Look out! In Coming! …Movies of 2013

I’m forgiving and forgetting and moving on.  Aside from a few exceptions (e.g. Skyfall, The Amazing Spider-Man, Moonrise Kingdom), 2012 was chock-full of massive films that I found more or less disappointing.  But it’s okay, really.  2012 is over!  The Dark Knight Rises happened, and I don’t wanna talk about it anymore.  It’s 2013!  There are new movies to be excited about!  Onwards!

Here are some movies on the horizon that I’m cautiously to moderately excited about:

© Ghost House Pictures/FilmDistrict/TriStar Pictures

Evil Dead (remake) – April 12

I know this is blasphemous, but I’ve never found the original Evil Dead all that scary.  I get the coolness of the whole ‘low budget, director torturing his cast’ thing.  The effects just weren’t there in 1981.  The premise, however – young people possessed and scared to death in the woods – is a classic set-up, and a little help from modern trickery makes the trailers look fairly terrifying.  Involvement from main dudes Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell (the creator and star of the original, respectively) seals the deal.

 

Iron Man 3 – May 3

© Marvel Studios/Paramount Pictures/Walt Disney Studios

The new Iron Man movie has a lot to do.  First, it has to launch “Phase Two” of Marvel’s movie universe – which is going to take more of an intergalactic route than the largely earth-based movies of “Phase One,” which ended with The Avengers.  Iron Man 3 also has to make up for Iron Man 2, which was pretty much a mess.  My main gripe with all of Marvel’s movies so far has been that their villains have been weak and not all that intimidating.  I’m hoping that changes with this film, which stars a genuinely great actor, Ben Kingsley, as Tony Stark’s main baddy, the Mandarin.

 

 

 

Star Trek Into Darkness – May 17

© Paramount Pictures

Nearly four years have passed since Star Trek breathed new, mainstream life into the crew of the USS Enterprise.  Now all the familiar characters are back, along with the addition of Benedict Cumberbatch (of BBC’s amazingly awesome Sherlock) as a villain who is as mysterious as he is destructive.

 

 

 

Man of Steel – June 14

© DC Entertainment/Warner Bros. Pictures

I’m not gonna lie, this is the peak of my 2013 summer movie interest right here.  The trailers have been intriguing.  The casting is impressive.  But can the granddaddy of superheroes be translated for a wide modern audience?  Man of Steel is said to be influenced by the updates made to the character in DC’s New 52 comics, and seems to show a lost Superman who is struggling to find a place in a world that fears his uniqueness.

 

 

 

Pacific Rim – July 12

© Legendary Pictures/Warner Bros. Pictures

Giant robots fighting giant monsters – ah, yeah?

 

 

Further on down the line:

Thor: The Dark World – Nov 8

Catching Fire – Nov 22

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug – December 13  (Enter the mighty dragon!)

 

And in the meantime…

            

Jon : Carrick

Spacing Out

Lately I’m in love with space. Outer space, that is. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent the last six months of my life watching every single episode of Star Trek: The Original Series (which celebrated it’s 46th anniversary a couple weeks ago, in case you didn’t notice the awesome Google logo on September 8th). But it’s easy to feel starry-eyed over the Final Frontier when there’s so much cool space stuff in the news.

David J. Phillip/Associated Press

Over the last few days, I’ve been following the progress of the space shuttle Endeavour as it travels from Florida to it’s new retirement home at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. How do you move a 122 foot-long spaceship with a wing span of 78 feet across the country, you may ask? Well, you fly it piggy-back on top of a Boeing 747, of course! But the really tricky part of the transportation doesn’t get underway until Endeavour makes it to the ground in Los Angeles. That’s when the massive shuttle will be loaded onto a 160-wheel carrier and driven to the Science Center. This thing is way too big to take on the freeway– it would never fit under all the underpasses. Instead it will slowly rumble through the city streets of L.A. en route to it’s final destination. In preparation for this tedious, 12-mile journey, the Science Center folks are removing trees, raising telephone wires, and clearing sidewalks to make room for the behemoth. All this for a vehicle that has recently blasted through space. If all goes as planned, Endeavour will be on display for all to see starting October 30th.

Now that NASA has retired its shuttle program, the space scientists are up to new tricks, like achieving warp speed. In non-Trekkie terms, warp speed means going really, really fast. Fast enough for interstellar travel. Up until recently, scientists thought this was impossible. But now they’re tinkering with a mathematic loophole that could be used to bend space and time and send spaceships blasting out of our solar system, where no man (or woman!) has gone before. This week scientists upgraded this scenario from impossible to “plausible, and worth further investigation.” Pretty exciting news for anyone who’s ever dreamed about cruising the cosmos.

Meanwhile, scientists watching the sky through the Hubble telescope this week spotted the oldest & most distant galaxy ever detected. It is 13.2 billion years old– almost as old as the universe itself, and expert stargazers say it could provide some insight into the earliest years of cosmic formation. Trying to imagine 13.2 billion years is a pretty brain-bending exercise. Luckily you can warm up by checking out some of the cool space stuff at the library.