Popcorn Chatter is a weekly rundown of the top movie news gathered online by
Brian McKechnie exclusively for
CityNews.ca.
Scorsese's Sinatra to be played by Johnny Depp?
It's official! Martin Scorsese will be
directing a biopic of the legendary crooner Frank Sinatra. Instead of a more imaginative title like
Ol' Blue Eyes it will just be called
Sinatra. Sinatra's family is on board and will allow the use of all his music for the production. So who is going to play the Rat Packer? Leonardo DiCaprio has been mentioned since he and Scorsese have done many films together. And now Johnny Depp is being touted as a strong possibility. I love Depp's work but I just can't see him in the role. I'm hoping they go with an unknown or someone we don't expect who will blow us away (like Jamie Foxx did in
Ray). Time will tell. Who do you want to see play Sinatra?
Debbie Gibson vs. Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus
It's no secret I like really bad cheesy movies (not
Angels & Demons
-bad but fun-bad like
Troll 2
). So when the trailer for
Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus
made the rounds this week I was shocked I'd never heard anything about it before. This is a movie that stars former pop idol
Debbie Gibson (I know she goes by Deborah now but she'll always be Debbie to me),
Lorenzo Lamas (yup) and a Mega Shark and a Giant Octopus. How can it not be good? Especially with the lines like, "There's something big out there," delivered by Gibson. The film was originally planned for a theatrical release in 3-D but was sent straight to DVD instead. Which is too bad as 3-D was made for B-movies and this could have been huge. Watch the trailer below to see how bad (but good) this looks.
Extended
Terminator: Salvation footage online
If you weren't excited for
Terminator: Salvation
before, you soon will be. With less than a week to go until opening day (it opens wide May 21) Warner Bros. has released a very cool featurette (below) that makes me as giddy as I was when
T2 came out. The near-six-minute-clip shows extended footage of the
Skynet Harvester scene as well as some behind-the-scenes footage. Pretty awesome.
Is the IMAX Experience not living up to the experience?
As
Star Trek breaks records for IMAX sales there is a lot of controversy surrounding whether certain IMAX screens actually deserve the IMAX certification. In an
angry blog post about the AMC theatre in Burbank Aziz Ansari (who plays Tom Haverford on the television show
Parks and Recreation
) had this to say: "Basically IMAX is whoring out their brand name and trying to trick people. These new 'IMAX' theatres are really just nice digital screens with good sound, but they ARE NOT IMAX, in that they don't have the huge 72 ft gigantic screen which people would expect. However, they still charge $5 more for tickets as they would for the regular IMAX." Richard Gelfond, CEO of IMAX, seemed to side-step the issue in his response, telling
MainStreet, "The overwhelming majority of comments on that guy's blog this morning, more than 90% of them, are vehemently disagreeing with him. And consumers are confirming this with their continued purchases of tickets." Hate to disappoint you Rich but IMAX is
even worse than Ben Lyons this week. If you want to make sure you're not paying extra for anything less than a true 'IMAX experience' check out the
Destroy Fake IMAX Google Map. Hopefully some Toronto locations will be added soon. Let us know your thoughts on this matter.
Have a comment on a Popcorn Chatter item or want to submit some movie news? Email Brian at
brian.mckechnie@citynews.ca
or follow him on Twitter
@bamcat.
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Top image: Johnny Depp stars as legendary Depression-era outlaw John Dillinger in the upcoming Universal Studios release Public Enemies. Photo Credit: Peter Mountain