The Bearded Trio

SKYSCRAPER  Dwayne Johnson, Neve Campbell, Chin Han, Roland Møller, Noah Taylor,  Byron Mann Written and Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber Reviewed by Patrick & Paul Gibbs   Out of Four A few years ago a study was released which said that cats can understand simple logic and have a basic grasp of the laws of physics. This puts them ahead of Rawson Marshall Thurber, writer and director of the new action movie Skyscraper . Dwayne Johnson joins the long list of action stars who have tried to step into Bruce Willis' shoes, and in fairness, he did take them off so he could make fists with his toes. If he's not gonna wear them . . . But where the premise of Die Hard as a genre for over three decades has been for imitators to try to top each other with more and more off the wall settings (airports, aircraft carries, hockey stadiums, a city bus and Air Force One, to name just a few) Skyscraper comes full circle and brings us back to the original ...

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 3: SUMMER VACATION Featuring the voices of Adam Sandler, Selena Gomez, Andy Samberg, Katherine Hahn,  Kevin James, David Spade, Jim Gaffigan and Steve Buscemi  Written by Genndy Tartakovsky and Michael Mccullers Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky   Out of Four I'll start out with the obvious:   Incredibles 2  didn't exactly make things easy for the next big animated movie caught in its wake, and it's probably best that the movie that followed was in a franchise that is cute enough, but very definitely a kid franchise as opposed to a family one (some may disagree with this designation, but most who do probably haven't faced that Adam Sandler's live action movies are strictly for 12-year olds of all ages.). Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation   begins in 1897, where it shows monsters disguised as humans on a train to Budapest. Abraham Van Helsing (voiced by Jim Gaffigan), a vampire hunter, boards the train a...

The Making of Back to the Future II 'It's your kid's Marty!  Something has got to be done about your kids!'  Remember watching the end of Back to the Future and hearing Doc desperately tell Marty that he's got to go back tot the future because of his kids?  Imagine having to wait four long years to find out.  Well, that was 1985 and it wouldn't be until 1989 would we all find out about his kids and the fact that (spoiler) hover-boards don't work on water. Is Back to the Future II better than the first one?  That's a difficult question to answer.  It has an extremely clever plot (to clever, some people will say) but there's a charm about the first one that is rare in a movie, lightning never strikes twice, so to speak.  Never the less, I do like the second one and it can sit along side the first movie knowing it did a good job.  Anyway, here's a making of feature on Back to the Future II that continues the making of story from the first one ...

The reason for my absence  Last month, I made the hard decision to shut down The Bearded Trio website and walk away from all blogging duties.  Well, we're still here...Sort of.  We obviously haven't closed down but you may have noticed that the posts have reduced.  We no longer post daily but instead it's a case of if and when.  I was convinced to keep the site going for reference, after all there is almost ten years of material to look back on.  Some of it, I hope you will find useful and interesting.  Also, we still have the excellent Brother Gibbs doing their movie reviews and I'll even post from time to time. Actually, I've been enjoying the break away from the everyday maintenance of the site and been focusing more on our sister site, Geek Universal which I strongly suggest you check out (Nice plug there.) Now, some people have contacted me and asked why I decided to walk away and up to now I've kept it quiet.  The reason I kept it u...

IDW SDCC Star Wars Exclusives Plus Dozens More to Purchase Only at Booth #2743! San Diego Comic-Con International is fast approaching, and IDW is rolling out their hottest exclusives and debuts for the biggest convention of the year. See below for a full list of your convention must-haves, starting with a select few exclusives that can be pre-ordered from IDW’s web store. Subsequent items can only be purchased on-site, with no reservations available. Please note that, by visiting IDW's page dedicated to these SDCC exclusives , you can peruse through the comprehensive list that includes cover graphics! Don't miss out on your chance to see just how awesome IDW's exclusives are! Disney DuckTales Lithograph with FREE gift Artwork by Jeff Smith $50 each, limited to 50 copies An Official Disney Archive print of the DuckTales #0 SDCC Variant cover by Bone creator Jeff Smith, measuring 11.7 by 16.5 inches. Hand-numbered and printed on 51 pound paper, each print is pack...

Starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, Patrick Kilpatrick, Jasmine Waltz Al Sapienza,   Aleksander Vayshelboym , Ellis Ryan   and Courtney B. Turk  Written by Chad Law Directed by Pasha Patriki Reviewed by Patrick Gibbs 35 years ago, the action genre was changed forever by the instant classic Die Hard, which established Bruce Willis as an action superstar and John McTiernan as a top director to watch for precisely one more movie (The Hunt For Red October) followed by an endless string of  "Oh for hell's sake, why?" poorly executed bad choices (with Die Hard With A Vengeance being the lone standout, reaching a bold level of "parts of that kind of worked" that the rest of his movies strove for but never quite managed to achieve.). Sadly, McTeirnan said "Yippe Ki Yay" to his career when a false statement to an FBI investigator in February 2006 about his hiring the private investigator to illegally wiretap  Rollerball producer C...

Hans Zimmer To Appear At Royal Albert Hall In July Hans Zimmer will take part in a rare ‘in conversation’ event at the Royal Albert Hall next week, sharing the secrets of his remarkable career in the latest instalment of a groundbreaking BAFTA series. Zimmer, one of the most in-demand composers in Hollywood, will take to the stage of the Hall’s 150-capacity Elgar Room for an intimate chat about his 40-year career in films, from My Beautiful Laundrette and Rain Man to Gladiator, Pirates of the Caribbean and his celebrated creative collaborations with Christopher Nolan on Interstellar, Dunkirk and the Dark Knight trilogy. The event is the latest in BAFTA’s Conversations with Screen Composers series, which has brought many of the world’s finest writers of movie music to the Hall, including  Clint Mansell, John Powell, James Horner, James Newton Howard and Michael Giacchino – who memorably deconstructed, and performed, ‘Married Life’ from Up to a rapt audience. Mehdi Aoustin-...

"READY PLAYER ONE" ARRIVES ONTO DIGITAL DOWNLOAD JULY 23, AND 4K ULTRA HD BLU-RAY, BLU-RAY 3D, BLU-RAY AND DVD AUGUST 6 M y favourite movie of the year so far is the Steven Spielberg adaption of Ernest Cline's epic story, "Ready Player One."  It's one of those movies that has to be watched more than once mainly because there are so many popular culture references packed into the two hours and nineteen minutes.  Thankfully, due to the imminent home release of "Ready Player One" we will be able to pause the movie whenever we notice one of those references. The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray disc of “Ready Player One” will feature Dolby Vision HDR that dramatically expands the colour palette and contrast range and uses dynamic metadata to automatically optimize the picture for every screen, frame by frame.  If you own a 4K TV and player, then you are in for a visual treat. It's not just the visual that gets the extra special treatment as the 4K...

Ow!  Ouch!  Stop it!  Steven Spielberg playing around with two fake cobras on the set of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The Bearded Trio - The Site For Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, John Williams and a whole lot more. THE BEARDED TRIO ON FACEBOOK THE BEARDED TRIO ON TWITTER THE BEARDED TRIO ON GOOGLE+ THE BEARDED TRIO ON PINTEREST CLICK HERE FOR FACTS ON STEVEN SPIELBERG CLICK HERE FOR FACTS ON GEORGE LUCAS CLICK HERE FOR FACTS ON JOHN WILLIAMS

Hey!  it's normally Chewie who doesn't get the joke.  Laughing it up on the set of Return of the Jedi.

Steven Spielberg is a household name worldwide, but here are some facts you may not know about the man himself. While filming Close Encounters, Spielberg had been receiving reports of a guy who was running around L.A. pretending to be him. The imposter had been getting people to pay for his dinners, and had been giving Steven a generally bad name. Steven was upset, so he took an ad in The Hollywood Reporter: “To the gullible and defenceless: The man walking the streets of Los Angeles is not Steven Spielberg. Steven Spielberg is in Alabama, making Close Encounters of the Third Kind. At least do not allow this sad fraud to make you pay for dinner. This year, Steven Spielberg can afford a meal.”   When Spielberg first showed John Williams a cut of Schindler’s List, Williams was so moved he had to take a walk outside for several minutes so he could collect himself. When he returned, he told Spielberg he deserved a better composer. Spielberg’s reply? “I know, but they are al...

ANT-MAN AND THE WASP Starring Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Pena, Hannah John-Kamen, Laurence Fishburne, Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfieffer Directed by Peyton Reed Reviewed by Paul Gibbs   Out of Four To say Marvel has had a great year so far would be an absurd understatement. After all, in 20 years only two other films managed to out gross Titanic at the U.S. box office, and Marvel has already done it twice this year. The first of these blockbusters, Black Panther, was a masterpiece. The second, Avengers: Infinity War was an incredibly entertaining event movie that still felt more like a season ending cliffhanger with an unsatisfying ending to me (sorry, I didn't cry at the "deaths" of characters who already have their next sequels scheduled for release. And I've been known to cry at 33 year old Golden Girls reruns.) Marvel's third 2018 venture, Ant-Man and The Wasp, isn't going to come close to matching the grosses of the first two. An...

Is it Retro? If you follow me on this site or Facebook then you will know I'm a big fan of retro toys especially vintage Star Wars.  I've always considered the original figures from 77 to 84 being classed as vintage.  But having just come back from London Film & Comic Con I see a number of stalls now classing the 1997 range, The Power of the Force as being retro.  It made me feel old but I guess its 20 years old so what do you think?  Should we class this range of Star Wars toys as retro? Anyway, today's photo of the day is an advert for The Power of The Force advertising the fact it was 20 years since Star Wars came out.  Think of that?  20 years ago they were advertising that. Rob "Feeling old" Wainfur @thebeardedtrio The Bearded Trio - The Site For Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, John Williams and a whole lot more. THE BEARDED TRIO ON FACEBOOK THE BEARDED TRIO ON TWITTER THE BEARDED TRIO ON GOOGLE+ THE BEARDED TRIO ON PINTEREST...

WON'T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR? Starring Fred Rogers, Francois Clements, Betty Aberlin,  Joanne Rogers and Yo Yo Ma Directed by Morgan Neville Out of Four Reviewed by Paul & Patrick Gibbs If you grew up in or near our generation, there's a good chance that Mister Rogers' Neighborhood was an important part of your childhood. It certainly was for us. And while Fred Roger's sweet and kind persona seemed in his later years to be most often referenced in pop culture through roasting, there has been a resurgence of love for the venerable host. And it's much more than just the nostalgia boom of anything '80s or '90s kids loved as children: there's a recognition that Rogers is the perfect personification of everything our current troubled society is missing. He's not the hero we deserve (we don't come close to deserving him,) but the one we need right now. And Morgan Neville's documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor? is a spellbinding...