New DVD release

22 Jul

The Wild Influences Behind the Look of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

New DVD release

This article is presented by Paramount Pictures. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem brings back the iconic reptilian quadruplets for another wild adventure in the animated world of New York City. But for this story, director Jeff Rowe and writers Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Dan Hernandez, Benji Samit, and Rowe himself bring two new ideas to the screen: casting actual teenagers as the Turtles themselves and applying their own unique spin on the current trend of stylized, exaggerated visuals, jump-started by Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse and continued with Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and The Mitchells vs. The Machines, which…

Read More

22 Jul

How Justin Simien’s Haunted Mansion Channels the Classic Disney Ride, Ghosts and All

New DVD release

This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. Get your copy here. Haunted Mansion was launched as a theme park attraction at Disneyland in 1969. Riders get strapped inside “doom buggies” and whisked through a spooky old manor with chills and thrills around every corner. The ride doesn’t end at the last stop, either. A mirror along the exit captures the image of a phantom prankster attaching itself to each visitor. For Disney’s upcoming Haunted Mansion film, director Justin Simien wants to bring that feeling home. “My number one goal as a filmmaker is to make sure you actually…

Read More

22 Jul

The Creator: How Rogue One Inspired Gareth Edwards’ New Approach to Sci-Fi Movies

New DVD release

This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. Get your copy here. “Where do you get your ideas?” is one of those questions you are never supposed to ask, but Gareth Edwards remembers precisely where he was when the storyline of The Creator came to him. “I got the idea on a road trip while promoting Star Wars [Rogue One],” Edwards recalls. “I had Thanksgiving off, and we were driving to Iowa, where my girlfriend’s family is from, and I was just looking out the window. We went past this farmer’s field of tall grass with a strange building…

Read More

21 Jul

Barbie Cast: Who Plays Ruth, Sugar Daddy Ken, and All the Other Kens and Barbies?

New DVD release

Barbie may be everything, and Ken is just Ken, but what about the people in the Real World they meet along the way? Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, based on the popular dolls, is a hyper-stylized take on the Mattel toys that sees the titular doll journey from Barbie Land to the Real World on a quest of self-discovery. This movie definitely looks the part, but it wouldn’t be what it is without its incredible all-star cast full of award-winning actors and familiar faces. Here’s what you need to know about the Barbie characters and the actors who play them. Margot Robbie…

Read More

21 Jul

Delaying Dune 2 (and the Rest of the Fall Movie Release Schedule) Is a Terrible Idea

New DVD release

Are you going to the movies this weekend? Box office tracking suggests you probably are. If so, you’ve got options. Whether it’s basking in Greta Gerwig’s pink Barbie fantasia (released by Warner Bros. Pictures), getting lost in what may be Christopher Nolan’s greatest brooding masterpiece, Oppenheimer (courtesy of Universal Pictures), or experiencing both on the same day, it’s a good time to be a cinephile. And if you happened to be at a cinema Thursday night, you could tell all this from the antiquated sight of long lines queuing outside a theater. There’s genuine excitement for two new releases, and…

Read More

21 Jul

Can You Take Your Kids to See Barbie?

New DVD release

This article contains some very mild Barbie spoilers. Of all the toys in all the world, Barbie is arguably the most famous. Introduced in 1959 as a different type of doll for young girls, the Barbie brand has become globally synonymous with childhood and (for better or worse) the aspirations of generations of girls who attempt to imagine what their adulthood will be like. For that reason, we imagine some parents are apprehensive to the fact that the first live-action, big screen Barbie movie, which stars Margot Robbie as the iconic doll, has been awarded a PG-13 by the Motion…

Read More

21 Jul

Barbie Soundtrack: Every Song from the Movie

New DVD release

With artists like Dua Lipa, Sam Smith, Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj, and Ice Spice, the Mark Ronson produced Barbie movie soundtrack is poised to be almost as iconic as the movie itself. From danceable pop hits to more melancholic tunes and ballads, the soundtrack is full of songs for a variety of Barbies and Kens. While Aqua’s classic song “Barbie Girl” unfortunately won’t be making an appearance on the soundtrack, there are plenty of other bops that make Greta Gerwig’s Barbie Land come to life. Here are all of the songs you can expect to hear on the Barbie soundtrack,…

Read More

21 Jul

The Venture Bros: Radiant Is the Blood of a Baboon Heart Review

New DVD release

This Venture Bros. movie review contains no spoilers. “It’s like a job trying to follow this nonsense.” How does one say goodbye after 20 years? That’s the lofty task that The Venture Bros. faces with this concluding movie-length finale, Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart, and it does so with nerdy, passionate grace. The Venture Bros. has produced seven seasons, but it made its Adult Swim premiere back in 2003 when the then-fledgling network only had five original programs to its name and superhero parodies were niche, not the new normal. Now, it celebrates its swan song during…

Read More

21 Jul

Forget Barbenheimer and Get Ready for Saw Patrol

New DVD release

We’ve all had a sensible chuckle at the Barbenheimer meme. The idea that something as po-faced as a Christopher Nolan movie about the perils of creating the atomic bomb is being released at the same time as a pink glitter explosion of a flick about Mattel’s immortal fashion doll and her adventures in the real world makes for a naturally hilarious showdown slash double bill. But as the Barbenheimer t-shirts, posts, video edits, and think pieces continue to pour in, horror fans may well be watching from the shadows, eyes glowing red, knowing that their time is almost nigh. When…

Read More

21 Jul

James Urbaniak on The Venture Bros.’ 20-Year Journey and Happy Ending

New DVD release

*Please note: This interview was conducted before SAG-AFTRA’s decision to take strike action.  So rarely do modern audiences get to experience a “cult classic” film or television show anymore. The internet has seen to that. Even independent films that 20-30 years ago would have to rely on word of mouth or for the local Blockbuster to run out of copies to create any kind of buzz now get thousands of people sharing their thoughts about it within online forums.  It is with no sense of irony that The Venture Bros. is perhaps one of the last cult classics. The animated…

Read More

21 Jul

Neill Blomkamp’s Gran Turismo Is Not Just Another Video Game Adaptation

New DVD release

This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. Get your copy here. How do you adapt a racing simulator to film? When Neill Blomkamp was approached by Sony to direct Gran Turismo, he was skeptical about the project, to say the least. “My initial response was, you can’t make a movie out of that,” he tells Den of Geek magazine. But when Blomkamp read the script, he quickly realized that the film would be unlike any video game adaptation he’d ever seen—and unlike any movie he’d ever made. “I never imagined myself directing a car movie or a sports…

Read More

21 Jul

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem – Kevin Eastman on the Past & Future of the Franchise

New DVD release

This article is presented by Paramount Pictures. Approximately 40 years after Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird first jokingly sketched a masked turtle standing upright with a pair of nunchaku strapped to its little arms, TMNT is one of the biggest franchises in the world. Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo are now veterans of not only years of comic book storytelling, multiple beloved animated series, blockbuster films, video games, countless toys, and more, but their Renaissance-inspired names are now household ones, and their adventures have delighted multiple generations of children and adults.  In short, the TMNT…

Read More

21 Jul

Oppenheimer: The Real WW2 History Behind the Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb on Japan

New DVD release

This article contains mild Oppenheimer spoilers. At 8:15 a.m. on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber called the Enola Gay arrived at its target above the heart of Hiroshima, Japan. Below was a city that had been left relatively untouched by the ravages of the brutal Second World War. That changed to horrifying effect after the B-29 dropped its payload above a bridge at the city’s center: an atomic bomb codenamed “Little Boy.” It would be the first nuclear weapon deployed in anger in the history of humanity. The second came three days later when another…

Read More

20 Jul

Enter the Reese’s x Blue Beetle Sweepstakes for a Chance to Win Limited-Edition Peanut Butter Cups

New DVD release

This article is brought to you by Reese’s and Warner Bros. Blue Beetle soars into theaters this summer just in time for fans, friends, and families everywhere to experience the hero’s first-ever big screen adventure. To celebrate, Reese’s and Warner Bros. Pictures have teamed up to create a specialty run of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups x Blue Beetle. Inspired by the titular character’s high-tech suit—powered up in the film by an ancient alien technology that transforms college grad Jaime Reyes—the new limited-edition Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups x Blue Beetle will be wrapped in a cool black packaging that channels the…

Read More

20 Jul

Blue Beetle’s Long Journey to the Big Screen: Xolo Maridueña on Becoming a DC Legend

New DVD release

This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. Get your copy here. When Angel Manuel Soto got the call from Warner Bros. about directing a DC movie, his mind was miles away from Blue Beetle. “I wanted to pitch ideas, and one of them was the Bane origin story,” Soto tells Den of Geek magazine. “I always thought that there was something interesting in exploring his reality and how a character like that comes to be.” He quickly found out, though, that “the conversation was not about that.” Instead, the studio had a more youthful and heroic figure in…

Read More

20 Jul

How Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem Puts a Fresh Spin on the Franchise

New DVD release

This article is presented by Paramount Pictures. Almost everyone has a memory of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Their cultural ubiquity has been maintained for almost 40 years on toy shelves, game consoles, and Saturday morning cartoons, but there’s something about reptilian ninjutsu masters who binge on pizza slices in the New York City sewers that conjures deeply personal recollections of halcyon youth.  No matter when you met Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Donatello, you were a fan for life. This is true for the filmmakers of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. In interviews with Den of Geek, director and…

Read More

20 Jul

Oppenheimer Review: Christopher Nolan Gives Us a Nuclear Nightmare

New DVD release

In true Christopher Nolan fashion, Oppenheimer is a lot of movie. As usual, the often brilliant and sometimes equally frustrating auteur has set out to make the ultimate of whatever genre he’s working in, whether it’s the superhero movie with The Dark Knight, the techno-thriller with Inception, or the mind-bending space travel epic with Interstellar. In this case, he’s made the final word on biopics about controversial 20th century scientists: an exhaustive and exhausting look at the rise and fall of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American theoretical physicist widely credited as “the father of the atomic bomb.” Oppenheimer is the…

Read More

20 Jul

Barbie Review: Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig Make Art Out of Playing with Dolls

New DVD release

Barbie is not the movie you think it is. And as it arrives in cinemas this week atop a pink tsunami of creativity from Greta Gerwig, I’m not even sure it’s the movie she and co-writer Noah Baumbach first imagined. Or rather, it’s just not that one movie, but several which have been squished together with buckets of glitter glue. Despite being only 114 minutes, this is very much a sprawling epic in hot pink miniature, within which resides vignettes, meta asides, and tonal switchbacks that explode with the type of ingenuity that suggests spontaneity and improvisation. It even at…

Read More

19 Jul

Barbie v. Oppenheimer Isn’t the First Big Matchup Between Polar Opposite Movies

New DVD release

Rumor has it that Christopher Nolan is not thrilled with the idea of “Barbenheimer,” an extremely online colloquialism which revels in the culture shock of seeing films like Barbie and Oppenheimer somehow exist in the same universe—never mind be released on the same day! Perhaps Nolan’s apprehension is because he crafted a vast, pensive work about the birth of the atomic age and not one half of a TikTok meme. Or, more likely, there’s probably some annoyance due to the likelihood of Warner Bros. dating Greta Gerwig’s own hot-pink epic on July 21 as revenge for the Inception filmmaker breaking…

Read More

19 Jul

Exclusive: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem Soundtrack Celebrates Hip-Hop Legends

New DVD release

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and music go together like the Ninja Turtles and pizza; the two are intrinsically linked. From the iconic theme song of the 1987 animated series, to Vanilla Ice’s tie-in “Ninja Rap” for 1991’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze, and even their semi-forgotten 1990 stage rock and roll musical Coming Out of Their Shells, no matter the genre, these green teens are always rocking big tunes. With music playing such a big role in the Turtles’ history, director Jeff Rowe and executive producer Seth Rogen had to be extra thoughtful when…

Read More