5 O'Clock Shuffle - August 1st

Welcome to the first installment of the site's new broadcast the 5 O'Clock Shuffle, coming to you every Monday with the news you may have missed over the weekend and a look at what's to come, all in just under 10 minutes.

This week I take a look at The Great Wall controversy, some Disney reboots, Sharknado 4 and of course, the weekend box office report and New Comic Book Day round-up.

Troll: Rise of Harry Potter Animated Series Coming

Earlier this week it was announced that plans are currently in the works for Troll animated series.  I don’t really know what kind of people read this blog but I’m betting that was probably a strange announcement regardless of your background because there is nothing about this animated series that makes sense.  In fact Troll the animated series actually goes out of its way to defy all rational logic as part of the universe’s ongoing effort to troll rationalists everywhere (pun completely intended.)  Let’s take a guided tour through trolls, animated series, and why this announcement makes no God damn sense. 

Shaft comedy in the works

New Line Cinema has announced they’re planning to do a reboot of the blaxploitation cult classic Shaft.  The original Shaft became a hit as a sort of Black James Bond action flick in the ‘70s and is probably the best iteration of the blaxploitation genre (aside from possibly Blacula.)  The original Shaft was a strong hit, spawning 2 sequels in Shaft’s Big Score and Shaft in Africa.  Since then Shaft was remade in the ‘90s starring Samuel L. Jackson as a slickly produced action flick with a hard R rating.  This new iteration of the character has attracted the creator of Black-ish Kenya Barris as the writer and the studio has stated they’re aiming for a more comedic tone. 

This decision has been met with a pretty wide array of responses, some have voiced apathy at the prospects of a new Shaft film while others have felt downright outraged over this approach to the classic character.  Me?  I’m firmly entrenched in the angry side of the divide, this strikes me as a thoroughly tone deaf approach to the material with very little to redeem it to say nothing of setting a really bad precedent. 

Movie Monthly - Alligator

And so we come to the end of Movie Monthly’s celebration of Shark Week, Sharknado 3, and the Jaws 40^th Anniversary with our Terrors From The Deep series with a look at the 1980 horror comedy Alligator.  Alligator is an odd flick in more ways than one.  The film came out at the tail end of the post Jaws creature feature boom, coming out 5 years after Jaws already made everyone afraid to go in the water.  As such Alligator takes a very different approach to animal horror than a lot of the other Jaws knock-offs like Orca.  The first major difference is that Alligator is actually a land locked horror film but more than that the movie is grounded in a much goofier premise that kind of informs the odd mix of anger and levity that informs the film overall. 

The basic premise of Alligator is that 12 years in the past, a young girl’s parents flushed her pet baby alligator down the toilet.  Rather than dying on the ride or in the sewers the alligator somehow survived and grew to gargantuan size off the strange toxic wastes being dumped into the sewers by a nearby business.  Now, the alligator has emerged from the depths beneath Chicago to exact brutal, animalistic vengeance on the forces that made it along with pretty much anyone else it encounters along the way.

Movie Monthly - Shark Night 3D

Welcome to month 2 of Movie Monthly, devoting a whole month of film reviews to whatever subject happens to tickle my fancy.  Most of the time that also ends up paralleling a popular release or upcoming movie and this month we’ve hit the double.  Firstly this year marks the 40^th anniversary of Steven Spielberg’s redefining classic Jaws but also, this week marks the start of the longest running cable TV event: Shark Week.  So to celebrate this double dose of shark I’m devoting the entire month of July to Terrors from the Deep, it’s going to be all ocean horror all the time though not simply limited to sharks because that’s actually a pretty shallow well.  To start things off we’re going to look at a movie I actually saw in theaters when it came out; Shark Night 3D.