What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly column dedicated to the cool, the weird, the entertaining, the brief, the good, the bad and the ugly of the entertainment news world. Also, there’s some philosophical talk about Sharktopus, because that’s just how the Internet rolls.
We begin this evening with an image of a handmade Game of Thrones board game that is absolutely fabulous. Created by Fay Helfer, it’s basically a Risk board in the shape and detail of Westeros. And it’s brilliant.
1. Ciaran Hinds is Mance Rayder – Speaking of Game of Thrones, the production has locked down one of the biggest casting choices for its upcoming third season, bringing on Rome star Ciaran Hinds as Mance Rayder, The King Beyond the Wall. He’s the one powerful force we’ve yet to meet in Westeros, and Hinds has an incredible presence. It should be a right fit.
2. Vin Diesel in Avengers 2? - According to some new reports, there’s a campaign forming to get the XxX star into Joss Whedon’s sequel as the android superhero Vision. It all seems to be coming from the Diesel camp, though. It’s hard to believe that Joss Whedon would just flush all of his creativity and good will down the drain in one casting move.
3. Why Sharktopus is a philosophical masterpiece – You’ve gotta love the folks at io9 with their crazed dedication to celebrating science fiction. Take this video essay by Annalee Newitz on Sharktopus. Somewhere Roger Corman is saying, “see, I told you!”
4. Sight & Sound’s Full 250 – The magazine that’s all the rage these days thanks to its once-per-decade list of the greatest films of all-time has released the full poll, showing off the top 250 films of all-time. Among them is Wall-E (#202). And that just feels right.
5. Avengers 2 set for May 1, 2015 – With or without Vin Diesel, this Avengers sequel is happening. And now it’s got a release date. Hooray! Three years and counting…
6. Shia LaBeouf is in for real sex in Nymphomaniac – Here’s the Transformers star on Lars von Trier’s next: “It is what you think it is. There’s a disclaimer at the top of the script that basically says, ‘we’re doing it for real.’ And anything that is ‘illegal’ will be shot in blurred images. But other than that, everything is happening.”
7. The Raid sequel’s Hammer Girl – Earlier today, director Gareth Evans tweeted out a first look at a character from the upcoming Raid sequel Berandal, known simply as Hammer Girl. You can guess what she’s known for. Yes, the answer is wearing boots.
8. The Hunger Games is best seller ever on Amazon – Just as it’s about to be released on Blu-ray, The Hunger Games book trilogy was named as the highest selling book series ever on Amazon, surpassing those Harry Potter books. Which is impressive, because there are a few more Potter books out there.
9. The Best Jaws rip-offs – So far we’ve been captive audience to Movies.com and their awesome “Jaws Week” feature (and just a little jealous that we didn’t think of it first), so we’ll end the week with a link to Scott Weinberg’s exploration of some crazy knock-off movies, including the seminal hit, Orca: The Killer Whale!
10. ParaNorman: This Little Light – Behold the craftsmanship behind this weekend’s must-see movie that does not involve a complimentary testosterone injection. Yes, Laika worked very hard on the details of ParaNorman. And you just don’t know quite how intense it is until you see something like this: