Ray Harryhausen 1920 - 2013, Gigantic Pacific Rim Banner, The World's End Trailer, J.J. Abrams Video Interview, How Marvel Assembled Its Cinematic Universe Infographic

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This Week... Friday. The final frontier. These are the latest activities of the website Empire Online. Its continuing mission: to interview movie folk of note (this week, J.J. Abrams and composer Harold Faltermeyer ), to explore strange, new movies (in our The World's End trailer breakdown), to seek out new features and new competitions, to boldly podcast where no one has podcast before (with the Star Trek screenwriters and writer/director Jeff Nichols of Mud, this time). Yes, Star Trek Into Darkness is out this week and we're knocking back a Romulan ale in celebration, as well as bringing you Star Trek features galore and continuing our massive soundtrack celebration with a look at the decade-defining efforts of the 1980s. So whether you're a doctor or a bricklayer, come on over and check it all out. Helen O'Hara Deputy Online Editor, Empire

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Ray Harryhausen Has Died The special effects genius was 92 Gigantic Pacific Rim Banner Online Go big with Del Toro's new film Michael Caine Heads To Interstellar He's back with Chris Nolan

The World's End Trailer Blasts Online We've been patient, waiting through the first poster, the pics of the main cast in action (well, arm-action in the pub) and a week's worth of Twitter teasing (thanks) from crafty scoundrels Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright and Nick Frost. Now the moment of truth is upon us with the arrival of the first trailer for The World's End, AKA the final bite of the unofficially-titled Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy. More: Gravity Trailer Lands Houston, they have a problem... Disney Unveils Big Hero 6 Footage Marvel meets anime. Captain Phillips Trailer Sails Online Tom Hanks gets hijacked. Ender's Game Trailer Arrives Asa Butterfield learns to fight aliens. The Butler Trailer Walks Online Forest Whitaker serves up history.

Speakers made from whiskey casks, courtesy of Bushmills Live 2013.

My brother doesn't have a dark passenger, and I'll kill anyone who says he does. Phil wonders why we talk about the De Semlyen Dark Passenger so much.

J.J. Abrams Talks Star Trek Into Darkness J.J. Abrams is the man that brought you Felicity, Alias, Fringe, Lost, Star Trek, Super 8, Mission Impossible III and now Star Trek Into Darkness. He's also the fellow Disney have tapped up to make Star Wars: Episode VII, but it's no big deal or anything. Speaking to the producer / screenwriter / actor / composer / director at the Star Trek Into Darkness junket recently, Empire talked to him about, um, Star Trek Into Darkness, as well as the current state of play of the Portal and Half Life projects, not forgetting his secret weapon for Episode VII... The Empire Podcast #60 Star Trek Into Darkness is out, so it's time to talk Kirk-y. And who better to do so than the writers and producers of the film, namely Bryan Burk, Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof? Also in the interviewee's chair is the director of Mud, Jeff Nichols, who explains how he made a movie where Matthew McConaughey keep his top on. Sort of. The 20 Soundtracks That Defined The 80s This week Empire's massively enormous celebration of movie music rumbles mightily on and into the '80s. It was the era where new talents made the synthesiser king and old favourites like John Williams, Vangelis and John Barry produced some of their best work. Time-travelling skateboarders, homesick aliens, fighter jets, big boulders and a little dirty dancing... it's all here. Harold Faltermeyer On The Making Of The Beverly Hills Cop Soundtrack A Teutonic - or should that be tunetonic - wizard of synth-based electronica, Harold Faltermeyer made waves with his work on the Bruckheimer/Simpson mega-smash Beverly Hills Cop. He talked to Empire about getting his big Hollywood break and how he had Crazy Frog's Axel F as his ringtone until "it got annoying". Danny Elfman On The Making Of The Batman Soundtrack Danny Elfman's long-standing collaboration with Tim Burton hit a high point on Batman but it wasn't without drama. "It was my great test of fire," the composer tells Empire in a fascinating, insightful interview about the 1989 Batbash. Harold Faltermeyer On The Making Of The Top Gun Soundtrack We quizzed him on providing those naval aviators with their soaring synthesiser and stirring power-rawk accompaniment in Tony Scott's movie. Find out how the Top Gun Anthem came together, what it was like to work with Giorgio Moroder, and whether he ever find out where they were going in Destination Unknown. Expanded Universe: Star Trek The first original Star Trek tie-in novel (i.e. not the novelisation of an existing episode) was Spock Must Die! by sci-fi legend James Blish, published in 1970. Since then there have been hundreds of Trek books, expanding the canon into new adventures for the TV and film crews, and characters we've never met off the printed page. In many ways, Star Trek's expanded universe set the model for the others that followed. To detail every single story would be the work of an encyclopaedia, and obviously there are tonnes of Original Series, Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise novels. But with JJ Abrams boldly going Into Darkness this week, here's a guide to the multi-part spin-off series you might not be so familiar with... The Evolution Of The Star Trek Uniform Even leaving aside all the spin-off series and Next Generation films, the Starfleet uniform of the original Enterprise crew has changed considerably over the years. From the brightly coloured and iconic looks of the '60s through the neutral monstrosities of The Motion Picture and back again, this uniform is more than just something for Captain Kirk to shred so he can better show his manly chest. We called our fashion expert, Hello Tailor's Gavia Baker-Whitelaw, to talk us through the history of the Enterprise style... The 15 Most Exciting Movies At Cannes 2013 The Cannes Film Festival is one place in the world you're safe from the latest Scary Movie clusterbomb - outside the Marché, at least - and it kicks off on May 15 with films, fanfare and more glad-handing than a jazz-age version of Fingermouse. Empire will be there, hob-nobbing with cinema's great and good, lily-padding from yacht to yacht, and generally getting the buzz on the festival's movies, big and small. Here are 15 we'll be keeping a particularly beady eye on. Empire's World's End Trailer Breakdown How's this for several slices of fried gold? The teaser trailer for Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's The World's End, the third and final part of their Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, dropped onto the internet this morning with the explosive force of a well-hurled pack of pig snacks. It sheds much light on the movie, which sees Pegg, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman and Eddie Marsan play five childhood friends who reunite after 20 years to take on an infamous pub crawl, only to find that it puts them right in the middle of what seems to be an extra-terrestrial, and very apocalyptic, assault on mankind. Can the old friends keep their foamy heads, and make it to the final pub, The World's End, before the world ends? Infographic: How Marvel Assembled Its Cinematic Universe Do you lose track of who's who and what's super-what in the Marvel universe? Are you unsure where Phase 2 begins and ends? Well, worry no more! In a handy diagram form we've figured out the links between the films and the way the universe has opened up since Iron Man kicked things off. Clue: The Avengers is a big nexus point. When Empire Met Ray Harryhausen This article was originally published in 2012 following an interview with Ray Harryhausen, and serves now as our tribute to the late special effects legend, allowing him to talk us through his groundbreaking career. An unremarkable trip along the Central Line takes you to Holland Park, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, in West Central London. And in a typically large but deceptively anonymous Holland Park corner townhouse... live the monsters... John C. McGinley Remembers Platoon Now perhaps best known as the ferocious Dr Percival Ulysses Cox on Scrubs, John C. McGinley's career has been a long and varied one, often involving the ferocious Dr William Oliver Stone. The start of that particular relationship was Stone's 1986 autobiographical Vietnam tragedy Platoon, which, if it wasn't quite the high-profile, inmate-run asylum that Coppola's Apocalypse Now had been, nevertheless shot in the shadow of some serious political ructions in the Philippines. The gruelling four-month schedule took its Kurtz-like psychological toll on its small battalion of actors, and if McGinley has since emerged to fame and fortune in a comedic role, his tour as Sgt. O'Neill was no joke at all. "I'm very proud of Platoon," he tells Empire, "but at the end of it I was done. I was done." James Nguyen Talks Birdemic: The Resurrection 2010's Birdemic: Shock And Terror set out to be a terrifying environmental fable, setting deadly flocks of vultures and eagles loose on San Francisco. Instead, blighted by wooden acting, primitive effects, sound issues and bizarre subplots, it became an internet sensation, celebrated as an inadvertent comedy masterpiece. As Patton Oswalt puts it, "It's like everyone in it escaped from that lodge in Twin Peaks." As the (slightly) bigger-budget sequel arrives, shifting the avian chaos to Los Angeles, we talked to Vietnamese writer-director James Nguyen to get the low-down on all things Birdemic...

Steven Soderbergh doesn't drink coffee, but likes builder's tea. After the death of Moriarty in Sherlock Holmes, his henchman Sebastian Moran set up an organisation called THRUSH, which became the bad guys in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. And Guy Ritchie's directed both! To do a "J-turn" in a car, you need more flexible wrists than you'd think. The spectacular opening shot of Aguirre Wrath Of God, with a long line of people descending a steep mountain, was shot in only one take. There's an American wine distributor called Peetr Cellars.

Sushi cats? Um... OK? Riker sits down funny. Walmart fail. The cost of being Iron Man. If you have any timewasters to share, then e-mail them in to us.

Star Trek Into Darkness If this is Abrams' final frontier, he has left Star Trek in a good place, both in the fictional universe and as a franchise. In some sense, the title is misleading. Into Darkness is a blast, fun, funny, spectacular and exhilarating. The rule of great even-numbered Trek movies continues. Also Out Mud Mud, glorious Mud. A Hijacking Borgen on a boat. The Reluctant Fundamentalist The American nightmare. Village At The End Of The World Greenland-set documentary. Our Children A family affair. This week's video trailers and clips. Every week, our video player will update to show trailers and clips from the week's movie releases listed above.

The Impossible You can take issue with its overly Anglicised approach to an international tragedy, but there's no denying that this rousing, superbly acted, no-holds-barred melodrama is a mighty feat of physical filmmaking. Also Out Billy Liar Pants on fire. Quartet Dustin Hoffman picks up the baton. Alex Cross He is, you will be too.

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