"THIZIZINNACARGH!!!"

Hey look, here's that final "Dark Knight Rises" trailer that's supposed to be stuck in front of "The Avengers" prints. Good news: Bane's voice doesn't suck now. Bad news: Batman's still does.



Yup. That's that movie alright. And a decidedly solid trailer to boot - definitely leaning hard on the "this is serious drama" button.

Are we finally going to see (competent) hand-to-hand fight scenes in a Nolan Batman movie? ...probably not, but the trailer is kinda hinting at it at least. I DO really like that so much of this seems to take place in the daytime, it's a nice switch - although... huh. Y'know, if the big setpiece action scene of this is also a big goodies vs. baddies brawl in the middle of New York  Gotham... that would really kind of suck for Nolan and company.

You Should Go See "The Avengers"

I won't be running a full review of "The Avengers" until this Friday's "Escape to The Movies," but the review embargo seems to have dropped (it's already opened for half the planet) so I'm happy to drop a few thoughts on the matter (after the jump) and offer that the already-posted full reviews from Drew McWeeney, Devin Faraci and (he's back!) Neill Cumpston pretty-much sync up with my own. (note: some reviews and this post after the jump contain ellusions to events in the movie a MINOR spoiler of something that doesn't seem to have ever been meant as a secret, i.e. the name of the alien bad guys, but if you insist on waiting until literally the first minute of the movie to hear it you've been warned.)


Short version: I don't know that it's the best movie about superheroes ever made, as "Spider-Man 2" "Dark Knight" and the '78 "Superman" loom pretty large in that regard. But "The Avengers" it's easily the best "Comic-Book Superhero Movie" ever made in terms of bringing the genre itself to the screen - undilluted, uncompromised and, finally, unashamed of itself.


Some other observations:

• This is The Marvel Universe, it's world(s), it's characters and it's rules translated into a live-action feature film as faithfully as possible; and by that virtue fairly or not it will immediately become the superhero movie by which all others will be judged and, in the immediate, probably found wanting. The subsequent Marvel movies are going to have to work a lot harder than they had been before (excluding "Captain America") to measure up to this, and I'd imagine that it will cause a lot hand-wringing for the producers of the too-far-along-to-rework "Man of Steel" and "Amazing Spider-Man;" and while the Nolan Batman movies are so much their own seperate thing form the rest of the genre (at this point it feels like even having the main character still BE Batman is a begrudging courtesy on the filmmaker's part) for a comparison it's hard to imagine "Dark Knight Rises" NOT being regarded as the runner-up in the innevitable punditry matchups.
• Worries about Iron Man dominating the movie? Shelve them. There's a lot of Tony Stark in the movie (he is, after all, "the funny one" and good for exposition) but in terms of the action beats and screentime Iron Man is more of a combination comic-relief/deus-ex-machina figure: He's there to deliver a quick-fix and land a punchline for the most part; with Thor as the serious one who keeps things on track, Hulk as the wildcard and Cap as the overall MVP.
• It's kind of genius that Samuel L. Jackson's role as Nick Fury mainly utilizes his gift for solemn, forboding delivery and straight-faced just-the-facts-isms, as opposed to the "angry, ever-shouting black police captain" cliche it could've easily been.
• If there's one innevitable "down-side" to just how good "Avengers" is, it's that it can easily be seen as the ultimate vindication of a "The Fanboys Were Right" outlook on such things - pretty much every risky/offbeat thing that makes the film work as well as it does, from the inter-film continuity to the source-faithful aesthetics to the hiring of Joss Whedon amounts to what comic fans have been clamoring for for decades. It's going to be very hard for any adaptation of a "geek" property to jettison an awkward genre/continuity relic or rework a costume/design-element without getting a tidal-wave of "It worked fine for The Avengers!!!" in retort. In other words, we've probably heard the death-knell of "Nolanizing" genre-properties - for good or for ill.
• Mark Ruffalo is the best Bruce Banner since Bill Bixby, and this Hulk is the best Hulk period. I like the Edward Norton one and I still think Ang Lee's oddball interpretation is criminally underrated; but this is the first time anyone has really pulled-off the idea that while being Bruce Banner is scary and sad... being The Hulk looks like fun. I do not envy the parents of small children the night after they see this movie.
• Jeremy Renner is VERY good as Hawkeye, but I still say they should've given him something more interesting to wear. He looks underdressed whenever he's with the other Avengers, and frankly even his ridiculous "classic" purple gear is no sillier than some of the "why would he even HAVE THAT!?" trick-arrows he busts out. (Warner Bros. is either going to very happy or very sad about their in-production "Green Arrow" show after seeing this.)
• Chris Evans was very, very good as a more deeply-characterized version of Golden Age Captain America; but he's phenomenal as a literal live-action translation of Silver Age "man out of time" Captain America. His one-line off-the-cuff appraisal of Thor and Loki is a perfect piece of writing from a character standpoint (though I think some folks will misinterpret it.)
• Speaking of perfect writing, the long-in-coming payoff to the lingering question of Bruce Banner's "secret" to keeping The Hulk in check is one of the best pieces of Banner dialogue ever uttered in any version of The Hulk in any medium ever.
• I know Marvel is back and forth about what to do with The Hulk after this (is that TV show still happening?) but someone needs to sign Ruffalo for at least more in-universe cameos yesterday. The instant chemistry and snappy rapport he has with Robert Downey Jr. as Stark is the best surprise of the whole production.
• One of the great benefits to bringing the "rules" of comic book storytelling into the movies is that, as it turns out, the "shortcuts" carry over, too: The film's brisk pace is aided by an almost gleeful pulling of the "A Wizard Did It" trigger; with what might otherwise have required tedious exposition often being handled in short conversations that boil down to: "Wait, plot-hole?" "Oh, handwave/phlebetonium/magic/cosmic, of course."
• Loki is a great choice for an innaugural bad guy, especially because he's still essentially the same "type" of bad guy from "Thor" - angry, crafty and more invested in manipulation and game-playing than big-scale supervillainy. This is necessary, since everybody knows that in superhero team-ups the good guys MUST be made to fight eachother in as many combinations as possible before they all fight the bad guys - otherwise how would we find out "who would win?"
• It is soooooooooooooo fucking refreshing to see a superhero movie where the characters joke around and the movie is allowed to be funny without it feeling like self-parody (the Schumacher Batmans) or obnoxious (what we've seen of the new Spidey's cringeworthy comedy-routine.) For me, the first two Raimi "Spider-Man" movies were the gold-standard for "takes itself seriously but knows when to go for the laugh" superhero narrative, but this overall surpasses them in that department.
• One thing that DOESN'T happen that I was kind-of hoping MIGHT happen: Captain America being able to lift Mjolnir. Probably for the best - might've taken a bit too long to explain to people who skipped "Thor" why that's a big deal, and as it is Cap already gets like four or five "Yeah, I'm the guy" moments.
• More than one person at Warner Bros. is taking a second look at the Joss Whedon "Wonder Woman" script they passed on a few years back right now.
• It'll be really interesting to find out, when the dust settles, just what DID happen in the conception of the alien army that shows up for the big finale. In the film they're called Chitauri (the "Ultimate" name for The Skrulls) but they don't have Chitauri/Skrull shape-shifter powers and they don't look like either creature or any other recognizable Marvel alien. Supposedly the shape-shifting was part of the leaked script that was around awhile back, and the Skrulls rumors were "fact" for awhile, so it almost feels like they went into shooting intending for these to be Skrulls  and then had to switch it around later on when the legal quagmire surrounding those characters proved untenable. Either way, all the "what are they?" silence has led a lot of people to assume their identity is some kid of important secret, when in reality we learn their names offhand within the first minutes of the film.
• This is probably the closest to recognizably human (as opposed to unbelievably-sexy-alien-unfamiliar-with-emotion) a performance as has ever been coaxed from Scarlett Johanssen. That's not to say she's ever been "bad" (far from it) but she finally appears to be from this plane of existance.
• "Iron Man 2" is probably still the least of the Marvel movies, but the payoffs in this film to some of the smaller character beats and worldbuilding it got into are good enough to make that film a whole "star" better.
• Traditional Marvel mid-credits surprise? Yup, and it provides the most definitive answer possible to "how the HELL do they plan to top THAT?"

Escape to The Movies: "The Raven"

It's crummy.

Intermission: Not as crummy.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Raven

Silver Age Ends For Warner Bros.

Incredible.

Deadline reports that megaproducer Joel Silver is out at Warners - he no longer has a production deal with the studio vis-a-vi his Silver Pictures and Dark Castle labels. This may not "read" as much if you don't follow "the industry," but on the inside rest assured this is major, epic, end-of-an-era, Fall Of A Titan stuff. Most modern-day producers are lucky to last more than a year in one deal; Silver had been at Warner Bros. since the early 1980s and was seen as "old school" even then: a hard-living, harder-partying, opulence-favoring eccentric infamous for harraunging his employees and his employers into risky gambles with big payoffs - so goes the legend, he gave The Wachowskis, then virtual-nobodies with one movie under their belt, damn near carte-blanche to make "The Matrix" based on little more than the (then) brothers introducing him to Anime and a promise that they could deliver that style in live-action.


If you came up watching action movies in the mid-80s/early-90s, Silver was responsible for a HUGE amount of what you likely absorbed: He backed the original runs of the "Lethal Weapon," "Die Hard" and "Predator" series, plus one-off hits like "Commando," "Demolition Man" and "The Last Boy Scout."

Not everything he touched was gold, though, and his willingness to role the dice on oddball projects like "Hudson Hawk" and "Speed Racer" along with a legendary bluster made him plenty of detractors. Over the last decade he'd made most of his money in the realm of low-budget horror via the Dark Castle imprint, though he still found room to throw his clout behind hard-sells like "Kiss-Kiss Bang-Bang" and "Splice." He also spent a decade trying to get a live-action "Wonder Woman" off the ground, only to lose the rights when Warners decided to take the various DC franchises back from individual producers a few years ago.

All told, Warners has probably been trying to find a way out of the partnership ever since "Speed Racer" bombed; but this is still pretty big stuff. Whatever he does next (another studio? independent production?) will be a major story whenever it breaks.

Are We Really Having This Discussion?

Via The AVClub
The big topic at CinemaCon - the combination Movie Theater trade-show / tech-demo / footag-showcase - this year was the debut of the 48fps digital projector technology for "The Hobbit." Second biggest? Apparently theater chain owners are having a serious discussion about whether they should allow people to text during movies to increase ticket sales.

The obvious answer for any respectable person is NO; but that we've come to the point where this is even a serious question is telling about just how much closer we inch toward Idiocracy every day.

The population has become so obscenely bloated - in multiple senses of the term - that the stupid, ignorant and inconsiderate now have so much power as a "market demographic" that lowering the standards to entice them back into various establishments is seen as a necessary business decision.

I will GLADLY pay a higher ticket price to attend a theater that forcibly removes talkers, phone-users and other wastes of tissue from the building; and I know I'm not alone. If Michael Bay's America wants to text during the movie, let them do it at home - and if the ticket prices have to rise and the Theatrical Experience has to become the province of elite cinephiles and hardcore film-geeks who don't mind paying extra for the privilige... so be it. I've had enough.

BREAKING! Breitbart's Boors Bash Brony Beehive!

Ah, good. Here's my entertainment for the weekend.

Kurt Schlitcher, a contributor to the late Andrew Breitbart's paranoid-loner feeding-trough masquerading as a "Conservative" movie-blog "Big Hollywood," has caught up with the year-old phenomenon of "Bronies" (adult/male fans of the "My Little Pony" reboot)... and has decided they're a threat to America, masculinity and Western Civilization.

Money quote from Schlichter:

"As sickening as it is, we can’t just ban grown men from acting like idiots because we disapprove of their lifestyle choices – after all, we aren’t progressives. It’s still a free country – coincidentally due entirely to the efforts of men and women who put aside childish things to contribute to society instead of feeding at the trough and then sitting on their expansive backsides as they eagerly clap like seals at the antics of colorful cartoon steeds."

Yegh. Now, I'm not a Brony myself - it's a clever show, not really my bag, I lean in more of an "Adventure Time" direction, etc - but I "get" why it's popular, why it has it's surprising adult/male fanbase (I'm talking outside of it's place in the cartoon-fetishism realm, different discussion) and so on. But even if I didn't care for the series, this sort of thing boils my blood.

The tiresome fixation of "cultural conservatives" and "traditionalists" on binary gender-divisions in popular culture - the nonexistant "War on Boys," the fringe of "Men's Rights Activism," the resistance to anti-bullying legislation ("it's not bullying, it's how boys learn to be MEN!"), the terror at the "feminization of society" - it's all part of the same last-ditch backlash fueling the activist anti-abortion/contraception movements, the resistance to gay marriage and the campaigns of clowns like Rick Santorum: The last remnants of the Bad Old Days lashing out as it dawns on them that their anachronistic patriarchy and all the social, religious and cultural superstitions that went with it are crumbling... but still alive enough to do damage on their way down.

As I said, I may not be a Brony; but I've seen how well that particular fandom can mobilize when it gets it's dander up about something - and while I've had my differences of late with The Internet (and do NOT endorse illegal/harassing behavior) I can think of few cultural-entities more worthy of It's attention than Schlichter and the rest of the noxious Breitbart Clique...

So, then, HERE'S the original article.

HERE'S "Big Hollywood," the main website on which it appeared.

HERE'S Breitbart.com, the central hub from which BH originates.

HERE's where you'd contact the site.

Oh, and Kurt Schlichter is on Twitter @KurtSchlichter

And lest you feel that maybe giving Breitbart.com and/or "The Bigs" a headache over this one stupid article is a bit silly, remember - they were also behind THIS. Gotta love the New Media...

We Are Abandoned

Remember Pizza Hut UK's "Hot Dog Pizza?" Well, Pizza Hut's Middle East branch aims to do them one better: The "Crown Crust Pizza" isn't filled with cheeseburgers - it IS cheeseburgers. And it's topped with what are essentially Big Mac fixin's:



Here's what grabs me about this ad, though - the way the main customer guy treats "Let's order a burger in a pizza place" as a knowing, obvious joke at the restaurant's expense. It suddenly dawns on me... have I been reading this "obscene versions of American food originating in foriegn territories" trend wrong by assuming Pizza Hut etc. is using my overseas friends as labrats for future domestic product? Are y'all actually ordering/making food that looks like a perfect parody of American excess at American restaurants as ironic parody; i.e. a chance to "role-play" as a stereotypically gluttonish American fast-food consumers ("Ha ha! Look at me! My food is made of different food! Let's go get a SUV and vote for Palin!") in much the same way that American chinese food establishments decorate themselves like Fu Manchu's hideout?

Because, if so... that's pretty damn funny. Applaud yourselves ;)

Big Picture: "Future Assembly"

One more "waiting for 'Avengers'" episode before I actually finally see the damn thing.

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Future Assembly

Cobra is Blackwater in New "G.I. Joe 2" Trailer

"G.I. Joe: Retaliation" has a new trailer, which answers some questions as to how much of the story from the (unfairly-maligned, IMO) original film is actually being continued here. Answer: A whole bunch.

It also makes it clear that it will continue the first film's anti-private-military-contractor theme; with Cobra (formerly "M.A.R.S.") now emerging as a Blackwater-esque force brought in ostensibly to protect the U.S. from the (framed) "traitorous" Joes.

Will "Machete" Battle Mel Gibson?

In case you've been living under a rock, Mel Gibson seems - at long last - to finally be near "the bottom." I've long rejected the idea that there could be (or need to be) anything 'wrong' with him other than garden variety anti-semitism and Christian whackjobbery, possibly exacerbated by alcoholism... but you can't listen to that Joe Esterhasz tape and not conclude that there may actually be something profoundly broken in the way this guy is wired - he could very well have a serious mental illness.

In any case, he's in deep shit career-wise: "The Beaver" tanked, his new movie is going straight-to-DVD, nobody wants to make his Viking movie and the Maccabees project is almost-certainly dead. At this point, he's only slightly more employable than Lindsay Lohan or Steven Seagal... and, appropriately, he may next be going exactly where they did: A stunt-casting guest-spot in an in-betweener Robert Rodriguez "Machete" movie.


Yeah. Not a joke. Deadline reports that Gibson is close to signing on for an unspecified role in the sequel "Machete Kills," which is supposed to involve Danny Trejo's titular vigilante being conscripted by the U.S. and Mexican governments to stop a druglord's plan to launch a rocket into outer space because... whatever, it's "Moonraker" but with Machete. I'm wondering if they plan to keep playing the political angle from the first movie - tongue in cheek or not, setting Machete up as striking back against the then-raging anti-immigrant fervor in the U.S. did a lot to elevate the film above the usual Rodriguez grindhouse homage schtick.

FWIW, Rodriguez said in the past that his grand plan was for "Machete 3" ("Machete Kills Again") to be a "space opera." I'd kind of love it if he was serious, and the "space rocket" stuff in this one led to Machete winding up on an alien world a'la Flash Gordon or John Carter at the very end. If nothing else it'd "go" nicely with Rodriguez next big planned movie after this and "Sin City 2;" a live-action remake of the Ralph Bakshi/Frank Frazetta collaboration "Fire & Ice."

Random Thoughts 4/22/12

People seem to remember "Summer Rental" more, but "The Great Outdoors" is the superior John Candy Goes On Vacation movie.

A "Late Shift"-style movie chronicling the collapse of "Chapelle's Show," Dave Chapelle's subsequent career-immolation and they way both (briefly) led to the otherwise-inexplicable elevation of one-joke-wonder Carlos Mencia to "stardom" would be a thousand times more interesting and funny than any YouTube clip from either series that people insist is "a classic bit" and "still totally holds up."

There have never been enough video games where you play as a non-human, non-biped character.

(more after the jump)


It is, with rare exception, bad form to "go after" the families/spouses of political candidates. However, it is an unavoidable truism that Mitt Romney's kids look/act just like the bad guys in "Disturbing Behavior."

Reading that sentence is the first time anyone has thought of "Disturbing Behavior" in over a decade.

Are Harvey Danger and Nada Surf still recording/performing? I'd like to know, just not enough to actually google it.

The secret to Ron Paul's political viability is that The Internet has made it possible for all the young people with that special combination of being nonempathetic enough to be "conservative" before turning 30, paranoid enough to believe a 1984-style dictatorship is still a remote possibility yet far too comfortably class-sheltered to rock the bunker/militia/seperatist scene to find eachother.

If the rules in "Inception" really are meant to be a metaphor for Christopher Nolan's approach to creating/maintaining audience-immersion in filmmaking, then "The Dark Knight Rises" will be 3 minutes long - ending immediately after Mario Cotillard appears out of nowhere and shoots Christian Bale in the face after having uttered one word in his ridiculous Batman-Voice.

The Internet will go waaaaaay to easy on "The Amazing Spider-Man," way too hard on "The Man of Steel," and will not "own up" to either case until at least 2016.

The reason that glam-metal/cock-rock/butt-rock/arena-rock etc. "went away" is that hip-hop went mainstream and filled in the "aggressive/self-mythologizing/hypermasculine/teen-male-anger/music-to-enter-the-stadium-to" niche. There's a sociology paper in there, somewhere...

If you honestly do not "get" why the "Obama eats dogs!" meme is blatantly fueled by an undercurrent of oldschool xenophobia, "other-ism" and - yes - racism; while the "Romney put his dog on the car roof!" meme is at worst a mountain/molehill situation... I don't know that I can help you.

Every member of the mainstream Entertainment Press who is legitimately SHOCKED that "Think Like a Man" opened at Number 1 this weekend is basically admitting that they don't have very many black friends and/or are not nearly as attuned to the popular-culture outside of their own "niche" of it than they probably assumed they were.

Escape to the Movies: "Detention" & "Lockout"

Now with EMBEDS! (below)

Warning: "Intermission" includes MASSIVE SPOILERS for "Cabin In The Woods."

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Detention & Lockout

ESCAPIST EXPO ANNOUNCEMENT

The Escapist is putting together a convention of it's very own: The Escapist Expo.

The event will be held in Durham, NC from September 14 to 16. Among those scheduled to attend include Yahtzee, Jim Sterling, Graham and Paul from LoadingReadyRun, Gavin Dunne and myself. In what "capacity" will we be there? Stay tuned.

Looking forward to see folks there!

Big Picture: "Hercules - Part II"

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Hercules Part Two

Not Needed

Oh goody - "Need For Speed" is making the jump to the big screen.

For those keeping track, the score is:

ZELDA: No movie.
SUPER MARIO BROS: One insignificant movie, two decades ago.
METROID: No movie.
MEGA MAN: No movie.
METAL GEAR: No movie.
CASTLEVANIA: No movie.
FINAL FANTASY: Two movies, one bad one just-okay-as-fanservice.

But "Need For Speed?" Oh yeah, let's film the FUCK out of that. Egh...

Friends

Many congratulations are in order to fellow Boston film critic Wesley Morris, who just won this year's Pulitzer for criticism. The occasion reminds me that a few other local associates of mine have things going on worth promoting - something I generally don't do too often on this site but will gladly make an exception for in these cases:

Daniel M. Kimmel - onetime head of the Boston Society of Film Critics, genre film/lit expert and teacher - is nominated for a Hugo Award this year for his published collection of essays "Jar-Jar Binks Must Die ...And Other Observations About Science Fiction Movies." Well worth your time.

And while I'm here, I also reccomend checking out Ian Pugh's academic examination of "The Dark Knight," "The Faces of Gotham" - now available in e-book format.

"Iron Man 3" Shoots In China

This is getting interesting.

The big question-mark of the "Iron Man" franchise (before anyone knew about The Avengers plans, at least) was always how it was going to deal with the fact that the character's most (only, really) noteworthy villain was The Mandarin; a villain who while interesting in his own right is pretty-much a "Yellow Peril" caricature left over from the hero's heyday as a Cold War commie-smasher.

The first film teased his existance with a terrorist cell called "The Ten Rings" (Mandarin augments his "magic" with borrowed alien technology housed in ten rings) whose leader was obsessed with Ghengis Khan. Sir Ben Kingsley (who is half Indian and has played Eastern characters in Ghandi and Prince of Persia, among others) has evidently been cast as IM3's main heavy, though Marvel was quick to say that he was NOT playing The Mandarin.

BUT then the casting-call went out for Asian and Middle-Eastern extras, and now the film is going to the trouble of lensing in mainland China, so it's not too difficult to imagine some element of that will come into play. It's possible to do versions of dated characters like The Mandarin and make them work - David Lo-Pan is a memorable example, though that was 20 years ago...

Japan's "Amazing Spider-Man" Trailer Doesn't Suck

Hat-tip: Latino-Review

Seriously! Take a look:



No, but for real the actual one is finally the piece-of-marketing-that-doesn't-suck I'd been waiting for on this movie...



MUCH better, no? There's still plenty I'm not sold on here - Spidey's terrible new costume, the webshooters as guns, the tone, the missing-parents mystery, hints of heroic predestination, the too-tidy "everything leads to OsCorp" plotting, the on-the-nose casting (Sally Field as a concerned mother-figure? Way to think outside the box!), the whole lost-parents backstory, The Lizard still looking incredibly crappy, etc - but at least this is a well-cut trailer for something that might look pretty decent... if only I could forget that it's a pointless, licensing-rights-driven, bean-counter-mandated reboot of "Spider-Man."

I can't quite place the male voice of who that is telling Peter he needs to "look within" for answers about his parents/self/powers(?) etc. It doesn't sound like Ifans, Sheen or Leary; and we already know that J Jonah Jameson isn't a character in this, so... who is it? Quickie guess: It's a yet-to-be-officially-announced Norman Osborn, and this dialogue is coming from his nigh-innevitable "Joker Tease" reveal at the end of the movie.

Escape to the Movies: "Cabin In The Woods"

Go. Go see. Go see NOW.

I'm also very proud of this week's "Intermission."

And hey, here I am on a PAX East panel!

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Cabin In The Woods

"Looper" Trailer

Rian Johnson's (late of "Brick" and "The Brothers Bloom") scifi movie "Looper" finally has a trailer:



Premise concerns future mobsters who dispose of victims by zapping them 30 years into the past, where specialty hitmen called Loopers whack and dispose of them (the guys aren't supposed to exist yet and thus register as just another John Doe is, I'm assuming, the logic in that.) Joseph Gordon Levitt is the Looper of the title; whose most-recent assignment hits a snag when the intended victim (Bruce Willis) turns out to A.) have an escape plan and B.) actually be himself from the future. I'm gonna guess the idea is that "you will at some point off your elderly self" is something Loopers agree to (hence the hoods so they don't know when it happens?) and the origin of the name.

Killer idea, hope it works.

"Avengers" LA Premiere Buzz Is... GOOD!

Naked hit-baiting? Not above it.

"Avengers" held it's Los Angeles Premiere last night, and LA journos took to the (apparently not-embargoed) Twitter right after to opine. The verdict, thus far, seems immensely positive.

The reliefs. I has them all.

Here's DEADLINE'S report, which is mostly business-side, but there you go.

Here's Jeff Wells, complaining about not being invited to screen a movie he's already sure he'll hate (gotta love this guy, seriously)

BAD's Devin Faraci posted his and other people's Twitter reactions. I'm hesitant to post this one, since he drops what may or may not be a SPOILER (I'm told it's a REALLY early one, if so) but if you don't fear such things there you go.

Paul Dini's Twitter Feed Said: "Just arrived home from #THEAVENGERS premiere with mind blown, shit lost and a smile that won't leave my face. The superhero movie perfected."

There's also early word that the customary Marvel Studio's "wait for huge next-movie-reveal after credits" rule is in effect, though so far no one has spoiled it that I've seen. (I've a reasonably good idea what it might be based on years-old rumors, but my lips iz sealed.)

Before anyone asks: No, I don't know when I'll be seeing it. If you think that dissapoints you, just imagine how *I* feel ;)

Body By Michelin

Here's Batman and Catwoman from "Dark Knight Rises" on the cover of the new Entertainment Weekly. I hate to sound like a broken record here, but the "Nolanverse" costume/character designs - Joker excluded - just keep looking worse.

Yeah, yeah, "haters gonna hate;" but just LOOK at those monstrosities - they look like they made their suits out of old tires. I'm sure the movie will be fine, but between these two and Bane it'll be fine in spite of how bad everyone looks. Ugh.

Untold Tales

I'm not sure why this story hasn't yet gotten more attention today, but "Amazing Spider-Man" director Marc Webb has confirmed to MTV that the film isn't just re-telling the title character's origin story... it's re-writing it, too. More after the jump:

Speaking to MTV, Webb delivered the "headline" story that - as pretty-much everyone has been guessing since the first teaser - the mystery of what happened to Peter Parker's biological parents will form the background continuity of the (hoped-for) new series. But buried amid the quotes was this doozy, which seems poised to confirm some of the speculation that came out of the "sizzle reel" presentation back in February:

"This is probably a reveal," [Webb] said, "but there is no wrestling match in this movie. The character is evolving in a different way. It's about finding a balance between iconic elements of the 'Spider-Man' mythology—like how Uncle Ben's death transforms him emotionally—but it happens in a different way."

No Wrestling? Well, okay, maybe a necessary concession to reality - unlike the early 60s, people pretty-much know that pro-wrasslers don't generally issue take-on-all-comers challenges to random folks off the street now. But the circumstances of Ben Parker's death - shot by a criminal who pre-vigilante Spider-Man had earlier let escape - strikes me as one of those perfect/necessary details you just can't change without essentially creating an entirely different character. Then I think back to some educated-guessing Badass Digest's Devin Faraci did back when the aforementioned "sizzle reel" showing took place. Said Devin:

"There’s one more thing I took away from this footage presentation: I’m worried that Uncle Ben’s death is changed. In the footage Ben has to come to school when Peter gets in trouble for humiliating Flash Thompson using his new powers. He tells his nephew that because of this incident, he had to change his shift at work. I am willing to bet that this shift change leads to his death in some way. But the footage (which felt really comprehensive) doesn’t have Peter using his powers to make money, or a scene where he lets a criminal go. Could Ben’s death just come from the shift change? That would be a massive disappointment, as the set-up of his death in the original origin is, frankly, perfect. Again, there’s not enough to know, and I’m not against this film changing up things to find its own identity, but not having Ben killed by a crook Peter let get away is like having Bruce Wayne’s parents killed by a drunk driver. It just doesn’t work."

Sigh. Still waiting for something significant about this movie to look interesting/optimistic without some kind of gigantic caveat.

Big Picture: "Hercules - Part I"

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Hercules Part One

Watch "Conservative" Assholes Rip Into Mike Wallace

Here are three things that are more or less constant in terms of how I view the world:

1.) There are essentially two kinds of people: THINKERS and BELIEVERS.

2.) The previous statement refers to the manner in which one looks at the world, NOT necessarily to whether or not one is a "person of faith" - though, obviously, there are some incidenta correlations.

3.) While the situation may have been different in the past, Believers haven't been doing much in the way of long-term good for the world in a long, long time; and today they function almost exclusively as a series of annoying roadblocks holding the rest of the world back from a better future.

Anyway...

When right-wing muckraker Andrew Breitbart passed away suddenly earlier this year, the mainstream news outlets that he'd made a career of slandering with bogus "bias" charges bent over backwards to be generous and recall the good points of the guy; partly out of deference to his grieving family, but also perhaps in the knowledge that his legion of ill-informed followers - Believers who'd absorbed the ridiculous mythology of the Liberal Media Boogeyman whole - were poised to descend upon them en masse if they did otherwise.

Try to keep that extension to goodwill in mind, as you read the comments from Breitbart's acolytes posted on this Breitbart blog post announcing the death of actual journalist Mike Wallace.

Some choice samples from the comment thread:

"A charming socialist is still a socialist."

"Obama has one less vote now."

"A shining member of the mentally retarded left-wing liberal mainstream media, the people who conspired and lied, AND CONTINUE TO CONSPIRE AND LIE, in order to advance an equally retarded left-wing liberal agenda, an agenda that CREATED America's Second Great Depression.
Good riddance to bad rubbish."

"WHAT EVER! Sorry for Chris, lost his Dad but all this nonsense about this liberal knucklehead being legendary is so much baloney."

"Wallace personally caused SeeBS to be involved in several costly lawsuits by his skewing of the facts(remember Gen William Westmoreland) . Wallace was a commie ideologue, plain and simple. Every a$$clown on "60 minutes" was, whether it was Wallace, Ed Bradley, Morley Safer, and worse of all, Andy Rooney."

"Wallace was a sham. He refused to go after hard left figures(he once refused an assignment to interview Bill Ayers in 1974), yet some of his harder-hitting "stories" turned out to be somewhat less. Like most media, he was a commie ideolgoue first, and it showed in his reporting."

Adorable.

For all the nonsense about "voter fraud" currently slithering through the media - both as a desperation-gambit to suppress Democrat-leaning voters during the election and fuel the accusations of Obama's illegitimacy after - it bothers me a hell of a lot more that some of these people are actual voters. Churchill may have been correct when he called Democracy may be "the worst form of government except all the others;" but forgive me if I seem increasingly less romantic about a system that holds the governing input of the ignorant and the paranoid "equal" to that of the intelligent and the rational.

Has Superman Gotten New Powers For "Man of Steel?"

Patrick Sauriol's revivified Corona Coming Attractions has a rumor up purporting to describe the trailer for "The Man of Steel;" which many are presuming (still without a shred of real evidence) has been secretly constructed for a surprise debut in front of "The Dark Knight Rises." It reads a little fishy to me, reading like a fanfic made up from guesses about the context of the more well-known set reports and "spy" photos, but if it is legit then the trailer is set to reveal that the film will be giving Kal-el some value-added features to go with the usual Faster/More-Powerful/Able staples.

Learn what it may be (and polish up your "hurr durr Zack Snyder likes to mess with the camera-speed" jokes) after the jump:


THIS COULD POSSIBLY BE A TINY SPOILER

The alleged breakdown says that the trailer includes the expected montage of Young Clark Kent learning to use his powers, and that one of these scenes depicts him "...spinning a pencil in the air using telekinesis." Yup, that would be new.

Assuming for a moment that any of this is legit, my guess would be that "telekinetic levitation" isn't so much an entirely "new" power as it is part of a way of explaining the mechanics of one or more of the other powers (i.e. "this is how he makes himself levitate/fly"); a to-be-expected result of having the must-provide-explanations-for-every-damn-thing Nolan Brothers producing and working on the screenplay. Either way... I honestly don't have a problem with this.

Superman's power-set has pretty-much always been ill-defined. Originally, he just did whatever a normal human could do only MUCH better - he didn't fly but rather just jumped insanely high, he could see through walls because his eyes were just that strong ("heat vision" was literally "I can look at you so hard it BURNS!") and he was even super-smart to boot. While over time it evolved into the specific-powers-manifested-in-Kryptonians-via-exposure-to-radiation-from-Earth's-yellow-Sun form we know today, throughout the Golden and Silver Ages Superman would routinely sprout outlandish new powers "just because;" a tradition that carried over into the earlier movies with... mixed results, to say the least:



So, yeah. Telekinesis? I can roll with that. Now let's just see a trailer for the damn thing so we can get a sense if this is going in an "Avengers" or an "Amazing Spider-Man" direction...

Escape to the Movies: "The Raid"

It's good. Go see.

"Intermission" talks with the director of "Detention."

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : The Raid

COME SEE MOVIEBOB AT PAXEAST 2012!

I'll be starting my weekend-long stint at PAX East tomorrow afternoon. If you see me around the floor, feel free to say hi - in addition, I'll be featured at the following two panels on Friday night:

6:00 PM - "BLANKETY BLANK PANEL" (Manticore Theater)
A gamer/geek centric version of The Match Game. Should be a blast!

10:30 PM - "ESCAPIST MOVIE NIGHT" (Wyvern Theater)
Escapist editors, Shamus Young, the LoadingReadyRun crew, The Space Janitors, myself and others present select episodes of The Escapist's most popular shows (including some never-before-seen new stuff!) preceded by a live Q&A.

See you there!

"Show Her 'Yer Chevron Card!"

The big question of the "Ted" trailer was "is this funny without the profanity?" The general-release trailer says: "Pretty much, yeah;" though it does appear to have the "you have now seen the whole movie" problem...



I like the red-band better, less for the profanity and more for how great the build-up/fake-out/payoff reveal of Ted plays out; but this one obviously does a better job explaining the "E.T./Hobbes/Elliot sticks around and becomes the immature holding-you-back buddy from an Apatow movie" premise - which I still think is kind of inspired. I really hope they've already licensed a Talking Ted, because that will be a big grown-up gift later this year...

I can't decide if it's more of an asset or flaw that this is so clearly the Seth MacFarlane Comfort-Zone in live-action - i.e. Ted/Whalberg are so very much Peter/Brian or Stan/Roger, Kunis turning up and Patrick Stewart doing his best Patrick Stewart Narration parody - but the bear legitimately cracks me up. Plus, it looks like they went to the New England Aquarium, so that's pretty awesome.

Spider-Man Is An Asshole In "Leaked" Clips

People have been uploading what look an awful lot like unfinished scenes from "The Amazing Spider-Man" unlocked from a Kelloggs promotion to YouTube, and they look... not very good. Not very good at all. But, again, they also look unfinished, so maybe the benefit of the doubt is in order. The Escapist points me to a set that has all three together:



Yeah... that's pretty painful.

I'm willing to consider, until proven otherwise, that the "messin' with a mugger' scene is presented extremely out-of-context; i.e. that maybe this movie's version of "I was a self-centered wrestler first" is "I started out as a massive douchebag." Because otherwise... wow, that is show-stoppingly horrible stuff as presented here. Set aside the fact that stand-up-comedy-Spidey (still) doesn't seem to work in live action - I stand by my original appraisal of "Dane Cook as a Power Ranger" - and whole thing still feels... "off."

It's a weird distinction, I realize, but in the comics/cartoons/whatever Spidey verbally dressing-down the bad guys generally comes off as "playful;" partially because his sense of humor is generally so corny (THIS is the thing Sam Raimi "got" that few others ever do - even when he's Spider-Man, Peter Park is still a total dork.) but also because you're reading it to yourself and can make Spidey sound agreeable to you. Everything about this clip feels exactly the opposite of playful and/or agreeable. Spidey comes off like a bully here - from the awful "stop hittin' yerself"-style douchebag humor to the "come at me bro!" stance and posture. Couple that with the ugly visual scheme (though, again, this is probably an unfinished scene) the still-not-working black eyes and the fucking MUZZLE FLARE on the webshooters (duuuuuuuuuuuude! hardcore!!!) and this continues to look every bit the awful grimdarkedgygritty bullshit version I was soooo relieved we avoided the first time around. BUT... it could be out of context, so who knows?

That bit in the bathroom, on the other hand... you've got decades worth of superhero movies to steal from, and you choose to steal from "X-Men Origins: Wolverine!?"

The Robocop Statue Is Still Coming To Detroit

Remember that joke-that-snowballed Kickstarter project to build and install a life-sized bronze statue of Robocop in Detroit? It fell off a lot of people's radars, but it's still going on and seems to have entered the home stretch - not only have they officially licensed the image from MGM, the foam version of the final product is now being assembled in Canada so that it can be shipped to Detroit and cast in bronze by a local company.

Still to be decided is exactly where in the city the statue will be installed, though the most likely candidate is a private plot of land owned by Imagination Station, which has been a contributing partner to the project from early on.

I know that a lot of people find this whole project to be in bad taste, i.e. non-Detroit-residing film nerds putting a statue referencing a movie about a crime-ridden future dystopia up in a city currently facing a very real crime-ridden present dystopia; but I say the more the merrier to pop-iconography like this. New York could use a Spider-Man or Ghostbusters statue, while we're at it...

In Which I Return To The "Post-Movie Podcast"

Boston-area film criticism mainstays Steve Head and John Black graciously invited me back to their "Post Movie Podcast" show (which you should ALL totally be downloading and "liking" on iTunes HERE) to talk "Wrath of The Titans," "Mirror Mirror," "The Raid" and other sundry things. Embed after the jump:

Big Picture: "Shell Shock"

Because I'm not done talking about TMNT reboots, apparently.

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Shell Shock

Red-Band "Ted" Trailer Is "Toy Story" As R-Rated Bromance

I'm the guy on the Internet who doesn't reflexively hate Seth MacFarlane. His shows can be hit-or-miss, but he's ridiculously talented in his own right and when he's "on" he and his 'family' of writers/actors routinely pull off some great stuff. In any case, he's now branched out into feature films; and his debut feature - shocker! - centers around a lovable jerk whose best buddy is a thing-that-should-not-talk-or-act-like-a-human-and-yet-does voiced by MacFarlane himself:



The "big idea" is that it's the hypothetical sequel to every "boy and his magical friend" story ever: Mark Wahlberg's character wished his Teddy Bear to life as a child, but now it's two decades later and his "magical adventure pal" is now his "magical perpetually-adolescent-troublemaker-who-gets-in-the-way-of-his-relationships pal."

I think it looks hysterical. I love that Ted's design is just "basic bear," and MacFarlane-alumni Kunis is always fun in these things.

You Will Forget This "Total Recall" Trailer Before It Even Ends

I'm not really bothered by the idea that the remake of "Total Recall" evidently doesn't involve Mars or three-breasted hookers. I AM, however, bothered by the fact that the remake of a movie that felt very fresh and visually-unique in it's day is trying so hard to look like just another plug-and-play generic scifi/action movie. Oh well.