avatar

About Scott Howard

@MrHoward

Scott Howard grew up in rural Georgia and got a job making grocery store ads for his hometown newspaper at the ripe old age of 15. When the entire editorial staff was fired, he started writing movie reviews to fill empty space. He's been doing the same thing ever since, as one of the original editors of PiQ Magazine, a columnist for Connect Savannah and The Savannah Morning News, and a regular contributor to Newtype USA, The Stanford Daily and Bolt Reporter. His work as a graphic designer has been featured in ADV Manga, PiQ Magazine and Newtype USA. He holds BFAs in Graphic Design and Photography from Georgia Southern University and lives in Houston, TX with his lovely wife Marisa.

Dana Gould and Dave Grohl make rock band pilot for FX

This year’s pilot pickup announcements haven’t added many surprising new names to the mix of folks who peddle a new show every year. But this is interesting news: Dana Gould has Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl signed on as an executive producer for a comedy for FX starring Gould as the frontman for a dysfunctional band “on the verge of mega-stardom“. For those unfamiliar with him, Gould is a longtime standup and Simpsons writer who Patton Oswalt credits as “the founder of alternative comedy”. Grohl has been in music all his life, playing in the DC punk scene before becoming the drummer of Nirvana. If picked up, it sounds like a perfect addition to FX’s impeccable comedy slate, including Louie, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia and Archer.

Discuss

Frank Darabont reveals his original Walking Dead season 2 opener

The ongoing second season of The Walking Dead is unquestionably better than the first, if a little unambitious. One of the biggest mysteries in recent TV history is why AMC canned the big name behind their biggest hit ever and what exactly he wanted to do that rubbed them the wrong way. A recent email exchange between Ain’t It Cool News and Frank Darabont himself may shed a little light on that, as he laid out his plans for a sweeping season opener with almost no participation from the already huge ensemble cast. It’s a pretty great idea, but it sounds really expensive, and it’s pretty obvious that executives already jittery about their big hit being off the air for nearly a year would want to hop right back in with the characters the audience already identifies with.

1 Comment

Tim Burton continues to be lazy, decides to make a new Pinocchio

Tim Burton is probably the only household name director in America besides Steven Spielberg, and is at the height of his commercial powers after making two of the biggest blockbusters of all time with his spins on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland. He’s also light years away from the exciting, iconoclastic genius who turned out classic after classic in the late 80′s and early 90′s like Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice and Ed Wood. As soon as he got the clout to make whatever he wanted, Burton turned his attention almost exclusively to phoning in his uninspired riffing on his favorite stories, from Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman to Planet of the Apes. Whenever he breaks out of the box — as with the uncompromising musical Sweeney Todd or the lovely Southern fairy tale Big Fish — he reminds us why we fell in love with him in the first place. Sadly, he’s continuing his and our time with his next project:

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Burton wants to make a retelling of PINOCCHIO with Warner Brothers (not at Disney, interestingly enough), and Robert Downey Jr. would play Gepetto, the lovable inventor who wants a son so badly that he makes a puppet that comes to life.  This new tale would be from the perspective of Gepetto and his adventures trying to find his lost wooden marionette.

Expect lots of cartoonish goth imagery and Danny Elfman-scored “la la la”-ing. Yawn.

Discuss

Warner Bros. reportedly as concerned about Bane’s voice as you are

Those of us who shelled out to see The Dark Knight Rises prologue before IMAX screenings of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol this weekend pretty much all had the same thought: Bane’s actually pretty awesome, but I can’t understand a damn thing he’s saying. Apparently, Warner Bros. is concerned as well:

Sources also say some at Warners would like Nolan to change the sound mix, but the filmmaker, whose autonomy is well-earned (his Inception earned the studio more than $800 million and eight Oscar nominations), has informed executives that he plans only to alter the sound slightly, not to rework it completely.

“Chris wants the audience to catch up and participate rather than push everything at them. He doesn’t dumb things down,” says one high-level exec, declining to be named. “You’ve got to pedal faster to keep up.”

Might I, but a humble writer, suggest a simple compromise? Subtitles.

Discuss

Fast Six goes Kill Bill/Harry Potter/Twilight, splits into two movies

Fast Five was one of 2011′s biggest surprises for action aficionados, a film so gloriously bonkers that anyone who came of age in the late 80′s/early 90′s couldn’t help but fall for its overblown charms. That insanity will extend to the very structure of the next segment, as producer/star/Paul Walker lust object Vin Diesel informed the Hollywood Reporter that Fast Six will be two different movies.

With the success of this last one, and the inclusion of so many characters, and the broadening of scope, when we were sitting down to figure out what would fit into the real estate of number six, we didn’t have enough space…

We have to pay off this story, we have to service all of these character relationships, and when we started mapping all that out it just went beyond 110 pages,” Diesel explained. “The studio said, ‘You can’t fit all that story in one damn movie!’

Discuss