The ultimate X-Men ensemble fights a war for the survival of the species across two time periods in X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST. The beloved characters from the original “X-Men” film trilogy join forces with their younger selves from “X-Men: First Class,” in an epic battle that must change the past — to save our future.
Printed by New Flesh on 140lb Arches Hot Press Watercolor with two deckled edges and embossed logo. THE EXORCIST (Variant) is signed and numbered with an edition of 25 and also signed by director William Friedkin. This limited run is available on the 29th October HERE
Lou Reed, the singer, songwriter and guitarist whose work with the Velvet Underground in the 1960’s had an impact on generations of rock musicians, and who remained a powerful if polarising force for the rest of his life, died on Sunday at his home in Southampton on Long Island, New York. He was 71.
The cause was liver disease, said Dr Charles Miller of the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, where Reed had liver transplant surgery earlier this year and was being treated again until a few days ago.
“I’ve always believed that there’s an amazing number of things you can do through a rock ‘n’ roll song,” Reed once told the journalist Kristine McKenna, “and that you can do serious writing in a rock song if you can somehow do it without losing the beat. The things I’ve written about wouldn’t be considered a big deal if they appeared in a book or movie.”
Reed played the sport of alienating listeners, defending the right to contradict himself in hostile interviews, to contradict his transgressive image by idealising sweet or old-fashioned values in word or sound, or to present intuition as blunt logic. But his early work assured him a permanent audience.
The Velvet Underground, which was originally sponsored by Andy Warhol and showcased the songwriting of John Cale, as well as Reed, wrought gradual but profound impact on the high-IQ, low-virtuosity stratum of alternative and underground rock around the world.
Joy Division, the Talking Heads, Patti Smith, R.E.M., the Strokes and numerous others were direct descendants. The composer Brian Eno, in an often-quoted interview from 1982, suggested that if the group’s first record sold only 30,000 records during its first five years — a figure probably lower than the reality — “everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band.”
Many of the group’s themes — among them love, sexual deviance, alienation, addiction, joy and spiritual transfiguration — stayed in Reed’s work through his long run of solo recordings. Among the most noteworthy of those records were Transformer (1973), Berlin (1973) and New York (1992). The most notorious, without question, was Metal Machine Music(1975).
Beloved of Reed and not too many others, Metal Machine Music was four sides of electric-guitar feedback strobing between two amplifiers, with Reed altering the speed of the tape recorder; no singing, no drums, no stated key. At the time it was mostly understood, if at all, as a riddle about artistic intent. Was it his truest self, was it a joke, or was there no difference?
Reed wrote in the liner notes that “no one I know has listened to it all the way through, including myself,” but he also defended it as the next step after La Monte Young’s early minimalism. “There’s infinite ways of listening to it,” he told the critic Lester Bangs in 1976.
“I was serious about it,” Reed said of the album more than a decade later. “I was also really stoned.”
Not too long after his first recordings, made at 16 with a doo-wop band in Freeport, New York, Reed started singing outside of the song’s melody, as if he were giving a speech with a fluctuating monotone in his Brooklyn-Queens drawl. That sound, eventually heard with the Velvet Underground on songs such as Heroin, Sweet Jane and in his post-Velvets songs Walk on the Wild Side, Street Hassle and others, eventually spread outward to become one of the most familiar frequencies in rock. He played lead guitar the same way, hitting against the wall of his limitations.
Reed is survived by his wife, the composer and performance artist Laurie Anderson. Dr Miller said Reed decided to return to New York after the doctors could no longer treat his end-stage liver disease.
“He died peacefully, with his loved ones around him,” Dr Miller said. “We did everything we could,” added Dr Miller, the director of the hospital’s liver transplant program. “He really wanted to be at home.”
Sober since the 1980s, Reed was a practitioner of Tai Chi. “Lou was fighting right up to the very end,” Dr. Miller said. “He was doing his Tai Chi exercises within an hour of his death, trying to keep strong and keep fighting.”
“I am a triumph of modern medicine, physics and chemistry,” Reed wrote in a public statement upon his release from the hospital. “I am bigger and stronger than ever.” Less than a month later, he wrote a review of Kanye West’s album Yeezus for the online publication The Talkhouse, celebrating its abrasiveness and returning once more to Metal Machine Music to explain an artist’s deepest motives.
“I have never thought of music as a challenge — you always figure the audience is at least as smart as you are,” he wrote. “You do this because you like it, you think what you’re making is beautiful. And if you think it’s beautiful, maybe they think it’s beautiful.”
After the cataclysmic events in New York with The Avengers, Marvel’s “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” finds Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, living quietly in Washington, D.C. and trying to adjust to the modern world. But when a S.H.I.E.L.D. colleague comes under attack, Steve becomes embroiled in a web of intrigue that threatens to put the world at risk. Joining forces with the Black Widow, Captain America struggles to expose the ever-widening conspiracy while fighting off professional assassins sent to silence him at every turn. When the full scope of the villainous plot is revealed, Captain America and the Black Widow enlist the help of a new ally, the Falcon. However, they soon find themselves up against an unexpected and formidable enemy—the Winter Soldier.
A Warrior’s Dream is a 3D animated short film with photorealistic visual style. The story is about a martial artist’s combat with his imaginary opponent. The martial artist finally realized that the mightiest opponent is himself. The film ends with Bruce Lee’s calligraphy “Walk On”. Thus the director wishes Donnie Yen can walk on as a martial artist like Bruce Lee, the idol of Donnie Yen himself.
The outback once more becomes a place of horror as another unwitting tourist becomes the prey for crazed, serial-killing pig-shooter Mick Taylor. Directed by Greg Mclean, starring John Jarratt, Ryan Corr and Shannon Ashlyn.
A couple’s preteen son and daughter inexplicably reappear after being lost overnight on a desolate, cave-riddled mountainside. Becoming withdrawn and beginning to exhibit strange behavior, their parents quickly assume something sinister happened to them while missing and alone.
But after hearing an ominous local legend… the concerned mother and father begin to realize that their children may have fallen prey to something inhuman — and that this dark, unstoppable evil has now returned home with them.
My son is desperate for this (Arkham Asylum and Arkham City are on constant rotation on his xbox). Here’s the blurb:
Batman: Arkham Origins lets players experience Batman’s transformation from an unrefined vigilante into the Dark Knight. Bruce Wayne’s journey to become a crime fighter and his steadfast morality began much earlier in his life, formed by tragedy, dedication, and honor. As you’ll see in this latest trailer, his quest was anything but easy.
Batman: Arkham Origins features an expanded Gotham City and introduces an original prequel storyline occurring several years before the events of Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City. Taking place before the rise of Gotham City’s most dangerous villains and assassins, the game showcases a young, raw, unrefined Batman as he faces a defining moment in his early career as a crime fighter that sets his path to becoming the Dark Knight. As the story unfolds, witness identities being formed and key relationships being forged.
The legendary Henry Selick will direct A Tale Dark & Grimm, a live action film based on the popular children’s book by author Adam Gidwitz, who put his own take on some of the Grimm Brothers’ more gruesome stories. Tale follows two unsuspecting children who run away from their own dark fairy tale in search of a better life only to find themselves amidst eight other tales just as fearsome.
Selick helmed the stop-motion classics The Nightmare Before Christmas, James And The Giant Peach, and Coraline. Marissa McMahon of Kamala Films will finance the development and produce alongside FilmNation Entertainment’s Aaron Ryder and Karen Lunder. John W. Mann and Jon Gunn adapted the script.
“I remain completely enraptured by Adam Gidwitz’ marvelous book A Tale Dark & Grimm,” said Selick. “It’s a hilarious, deeply inventive tale about survival in the world of fairytales and what it takes to forgive one’s parents. So it’s a huge thrill to be joining the team of Kamala Films and FilmNation as the director of the film based on it. Between the great material and a team that really gets it, I hope to make something really special that lasts.”
It’s been a long time since the Lynda Carter series, and Hollywood seems to have had so many problems creating a Wonder Woman movie; so fan Sam Balcomb and friends have created a fake trailer of their own. A word from Sam:
Firstly, thanks for watching. Whether you like, or dislike, our live action interpretation of Diana of Themyscira, Wonder Woman, born of clay, I think (quite a few of) you will agree she is a character just as vital and crucial to our understanding of humanity as any other superhero… if not more so.
We spent the majority of 2013 working on this — the look, the feel, the aspects we most wanted to portray. It’s a scant two and half minutes, but in the end, it’s one hundred and fifty seconds of pure fantasy, where I get to consider the two sides of my favorite warrior: a crusader in man’s world, and a paragon of virtue told through Greek mythology.
Printed by New Flesh on 140lb Arches Hot Press Watercolor with two deckled edges and embossed logo. THE EXORCIST (Variant) is signed and numbered with an edition of 25 and also signed by director William Friedkin. This limited run is available on the 29th October HERE
Lou Reed, the singer, songwriter and guitarist whose work with the Velvet Underground in the 1960’s had an impact on generations of rock musicians, and who remained a powerful if polarising force for the rest of his life, died on Sunday at his home in Southampton on Long Island, New York. He was 71.
Infographic Created by HalloweenCostumes.com
The legendary Henry Selick will direct A Tale Dark & Grimm, a live action film based on the popular children’s book by author Adam Gidwitz, who put his own take on some of the Grimm Brothers’ more gruesome stories. Tale follows two unsuspecting children who run away from their own dark fairy tale in search of a better life only to find themselves amidst eight other tales just as fearsome.
socialpsychol 