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The RUMOR is Spreading! Do you live in the Permian Basin area of West Texas (Odessa, Midland)? May 10th: Book signing at Barnes & Noble in Midland, Texas, at 3:00pm If everyone sells out before you can buy a copy? RUMOR is also available on Kindle, so if you buy it online you can get your photo taken with the author while you ... hold your Kindle, I guess. And - May Is MARVEL and MUMMY Month HAPPY HORROR THRILLER BIRTHDAYS TO - Actor John Rhys-Davies (SPHINX, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, WAXWORK, THE LOST WORLD, THE UNAMEABLE II, THE LORD OF THE RINGS, CHUPACABRA TERROR, TAINTED LOVE, ANACONDA 3, ANACONDA 4, 31 NORTH 62 EAST, FEROCIOUS PLANET, MEDIUM RAW: NIGHT OF THE WOLF, FEROCIOUS PLANET, ESCAPE, 100 DEGREES BELOW ZERO, PRISONERS OF THE SUN, TIME LAPSE [2014], AUX, AQUAMAN, G-LOC, THE GATES, over 270 movies and TV episodes in all!) is 80. SUNDAY - Actor Nicholas Hamilton (STRANGERLAND, THE DARK TOWER, IT [2017], IT: CHAPTER 2, ENDLESS, GEN V) is 24. THE MUMMY RETURNS is 24 Aw man! It was great to see the fun cast together again! And The Rock was at his prime and he was going to be... The Scorpion King (we had no idea but it sounded cool and we were there for it!). What a great movie! All building up to the appearance of the Scorpion King! Then... we saw it, and that utterly changed the direction of THE MUMMY RETURNS. SPIDER-MAN 3 is 18 There could have been many more SPIDER-MAN movies with the Sam Raimi cast. Unfortunately the only actor who got out of it unscathed was J.K. Simmons. My first watch was pure geek giddiness. But some movies cannot withstand repeated viewings and that's what happened with most of us who saw SPIDER-MAN 3. SATURDAY - Director Joseph Kosinski (TRON: LEGACY, OBLIVION, SPIDERHEAD) is 50. SPIDER-MAN is 23 It was 2001! Hot Marvel movies like BLADE opened the door to Box office gold and X-MEN laid the foundation. It was no fluke! A BLADE sequel was in the works and a Horror director was signed on. An X-MEN sequel was in the works and it began with a Horror director! Columbia Pictures was ready to release their own Marvel superhero property and it too was directed by a Horror director! One who already proved himself in the Superhero realm with DARK MAN! Then on September 9, 2001, a day that changed the world for the worse put the brakes on Sam Raimi and Marvel Studios' ascent. It would be a new year before Columbia Picture's SPIDER-MAN would be released. IRON MAN 3 is 12 Years Old How to put this? By 2013 the MCU was off and running. CAPTAIN AMERICA was a hit. THE AVENGERS were a bigger hit. It was as if Paramount had found the secret formula (which they did) for making Superhero movies that were basically legal machines for printing money. And whatever box office the movie made in theaters, that would be doubled or more in home video. Then came the second sequel. In hindsight, some point to Disney buying out Paramount's Marvel properties of THE AVENGERS and IRON MAN in 2012, leaving Paramount with plenty of cash and nothing to lose if they poisoned Disney's new well. On the other hand, maybe it was to Disney's benefit if the property lost some value before all the monetary transactions were complete? When you rule out all possibilities then whatever is left, however improbable, has an ocean of its own possibilities. Sour grapes coming from unexpected corners are legendary in Hollywood, and who knows really when everybody wants credit for a hit and nobody takes credit for a miss? For whatever reason(s) which are none too clear, somewhere in the chain they threw away everything they learned that far in making hit, fan pleasing Marvel movies, and made a parody IRON MAN 3 so mediocre that it destroyed the franchise for the next ten years and damaged the MCU brand.
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INTERVIEWSJoe Mynhardt interviews E.C. McMullen Jr. in the book HORROR 201: The Silver Scream. Matt Jarbo's interview with Feo Amante at The Zurvivalist. James Cheetham's Q&A with Feo Amante at Unconventional Interviews *. Megan Scudellari interviews Feo Amante and Kelly Parks (of THE SCIENCE MOMENT) in The Scientist Magazine. Check out our interview at The-Scientist.com. REFERENCESAnthropologist Gretchen Bakke, PhD, references my UNFAIR RACIAL CLICHE ALERT as an expert resource in her 2010 Anthropological Quarterly essay @ Johns Hopkins University Researcher David Waldron, references my review of UNDERWORLD in the Spring 2005, Journal of Religion and Popular Culture entry, Role-Playing Games and the Christian Right: Community Formation in Response to a Moral Panic (downloadable pdf). E.C. McMullen Jr.Author page at Amazon (Amazon.com)
* Linked to archive.org |
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