Avi Arad to apparently produce "Metal Gear Solid" movie

Avi Arad panders to the crowd as Hideo Kojima looks on

If there's one video game series you can point to that started the cinematic trend in video games, it would have to be "Metal Gear Solid". And now, after a few false starts over the last few years, there seems to be a big push to bring Metal Gear to the big screen. Brought to you by Avi Arad and Sony Pictures.

Now, when most people think about Avi Arad, they think "Spider-Man" and Marvel. He says the right things, but if you wade through all his bullsh*t, it's kind of obvious he has no idea what he's talking about much of the time. He seems to be a guy who picks up existing properties and then exploits them to the highest degree. The man brought "Bratz" to movie screens, for f*ck's sake. Bratz. Why? Why would you even think about doing something like this? He's also the man who forced Sam Raimi to put Venom in Spider-Man 3, despite Raimi's clear disdain for the character.

But in an incredibly pandering move, he claimed at the Metal Gear 25th Anniversary event last night that he feels that video games are today's comic books. (I still feel like comic books are today's comic books, but whatever.) And as such, he's devoting himself to bring excellent video game movies to the big screen since he's currently attached to "Uncharted" and "Mass Effect" movies that are about as far away from release as possible.

For now, I'll reserve judgment. Having played the original Metal Gear Solid over again a few months ago, while the story is very cinematic, it's also obscenely cliched and over the top. They would really have to rein in a lot of that to make a successful movie. Either that or put Venom in it. That solves all problems.


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All Whedon, All the Time! - Joss to write and possibly direct "S.H.I.E.L.D." pilot

The big news this morning is that Joss Whedon is going to write, and possibly direct (just like the headline!) the ABC pilot of "S.H.I.E.L.D." And...well, that's pretty much it. His frequent collaborators Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen will assist him in these development duties.

I know I'm simply jumping on the bandwagon of all the other reports that are going crazy over this news, but there really isn't much to speculate about at this point. The likelihood that there will be any characters from the movies (outside of maybe a couple of S.H.I.E.L.D. lackeys that will show up in the "Item 47" short that's on the Blu-Ray coming out next month) seems to be pretty slim. People seem to be jumping to the conclusion that Nick Fury won't be involved and that Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) may or may not following the conclusion of her show "How I Met Your Mother". Which is pretty much an irrelevant argument at this point since we know so little.

Personally, I'm happy to see Whedon return to television, but I'm not really sure about the subject matter. As huge of a Marvel fan I am, I just don't see how you can set a series in that universe and not be able to use your heroes. I suppose they could use it to introduce smaller deal third string characters to the universe, but will the actors be talented enough to potentially show up in an "Avengers 2"? At any rate we're getting ahead of ourselves here because the pilot hasn't even been written yet. And ABC could choose not to pick it up. (Doubtful, but possible.)

It's just too bad we won't be seeing any Agent Coulson. You were taken from us too soon, Phil.

Pour one out for Toontown - Bob Hoskins retires from acting

According to comingsoon.net, original Mario Mario himself, Bob Hoskins, has decided to retire from acting at the age of 69 following a Parkinson's diagnosis. The man is an absolute institution, and despite the fact that he's had few big roles these last few years, he's been in some pretty awesome movies over the years. And yes, I do include "Hook". But mainly "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?".

The real question is: what does this mean for the sequel to 1993's Super Mario Bros? I mean, Daisy busted their door down at the end of the movie asking for their help! They're not just going to let a cliffhanger like that sit without any resolution, are they?

Breaking Bad - "Fifty-One" Review

There is no Walt. Only Heisenberg. 

These reviews are starting to become a bit ridiculous, and a bit repetitive. Episode after episode just seem to highlight the fact that Walt is becoming more and more reprehensible. But the fact is that this continues to happen episode after episode and there's truly no respite from the evil that continues to brew inside him. And this episode is no different. Directed by Rian Johnson, who directed the season three episode "Fly" and also the excellent "Brick" with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and next month's "Looper", did another fantastic job creating tension in small situations and doing quite a bit with a relatively scaled back episode.

Despite the fact that this episode is titled after Walt's birthday, the focus is clearly on Skyler and the way her world seems to be crumbling around her and her futile attempts to protect her children from the self-professed "danger". Her suggestion to send Walter Jr. away to boarding school is met with nothing but a dismissive attitude.

We are now exactly one year from the start of the entire series from the characters point of view. And Skyler is as terrified as ever. Her role thus far this season has to have been a very difficult one for Anna Gunn to play. Her dialogue has been minimal and her primary function has been essentially to just look borderline insane for these last few episodes. But Gunn's success is clearly evident given that every moment she is on screen, I feel uncomfortable and fear for her. Even when Walt is having an otherwise unassuming conversation with Walt Jr., her expression just permeates discomfort.

Where Walt is expecting a huge party thrown in his honor, the reality is that Hank and Marie are invited over for a low-key dinner. Skyler won't even break the bacon in the shape of a 51 for him at breakfast! How dare she?! And as she listens to them rattle on about what's happened over the last year at dinner, she snaps. She jumps into the pool and looks like she may be attempting to drown herself.

Yet, that's not what she's doing at all. These are acts of desperation. This action has allowed Marie and Hank to take the kids for at least a few days. She tells Walt she has no plan. That she is going to do everything in her power to try and keep her children away from this drug dealing criminality. From her point of view, it's too late for her. Her hands are dirty. She can't go to the police without incriminating herself and every other idea is met with a scathing counterpoint by Heisenberg himself. Walt is winning, and nothing is going to knock him from the top.

Meanwhile, Hank is pulled off the Fring case and promoted to director of the ABQ office. What's finally clear to the rest of the DEA is how great of an officer he is and he's being rewarded for it. His only downfall is how he can't see that his greatest collar is right under his nose. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before that becomes evident, as quick as things have been moving along for Walt.

But our man Jesse doesn't have much to do this episode, unfortunately. After a quick cook with Walt in some suburban house somewhere, he's delegated by Mike to go pick up some precursor at Madrigal in Houston from Mike's old pal Lydia. When he pulls the barrel off the shelf, Lydia notices a GPS tracker and Jesse scrams back to New Mexico. After Mike's deduction that Lydia planted the GPS to get out of their arrangement, he makes the decision to kill her and ramp down production until they find some more methylamine. To Walt, this is unacceptable. They will continue as planned.

After their meeting, Jesse gives Walt a watch for his birthday. Walt sees this as another glorious victory and goes home to tell Skyler all about it. The man who had put a gun to his head, ready to pull the trigger, a few short weeks ago, gave him a birthday present. And now he believes that Skyler will come around just like Jesse did.

Something tells me that's not going to happen.


EPISODE GRADE: B

Joss Whedon to return for "Avengers 2"; Oversee "Avengers" TV show

"I want you to grab her chest like this and then pull the back of her hair. Yes, this is absolutely something that Nick Fury would do."

In news that has the entire superhero-loving world aflutter, Bob Iger has revealed on one of them fancy conference calls to investors that Joss Whedon will be returning to write and direct "Avengers 2", help shape the direction of Phase 2 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (which kicks off with "Iron Man 3" next May), and also oversee (which probably just means come up with a few ideas for millions of dollars) the creation of an Avengers-universe based TV show for ABC.

Realistically, this show will not feature any of the actual Avengers, but be more of an "Item 47"-based show where people living in the Avengers world dealing with the day-to-day dealings of a world with superheroes. I'd venture to guess it would be centered around S.H.I.E.L.D., since there are several human characters that could be done on a TV budget. Plus, Samuel L. Jackson would probably show up with the promise of six Snickers bars and a $25 gift card to Applebees. Seriously, that guy will be in anything.

But with Marvel's historic ability to low ball their talent, the fact that they're stepping up to the plate and securing a man as talented as Joss Whedon for the foreseeable future honestly shows how committed to quality they are.

X-Men: First Class Sequel to be titled "Days of Future Past"

It'll be a lot like this. Minus all the Wolverine though.

The ten year old boy in me whose first memories of this storyline, before the days in which he dabbled in the popular comic story arcs, were the animated cartoon where Bishop essentially plays the Kitty Pryde role from the comics could not be more excited for this news. Bryan Singer has confirmed in an interview with IGN that the new X-Men sequel will be titled "Days of Future Past" and talked about the vague possibility of bringing some sort of connectivity between the First Class continuity and the original X-Men continuity (but the more he stays away from X-Men Origins: Wolverine and X-Men 3, the better).

What this proves is how ambitious director Matthew Vaughn and producer Bryan Singer are attempting to get with this sequel. This easily has the potential to be the best of all the X-Men movies, given the source material.

Clearly there will be some significant changes, as there's no way Wolverine is going to play as large a role in the new movie as he did in the original story, nor will Kitty Pryde, I'd guess, but the fact that they're headed in this direction hopefully means they've found an appropriate through-line for the story to succeed. Check out the confirmation video after the jump.

Breaking Bad - "Hazard Pay" Review

So this is up a little late, and for that I apologize to the five of you that actually read this. Things have been a little busy around here at Storyverse Central and I haven't gotten around to writing a complete review. But without further adieu, here it is.

The more we come along through season five, the more unsettling that Walter White makes me feel. I never cease to be amazed by the changes that this character has gone through and will most certainly continue to go through. And despite the fact that for the most part this was essentially a set-up episode, putting plot points into motion that need to pay off down the road, for me, the episode was nothing less than captivating.

The overall plot in this episode is relatively simple. The episode begins as Mike is visiting his former compatriots in Gus' empire to let them know that their hazard pay, which was taken away by the government, will be returned to them. Someway. That way being the reluctant business arrangement with Mr. White.

Walter, Jesse, and Saul are actually discussing the idea of bringing in Mike (who is being guarded by the Return of Huell in the lobby). Saul's concerns notwithstanding, Walt has no issue recruiting him to manage the business end of this new organization. Because once again, in his mind, who can conquer Walt?

Saul proceeds to take them to a number of different locations that could be used to cook their new batches, none of which seem sufficient. Until they arrive at Vamanos Pest. The location itself doesn't work as a cook site, but Walt has an ingenious idea behind it: use the homes that are being fumigated as cover. Homes that are already being pumped full of chemicals that it wouldn't be out of the ordinary for weird smells to result. Sure, there will be more legwork involved since they'll have to tear down and set up after every cook, but given that they're constantly on the move, it will make it more difficult for them to be pinned down. (Of course, given what we know about what's going to happen at some point in the next year, this will inevitably go sour.)

Once the terms are agreed to, Mike lays down the ground rules for the Vamanos Pest employees. Walt and Jesse are not to be spoken to unless in response to a question of theirs. Their names, for all intents and purposes, are "Yes, sir" and "No, sir". Yet, despite this declaration, the man formerly known as Landry, Jesse Plemons, here playing a character named Todd, warns Walt and Jesse of a nanny cam that he had disabled for them at the first cook site. Clearly he's going to play a more pivotal role in this season, and I'm curious to see where it will all end up. (Unless he's secretly playing Landry and is trying to recruit Jesse to a new and improved Crucifctorious.)

After their cook, Walt and Jesse sit down and have a beer discussing their lives. Walt craftily plants the seed in Jesse's head that what he is doing endangers Andrea and Brock, despite outwardly expressing support for Jesse's choice in his new surrogate family. It's truly in scenes like this where the show reveals so much of its greatness. In most other shows, they wouldn't take the time to just have the characters have, on the face of it, a standard conversation for such a long period of time with almost no action whatsoever. But looking deeper, there is a manipulation at play, albeit a small one, that masquerades as a sense of concern.

In the meantime, Skyler is losing her sh*t. She looks perpetually terrified, no respite from the danger that Walt poses to the family. And when Marie goes off on the way Skyler runs the car wash, and the fact that Skyler has once again taken up smoking, Skyler just loses it in a barrage of "SHUT UP!"s that are repeated again and again until Marie does just that.

So Marie takes Skyler home and waits for Walt. She refuses to leave until Walt tells the truth. I must admit that I was curious as to what new lie would come out of Walt's mouth to cover for this reaction. But surprisingly, Walt sprung for the truth. There was no lie. And of course he made himself look sympathetic and placed Skyler as the bad guy. He revealed the "affair" she had with Ted Beneke and that her subsequent meltdown has been a result of the accident he suffered, resulting with possibly a permanent paralysis.

When Skyler finally wakes up, she is treated to an on-the-nose parallel by watching Walt, Junior, and Holly sit in front of the TV taking in a viewing of "Scarface".

"Everybody dies in this movie." seems to be quite the foreshadowing for this show. The fact that Sony shelled out what I would assume is extensive amounts of money to Universal in order to get the rights to a clip from "Scarface" shows the importance of that film in the overall arc of the show. Either that or they were able to obtain the rights at a bargain, and since Gilligan has always described this show (and I hesitate to repeat it here for the millionth time) as "Mr. Chips turns into Scarface", that it just happened to be a convenient time to show this particular clip.

The real meat of the show happens at the end when Mike decides to cut the earnings of everyone in order to pay out that hazard pay that was taken away from all of his guys. A decision that Walt is not very amenable to. Jesse on the other hand is completely indifferent. He has no problem giving away his cash if it prevents a war between his two surrogate fathers. But, Walt relents and hands over a hefty portion of his share to Mike.

Except not really.

Walt recounts to Jesse, directly after Jesse reveals that he broke up with Andrea in order to protect her and is immediately dismissed, the situation in which Gus slit the throat of his trusted man Victor. Walt thought it was a message. But in retrospect, he now sees it as just something that had to be done to keep people in line. Victor had taken measures into his own hands; cooking in Jesse's absence, taking control over situations that weren't his to control. And in Walt's eyes, this must have been the reason that he was disposed of. (Not that he was seen at the scene of Gale's murder. Why go with the obvious answer?) And now that Mike is currently taking matters into his own hands in regards to the monetary cut of each new business participant, Walt feels maybe he should be taken out too.

And so, even though there wasn't a whole lot of action in this episode, the pieces are falling into place for the endgame. And unlike other shows that began questionable moves into their own endgames (I'm thinking of "Lost" and "Battlestar Galactica" in particular), the changes and machinations here feel entirely organic. There's always so much to take in with this show that you can't help but wonder when it's all going to fall apart.

Next week's episode is titled "Fifty one" and, as Marie had mentioned in this episode, it will have been one year since Walt was diagnosed with cancer and one year in the world of this man who has changed so completely. I hope it involves more numbers made out of bacon. Maybe a graduation to turkey bacon this year?

Also, if anyone can make me a Vamanos Pest t-shirt, I will forever be in your debt.

Episode Grade: B+