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Suicide Squad Cast Confirmed – Will Smith, Jared Leto, Margot Robbie and more

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When it was rumoured Will Smith was in talk to star in Warner/DC’s Suidice Squad, many wondered if the info was wrong as traditionally he’s always wanted to be the star of the show rather than part of an ensemble, and he’s also shied away from playing villainous characters.

However it turns out the info was correct, as the studio has confirmed Smith will play Deadshot in the film. He’s not the only cast member now officially attached, as it turn out most of the other rumours were also true, with Jared Leto as the Joker, Jai Courtney as Boomerang (rather than Deadshot, as some previous reports suggested) and Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn. Cara Delevingne was also rumoured for the latter role, but she’ll actually be sorceress Enchantress.

Another name mentioned was Tom Hardy. Many wondered whether that meant he’d be reprising Bane, or whether his Dark Knight involvement actually ruled him out. He will be in the movie though, playing the squad leader, Randall Flag.

The only one completely left out is Jesse Eisenberg, who previous rumours said would reprise his Batman Vs Superman role as Lex Luthor. However Warner doesn’t mention him in the announcement, although that doesn’t rule out the possibility of a cameo.

The movie revolved around an array of supervillains, who have all been captured but are offered the chance for redemption by taking on a mission from which none of them are expected to return alive.

David Ayer is set to direct, with an early 2015 shoot expected. An August 5th, 2016 release date has already been set.

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Felicity Jones Gets Caught Up In Inferno – She’s in talks for the Da Vinci Code sequel

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For quite a while now Ron Howard and Tom Hanks have both been attached to a third adaptation of Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon series, following Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons. More recently it was revealed that they hope to start shooting next April.

However what they don’t have yet is any cast members – barring Hanks of course. That looks like it’s about to change as Felicity Jones (Theory of Everything, Amazing Spider-man 2) is in early talks to star in Inferno.

In Brown’s novel, symbologist Robert Langdon once more get thrust into the heart of a mystery, this time revolving around medieval poet Dante Alghieri. However to make things a little more complicated Langdon wakes up in an Italian hospital with amnesia. He has no idea what’s going on but it soon becomes clear it has something to do with a global plague, as well as artefacts to do with Dante – and he may be the only one who can stop it (and if that sounds like James Bond with a university professor, it kind of is).

Ron Howard is directing from a screenplay by David Koepp.

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Will Ferrell Plans To Get Shakespearean (Sort Of) – He’ll be part of an acting troupe for a new film

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Few people would think of Will Ferrell as being someone you’d cast in a great Shakespearean role, and he seems to agree, as he’s set to star in a comedy where he’ll send up that idea, according to Variety.

Sony Pictures has acquired the currently untitled pitch from Mosaic, with Will Ferrell set to star. David Guion and Michael Handelman will write the screenplay, which is set in the apparently highly-competitive world of a Shakespearean theatre company.

Now much more is known about the plot than that, but you can certainly see Ferrell having fun being over the top in some of Shakespeare’s greatest roles (I’m imagining Ron Burgundy meets Laurence Olivier)

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Terminator Genisys Gets A Living Poster – Counting down to Thursday’s trailer

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After Jurassic World and Star Wars, another of the movies bidding to be a 2015 blockbuster has announced that its trailer is coming soon, and they’ve done it with a ‘living’ poster. The trailer itself meanwhile should be with us in Thursday.

A previous reported, the film ‘is set in 2029, when the Future War is raging and a group of human rebels has the evil artificial-intelligence system Skynet on the ropes. John Connor (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’ Jason Clarke) is the leader of the resistance, and Kyle Reese (Divergent‘s Jai Courtney) is his loyal soldier, raised in the ruins of post apocalyptic California. As in the original film, Connor sends Reese back to 1984 to save Connor’s mother, Sarah (Game of Thrones‘ Emilia Clarke), from a Terminator programmed to kill her so that she won’t ever give birth to John. But what Reese finds on the other side is nothing like he expected.’

Although that sounds pretty much like the original, things have changed as in this version Sarah Connor ‘was orphaned by a Terminator at age 9. Since then, she’s been raised by (brace yourself) Schwarzenegger’s Terminator—an older T-800 she calls “Pops”—who is programmed to guard rather than to kill. As a result, Sarah is a highly trained antisocial recluse who’s great with a sniper rifle but not so skilled at the nuances of human emotion.’

The movie is due out July 2015.

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Mood Indigo (Blu-ray) – Is Michel Gondry’s film too imaginative for its own good?

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As a film reviewer it feels almost compulsory to believe that a director’s original cut is the one we ought to watch, but in some cases that’s not true.

Mood Indigo was released in France back in early 2013 with a very lengthy running time of 131 minutes. However despite having Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine, Be Kind Rewind) at the helm and talents such as Romain Duris, Audrey Tautou and Omar Sy starring, it took over a year for it to arrive in the US and UK, and when it did, it was 40 minutes shorter.

At the time, many harrumphed about the idea of philistine producers neutering Gondry’s original intentions, but the home entertainment release gives us a chance to see both versions side by side and it turns out that what we got was better than original edition the French had.

It’s a relatively simple if surreal story, following Colin (Duris), who meets and falls in love with the beautiful Chloe (Tautou). However shortly after getting back from their honeymoon it turns out Chloe has contracted a potentially fatal illness where a lily is growing in her lung, and so Colin must help to save her.

Surrounding all that – and taking up a huge amount of the running time of the Director’s Cut – are an endless array of flights of fancy, from a tiny man in a mouse suit who lives is Colin’s apartment to doorbells that crawl down the wall and try to escape.

Arguments about style over substance can often be rather unsound as with some movies the style is the substance (or at least helps create the substance). Mood Indigo is designed to be one of the latter, but the problem is that it feels like there was no quality control or realisation of when things might be going too far. The result, in the Director’s Cut version at least, is like ordering an enormous slice of incredibly gooey chocolate cake – it tastes absolutely gorgeous but the more bites you take the more you realise that it’s far too rich and that it’s going to be difficult to finish.

It’s an apt metaphor as the first 20 minutes are incredibly magical, with some brilliant, jaw-dropping imagery including an incredibly conceived and executed dance scene where people’s legs become so bendy they look like they just fell out of a Betty Boop cartoon. However after a while it all gets to be a bit too much, so that Mood Indigo becomes a never-ending series of images and conceits that often go on for far too long, with not much else to keep you hooked in.

It is admittedly astonishingly imaginative and some of its phantasmagorias are astonishing to look at, but it’s so in love with them that’s it’s determined to show us every single second of them whether they add anything or not. And in the end the characters all get rather lost in the midst of it.

That’s where the much shorter Theatrical Cut comes in, as while it retains the fantastical and surreal, it pulls back on many of the flights of fancy to concentrate on the story. In the Director’s Cut Colin and Chloe have a tendency to come across as rather flat and uninteresting, largely because they feel like window dressing that nobody is particularly interested in. However in the shorted version it becomes apparent there’s a little more to them (although not massively), and the endless incredible images are more a part of their world than something that’s constantly screaming ‘Look at me, aren’t I unusual and clever?’.

Even so it’s not a great film, largely because it doesn’t spend enough time really getting us to care about the characters. It thinks it does, but it really doesn’t, with the largest issue being that it never treats Chloe as a fully formed human in her own right, more as an extension of Colin, which makes him seem very self-absorbed and narcissistic when things start to go wrong. It doesn’t help either that the metaphors it sometimes employs behind its images often feel like rather blunt and obvious tools.

That said, in its Theatrical Cut form it is worth a look and it’s undeniably beautiful and full of astonishing imagination, but in its Director’s Cut version, boy does it go on and on and on.

Overall Verdict: A work of incredible imagination and incredible to look at, but as a work of storytelling it’s far less interesting. Mood Indigo just about gets away with it in its 90 minute version, but at 130 minutes it’s more than stretching it.

Reviewer: Tim Isaac

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Jon Richardson – Nidiot (DVD) – The singleton got engaged and lets us know how he did it

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If you’ve seen recent episodes of 8 Out Of 10 Cats you’ll know life has changed in the world of comedian Jon Richardson. He made his name for being a fastidious man on the edge of OCD, with a worldview which he seems to believe is misanthropic but is closer to constantly disappointed optimism – and he’s also known for being perennially single.

However now he’s not just got himself a girlfriend, he’s engaged and will probably be getting married soon. His stand-up show Nidiot is largely based around the story of how he decided to take stock of his life to become a happier person, as well as how he met and started dating his fiancée.

It’s a lot of fun, with Jon on fine form. The frustration with the world hasn’t completely left him, nor has his curious assumption that the way he looks at the world is incredibly unusual, when in reality it’s not that weird at all. It’s an oddly endearing trait which could be annoying but is actually very effective. After all, we all think we’re a bit odd in certain ways, and it’s always nice to know it’s not just us (and that what we think is weird isn’t really).

He’s a funny man who’s extremely good at telling stories and making you laugh. While some comics are very different when you see them on mainstream TV to how they are on stage, Richardson is exactly the same. He’s also good at maintaining a balance that ensures he doesn’t outstay his welcome and you’re more than happy to listen to him prattling on about the small and large annoyances of life, from drunk people on trains to the potential disastrousness of being ill on holiday.

Overall Verdict: Despite the changes in his life and the fact he’s now happy rather than the miserable sod he always insisted he was, Richardson is still very funny as he takes you through the latest developments in his life.

Reviewer: Tim Isaac

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