Escape to the Movies: "Predators"

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escape-to-the-movies/1861-Predators

Intermission: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/moviebob/7808-An-Open-Letter-to-the-Producers-of-James-Bond

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Proposition Infinity

Part of what's been great about the new Comedy Central era "Futurama" episodes is how familiar everything has been - despite the new network, DVD movie run and "down time," everything has popped back into place like a comfortable old show... save for one difference: There's MORE you can do on cable than network, and the writers seem to have taken the newfound freedom as an opportunity to let loose all the pent-up "M-rated" humor and storylines they couldn't use before - "Futurama 3.0" is a MUCH raunchier, more bluntly-sexual show, even compared to the four movies.

It was a touch jarring, at first - the Zap/Leela-as-Adama/Eve episode was a note-perfect riff on the author-working-out-a-fetish substrata of pulp scifi - but in a way it's a logical progression. One of things that's always struck me about "Futurama" was the way it opted - being one of the only (or just THE ONLY?) successful animated sitcom that's not built around a related family - for a thoroughly modern vision of human (etc) relations: The core group of friends/aquaintances fool around, fall into and out of relationships, have quickies, flings and whatnot... without the story "insisting" that this cause long term problems. Fry and Leela remain on/off friends-with-largely-unrequited-benefits, Amy has been with Fry, Zap and Kiff, Leela and Amy had a "moment" while transmuted into fantasy-avatars... okay, so basically it boils down to "everyone gets at least one up-to-bat with Amy," but still it's a decidedly progressive dynamic that you seldom see on ANY TV, let alone animated, and I dig it.

But seeing it come to some kind of "head" in last night's ep, "Proposition Infinity," was pretty remarkable: Bender and Amy is the sort of character-hookup that makes perfect sense only after it's been done, and spinning it off into a social-satire riff as Bender attempts to legalize "Robosexual Marriage" turned out brilliant. Honestly, the whole thing would've been worth it for: "I'm a pre-op Transformer."

I love this show.

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SGC 2010

Here's a question I never would've imagined I'd have an answer to: What does it feel like to have beautiful women dressed up like anime/video-game characters asking YOU for a photo and autograph?

Answer: It feels pretty fucking awesome.

Honestly, easily one of the top ten weekends of my life. Meeting fans from as far away as England and Portugal, signing autographs, doing a panel with Spoony, GPX and the Life & Level guys, hosting my own Q&A panel, watching it get fuller with time and being applauded for broad references to "Babylon 5", being invited up onstage with the ACTUAL ScrewAttack crew, improvising a "debate" with The Game Underthinker, meeting Keith Apicary, Brentalfloss, The Angry Nerd and the whole crew in the flesh, being treated like a goddamn rock star - or, at least, moderately-noteworthy musician - for posting jokey videos on the internet... EPIC. There's just no other word for it.

More in-depth type stuff to come but, for now... wow, just wow.

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How old is Spider-Man, again?

(FYI, I'm doing this from Dallas right now - at the ScrewAttack Gaming Convention, which is pretty damn awesome so far.)

Anyway, the most frequent reaction people are having to yesterday's casting of Andrew Garfield as the new Spider-Man is how old he is - he's 27 - compared to everyone else they were looking at to play what was supposed to be a high-school aged version of the character?

Well, you might want to hold your horses: In his writeup of the story, HitFix's Drew McWeeny (http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/2008-12-6-motion-captured/posts/breaking-sony-pictures-announces-andrew-garfield-for-spider-man) drops some information that's certainly news to me (if, in fact, it's news at all.)

Sez Drew: "What we're hearing now though is that Parker starts the series as a college student, and that makes more sense with this casting."

So... College-age would mean... the same as the previous movies, just with new actors and an indie rom-com helmer standing in for Sam Raimi? Or is it still "Twilight" with Spider-Man characters? I'm having trouble deciding which bad idea I hate more...

"Spider-Man: The Quest to Retain Movie-Rights" is scheduled to suck in 3D on July 3rd, 2012.

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Escape to the Movies: "The Last Airbender"

It's not good.

It's also not AS bad as you've heard.

But yeah, it's very very not good.

If it makes money, Shayamalan might be "back" jus because he'll have "proven" he can handle an FX-driven feature. If not... yikes.


http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escape-to-the-movies/1849-The-Last-Airbender

"Intermission" has more elaboration about Twilight and such: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/moviebob/7779-The-Problem-With-Twilight

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HEADLINE! Andrew Garfield To Become Most-Hated Man In Movie-Geek Universe!

Figures this would come when I'm trying to get some pre-flight sleep...

Whatever. British actor Andrew Garfield, best (only?) known to moviegoers as Anton in "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus," is Sony and director Marc Webb's choice to play the hip, happenin' new Peter Parker in their fast-tracked, quick-n-cheap reboot of "Spider-Man." For those who haven't been keeping track, the new film will rewind the story back to High School and rework it into a "Twilight"-style teen romance soap.

This is unfortunate, since Garfield has struck me as a pretty good actor so far - in other words, not deserving of being associated with this pending atrocity - but also somewhat depressingly-funny in at least one sense: On the "celebrity scene," Garfield was at one point best known for being frequently mistaken for another actor...

...named Robert Pattinson.

In other news, it continues to be sincerely hoped that everyone for whom Tobey Maguire doing a silly dance for about a minute in "Spider-Man 3" was the worst thing that ever happened in the history of anything!!!!! continues to be really, really thrilled.

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Mashup

Yeah, I know this is about a year old at this point...



Are there any of these with Blade?

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