Weird Mind News Room episode 11: May 8th-14th 2023

 *time to play the music, time to light the lights time to talk the media news on the weekly news show tonight*

Hello, hello, hello again everyone for the 11th episode of the Weird Mind News Room with me as your only host. You know how this series goes at this point so we will not waste time and let us get to the new weeks releases, new trailers and news pieces shall we.

The New Releases 

Movies

Still: A Michael J.Fox Story

Now this one is quite different to the other films I have mentioned in release as this is actually a documentary film and focused on the actor of Michael J.Fox, who you may know as Marty from Back to the Future, Scott Howard in teen wolf (the movie not the series), Alex P.Keaton in Family or the voice of Stuart Little in the Stuart Little Trilogy or as Milo in Disney's Atlantis. Now we take a step behind the scenes and learn of the life of the actor through his own eyes while telling us on his life while dealing with Parkinson's disease that he has had since the young age of 29. It is a heartwarming and sometimes emotional film that I would recommend to check out in cinemas or on Apple TV+ if you have the time (May delve more into the film in a review sometime soon but I will see). 

TV Shows

Muppet Mayhem

Now for something to binge watch this weekend that just released this week we have a return to the world of the Muppets with a new series solely focused on the musical band of Dr Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, who may have been around for nearly 50 years but have never made or recorded an album and the series will see them get into hijinks and mayhem that only the Muppets can do and hopefully turn out their first album. As a fan of the Muppets, I will be checking this series out myself at some point and see what kind of hijinks these Muppets can really get up to.

Video Games

The Legend Of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

In what might be my personal and most likely a lot of people's Most anticipated game of the year is the long awaited follow up to the acclaimed Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild with Tears of the Kingdom. This new game takes place not too long after the events of the previous installment and see's Link and Zelda trying to stop an evil that has been buried deep below the castle of Hyrule of an ancient evil ready to destroy all that stands in their way. While a good bit of the original game is explorable again, it has been expanded to also include a whole new array of island and exploration high above the kingdom itself as well with a lot of new abilities. While I have not played a lot of the game as of writing this, what I have played has been a lot of fun and I cannot wait to explore a whole lot more of the kingdom of Hyrule and become the hero of Hyrule once again.

Roll the Trailers

Oppenheimer

For the first of the trailers, this was technically released last week in front of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 (Which the review of from me will be released very soon) this only released online to everyone on Monday Morning, we have a whole new look at the newest film from Christopher Nolan in this biopic of the man who labelled himself as "The Destroyer of Worlds" with the creation of the Atomic Bomb. This also confirms that the film will not be delayed to the end of the year as the head of the cannes film festival had specified a few weeks back. But the trailer looks pretty good and I look forward to checking this out in July.

THE Meg 2: The Trench

Now 5 years ago, an over the top summer blockbuster known as the Meg was released that was simply summarized as Jason Statham against a giant pre-historic shark. While the film was mixed amongst critics, it did earn itself quite a bit of box office, and while it was goofy, I enjoyed it for what it is. Now 5 years later and a lot of people didn't think that we would see this film get a follow up but here we are with a sequel that see's them come face to face with the alpha of the Megalodon and 2 others at once and the trailer has shown this is going to get nutty and I am all for it when this swims its way to the cinema in early August. 

Bird Box Barcelona

In 2018 Netflix released a film known as Bird Box, a film starring Sandra Bullock trying to survive in a world where people were suddenly dying or going insane from looking directly at some strange and unseen creature that causes those that look to unalive themselves. It was one of the most popular films released from Netflix, and despite the somewhat mixed reception, it garnered some fans and even a trend that was a little bit stupid (people essentially blindfolded themselves and tried to do normal activities blind and led to some influencers nearly getting killed by walking into busy roads). Now nearly 5 years on, something I did not expect to be getting is a spin off sequel to the first film that is set in spain and will see a father and daughter trying to survive in a similar vain to the original. I am sure we will learn more by the time the film releases in Mid July.

Crowded Room

Now Tom Holland has been rather quite in the media scene for a bit, the last time I remember him being present was with the Uncharted movie early last year and then took a break from social media for a while and still worked on his charity program with his brothers. Now he is returning to a whole new series from Apple TV where he plays Danny Sullivan, a man who gets arrested following a devastating shooting in New York in late 1979 and will be told from the perspective of different interrogations conducted by Rya Goodwin, in this played by Amanda Seyfried to uncover what really happened and if he is innocent or something he is not telling them. It seems very interesting and intriguing and I may give it a look into when it comes out in early June

Icarly season 3 (Reboot series)

Ok I just to specify 2 things here. First of all this is a trailer for the reboot series of the original series that was on Nickelodeon over a decade ago and secondly, to me personally I find this show to not be that good as I feel they could've easily made this as something else that didn't connect back to the original series and still had this cast (given that 2 of the main cast are not even a part of it) and that it has no idea of what age demographic it wants to focus on at all with this series as one minute it is all goofy and trying to have stories that feel like situations found in the original series and then it is trying to be more adult where they are talking about having sex with others, making crude jokes and even swearing a fair bit that I really question what age group are they trying to go for (especially when this series was nominated for Kids choice awards which just feels weird). It also doesn't help that the writing is trying to be trendy and try to keep up with current topics which makes it become a little dated and makes it a bit annoying to hear them perform personally, but if you enjoy it then that's fine. 

Anyway this trailer seems to go off the end of the last season where they are trying to really make the whole love story of Carly and Freddie from the original series an official thing (even when Freddie in this show has been divorced 2 or 3 times, has an adopted child and in a relationship with someone at the time) but I am sure this will last well (I really do not know if I have the effort to watch another season of this again).

News, Views and opinions too

Round 1.... FIGHT!!!

In the first bit of news was with some discussion of an upcoming announcement that has been confirmed from the Developer Nether Realm and that is the newest installment in the long Running Mortal Kombat series. According to the sources it is not being called Mortal Kombat 12 but now Mortal Kombat 1, it is seen as a reboot to the series (which would be a 2nd time after the first one in the late 2000s or early 2010s on PS3 and XBOX360). Not much else is known until the announcement but some rumours from listings and possible characters for the Kombat Packs for the game that it will be releasing this year in September, will have a standard, special and pricey Kollectors edition. As for some rumoured characters appearing on the Kombat Karacter packs, the 2 that has been discussed has been Peacemaker from DC's Suicide Squad and Homelander from The Boys making their appearance. That is all that has been floating around for the last few days so until they give a proper announcement we shall wait for the Fatality.

I wanna know what do you think? Are you excited for a new Mortal Kombat game or do you care about it. Who do you think will be part of the large roster of characters and who will appear as some new DLC fighters? Let me know in the comments below and lets start a discussion of who we may see fighting against each other in the game soon.

BEETLEJUICE, BEETLEJUICE, BEETLEJUICE

In quite a surprise announcement during the week, we had known that a sequel to the cult classic film Beetlejuice was getting itself a sequel after all of these years with a return of Michael Keaton as the titular character as well as Winona Ryder returning as her character Lydia Deetz and new cast member of Jenna Ortega joining the growing cast (more on that in a sec). But now we know that the sequel is coming sooner then expected, as it was announced that the sequel will be releasing next year on September 6th 2024 and will be going up against some tough competition with the new Marvel film of Blade (and was originally going to be Deadpool 3). As well as that we also got the announcement of another new cast member joining and that is with the man himself, Mr Willem Dafoe who will be appearing in the next film in some form but we have no other info. I am sure we will hear some more info about the film sometime soon including plot (once this strike comes to a good agreement of meeting demands and everything) and other cast joining, but I will give this a watch when it comes out next year and will talk more when we learn more.

Are you excited for a Beetlejuice Sequel? Let me know in the comments what you think.

Now to learn about the life of Chuck

Now for some new adaptation news with a new take on a story from the master of Horror, Stephen King. This new adaptation of the short story will focus on the tale of The Life of chuck which is a story being told in reverse in 3 separate tales of some form of a dystopian future starting with the death of the character at the age of 39 to a brain tumour and ending with his childhood of growing up in a haunted house. While it sounds like quite an interesting concept to make into a film or mini series, we do know some casting for this project and that is with the casting of both Tom Hiddleston (LOKI) and Mark Hamill (Star Wars). Not much is know if either of these is playing Chuck himself or who they are playing but I am sure we will get some more new info overtime.

What do you think of the Stephen King adaptations, do you have a favourite or do you think they are all bad? Let me know down below in the comments

Reactions seem better, down where its wetter, under the seas

Now for 1 of the last 2 stories of similar discussion, we are talking about the upcoming and heavily discussed (a discussion that has been quite a bit racist on certain parts of the internet) Live action remake of The Little Mermaid from Disney. The film had its world premiere on Monday Night and the first of the reactions have been released online and most of the reviews seem to be a fair bit positive with the most praise going to Halle Bailey for her performance as this portrayal of Ariel. Other characters I have seen getting some bits of praise is a little for Melissa McCarthy's Ursula (a little mixed here and there but most said she did well in the role) and the other is Daveed Diggs Sebastian (seen as a scene stealer, while also being seen by some viewers as unsettling too realistic). Some of the other praise has gone to the songs performed and I myself have seen some snippets of Part of your world and Under the sea and they sound great so far but would need to hear the full piece before I can agree. The only other bits is that it is seen as one of the better live action remakes but that is not the biggest bar to pass as a lot of people are not too interested in the remakes of these films, seemed unique at first but now has been way overdone on films that were classics and should be more of ones that were underrated or not as well known or beloved (I will say this time and time again, give me a Live action remake of Treasure Planet and Atlantis the Lost empire as ones I think would work great in Live action). Now usually the early reactions can differ to the actual reviews that come out nearer to the release of the film so we will see how that turns out for this.

(Also this is just a little update: there is one other bit on the Little Mermaid as the actor who played Aladdin in the live action film version from a few years ago has caused some backlash as he somewhat mocked this film with his comments on twitter, as he commented on a post for some film analytics were projecting a slightly higher domestic opening for this film then Aladdin, by saying:

"Our film was unique in that audiences went to watch it multiple times. It's the only way we reached the billion dollar opening mark with our opening. My guess is TLM doesn't cross the billion mark but will undoubtfully get a sequel"

Personally I find it odd that he said it was unique when most it did different was give Genie a love interest, made Jasmine more independent and most people went to just see Will Smith as the Genie, when this guy and the one that played Jafar were the weakest part of the film, so I understand the backlash to it) 

But what are your opinions on this film, will you be seeing it when it comes out or skipping it and what do you think of the Aladdin's star's comments? Let me know down below.

Do we still feel the need for speed?

In our final story for this week, we have also saw the world premiere of the 10th mainline entry in the Fast and Furious franchise, Fast X (again I will say this until it is heard by all, this film had the perfect opportunity to call this one: Fast 10 Your Seatbelts, and they completely missed that opportunity) in Rome on Friday and some of the early reactions released the following morning and the results have been a lot more mixed for this one. Out of all of it though the highest praise that all that saw it has been that Jason Momoa's Character of Dante Reyes is the standout overall of the cast. As for the rest of the film some have said the action scenes are great, some said it is entertaining and some has specified that this one is the worst Fast and Furious film of them all. Now as I said the reactions of early screenings can differ to the actual release but we will learn the proper reviews sometime next week before the release on the upcoming Friday and I'll give it a watch and give my thoughts on it as well.

In one other last piece of news, it was initially supposed to be ending the series with Fast 11 in 2025, well now we got word from Vin diesel himself that we are actually getting a Fast 12. The reason for this is that the studio of Universal was asking for an extra film after they saw this new one and now they are making a 12th one (although I feel this was more Diesel demanding another one as he has been causing a lot of problems on these films since Furious 7). I feel they'll say it will end at 12 and then we will go forward into the future where it will eventually be Fast 25: Even more fast and more furious. But I wanna know what do you think, will you be seeing the newest one next weekend, do you think the series should've ended after a certain amount of them or do you want more of these. Also what one is your favourite in the franchise? Let me know down below.

And with that, that is the end of another episode of Weird Mind News Room and I hope you enjoyed reading my ramblings and I hope you will share my ramblings around to others too. But for now I must go as I am very tired and want sleep, so stay being wonderful people and good night and good news.

Signing off

Sam H