In Marvel film news, the Fantastic Four trailer from ShoWest makes it online (nope, still not feeling it), and there’s more talk of the villains for X3 and Spidey 3: Dark Phoenix and (as I guessed…booyah) The Sandman respectively.
Month: March 2005
Life on Mars, Death from Space.
“I’d give it a 50-50 shot that you could find it somewhere underground. But then that’s a guess.” The NYT surveys the current thinking about prospects of Martian life, and how astrobiologists plan to go about proving or disproving its existence. (To wit, the European Space Agency plans to send an tricked-up rover to the red planet after 2011…hopefully, it’ll get past the Dubya Pentagon’s rash of Moonraker weapons.) Update: In somewhat related news (to the second story), Slate‘s Fred Kaplan assesses the Pentagon’s overly enthusiastic vision for ground-based future tech.
Woody on the Couch.
“Remove Allen from the scene of the contemporary romantic comedy and you get either Hugh Grant’s hollow trysting or Ethan Hawke’s pretentious babbling. (Actually, without Allen’s precedent, Hawke probably wouldn’t be allowed to babble.)” In the new N+1, Christian Lorentzen (a friend of mine from college days) writes on Melinda, Woody Allen’s castration anxiety, and Melinda.
Keira Fett.
Bounty hunter Keira Knightley gets backup from Mickey Rourke, Delroy Lindo, and Lucy Liu in the new trailer for Domino. This looks like a standard helping of grainy-flashy Tony Scott hokum, but Donnie Darko writer Richard Kelly’s presence is an X-factor.
Send in the Clones.
In case you missed them on the Cartoon Network, all twenty-five episodes of Genndy Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars are now available online. Season 2 in particular, involving General Grievous’ invasion of Coruscant, apparently leads right into Episode III…and they’re at least as entertaining as Attack of the Clones.
The F-Chip.
“I might as well be reading tabloids out of the grocery store…Anything to get a rise out of the viewer and to reinforce certain retrograde notions.” Sam Kimery, a former Republican precinct captain, builds and markets a device that blocks FOX News from infecting your television. Looks like Christmas will be easy this year.
Hairy Potter and the Girls of Goblet.
A French website obtains a number of new Goblet of Fire images courtesy of Premiere Magazine. Besides Harry and Ron in their shaggy late-Beatle phase, they include looks at new characters Rita Skeeter (Miranda Richardson) and Fleur Delacour (Clemence Poesy.)
Puppets of Industry.
“Fortune 500 companies that invested millions of dollars in electing Republicans are emerging as the earliest beneficiaries of a government controlled by President Bush and the largest GOP House and Senate majority in a half century…Bush and his congressional allies are looking to pass legal protections for drug companies, doctors, gun manufacturers and asbestos makers, as well as tax breaks for all companies and energy-related assistance sought by the oil and gas industry.” In the stating the obvious department, the Washington Post discovers the Republicans are in the thrall of corporate power.
Rooms in New York.
“Even before he had established himself as a delineator of New York places, the artist had already pinpointed a New York state of mind. That state is not so much ‘loneliness,’ as the maudlin cliche about him would have it, but a tougher and more unsparing isolation that touches on the traps of modern urban existence, one in which individuals must become inured to life’s insults and injuries.” Art critic Avis Berman previews her new book on Edward Hopper’s New York for the Sunday Times.
Hammer Blows.
“The point is, the other side has figured out how to win and to defeat the conservative movement, and that is to go after people personally, charge them with frivolous charges, link up with all these do-gooder organizations funded by George Soros, and then get the national media on their side.” Boy, I wish it were that simple. Boss DeLay comes out swinging against the Dems, who he blames for everything from Terri Schiavo to the separation of church and state…oh, yeah, and his multiple ethics and fund-raising violations too.