John Carter of Mars trailer

I saw that this summer when I was either at Xmen or Capt. America...the only girl in the theatre... one of the guys leaned over to start telling me all about the original story... It looks great!

Someone told me about the first book in this series when I was in Jr. High and I looked for years at stores and libraries for it. The series was finally out in paperback in the 1960s. I have all eleven books. Well worth the read. The lame attempt at a movie that was on Siffy last year was very disappointing. This one looks very good and I hope they make several more of the books into movies.

Most people know Edgar Rice Burroughs for the Tarzan books but I like the Martian series better.

I think all of the books are online too. I had the URL once but don't think I have it now....

I found it in the Jr.High library too, along with all the S-F anthologies that were popular at that time. English teachers of the day couldn't understand S-F to save their lives, but at least their students who read S-F were reading something. Which is more than you could say about the great majority of students back in the day other than their required reading assignments, which were lame beyond belief. Is there any English teacher, anywhere, anytime, who can tell me what literary lessons we were supposed to get from reading Silas Marner ?

One time in 11th grade English class I got an A on a book report for Moby Dick. Did I read the book ? Don't make me laugh.......

Many English teachers could tell you why those crazy books from the Canon have relevance. I think it's just one of those things you either get or don't...same old science vs arts problem...this is one area that's annoyed me about schools decline in cultural curriculum. No more classical educations. No more critical thinking.
Those books inform us on who we are and where we've come from....the arts are the common thread. I love scifi and I know you can learn a lot of the same lessons there but they don't give you the references that the Canon lit does.

I'm going to stop ranting now...

I agree, except someone needs to show me where Silas Marner fits in the Canon lit. :lol: I don't know much about present high school lit. requirements but I'm sure you're right about the Canon disappearing. There was a time when Harriet Tubman would not have been considered a sufficiently relevant historical figure to be included in the curriculum. Not to take anything away from her accomplishments, but I know she is included in modern curriculums possibly at the expense of more important figures for the students to know about. I just use her as an example...there are many others similarly displacing more relevant history.

It won't come out until March 9th. The star, Taylor Kitsch, never heard of him, was on GMA this morning and said it was made "a long time ago". I think Bryan Cranston filmed his part during the hiatus before last seasons Breaking Bad started filming. So that would have been ~ 2-3 years ago. They showed another new trailer. Tars Tarkus and his "tribe" remind me of larger versions of Jar Jar Binks.

He is also in 'Battleship' which I think comes out during the summer......

Here is a new trailer from Disney for John Carter. A few of the same scenes but mostly new. Really looking forward to this. :D

There are some recognizable names in the cast and Lynn Collins seems a good choice for the "dusky skinned beauty" Dejah Thoris.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401729/

Banjo wrote:There are some recognizable names in the cast and Lynn Collins seems a good choice for the "dusky skinned beauty" Dejah Thoris.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401729/

Yes, she's a good Texas girl. :D

Here's two places to find the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs



http://burroughs.thefreelibrary.com/


http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/b

Scroll down to Burroughs, Edgar Rice


I haven't used thefreelibray before but The Gutenberg Project is fantastic.

I'm looking forward to this too.

Another interesting site:

http://www.tarzana.ca/

Look at the Corriganville link at bottom right.


The Corriganville Movie Ranch was the site of annual motocross races sponsored by the movie stuntmen's association. I went several times in the late 60's. Sorry to see that it burned down. At one end of the main street was a barn with big double doors at both ends. The race course led the bikes down a dirt trail, turned sharp left through a mud pit then up a steep embankment , through the rear double doors , through the barn , then down the main street wide open past the S/F line and out into the brush and rocks for another lap. A lot of bikes would get bogged down in the mud pit. The stunt men would position several guys along the sides and would jump into the mud and bodily wrestle the bike out of the mud and up the embankment. That was always a favorite place to spectate from.

Just saw the movie and liked it. Lots of action, a good general look and a nice touch of romance. With Jake telling me the reviews weren't good, this exceeded my expectations.

CGI is expensive to produce and this is full of it, which I guess explains the $250 million...


Disney says 'John Carter' to lose $200 million
By RYAN NAKASHIMA, AP

In this film image released by Disney, Taylor Kitsch is shown in a scene fro...
LOS ANGELES — "John Carter" is now officially a flop of galactic proportions.

The Walt Disney Co. said Monday that it expects to book a loss of $200 million on the movie in the quarter through March. That ranks it among Hollywood's all-time biggest money-losers.

Directed by Pixar's Andrew Stanton, the 3-D effects-laden movie about a Civil War veteran transplanted to Mars was already headed to the "Red Ink Planet," according to Cowen & Co. analyst Doug Creutz. Yet he expected a write-down of about half that size.

Disney said "John Carter" has brought in about $184 million in ticket sales worldwide so far. But ticket sales are split roughly in half with theater owners. The movie's production budget is estimated to be about $250 million with about $100 million more spent on marketing.

The movie was based on a series of books written by the late Edgar Rice Burroughs, starting with "A Princess of Mars" in 1912 and ending with "John Carter of Mars," published posthumously in 1964.

There was plenty of material for sequels and prequels but they seem highly unlikely now.

With a 51 percent "Tomatometer" rating on movie site Rotten Tomatoes, the film got average reviews, though AP Movie Critic Christy Lemire called it "massively confusing" and "deadly dull."

The poor reception was a shock given Stanton's directing success with movies like "Finding Nemo" and "Wall-E," each of which won an Oscar for best animated feature.

Disney said the loss on "John Carter" will cause its studio to lose $80 million to $120 million for the quarter. Profits from other movies and home video disc sales will be more than wiped out.

Miller Tabak analyst David Joyce said the studio's projected loss is more than double what he had expected, and that will cause him to trim his estimate for Disney's earnings. The hefty spending on production and marketing is causing the Burbank, Calif., company to book the loss sooner than might be the case for a smaller-budget film.

"It's good that Disney's airing their dirty laundry now," he said.

The flop ranks with history's biggest box office disasters, although it's tough to rank them precisely because of inflation and incomplete disclosure.

Disney's eerily real computer animated movie "Mars Needs Moms" from last year cost about $150 million to make but only sold $40 million in tickets worldwide, according to Hollywood.com analyst Paul Dergarabedian.

Warner Bros.' "Speed Racer" from 2008 cost about $120 million, but took in only about $94 million in theaters. Columbia Pictures' "Ishtar" in 1987 cost about $40 million but sold only $14 million in tickets domestically, he said.

"Obviously no studio puts this much into a movie hoping for this kind of result," he said.

It's not clear how much box office revenue Disney needed to break even on "John Carter," but one estimate pegged it around $600 million worldwide. That's a figure reached by fewer than 65 movies ever, Dergarabedian said.

Disney hopes to overcome the setback with other big-budget movies this year, including "The Avengers" from its Marvel subsidiary in May and Pixar's "Brave" in June. The comic book geeks usually flock to the comic book movies so The Avengers should do well. And one geek will be "flocking" because Cobie Smulders is in it...
Before Monday's announcement, analysts polled by FactSet expected Disney as a whole to post $1.92 billion in operating income for the quarter. Most of the company's profits come from its pay TV channels such as ESPN, so the studio loss is not a huge debacle. Analysts expect Disney to post $9.62 billion in revenue for the period.

Disney shares fell 43 cents to $43.01 in extended trading Monday. The stock closed regular trading up 25 cents at $43.44. Disney released the news after the markets closed.

Too bad, it did have an innocent charm that probably didn't NEED all that much CGI. I still like the first Star Wars I ever saw. I find it superior to the one that now has all the special CGI effects stuffed into it.