- For pretty much no good reason other than sheer awesomeness, Omaha donated more than $3 million dollars during the Omaha Gives event. The so-called “charitable challenge” wasn’t prompted by anything really, but was a reminder that our city is the absolute best. (https://welterheating.com/) What? Say something, St. Louis! Specifically, the one that stunned me the most? Film Streams pulled in more than $20,000. In an attempt to take credit for supporting this incredible arthouse, I may officially change my name to A. Nonymous Donor Jr. (the “Jr.” part makes it feel authentic).
- In the first salvo of what is sure to be an ongoing war between Fox and Marvel, director Brian Singer proclaimed that Quicksilver would appear in the upcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past. This comes after Joss Whedon confirmed that the character would be in The Avengers 2 (although I’m still holding out hope the title is The Avengers Too!). How? What? Why? Well, Fox owns movie rights for all mutants (and Quicksilver is a mutant). But Marvel owns the rights for all Avenger characters (and Quicksilver is an Avenger). Oh, and Marvel actually owns the TV rights to every character, including Spider-man, whose movie rights are owned by Sony. So you could conceivably see Spidey and Wolverine show up on the new ABC show Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D while Quicksilver is simultaneously in the new X-Men and Avengers movies. And they said copyright laws were boring…
- Briefly on the brewing “panty-gate” scandal surrounding Star Trek Into Darkness. Writer Damon Lindelof went on Twitter to cop to the fact that having Alice Eve disrobe down to her skivvies for no reason in the film was both bad writing and exploitive, as her whole character seemingly only exists to titillate in previews and online images of that moment. That was a nice reaction from him. But…then director JJ Abrams went on late night talk shows with a clip he cut from the movie showing male star Benedict Cumberbatch in a shower scene, as though that somehow balances things out! Bad, JJ. Who knows when such scenes will die the death they deserve, but at least we’re talking about it for a change…and not all the talk is “dude, did you see her butt?”
Cutting Room provides breaking local and national movie news … complete with added sarcasm. Send any relevant information to film@thereader.com. Check out Ryan on Movieha!, a weekly half-hour movie podcast (movieha.libsyn.com/rss), catch him on the radio on CD 105.9 (cd1059.com) on Fridays at around 7:30 a.m. and on KVNO 90.7 (KVNO.org) at 8:30 a.m. on Fridays and follow him on Twitter (twitter.com/thereaderfilm).