Movie Editor's Blog

Wanna know how to survive the apocalypse? Get a job.

If Hollywood’s morbid fascination with the end of the world has taught us one thing, it’s that being ordinary helps your chances.

Tom Cruise’s post-apocalyptic repair man in ‘Oblivion’, out this week, now joins Bruce Willis’ ‘Armageddon’ oil rigger, John Cusack’s ‘2012’ limo driver and Kevin Costner’s postman in, well, ‘The Postman’, on the list of blue-collar folk who survived disaster movie Doomsdays.

We set our Joe on the case to investigate the trend, and whilst he’s at it, maybe get a job too…

In the world of movie spin-offs, anything’s fair game. Even your childhood.

In ‘G.I. Joe: Retaliation’ (that’s Action Man to us Brits), out this week, classic action figures are morphed into actual people. Like Bruce Willis, and The Rock.

Does exactly what it says on the tin? Not really.

So, in this week’s Home Movies, our Joe investigates the toy spin-off trend, to find out just why Hollywood wants to get its hand on your childhood.

And, if Transformers and Battleships can do it, why not Monopoly? Or even KerPlunk?

Now there’s an idea…

In the new cartoon adventure ‘The Croods’, early human history was a riot that featured zany animal sidekicks and brightly-coloured scenery.

In reality, our Homo sapiens ancestors’ lives were blighted by disease, violence and quite possibly cannibalism. Not great material for a DreamWorks kids flick.

That’s why we love cartoons. They take awful situations, such as fratricide within lion prides, or stepmother abuse, and turn them into jaunty, musical stories that always have a happy ending. But how do they do it? Joe Wilkinson investigates...

Maybe it was a case of being in the right place at the right time. Maybe it was destiny.

Whatever the reasons, David Hasselhoff has inexorably linked with one of the most iconic and memorable moments of the 20th century - the fall of the Berlin Wall.

[Related story: The rise and fall of the Berlin wall]

The star of 'Baywatch', 'Knight Rider', and more recently 'Dodgeball' and, umm, the ‘Keith Lemon Movie', has this weekend aligned himself with a campaign to keep one of the last remaining sections of the wall from being moved by developers who want to make way for access to a new luxury housing development.

Hero returns... the Hoff, back at the wall he destroyed (Credit: Rex Features)

“It's like tearing down an Indian burial ground. It's a no-brainer,” he said.

“This last piece of the wall is really sacred. It's about people and it's about hearts that were broken, hearts that were torn apart and lives that were lost. That's what we're talking about today, not a piece of real estate.”

It was a typically emotive message from The Hoff.

But why has a man better known

Ridley Scott's iconic 'Blade Runner' didn't quite grab the imagination of its producers during its early screenings back in 1981.

Thanks to some purportedly original screening notes from executives Jerry Perenchio, Bud Yorkin and Robin French of Tandem Productions, we can see precisely what they thought of it after watching some of the early cuts.

[Related story: New Blade Runner project a sequel]

Blade Runner... early cuts weren't well-received (Copyright: Imgur)

Perenchio was among the most damning of the film, proclaiming: “This movie gets worse every screening.”

Much work still needed to be done, it seems, before its release the following year, with plot and dialogue described as 'confusing', and the film up to the death of replicant android Zhara damned as being 'deadly dull'.

While all the producers had their own views – largely negative – all seemed united in their hatred of Harrison Ford's controversial voice-over.

Under 'general comments', the VO is described as 'an insult'.

“Why is this voice-over track so terrible,” asks Perenchio.

The magic of the movies. You can’t beat it can you? Certainly not with “real” magic anyway – just look at Paul Daniels.

[Related story: Exclusive: Burt Wonderstone Vegas ad]
[Related story: Sam Raimi reveals amazing magic skills]

This week, our Joe takes a look at upcoming conjuring comedy ‘The Incredible Burt Wonderstone’, starring Steve Carell, Steve Buscemi and Jim Carrey – asking why is it the movies make magic look so, well, magic.

Yahoo! Movies has got the inside scoop on Tom Cruise’s spectacular new sci-fi blockbuster ‘Oblivion’.

In our exclusive behind-the-scenes video the Hollywood superstar, along with director Joseph Kosinski, discuss the origins of the story.

Watch the video below:

Set in 2073, it sees Cruise star as one of the last drone repairmen stationed on earth, which was destroyed by a war with aliens 60 years before (wait, that’s this year!).

[Related video: Watch the 'Oblivion' trailer]

He’s about to leave, when he rescues a young woman (played by Olga Kurylenko), who forces him to reconsider the alien war, what happened to earth, and whether he actually lives in a police state. We’re also looking forward to seeing Morgan Freeman play a 102-year-old-leader of a resistance movement.

With nods to classic sci-fi from the 70s, director Joseph Kosinski described it as “a sci-fi adventure that spans two different worlds and two different times. It's epic in terms of its scale and scope, but it's a