Photo: EFCC arrests man for failure to disclose $207,000 at the Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport
The Kano state zonal office of EFCC arrested Sani Abdullahi, at the
Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport, for money laundering offence.
Abdullahi was arrested on board Ethiopian Air enroute Kano to China,
for failing to fully declare the sum of $207,000 (Two Hundred and Seven
Thousand Dollars) in his possession, to the authorities.
He declared the sum of $86,000 (Eighty Six Thousand Dollars), but
concealed the sum of $121,000 (One Hundred and Twenty One Thousand
Dollars). The concealed sum was discovered after he was searched by
operatives of the Commission. It is an offence contrary to the Money
Laundering Act 2011 (as amended).
The suspect has been granted administrative bail and will soon be charged to court.
"Like its hero, it's the kind of film that surveys the strangeness in
front of it, flashes a smile, and dives right in. And if it stays in
the water a bit too long—well, I'd still come back for a sequel."
Critics like Mashable's Angie Han concede that Aquaman
isn't without its barnacles, but contend the flick is at least worth
the price of admission. Others are denouncing the DC Comics' tentpole as
an irrefutable, outright flop.
The Jason Momoa and Amber Heard-starring adventure tackles the origin
story of the Justice League's trident-wielding hero, taking viewers
into the seven kingdoms of Atlantis and entrenching them in ocean-dwelling politics.
Plot-wise, the result is a hot, foamy mess, my friends,
but a mess that washed over me like a tidal wave, a mess so wild and
candy-colored and eager to have a bitchin’ time that it’s some of the
most fun I’ve had at a theater this year, anchored by a Momoa who is
having the time of his goddamn life and director James Wan‘s genuinely
gorgeous vision of an entire universe under the ocean waves.
A lot of “Aquaman” suffers from logic gaps, even on its
own slippery terms: How come Mera can breathe oxygen, but other
Atlanteans can’t? Why does a normal flare work underwater? How on earth
does a gun transform water into beams of “energized plasma”? Audiences
keen on pure escapism won’t bother with such distracting quandaries, but
they reflect the lack of care for developing a fully realized world. As
with much about the DC universe, the whole thing is hobbled by
carelessness, which might not hurt box office receipts but certainly
doesn’t ensure the long-term appeal of the brand.
A “Baywatch” alum who bulked up considerably before “Game
of Thrones” re-launched his career, Momoa is now a swollen muscle
builder with a pro-wrestler physique that reflects the body-worship
appeal of vintage comicbooks, in which these brightly colored characters
were essentially hyper-idealized figure studies, bordering on indecent
in their skintight uniforms. Whereas previous DC stars have relied on
well-padded costumes to supply their abs and pecs, Aquaman puts the cod
in codpiece, so to speak, and the movie isn’t shy about ogling his
bulges at every opportunity.
If you hadn’t already been taken with Momoa’s Aquaman in Justice League, you will be after Aquaman. Momoa
delivers the kind of hammy performance that shows a supreme
self-confidence — or just suggests that he is having a ball. His jovial
attitude is infectious, spilling out through the screen and daring you
not to crack a smile when he cheekily delivers lines like, “Permission
to come aboard?” Sadly his infectious attitude doesn’t extend to the
majority of the cast, who are given the task of playing straight men to
Momoa’s hotheaded fighter.
Director James Wan's success here is up for debate
Hiring James Wan is the key to Aquaman's success. The Conjuring
director fearlessly embraces everything that comes with the hero,
figuring out how to effectively stage underwater action, and
choreographing impressively fluid fight sequences both on the land and
in the sea. Water is integral to Aquaman's story, and I'm certain there
came a point when Wan got sick of everything having to be so wet on this
set. But this movie plunges us into Aquaman's realm, and it's supremely
effective.
There was never a question that at this stage in
Hollywood’s comic-book economy that every superhero would eventually get
his or her own standalone blockbuster. Even Aquaman. But Wan, a
director who’s proven himself to be a can’t-miss ace regardless of genre
(from the horror formulas of The Conjuring and Insidious to the big-budget tentpole mayhem of Furious 7)
seems to finally be out of his depth. He’s conjured an intriguing
world, but populated that world with dramatic cotton candy and silly
characters, including a hero who’s unsure if he wants to make us laugh
or feel — and winds up doing neither.
At two and a half hours, Aquaman is long and detailed
There are almost innumerable action sequences in Aquaman,
as if pulled out of a hat on cue to sate the appetites of the gathered
masses. The majority of the time the action set pieces seem quite
arbitrary, no doubt because they are, dictated by the requirements of
the format rather than by some organic, intrinsic narrative need. This
saddles the overlong film with a ponderous, grinding feel, one driven by
a sense of obligation more than the glee of inspiration. Rarely in the
world of superheroes has the thought occurred that less can be more.
It feels like four or five different movies happening at once, not to mention that it playfully winks at legendary films like Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom (via Arthur’s hunt for the trident), the Lord of the Rings trilogy (the trident), The Sword in the Stone (also the trident), and perhaps unintentionally Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again (at one point, Arthur and Mera find themselves in a coastal Mediterranean town, and can’t stop love from happening).
To be sure, there are brilliant, joyous little moments in each of the mini-movies that make up Aquaman,
but there’s also a lot of boredom and muddling along, thanks to all the
exposition they require. Instead of five just-okay movies, I wish that Aquaman was one great one.
That epic underwater fight to the finish is full throttle fun
The film’s finale, the undersea war that was promised, is the first time I can ever remember looking forward
to a giant CGI battle, and I can’t wait until someone recuts it to the
B-52s “Rock Lobster,” Fred Schneider announcing each new fighting sea
creature as it zooms through the deep. Aquaman’s as formulaic,
excessively thrashy, and mommy-obsessed as any other entry in the DCEU,
but its visual imagination is genuinely exciting and transportive, and
dare I say, fun.
In 2009, Disney paid $4 billion to acquire Marvel. Less than 10 years
later, in 2018, Marvel movies accounted for more than half of Disney's
$7.3 billion box office haul.
I'd say that was a good investment, wouldn't you?
In Disney's final box office tally of 2018, just three movies
accounted for slightly more than $4 billion in global ticket sales. Avengers: Infinity War and Black Panther account for the lion's share with $2.05 billion for the former and $1.35 billion for the latter. Ant-Man's global box office of $623 million brought in the rest.
(And in case you're curious: Black Panther had the box office edge over Infinity War in the U.S., $700 million to $679 million.)
Pixar delivered the other big piece of Disney's year. Incredibles 2
made $1.24 billion worldwide, with $609 million of that coming from
U.S. audiences. Nothing else in the studio's slate even came close to
breaking $1 billion, though Ralph Breaks the Internet and Mary Poppins Returns are notably still in release with more overseas openings still to come.
There were some notable misses in 2018. The much-hyped, Ava Duvernay-helmed adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time was Disney's lowest performer of the year, with just $133 million earned globally. And Solo: A Star Wars Story
marked a low point for the series; its global box office of $394
million is lower than that of every other non-animated Star Wars release
to date.
(Star Wars: The Clone Wars is still the reigning champ of
poorly received Star Wars movies at the box office. The animated movie,
which was really just a three-episode arc of the TV series that had been
stitched together, made just $68.3 million in 2008.)
The missed opportunities with Star Wars and Wrinkle were
seemingly just enough to make 2018 the runner-up in Disney's all-time
best box office years. (Not to suggest that $7.3 billion in one year is in any way a bad thing.)
It's hard to top 2016, or really overstate the importance of Star Wars to Disney's business (Solo's misstep notwithstanding). That earlier year was bookended by the Dec. 2015 release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Dec. 2016 release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
The rest of 2016's total — a whopping $7.6 billion — came from a mix of titles: key Marvel releases (Captain America: Civil War, Doctor Strange) and popular animated features like Moana, Zootopia, the live-action-ish The Jungle Book, and, of course, Finding Dory.
The 2019 calendar is likely to hit similar heights, or even exceed them. In addition to Captain Marvel, out in March, the MCU as a whole is headed for a watershed moment just a month later, in April's story arc-capping Avengers: Endgame. It's a similar situation with Star Wars: when Episode IX hits theaters in December, it'll be finishing off a journey that George Lucas started, sans Disney, all the way back in 1977.
Then, in addition to those, we'll be getting three freshened up remakes of Disney classics: Dumbo in March, Aladdin in May, and The Lion King in July. Those will also be joined by a pair of major sequels: Frozen 2 and Toy Story 4.
Disney likes to brag that it's the only studio in Hollywood history
to have made more than $7 billion at the box office in one year. Could
2019's lineup have the juice to push into $8 billion territory?
Big, green, and full of rage, the Hulk is one of the most iconic superheroes in comic book history. But despite his popularity, we've never really gotten a proper Hulk movie. Director Ang Lee tried his best in 2003, but his controversial film is widely considered an abomination. So when The Incredible Hulk hit theaters in 2008 — hot on the heels of Iron Man — hopes were high that Marvel Studios could give Bruce Banner and his smash-happy counterpart some cinematic justice.
At first, it seemed like everything was moving in the right direction, as Marvel had cast Oscar nominee Edward Norton as the mild-mannered Banner. This was the guy from incredible films like Fight Club, American History X, and 25th Hour. If anybody could make a Hulk movie work, it would be him, right? Well, after a tepid critical response and so-so box office results, The Incredible Hulk quickly became Marvel's forgotten film.
Stranger still, by the time the Avengers assembled in 2012, Norton had been replaced by Mark Ruffalo. So what exactly happened? Why was a respected star kicked out of Hollywood's most successful franchise? From paycheck problems to behind-the-scenes struggles, here are the real reasons Edward Norton was fired from the MCU.
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Aquaman slid past Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice on Saturday to become the highest-grossing DC Extended Universe film internationally. Dawn of Justice made $863 million at the global box office – Aquaman is already at $887 million, after just two weeks in theaters.
Though reviews weren't universally positive, many were average (the film has 64 percent on Rotten Tomatoes) and audience response has been favorable. What sets Aquaman apart from other DCEU fare is that it's fun. This movie gets ridiculous and sometimes down right weird, but it's colorful and powerful and just a good time at the movies.
Maybe the lesson here is for DC to take more big swings and let its movies be weird, rather than emulate its grimdark predecessor (Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy) and subsequent Superman or even Wonder Woman films. Aquaman is now in theaters.
Every superhero origin story needs a good hero shot (or several), and from we're sitting, Captain Marvel's looks downright epic.
Some magical combination of posture, costume, and camera angle has
star Brie Larson looking several inches taller than she actually is. Her
red-and-blue suit shines; her steely gaze says she's doing exactly what
she was put on this planet to do. All that's missing is the glowing
hair which, a Marvel producer reassures me and the other journalists
gathered on set last May, will be added in post.
In short, it's the moment the Marvel Cinematic Universe's first solo female lead warrants — even if what she really
deserved was not to have to be the first solo female lead, 21 films
into the franchise. It's that familiar, instantly iconic moment, with a
twist.
Captain Marvel reverses the origin story
Director Ryan Fleck, the MCU's 15th male director, chats with Larson on the Captain Marvel set.
Image: Chuck Zlotnick / Marvel STudios
In
fact, Carol Danvers' whole story is a variation on a tried-and-true
formula. "In many ways, it's a classic Marvel origin story but told in
reverse, structurally," producer Jonathan Schwartz explained to us. "You
meet her as an awesome badass superpowered space hero, and then learn
who the human is behind that aspect of herself."
That journey takes her from the planet Hala, where she is battling
Skrulls alongside Kree soldiers like Mar-Vell (Jude Law) and Minn-Erva
(Gemma Chan), to her home planet of Earth. There, in typical
superhero-movie fashion, she discovers that her forgotten past may hold
the key to the ongoing war against the Skrulls.
Despite all that interstellar intrigue, Schwartz described Captain Marvel as more Captain America: The Winter Soldier than Guardians of the Galaxy. Or, better yet, like a movie from the era of Blockbuster: "It's a '90s action movie, like Robocop or Terminator 2 or Total Recall," Schwartz said.
Carol's comic-book roots get a makeover
Comics fans know, however, that Carol's offscreen history goes back
even further than that. She was first introduced in the '60s a (human)
love interest to Mar-Vell, the original Captain Marvel, and gained her
powers after another Kree kidnapped her to use against him.
It's not exactly the most empowering narrative for a woman in 2019,
which is why the big-screen Mar-Vell and his role in Carol's life have
been updated to suit the times — in the movie, he's Carol's mentor.
"It's interesting to read those books through a modern lens, because
certainly, they were kind of at the edges of the feminism of the era.
But reading them now, as a modern reader, it's like, Wow. You can't do a lot of this,"
said Schwartz. "So there is a lot of homage and there is a lot of
respect paid to those early days, but with a spin we think that
moviegoers are really going to enjoy."
What comic-book readers can look forward to in the movie is a
Carol inspired by Kelly Sue DeConnick, the comic-book writer who helped
define the character as we know her today. "That's sort of become our
North Star in terms of how the character should feel and how the
dialogue and the voice develop," said Schwartz.
Carol is super-strong — and not just because of her powers
Captain Marvel's look is literally fire.
Image: Marvel Studios
What
eventually emerged out of all these influences was a big-screen Captain
Marvel who's not just tough and funny and inspiring but irrepressibly,
unapologetically herself. "We really grounded ourselves in that journey
[...] of somebody who’s kind of discovering her own power and realizing
the more herself she becomes, the more powerful she becomes," said
co-director Anna Boden.
Such is the force of Captain Marvel's personality that in the
third-act sequence we saw being filmed, she was the one bossing around
future Avengers organizer Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson).
"Brie is the most powerful woman in the universe."
As the pair prepare to fight their way off an alien spaceship (which
Jackson cryptically described as belonging to "a doctor from Carol
Danvers' past"), Carol instructs him to "take the Tesseract, leave the
lunchbox" while she runs off to buy him some time.
Though Fury pushes back a bit ("Oh, you're giving me orders
now?"), there's no question of who's in charge here. And when the
aforementioned hero shot follows, a bit later, there's no question of why she's in charge. She's strong, yes — like, most-powerful-character-in-the-MCU
strong — but based on what we saw on set, it's her courage and her
determination that earn her place beside the likes of Captain America
and Black Panther.
In that way, according to co-director Ryan Fleck, she's not so unlike
Larson herself. "Brie is the most powerful woman in the universe," he
laughed. "No, really — her commitment, her dedication, she's just so
fierce. Everything she does is a hundred percent, and it's like this
every day when we're super inspired and awed by her."
Carol's truest friends are the Rambeaus
Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch) and Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) giving off serious Top Gun vibes.
Image: Marvel STudios
But
even a superpowered superhero can only get so far on her own; just ask
any Avenger at the start of any team-up movie. Luckily, Captain Marvel's
got a ride-or-die bestie in the form of Maria Rambeau, a fellow fighter
pilot. The two go way back, even if Captain Marvel can't quite remember
her at first.
It's that former bond that helps Captain Marvel reconnect with her
human past, since seeing Monica triggers something in her. "[Carol] has
these flashes of the feeling, I think, of being herself, through seeing
her friend," said Lashana Lynch, who plays Maria.
That proves crucial to Carol's journey of self-actualization.
"Because there’s being a superhero and not knowing who you are, which is
dangerous, and then there’s know who you are, and then using your
superpower for good," said Lynch. "I think that’s what she’s doing."
Maria also happens to be the mother of 11-year-old Monica — a younger
version of the fan-favorite comic-book character. How the younger
Rambeau will factor into Captain Marvel or the MCU as a whole
remains to be seen; even Lynch admitted she didn't know at this point.
But it seems reasonable to expect big things from this young girl,
who'll be learning a thing or two from her mom and her friend.
... But she meets some more familiar MCU faces, too
Along the way, Captain Marvel will also encounter a few faces that'll
be more familiar to us than they are to her. One is a young Nick Fury,
here a younger two-eyed S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who knows nothing of aliens
or superheroes until Captain Marvel comes crashing into his life.
"Things are changing, the world is changing for him, how he views it
in terms of who we are with respect to the rest of the galaxy, and that
there is a much greater thing out there than who we are and what we
are," said Jackson.
"At some point, we'll find out how powerful she is and all the things that she's capable of."
Another is Phil Coulson, a S.H.I.E.L.D. rookie working closely with
Fury and played once again by Clark Gregg. Not all the returning
characters are so friendly, however; the roster also includes Ronan the
Accuser (Lee Pace) and Korath (Djimon Hounsou) from Guardians of the Galaxy. (The biggest bad is another newbie, though: Ben Mendelsohn's Skrull commander, Talos.)
Where all these MCU connections lead, we may have to wait a while to find out. Schwartz told us in no uncertain terms that Captain Marvel would not move past the '90s. But it's clear our heroine is being set up for a crucial role in May's Avengers: Endgame.
"I mean, [the Avengers are] up against some really, really tough odds right now, we saw throughout Infinity War,"
Jackson teased. "So now we know we need something that's as powerful as
Thanos, and at some point, we'll find out how powerful she is and all
the things that she's capable of. She's one of the few people in the
Marvel universe that can time travel."
What does Captain Marvel mean right now?
And as the Avengers have learned, timing is everything. Which brings
us back to one question that kept coming up throughout the visit, as we
oohed and ahhed over Carol's hero shot or listened to Larson gushing
about her: Why now?
Because Captain Marvel has been so highly anticipated for so
long — by Carol fans, by Skrull lovers, by MCU watchers who just want a
female lead already — expectations can't help but run high, and the
filmmakers acknowledge they're feeling the pressure.
Marvel's first female superhero film, Captain Marvel, also boasts its first female director, Anna Boden.
Image: Chuck ZLotnick / Marvel Studios
Perhaps that's why Boden, who is the MCU's first female director, is careful to stress that Captain Marvel
can't be everything to everyone. "We’re not trying to make this movie
about all women, we can’t make it about all women’s journeys, but just
be really true to this woman’s journey," she said.
That may be the truest way to represent women onscreen: through
individual stories and specific details, rather than through
all-encompassing generalizations. "You know, I'm sure there are movies
for you guys as dudes, that you're like, Whoa, that's so true to my experience," said Larson. "Just know we've never had that."
And if all goes well? We may find ourselves in a world where it
doesn't matter quite so much that Captain Marvel is a woman — one in
which she can "just be Carol Danvers," as Lynch put it. "It enables
young people to know they can use their own strength to get what they
want, and that being a female is a power, not a restriction."
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