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PAGE 6
THURSDAY, MAY 8, 2014
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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FILM
SUMMER BLOCKBUSTERS
Giant reptiles, warring apes and more: this summer in movies
ANDREW HOSKINS
entertain@kansan.com
The summer movie season is almost here, ladies and gentlemen, and you know what that means. Our great nation's big screens will soon be filled with mega-sized monsters, heavy weaponry, bikinis and shots of Tom Cruise sprinting wildly through the grim streets of some faraway city. Let it begin.
Despite the notorious cheesiness of the season, there are some movies coming out this summer that will be worth checking out. We here at the Kansan care deeply about your summer movie experiences and are here to help you navigate through all the cinematic goofiness and find a couple gems. These are the top five movies of the summer:
1 "Bonzilla" (May 10)
Blooming director Gareth Edwards tackles a new movie about perhaps the most recognizable big-screen monster ever to stomp around the streets of Tokyo. Starring notorious-goofball-turned-megastar Bryan Cranston and the super-cute Elizabeth Olsen, "Godzilla" pits the monster against some deadly man-made behemoths. In an interview with The Verge, Edwards promised this will be a "very different monster movie." You really can't go wrong with this one.
2. "Sin City: A Dame to Kill For" (August 22)
Directors Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez are back this time without the help of Quentin Tarantino — with an unexpected new chapter
in the "Sin City" saga. Bruce Willis and Mickey Rourke reprise their gritty roles as Hartigan and Marv, even though both characters died gruesome deaths in the first movie. This one must be a flashback. The film also stars Josh Brolin, Joseph Gordon Levitt and, of course, Jessica Alba. If it's anything like the first — my gut tells me it's practically a shot-for-shot remake — expect two-and-a-half hours of stylized, ultraviolent amusement.
3. "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" (July 11)
We know director Matt Reeves is very good at creating global calamity on screen. Remember Cloverfield? That was him. This one continues the ape saga that Rupert Wyatt started in 2011, and follows the survivors of the deadly simian
plague as they battle the ape leader Caesar. Starring Andy Serkis (Gollum from Lord of the Rings) and Gary Oldman, this one should be intense and very fun. It makes you think about how interesting life would be if you lived in the jungle 24/7 and your survival depended on fighting an ape every once in a while. Doesn't sound too bad to me.
4. "The Giver" (August 15).
Set in some sort of alternate, utopian reality, "The Giver" follows the story of a young man (Brenton Thwaites) who is chosen by a mystically powerful elderly man (Jeff Bridges) to experience the true joys and pains of the real world that you and I live in. This one looks like it could contain some valuable life truths and looks both amusing and very different. Directed by
Philip Noyce, the movie also stars Meryl Streep, Taylor Swift and Katie Holmes. Philip Noyce directs. See it for a change of pace and some deep life insights.
"Edge of Tomorrow"
It's hard for me to wholeheartedly recommend this one, and I'm much less excited for it than the others, but it does look different and potentially pretty entertaining. Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt star as soldiers fighting aliens. Sound unoriginal? There's a twist: Cruise gets stuck in some kind of time warp that allows him to keep dying and coming back to life on his last day in the alien war, allowing him to figure out where he went wrong. Also, Cruise is a grossly underrated actor who commits a nearly unmatched
amount of emotional dedication to his roles. He's often unfairly pegged as a hotshot movie star who can't really act. Just watch "Eyes Wide Shut" or "Magnolia" sometime, then see "Edge of Tomorrow" just for him.
OTHER UPCOMING SUMMER MOVIES
- Edited by Alec Weaver
Friday, May 23
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Friday, June 13 How to Train Your Dragon 2
Friday, June 27 Transformers 4: Age of Extinction
Friday, July 18
The Purge: Anarchy
www.movieinsider.com
TELEVISION
Comcast keeps Olympic rights through 2032 for $7.75B
MCCLATCHY-TRIBUNE
PHILADELPHIA - Over the past several months, officials of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Comcast Corp. secretly negotiated an unprecedented $7.75 billion contract extension to keep the Olympic Games on NBC-TV and NBC-affiliated cable networks through 2032.
The new Olympics deal skipped a bidding process that, experts said, could have brought significantly higher TV rights fees for the six additional Olympic Games.
But the deal also guarantees the Olympic organization billions of dollars even if the global economy tanks, or the market for TV sports rights in the United States cools.
Neal Pilson, a former president of CBS Sports who has consulted on Olympics TV rights bids, said the deal appeared to be an "insurance policy" for an Olympics organization that might fear an economic downturn, as well as a pre-emptive strike by Comcast to extend the Olympics franchise on Comcast-owned NBC.
The IOC initiated the
negotiations, officials said, which spared Comcast from having to bid for the rights against other broadcasters. The $7.75 billion price includes a $100,000 "signing bonus" to the IOC from Comcast.
Comcast already controlled the Olympic TV rights through 2020 after bidding $4.4 billion at the IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, in mid-2011, beating out Fox Sports and ESPN. With the earlier bid and the deal announced Wednesday, Comcast has now agreed to spend more than $12 billion on the Olympics TV rights through 2032.
Beyond the next three Olympics in Rio de Janeiro; Pyeongchang, South Korea; and Tokyo, the Olympics organization has yet to name host cities. The U.S. Olympics organization is considering whether it should attempt to bring the competition to the United States for 2024.
Brian Roberts, Comcast's chief executive officer, said on a conference call from Lausanne that it was "hard to overstate what an exciting day this is for me."
He added, "No one can be sure what the world will look like in 2032," but he said he is
confident that the Olympics will remain a stellar event.
Thomas Bach, president of the IOC, said he broached the topic with Comcast and NBC of extending the TV-rights contract in November, when he came to New York for a United Nations meeting. He then met with Roberts at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, in February to discuss it again, and finalized the deal on Wednesday.
"A happy day for the whole Olympics movement," Bach said. He added that the Olympics are "in good hands with a partner we have full
confidence in."
Sensitive to concerns he might have undersold the U.S. Olympics TV rights, Bach said he believed the $7.75 billion was a "fair balance between knowing your property is in good hands and the financial commitment."
Comcast acquired NBCUniversal in 2011. Now with two Olympics under its belt, the 2012 London summer games and this year's Sochi winter games, Comcast seems confident that it can earn a profit on the Olympics and leverage the games to boost ratings.
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