Welcome to the Punch

You remember James McAvoy's Welcome to the Punch?



According to IndieWire - link - IFC Films acquired the US rights for it, calling it "an ingenious action thriller featuring some of the best actors working today including James MacAvoy, Mark Strong and Andrea Riseborough." According to TheFilmStage - link - it might be released this fall.

I wonder if it'll be a state wide release or just Sundance etc., no idea how these things work. I wanted to put it out there because I can't wait to see the film! Though I worry that our cinemas won't show it :( I mean, they didn't even pick up Cabin in the Woods or J. Edgar, 2 movies I wanted to see in the theater... :( Well, at least give it to me on DVD! I'll gladly pay for it!!!

ETA: Latest news from the director Eran Creevy: "Welcome to the Punch now sold in every territory in the world." Found in WTTP's IMDB forum.

100 book quotes #6

"You know what?" I told Mister one night in front of the fire. "Maybe I've finally gone around the bend, but I think someone might be trying to kill me."

~ "Fool Moon" by Jim Butcher

Simon Kinberg on the XMFC sequel again

“I wish I could tell you about it, but literally, it’s like the most guarded state secret I’ve ever been around. I can tell you that it’s going really well, and I can tell you that I’ve been working closely with Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman on the script of the movie and that we hope to be shooting in Spring of next year to come out in July of 2014 and that I’m really excited about it, because the only thing I can say, because I have to be extraordinarily vague about it, because the last time I talked to anybody about it, I got in trouble…big trouble…what I can tell you is [that] it’s extraordinarily ambitious. It is unlike the other X-Men movies and yet very much a celebration of the X-Men movies.”

“I don’t know enough of what he [Vaughn] has or hasn’t talked about. I can tell you it’s been a very fluid process in the sense of we really went into it, Matthew, Jane and myself, just wanting to create a movie that was as…I’m very proud of First Class…as dramatic as that movie, I think it is as dramatic as that movie, but more epic, mythic in a way as well. So, there are ideas that we’ve started with that haven’t survived, there are ideas that we started with from conversations we had from making First Class that are going to be in the sequel. So, it’s vague but…”

“It’s one of those movies that, because it’s such a big deal for the studio, they have some sense of what it is that we’re writing and they are ambitious about the movie, too. I don’t know what the budget’s going to be, we’ve got to finish the script before we have a budget, but I would assume that it is a bigger movie than the last in physical scope, and that we have the license to do that because of the success of First Class. And because I think Fox has had success with interesting movies in the last couple of years in the genre, like Planet of the Apes was a really good movie, Chronicle was a cool movie, First Class, they’re just narratively or creatively a little bit more ambitious. So they’ve encouraged us to do that with the sequel.” Source

That? Actually makes me nervous. What worked best in XMFC was the small stuff, the relationships. I just hope that, if they do adapt "The Days of Future Past", they don't let the movie enfold in both time periods, in the past and in the future. And that they don't bring in the mutants from X1-X3 to make the "We want Jean and Ororo and..." fans happy. Considering it's Simon Kinberg, the writer of the overcrowded train-wreck that was X3, speaking... *cringes*

I desperately cling to what Matthew Vaughn said, that he wants to bring in just one new mutant. And that Simon Kinberg himself promised us more focus on the personal relationships between Erik and Charles and between Raven and Hank. Just... after the clustercrap of X3, EPIC and X-MEN in one sentence make me nervous.

No talk of cancellation

When Jeremy Carver took over Supernatural, everybody was of course interested in one thing: Was S8 the last one? His answer: link.

"I can tell you there is no talk about cancelling it," Carver told Assignment X.

"The storylines we have set up for this year set up the show for years to come. So we are certainly not thinking of ending it any time soon."

Carver also expressed his hopes that Supernatural will be given sufficient time to wrap up its storylines once the show does come to an end.

"It would be a shame if there was not a set ending for the show," he admitted.

I agree. I will be mighty miffed if the CW simply cancels the show one day without giving it a proper ending. I think that every show that runs for more than 3 years should be given enough time to tie up all the lose ends. It's just something the networks should do for their viewers, like USA Network does.

Book #32

"Sherlock Holmes: The Last Act (Big Finish Sherlock Holmes, #1)" by David Stuart Davies (author) & Roger Llewellyn (narrator)

♦ ♦ ♦

Story: 4 stars. The story, told entirely from Sherlock Holmes' POV, starts with John Watson's funeral after which Holmes returns to Baker Street and ruminates about his past and about the cases and adventures he shared with his friend. Bits and pieces from Doyle's work are used and explained from Holmes' POV, like "The Speckled Band" or "The Hound of Baskervilles". The story is incredibly touching, especially when Holmes forgets that Watson's not there and just turns to where his friend should be to tell him something funny or interesting and just... stops. You literally feel just how much Holmes loved his friend - in this the story reminds me of Anthony Horowitz's "The House of Silk". On the other hand, some of the stuff borrowed from Doyle is just too long and the part about Holmes' childhood - though interesting - feels a bit off, it jars, this transition from commonly known cases to something entirely new.

Narration: 2 stars. Well. As Roger Llewellyn himself admits in the interview at the very end, he's not a character actor. And I simply didn't like the way he read the story. I understand that he needed to set the various characters apart, but sometimes I could barely understand him and... well, let's just say that in some places, his reading was so full of pathos it was laughable, not dramatic. If I had been the director, I would've asked him to tone it down. It really affected my enjoyment of the story.

Overall? A really good story - David Stuart Davies is a fantastic Sherlock Holmes author - but I would've preferred to read it myself instead of listening to it.