneak peek quotes the male lead Jeremy Renner: “It’s big and there are thriller elements and tension, but it’s going to lean much more into a thinking person’s film.” There are also hints that Adams’ character will begin dreaming in the aliens’ language, which is a phenomenon I find fascinating. (I sometimes dream in multiple languages. The highest count I can remember is four.)
I discovered one interesting factoid. In the U.S. trailer, Dr. Banks can be heard commenting on the emerging common language like this: “We need to make sure that they [aliens] understand the difference between a weapon and a tool. Language is messy, and sometimes one can be both.”
The international trailer suggests a different story angle, however. Have a look:
ARRIVAL – International Trailer (HD) via Sony Pictures Entertainment
In it, instead of “[w]e need to make sure that they understand,” Dr. Banks says: “We don’t know if they understand the difference between a weapon and a tool [my emphasis].”
I don’t know what to make of the decision, and I can’t wait to see which one the movie actually goes with. Fortunately I don’t have that long to wait: the U.S. release date is November 11, 2016.
Image via Arrival Movie on Twitter
On, of, and about languages.
Assembled from a number of different sources, none of which have any sort of connection to author Ann Leckie’s writing, we now have an amazing book trailer for her Imperial Radch trilogy:
“Ancillary Justice“ book trailer by bironic
It was made by bironic, the creator of the goosebump-inducingly glorious video Starships! On the creation process, bironic has this to say:
“A labor of love, nine months in the making. I watched or scanned through about 50 movies and TV shows (plus endless YouTube videos) in the hunt for clips that looked like my headcanon of critical moments, places and characters from the books, while trying not to use hugely recognizable actors and actresses. Not that you’d know it from the final source list, but the research process involved reading and learning a lot about the history of black characters in Western science fiction film and television as well as a crash course in modern African SF/F independent filmmaking, both of which were fascinating.”
Make sure to read the notes for the book trailer in full.
Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.
YouTube users Grable424 and djcprod collaborated to bring us this awesome Marvel Cinematic Universe music video / mashup:
MARVEL || Glitter & Gold (collab w/ djcprod) by Grable424
They’ve skillfully intercut clips from Iron Man and Captain America movies, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Ant-Man, among others; the Doctor Strange trailer also features, even if the movie wasn’t out yet. The song is “Glitter & Gold” by new-to-me artist Barns Courtney, and very catchy. Love it!
Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.
Co-Geeking 
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