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"Perhaps surprisingly for some people, our story picks up quite a bit later, eight years after The Dark Knight. So he's an older Bruce Wayne; he's not in a great state." As Tom Hardy's Bane graces the cover of Empire, Chris Nolan reveals an eight-year-time jump in The Dark Knight Rises. Guess it takes time to rebuild Wayne Manor and make a new batcave (and, for that matter, train a ward?) That also means, if Begins was Year One and TDK was The Killing Joke, this could well borrow from The Dark Knight Returns.

In very related news, a possible description of the first six minutes has leaked. Very spoilerish if true, and it might be: Given that this prologue is hitting theaters in a month (before MI: Ghost Protocol), it seems around the time that this might leak. And it accords with the teaser, explains that time jump, and includes Bane's most famous moment...Gonna have to update those medical records. (Last link via LMG.)

Although, let's be honest: Rorschach is more like the original Tea Partier, no? Anyway, it's not just Calvin. By way of Mary Sue, comic book characters weigh in on Occupy Wall Street. Speaking for the 1%: Lex Luthor, Uncle Scrooge, Victor Von Doom, and, my evening alter-ego these days, Bruce Wayne...but he's cool.

'"The Guy Fawkes mask has now become a common brand and a convenient placard to use in protest against tyranny - and I'm happy with people using it, it seems quite unique, an icon of popular culture being used this way."

People should not be afraid of their governments...Speaking of Alan Moore iconography and #OWS, BBC News surveys the subversive popularity of the V for Vendetta Guy Fawkes mask. "[Vendetta artist David] Lloyd says he has already heard anecdotes about police in the US searching for the masks in people's houses to be used as evidence of involvement with Anonymous hacker attacks, 'which is scary but also ridiculous - you wouldn't prosecute someone for having a t-shirt with Che or CND on it.'" (via LinkMachineGo.)

Resolved: Chris Nolan is a sloppy action director. For the prosecution: film critic Jim Emerson, who dissects the second-act car chase in The Dark Knight to explain his reasoning. For the defense: Torque director Joseph Kahn, who similarly dissects Emerson's essay: "This is old film school thought. It's not even oversimplification, it's wrong. It stems from the technological origin of silent filmmaking."

All in all, an interesting debate. In terms of the macro-arguments about film, I find myself leaning toward Kahn: After hundred years of film-going, I think audiences are savvier about the basic syntax than Emerson suggests. But I also agree with Emerson that Nolan is not a particularly impressive action director,and that his action sequences do feel choppy and confusing at times. This is great for something like Batman Begins, when Bats is trying to sow confusion, but otherwise not as satisfying as, say, the truck chase in Raiders.

When Hal Jordan took a bullet for Steve Rogers by being the inevitable middling comic book movie of the season, the path was open for Marvel to go three-for-three this year. And, hey, they pulled it off! Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: First Class is still the most fun and self-assured of this year's comic book crop, but Joe Johnston's Captain America: The First Avenger is another solidly entertaining summer outing, and as good a Cap movie as Thor was a Thor movie. In the end, I probably preferred this film of the latter two, both for its four-color propaganda poster flavor and because I just prefer Cap to the Asgardian -- but it's really a toss-up.

If anything, The First Avenger is more faithful to its titular character, since Johnston, unlike Branagh in Thor, plays this period piece straight, without the likes of Kat Dennings and Clark Gregg providing a security blanket of 21st century irony. Speaking of which, Chris Evans has already shown he exudes star presence in movies like Sunshine and Scott Pilgrim, and he was easily the best thing about otherwise bland comic-book flicks like Fantastic Four and The Losers. But, in the past, he's always skated by on his snark, and I was worried Steve Rogers might be turned into a self-aware, wisecracking Spiderman sort to accommodate that. But, no, Captain America here is noble, earnest, and maybe a tiny bit dull -- exactly as he should be.

In this incarnation as in the original comic, Steve Rogers is a puny kid from Brooklyn whose spirit is willing and flesh is weak: Even as his best friend James "Bucky" Barnes (Sebastian Stans), and seemingly every other able-bodied American male in the borough, head off to fight Hitler and Japan in the Big W-W-I-I, Rogers is rejected from one recruiting office after another for being a tiny, wimpy asthmatic. That is, until a German emigre named Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci) overhears Rogers again trying to serve his country for the umpteenth time. Perhaps, Erskine decides, this brave little man might be the perfect candidate for America's top-secret Super Soldier program, conveniently headquartered in New York City. (Not to be confused with the Manhattan Project.)

It had better work, since Nazi Germany already has a Super Soldier of its own. That would be Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving), a.k.a. The Red Skull, head of Hitler's deep-science division HYDRA. And, while Hitler wastes time "digging around in the desert" (heh), Schmidt has located the all-powerful Cosmic Cube in Eastern Europe, where it had been under guard by Mr Filch/Walder Frey. Now, with his right-hand man Arnim Zola (Toby Jones), Schmidt threatens to use this powerful device to (wait for it, wait for it) take over the entire world. Can anyone stop his dastardly plan? Anyone, anyone? Rogers?

So, ya, pretty standard set-up, of course. Along the hero's journey, Captain America suffers through boot camp (led by Tommy Lee Jones, who's phoning it in but who at least isn't doing his Two-Face schtick.) He gains a costume, a shield, a squad (the Howling Commandoes), and the attentions of a plucky and beautiful British agent, Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell of Cassandra's Dream.) And he learns, more than once, that war isn't a USO show, and that with great power comes great sacrifice...but let's save those spoilers for The Avengers.

Speaking of that forthcoming super-team, there's plenty of chum in the water in The First Avenger for Marvel fans, from Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper here, not Roger Sterling) to the aforementioned Cosmic Cube to a great first shot of Jones' Zola, which pays homage to his four-color incarnation. When it comes to real, not comic-book, history, however, The First Avenger is obviously a bit fast and loose with the era. Several years before Truman desegregates, the Howling Commandoes are a multiracial brigade, and in fact the entire US Army seems integrated. And while Peggy has to put up with some macho bravado, she still seems unencumbered by the sexism of the period.

Still, given that this is a movie about a guy wrapped in Old Glory who continually punches Hitler in the face, the rose-tinted ahistoricism didn't bother me all that much. Captain America is a propaganda vehicle by design -- arguably the best section in the movie has him being taken on a Flags of our Fathers-style USO tour. And like Superman's commitment to truth, justice, and the American Way, Cappy has always been more about who we as a nation should be than who we actually are, so I found myself more willing than usual to forgive the film some well-intentioned anachronisms. If anything, I'm glad The First Avenger didn't choose to make Cap an overly militaristic hero. Instead, he's a unassuming kid from Brooklyn, given great power, whose patriotism mainly consists of just trying to do the right thing.

"Anyone who knows me knows I would never read a comic book. And I would especially never read anything created by Kevin Smith." -- Tim Burton. "Which, to me, explains f**king Batman." -- Kevin Smith. Also by way of a friend, the 30 harshest filmmaker-on-filmmaker insults in history. Some of these are questionable (who cares what Vincent Gallo thinks?), but there are a few gems here and there. "I HATE that guy! Next question." -- David Cronenberg on M. Night Shyamalan. (Director Bowie via here.)

Presumably to get ahead of all the spoilers leaking out of Pittsburgh, Team Nolan release the first official still of Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle in The Dark Knight Returns. What, no cowl? Hathaway says don't worry: "It's Chris Nolan. [E]ven the picture that he released of me, that's not everything. That's like a tenth of what the catsuit is."

Also showing up on the grid of late is out first look at Henry Cavill as Zack Snyder's Superman. Hmmm, ok. The Spidey-like texture is different, but why in blue blazes does Supes have Mitt Romney hair? Booo...

Speaking of Supes and via OsborneInk, the Man of Steel dresses down the Tea Party mentality, circa 1952. Where have you gone, Kal-El? Our nation turns its lowly eyes to you.

In the trailer bin of late:

• If Contagion wasn't enough for 2011, Steven Soderbergh has assembled an impressive cast for some straight-to-video-ish action in the new trailer for Haywire, with Gina Carano, Ewan MacGregor, Michael Fassbender, Bill Paxton, Channing Tatum, Antonio Banderas, and Michael Douglas. It doesn't look all that great, but with Soderbergh and that cast, you never know.


• Speaking of A-list casts down for some B-movie action, Ryan Gosling is a stunt driver by day and wheelman by nightin the red band trailer for Nicholas Winding Refn's Drive, also with Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Christina Hendricks, Oscar Isaac, Ron Perlman, and Albert Brooks. This got great reviews at Cannes, and, like Haywire, I'm intrigued by the personnel involved. But Oldboy has already cornered the market on hammer shenanigans.


• In the not-too-distant future, Justin Timberlake has time on his side -- or does he? -- in the Comic-con trailer of Andrew Niccol's In Time, also with Cillian Murphy, Amanda Seyfriend, Olivia Wilde, and Vincent Kartheiser. The timestamp thing is rather goofy, but Niccol (Gattaca, The Truman Show) is usually good for a smart sci-fi premise. I'm in.


• Luke constructs a lightsaber, Han shoots up a shield generator, and wampas and sandstorms attack in this preview of the Star Wars Original Trilogy deleted scenes, coming soon to a Blu-Ray player near you. Sorry, I think you have to buy the prequels as well to get these.


• And, not a movie trailer per se, but Rick Grimes and the gang are as ready as they'll ever be for another round of the zombie apocalypse in the new trailer for Season 2 of The Walking Dead. I'm more excited about S2 of Game of Thrones personally, but this'll do until the trouble gets here.

Flitting alongside Harry Potter 7.2 this past weekend -- review forthcoming, once I emerge from the backlog -- was the Bane-centric first teaser for Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises, with Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Leavitt, and Morgan Freeman. (Screencaps are here.)

As I said when the poster dropped, it's hard to imagine this one topping TDK, and I could do without all the "every journey comes to an end" marketing pablum here. Still, the moment with Bats in trouble and backpedaling suggests Nolan may be maximizing Bane's potential here.

Before we discuss that colorful, mutant-ridden year of 1962, journey if you will, faithful readers, back to June of 2005: Fresh off the impressive Layer Cake, director Matthew Vaughn decides to beg out of the ultimately atrocious X3: The Last Stand in pre-production, due mainly to the highly-compressed production schedule. In his own words, "'What happened with X-Men 3 was I didn't have the time to make the movie that I wanted to make.'"

And so the studio decided to replace Vaughn with veteran hack Brett Ratner, who, true to form, subsequently delivered an egregious cash-grab of a movie. (To be fair, Ratner's hands were tied by a terrible, death-heavy script that never should've been greenlighted.) Thus was destroyed much of the goodwill Fox had built up with Bryan Singer's X-Men and X2: X-Men United, and the studio's reputation was cemented as the place where otherwise decent comic book properties are squeezed for an opening weekend box office haul and then left to die. (See also: Daredevil, Elektra, and Tim Story's two terrible Fantastic Four films.)

So when news broke in May of 2010 that director Matthew Vaughn would be returning to the X-franchise for X-Men: First Class, Fox's Mad Men-era reboot of Marvel's most famous mutants -- due out the following summer! -- the fanfolk out there had to wonder: Would the consistently solid Vaughn, now with Stardust and Kick-Ass under his belt, actually be able to churn out a high-quality X-film under even more ridiculous time constraints? The answer, happily, is yes. Jaunty and briskly paced throughout, this globe-trotting X-adventure has the comic book energy and sense of fun its predecessor lacked. And even with a bevy of C-lister mutants on the roster (more on them in a moment), X-Men: First Class could very well be the best X-film in the franchise. (It and X2 would have to slug that out in the Danger Room, I think.) If nothing else, it's the second surprisingly solid Marvel film this summer -- let's hope Cap can make it a trifecta.

Just as J.J. Abrams and co. made the best of the Star Wars prequels in Star Trek, one great decision Vaughn and his six-deep story and writing team make is to unabashedly borrow from other genre influences. Vaughn himself has described the movie as "X-Men meets Bond," and that he molded "a young Magneto on a young Sean Connery. He's the ultimate spy -- imagine Bond, but with superpowers." And it works, in part because Fassbender, like the young Connery, has charisma to spare. For the first half-hour or so, it's inordinately good fun watching the young mutant master of magnetism (and languages) channel Bond-by-way-of-Simon-Wiesenthal and scour the globe for ex-Nazis to get payback for his parents (not to mention, in a clever switcheroo, Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man.)

But 007 isn't the only genre influence at work here. As it does in the comics, if you think about it, the earliest iteration of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters here also has a touch of the Hogwarts magic, especially when our first team of young mutants -- here, Mystique, Beast, Havoc, Banshee, a Pixieish Angel, and Darwin -- show each other their powers. And, of course, there's more than a bit of an Obi-Wan-Anakin-and-the-Emperor triangle going on with Professor X, the big M, and Kevin Bacon's impressive Big Bad, Sebastian Shaw, albeit with less whining and green screen-induced thousand yard stares.

Speaking of Bacon: You really can't say enough about the exceptional cast of X-Men: First Class. It would be very easy to imagine this film falling on its face if folks other than he, Fassbender, James McAvoy, and Jennifer Lawrence were carrying the acting load here. As it is, you don't get the sense from any of them that they feel like they're slumming it here. (Sadly, one does gets that sense from January Jones as Emma Frost, a.k.a. the White Queen. She's as wooden as Betty Draper and is...not good. The originally cast Alice Eve, or Rosamund Pike, would have been better.)

The only real qualm I have with X-Men: First Class, and it's ultimately a minor one, is that this isn't actually X-Men's First Class -- likely because Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Iceman made it into the first few films -- and the roster they chose here feels rather budget. (Havok and Banshee, for example, have pretty much exactly the same power when you get right down to it, and other than Banshee's "sonar" moment, everything they do here could've been done by Scott Summers.) Still, the beauty of the X-franchise is that the roster is always getting rejiggered in some way or another -- even death is merely a setback -- so they can always bring more intriguing heros on for X-Men: Second Class. Let's just hope Fox has learned to keep Vaughn, or another director of his caliber, in the director's (wheel)chair this time.

On the first day of shooting for The Dark Knight Rises (still a terrible name, by the way), the ingenious promotional games that accompanied TDK have started up again at the official site with some very Lazarus Pit-ish chanting. And, just like the Joker before him, Tom Hardy's Bane has been revealed, pixel by Tweeted pixel. Well, ok then...not much you can really do for Bane, besides hit the gym. It'll be more interesting to see where they've gone with Ms Kyle.

Well, I'm sure it helped that, between the series of underwhelming trailers and the general hokiness of the source material, I went in with expectations calibrated at about shin-level. Still, I was surprised to discover this past Friday that Kenneth Branagh's corny but amiable adaptation of Marvel's Thor -- which I caught IN THREE DIMENSIONS (the third of which adds next to nothing, by the way; save your money) -- is totally and utterly not-bad.

That may seem like I'm damning this first of four comic book tentpoles this summer -- along with X-Men: First Class, Green Lantern, and Captain America: The First Avenger -- with faint praise. But, hey, sometimes ok is a good thing. There's not much reaching for depth here: Branagh's Thor is smart and self-referential enough to know that, once you get past all the family strife, Norse brooding, hubris of Gods, and whatnot, this is just a breezy, early-May popcorn film, and it keeps a light touch accordingly. The Dark Knight, this isn't.

As such, and perhaps not surprisingly, Thor -- the story of a fallen deity's misadventures in the American Southwest, and the brother who betrayed him back home -- feels more in keeping with the Make-Mine-Marvel larkiness of Iron Man. (And although IM was a much better film, Thor is more successful and self-contained a story than the rush job that was Iron Man 2.)

Like Iron Man, Thor is a comic that -- Walt Simonson's epic run in the 80's notwithstanding -- I've remained mostly agnostic about over the years. With all due respect to the Nordic pantheon from whence he came, Thor has just never been all-that-interesting a comic book character to me. He's...a guy...with a hammer. Nor, for that matter, are his powers very well-defined. So, ok, he's strong and can kinda sorta control the weather. But there're a lot of generic strongmen running around the Marvel universe -- Hulk, Hercules, Colossus, Juggernaut. What makes Thor different?

With that in mind, Branagh and his team of screenwriters make the smart move of dropping the "trapped as mere mortal Dr. Donald Blake" part of Thor's origin and taking what's distinctive about the character -- mainly, his Asgardian roots and his noble, if a bit dense, nature -- to fashion a fish-out-of-water story instead. Most of the humor that keeps the movie humming along -- say, Thor going to the pet store to find a Lockjaw-type large steed on which to ride through the desert -- ensues from this wise decision to skip canon and tell a rollicking Thor story (Thory?) instead.

The film also benefits from a bevy of actors, including but by no means limited to Chris "Papa Kirk" Hemsworth as the titular thunder god, who can managed the dual feat of conveying comic book gravitas when it is required and delivering moments of pure cheese with a wink and a nod. Anthony Hopkins, of course, is an old hand at this sort of thing by now, but his Odin is matched well by Tom Hiddleston's impressive turn as Loki, the God of Mischief. (Let's face it, Loki was always a more interesting character than Thor anyway, almost by design, and perhaps the most visceral geek thrill I got out of Thor was seeing Hiddleston -- in the iconic horned helmet -- lounging on Asgard's throne like something out of Milton.) And a number of other actors here match the same wry and knowing tone perfectly, from Idris Elba's Heimdall to Clark Gregg's ubiquitous Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D to Stellan Skargard, here in the often-thankless role of skeptical science guy/mentor to the love interest.

Speaking of the love interest, Natalie Portman continues her post-Black Swan year-of-many-films here as super-physicist Jane Foster, and she's decent enough at it. At the very least she doesn't exhibit the deer-in-a-headlights stare that accompanied her last venture into FX-heavy fandom, the prequels. If there's a weak link here, it's probably -- and sadly -- Rome's Ray Stevenson (who already did time in the Marvelverse as the Punisher, in the one with McNutty) as Volstagg of the Warriors Three, a.k.a. Falstaff in the comics, Gimli in this film. I like Stevenson, but he's mostly just miscast here. A more rotund individual (Oliver Platt? Mark Addy?) probably could've sold the character better.

Still, the very fact that the Warriors Three are traipsing around the margins of a big summer movie just goes to show what an embarrassment of riches comic book fans are enjoying at the multiplex these days. Even if I'm not much of a fan of Thor per se, I have to admit I definitely enjoy watching the world-building Marvel is engaged in as a studio right now. (Here, various Marvel denizens are name-dropped, and another Avenger shows up briefly mid-movie -- You'll know him when you see him.)

Like the comics they're based on, these pre-Avengers films have permeable borders. It's like nothing we've seen before at the cinema, and the ambition is thrilling. Of course, there will be a backlash eventually -- one of these comic book films is going to bomb, and bomb big. But, surprisingly to me at least, Thor doesn't signify the end is near. To the contrary, it shows that if you get a good director, good writers, and good actors who take their source seriously -- but not too seriously -- the comic book experience is actually pretty translatable to the big screen. The ball's in your court now, Hal Jordan.

Another update for DC's Big Three: Adrianne Palicki is now filming in the full Wonder Woman garb for David E. Kelly's new TV reboot. (The costume looks better than their first attempt.) Kevin Costner now appears to be officially in Zack Snyder's Superman as Pa Kent. (One presumes he didn't see Sucker Punch before closing the deal.) And, while confirming Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Alberto Falcone, Variety says Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises is looking to cast Juno Temple as "a street-smart Gotham girl." Is that code for Robin?

Among the trailers I've missed in recent weeks is this -- arguably the most promising-looking comic book film in the summer of Thor, Green Lantern, and X-Men: First Class -- the teaser trailer for Joe Johnston's Captain America: The First Avenger, with Chris Evans, Hayley Atwell, Tommy Lee Jones, Stanley Tucci, Sebastian Stans, Toby Jones, and, above, Hugo Weaving looking pitch-perfect as the Red Skull. Granted, Johnston's The Wolfman was terribad, but I'm holding out hope for this one (and to be fair, Johnston was basically a hired gun on Wolfman, coming in four weeks before shooting to replace Mark Romanek.)

"Have you ever considered that all this is your fault? Your presence creates these animals." Following up on their Hugo Strange teaser of last December, WBGames releases the gameplay trailer for Batman: Arkham City, and it looks like the Joker and Harley Quinn are back for another go-round (along with Two-Face, Catwoman, and the aforementioned doctor.)

My non-Cata gaming time has most recently been spent playing through the scary-impressive Dead Space 2, but this and Portal 2 are on my drop-everything list. Can't wait. (And FWIW, that catchy song above is "Short Change Hero" by The Heavy.)

In the land of Detective Comics, Zack Snyder's Superman (a.k.a. Henry Cavill) gets a foster mom in Diane Lane -- word is she joins Kevin Costner as Pa Kent. David E. Kelley's Wonder Woman (a.k.a. Adrienne Palicki) gets a nemesis in Elizabeth Hurley. And Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises gets a possible plot revealed by Devin Faraci. Major story spoilers if true. (It sounds very plausible to me.)

"I've always loved Raiders and the tone that it had,' says director Joe Johnston. 'It was period but didn't feel like it was made in the period. It felt like a modern-day film about the period, which is what we're doing on Captain America.'" The new Empire gives us another look at Chris Evans in Captain America: The First Avenger. (See also the higher-res cover image.) He looks mighty iconic there, I must say.

"In the pantheon of superheroes, Superman is the most recognized and revered character of all time, and I am honored to be a part of his return to the big screen. I also join Warner Bros., Legendary and the producers in saying how excited we are about the casting of Henry. He is the perfect choice to don the cape and S shield."

Meanwhile, over on the DC side of things, Sorry Brandon Routh (and the Legion of Jon Hamm Fans): Zack Snyder's Superman has found its Man of Steel in Henry Cavill, formerly of The Tudors. (The photoshopped Cavill-El above was found here.) I don't really know the guy, but I hear good things.

"The best way of describing it is X-Men meets Bond, with a little bit of Thirteen Days thrown in for good measure. It's set in the '60s, and I basically molded a young Magneto on a young Sean Connery. He's the ultimate spy -- imagine Bond, but with superpowers."

Also backlogged for a week or so: After a not-so-great initial photo leak, Matthew Vaughn of Layer Cake, Stardust, and Kick-Ass talks about what to expect from his X-Men: First Class. "It's got a lot of teenage angst. The Twilight girls will like it." Hrm.

"I am thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Anne Hathaway, who will be a fantastic addition to our ensemble as we complete our story...I am [also] delighted to be working with Tom again and excited to watch him bring to life our new interpretation of one of Batman's most formidable enemies."

So, Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises (still a bad name) has announced its villains: Anne Hathaway as Catwoman and Tom Hardy as Bane. (Not Hugo Strange, as it turns out -- wires must've gotten crossed somewhere with Arkham City.)

Hathaway and Hardy...that's not bad. I still might've preferred Marion Cotillard or Olivia Wilder for Selina Kyle, but I'll give Hathaway the benefit of the doubt. And, while I'm not much excited about Bane as a villain, I'll concede that I haven't read the definitive take on the character (which is, apparently, Knightfall), and that he might actually be less of a one-note, musclebound oaf than he's seemed in Batman and Robin and other venues.

Lots of action on the Marvel movie front this past week. The powers-that-be have granted us our first looks at Chris Evans as Captain America, and Andrew Garfield as the new Peter Parker, along with another shot of Chris Hemsworth as the Mighty Thor. Hmm...three-for-three, I'd say, although I still have a bad, straight-to-video-y feeling about the god of thunder.

Update: Just as I finished posting this, a promo image leaks from Matthew Vaughn's X-Men First Class. From left to right: "Michael Fassbinder as Magneto, Rose Byrne as Moira MacTaggert, January Jones as Emma Frost, Jason Flemyng as Azazel, Nicholas Hoult as Beast, Lucas Till as Havoc, Zoe Kravitz as Angel Salvadore, Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, and James MacAvoy as Charles Xavier." Looks...crowded.

Cheer up, Bruce, it's Christmas! Happy holidays to you and yours, from Berk, Bats, and GitM.

Metallica roadie or Norse God of Thunder? Chris "Papa Kirk" Hemsworth finds himself stuck inside of Midgard with the Asgard blues again in the teaser for Kenneth Branagh's Thor, also with Anthony Hopkins, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Ray Stevenson, Clark Gregg, Kat Dennings, Colm Feore, Rene Russo, Jaimie Alexander, Stellan Skarsgard, and Idris Elba. Hmmm. Like the forthcoming Green Lantern over on the DC side, this looks rather cheesy...but maybe Loki will be fun.

Meanwhile, a more promising upcoming comic creation announces its main villain -- one who's also potentially featured in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises -- in this impressive trailer for Batman: Arkham City, due out next fall. Looks great, and Arkham Asylum is both very fun and a totally immersive Batman experience. But, while I get that they're riffing on Call of Duty: Black Ops here (and take that, Sam Fisher), I'm already way over the recent trend towards interrogation scenes in my gaming.

"'The idea is to use these fragments of cut scenes and use CGI to have The Joker appear one last time,' a source explained. 'Chris wants some continuity between movies and for the franchise to pay tribute to Heath and his portrayal of the Joker.'"

Take for what it worth, but a New Zealand paper is reporting that Chris Nolan will give Heath Ledger's Joker one final bow at some point in The Dark Knight Rises. "'It would only be a fleeting moment in the movie and would only be included with the full consent of Heath's family,' the source added." Perhaps an after-the-final-credits flourish? Update: Or not. "'That's all wrong,' said the writer-director."

"All in all, these AMC series remind me of American movies made in the early-to-mid-'60s, when Puritanical content restrictions were starting to break down and commercial films were embracing a new frankness, but filmmakers hadn't yet gone into the 'anything goes' mode that dominated the final quarter of the 20th century...[A]s mid-'60s American film demonstrated, there's more than one way to be 'adult.' AMC seems to have realized this and embraced it, and it's one of the reasons the channel is flourishing."

Salon's Matt Zoller Seitz (formerly of The House Next Door), sings the praises of AMC, home to Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead and Rubicon. I watch all of those except Rubicon, which is still languishing on the DVR for the time being. (Now that it's canceled, unfortunately, I may never get around to uncorking it. This was also the fate of Carnivale.) As for The Walking Dead, it's seriously overwritten at times -- the sisterly pow-wow about fishing at the top of Episode 4 was just embarrassing -- but I'll stick around through the first season at least.

With young Master Potter set to commence his crying jags through the wilderness at midnight, the Deathly Hallows crop of trailers has sprung...

• Dashing fighter pilot Ryan Reynolds is commissioned by a dying alien to defend Sector 2814, and maybe do some wisecracking along the way, in our first look at Martin Campbell's Green Lantern, also with Blake Lively (who seems reallll bored), Peter Sarsgaard, Tim Robbins, and Mark Strong. Hmm, ok. Sinestro, Kilowogg, and Tomar-Re all look solid, but the tone seems a bit FF-ish to me...This could go either way at this point. (For those looking to take it frame-by-frame, here are the screencaps.)
• Amanda Seyfried romps in the forest with teenage werewolves (Shiloh Fernandez, Max Iron) as Gary Oldman, Virginia Madsen and Julie Christie look to make some mortgage payments in the trailer for Catherine Hardwick's Twilight-ish take on Red Riding Hood, Yeah, no thanks.



• Special Agent Michael Caine joins the Radiator Springs gang for a world-spanning Bondish adventure in the trailer for John Lasseter and Brad Bird's Cars 2. I know Pixar doesn't make bad films, but the first Cars is probably my least favorite of the bunch. Still, I'm probably in.
• Jason Statham is Charles Bronson -- eh, never mind ,no he isn't -- in the trailer for Simon West's remake of The Mechanic, also with Ben Foster and Donald Sutherland. Maybe on Spike TV someday, I guess.
• Slacker knights James Franco and Danny McBride team up with badass warrior Natalie Portman to save Zooey Deschanel from the clutches of an evil wizard in the trailer for David Gordon Green's Ren Faire raunchfest Your Highness, also with Justin Theroux (as said wizard), Damien Lewis, and Toby Jones. Unfortunately, with the exception of that ridiculous weed-puffing muppet at the end, this looked aggressively stupid to me.
• And, in the most promising of the lot, it'll be a bad day at Black Rock when the ETs come to town in the impressive trailer for Jon Favreau's Cowboys and Aliens, with Daniel Craig, Olivia Wilde, Sam Rockwell, Clancy Brown, Paul Dano, and a seemingly engaged, not-drunk Harrison Ford (perhaps reprising his character from The Frisco Kid?) I have to say, this looks surprisingly solid to me.

"James's charm, warmth and wit are legendary as is his range as an actor in both comedic and dramatic roles. We feel very lucky to be able to welcome him as one of our cast." Peter Jackson fills out his Dwarf Company with James Nesbitt and Adam Brown as Bofur and Ori respectively. "Adam is a wonderfully expressive actor and has a unique screen presence. I look forward to seeing him bring Ori to life."

And, elsewhere in fanboy casting news, Andrew Garfield's Peter Parker (and Marc Webb's Spiderman) may soon have some caretakers in Martin Sheen as Uncle Ben and Sally Field as Aunt Mary. Compared to Rhys Ifans as The Lizard, that casting seems pretty by-the-book. Still not bad...but do we really have to sit through the origin story again?

"'At the time, I remember telling a buddy of mine, 'If the movie bombs, I'm f---ed. If the movie hits, I'm f---ed!' After declining the part three times...Evans signed a six-picture deal with Marvel to play the character, and he has no regrets: 'I can't believe was almost too chicken to play Captain America.'" Entertainment Weekly gets the first official shot of Chris Evans suited up for Captain America. I presume he'll be wearing a blue army helmet at least, but so far so good...now let's see the Skull.

"A shame the Lemur Brothers had to be sacrificed." "Yes, the Invisible Hand works in mysterious ways." By way of Mother Jones, Erich Origen and Gan Golan explain the financial crisis in comic book form. (The full Adventures of Unemployed Man are available here.)

"'We'll use many of the same characters as we have all along, and we'll be introducing some new ones,' Nolan said cryptically." Lots of big doings on the fanboy front recently: First up, the next Batman movie has a (lousy) title: The Dark Knight Rises, and Chris Nolan has announced the Riddler will not be the villain. (He earlier wrote off Mr. Freeze.) So whomever Tom Hardy turns out to be, it's not Edward Nigma. (My current guess is he's Killer Croc, with a yet-to-be-cast Catwoman as the main villain.)

Riddles may not feature in Gotham, but they will soon be spun in deepest Wellington: In happy news, New Zealand will be returning as Middle Earth for the upcoming Hobbit films. "'Making the two movies here will not only safeguard work for thousands of New Zealanders, but will also allow us to follow the success of the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy in once again promoting New Zealand on the world stage,' [Prime Minister!] Key said."

Those are the two big upcoming guns. But, also on the docket, James Cameron officials signs up for two more Avatars for 2014 and 2015. Well...ok. I can think of other worlds I'd rather see him tackle than Pandora again.

And, with Black Swan opening very soon, Darren Aronofsky announces his next project (after, um, Wolverine 2), will be called Machine Man. "Machine Man, not to be confused with the Marvel Comics character, concerns a tech engineer who, tired of going through life average and unnoticed, replaces parts of his body with titanium upgrades of his own design. He then discovers that he isn't the only one with plans for his new body."

While work has been kicking my ass like Doomsday on a tear through Metropolis, some big doings for the Big Three on the comic-to-film front. To wit:

• Marc Webb's Spiderman revamp gets a Gwen Stacey in the very Mary Jane Watson-ish Emma Stone (of Easy A and Zombieland) and a villain to menace Andrew Garfield's Peter Parker in Rhys Ifans, most recently of Greenberg and Exit Through the Gift Shop. Apparently, Ifans is playing Curt Connors, a.k.a. the Lizard. Both solid casting (if Stone can pull off blonde), but, honestly, what's Dylan Baker gotta do to catch a break?



• Meanwhile in DC land, the Nolan-produced Superman reboot has locked down a director in...Zack Snyder. "The character of Superman needs to be relevant again, without disrespecting his mythology. That's my goal." Well, Snyder has shown he knows how to recreate comic storyboards in 300 and Watchmen, but he still doesn't seem like a great fit for this franchise to me. We'll see.



• Over in Nolan's Gotham City, word breaks that Tom Hardy of Bronson and Inception will be playing a lead role in Batman 3, which likely means the villain. The Riddler? The Penguin? Black Mask? Killer Croc (to go along with the New Orleans location shooting?) At this point, I'm only ruling out Catwoman and Poison Ivy.

Since Glenn Beck and his elderly white army ventured to DC this weekend (via roads, highways, and mass transit) to complain about socialism (in a public park), what better time to break away to nearby Baltimore for a gathering of fanboys and fangirls? Baltimore Comic-Con was Saturday, and, as with the NY Comic-Con back in 2006, I've put a few pics up on the Flickr Feed. (I mostly took pics of cosplayers, but there were quite a few venerable comic names out and about as well, including Walt and Louise Simonson, Bernie Wrightson, Howard Chaykin, Jim Shooter, and Jim Starlin.)

Best brush up on those Thriller moves, y'all: AMC and Frank Darabont's adaption of Robert Kirkland's' The Walking Dead gets a 4-minute trailer and a start date: Sunday, October 31st.

Now that I'm back in civilization (and particularly given that my apartment is having power issues, and thus Berk and I are living like the Amish this week), time to catch up on the recent movies I've missed. First up, Edgar Wright's fun and propulsive adaptation of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, based on the (vaguely problematic) indie comic by Bryan Lee O'Malley.

Sadly, it seems Pilgrim has already joined a film it shares a lot in common with in terms of visual inventiveness, the Wachowskis' unjustly maligned Speed Racer, as something of a box office "bob-omb". (That pun, by the way, was borrowed from one of the many Expendables fans on AICN strangely all-too-happy to dance on Pilgrim's box office grave.) And that's really too bad. Because, even if I have some issues with the blatant fanboy (emphasis on "boy") wish-fulfillment at its core, which I'll get to in a bit, Scott Pilgrim deserves a wider airing.

For one, with its Wham-Pow! effusiveness and viscerally engaging superhero fights, it's easily one of the most imaginative comic book renderings onscreen this side of Sin City. And comics are only half the story. From its 8-bit Universal opening (a la those great NES Pink Floyd mash-ups I linked to a few months ago), the movie also has one foot firmly entrenched in the world of old-school console gaming. If the dreamworlds of Inception felt like stages in a video game, this movie takes the conceit to the next level: Scott Pilgrim's entire life unfolds in a Walter-Mitty-meets-Street Fighter, coin-operated Toronto (Trononto?) where g4m3r rules are a fact of life.

This allows for defeated villains turning into collectible coins, 1-ups around for psychic rejuvenation when needed, and -- always a happy indication that the movie is about to get super-fun again -- the Capcom "VS." popping up whenever Scott (Michael Cera) must face off against another of his dastardly foes. Those would be the seven members of the League of Evil Ex'es, the sinister cadre of former significant others to the lovely Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) that have gathered together to block our hero from ever dating his dream girl.

And trust me -- These Ex-Men (and one Ex-Woman) are no slouches. Among their number are not only Captain America (Chris Evans), here an action hero heartthrob and skater punk with a Jamie Madrox-style army of stunt doubles at his disposal, but the one and only Superman (Brandon Routh), now blonde, psychic, and, most dastardly of all, Vegan. (In the Pilgrimverse, Vegans operate like the Green Lantern Corps. Just ask Thomas Jane and Clifton Collins, Jr.) And they're just the mini-bosses Scott will have to contend with before defeating Gideon (Jason Schwartzman, a bit anti-climatic, quite frankly -- They should've sprung for Aldous Snow), the music biz impresario who still has an unholy thrall over Ramona, thanks to a chip implanted in the back of her neck.

Wait...a what? A chip, you say? That makes her a rather passive character, doesn't it? Yeah, well, that's the major problem with Pilgrim, which I attribute more to the source material than anything else. This is basically fanboy pr0n, and, in terms of the ostensible romance here, Pilgrim is as one-sided and overtly gendered a piece of rom-com wish-fulfillment as I imagine Eat, Pray, Love was in the theater next door. I mean, I get it: Saving the girl of your dreams from despicably evil forces has been a fanboy trope from Princess Leia to Princess Zelda (although, to her credit, Leia takes over the show as soon as she's sprung from Detention Block AA-23.) And as one who's eternally fond of Brazil, I'm not one to complain about a man going out on a limb for his dream-girl.

Still, something about Scott Pilgrim rankles. Sure, Michael Cera specializes in dweebs, but as George Michael in Arrested Development and in movies like Superbad, Juno, and Youth in Revolt, he still had a certain wry, self-effacing charm about him. But, as Scott Pilgrim, he's just a lazy, whiny, self-entitled jerk, and seems unpossessed of any trait that would make him either desirable to the opposite sex or worth rooting for as a hero. (Well, I guess he does play the bass.) Meanwhile, Ramona is a very pretty cipher -- She doesn't bring much to the table either except Kate Winslet's hair from Eternal Sunshine and the plot-driving baggage of seven evil ex'es. She's more of a Macguffin than a fully-realized character.

Don't get me wrong: There's a lot of joy to be had in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, mostly due to Edgar Wright, after Spaced, Shaun of the Dead, and Hot Fuzz, really letting his freak flag fly. There's almost always something fun and geeky going on in the margins of the screen or on the soundtrack, and the Brandon Routh fight and a later Battle of the Bands (between Scott's outfit, Sex Bob-omb, and a pair of Japanese twins by way of Daft Punk) are both absolute showstoppers. (Maybe too much so, in fact -- The final twenty minutes are muddled, and feel like a letdown after these earlier highs.)

Yet, despite the flaws of its titular hero, Scott Pilgrim is the most purely enjoyable roller coaster ride to come down the cinematic pike since Kick-Ass. And, sure, Scott Pilgrim probably doesn't deserve the girl in the end (or maybe he does, given that she's drawn as such a blank), but Scott Pilgrim vs the World definitely deserves your ten bucks regardless.

A publicity still from Kenneth Branagh's Thor featuring Odin, Thor, and Loki, a.k.a. Anthony Hopkins, Chris Hemsworth, and Tom Hiddleston respectively, materializes on the tubes. Well, I'll defer my full assessment until I've seen the characters move around under cinema lighting, but, to my mind, these outfits don't look so hot. I guess they were going for Kirbyesque, but they look too plastic-y and space-age to me. (Also, Loki needs horns badly, but they're too iconic not to show up in the final movie, I'd think.)

Elsewhere in comic-to-film-news, EW gets a look at Ryan Reynolds as Green Lantern (again, too early to tell, but this CGI-approach could work), and, in lieu of Eric Bana and Edward Norton, Mark Ruffalo may well be Hulking out for Joss Whedon's Avengers. (Eh, fine.)

Update: Forgot to mention the recent goings-on with Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: First Class. Joining McAvoy, Fassbender, and Eve as Xavier, Magneto, and Emma Frost are Kevin Bacon and Jennifer Lawrence (of Winter's Bone) as the Big Bad (Mr. Sinister?) and Mystique respectively. Also along for the ride: A Single Man's Nicholas Hoult as Beast, Friday Night Lights' Caleb Landry Jones as Banshee, Hannah Montana's Lucas Till as Havok, and purportedly Kick-Ass's Aaron Johnson as Cyclops, altho' that last one is still up in the air.

Update 2: More Thor and Green Lantern images emerge.

"On selecting Garfield, director Marc Webb said, 'Though his name may be new to many, those who know this young actor's work understand his extraordinary talents. He has a rare combination of intelligence, wit, and humanity. Mark my words, you will love Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker.'"

I'm inclined to agree -- this is really great casting. Better than Tobey Maguire, in fact. Sony's Spiderman reboot finds its friendly neighborhood webslinger in Andrew Garfield of The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus and Red Riding '74 (and soon of Never Let Me Go and The Social Network.) And given the Peter Parkerish sensiblity at work in Webb's (500) Days of Summer, this project actually seems to be coming together quite nicely.

I thought this was interesting. Long-time readers may remember that back in the day, I wrote a few posts about the TV show Heroes pretty blatantly ripping off Watchmen and the X-Men "Days of Future Past" storylines, which was all the more annoying because showrunner Tim Kring claimed to never read comics. So, anyway, a representative from Carnival Comics found those old posts and sent along this info about the lawsuit they've recently filed against NBC and Heroes for plagiarism (from Season 4, which begs the question: If you pretty clearly plagiarize from someone, and yet nobody in America actually watches your final product, does it still count as plagiarism?) I must say, particularly in light of the earlier grifts, the PDF in question is rather damning.

In the Jonah Hex review below, I mentioned the intriguing casting of James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender as Professor X and Magneto respectively. Now, Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: First Class circles 'round its White Queen in Alice Eve of She's Out of My League and Sex and the City 2. Haven't seen either of those, but she looks the part...although I still might've gone with Rosamund Pike myself.

I highly doubt any compadres and comadres out there need me to tell them at this late date that Jimmy Hayward's loud, dumb, Hoobastank-ish adaptation of DC's Jonah Hex is, all things considered, a lousy film. So, to be clear right up front: In no way am I recommending that anyone actually sit through the durned thing, especially if your own money is involved. But, I am forced to admit: While I may have just been in a summer-afternoon, World Cup-enhanced good mood at the time, I actually found Jonah Hex to be a pretty entertaining lousy film, if you set your brain to numb and roll with it.

For, however defiantly stupid Hex is for most of its run, and yes, Hex is extremely, flagrantly stupid -- we know that from the horse-mounted howitzers in the first reel -- at least the movie is aware enough of its drive-in badness just to let its Weird Western Tales freak flag fly. (Speaking of Hex's comic book origins, the obligatory source material disclosures: I've been aware of the character since he popped up in the Crisis way back when, but never really followed him, even when he got sent into the far-flung future for some reason, and I couldn't tell you much about Hex beforehand except the scar.)

So basically, I found Jonah Hex to be on the bizarrely-enjoyable, "TNT New Classic at two in the morning" side of terrible, as opposed to the just-plain-irritating-terrible of, say, 1999's The Wild, Wild West. (Or, to take two recent examples, Alice in Wonderland or Clash of the Titans.) True, gun-for-hire John Malkovich seems really bored as this twisted tale's Big Bad, Confederate general Quentin Turnbull. (Like Hugo Weaving in The Wolfman, another genre turn I thought would have to be fun no matter what, Malkovich is a letdown. Even in other easy paychecks like Con Air, I've never seen him so listless.) But the Malkatraz choosing to phone-it-in notwithstanding, there's still a lot of goofy fun at the fringes of Jonah Hex.

I mean, we've got rising star Michael Fassbender (of Inglourious Basterds, Fish Tank and, soon X-Men: First Class -- He's the Magneto to James McAvoy's Professor X) as a jolly, lilting Irish-immigrant henchman in a bowler hat. There's Will "Gob Bluth" Arnett playing it straight as a McClellan-esque Union general, Jeffrey Dean Morgan (of Watchmen and The Losers) as a wordy and depressed zombie, Lance Reddick (nee Major Cedric Daniels) slumming it as Hex's Q, American Beauty's since-AWOL Wes Bentley randomly popping up very briefly as Southern Gentleman #2...and that's not even getting into the random Civil war-era gladiatorial bat-beasts and whatnot.

And then there's Hex himself: Josh Brolin, who, not unlike Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley in Splice, carries the stoic deadpan -- with a glint of laughter in the eyes -- of a man who seems to be in on the joke. If nothing else, Brolin -- after spending two decades not-really-making-it between 1985's The Goonies and 2007's No Country for Old Men -- seems to be getting a real kick out of being an A-Lister carrying his own B-level comic book film. For her part, Megan Fox is not much to write home about here, but she's easy on the eyes and acquits herself well enough. I know she's often a target of many people's weirdly vociferous wrath. But I'll give Fox this: If Hex and Jennifer's Body are any indication, she seems to have a pretty solid sense of her own limited range.

Now, you'll notice I've gone several paragraphs in now without mentioning anything involving the actual story, and that should give you a sense of its quality. But, basically, Hex wants revenge on the aforementioned Gen. Turnbull, since he's the man who disfigured him (good work, make-up people), murdered his family before his eyes, and inadvertently gave Hex the power to commune with the dead (although, apparently not with his family, which is where you'd think he'd then spend most of his time.) Turnbull, meanwhile, wants to level the Union on its 100th anniversary, as payback for that whole Civil War thing -- you may have read about it. (The engine of his centennial-obliterating master plan are highly dangerous WMD, apparently once engineered by Eli Whitney -- In practice, they're glowing golden orbs not unlike the pinkish bombs Jar Jar et al were flinging around Naboo in The Phantom Menace. And, yes, the fact I just mentioned Episode 1 should again give you a sense of what you're in for here.

So, yeah, the film is bad, no doubt. But I still definitely enjoyed myself through its schlocky-grisly awfulness. If you'll allow me to explain by digression: Speaking of John Lee Hancock's amiable but slightly dull adaptation of The Alamo in 2004, I finished up by saying of Billy Bob Thornton's Davy Crockett that "Billy Bob is so good here that I spent most of the film contemplating who else I'd cast alongside Thornton for the definitive American History miniseries. Christopher Walken as 1850 Henry Clay? Fred Thompson as James Buchanan? Adrien Brody as Mexican War-era Lincoln? The possibilities are endless."

And, with that in mind, I think the point where Hex sorta sold me as Z-grade entertainment, despite its pretty unmitigated badness otherwise, is when Aidan Quinn (most recently playing a drunk-of-a-different-color in The Eclipse) shows up as President Ulysses S. Grant, a man who needs that outlaw and ex-Confederate rapscallion Jonah Hex on the side of God and country, his dirty deeds be damned, or else. If you've been coming 'round these parts and reading the movie reviews for any amount of time, you've probably noticed I have a weakness for both historical recreations and genre outings. Well, however much of a bomb in the end, Jonah Hex at least has the good sense to frolic happily at that crossroads for awhile.

"'No', says Nolan emphatically and unhesitatingly. He resists elaborating simply because, quite understandably, he says, 'I just don't feel comfortable talking about it.'" Christopher Nolan nips talk of recasting the Joker for Batman 3. (There was much fanboy speculation that the Ledger-esque Joseph Gordon-Leavitt, now on Team Nolan as of Inception, might take up the war paint for some kind of Silence of the Lambs-y type nod to the character from the depths of Arkham Asylum. No can do, apparently.)

Elsewhere in the comic movie department, Jeremy Renner of The Hurt Locker, 28 Weeks Later, and The Asssassination of Jesse James looks set to join Joss Whedon's The Avengers as Hawkeye. Which makes you wonder -- how deep into Avengers canon are we going here? Ant-Man and Wasp seem likely...what of Vision and Scarlet Witch?

"Most of the U.S. national news about immigration is very sad: bitter political disputes in Arizona, or images of desperate immigrants trying to cross the border. So much pain numbs you. It is easy to overlook the practical contribution of immigrants to American society, as well as the enormous financial contribution they make in sending remittances home. A lot of Latino communities survive on that money...Comic-book superheroes have an alter ego, and so do immigrants in the United States. They may be insignificant or even invisible to much of society, but they are heroes in their homelands."

In Foreign Policy, photojournalist Dulce Pinzón shares her photo collection of Mexican migrant workers dressed as superheroes. (Officially here.) "The principal objective of this series is to pay homage to these brave and determined men and women that somehow manage, without the help of any supernatural power, to withstand extreme conditions of labor in order to help their families and communities survive and prosper."

After some wrangling on Facebook, the second trailer for Edgar Wright's Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is now live. Michael Cera, is, for better or worse, Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and her great big googly-eyes still seem pitch-perfect for Romana Flowers, and Chris Evans especially makes for an apt evil-ex. (Also along for the ride: Anna Kendrick, Kieran Culkin, Allison Pill, Brandon Routh and Jason Schwartzman.) Looks like it probably goes overboard on the geek wish-fulfillment, but I'm in. Update: Here are a few comic panel comparisons.

Alas, while Tony Stark's original outing was a smart and surprisingly fun thrill ride that kicked off its summer in grand fashion -- put another way, it was the Kick-Ass of 2008 -- I am sorry to report that Jon Favreau's leaden, unwieldy Iron Man 2 falls back down to Earth. In short, it's basically the so-so, overripe, big-dumb-action flick I expected the first time around.

To be clear, the movie isn't an embarrassment -- On acting alone, it's miles above recent big-budget studio dren like Alice in Wonderland or Clash of the Titans. But, if the first Iron Man soared, this one dutifully plods along, earthbound. Usually, comic book franchises, freed of their origin story, gain momentum in their second chapter -- Superman II, Spiderman 2, X2, The Dark Knight. But here, unfortunately, we're closer to Quantum of Solace territory -- after a promising opening round, both films relapse into the lazy writing and unseemly summer-blockbuster habits whose surprising absence had defined their first go-round.

The thing that makes Iron Man 2 so maddening, and even kinda sad in the end, is that the powers-that-be clearly tried to capture the same lightning in a bottle that propelled the first one. As such, this movie feels like it was made by a committee, who sat down with Iron Man, a DVD player, and some notepads and tried to figure out exactly what made the first one tick. Then they took the various strands they came up with, made each one bigger-faster-stronger, and tried to recombinate them for Iron Man 2. Blammo, we have a sequel!...Only, it doesn't quite work like that. That sort of reverse-engineering may work in advanced weapons manufacturing -- but for movies, not so much. And, as a result, Iron Man 2 doesn't cohere nearly as well as the original. It feels disparate and shapeless and, well, rusty.

So, let's see here, we have Robert Downey, Jr. being charmingly egotistical, tossing off off-kilter line readings, wooing Gwyneth Paltrow, mouthing off to authority figures (this time, Senator Garry Shandling), and trading in on his troubled past to bring pathos to alcoholic billionaire Tony Stark. Check. We have a few exceedingly likable actors known for talent rather than bankability -- Mickey Rourke, Sam Rockwell -- in the villain roles. Check. We have lots of future-think computer displays in Tony's office, maybe a funny robot or two. Check. We have plenty of state-of-the-art military-grade hardware for the boys-and-their-toys crowd, and a bunch of random "Avengers! Coming-soon-to-a-theater-near-you" comic nods to keep the rest of the fanboys happy. Check. Oh, yes, 'splosions too, and don't forget the extra Bigger Robots Iron Man has to fight at some point. Check and check.

All the right boxes are checked off, and they even add a few more. (Hey, everybody digs Mad Men. Roger Sterling? Check!) And yet Iron Man 2 still ends up feeling more like an attempt to sell happy meals at Burger King and cups at 7-11 than an actual, full-fledged movie experience. Why? Well, I'm guessing it's because the film is undercooked. Simply put, the whole thing just feels like it was rushed out of the gate to make this 2010 release date, most notably in the writing department. Screenwriter Justin Theroux is a decent actor (Mulholland Drive, Six Feet Under), and he obviously scored a hit as one of three writers on Tropic Thunder (with Ben Stiller and Etan Cohen.) But, to say this plot has holes would suggest it's somehow more form than void in the end. As told, this film barely makes any sense whatsoever. You may have heard that Mickey Rourke recently admitted he doesn't know what the movie was about. Well, I sat through the durned thing, and I'm not sure myself.

There's no point in nitpicking every little thing that doesn't make sense in Iron Man 2 -- it's a fool's errand. But even by the lax standards one must accord a film about a guy in a flying metal tuxedo, it just doesn't hang together. You could wrestle over the basic plot points: What is Whiplash's plan here, exactly -- just to hope he picks up a benefactor? How does he know Tony will be racing at Monaco, and how does he -- or Pepper or Happy -- get on the track? Why does Justin Hammer want shoes? For what crime do the cops go after him in the end? Or you can go bigger with it: Why is Pepper Potts the head of Stark now? Why is Rhodey so trusting of the Big Bads? You're kidding me with this new element stuff, yes? Why can the Black Widow turn off some suits and not others? For that matter, why is she even in this film? But the answer seems to be: Sorry, because that's all we could think of to keep the story moving along. Sheesh, get over yourself, will ya? Sit back, eat some popcorn, don't think so much.

Well, maybe they're right, but the beauty of the first Iron Man is that it was slick, smart, and reasonably self-contained -- It hung together quite well, and you didn't have to turn your brain off to enjoy it. But this one's lumbering and bric-a-brac and all over the place in that summer-action-movie way, partly because I guess they wanted to top the first film, and partly because it's overburdened with all the random Avengers-prequel nonsense. See: Samuel L. Jackson as (nu-school) Nick Cage and Scarlett Johansson as the Widow. (I don't want to hate on Johansson too much, although I still think somebody like Olga Kurylenko was a much better fit to play a sleek Russian super-spy. Suffice to say, they didn't even give her an accent for some reason, and, when it comes to her big Trinity-ish action setpiece...well, I found Hit-Girl more plausible.)

So, is there a silver lining here? Well, Mickey Rourke isn't given near enough to say or do, but he's fun while he lasts. And, while Sam Rockwell may be slumming in a well-worn groove as "the guy who's not quite as cool as he wants to be" (Galaxy Quest, Zaphod), he just about steals the movie away every time he shows up. (Consider the scene where he's arming War Machine, and that business with the little nuke -- a joke lifted from MIB's "noisy cricket," by the way.) So, there's hope for the franchise yet, if they keep up the quality casting and just spend a little more time putting it all together next time. The first weekend alone already suggests Iron Man 3 will be a go. Here's hoping Favreau, Downey, et al get the pieces in order first before embarking on part III. Gotta break that rusty cage, y'all.

"[T]here isn't any such thing as a bad day. Yes, bad things happen. But any day that I'm still here, able to feel and think and share things with people, then how could that possibly be a bad day?" Lynn Redgrave, 1943-2010

"'He's going to be remembered as the most renowned fantasy illustrator of the 20th Century,' Pistella said." Frank Frazetta, 1928-2010.

"'The whole thing that made me a star was the war,' Ms. Horne said in the 1990 interview. 'Of course the black guys couldn't put Betty Grable's picture in their footlockers. But they could put mine." Lena Horne, 1917-2010.

I haven't been keeping up on this lately, but casting has been filling out for Frank Darabont's adaptation of Robert Kirkman's zombie-epic The Walking Dead, starting this October on AMC. Joining the shamble are Andrew Lincoln (as Rick Grimes), Sarah Wayne Callies (Lori), Jon Bernthal (Shane), Jeffrey DeMunn (likely Dale), Steven Yuen (Glenn) and, the most recognizable face, Laurie Holden -- nee X-Files' Maria Covarrubias -- as Andrea.

In very related news, please do keep in mind that May is Zombie Awareness Month. "Supporters of Zombie Awareness Month wear a gray ribbon to signify the undead shadows that lurk behind our modern light of day. From May 1 through May 31, Zombie Research Society Members and friends take this small step to acknowledge the coming danger." Awareness!

As rumored for awhile now, Hugo Weaving -- a.k.a. Agent Smith, Elrond, and V -- will add even further to his fanboy cachet by suiting up as the Red Skull for Joe Johnston's Captain America: The First Avenger. (Not altogether surprising: Weaving just showed up in Johnston's botched Wolfman.) He joins Chris Evans as the Cap'n, Sebastian Stan as Bucky, and Hayley Atwell (late of Cassandra's Dream) as Steve Rogers' gal, Peggy Carter.

Update: It looks like the character of Howard Stark -- Tony's dad -- is also involved, although he probably won't be as Roger Sterling-ish.

Update 2: The Cap'n's rogues gallery expands as Toby Jones signs to play Arnim Zola, "a Nazi scientist who used his horrific experiments to allow himself to unnaturally extend his life, ultimately leading to his consciousness being permanently stuck in a robotic body. Type-casting!"

"Vaughn's involvement had been on and off, with negotiations resuming yesterday thanks to the involvement of producer Bryan Singer. Another factor had been Fox's desire of wanting to have a finished film for next summer, making the search for a director who can deliver a quality film a priority."

Hmm...strange. Elsewhere in comic-to-film news, Layer Cake, Stardust, and Kick-Ass helmer Matthew Vaughn -- who memorably left X3 before it became a Ratner hack job -- is now back with the mutants for X-Men: First Class, i.e. the Professor X & Magneto backstory. I'd kinda soured on the X-franchise after the last two Fox ventures -- never even saw Wolverine -- but Vaughn instantly makes this interesting again.

As Iron Man 2 launches in one week (and, if you're feeling spoilerish, the post-credit sequence has leaked), the next Avenger down the pike, the Mighty Thor, gets ready for his close-up. That's Chris Hemsworth (formerly Papa Kirk in Star Trek) as the Asgardian in question. Joining him in Kenneth Branagh's film are Tom Hiddleston (Loki), Natalie Portman (Jane Foster), Anthony Hopkins (Odin), Jaimie Alexander (Sif), Rene Russo (Frigga), Kat Dennings (Darcy), Stellan Skarsgard (Selvia), Idris Elba (Heimdall), Ray Stevenson (Volstagg), and Colm Feore (a villain to be named later -- possibly the Destroyer?)

In this week's trailer bin, M. Night Shyamalan tries to get his groove back with some help from Nicktoons in the new trailer for his live-action version of The Last Airbender, with Noah Ringer, Nicole Peltz, Jackson Rathbone, Dev Patel and Aasif Mandvi. Sorry, M. Night, but after Signs, The Village, Lady in the Water, and that Mark Wahlberg Triffids movie (Google reminds me: The Happening), I'm skipping this unless reviews say otherwise.

And, elsewhere on Yahoo...what's wrong with your FACE? Josh Brolin mounts up for his own third-tier comic book film in the first trailer for Jimmy Hayward's Jonah Hex, also with Megan Fox, John Malkovich, Will Arnett, Michael Shannon, and Lance Reddick. Oof...seems pretty clear I'll have to get my drink on before this bad boy.

Let's get right down to brass tacks: Sylvain White's The Losers is not very good. Both the second edgy comic adaptation (after Kick-Ass) and the second elite-ops-on-a-suicide-mission movie (after Clash of the Titans) in a summer full of them (The A-Team, The Expendables, arguably Salt), The Losers feels shoddily written, by-the-numbers, and altogether pedestrian. (In fact, notorious hackmeister Akiva Goldsman has a producer cred here - that's a pretty good tip-off for what you're in for.)

And yet, even though The Losers is one of those movies where you sit around dutifully ticking off the one-liners, action beats, and omg-'splosions from the trailer as they happen, just so you can figure out when you get to go home, I'll say this: The movie's got charisma to spare. I mean, The Comedian, Stringer Bell, Johnny Storm, Uhura (or, if you liked Avatar more than I did, Neytiri)...all in a B-movie, rock-'em-sock-'em action flick? That should work, right? And that's not even counting appealing presences like Columbus Short, Óscar Jaenada, and Holt McCallany along for the ride.

And so there's a strange, vaguely entertaining tension playing out at the heart of The Losers, almost despite itself. Are the amiable actors on display here enough to compensate for a film that is so lazy and perfunctory in pretty much every other aspect of its production? And, the answer is...no, not really. With one notable exception, all the players here eventually check out and succumb to the lethargy of the proceedings. (Losers, indeed.) Still, unlike Clash or Alice in Wonderland, Losers is never an irritatingly, in-your-face terrible experience. It's just a ho-hum 100-minutes of blah that I'm sure will end up feeling perfectly harmless when TNT runs it into the ground a few years hence.

Anyway...The Losers, you say? Based on a Vertigo comic by Andy Diggle and Jock (I haven't read it. The only DC Losers I'm familiar with are the WWII tank outfit that died in the Crisis), The Losers are basically your standard-issue coterie of black-ops, get-any-job-done paramilitary badasses, as per most every other film in this genre. Oh, and, as you might expect, they've been betrayed and left for dead by their handler, the mysterious and very well-connected Max (Jason Patric, way over the top but it's not really his fault. Whatcha gonna do when the part is, for all intent and purposes, Dr. Evil?)

So, yes, this is basically the exact same story as The A-Team, or, for that matter Machete (once of Grindhouse, now, somewhat depressingly, its own full-length flick, coming to a theater near you this fall.) Only this time, somebody's "f**ked with the wrong Mexican" -- that would be laconic, eagle-eyed sharpshooter Cougar (Jaenada) -- and his four friends: Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), the hard-livin' leader with woman troubles; Roque (Idris Elba), the grouchy #2 and knife specialist; Jensen (Chris Evans), the motor-mouthed hacker and comic relief; and Pooch (Short), the pilot and family man.

The X-Factor in this all-too-predictable tale is the lovely Aisha (Zoe Saldana), an alluring assassin who recruits the Losers in Bolivia, as they lick their wounds post-double-cross, and who makes the team a Godfather offer: She'll get them back in the US if the Losers promise to take out Max for good. That sounds like a win-win for everybody...but what is Aisha's game, exactly? Well, do you really want me to tell you? There aren't too many surprises to be had here, so best keep that one quiet for now. (I will give away this: poor Saldana doesn't get much to do but look great, drop some exposition now and again, and occasionally blow stuff up.)

Then again, she's not alone in that regard. Anyone who's ever watched The Wire knows that Elba is a charisma-bomb on most occasions. As Stringer Bell, he always commanded one's full attention. But, here, he just seems bored and in a funk. Same goes for Morgan, who made a decent impression as the Comedian in Watchmen but, again, doesn't have either the wherewithal or the ambition to spin gold from lead here. Somehow, someway (and just like Clash of the Titan's "power of Medusa"), this movie just seems to suck the life right out of people -- It's as if everyone realized at some point they were in a second-rate action movie and recalibrated their behavior accordingly.

The one notable exception I mentioned earlier, tho', is the future Captain America, Chris Evans. Perhaps, thanks to his quality turn as the Human Torch in the otherwise atrocious Fantastic Four films, Evans has already had some practice in how to be the best thing in a bad movie. (He's also quite good in the promising but maddeningly uneven Sunshine.) Or perhaps it's just because his character, Jensen, is given the meatiest stuff to work with. Nonetheless, Evans sells it -- The Losers is a zippier, vervier film whenever he's onscreen. Which I guess makes him the winner of The Losers [rimshot]...Mama didn't raise no fool.

Not to get all Peter Travers up in here, but, if you're in any way a member of the fanboy/fangirl nation, Matthew Vaughn's Kick-Ass is, pure and simple, kick-ass. Much as Jon Favreau's Iron Man launched the summer of 2008 with a sleek, rousing, highly-enjoyable crowd-pleaser of a comic book film, I'm happy to report that Vaughn delivers exactly what its very quality trailer (not to mention Layer Cake and, occasionally, Stardust) promised -- two quality hours of thrills, spills, and vaguely disreputable four-color mayhem.

This is not only a much more entertaining adaptation of Mark Millar's work than Timur Bekmanbetov's badly flawed Wanted. It's also, in some ways and like Brad Bird's The Incredibles, more Watchmen-y than Watchmen -- a sardonic, pleasingly daft evisceration of common comic book tropes. And with a light touch, an impressive funnybook aesthetic, and great comic presence throughout, Kick-Ass is an audience movie if there ever was one, and just an all-around fun night out at the multiplex.

If you're unfamiliar with the comic (as I was -- I just knew the conceit), Kick-Ass basically centers on one question: Given that there are millions of comic book fans out there, and more than a few of them are, put charitably, maybe a little socially maladjusted, how come nobody in our world ever dresses up in a costume to fight crime? That's the banner idea that occurs one day to thoroughly average high-school kid Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson, looking like a lankier Frodo.) And one scuba outfit purchase from Amazon and a few weeks of training (re: fantasizing) later, Dave -- now known as Kick-Ass -- embarks on his Hero Quest...which, well, doesn't turn out so hot. (Minor spoiler: He quickly gets shivved, hit by a car, and left for dead.)

The silver lining of this godawful ass-kicking: Dave suffers so much nerve damage from his beatdown that he's backed his way into a super-power -- a higher-than-average pain tolerance. And so he sets out once more to fulfill his destiny, maybe impress a girl here or there also. But, while Kick-Ass is basically freelancing his way into a super-hero career, other folks take the mask-and-cowl more seriously -- namely the better-trained, better-armed, and better-motivated father-daughter duo of Damon and Mindy MacCready, otherwise known as Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and Hit-Girl (Chloe Moretz). Out for revenge against a drug operation run by kingpin Frank D'Amico (Mark Strong), Big Daddy and Hit-Girl tend to leave a swath of blood and entrails in their wake. This makes D'Amico livid, of course, and so he starts gunning for any and all costumed vigilantes he can find, starting with that goofy kid on Youtube in the green scuba suit...

Admittedly, Kick-Ass is ultra-violent, although always in a hyperstylized comic book sense. (At worst, we're in Kill Bill territory here.) Like Sin City, the moral economy of Kick-Ass may be somewhat suspect, although it's nowhere near as craven or reprehensible as some pearl-clutching critics, like, weirdly, Roger Ebert, suggest. (Basically, Ebert is mortified by Hit-Girl. I presume he's never heard of Robin, Bucky, Kitty Pryde, Jason Todd, or any other number of endangered child sidekicks in comics. That train left the station fifty years ago.) And, yes, it's occasionally sophomoric -- if I remember correctly, we have two masturbation jokes before the credits are even finished rolling. All that being said, Kick-Ass is also breezy, propulsive, and very entertaining, and its pros definitely outweigh its cons.

There are a lot of little things about the movie that work, from Clark Duke's sidekick banter (he's much more engaging here than in Hot Tub Time Machine) to Mark Strong (late of Sherlock Holmes, soon of Robin Hood) continuing to grow into an A-list presence. Or seeing a post-Bad Lieutenant Nick Cage offer up a wicked Adam West impression. Or Kick-Ass and Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, nee McLovin) getting their freak on to Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy." (One minor quibble: From "Crazy" to "Bad Reputation" to even the 28 Weeks Later score, the soundtrack is weirdly rote in its choices, and feels almost temp-track-y.)

But, let's get real -- In the end, this is Hit Girl's movie, and Chloe Moretz just about runs away with the durned show. As in (500) Days of Summer, Moretz is basically playing another preternaturally adult kid sister, except this time she's also a certifiable badass with a potty mouth and a way with butterfly knives. (As it turns out, she'll be doing the Old-Soul routine again this Christmas in Matt Reeves' American remake of Let the Right One In.) Still, the movie wouldn't work at all if she wasn't great, and this is a star-making performance. Get used to the purple wig, y'all, 'cause Hit-Girl, I suspect, is going to be a staple of both Halloween and cosplay types for many years to come. And it's Moretz's impish grin and impeccable comic timing that, more than anything else, makes the idea of a Kick-Ass 2 worth entertaining.

"The idea basically sparked from the realisation that Mr Happy from the Mr Men, looks a lot like the Comedians badge from Watchmen... and a quick doodle of this lead to the question "Who Watches the Mr Men?" and assigning various Mr Men personalities to their Alan Moore counterparts..." By way of my sis and as you may have already seen in my twitter feed, various Marvel and DC superheroes done up as Mr. Men (a staple of my early years).

"Without getting into specifics, the key thing that makes the third film a great possibility for us is that we want to finish our story, and in viewing it as the finishing of a story rather than infinitely blowing up the balloon and expanding the story. We have a great ensemble, that's one of the attractions of doing another film, since we've been having a great time for years." Christopher Nolan discusses Batman and Superman (but no World's Finest)

Five movies this past weekend and I didn't catch this one (although I did see the fun Tron: Legacy teaser): With Sam Rockwell's Justin Hammer making an appearance, here's the second trailer for Jon Favreau's Iron Man 2. This is only two months away? Wow, that was fast.

"Webb said, 'This is a dream come true and I couldn't be more aware of the challenge, responsibility, or opportunity. Sam Raimi's virtuoso rendering of Spider-Man is a humbling precedent to follow and build upon. The first three films are beloved for good reason.'" Well, actually, not many care much for Spidey 3. In any event, the post-Raimi reboot of Spiderman at Sony has found its director in Mark Webb, previously of (500) Days of Summer.

A solid choice, although two things give me pause: 1) It's hard to escape the sense that Webb was picked mainly because the studio suits think that, unlike Raimi, he'll be more malleable than a lot of the A-list names floating around (Fincher, Cameron). 2) The ramifications of the following sentence might just end up being terrible: "The touchstone for the new movie will not be the 1960s comics...but rather this past decade's 'Ultimate Spider-Man' comics by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley where the villain-fighting took a back seat to the high school angst."

"A decade ago we set out on this journey with Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire and together we made three 'Spider-Man' films that set a new bar for the genre. When we began, no one ever imagined that we would make history at the box-office and now we have a rare opportunity to make history once again with this franchise."

Um, ok. Apparently as a result of continuing tensions between Sam Raimi (still gunshy after being forced to include Venom in Spiderman 3) and the studio suits (who wanted him to move ahead anyway), Sony puts the kibosh on Spiderman 4 and sends Raimi, Maguire, et al on their way. Next up is a reboot, scripted by Zodiac's James Vanderbilt and slated for 2012. (Here's a tip -- Don't give the Green Goblin a cruddy mask this time.)

Also, in much less interesting Marvel firing news, Stuart Townsend is out as Fandral in Kenneth Branagh's Thor, and has been replaced by Joshua Dallas of the forthcoming Red Tails and The Descent 2. Hmm...Perhaps he was still bitter about the whole Aragorn thing.

Casting continues to fill out for Kenneth Branagh's Thor: Apparently Idris Elba will play Heimdall (Asgard's bouncer, basically), and Stuart Townsend, Ray Stevenson, and Tadanobu Asano have signed up as Fandral, Volstagg, and Hogun respectively (Fandral, Hogun and Volstagg.) Stringer Bell and the Warriors Three join Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Natalie Portman, Jaime Alexander, Colm Feore, Anthony Hopkins, and Stellan Skarsgaard.

In today's trailer bin, director Matthew Vaughn borrows a little bad reputation from Freaks & Geeks to make the case for his adaptation of Kick-Ass, with Aaron Johnson, Chloe Moretz, Nicolas Cage, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse. (So far, so good -- from all indications, Moretz's Hit Girl will steal the show.)

Meanwhile, Sam Worthington takes on big scorpions and sundry other Kraken-like things in the very 300-ish trailer for Louis Leterrier's Clash of the Titans remake, also with Alexa Davalos, Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Danny Huston, Gemma Arterton, Pete Postlethwaite, Jason Flemyng and Mads Mikkelsen. Frankly, it sorta lost me with the lousy aggro-whiteboy rock, but ya never know. And "Titans Will Clash!"...ugh. Who were the ad wizards who came up with that one?

Casting for Kenneth Branagh's take on Thor fills out, with Jaimie Alexander and Colm Feore joining the cast. Alexander plays Sif, while "Feore's character is shrouded in mystery, though it is known to be a villain." (That spells trouble to me -- Be it stage or screen, Feore can be super-hammy.)

Whoever Feore is playing (Mephisto?), it's not Loki -- That would be Tom Hiddleston, appearing alongside "Papa Kirk" Chris Hemsworth as Thor and Natalie Portman as Jane Foster.

Meanwhile, the strange Aaron Sorkin-penned, David Fincher-directed Facebook movie, The Social Network, gets a cast in Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Timberlake, and Doctor Who alum Andrew Garfield (also soon to appear in Gilliam's Imaginarium.) "Eisenberg will play Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg; Timberlake will play Sean Parker, the Napster co-founder who became Facebook's founding president; and Andrew Garfield will play Eduardo Saverin, the Facebook co-founder who fell out with Zuckerberg over money."

"'We believe that adding Marvel to Disney's unique portfolio of brands provides significant opportunities for long-term growth and value creation,' said Disney President and Chief Executive Robert A. Iger." Spidey, meet the Mouse: Disney buys Marvel for $4 billion.

And, in very related news, Fox announces another Fantastic Four reboot, with -- true to Fox form -- the hackmeisterly Akiva Goldsman at the helm. "Though Marvel Entertainment owns and finances properties like 'Iron Man' and 'Thor,' Fox controls 'Fantastic Four' in perpetuity -- as long as it continues making the films. Fox has the same arrangement on Marvel Comics properties 'X-Men,' 'Daredevil' and "Silver Surfer."

"This is not about zombies popping out of closets. This is a story about survival, and the dynamics of what happens when a group is forced to survive under these circumstances. The world (in 'Walking Dead') is portrayed in a smart, sophisticated way." Don Draper and Walt White, meet the Zombie Apocalypse: Apparently, AMC is close to contracting Frank Darabont to oversee, and Gale Ann Hurd to produce, a television series from Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead. Clever, clever -- I'd watch it. (And let's hope they use the most recent mathematical modeling to keep things on the up-and-up.)

In the trailer bin of late:

She's given up, stop: Mia Wasikowska, a.k.a. Alice, takes a tumble down the rabbit hole anew in our first look at Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, also with Johnny Depp (frontlined a bit much here), Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter, Stephen Fry, Michael Sheen, Christopher Lee, Alan Rickman, Matt Lucas, Crispin Glover, Noah Taylor, and Timothy Spall. (Looks like a good start, although clearly there is still much CGI-rendering to do.)

In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, where naturally Gary Oldman is up to no good, a Mad Maxish Denzel Washington may be carrying the secret to something-or-other in the trailer for the Hughes Brothers' The Book of Eli, also with Mila Kunis, Ray Stevenson, Jennifer Beals, Frances de la Tour, and Michael Gambon. (It's good to see the Hughes, of From Hell and the underrated Menace II Society, back behind the camera. But I'm betting this'll seem a bit been-there-done-that, coming so soon after John Hillcoat's The Road.)

Kate Beckinsale uncovers something deadly, dark, and dangerous in the furthest reaches of Antarctica in the straight-to-video-ish trailer for Dominic Sena's Whiteout, also with Gabriel Macht and Tom Skerritt. (It looks like The Thing, with shower scenes. Beckinsale is probably one of my bigger movie star crushes, but lordy, the woman needs a new agent.)

And, as Comic-Con 2009 is just kicking off:

Pushing Neil Blomkamp's District 9, Peter Jackson talks The Hobbit and Tintin. (Apparently, the script for The Hobbit is three weeks away, and four or five of the 13 dwarves have been front-lined. Spielberg has finished a first cut of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, and The Lovely Bones comes out Dec. 11, with a trailer Aug. 6.)

Jonah Hex gets a poster that is sadly devoid of Malkovich. (For what is here, the scar looks decent enough, Megan Fox in anything gives me pause (but I guess she's a hot ticket after the Transformers sequel made so much bank), and the lettering looks a bit futuristic for the property...unless they're going post-Crisis Hex.

TRON 2.0, a.k.a. TR2N, is now called the much-more-boring TRON LEGACY. But, hey, at least they're not abusing the colon...yet. (More TRON news, of sorts, in the post below, and, since the weekend is young, undoubtedly more Comic-Con news to come.) Update: The TR2N footage that premiered last Comic-Con is now -- finally -- up in glorious Quicktime.

"Any legitimate terror suspect, she said, would almost certainly be held in remote, high-security 'supermax' federal prisons, which are already home to convicted terrorists like British shoe bomber Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged 20th hijacker of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. That's what these prisons are designed for." The WP's Dan Froomkin surveys the most recent idiocy being spouted by Republicans -- as well as FBI director Robert Mueller and far too many Senate Democrats: that moving detainees from Gitmo into maximum security prisons would represent a clear and present danger to the republic. (As always, see also Glenn Greenwald on this ridiculous subject.)

I'm unclear as to what the GOP thinks will happen if we move these detainees into our regular prison system (other than that it'll probably be harder to waterboard them.) What kind of fantasyland do these yokels reside in? These detainees aren't Lex Luthor or the Joker. They have no vast army of misguided goons waiting to help them in the Big House. (In fact, I think they'll find they don't have much in common with your run-of-the-mill hard time lifer.) Nor have they concocted any diabolical master plans to escape from these extremely secure institutions. Newsflash: Those supercriminal types you read about in comics don't actually exist. (And, while we're debunking conservative fantasies, forget what you saw Jack Bauer do: "ticking time bomb" scenarios don't in fact happen either, and, even if they did, torture is in no way effective as a means of obtaining the information you'd need. Not that its efficacy matters anyway, because it's a war crime regardless.)

Absurd. Blatantly absurd. And altogether irritating that, once again, too many Democrats in Congress are not only taking these inchoate lunacies seriously, but grimly echoing them as if there's even a modicum of sound reasoning going on here. Can these conservatives and their Dem enablers distinguish between the Real World and their bizarre, half-baked realm of nightmares anymore? At this point, I half-expect Chuck Grassley and Harry Reid to tell me they're imprisoning Zubadayah, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, et al in a pane of glass and shooting them into the far reaches of space. I mean, it worked for General Zod in Superman II, right?

Casting fills out for Kenneth Branagh's Thor -- there's a phrase that should stay weird for awhile -- with the titular hero to be played by Chris Hemsworth (recently George "Papa" Kirk in Star Trek) and Branagh veteran Tom Hiddleston as Loki. Well, they both look the part, at least. So far, so good.

Stand clear of the closing doors, please: In the trailer bin of late, it's Tony's Scott's remake of The Taking of the Pelham 1-2-3 (and if you want a doo doo rhyme, then come see me), starring Denzel Washington, John Travolta, John Turturro, James Gandolfini, and Greg from Flight of the Conchords (a.k.a. Frank Wood). The trailer here has got a good bit of ADD Tony Scott shakicam, and what looks to be the ending mano a mano -- so save yourself ten bucks and two hours and just watch this, if you're so inclined.

Along those lines, there was a great to-do yesterday over the leaked release of a workprint of Fox's X-Men Origins: Wolverine onto the tubes. So, if you want to catch that, it's flitting about the ether also. For my part, I don't think I care enough about this movie to even spend the requisite time downloading it, much less watching the durned thing. And that goes double after the botch job that was X3 and Fox mucking about with Watchmen a few months ago.

Sure, Fox Searchlight still distributes some quality films, but Fox itself of late has been where once-decent properties (FF, Die Hard, X-Files, Aliens, Predator) go to die. (Let's hope James Cameron is keeping the studio's greasy hands away from Avatar.) The hackmeister currently in charge of Fox, Tom Rothman, is once rumored to have quipped "F**k the fans. We already have their money anyway." Well actually, in this case, you don't.

In recent casting news, Will Arnett and Michael Shannon saddle up for Jonah Hex, already with Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, and Megan Fox. "It's the story of Hex (Brolin), a scarred bounty hunter tracking a voodoo practitioner (Malkovich) who wants to raise an army of the undead to liberate the South. Arnett will play a Union soldier who enlists Hex and is blindsided by the dirty fighting style of his enemies. The role is not inherently comic. Shannon plays Doc Cross Williams, the bizarre ringleader of a brutal gladiator circus event. The character might appear in sequels."

Also on the comic-to-film front, Idris Elba and Zoe Saldana join The Losers, starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan and based on the Vertigo comic. (Or, put another way, Stringer Bell and Uhura are teaming up with the Comedian.) The comic "follows a Special Forces team betrayed by its handler and left for dead. The 'losers' regroup in the interest of revenge, the opportunity to remove their names from a secret CIA death list and to conduct covert operations against the CIA and its interests." Well, ok then. The only comic Losers I'm cognizant of are the WWII tank crew who bought it in Crisis, so I have no idea if this'll make a good movie or not.

And finally, the cast for Christopher Nolan's Inception fills out, with Marion Cotillard, Cillian Murphy, and Ellen Page all in talks to join Leonardo di Caprio in Nolan's "contemporary sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind." (Murphy is the sole Nolan veteran of the three, having played the Scarecrow in both Batman films.)

Word comes down from the gibbering many-eyed oracles of Hadith that Ron Howard will be directing The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft as his next project after Angels and Demons. "Created by Mac Carter and Jeff Blitz, [the] book borrows elements from Lovecraft's life, such as his family's struggle with mental illness and his own bouts with writer's block, and transforms the young writer's darkest nightmares into reality when he comes across a book that puts a curse on him and lets the evils he conjures up loose on the world."

Hmm. On first glance, I'd think Ron Howard is exactly the wrong director to handle the depraved tentacled deities and slavering profane minions of the Cthulhu mythos. Then again, his last movie was Frost/Nixon, so perhaps he's developed a taste for it.

"Come writers and critics who prophesize with your pen, and keep your eyes wide --
the chance won't come again." As in the original comic, two Dylan songs bookend Zack Snyder's ambitious, admirable, and flawed adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen, the critically-acclaimed tale of the rise and fall of Cold War superheroes (which I've now seen twice.) The first, "The Times They Are A-Changin'," comes direct from Dylan himself, and scores the impressive, easter egg-filled opening credit montage that is one of the highlights of the film. Here, Snyder has taken the world of Watchmen, fused it with some quality Bob, and made something transporting and uniquely filmic. (Fanboys and fangirls, note the original Nite Owl saving the Waynes. By the way, Dylan, US History, and superheroes -- yes, this sequence is easy for me to love.)

On the other hand, over the end credits, we get a a truly terrible version of "Desolation Row" by My Chemical Romance, whom I'm not particularly familar with but who, on the basis of this cover, would seem to be derivative, talentless hacks. Now, I'm not averse to Dylan played fast and loud. To hear it done right, check out Rage Against the Machine excavating the angry heart of "Maggie's Farm", or the White Stripes' live takes on "Isis" or "Lovesick", or, of course, Jimi's "All Along the Watchtower" (also in the movie, right where it is in the book.) But MCR have completely missed both the power and the poetry of "Desolation Row," and just play it fast, sloppy, and nu-punk like the faux-Green Day cover band (which makes them faux-faux-Pistols) they seem to be.

If I've spent a lot of time here talking about these two Dylan songs at the onset instead of Watchmen, it's because they mirror the dichotomy present in the film. In certain sequences like the opening credits, Snyder manages to catch lightning in a bottle and really bring elements of the graphic novel to life, albeit in truncated form. There are moments in the movie, usually involving Rorschach or Dr. Manhattan, where I was struck by the sheer sensation of seeing the book leap off the page. (Short plot summary for the uninitiated: In an alternate-America 1985, on the eve of what appears to be nuclear Armageddon, one of a dwindling band of ex-superheroes is murdered in (and then out of) his New York City apartment. Rorschach, a borderline-psychotic right-wing vigilante who dresses like Philip Marlowe and rasps like Christian Bale, wants to know why. It's a dangerous question.) The altered ending notwithstanding, it's somewhat amazing to me that we got a Watchmen movie this close to the source material, and, by all accounts, Snyder had to fight tooth and nail with the studio suits for every cynical, resolutely uncommercial facet of it.

But, at other times, Snyder's bad habits sadly leak through and undeniably taint the end product, most notably in the gratuitous violence present here. In interviews, Snyder can sometimes come off as a geekier version of the white fratboys in Harold and Kumar. ("Dude, that's so extreme!") And that better-harder-faster mentality results in some serious whiffs along the way in Watchmen, when Snyder ratchets up the gore and bone-breaking at the expense of the story. However close the movie gets to gorgeously capturing Manhattan's reveries on Mars (although I wish the Doc's living in an endless now was better emphasized.), it basically drops the ball completely on Rorschach's "origin" (which I quoted in my pre-movie post), mainly because Snyder sidesteps the existential horror of Kovacs' story to amp up the violence of it. In the comic, Kovacs has pierced the veil of the sheltering sky and discovered all is blackness. In the movie, he just seems to be on a torture-porn killing spree. Same goes for a scene involving Dan (Nite-Owl) and Laurie (Silk Spectre) getting jumped by the Top Knots gang in a dark alley. It's bone-crushingly brutal when it doesn't need to be, actually has these two kiling people Rorschach-style, and seriously detracts from the more interesting scene it's intercut with, that of Dr. Manhattan inadvertently exposing his disinterest in humanity in an interview with Ted Koppel.

Now, as with loud, angry Dylan covers, I'm not averse to gore or over-the-top violence when it serves the narrative. To take an example, there's a scene involving human entrails stuck to the ceiling (don't you want to see this now?) which is also overly Snyderish, but I think works in context. (The voiceover is making Hollis Mason's point that, with the arrival of Dr. Manhattan (i.e. the advent of atomic weaponry), the superhero game has forever changed -- it's no longer gallantly nabbing bankrobbers and pursesnatchers with a few "Wham! Pow!" four-color blows, but something much darker and more lethal.) But Snyder's Watchmen is unnecessarily violent at the wrong times (see also Big Figure's henchmen), and then inexplicably goes soft at the moments when gore is virtually required. I'm referring here to the consequences of the Big Plan, which feel strangely weightless in the movie, partly because (in this cut) no characters we've been following are anywhere close to Ground Zero and partly because, unlike every other action sequence in the movie, it's all very PG-13 all of a sudden. (Contrast this with the opening of Chapter 12 in the comic, which is basically several pages of horrific imagery, unlike anything we've yet seen in the story.) Now, I'm willing to bet dollars-to-donuts that 9/11-squeamish studio types were unyielding about the soft-pedaling of the climax here (which, by the way, is elegant in its own way even without the squid.) Still, it's hard to escape the feeling that, while Moore and Gibbons used violence in their tale to comment on its awfulness (and the awfulness of The Plan), Snyder often just uses it because it's like, totally extreme.

Don't get me wrong: I have no idea how it plays to people unfamiliar with the comic, but for the rest of us, there's a lot to like here. Even notwithstanding some godawful, cringe-inducing age and Nixon make-up (I guess everyone was busy on Benjamin Button) and one of the worst movie sex scenes in recent memory (I'm offended on behalf of Leonard Cohen), Watchmen is a better film than some of the critical pans make it out to be. Jackie Earle Haley's Rorschach is especially dead-on, and is rightfully drawing most of the acting kudos right now -- This should be a career-defining role for him. But Billy Crudup's Dr. Manhattan and, surprisingly, Patrick Wilson's Nite-Owl are also pretty close to note-perfect. (So too is Matt Frewer's Moloch, who absolutely nails his big moment -- "You know that kind of cancer that you get better from eventually? Well, that ain't the kind of cancer I got.") And Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Comedian and Matthew Goode's Ozymandias grow on you, even if Ozy seems a bit charisma-starved compared to his comic counterpart. (As for Malin Ackerman's Silk Spectre...uh, well, let's just say she's in it too.)

So, in short, I liked the movie, would recommend it to readers and non-readers alike, and thought even more of it the second time around when I was less burdened by expectations. (Yes, it's wayyyy better than 300, and I'm looking forward to the 30-minute longer cut, which is rumored to spend more time with Rorschach's shrink and the two Bernards.) Still, it's hard to shake the nagging sense that the things I really liked about Watchmen would've made it into any reasonably faithful movie version, and that a different director than Snyder might've brought about a better, richer film in the end.

Still, as my old boss was wont to say: We don't need people who get the ball to the twenty-yard line; we need people who can bring it over the goal line. And, for better or worse, Snyder got this ball over the goal line where Terry Gilliam, Darren Aronofsky, and Paul Greengrass couldn't. Let's give credit where it's due: After twenty years of trying, they actually made a Watchmen movie, and it ended up being surprisingly close to the source material and not at all an embarrassment or cash grab. I presume the Rorschach types probably loathe this end result, compromised as it is in certain places. But for the rest of us, I'd say this new Utopia, however flawed at times, is close enough for government work.

"Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It's us. Only us."

At Midnight, all the agents and the superhuman crews go and round up everyone who knows more than they do...

"It would be insulting to the genre and its readers, as well as fundamentally untrue, to say that Moore reinvented comics. Moore loved comics, in all their overheated melodrama and violence and passion and romance, and simply wanted them to fulfill their potential. He wanted comics to be better written (and more beautifully drawn; he has consistently brought out the best in his artists), to be more alive to the outside world and to other forms of culture, to be less imprisoned by the emotional ghetto of pre-adolescence." On the precipice of Watchmen, Salon's Andrew O'Hehir sings the praises of Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing.

As for Watchmen itself, the early reviews for Zack Snyder's adaptation are coming in pretty poor, unfortunately. Still, I remain cautiously optimistic that, with expectations suitably lowered, there'll be some things to like about Snyder's version. For one, a lot of the worst reviews of the film wallow in exactly the type of insecure, i'm-too-cultured-for-funny-books douchebaggery I just noted in my review of A Christmas Tale. (See, for example, Anthony Lane's spoilerish New Yorker review, whose good points -- for example, that Snyder's film revels in the same fetishizing of power that Moore was trying to subvert -- are buried beneath his puerile sneering at both the author and fanboys in general. ("'Watchmen,' like 'V for Vendetta,' harbors ambitions of political satire, and, to be fair, it should meet the needs of any leering nineteen-year-old who believes that America is ruled by the military-industrial complex, and whose deepest fear -- deeper even than that of meeting a woman who requests intelligent conversation -- is that the Warren Commission may have been right all along.") Even for him and The New Yorker, which famously whined of The Matrix that we should all be reading Cheever instead, this review is a new low.

For another, and as I've said here many times before, Snyder isn't my preferred choice of director for this project either. But, heck, even a stopped watch is right twice a day. So, here's hoping there's something salvageable from this long-awaited adaptation...I'll know when the clock strikes midnight tomorrow.

"Rorschach's Journal, October 13, 1985, 8:30pm. Meeting with Dreiberg left bad taste in mouth. The flabby failure sits whimpering in his basement. Why are so few of us left active, healthy, and without personality disorders? The first Nite-Owl runs an auto-repair shop. The first Silk Spectre is dying in a California rest resort. Dollar Bill got his cape stuck in a revolving door where he got gunned down. Silhouette murdered, a victim of her own indecent lifestyle. Moth Man's in an asylum in Maine. Only two names remain on my list. Both share private quarters at Rockefeller Military Research Center. I shall go to them. I shall go tell the indestructible man that someone plans to murder him."

With Midnight only two weeks away, there're a quite a few more Watchmen clips popping up online (including a semi-entertaining riff on Martha Quinn-era MTV and one cringe-worthy clip of the prison melee that's basically a show reel of Zack Snyder's bad habits.) Still, this extended look at Rorschach's sleuthing gives me hope that Jackie Earle Haley, at least, knocked it out of the park. ("All those liberals and intellectuals and smooth-talkers, and all of sudden nobody can think of anything to say.")The clock's still ticking...

A good bit of interesting news on the movie development front of late: Presumably given carte blanche from WB (provided he brings home another Batman in 2011 or 2012), Christopher Nolan announces his next project will be Inception, a self-penned story "'described as 'a contemporary sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind.'" So, Minority Report meets Memento? I'll go.

In other news, David Cronenberg looks to go Bourne with The Matarese Circle, starring Denzel Washington and Tom Cruise as rival spies up against the same sinister conspiracy. The industrious Woody Allen has locked down the stars for his next (post-Larry David) project in Anthony Hopkins and Josh Brolin. (No other details forthcoming.) And, over on his other next film, Brolin has found a worthy antagonist for his Jonah Hex in none other than John Malkovich. "Malkovich will play Turnbull, a wealthy Southern plantation owner whose son is killed by Union soldiers during the Civil War. He blames Hex, a former confederate soldier-turned-hardened bounty hunter and gunslinger." Ah, movies. They just keep making more!

In the third installment of Watchmen viral fun, we get to venture into the Gunga Diner and try out an 8-bit, Veidt-manufactured Minutemen arcade game. (It's basically Double Dragon or Kung-Fu Master, except with Hollis Mason, Sally Jupiter, and Moloch.) Some nice touches in here -- note the poster for Rolf Mueller's circus show. And the date of the game -- 1977, a bit early for this sort of sidescroller -- might suggest the accelerating influence of Dr. Manhattan...

Speaking of public service announcements, and in keeping with the Cronkite-era Dr. Manhattan report of a few weeks ago, the Watchmen powers-that-be offer up The Keene Act and YOU, a 1977 government safety video on the predatory costumed vigilantes in our midst. To be honest, I like the idea better than the execution, but good on them for tryin'.

"I think I just have a natural operatic aesthetic. I can’t help it. People have said to me, when they talk about the graphic novel, about how it’s gritty and real, and I always go, 'Yeah, you realize also though that a lot of that book takes place on Mars.'" By way of a friend, Watchmen director Zack Snyder talks with the NYT about the recent lawsuit, the challenges of adaptation, The Dark Knight, Alan Moore, transient cephalopods, and other matters. (I'd really skip this one if you haven't read the book and want to go in unspoiled.) "In the end, all I would hope is that geek culture, this movie gives geek culture a little bit of cred."

Also, for the record, I could honestly care less about the lack-of-squid issue that's riled up the purists. The squid was a means to an end (and a riff on the wildy convoluted Dr. Evil-ish plots and goofy villains like Starro one tends to find in Golden Age comics), not the actual point of the graphic novel. In fact, I'd say the absent Scouring of the Shire from PJ's LotR trilogy is a much more glaring omission, in terms of changing the actual meaning of the story...and those turned out ok, didn't they?

Some fun links by way of other quality blogs:

"'Wonder Woman? That's not even Marvel,' Obama responded before storming out of the press room. 'Who are you people?'" According to the venerable newshounds of The Onion, purported fanboy Barack Obama is apparently having trouble relating to his new cabinet. [Via LinkMachineGo.] "Added the president, "For the love of Crom, am I the only one here who wants to keep the U.S. technologically competitive?'"

I found this exchange particularly funny: "Gates told reporters he may have gotten off on the wrong foot with the new president, citing an occasion when Obama asked him what he knew about 1984's Secret Wars, a 12-issue limited Marvel release. Gates then handed a visibly confused Obama 1,400 classified pages on covert CIA operations in El Salvador. Later, the defense secretary attempted to find common ground with Obama by making casual references to the comic book Spawn. But the 44th president reportedly brushed him off with an abrupt laugh, saying, 'no one in [his] administration likes Spawn.'"

Well, sorry to hear of the dilemma, Mr. President. Perhaps (*cough cough*) hiring some progressive-minded fanboys (fanboy-minded progressives?) might've alleviated the situation...

"The electronic signs, which usually warn motorists of traffic detours, instead included warnings such as 'Caution! Zombies Ahead!' and 'Nazi Zombies! Run!!!'" By way of Liam at sententiae et clamores, some enterprising Austin wags hack the local road signs in preparation for World War Z. "The signs also instructed motorists to 'run for cold climates.'" Well-played, y'all.

"You are standing in a nightclub. There is a guitar here." Also via LMG, check out the original version of Guitar Hero from 1982. (Yes, text-adventure humor will always get some love here at GitM.)

"Did I ever tell you how i got these sock-monkeys?" I guess this post probably isn't in my best interest, as y'all will just further diminish my slim chances of scoring this year's exceedingly cool victory swag, but nevertheless: Web Goddess's annual Oscar contest is now live, and check out this year's prizes! Huzzah to Kris on this pair of Gotham's finest. (It's just too my bad my grim view of Slumdog will probably kill my entry this year.)

"It doesn't take a genius to see the world has problems. We can do so much more. We can save this world...with the right leadership." If you haven't been by there recently, the official site for Zack Snyder's Watchmen has added extensive quotes and mini-trailers for each of the main characters. It's particularly good to see/hear more of Ozymandias -- Except perhaps Doc Manhattan, Matthew Goode as Veidt was the character I've had the most worries about.

Also of note, Jackie Earle Haley's Rorschach delivers his first journal entry ("Dog carcass in alley this morning. Tire tread on burst stomach..."), and the oft-quoted line from the trailer -- "the world will look up and shout 'save us!'" -- has been restored to its original form.

Update: The final poster is released. Bit of a cut-and-paste photoshop job, to be honest. But I suppose it'll do until the trouble gets here.

Taking a page from all the viral shenanigans accompanying The Dark Knight, the WB marketeers recreate Rorschach's favorite mag, the New Frontiersman, for Zack Snyder's forthcoming Watchmen. Hrm. It doesn't seem nearly as right-wing as I remember. Must investigate further.

Update: As part of the site above, a March 1970 NBS news broadcast celebrates 10 years of Dr. Manhattan.

The clock is ticking: As expected, Fox and WB have settled their dispute over Zack Snyder's Watchmen, thus clearing the way for the March 6 release. "Fox...will emerge with an upfront cash payment that sources pegged between $5 million and $10 million...More importantly, Fox will get a gross participation in "Watchmen" that scales between 5% and 8.5%, depending on the film’s worldwide revenues. Fox also participates as a gross player in any sequels and spinoffs, sources said."

Sequels and spinoffs? I don't think so...how awful would those be? Then again, I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the forthcoming prequelish Watchmen: The End is Nigh Double Dragon game and, as the graphic novel predicted, the inevitable Watchmen action figures. (Archie and Bubastis sold separately.)

Speaking of the costumed vigilante in question, it looks like the recent lawsuit by Fox to put a hold on WB's Watchmen is now well on the way towards settlement. "Attorneys for both studios disclosed Friday that they had achieved progress toward an accord and agreed to delay a federal court hearing until today in order to continue settlement talks." So, reset the Doomsday Clock for March 6, 2009.

On the occasion of the new year, EW previews some of the more-anticipated films of 2009, including Michael Mann's Public Enemies, Terminator: Salvation, Spike Jonze's' long-awaited Where the Wild Things Are, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Pixar's Up, Harold Ramis' Year One, The Taking of the Pelham 1-2-3 (again), Wolverine, and Watchmen.

"The bottom line: Warner Bros. had absolutely no right to roll film on Zack Snyder’s adaptation of the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons superhero classic." Forget the watchmen for a sec: Who's watching Larry Gordon? A judge rules that Fox's lawsuit over Watchmen does indeed have merit, and that former Fox, now WB exec Larry Gordon never actually secured all the necessary distribution rights to make Watchmen at his new home studio. "In his ruling, Feess concludes that Gordon never properly presented Fox with the option to produce and distribute the version of Watchmen developed by director Zack Snyder. He also makes it clear that neither Gordon nor Warner Bros. had bought out Fox’s interest before Warner Bros. went into production."

What this means for the movie is still up in the air, although a release delay of several months isn't out of the question. When a similar incident happened with The Dukes of Hazzard, a case that involved the same judge, WB eventually just settled and ponied up before the release date.

Well, here's hoping this gets worked out in short order. I'm guessing Snyder's film is going to have some serious problems, but I'd still like to see it next to immediately. (Watchmen image above via The Nerd of Her.)

Times are tough, bub. In a clear sign that the economic downturn is affecting actors and celebrities as much as it is ordinary working people, Danny Huston and Liev Schreiber pay off their mortgages alongside Hugh Jackman in the new trailer for Gavin Hood's X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Ok, I kid, this doesn't look completely terrible. But some of the shots here -- particularly Jackman walking away from the explosion, hanging on to that chopper, or otherwise engaged in wire-fu -- definitely have that C-movie, Punisher: War Zone feel to them. And after the directorial switcheroo that brought about the lamentable X3: The Last Stand (which has an equally overburdened title, come to think of it -- what's with the colons?), I'm not all that inclined to look charitably on Fox's handling of this property anymore.

Fanboy-wise, I had mostly checked out of X-Men by the time they began revisiting Wolvie's origin every other year -- most of the stuff I do remember involved Kitty Pryde and feudal Japan -- so I can't really speak to what's going on in this clip in terms of comic continuity. That being said, I've always thought the cajun mutant cardslinger Gambit (here, Friday Night Lights' Taylor Kitsch, no pun intended) was a pretty goofy, throwaway character, n'est-ce-pas, mes amis? It is interesting to see (I think) Emma Frost pop up for a second, but, again, I'm much more familiar with the character in her old, Hellfire Club incarnation, before she pulled a Magneto somewhere along the line and got retconned into a X-member. (And I always thought, movie-wise, they should've cast Rosamund Pike for the White Queen, particularly in her ice-castle incarnation from the otherwise-completely-forgettable Die Another Day.)

"The Superman exists, and he's American." Several months after the fact, the Philip Glass-scored, Comic-Con Watchmen footage finally leaks onto the tubes. This looks more promising than the last trailer...but it's always easier when nobody's talking.

Update: In related news, see also Matt Groening's Watchmen. (Via LMG and mkh.)

Among the bountiful harvest that is the Quantum of Solace trailer crop...

Trailer rights to use Philip Glass and Muse? Several thousand dollars. Lawyers to haggle out an armistice among warring studios? Millions. Finally getting a Watchmen film up and made? Priceless. Costumed heroes (the Voice-of-Mastercard among them) investigate the death of a Comedian in the story-heavy second trailer for Zack Snyder's Watchmen.

I'm all over the place on this one. There are some real red flags here -- all the Snydery slo-mo shots of Malin Ackerman's hair, for example -- and some of the dialogue feels as stiff and expository as the ponderous take-a-meeting scenes in 300. Then again, as with the first trailer, I'm still having trouble just wrapping my mind around the fact that they finally made a Watchmen movie. So I'm inclined to be charitable, and the little flourishes throughout (Rorschach's mask moves!) appeal to my inner fanboy regardless. (Also, while Jackie Earle Hale's Bale-Batman-growl may be a tad distracting, it's hard to imagine Rorschach with any other kind of voice.) For now, I'll call it a push.

Bad Boy Kirk! Angry Spock(?)! Alluring Uhura! Villain with Ridges on Face! J.J. Abrams introduces his new-and-improved Enterprise babies in the crowd-pleasing trailer for the Star Trek reboot. I can't say I'm expecting all that much from this venture, and this clip, particularly in its 2 Fast 2 Furious opener, doesn't shy away from bringing the summer movie dumb. Still, I'm forced to admit this looks more fun than I'd earlier envisioned, and I'm looking forward to more of Simon Pegg's Scott and Karl Urban's Bones. (And Bruce Greenwood (Pike) and Eric Bana (Big Bad) are generally a welcome touch of class in any event.)

Also out of late:

A stiff, robotic alien promises to destroy life on Earth in order to save it...oh yeah, and he brought Gort along too. Keanu Reeves get threatening in the new action-centric trailer for next month's The Day the Earth Stood Still, also with Jennifer Connelly and Jon Hamm.

Speaking of threatening, Harrison Ford looks to uncork the finger of doom for the cause of immigration reform in the trailer for Wayne Kramer's Crash-like Crossing Over. (I hope his wife and family are ok, at least.) Joining Indy on this border-crossing adventure: Summer Bishil, Alice Braga, Cliff Curtis, Alice Eve, Ashley Judd, Ray Liotta, and Jim Sturgess.

Immigration, Schmimmigration. According to the teaser for Roland Emmerich's next forgettable summer jaunt, 2012, we've only got four years left anyway...and it's all Dubya's fault. Strangely enough, John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Danny Glover, Thandie Newton, Oliver Platt, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Woody Harrelson are all along to surf this improbable Himalayan-swamping wave, but I wouldn't expect much of a splash at the box office.

Finally, the revolution may not be televised, but it'll soon be hitting at least a few screens here in America anyway: Witness the a international teaser for Steven Soderbergh's Che (or, more to the point, Ches -- I believe this project is still two films.) Word of mouth on this one has been highly variable, but I remain curious to see what Soderbergh and Benicio del Toro have come up with. Still, this strangely disjointed teaser -- Ken Burns by way of Oliver Stone -- doesn't really get the job done.

"The Bodyguard goes LIMP and slides off the table. The PENCIL is gone. MAGIC. The Joker BOWS. Grins at Gambol." As part of WB's "For Your Consideration" Oscar-push website, the official script for Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight is now online. Worth a read-through if you enjoyed the film as I did, if only to discover what memorable flourishes by Ledger's Clown Prince of Crime were the actor's creation. (Quite a few of 'em, it seems.)

As featured in the Spike awards last night, an extended version of Zack Snyder's Watchmen trailer arrives online. I'm liking the Galactus-y feel of Dr. Manhattan's moments, but the slo-mo Snyderisms here (the doomed flight of the Comedian notwithstanding) still give me pause.

Update: Speaking of which, said flight is now captured in a spiffy new Watchmen teaser poster, above.

With Matthew Vaughn now off the project, will Mjnolir fall into the hands of a Shakespearean? Apparently, Marvel is in discussions with Kenneth Branagh to direct Thor. That is...strange.

"A man only gets a couple of chances in life. It won't be long before he's sitting around wondering how he got to be second-rate." Lots of choice stuff in today's trailer bin: First up, President Josh Brolin braves pretzels, Poppa Bush, and enough JD to kill a small horse in this fun extended trailer for Oliver Stone's W. (I can't wait.) Elsewhere, Frank Miller borrows from Robert Rodriguez, who, of course, borrowed from him, to mine Will Eisner's back-catalog in this short new teaser for The Spirit. (I'm still not sold.)

Also up recently, Kate Winslet and Leonardo di Caprio forsake the Titanic to suffocate in the suburbs in the first trailer for Sam Mendes' Revolutionary Road. (Ok, altho' it looks Little Children-ish.) Tom Cruise leads an all-star team of character actors in a plot to kill Hitler in the second trailer for Bryan Singer's Valkyrie. And Brad Pitt moves from age to wisdom in the second trailer for David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. (Not as haunting as the teaser, but close.) I gotta say, it's good to finally hit the Oscar stretch for 2008 -- I haven't seen nearly enough movies this year.

Update: One more, via LMG: Philip Seymour Hoffman puts on a play -- and gets stuck waiting in the wings -- in the trailer for Charlie Kaufman's much-anticipated Synecdoche, New York, also starring Hope Davis, Catherine Keener, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Dianne Wiest, Emily Watson, and Michelle Williams.

Update 2: Ok, what with Marky Mark, Ludacris, Bridges the Lesser, the lousy whiteboy angst-metal, and the highly Matrix-derivative gun-fu and explosions throughout, the recent trailer for John Moore's Max Payne looks Skinemax bad. But, then again, it does have The Wire's Jamie Hector (Marlo) briefly playing Exposition Guy with an island accent, so that's enough for a link. Hey, I'm easily amused.

"Whatever happened to the American Dream? It came true -- you're looking at it." Quite a bit of new Watchmen material today. AICN get their hands on high-rez versions of the spiffy painted Comicon posters. (Rorschach | The Comedian | Silk Spectre I | Silk Spectre II | Nite-Owl | Dr. Manhattan | Ozymandias.) Very nicely done -- Lots of continuity nods thrown in for the fans, and note the clocks in the top-left corner. Plus, this is the first image of Ozy that I've liked so far. (Bubastis helps.) And Empire Online has a few new stills to share, although they've logo-stamped them in rather irritating fashion (and the characters look a bit stiff.)

The place to be right now, other than Berlin? San Diego, where the 2008 Comic-Con is now under way. There are lots of pictures of the floor here and here -- Note the full-scale version of NIte-Owl's ship (Archimedes) from Zack Snyder's Watchmen.

One of the first stories down the pike: Strangely enough, the recent rumors are true: Darren Aronofsky is signed for a Robocop sequel. I'd buy that for a dollar...But, don't get Murphy out of cold storage just yet: Not many of Aronofsky's projects ever seem to get off the ground. (See also: Batman: Year One, Ronin, Lone Wolf and Cub, Watchmen, Black Swan.)

Meanwhile, Disney brought down the house the first day with a surprise, fully-formed teaser for TR2N, featuring none other than the Dude, in both 1983 and 2008 incarnations. Best of all, as I recently wished in my Iron Man review, they seem to have stuck with the "Col. Kurtz up the datastream" idea. That should be great fun. Everyday, I think I'm going to wake up back on the grid...

Update: Also from Comic-Con Day 1, the trailer for Wolverine airs (ho-hum), Coming Soon has a sit-down with new Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat, and Torchwood's Captain Jack is up for Captain America? I don't see that at all.

Update 2: The TR2N trailer is up in really poor Kramervision...and it still looks grand. (A slightly cleaned up version is here.)

"I've not seen any recent comic book films, but I didn't particularly like the book 300. I had a lot of problems with it, and everything I heard or saw about the film tended to increase [those problems] rather than reduce them: [that] it was racist, it was homophobic, and above all it was sublimely stupid." As a companion to their Watchmen story, EW has a wide-ranging sit-down with Alan Moore, wherein he discusses Zack Snyder, 300, magic, the afterlife, DC Comics, and his favorite television show: "The absolute pinnacle of anything I've seen recently has got to be The Wire. It's the most stunning piece of television that has ever come out of America, possibly the most stunning piece of television full-stop...So yeah, everything else looks pretty lame next to The Wire."

Speaking of Moore's critique of Snyder, I felt a similar unease after reading Snyder's EW Q&A. Says Snyder of Watchmen: "Everyone says that about [Christopher Nolan's] Batman Begins. 'Batman's dark.' I'm like, okay, 'No, Batman's cool.' He gets to go to a Tibetan monastery and be trained by ninjas. Okay? I want to do that. But he doesn't, like, get raped in prison. That could happen in my movie. If you want to talk about dark, that's how that would go." Hrm. Ok. I'd have more faith in Snyder's Watchmen if he didn't persist in sounding like one of those "Totally Extreme!!" meathead whiteboys from Harold & Kumar.

Holy Catastrophic Wreck of a City, Batman! After two viewings, I'm happy to report Christopher Nolan's moody, sinister The Dark Knight was well worth the wait, and bears the high expectations set for it quite impressively. In fact, at two and a half hours (which zip along, and even feel somewhat truncated at times -- see below), this sprawling Gotham crime saga is almost too much movie to take in the first time around. To be sure, The Dark Knight isn't perfect -- It still has a few of the problems of Batman Begins: Once again, there's a lot of comic-book speechifyin' going on (Michael Caine's Alfred is particularly Yoda-ish at times), some leaps in logic are occasionally required, and the fight sequences can be hard to follow at first -- but all of these are readily forgivable given both the ambition and scope Nolan is working with here and the sheer entertainment value of the film.

Most importantly, if Begins, as I said in 2005, was "the Batman movie that fans of the Dark Knight have been waiting for," this is undoubtedly the Joker movie we've all been hoping for as its companion, particularly in light of Jack Nicholson's one-note grandstanding way back in 1989. Heath Ledger here is a true force of nature, embodying to a tee the malevolent, frighteningly insane jester of The Killing Joke and The Dark Knight Returns -- He has to be considered a lock for Best Supporting Actor next year.

Some spoilers will likely follow in the paragraphs to come, so, if you want to go in completely fresh, I'll leave it at this: WALL-E is up there, but right now The Dark Knight is without a doubt the film of the year, and far and away the best superhero movie out since Spiderman 2 or The Incredibles. True, some might find this vision of Gotham too relentlessly downbeat for their taste. But, if like me, you take your Batman black, you're in for a real treat.

The Dark Knight begins with a taste of things to come -- Six masked clowns descend upon a downtown Gotham bank, owned by the mob and run by Heat's William Fichtner, and only one drives out, with $68 million in lucre and another boost for his burgeoning notoriety. We then are introduced to the three men leading the fight to take back Gotham City from the criminal hordes: Lt. Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman), now running his own MCU; recently-elected DA and Kennedyesque "white knight" of Gotham Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), and of course, the Batman (Christian Bale), still striking fear in the hearts of Gotham's underworld...and inspiring a few copycats. With Gordon following the money, Dent handing down indictments, and the Batman enforcing the law (if sometimes by circumventing it), this trifecta of concerned citizens -- aided by ADA Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal), caught in a McNulty-Daniels-Pearlman love triangle of sorts -- have put the squeeze to the remaining Mob factions, who've reorganized into their own version of the New Day Co-Op. (Yes, as this paragraph attests, this version of Gotham comes off very Wiry at times.)

But, in their desperation, the Mob goes Marlo one step further, and places their trust in the deranged madman in greasepaint who stole their money in the first reel. Handy with knives, pencils, motivational tactics, and The Anarchist Cookbook, this Joker is in effect the criminal countermeasure to the Batman...except, it turns out, he could pretty much care less about the Mob, their money, or really anything else. Rather, as Alfred puts it, he "just wants to watch the world burn," and before he's fully indulged his whims of fancy, all of Gotham's heroes -- and the city itself -- will face his devilishly inspired moral quandaries, no-win situations that will test their character...and, more often than not, destroy them.

So, yes, folks, despite all the quality actors on display here (special kudos to Eckhart and Oldman) and the titular Dark Knight, this is ultimately the Clown Prince of Crime's movie...and he's a real kick. As I noted above, Jack Nicholson's portrayal of "Jack Nicholson" playing the Joker was a disappointment to me even when I was fifteen years old. But this is the scary clown I've been looking to see. Lolling his tongue obscenely along the scars in his mouth, chirping about madness, mayhem, lepers and crooks in his grotesque singsong, laughing hilariously to himself about gags only he would find remotely funny, this Joker, "like a dog chasing a car," is note-perfect throughout. Ledger has so many great moments in this film that it'd be impossible to enumerate them all here. Suffice to say, he (and Nolan) got it: The Joker's knowing, even admiring co-dependence with Batman ("You complete me!), his shifty-cowardly fighting style (i.e. throw goons in the way and look for the occasional shiv), his taste for the theatrical murder (note, for example, those video interrogations)...Ledger delved right past all the campy cruft surrounding the character for years and burrowed right into the clown's dark heart. Every plaudit you've heard about him is fully deserved -- it's really an amazing performance.

Of course, the Joker isn't the only villain of the piece. Of the other main Rogues' Gallery entrant, I loved the slow build-up to his "origin" -- for once, Two-Face had real dramatic and even tragic heft on the screen. (I'm a fan of Tommy Lee Jones, but I hope he sees this movie somewhere and feels downright lousy.) That being said, it's hard to escape the slight feeling that he -- as a villain, anyway -- is shoehorned into the story somewhat. Given how fast they try to run through the Two-Face storyline near the end, it might've made more sense just to set him up for the next installment. (Speaking of which, given that Nolan rectified Tim Burton's horrendous error of killing the Joker this time (a cruel irony, in light of recent events), I'm of the opinion currently congealing in fanboy circles that Dent was unconscious in the last scene, and will be shipped off to Arkham under a fake name, by (secret) order of Gordon, should the series continue.)

And the other villain of The Dark Knight -- besides mobsters Eric Roberts and Michael Jai White, that is -- is the Batman himself, who contracts a passing case of the Dubyas as the film progresses (much to Morgan Freeman's consternation.) True, the warrantless wiretap incident also seems slightly shoehorned in to some extent, but I applaud the brothers Nolan for bringing in some post-9/11 deepthink into the equation. (Don't worry -- it's nowhere near as exploitative as Cloverfield.) As the Joker spreads fear through Gotham, by way of targeted bombings and bridge-and-tunnel threats, the authorities behave increasingly badly to keep up, from harsh interrogations to phone taps to ultimately, the murderous vigilantism of Two-Face. But, despite the occasional smoldering ruin and grieving firemen, the analogy is never cut-and-dried, and, eventually, we're all implicated. When fear runs your city, nobody's thinking too clearly. (Or, as the Joker puts it, "When the chips are down, these civilized people will eat each other." -- Note also his veiled war-in-Iraq commentary, about truckloads of dead soldiers being "all part of the plan.")

For all the upside of The Dark Knight, there are still problems here, to be sure. Perhaps I was sitting too close the first time, but some of the action sequences -- most notably the final one (needlessly enhanced by the video game sonar, even if the white eyes were a nice fanboy touch) were hard to follow the first time through. (Everything made more sense the second time.) For all its 152 minutes, The Dark Knight still feels weirdly truncated at times, particularly in the final act. (The Rangoon, "watch the world burn" scene in the middle going also seems haphazardly thrown into the mix.) And, perhaps most problematic, characters have a tendency throughout to just show up and/or disappear without explanation. Where did the Joker go after Batman leaves the fundraiser? How did Bruce know the Joker was coming in the first place? How did Batman find Dent when he's interrogating the Joker's goon? Why was Eric Roberts (standing on his own two legs, no less) just sorta hanging around outside you-know-who's hospital room? You could just chalk it up to comic-book pacing, I suppose, but these moments still felt entirely too convenient a lot of the time. (I guess one could also complain about the depth of the Jokers' ruses -- the shattered-bullet fingerprint and phone-"contusion" come to mind -- but that was a case where I figured comic book rules sufficed to explain things.)

But, minor quibbling aside, The Dark Knight is an exemplary sequel, and easily the best of the seven Batfilm incarnations thus far. Which begs the question: After the dastardly depths of Ledger's Joker, where could Nolan & co. possibly go next? Everyone's signed for three films, and -- of the main villains -- we still have the Penguin (Ray Winstone? Phillip Seymour Hoffman?), the Riddler (Guy Pearce? Paul Bettany?), and the Catwoman (Shannyn Sossamon? Jessica Biel?), the first two of which don't seem to fit the Nolanverse particularly well. (Neither, for that matter, does Robin.) I suppose the Joker could return, but that obviously opens up a huge can of worms now. (Perhaps Joseph Gordon-Leavitt? He looks eerily like Ledger anyway.) My first thought when the cliffhanger of a sort was set up was this (probably because I'd just seen Dr. Manhattan doing the Feds' dirty work), but I'm sure that's way too out there for the franchise.

In any case, here's hoping they figure it out. But, even if they don't, The Dark Knight will stand tall in the annals of the caped crusader. Near the end, the Joker tells Batman, "You and I could do this forever." That's how I like to think of this incarnation of the Clown and the Bat, now forever locked in their eternal dance. Even if we'll never see it, I know Ledger's Joker will continue to break out of Arkham, terrorize Gotham, and haunt its winged guardian for years and decades to come. Long after the actor's death, his masterful creation will continue to get the last laugh.

"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. -- H.L. Mencken.

It's been awhile since I've been looking forward to a movie quite like this, and then some... In any case, herrrrre we go!

Yes, tonight should be good fun...provided you don't live in Gotham.

Update: Now that's the Joker! Great stuff, and a whole lot of movie. More later.

"The world will look up and shout, 'Save Us!,' and I will whisper, 'No.'" Forget midnight -- the teaser for Zack Snyder's Watchmen has leaked. I must say, Dr. Manhattan looks better than I had anticipated (I like the money shot of him, the American Superpower, in 'Nam), Rorschach looks great, and the Comedian seems ok, but I have quibbles with Ozymandias (too young), Nite-Owl (too buff) and Silk Spectre (too vamp). Still, I'll reserve full judgment until I've watched it a few dozen more times. In the meantime, how weird is it that there's actually a trailer for Watchmen out? We seem to be living in the Golden Age of comic book movies. Update: Like most things in this world, it looks much better in HD.

Update 2: "Based on footage Snyder screened for EW, at least, the work seems to have been worth it. Multiple scenes -- the Comedian's murder, Rorschach's introduction, Dr. Manhattan's origin, and a hypnotic title sequence that shutter-flies through the history of Watchmen America, set to Bob Dylan's 'The Times They Are A-Changin' — suggest a film that may capture more of Watchmen than anyone thought possible." Hrm. Watchmen makes the EW Comicon cover -- see below -- and their story includes the first pic of Carla Gugino as Sally Jupiter. Sadly, Ozy's still not looking so hot...maybe they should've gone with Jude Law of the Rorschach tattoo, since he was practically begging for the part. (And is it just me or does Crudup-Manhattan look eerily like Kevin Spacey?)

Update 3: Speaking of Sally Jupiter, AICN scores a pinup of the heroine, in the style of Alberto Vargas and in keeping with the WWII-era aesthetic of The Minutemen.

"I've been thinking lately. About you and me. About what's going to happen to us, in the end. We're going to kill each other, aren't we?" The WP's Hank Steuver offers a brief history of the Joker, from Conrad Veidt in The Man Who Laughs to Heath Ledger tomorrow night. If you're headed to TDK absolutely spoiler-free, I'd skip this one -- quite a few plot details herein.

"This trailer speaks to the fanbase in a huge way. Your friends and neighbors will be damn impressed by what they're seeing, but they'll also be slightly baffled. They'll want to know more - who is that blue guy? Who is flying that ship coming out of the water? Are they on Mars? Why is that guy getting thrown through a window? - so get ready to start lending out your book." One of the CHUD guys takes a spin with the Watchmen trailer, due before The Dark Knight tomorrow night. Sounds great, and while Snyder's 300 turned out to be more than a little ridiculous, it's still boasts a helluva trailer.

Update: The Watchmen trailer officially drops over at Empire Online tomorrow, at -- of course -- the stroke of midnight (EST).

The trailer for Frank Miller's take on Will Eisner's The Spirit leaks, and it's a strange one, seemingly combining the visual atmosphere of Sin City with the gender economy of Dave Sim...and that doesn't even get into Nazi Samuel L. It looks like it could be a trainwreck, but I'll put this on the maybe pile.

Give the devil his due: I said of the underwhelming Hellboy in 2004 (which I watched again last week, and remained underwhelmed by) that hopefully, like Bryan Singer and the X-Men series, Guillermo del Toro would be able to work out the kinks in time for the sequel. Well, four years have passed, and Hellboy II: The Golden Army is now upon us. And the verdict? Well, HB-II: TGA is by almost every reckoning a brisker, more confident, and more satisfying movie than its predecessor. (I say "almost" because, with the transition from Nazis and Lovecraft to the World of Warcraft, Hellboy seems slightly out of his milieu this time.) That being said, I felt The Golden Army, while entertaining throughout, didn't quite cohere for me as a film: It plays more like a sprawling collection of fun ideas, haphazardly strung together, than a movie of a piece. Now, originality goes a long way, and I'll give del Toro bonus points for really letting his freak flag fly this time 'round. (If nothing else, HB-II occasionally seems like a test FX-reel for The Hobbit.) Still, while I was impressed by the breadth of del Toro's imagination, I can't say I ever felt absorbed by it. For whatever reason, and not for lack of trying, Hellboy II: The Golden Army left me reasonably amused and distracted for two hours, and not much else.

The films begins with a stop-motion fairy tale. As a (goofily-designed) preadolescent in 1955, Hellboy was told the tale of the Golden Army, an unstoppable goblin-forged force commanded by an elven king in his war against that teeming, grasping nuisance, humanity. But dismayed by the carnage wrought, said king ultimately decided to sign a truce with humankind -- men get the cities, elves get the forests -- much to the consternation of his son, Prince Nuada. Cut to the present day: The humans have, as WALL-E foreshadowed, plowed through the forests for their strip malls and parking lots, and thus Nuada (Luke Goss) has returned to fight the ancient war anew.

But, standing in his way, for better or worse, are the motley protectors of humankind, the BPRD (Bureau of Paranormal Research and Development). Among their number, the kindly, bookish fish-man Abraham Sapien (Doug Jones, not too far removed from Threepio), the powerful pyrokinetic Liz Sheridan (Selma Blair, all blue fire and bedroom eyes), and, of course, Big Red himself, the kitty-loving, cigar-chomping spawn of Lucifer, Hellboy (Ron Perlman, clearly having fun). But, one must ask, in a war between the freaks and the humans, why are Hellboy et al on the side of the latter, particularly when mankind seems to fear and despise their lot? Clearly, the BPRD gang have some considerations to make.

That's arguably the main thread of Hellboy II, but there's quite a bit else going on -- too much, in fact. Y'see, Hellboy very much wants to take the team public, and he and Liz are having some space issues, and Liz has a secret of her own, and Abe may have met the (elvish) girl of his dreams, and, along with last film's comic relief (Jeffrey Tambor), there's a new freak in town, an ectoplasmic German martinet named Johann Krauss (Seth McFarlane, of Family Guy). Oh, and let's not forget the Troll Market (a showy cantina-style setpiece in the middle going), a (IMHO, strained) Barry Manilow musical number, and even an encounter with the Angel of Death.

Now some might rightly argue that I'm looking the gift hellspawn in the maw here, and that one should just sit back and relish the cornucopia of imaginative riches on display. Fair enough -- There are some memorable images throughout (I particularly liked the autumn of the elemental), and this is miles more interesting than, say, The Incredible Hulk. But I still think the movie would've been more captivating had it been less episodic. Despite the many innovative ideas on display, The Golden Army -- much like Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen -- at times feels more like a notebook dump than a movie. (But as I said, if this what it takes for del Toro to clear the mental decks pre-Hobbit, I'm all for it.)

Nevertheless, if Hellboy was too little, and Hellboy II turned out to be too much, I'd still probably be up for a Hellboy 3, several years from now, on the other side of Middle Earth. Particularly if it goes back to plumbing the Cthulhian depths suggested in the original, the third film could end up being juussst riiight.

In its most recent installment, Gotham Tonight's Mike Engel (Anthony Michael Hall) scores an exclusive interview with new Gotham DA Harvey Dent, one that seems to be occurring right at the start of The Dark Knight (which, you may have heard, opens this Thursday at midnight.) In related news, the Joker -- after defacing all the online viral sites -- kindly handed out free IMAX preview passes to (some of) those playing along.

However the movie ends up turning out (and with a 94 on Metafilter and 100 on Rotten Tomatoes at the moment, I'm optimistic), kudos to the viral marketing gurus...it's been a fun ride.

In the fourth installment of their making-of video series, original Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons sings the praises of Zack Snyder's art direction, and shows brief glimpses of Hollis Mason's apartment and Rorschach on patrol. All well and good, but as I said before, obsessive art direction will be the easy part.

"Does it depress you...how alone you really are? You had plans...look where that got ya!" Yes, even more news on the Dark Knight front: Domino's has a fun site up with an exclusive variant trailer...and be sure to play 3-Card Monte with the Joker before you go. (If that site's bogged down, low-quality versions have popped up on Youtube here and here.)

Update: Another exemplary new poster, and -- just in case the deal isn't closed yet -- it looks like the teaser for Zack Snyder's Watchmen will open the show. It's safe to say I'm reaching LotR-levels of anticipation at this point.

Update 2: Gotham Tonight Episode 3 (crime in the city) and Episode 4 (Jim Gordon profile) are now up. Looks like Bal'more's New Day Co-Op and MCU have both made it to Batman's town.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me [twice], you can't get fooled again. A leaden mishmash of The Matrix, Fight Club, and various much-more-entertaining FPS shoot 'em ups, Timur Bekmanbetov's aggressively dumb and derivative Wanted is what I'd call a total misfire...if it wasn't totally in keeping with the similarly adrenaline-fueled, barely coherent nonsense that was Night Watch. I haven't read the source material, although a quick peek at the Wikipedia (and the fact it was penned by Mark Millar) suggests it was probably much more wry and entertaining than this flick turned out to be (and made more sense, given it's set in a universe with supervillains.)

As it is, however, Wanted plays like Michael Bay's version of Gus Van Sant's Elephant, a hyperbolic, stultifying stupid, aggro-laced paean to the Columbine mentality. Now, I'm all for leave-your-brain-at-the-door actioners, and I could forgive Wanted its video game physics, its cheap-and-easy nihilism, its plagiarism from much better movies, and its intrusive whiteboy angst-metal if the movie actually turned out to be entertaining. But, a few minor setpieces aside (namely the limousine hit, which was everything ths film should've been in 60 seconds -- perhaps Bekmanbetov should try his hand at videos), Wanted is basically the opposite of fun. Like Night Watch, it's so bogged down by turgid plotting and long bouts of needless exposition (as well as, in this case, scenes cobbled together from other sources) that the film has no pulse. How bad is it? When a baby started screaming in my theater during the final act (when Morgan Freeman started monologuing yet again in the Fraterntity's library), prompting a yelling match between the disgruntled babyless ("Get that goddamn kid out of here!) and the babied ("F**k you! Babies have rights too!"), I was kinda thankful for, at long last, an entertaining diversion.

As Wanted begins, we are introduced to one Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy, who seemed to have learned his American accent solely from Billy Zabka movies and Sprite commercials.) Gibson is a depressed, obsequious worker drone somewhere in the Great American Cubicle Hive -- Chicago, to be precise. He hates his job, he hates his boss, he hates his routine, and his "best" friend is pretty obviously sleeping with his aggravating girlfriend. Gibson is such a capital-L Loser, in fact, that his relatively common name brings up 0 hits on Google. (Sigh...would that were the most ridiculous thing about this movie.) One day, however, he is approached in the local supermarket by "Fox", an alluring -- albeit currently on the wrong side of skinny -- minx (Angelina Jolie, trying but clearly bored), who immediately gets him involved in a shoot-out and car chase against a rival killer (Thomas Kretchmann).

From there, Gibson is soon initiated into a secret and ancient cabal of assassins known as the Fraternity, led by Morgan Freeman (playing Lawrence Fishburne playing Morpheus) and including members such as The Gunsmith (Common), The Butcher (Konstantin Khabensky), and The Repairman (Marc Warren). Each of these FPS Minibosses, basically, train Gibson in the arts of their order (it seems to involve him needlessly getting his ass kicked a lot) until he's reached his full potential as a genetic prodigy, and can thus seek out and kill the murderer of his father. But who are these assassins actually killing, and for what purpose? Even total badasses, it seems, aren't free of the occasional moral quandary.

That's basically the set-up -- If it sounds like you've heard variations on this story before, you have. I neglected to mention the scene involving Gibson's father's final mission, which [a] plays almost exactly like Trinity's early shenanigans in The Matrix and [b] first establishes that, here, bullets not only travel for miles but can bend their trajectory in flight. This may sound like a cool idea to some, I guess -- for me, it put me right in House of Flying Daggers mode. Once you've established something so ridiculous, it's hard to feel invested in any of the ensuing action sequences. There's no danger at all if the laws of physics don't apply -- You're just going to show me what you show me, and that's that. (I would argue that movies like The Matrix bend these sorts of rules, but don't break them. Besides, the Wachowskis introduced a higher-level threat with the Agents anyway.) In any case, magically-bending bullets is only one example of the suspension of disbelief required here. Don't get me started on the Loom, or the Moravian Express, or the Total Miracle Body Bath, or anything else in Wanted. Like Night Watch, it doesn't make a lick of sense.

Again, I could have looked all that over if the movie was good fun regardless. But, it's not. When Wanted isn't drowning in expository gobbledygook -- which is most of the time -- it brays at you with idiotic macho posturing. (There's a reason a Dubya quote came to mind above when writing this -- this is a film tailor-made for "windshield cowboys" and tough guy poseurs.) In other words, Wanted is basically Fight Club for the fratboy Nickleback set, without the intellect or sense of irony that made Fincher's movie one of the best of the '90's. Jolie especially does what she can -- she's a star through and through -- but she can't redeem this boring, moronic pile of dren. In other words, folks, Wanted is effing terrible. In the final moments, McAvoy breaks the fourth wall and asks us, "What the f**k have you done lately?" Sadly, I went to see this film.

"Introduce a little anarchy, upset the established order, and eVEryoNe lOseS thEir mIndS!" If, like me, you're devouring all things Dark Knight-related between now and July 18, three more TV spots hit the tubes, and Gotham Tonight is on its second episode. (Careful out there, tho'. The film seems to have now screened, and spoilers are flyin'.) Says Peter Travers: "The haunting and visionary Dark Knight soars on the wings of untamed imagination. It's full of surprises you don't see coming. And just try to get it out of your dreams."

Update: "It's not about money...it's about sending a message." Ugh, temptation everywhere...12 brief clips from the film pop up on the grid. And, don't forget, tix for those 7/17 midnight shows are now on sale.

Of course, the Celts weren't the only Big Green Guys going on a rampage this past week. Like much of America, I dutifully caught Louis Leterrier's The Incredible Hulk last Saturday, partly to fill the cinematic void until the more-anticipated summer movies return (Next stop, June 27: Wall-E and Wanted.) And, well, if you haven't seen it yet, this iteration of Hulk is about what you'd expect after Ang Lee's notable misfire: Namely, it's two hours of mostly mindless, Gamma and CGI-enhanced action sequences, strung together by generous heapings of Marvel continuity pr0n and a few bare threads of story, ripped mostly from the old TV show. Now, ever since Marvel hired the director of The Transporter to take another crack at Banner, this is exactly what the Hulk relaunch was billed to be. And since I too desired to see more "Hulk Smash!" from the Ang Lee version, I find it hard to be too down on these proceedings, and I'd say I enjoyed myself most of the time. Still, there's not much here here. If you're not a "Marvel guy" and just feel like taking in a super hero movie to whet the appetite for Hellboy 2 and The Dark Knight, I'd spend your money on Iron Man.

After a spiffy quick-edit reintroduction to the Hulk's origin (albeit without Rick Jones or a gamma-nuke), Leterrier's Incredible Hulk begins its first hour with a man on the run. It's been 157 days since Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) last went all Tyler Durden on us, and he's now hiding out in the sprawling slums of Rio de Janeiro, trying to stay off the grid, and otherwise working to keep a lockdown on his anger issues. But the US military -- represented by one take-no-guff, mustachioed general, Thunderbolt Ross (William Hurt) and his deadly, if aging, new Special Ops assassin, Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) -- wants its potential Gamma-weapon back, and they will follow Banner to all ends of the earth to reacquire it, including the City of God. The first attempt at capture results in an "incident," prompting Banner to head back to the States to look for a cure (with the help of his old flame, Betty Ross (Liv Tyler)) and the government to consider growing its own enhanced supersoldier (with the aid of the WWII-era superserum that helped bring forth Captain America.) Alas, Specialist Blonsky just can't get enough, and before long he's toyed with the forces of nature enough to make of himself an Abomination. This is what the military experts refer to as "blowback"...

And commence the smashing. But fear not, faithful readers! From the aforementioned super-serum to the Tony Stark sighting (now featured in the commercials), we have enough nods to the expanded Marvel universe amidst the carnage to make even Comic-Book-Guy blush. We've got S.H.I.E.L.D., we've got Doc Samson, we've got The Leader. (Fans of the TV show, take note also of the Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno sightings.) On one hand, for a old-school comic reader like me (albeit not a huge fan of The Hulk), the fact that Marvel was taking their properties to the next level and introducing interfilm continuity was the most exciting thing about this project. On the other, all the fanboy nods throughout made this film feel somewhat inchoate and unformed on its own. (What's more, making it seem like the entire Marvel universe is in play carries its own pitfalls. When Banner is first seen discussing a cure online with a mysterious "Mr. Blue" out of New York City, I couldn't believe they'd managed to shoehorn Reed Richards into the film. When it turned out to be someone else, I found myself let down.)

Finally, I know that I was among those asking for more mayhem and destruction from Ang Lee's film, and that, as a character, the Hulk doesn't really have any other setting other than "destroy things." Still, by the time the Hulk and the Abomination engage in a climactic CGI-slugfest in my old 'hood, I was well on the way to checking out. Part of the problem, I think, is that the fight here plays almost exactly like the final Iron Monger sequence of Iron Man. Our hero must face a bigger, more powerful eeeevil version of himself, and occasionally ensure that his significant other isn't in the line of fire. If we're running that show again, to be honest, I'd rather watch it with Downey and the Dude than with these two pixellated monstrosities. All that being said, Leterrier, Norton & co. have done a passable job with this Hulk do-over, and -- as with Iron Man -- if they're getting the gang back together for another run, you could probably count me in for a matinee. Just maybe bulk the story up a little more next go, fellas. Too much smashing make Hulk brain tired.

"Dent...Jesus, I thought you was dead." Party 'til he's cute? In case you missed it below, the "prize" for today's most recent viral marketing for Chris Nolan's The Dark Knight (originally shown at Comic-Con last August) is well worth checking out...

"When the chips are down, these civilized people will eat each other. You'll see...I'll show you." So, did you vote? Gotham City elections closed yesterday, and the winner will soon be announced on Gotham Tonight with Mike Engel, a.k.a. Anthony Michael Hall, his identity now disclosed. (I voted Harvey Dent, natch.) Of course, it's Friday the 13th, and the Joker has threatened another round of viral shenanigans as well...which I suspect will lead to this new alternate Dark Knight trailer. Enjoy it before WB takes it down.

Update: Dent wins! But he he doesn't seem too happy about it...

For the completist: A little over a month out from the film's release, Comcast creates a promotional site for Chris Nolan's The Dark Knight, with a few glimpses of new footage here and there. (See, for example, the IMAX featurette.)

This is old news at this point, but nevertheless: AICN procures a vintage-era photo of the Minutemen from Zak Snyder's forthcoming version of Watchmen. (Note Carla Gugino as Sally Jupiter/Silk Spectre and Jeffrey Dean Morgan as The Comedian.) Hrm...They look a bit cosplay, but then again they probably should.

Update: Also in Watchmen news, the NYT reports that Tales of the Black Freighter will first be spun off as its own DVD, five days after the film comes out. "Mr. Snyder said he was eager to head a direct-to-DVD project, in part because it would allow him to use more material from the 'Watchmen' graphic novel. 'I thought the ‘Black Freighter’ story would never see the light of day,' he said. 'The main picture is nearing three hours long and I know I have a fight on my hands just with that.'"

Worth watching for the Joker's Rorschachian "Hrm" alone, another Dark Knight TV spot is out. (The last two are here.) Y'know, much as I'm fond of Henry Jones, Jr., Ph.D, it really wouldn't bother me if this movie (July 18) and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (next Friday) just switched release dates. Update: Also, a new poster, above.

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We're tonight's entertainment!" Two new TV spots for The Dark Knight pop up here and here. They're mostly the trailer rearranged, but there's a bit of new footage in each. (What's going on at 0:26 in the first one? Creepy.)

As far as Marvel characters go, I can't say I ever really cottoned to Iron Man in my comic-reading youth. Sure, I was aware of his backstory and his rogue's gallery and all that, just by dint of sheer osmosis. But, other than when he was hanging around the Avengers or engaged in some huge crossover like Secret Wars, I don't think I ever picked up an issue. (Besides, with his industrial-techy side and all the paramilitary hangers-on, Iron Man seemed a hero designed for the GI Joe/Transformers kids, which was never really my scene. Inasmuch as I read Marvel, I usually preferred the angst-ridden, verbose types (Spidey, the X-Men, etc.))

All of this is a long way of saying that, given I have no real reservoir of nostalgia for its titular hero, Jon Favreau's crisp, surprisingly fun Iron Man seems that much more of an achievement. (Yes, I'd say the movie of the trailer holds up.) Sure, it suffers from having to tell yet another variation of the increasingly worn origin story, and thus slips below the top tier of recent comics films freed from that obligation (X2, Spiderman 2, The Incredibles.) And it's possible that Iron Man's sheer, unapologetic summer-blockbusterness may rankle a few viewers out there. (Note the not-very-subtle Burger King and Audi product placements.) But, as far as origin stories go, I'd say Iron Man can hold its helmet proudly alongside Batman Begins and the Donner Superman, thanks mainly to its superb cast (and inspired casting). And, as the kickoff to what's by all accounts an absurdly-stocked fanboy summer, Iron Man sets an auspiciously high bar for the many features to come.

In this updated incarnation, Iron Man begins as a sequel of sorts to Charlie Wilson's War: A troop convoy containing genius weapons manufacturer Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.), nursing a scotch, is upended and undone on a dusty road in Afghanistan, and the ne'er-do-wells responsible are somehow armed with Stark Industries' finest. Cut to the title card, then to 36 hours earlier, when we meet Stark in his natural locale, Vegas. The son of a famous "ironmonger" and member of the Manhattan Project, Tony is basically a cross between Bill Gates and Howard Hughes, an acerbic, alcoholic, womanizing billionaire who always knows he's both the smartest and the richest guy in the room.

But after being near-fatally wounded by shrapnel of his own making and captured by an Afghan warlord in the aforementioned raid (Stark was in-country, with his Air Force pal Rhodey (Terrence Howard), to pitch his newest lethal invention to the Brass), the playboy industrialist undergoes a not-unanticipated moral awakening, thanks in part to the saintly doctor (Shaun Toub) who saves his life with an electromagnet and a car battery. After building a suit of armor to break out of his Tora Bora captivity, Stark eventually returns stateside a changed man. He's got an arc reactor (don't ask) for a heart, he's getting out of the Merchant of Death trade for good, and he's thinking about taking that whole suit-of-iron idea to the next level. This (literal) change of heart, however, doesn't sit altogether well with Stark Industries' chairman-in-regency, Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), who -- despite his long relationship with Stark and his father -- may have his own ideas on how to proceed. Y'see, the weapons trade really tied the company together, so Stark's new digression will not stand, man.

The Dude's turn toward unctuous corporate villainy is one of the most potent secret weapons in Iron Man's arsenal. (Speaking of which, look for the explicit Lebowski name-drop.) A bald, bearded, leering, and obviously untrustworthy achiever, Bridges is great fun here as the eventual Big Bad -- he takes the film up a notch in every scene he's in. (There's long been rumors of a Tron 2.0 script involving Bridges' character having gone all Col. Kurtz somewhere up the datastream. I was thinking of that quite a bit during Iron Man.)

But Bridges is not alone -- He's matched here every step of the way by Robert Downey, Jr., who's both a brilliantly unconventional superhero and a note-perfect Tony Stark (indeed, so much so that my brother tells me the recent Ultimate reboot has basically ret-conned Stark into Downey, Jr.) It's really hard to imagine any other actor in the role, or anyone else working as well. In fact, as with Batman Begins (give or take Katie Holmes), Iron Man is basically overstocked with talent at every position, from Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts (Stark's Moneypenny) to director Favreau as Happy Hogan (Stark's Foggy Nelson) to Clark Gregg (In Good Company) as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (although not that one -- he comes later.) I mean, when you've got Paul Bettany playing the voice of the computer (also a nod to Jarvis, Stark's Alfred), you know you're working with an embarrassment of riches.

If Iron Man has a problem, it's that, despite the prodigious talent on display, the movie is still somewhat hampered by the now-rote conventions of the origin-movie genre. I mean, I'm definitely of the fanboy temperament, but even I grew ever-so-slightly bored as Iron Man moved us through the usual paces (the awakening moment, the learning to use the new powers, the big reveal of the new suit, the final mano a mano, etc.)

Still, Favreau and Downey leaven these moments as best they can, and -- as you might've guessed from Lebowski, above -- there're plenty of knowing winks throughout to keep the base happy. (Like I said, I'm pretty unfamiliar with Iron Man canon, but even I could figure out the nods to War Machine and the Mandarin.) In short, if you allow for the constraints of the genre, Iron Man is basically everything you'd want in a summer-y superhero blockbuster. And if they bring Downey et al back for the sequel, I'd definitely look forward to seeing Iron Man live again.

A fanboy programming note: If you're like me and the many others celebrating May Day (and the unofficial start of summer) tonight by reveling in the adventures of a dissolute American weapons manufacturer, don't forget to stay until after the credits...

Indiana is May 6. Indiana Jones is May 22. And, while WB's cadre of lawyers try to lock down various versions of the Dark Knight trailer, the new Kramerized Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull trailer has also popped up online. I'm still of 2 minds about Indy 4. It could be a great throwback, it could be Attack of the Clones...but at least we only have to wait a few weeks to know the score. (In fact, Indy IV will close out four weeks of Fanboy May(hem), beginning tomorrow with Iron Man, followed by Speed Racer (5/9) and Prince Caspian (5/16).

Regarding much-anticipated projects further down the pike, Guillermo del Toro has been confirmed for The Hobbit, as has Ian McKellen. "'Yes, it’s true,' he said. 'I spoke to Guillermo in the very room that Peter Jackson offered me the part and he confirmed that I would be reprising the role. Obviously, it’s not a part that you turn down, I loved playing Gandalf.'" I'm obviously hugely excited for this project, but, still...that second filler movie attached to The Hobbit sounds like it could end up being a colossally bad idea.

Update: Also out today, Edward Norton wrestles with the angry, powerful alpha male inside him in the new trailer for Louis Leterrier's Incredible Hulk. Pfff...Tyler could still take him in a fight.

Along with a slew of new posters (see also the snazzy 9/11ish one at Quiddity), The Dark Knight begins its trailer rollout today with -- of course -- another worldwide Joker-run scavenger hunt. (I for one am loving the confluence of my interests that is Jokerized dead-presidents.) In any case, once we budding fanboy detectives run the info through the Batcomputer and get to the bottom of it all, I'll post the new trailer here...

Update: After the scavenger hunt and some anagram work and duck-shooting, it seems the trailer will be here...next Sunday. (Presumably, it premieres before Iron Man on Friday.) Sunday? Now, that wasn't very nice.

Update 2: "This city deserves a better class of criminal, and I'm going to give it to them." In pure Joker fashion, it's been Kramerized and Youtubed regardless. Extremely poor quality, but this'll do until the trouble gets here. (I could do without the post-title goofiness, to be honest, but Heath's Joker still seems scarily spot-on.) Update 3: While bootlegs of the clip keep getting shut down (if you haven't caught it yet, it's still up here at io9), the "Jokerized" version of the trailer, handed out to raffle winners in the viral game, is nevertheless now on the tubes.

In the trailer bin of late, veteran comic writer Frank Miller (possibly soon of Hardboiled) jumps to the silver screen in the new trailer for Sin City...uh, The Spirit. And Steve Coogan spreads the Gospel of Sexy Jesus in the recent redband trailer for Hamlet 2, i.e. one of the South Park guys' take on Waiting for Guffman. This looks like it might try too hard, but I'll probably see it for Coogan (and that scene with the cat.)

Also up as of the weekend, courtesy of NY Comiccon: lots of spoilers for Indy 4 and a description of the next Dark Knight trailer. (I'm trying to avoid them both, although I may have snuck a peek at the latter.)

By way of Bitten Tongue, the Onion reports on the questionable decision by Paramount to make a movie based on the Iron Man trailer. It's funny because it's true...just remember how the film made from this preview turned out. (By the way, one scene they'll be shoehorning in that surprisingly solid Iron Man trailer: two minutes of Robert Downey Jr. getting cute with repulsorlifts. Um, ok.)

As the first part of a 12-part series (with each episode premiering on the 6th of the month), a new video grants a set tour of Zack Snyder's Watchmen. Looks grand, although after 300 and these stills of a few months ago, art direction is the least of my concerns about this project.

"RUMOR: Dent Will Withdraw From Race Tomorrow... Developing." With two months to go until election day, is Harvey Dent done? The Gotham cops swift-boating seems to have killed him in the polls (he's pulling only 9% in the three-way race against Garcetti and Worthington), and now even random clowns are sticking a fork in him. At this point, I'd say Dent's political future is at best a coin-toss.

It's the Burning Legion vs. the forces of Tempest Keep, with the U.S. of A. caught in the middle, in the full trailer for Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Looks like a healthy dollop of summer fun, if nothing else.

If you'll remember, I posted last week that viral promotion for The Dark Knight would bring back the Clown Prince of Crime for April Fool's Day. Well, whatever happens tomorrow -- and word is it might be the final trailer, although, again, it's April Fool's, so who knows -- it seems the Joker has set up shop here, at the "Clown Travel Agency." Tune in tomorrow, folks. Same bat-time, same bat-channel.

Update: Apparently, DA candidate Harvey Dent has been swiftboated by the "Concerned Citizens for a Better Gotham" (a.k.a. some disgruntled cops), and he'll be holding a press conference tomorrow at 3pm to address the charges made in the ad. This sounds like a prime moment for Joker/trailer-related shenanigans.

Update 2: Never mind tomorrow: The trailer seems to have leaked, and it's a beaut. (Ok, sorry. I couldn't help myself...just getting in the April Fool's mood a day early.) At any rate, more Dark Knight info as it comes.

Update 3: And they're off: Looks like Step 1 is a worldwide scavenger hunt...apparently to acquire Joker bowling balls and cellphones. The bowling balls have phone numbers and code words attached -- presumably that's Phase 2. Update 4: With all the balls doled out around the globe, the next stop is this Acme Security Systems site...where everyone's getting "server is too busy" screens of death. April Fool's! Update 5: For those who did manage to get through, they got a call from Commissioner Gordon, but no obvious link to a trailer or anything. (You can hear it here.) No more updates here unless something big happens (but, if you wanted to play along, this wiki overview of the growing Dark Knight ARG is a good place to start, and most of the spinoff sites have been found via The Gotham Times or the Jokerfied version.)

Update 6: Some spoilerish stills of the Joker appear at a French site. Check 'em out before they disappear.

"Encouragingly, Peter and Fran Walsh have told me they couldn't imagine The Hobbit without their original Gandalf. Their confidence hasn't yet been confirmed by the director Guillermo del Toro but I am keeping my diary free for 2009!" Grey Havens be damned, Ian McKellen reports he's likely returning as Gandalf for The Hobbit (well, if he and producer Peter Jackson have anything to say about it, and they probably will.) Update: More good news: Composer Howard Shore is back as well.

Also in movie news, the viral marketing campaign for The Dark Knight is picking up again. As you may remember, a slew of new Gotham-related sites appeared last December. Now, more have arrived, of a distinctly Harvey Dent bent: A new edition of The Gotham Times, Dana Worthington for DA (a.k.a. Harvey Dent's opposition), Maiden Avenue Report (Gotham's Drudge, it seems), Citizens for Batman, St. Swithuns Church, and Gotham Cable News are all now online, along with the Dent campaign site linked to the other day. Also, apparently the original marketing plan was always to shift from the Joker to Harvey Dent, so this rollout hasn't necessarily been affected by the loss of Ledger. (That being said, viral text messages seem to indicate the Clown Prince of Crime will pop up yet again before April Fool's Day.)

By way of Bitten Tongue, the Peanuts characters take on the mantles of Watchmen. Charlie Brown with the power of Dr. Manhattan is a bit unnerving, and Linus seems like more of a Nite Owl-type, but Lucy as Silk Spectre and Schroeder as Ozy make perfect sense...and Rorschach is really just one bad day away from Joe Cool.

Also, via Quiddity and in keeping with the GitM theme, the plight of Pac Man gets reconfigured as a Tale of the Black Freighter. Game over, yellow fella.

"Gotham City is collapsing from a runaway crime wave and Harvey Dent can save it. But he has to run for District Attorney first, and the only way he'll run is if he sees an outpouring of public support. So, let's all get out there and show Harvey Dent he's got support to take back Gotham!" I know I've been doing a lousy job of following down-ticket races thus far this cycle. Still, in case anyone's interested and by way of Quiddity, Harvey Dent's campaign for Gotham DA has hit the road. (Alas, it seems I've already missed his NYC stops.) Also, no doubt aware of Sen. Obama's prodigious coattails, he seems to be plugging for an endorsement: "Be creative. Harvey Dent wants to see that we want change -- and that we are ready to work for change. Harvey wants to see that people are ready to throw out the old, to break out of habits, to really do something new and different! Because that's what taking back Gotham will take."

I'll say this for him, he has a honest face. By the way, it should be noted: Harvey Dent also somewhat disproves the Gerry Ferraro thesis, as he's managed to get elected the District Attorney of Gotham City as both a white and black man.

Hulk smash? Or does Hulk whine for two hours about his condition like last time? The rather underwhelming teaser for Louis Leterrier's The Incredible Hulk is now online. (I had hopes for Norton, but it looks like, if anyone saves this film from summer mediocrity, it'll be Tim Roth.) Meanwhile, Harry's seventh year at Hogwarts, Deathly Hallows, has been split into two films, both directed by Order's David Yates and coming out in 2010 and 2011 respectively. If it's at all like the book, I guess there was just too much camping in the English countryside to fit in one film.

"In a political context this would politely be called an 'unintended consequence.' (Gotham as Baghdad, anyone?) Mr. Nolan doesn’t deny the overtones. 'As we looked through the comics, there was this fascinating idea that Batman’s presence in Gotham actually attracts criminals to Gotham, attracts lunacy,' he said. 'When you’re dealing with questionable notions like people taking the law into their own hands, you have to really ask, where does that lead? That’s what makes the character so dark, because he expresses a vengeful desire.'" The NYT checks in with Chris Nolan on The Dark Knight.

"Now at midnight all the agents, and the superhuman crew, come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do." One year out from its release date, Zack Snyder releases some character stills of the Watchmen. I like the three above quite a bit (particularly the pitch-perfect, G. Gordon Liddyesque gleam to the Comedian.) But, imho, Ozymandias didn't really pan out (Matthew Goode looks way too young), nor did Malin Ackerman's Silk Spectre. (Besides looking rather generic and X-Men-ish, she seems way too tall and modelly for Ms. Juspeczyk.) As yet unseen, Carla Gugino's Mama Spectre and -- perhaps the real make-or-break'er -- Billy Crudup's Dr. Manhattan.

By way of my sis-in-law Lotta, here's a funky animated gif: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton play the oldest game of all. (The text is early on from Neil Gaiman's Sandman, when Morpheus descends into Hell to retrieve his helmet and is challenged to a contest of wits to reclaim his prize, at the risk of unending torment.)

Strangely enough, just as she sent me this, I'd just grabbed an animated gif of a different game, which -- at least imho -- also has some metaphorical resonance for the primary season. (For those who don't follow basketball, that's virtually an automatic basket by 7'5" Yao Ming getting stuffed out of nowhere by 5'7" Knick Nate Robinson...Notice also (in the Youtube) how Yao tries to play the victim card after ignominious defeat...)

Robert Downey, Jr. suits up to face Obadiah Stane (a.k.a. the Bald Lebowski) in a spiffy all-new trailer for Jon Favreau's Iron Man. As with the two previous teasers, this looks surprisingly enjoyable, and may hopefully end up being Marvel's best product since Spiderman 2 and X2.

"Exhausted, I slept across the grave...I saw the Black Freighter bearing down on all I loved, but I was powerless to stop it." Zack Snyder alum Gerard Butler reveals his upcoming part in Watchmen: He'll be narrating the Tales of the Black Freighter digression for the DVD version. "'I'm going to do the voice of the captain,' said Butler. 'They're going to do it in the style of a Japanese anime and I'm totally stoked." Anime? Hrm.

Some comic-book cautionary tales for the day: Rorschach sets fire to a would-be pursuer in a new still from Zach Snyder's Watchmen, which has wrapped shooting. And Dark Horizons offers a first glimpse at how Aaron Eckhart will look as Harvey Dent...after the incident.

"'Harvey Dent is a tragic figure, and his story is the backbone of this film,' says Christopher Nolan...'The Joker, he sort of cuts through the film -- he's got no story arc, he's just a force of nature tearing through. Heath has given an amazing performance in the role, it's really extraordinary.'" With the next Democratic debate tonight at 9pm EST on MSNBC, one that will hopefully help defuse the tone of the past few days, now seems as good a time as any to check on the big box office rivalry of the summer, Batman v. Indy. (Well, and the forgotten man, Iron Man.) Last we checked, the Jones camp had suggested Bruce Wayne was too wealthy and privileged to understand ordinary people's concerns, while Batman surrogate Alfred told The Daily Planet's Clark Kent that Jones was too "pointy-headed and academic" to save anyone but upscale, overeducated professionals. (The missed rejoinder: The Batman camp is calling people pointy-headed?) Also, scurrilous rumors abound that Shia LaBoeuf was added to the Indy ticket merely to siphon the youth vote away from Batman's running mate, Dick Grayson...Yep, it's getting ugly, folks.

Anyway, as the quote above attests, Dark Knight director Chris Nolan recently checked in briefly with the L.A. Times about his two main villains: "Don't expect a lot laughs in this summer's return to the cave. 'It's a dark and complex story,' Nolan said, 'and the villains are dark and complex as well.'" Meanwhile, on the Spielberg side of things, we have this new still from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls. (Note Ray Winstone lurking in the corner.)

"We have company." Big Red, Selma, Pa Bluth, Abe Sapien, & co are back fighting Cthulhuian monstrosities (and what look to be Warcraft blood elves) in the new trailer for Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy II: The Golden Army. I said of the first one that del Toro deserves another chance to tell a crackling Hellboy story without being burdened with all the origin stuff. So, hopefully, this'll be more fun from the word go.

Update 5: Hello all. Since this is one of the more popular entries on the site: My review of The Dark Knight is here, the Batman archives are here, and the main page is here. Welcome, and good hunting.

"You've changed things...forever. There's no going back. You see, to them, you're just a freak...Like me!" Ok, between this amazing new poster (the one in the middle, although all three are grand) and this leaked, really busted version of The Dark Knight trailer (also here and here, and the real thing appears online here Sunday), I am currently geeking out like a twelve-year-old. (Berk's wondering why the heck I'm giggling like the Joker right now.) Honestly, this thing hits at the fanboy-gut level, and is just about the coolest darned thing I've seen in ages. Explosions, Batbike, and Michael Caine pep speech aside...how about that clown? I think I'm gonna watch it again.

Update: "I believe whatever doesn't kill us...simply makes us stranger." Also, in front of I am Legend on IMAX, the first six minutes of The Dark Knight, featuring a Joker-planned heist of a mob-run bank in downtown Gotham City. It was clever enough, and features a good slow build-up to Heath Ledger saying hello. But it's not nearly as visceral a thrill as the trailer (which, for some reason, wasn't shown with the IMAX prologue...ah well. Sunday, then.) Update 2: The first six minutes (in Kramervision, of course) have leaked. Get 'em while you can.

Update 3: While we all await the official trailer release this evening, yet another really creepy Joker poster appears online, in the same vein as the earlier glass one. (It's been added above.) This might be my favorite of the lot. Update 4: And it's up, in splendiferous hi-def.

Timed to release with The Golden Compass this Friday, the trailer for Andrew Adamson's The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian is now online. Liam Neeson and the kids are back again (if a little older), while replacing Tilda Swinton, James McAvoy, and Ray Winstone in the support department are Ben Barnes (of Stardust), Warwick Davis, and Peter Dinklage (of The Station Agent.)

The promotional machine for Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight continues to ramp up. As you may have noticed below, I've been posting several additional new photos of Heath Ledger's Joker to the entry of a few days ago. Also, the online viral marketing has continued apace: First an edition of the Gotham Times was released, and, in keeping with the Dark Detective meme, that's led to all kinds of spinoff sister sites and more municipal tangents than The Wire (Gotham Police Dept. (and Internal Affairs), Gotham National Bank, Gotham School District, Gotham's DA hotline, Gotham City Rail, Gotham Cab, Acme Security Systems, Gotham Victim Advocate Organization, Remembering Gina, and a Jokerized version of the paper.) Whatsmore, at the original viral Joker site, you can now take a personality profile or try to open a vault for further clues. (Set your clock for 7:38am to do so.) Finally, both the trailer and the first seven minutes of the film will be released on December 14, before the IMAX version of Will Smith's Omega Man-update I Am Legend. To the IMAXcave, Robin! Update: Another countdown, set for noon on Tuesday. The trailer, perhaps? Update 2: Nope. After some shenanigans involving local bakeries (the NYC ones were over in Yorktown), it's a new one-sheet.

"This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face." Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) strolls the streets of (Late-Late-Nixon-Era) Manhattan in one of several newly-released stills of sets from Zack Snyder's Watchmen.

What do Berkeley and the fanboy nation have in common this week? They both get really excited about socks...Empire Magazine makes a game of their slow reveal of their Heath Ledger Joker cover. Update: As you can now see, the cover's been leaked. Update 2: And another, from the cover of Wizard. Looking better and better. Update 3: And yet a few more, from what look to be merchandising proofs. I don't like these nearly as much, but then again it's hard to sell anything comic-booky with a stark white background.

Matt Frewer (best known as Max Headroom, of '80s television) joins the cast of Zach Snyder's Watchmen as Moloch the Mystic, the team's formerly satanic, now born-again nemesis. Extra points to Snyder for choosing a fanboy veteran.

"Let me be the way I'm not in interviews. I'm furious. I'm furious...They never asked me about a sequel with the Joker. I know how to do that! Nobody ever asked me." Strangely enough, apparently Jack Nicholson wanted another run at the Joker for Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. "Well, the Joker comes from my childhood. That's how I got involved with it in the first place. It's a part I always thought I should play." Well, maybe so, but even back in 1989 Nicholson seemed like stunt casting, and his performance hasn't aged well. Here's to a new take on the character.

"I can't keep doing this on my own...with these people." Making it online of late, a new domestic trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, and a new international teaser for Jon Favreau's Iron Man. (The original clips are here and here.)

The Matrixish trailer for Timur Bekmambetov's Wanted is now online. Based on a Mark Millar graphic novel I haven't read, it stars James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Terrence Stamp, and Thomas Kretchmann. Well, that's a solid cast, but I dunno...this looks goofy, and I didn't really cotton to Night Watch.

Happy Halloween, everyone. While my Shaun of the Dead costume got favorable reviews last October, I've been entertaining vague notions of dressing up as Heath Ledger's Joker this year. (And, as for Berk, my sister Tessa suggested something along the lines of this, which he'd probably prefer to Yoda again.) But, as it turns out, neither Berk nor I have any costume-oriented festivities on the social calendar, so we'll just be sitting home in plainclothes doling out sweets. Still, if you're up for it, the viral marketers at Warner Brothers have initiated a second round of Jokerish shenanigans (a la Comic-Con) over at whysoserious.com, which involves a photo scavenger hunt across several major cities. If you play along, watch out for Bats. Update: As per the norm, that didn't take long. The hidden message, give or take a few letters, reads: "The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules." So, what happens next? Update 2: Guess I should've made that costume after all. After revealing this new pic, the new site (http://www.rorysdeathkiss.com) asks for people to dress as the clown in question and take a pic in front of a famous landmark. Have fun with it, y'all.

Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson's previously-announced Tintin trilogy finds a writer in Doctor Who scribe Steven Moffat, of the Season 3 episode "Blink." Speaking of which, I've run hot and cold on BBC's Doctor Who update thus far, and have found showrunner Russell Davies' campy contributions to be mixed at best. But the second half of Season 3 has been exceptionally good Who. From "Blink" to the "Doctor goes Human" two-parter in pre-WWI England ("Human Nature/"The Family of Blood") to Derek Jacobi's turn as a lonely, befuddled scientist at the end of time in "Utopia" to the Master taking Tony Blair's job in "The Sound of Drums," I'd say this most-recent run can hold its own with the best of the Pertwee-Baker years. (I haven't seen "Last of the Time Lords," the Season 3 finale, yet, but I dig John Simm as the Master, and his evil companion is a real kick.)

Off-topic, but also on the television front, I've recently boarded the 5:23 Mad Men commuter train. It's a show I've been shying away from despite the good reviews, mainly because I feared it'd be 85% Rat Pack kitsch, i.e. its raison d'etre would be primarily to wallow in the unregenerate un-PCness of the early Sixties. But, while I'm still living a few episodes behind present-time, Mad Men makes for pretty solid television, even if, as with Miller's Crossing, it can be hard to watch without a glass of Jamesons and clinking ice in hand. Jon Hamm's Don Draper and John Slattery's Roger Sterling are particularly good, and, as someone noted on The House Next Door, Michael Gladis' Paul Kinsey is an eerie facsimile of the young Orson Welles. Plus, with all due respect to Officers Bunk and McNulty, it's a nice change of pace to watch smart, well-written characters in a TV drama that aren't cops, doctors, or mobsters.

Finally, I never much cottoned to it anyway, but after the Season 2 premiere, NBC's Heroes is getting kicked off the DVR. As I said last Spring, the blatant, unattributed ripping off of Watchmen and the X-Men's "Days of Future Past" in Season 1 was already hard to swallow. And, judging from the first week's installment, Kring & co. have decided to go back to the well, and have stolen the Comedian storyline straight out of Watchmen too. Given that their poorly-written, overstuffed show is usually as artless as their theft here, count me out.

In Marvel news, the the teaser for Jon Favreau's take on Iron Man, with Robert Downey, Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Terence Howard, and Jeff Bridges, is now officially online. (Basically, it's a shortened version of the Comicon clip.) And has Matthew Vaughn found his Thor in Kevin McKidd of HBO's Rome and Trainspotting? Possibly maybe...if so, that's not half-bad.

As you can see, Heath Ledger's been busy. First off, new pics surface of Ledger and others as Bob Dylan in I'm Not There, including more images of Cate Blanchett eerily channeling the Blonde on Blonde-era Bob. (See below and here for more.) And, apparently much to the consternation of the Time Warner powers-that-be, eighteen early and spoilerish stills from Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight have leaked onto the Internets, including a few of Ledger's Joker seeming to enjoy a police interrogation more than he probably should. Check 'em out before they disappear.

Waugh, waugh. Move over, Phillip Seymour Hoffman...Has Oswald Cobblepot been cast? (Nah, Cheney would work better.) Vermont Senator, Senate Judiciary Chairman, and Batman fan Patrick Leahy joins the cast of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. "Leahy is apparently a big comic book enthusiast, and actually served as an extra in the 1997 Batman installment: Batman and Robin." (He also played himself on Batman: The Animated Series.) "The senator told the station he can't reveal the exact details of his role in the upcoming movie, but he did say he has landed a scene with its two stars, Christian Bale and Heath Ledger."

"Jesus, Harvey, I thought you were dead!" News breaks of some actual honest-to-goodness Dark Knight footage previewed at Wizard World in Chicago over the weekend, and it sounds very fun (although, alas, it has yet to leak its way onto the Internets.) So it seems Aaron Eckhart's Two-Face is very much a part of the next installment, although I'm hoping he doesn't crowd out Heath Ledger's Clown Prince of Crime, a la Sam Raimi's overstuffed Spiderman 3. I'm guessing Dent will serve as a physical manifestation of the good (bat)-evil (clown) duality at the heart of the next film, but it's the Joker, Batman's one true arch-nemesis, I'm really paying to see.

The lovely Carla Gugino (Sin City, Spy Kids, late of Entourage) joins Zach Snyder's Watchmen as Sally Jupiter, a.k.a. the original Silk Spectre. A solid choice (although she doesn't really look related to Malin Ackerman.)

Also from Comic-Con, director Jon Favreau reveals an extensive (You-tubed) trailer for Iron Man. I've never been a huge fan of the comic, to be honest, but this looks much better than I anticipated (and the cast -- Robert Downey, Jr., Terence Howard, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges -- is solid regardless.)

"Bring your sense of humor, but don't worry -- we'll supply the smile." From the demented criminal mastermind who brought you IBelieveinHarveyDent.com...a Comic-con teaser for Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight looks increasingly likely after another viral marketing site "by" the Joker -- whysoserious.com -- appears online. (The clock is ticking down to tomorrow's Comic-Con presentation time, and the coordinates are in San Diego.) Update: A Kramervision version of the teaser has been Youtubed (also here), and it's...a teaser, although you do at least get to hear Ledger's suitably bizarre voice. (And, no, I'm not Rick-Rolling you.)

Update 2: Ok, the madness has begun. If you're playing along at home, the number that appeared in the sky over San Diego was 800-395-9646. Call it, and you get a rather creepy message -- apparently the Joker holding somebody at gunpoint -- with the first password, "INSIDE JOKE." Stage 2 -- "Catherine, Annie, Elizabeth, and Mary Jane had someone I admire in common. Who was it?" Henry VIII was my first guess, but apparently the correct answer is "JACK THE RIPPER." Stage 3 involves more legwork in San Diego...Update 3: Or does it? The Joker has left us a Morse-encoded laugh to ponder in the meantime. K, let's see here...It's "MOUNTEBANK." (Some aspiring Bruce Wayne locked that one down well before I did...I was on "MOU.") Stage 4 is an anagram of sorts -- CPRAISMSEIOOFN -- My summer a few years back spent trying to get actually decent on Scrabble, and the occasional cheating that ensued, would've helped me here, but somebody else figured it out first: "CRIME OF PASSION." (Hint: As with the morse code, note the two large words.) Stage 5...well, the site's locked up...

Update 4: While the Warner Brother server was flailing, balloons were passed out in San Diego with the next clue, "head games." From there, it's on to the Joker's case file and another clue, apparently found in bathrooms at the next San Diego point, "74 BARS." The Clown Prince of Crime then goes the US History route: "Who was the lawyer who got his client acquitted of murder by fatally shooting himself by accident in a courtroom in 1871?" (I'll give you my own hint: Copperhead.) Answer: VALLANDIGHAM. The next checkpoint involved finding a particular brick in San Diego to ascertain the real name of "Dr. Death," "GASLAMP DAN HASLAM." Now, time for a game of cards... Note the actual still of Ledger and Gyllenhaal from the film (click on the word "knife," or see below) -- It looks like the Joker wears make-up in the Nolanverse, and didn't fall into a vat of anything bothersome this time.) Also, note there are 26 cards at bottom, which should help you to discover the next keyword, "UNFORGIVABLE."

(Phew, Holy detective work, Batman! This is hard!) Ok, next the San Diegans were to find a child on the street learning to defend himself (note also another police report) The accompanying surveillance site -- and this picture -- help in discovering the next (punny) clue, "BASEBALL BAT." After that, we're in anagram territory again...consider the missing letters and you might just end up with "LARCENY." Alright, two more clues to go...the next one involves a "Gotham Girl Guide" and her cookies, so we'll need the troops on the ground again for this one... Update 5: Ok, word has come back that the cookies password is "STARVE." Then we're sent to a half-lit LED on a bomb to ascertain the next clue, "REAPER." (I was stumped by this one for awhile - all I'll say is that green and red mean something, and the HA's are there for a reason.) Finally, the San Diego fanfolk had to find a certain license plate reading "291759," (on a limo near their start point) and, voila, the Joker covers his trail, and offers up a high-quality version of the teaser Youtubed above, before this all started. (Click on the dot.) Ok, a bit of a letdown at the end there, sure (As, one fanboy wit at AICN put it, "Be sure...to drink your...Ovaltine?") Still, the journey was the reward (even if it ate up much of my Friday afternoon.) Clever, clever, Warner Bros. marketing gurus.

Also, some casting news that emerged on the eve of Comic-Con: First, the Watchmen cast is now official -- yes, it's finally happening -- and it is as rumored (along with Jeffrey Dean Morgan of Grey's Anatomy -- um, ok -- as The Comedian.) And, for the trekkies out there, it seems Matthew Quinto, a.k.a. Heroes Big Bad Sylar, has been cast as Starfleet Academy-era Spock for J.J. Abrams' Trek movie. (Also, strange to discover from this article that Abrams and Greg Grunberg, the mind-reading cop of Heroes, are childhood best friends.) Now, Quinto is a good physical match...a highly logical choice. But Sam Rockwell as James T. Kirk? That's genius. (Spock pic not official -- I found it here.) Update: Another casting note: Tim Blake Nelson joins Louis Leterrier's Incredible Hulk revamp as Dr. Samuel Sterns (a.k.a. The Leader), further swelling an already ridiculously tricked-out cast for a remake of a movie made less than five years ago. But, hey, gift horses and all that.

More casting for Zach Snyder's take on Watchmen: Jackie Earle Haley and Patrick Wilson (both of Little Children) now seems all but confirmed as Rorschach and Nite-Owl respectively. As Dr. Manhattan, Billy Crudup. As Silk Spectre, Malin Ackerman of Harold and Kumar. And as Ozymandias, Matthew Goode of Match Point. Well, no egregious misfires in that bunch (and not much star power either, which may make the suits nervous. Fine by me.) Now, it'll all come down to Snyder.

I'd be more excited to see Heath Ledger's Joker in action, but for now on The Dark Knight front, we'll have to content ourselves with pics and video of Batman's goofy new trike (the "Batpod") and Flickr-ized shots of Maggie Gyllenhaal and Aaron Eckhart as Katie Holmes and Harvey Dent respectively. Hmm, ok.

Also in comic-to-film news, there's more rumors of close-to-official casting for Zach Snyder's Watchmen happening. Keanu Reeves apparently passed on Dr. Manhattan, so now they're looking for, um, Jason Patric in that role. (I'm not seeing it, frankly, but he's no better or worse than Keanu, I guess.) Also rumored, Thomas Jane as the Comedian, and, as Rorschach, Little Children's Jackie Earle Haley. That's actually not half bad.

Also via AICN, and the new issue of Entertainment Weekly: Bruce Wayne shows off his new Bat-duds for Chris Nolan's The Dark Knight...now with kung-fu, head-swiveling action! (Accessories not included.)

In Marvel comic-to-film news, William Hurt joins Louis Letterier's increasingly-stacked The Incredible Hulk as Gen. Thad "Thunderbolt" Ross. (The movie, it may be remembered, already stars Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, and Tim Roth.) And, also rumored to be in the works: a Silver Surfer film written by J. Michael Straczynski of Babylon 5 (Will the character have any life in him after FF2 this weekend? I somehow doubt it) and a Thor film directed by Matthew Vaughan of Layer Cake and Stardust. (Ooh...can we get Beta Ray Bill?)

Breaking a few weeks ago now, AICN claims to have the skinny on the initial casting of Zach Snyder's version of Watchmen. Rumored as the Nite-Owl, Patrick Wilson of The Alamo and Little Children. (He's a bit buff for the role, frankly. I'd expected someone a little more gone to seed, like John Cusack or even Tom Hulce.) As Doctor Manhattan, Neo himself, Keanu Reeves. (Um, ok. I don't really see that working. Then again, I don't really see anyone else working either, this side of Gollum-style CGI) And, as Ozymandias, much-avowed Watchmen fan Jude Law. (That's pretty good, although somebody like Aaron Eckhart would be even better.) That's it so far, other than that Snyder -- who won't deny these casting rumors -- has promised he'd get Gerard Butler of 300 in there somewhere. (Why bother? I don't remember any character who's supposed to YELL...ALL...THE...TIME.) At any rate, that means Simon Pegg as Rorschach is still a possibility, if one that is very, very remote.

"It's really a great role. I'm in throughout the whole movie, and I'm really looking forward to working with Christian and Morgan and all these real Hollywood heavy hitters." Um, who is Anthony Michael Hall playing in The Dark Knight? "'I signed a confidentiality agreement, and I can't say which part I'm playing because it affects the story,' says Hall.'" Some sites have suggested he's [spoilers] playing a vigilante Batman, likely one who gets snared by the Joker, although that wouldn't explain why his scenes seem to involve Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox).

"I always say, you never know what a man is truly made of until you peel the skin off his face one piece at a time..." Christopher Nolan and co. are up to some very funky viral marketing for The Dark Knight at the moment. You may or may not have seen this political ad for possible Gotham City District Attorney Harvey Dent make the Internet rounds over the past few days. Well, it seems the Clown Prince of Crime has taken issue with the campaign, and is now revealing himself to Gotham's denizens -- with your help -- one pixel at a time. Get to it, fanboy nation! Update: After a weekend of work, Heath Ledger's Joker is revealed. (Ouch, that had to hurt.)

Thundering son of a sea-gherkin! Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson are teaming up for a Tintin trilogy! "Sources said Monday that Jackson and Spielberg would each direct installments of the franchise...The movies would be made using motion-capture technology."

Sam Raimi's Spiderman 3, which I saw a week ago, before this recent illness descended in earnest, is -- as you likely already know -- a disappointment. Both undercooked and overstuffed, it oftens feels like a Sequel-By-Numbers, the creation of a boardroom of comic-book-ignorant Sony suits who sat down and watched the splendid Spiderman 2, brainstormed for two hours about what its main selling points were, and tried to add 20% more of each to Spidey 3. The end result, as Joseph II might say, has too many notes. There occasionally seems to be a decent, heartfelt Sam Raimi Spidey foray struggling to get out in here somewhere, but it's mostly wrapped up and powerless against the black suit of the corporate bottom line. I highly doubt this film will be the end of Spiderman, after that outrageous opening weekend take, but it does sadly suggest that it may be time for Raimi & co. to escape Spidey's web and take a break from the franchise.

In true comic-book fashion, Spiderman 3 begins basically where the last installment left off, with Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson (Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst, both of whom seem bored) in love, his secret identity out to her. But, just as our friendly neighborhood webslinger begins to contemplate wedding bells in his future, a slew of supervillains rise up to disturb Spidey's domestic peace: The Green Goblin II (James Franco, putting in his best work of the series), who's also aware of Spidey's identity and is out to avenge his father's death; The Sandman (Thomas Haden Church, good with what he's given), who's out to find his daughter some quality affordable health care (good luck! Even fantasy has limits); and, most troubling, Venom (ultimately, Topher Grace, a likable actor that sadly doesn't work here), an oozing alien symbiote that first draws out Spiderman's dark side before congealing with his biggest rival at the Daily Bugle, photoshop expert Eddie Brock. Eventually, Spidey must find a way not only to beat back this rogues' gallery before doom befalls Ms. Watson high above Manhattan, but also come to terms with his darkest impulses, grapple with his deepfelt desire to cut a rug in a jazz club, and make Mary Jane feel important and special despite her withholding secrets from Peter most of the movie for unexplainable reasons. Can he pull it off, Spider-fans?

Maybe so, but the movie sure can't. If that litany of villains put you in mind of the later installments of the Batman franchise, Batman Forever or Batman and Robin, you're in the right ballpark. Basically, Raimi has too many balls in the air this time around (I haven't even mentioned Gwen Stacey, who's also in here for some reason), and the film just can't do justice to all of them. The Sandman in particular is given short shrift -- much time is devoted to giving him a backstory, but it gets dropped halfway through and never amounts to much. Meanwhile, other important plot points, such as how Spidey's enemies decide to gang up on him, are handled perfunctorily, apparently to make room for more wet blanket Mary Janeisms or badly-conceived comedy involving J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons). By the end of the film, when Harry Osborne's butler becomes Basil Exposition and Spiderman runs around without a mask in front of hundreds of cameras, the carelessness taken with this installment of the franchise becomes manifest. Raimi would likely have done better to leave Venom out of this episode and saved him for the next one (and, indeed, circumstantial evidence suggests that Venom was foisted on him by Sony -- Raimi wanted the Vulture.) As it is, though, Spiderman 3 is a swing-and-a-miss -- not as bad as X3, mind you, but definitely the worst outing thus far in the Spidey franchise. 'Nuff said.

I have to say, I continue to be completely thrown by what's emerging from Louis Leterrier's Incredible Hulk do-over. Now joining Ed Norton as Bruce Banner are Liv Tyler as the love interest (Betty Ross, a.k.a. Jennifer Connelly in the Ang Lee version) and, more interestingly, Tim Roth as the villain, Emil Blonsky a.k.a. Abomination. Norton v. Roth in a chew-and-smash-the-scenery contest? That should be great fun.

"'This is a decidedly adult superhero story,' says Favreau. (Fanboy FYI: Look for Stark's legendary drinking problem to pop up in possible sequels.)" Entertainment Weekly gets an exclusive first look at Iron Man's armor (as, in the red-and-gold suit, not the early prototype.) And, also in Marvel-to-film news, the new trailer for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer premieres online. Nope, still not feeling it.

You know what the next Batman movie needs? That certain straight-to-video je-ne-sais-quoi...Eric Roberts joins the cast of Chris Nolan's The Dark Knight, as "a Mafia kingpin."

As I noted a few weeks ago, NBC's Heroes has been a guilty pleasure of mine this past season: It serves up poorly-scripted, wafer-thin, and yet undeniably scrumptious slices of z-grade fanboy cheese every week, and it's close to the only network show I watch these days. (And the "Company Man" episode of a few weeks ago was good television by any reckoning.) That being said, the show's outright plagiarism is getting more and more marked, to the point where I'm fast losing interest. Series creator Tim Kring says he doesn't read any comics, which I find somewhat hard to believe. And there's always going to be some overlap in the superhero genre, just because there's only so many ways you can tell the same sort of story. But Monday's episode not only showed the writers continuing to lift liberally from the famous "Days of Future Past" arc from the Claremont-Byrne years of X-Men, but brazenly ripping off one of the key plot points of the mother of all contemporary graphic novels, Alan Moore's Watchmen. And I don't mean homage or tip-of-the-hat -- I mean straight-up, unabashed, actionable stealing, right down to Linderman's Ozymandian monologue. For shame. Do Kring & co. really think their fanboy/fangirl viewership isn't going to notice?

Even after Tyler Durden, apparently, he still has rage issues: Edward Norton signs up to play Louis Leterrier's Incredible Hulk. Interesting -- I was expecting this movie, coming so soon after Ang Lee's botch, to be basically a straight-to-video do-over. But Norton's presence is, without a doubt, an X-factor, and now I'm actually intrigued by it.

Is he alive or dead? Has he thoughts within his head? AICN obtains the first picture of Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man, in the original gray suit.

Trailers I've missed lately: John McLean goes up against Seth Bullock, with Kevin Smith and Mac Guy along for pained comic relief, in the new trailer for Live Free and Die Hard (which I caught with Grindhouse last Friday -- review forthcoming), and Topher Grace prays for vengeance in the impressive final trailer for Spiderman 3.

Venom (Topher Grace) comes to the fore in the final, very spoilerish, and Comcastic trailer for Sam Raimi's Spiderman 3 -- really, it seems like more of an executive summary than a preview. And, also up this weekend is the trailer for Matthew Vaughn's version of Neil Gaiman's Stardust, featuring, among others, Charlie Cox, Sienna Miller, Claire Danes, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert De Niro, Ricky Gervais, Jason Flemyng, Rupert Everett, Ian McKellen, and Peter O'Toole. Not a bad cast, that, and with Layer Cake's Vaughn at the helm, I'll go see it, even if this trailer is a mite underwhelming.

Ever since The Matrix came out of nowhere in March of 1999 and proved that genre audiences would pack the seats any time of year, not just in summertime, the February/March comic-book tentpole release has become a staple of the fanboy film calendar (Think Blade II, Constantine, Sin City, V for Vendetta.) This year, as you probably know, the big event was Zack Snyder's adaptation of Frank Miller's 300, which has been getting good buzz ever since its Comic-Con test footage and very impressive (and still very watchable) trailer last year. Well, I gotta say, I did everything I could to get all suitably double-Y aggro'ed for Snyder's trip to Sparta: I went to the midnight IMAX showing with the fanboy nation, had Greek food for dinner (ok, a coincidence) and downed a few beers beforehand, tossed out 600 sit-ups and randomly killed a hobo -- but, even then, 300 turned out to be sadly underwhelming. It looks great, no doubt -- with its carefully calibrated colors and artfully spurting viscera, it looks even more Frank Millerish than Sin City did, and there are definitely a couple of images that bypass all thought and directly engage the reptilian part of the brain. But, even taken on its own terms, there're too many groaners and too much filler here, and its attempts to be somber border on the laughable. I suspect 300 will sell a lot of HD-DVD players in the very near future, and for good reason, but it ultimately makes for a better music video than it does a movie.

The story is old, I know, but it goes on (usually in a David Wenham voiceover): In the ancient warrior city-state of Sparta, presided over by the robust, strapping King Leonidas (Gerard Butler), the men are men, the women are women, and those stunted weaklings born without a killer six-pack are picked off at a very early age. But, alas, this militarist utopia finds itself threatened by the global ambitions of the -- clearly not manly enough -- Persian God-King Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro), who asks only that Leonidas and his people submit to his divine benevolence. Submission? You must be joking. So, while his beautiful Queen (Lena Headley) negotiates with the Spartan Senate in a number of insipid let's-take-a-meeting scenes straight out of The Phantom Menace, Leonidas takes 300 of his best, least-clad warriors to the Hot Gates, where he and his ilk must fight off -- without benefit of armor, mind you -- wave after wave of Xerxes' elite assassins: the fearsome Persian Immortals, known mainly by their grinning demon masks and matching Ahmadinejad windbreakers.

Ok, that gag aside, and despite what you may have heard, there's really not that much allegorical grist in 300. I mean, you could very easily call out the political and racial subtext of the film: very Anglo-Saxonish looking Greeks beating down evil brown and black folk, in order to defend Spartan freedom(?) against the "mysticism and tyranny" of the Asian hordes. (After all, writer Frank Miller is the same guy who felt it necessary to sic Batman on Al Qaeda.) Or, you could fault 300's unabashed reveling in blood, guts, and glory: Faramir won't shut up in this movie, and yet there's nothing at all here akin to his opening lines in his last crusade against Men of the East, The Two Towers: "His sense of duty was no less than yours, I deem. You wonder what his name is, where he came from, and if he was really evil at heart. What lies or threats led him on this long march from home. If he would not rather have stayed there in peace. War will make corpses of us all." In short, to say 300 is the anti-Letters from Iwo Jima is an understatement.

But, really, all of that is basically beside the point: the movie is way too shallow to merit any deeper readings. The inimitable, foul-mouthed Neill Cumpston hit the nail on the head: 300 is in essence a video game, with waves of easy-to-dispatch bad-guy mobs punctuated by the occasional mini-boss. And, besides, let's be honest: All subtexts aside, I came to 300 -- and if you saw the trailer, you did too -- to chew gum and watch people kick ass, and I'm all out of gum. But, for every adrenaline-firing sequence of Leonidas and co. carving through baddies in slow-motion -- one, you'll know it when you see it, is pitch-perfect Frank Miller -- there are several others where the movie just grinds to a halt, and we're forced to watch Leonidas look angst-ridden or Queen Gargos engage in some cut-rate speechifying about freedom: "Freedom isn't free," "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose," etc. etc. ad nauseum. (And, alas, poor McNulty gets the shaft again: Dominic West gets a terribly-written, totally unnecessary part as a mustache-twirling politician/diplomat, which should tell you all you need to know about his role here -- Like Sparta's intrepid warriors really need his cut-and-run, Hans Blix pansy-ass screwing things up on the homefront.)

Still, for all of 300 pacing woes, dialogue groaners, and two-dimensional characters, I have to admit -- it does have its occasional moments...usually when it drops all pretense and just lets its "Tonight, we dine in Hell!" freak flag fly. A sinuous oracle in flimsy gauze writhes ecstatically through a soothsaying as if underwater. The God-King Xerxes, his voice booming with inhuman authority (nice job, sound editing guys), rests majestically on his obscenely large throne stairs, making Leonidas an offer he can't refuse. Persian ships are rent asunder by the stormy wrath of Poseidon, as Greece's warriors roar with approval in the rain. In these moments, and at others, such as when Xerxes unleashes his menagerie of rhinos and elephants against the 300, or when the Spartans first encounter the Asians' arcane magick of gunpowder, Zack Snyder's film settles into a big, dumb, loud, and rousingly enjoyable groove. Alas, 300 can only sustain that intensity for minutes at at time, and for the rest of the run, it's not so enjoyable. Too bad -- I get the sense there's probably a really amazing half-hour short-film in here somewhere. As it is, 300 feels disappointing, and makes me wonder if Snyder has the wherewithal to do Alan Moore's The Watchmen justice.

After last night, I gotta say I'd have much preferred to see a Paul Greengrass Watchmen. Still, I'll give him this: Zack Snyder knows his audience, and has inserted a test image of Watchmen's Rorschach in a new Internet trailer for 300. (And, for the record once more, I'm totally on board with the commenter in that AICN talkback who suggested Simon Pegg for the part.)

It's official: Maggie Gyllenhaal takes Katie Holmes' place in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. And, with Tobey Maguire appearing to beg off any future webslinger installments after Spidey 3, the door is now wide open for Maggie's brother Jake...

Steely blue eyes (with no love in them) scan the world no more: The powers-that-be at Marvel kill off Steve Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America, who apparently gets shot down on the courthouse steps. "'He hasn't been living in the modern world and the world does move," says Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada." But has the good Captain joined Bucky...or will the Bucky clause take effect?

As you may have seen during last night's Heroes (a show which has certainly hit a stride of some kind in the past few episodes -- it's gone from low-grade cheesy fun to being genuinely surprising at times, and it -- and Sundance's Slings and Arrows -- are now don't-erase Tivo staples), NBC.com is previewing seven minutes of Spiderman 3 until 9pm PST this evening, including Aunt May on memory lane, a knock-down, drag-out between Spidey and the Green Goblin II (Harry Osborne/James Franco), and our first official look at Venom.

"Batman is a complex character, and Two-Face comes a little bit from the same world. But [at the same time], he's apart from it. I'm looking for the tension between the two, the similarities between the two. I want to find what's similar to Batman, and then find what's opposite to him." The Dark Knight's Aaron Eckhart talks D.A. Harvey Dent, and suggests that he may well be popping up as Two-Face before the last reel of Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins sequel. (Presumably, Heath Ledger's Joker is somehow involved.)

As rumored a few weeks ago and in a bit of inspired casting, Aaron Eckhart looks set to join Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight as Harvey Dent, a.k.a. Two-Face. And, also in fanboy casting news, the cast of James Cameron's Avatar fills out, with Wes Studi, Sigourney Weaver, and others joining Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana for the 3D-epic.

Because noone demanded it, the trailer for Disney's live-action Underdog. (Somewhere, Krypto is sulking.) No way on God's green earth I'll be seeing this one, although I did sorta like the Superman Returns spoof and the "One Nation Under Dog" tagline. (And if you think this film was unnecessary, how 'bout a grown-up Hardy Boys film with Ben Stiller and Tom Cruise? That's just straight-up bizarre.)

"The truth is, '300' to the studio is a graphic novel movie. It's not a movie that they necessarily understand exactly when I pitch it on paper. They feel in some ways the same about "Watchmen." They don't understand why it's not 'Fantastic 4.' I have to remind them that it's much more 'Strangelove' than it is 'Fantastic 4' which they don't like hearing, but they believe that I know, and in that way, it helps." 300 helmer Zach Snyder checks in with the status of The Watchmen.

The Power of the Dark Crystal, the sequel to the 1982 muppet fantasy announced last year, has officially been put on hiatus. (Sorry, Gelflings.) And Latino Review, breakers of the Heath Ledger Joker casting, says Thank You for Smoking's Aaron Eckhart is now in line to play Harvey Dent (a.k.a. Two-Face) in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. Great choice. (Also, apparently Katie Holmes has been kicked off the Batman Begins sequel -- word is she'll be replaced by Emily Blunt, Rachel McAdams, or Maggie Gyllenhaal.)

Another wave of holiday trailers comes down the pike: Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez let their B-film freak flags fly (again) in the full trailer for Grindhouse, with Kurt Russell, Rose McGowan, and Freddy Rodriguez, among others; Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, Chris Cooper, Jeremy Piven, and Richard Jenkins fight the war on terror in Saudi Arabia in this first look at Peter Berg's The Kingdom; and Shia la Boeuf and the US military run from metal toy-like things in the new preview for Michael Bay's Transformers (If you're interested, see also the pic of Optimus Prime here.) Word is the trailer for Fantastic Four 2 is also showing in theaters at the moment, although the only thing online right now is this rather meh image of the Silver Surfer...hopefully, they do a better job with Galactus. Update: The FF teaser is now up.

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Sam Raimi, apparently. The Evil Dead/Spidey director looks to be moving forward on another version of The Shadow (which should in all likelihood be better than the 1994 Alec Baldwin version.)

Word officially comes down that Garth Ennis' Preacher is being developed for HBO by Mark Steven Johnston (Daredevil, Ghost Rider) and Howard Deutch (Grumpier Old Men.) Not the most exciting development team in the world, but it's nice to see HBO get into the comic game. (And if Zach Snyder's take on The Watchmen falls apart for some reason, as so many earlier attempts at it have, a 12-hour series on the Home Box Office would be a good place for Alan Moore's magnum opus.)

I'm talking about the man in the mirror...Two new posters for Sam Raimi's Spiderman 3 make it online, showcasing the Spidey-Venom duality.

The new Sandman-heavy trailer for Sam Raimi's Spiderman 3 is now online. To be honest, I think I preferred the teaser -- this one doesn't really grab me (and it seems to give away too many plot points.) Nevertheless, here it is.

Quite a bit of movie news lately: Bryan Singer's next Superman achieves liftoff, as does Harold & Kumar II. (I didn't think much of Superman Returns, but am willing to give Singer another shot, particularly given how much better X2 was over X-Men. As for H & K...yeah, I'll see it.) Meanwhile, the Peter Jackson-produced Halo is off for now...probably not a great loss, I suspect. And, finally, Steven Soderbergh and Benicio del Toro's Che is now two films: The Argentine and Guerrilla, to be shot back-to-back.

"1985's a problem for people. The Cold War's a problem for people. But these are things I've been trying to [tell people] would be cool. I like that Richard Nixon is the president in it. I think that's important. Those kinds of things tell you exactly what kind of movie this is - it's not Fantastic Four, you know." 300 director Zach Snyder offers a brief update on the current state of The Watchmen.

Ok, it's still basically just a lot of flexing and screaming. Nevertheless, the new trailer for Zach Snyder's 300 is out, and it's an adrenaline shot...one of the more effective previews I've seen in awhile. (And "Tonight we dine in Hell!" seems like it might be an apt catchphrase for all kinds of situations.)

In an interview with IGN Filmforce, Christopher Nolan discusses The Dark Knight and The Prisoner, and confirms that Harvey Dent will have a role in the former, although he hasn't yet been cast. Guy Pearce? Liev Schrieber?

Method casting? Robert Downey Jr. signs up as troubled alcoholic billionaire Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man, for director Jon Favreau.

Alas, today would've been Jim Henson's 70th birthday. In honor of the occasion, my sis-in-law sent along a scan of this sad (and arguably deeply disturbing) comic, which originally appeared in Cerebus back in the day (and which I used to have on a T-shirt, before it disintegrated.) Happy birthday, JH.

In other recent trailers, much slow motion screaming: Leonardo di Caprio, Jennifer Connelly, and Djimon Hounsou venture through deepest, darkest Africa (and get shot at a lot) in their search for Edward Zwick's Blood Diamond. And, Gerard Butler puts on his Spartan game face (with aid of a David Wenham voiceover) in this music video-ish glimpse at Zack Snyder's 300, based on the Frank Miller graphic novel about the Battle of Thermopylae.

Via LMG, two bizarrer-than-most comic book creators get in the blog game: Dave Sim and Bill Sienkiewicz.

"It's definitely going to stump people. I think it'll be more along the lines of how the Joker was meant to be in the comics, darker and more sinister." Brokeback Mountain's Heath Ledger says all the right things about his upcoming turn as the Joker in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. "I wouldn't have thought of me, either. But it's obviously not going to be what Jack Nicholson did. It's going to be more nuanced and dark and more along the lines of a Clockwork Orange kind of feel. Which is, I think, what the comic book was after: less about his laugh and more about his eyes." And, in related news, Bob Hoskins hasn't heard he might be playing the Penguin, so scratch that one off the rumor list for now.

It's official (and Latino Review is 2-for-2): Heath Ledger will be suiting up as the Joker in Christopher Nolan's sequel to Batman Begins, now called The Dark Knight. Ok, I can dig it...now, who's Harvey Dent?

As most of y'all likely already know, this past weekend was Comic-Con 2006 in San Diego, which means an exceedingly large amount of news in the fanboy department. To wit:

Regarding perhaps the most anticipated comic-to-film property nearing post-production, Sam Raimi's Spiderman 3, the attending panel offered a number of new shots of the main characters, including an iconic poster of Thomas Haden Church as the Sandman and -- at right -- That 70s Show's Topher Grace, a.k.a. Venom, having a painful-looking first run-in with the black suit/symbiote.

Also in Marvel's wheelhouse, Jon Favreau premiered the teaser poster for his take on Iron Man, and confirmed the villain of his film, the Mandarin.

In other Marvel news, Louis Leterrier's Incredible Hulk has picked a villain, too, that being the Abomination.

On the DC side, Bryan Singer is looking to revisit Superman in 2009, even though the jury's still out on Superman Returns.

The inimitable Peter Jackson, via remote (and still not making The Hobbit) showed off a scene from his extended DVD version of King Kong (my love of the extended LotR versions notwithstanding, count me among those who thought Kong needed tightening more than anything else.)

Not Comic-Con news, per se, but worth mentioning here: Former Jedi Samuel Jackson and Hayden Christensen may reunite for the film version of Steven Gould's Jumper, a surprisingly solid little take on the hoary old teleportation meme, to be directed by Doug Liman of Swingers and The Bourne Identity.

J.J. Abrams of Lost, Alias, and M:I:III brought along a teaser poster for his Trek reboot, which, word has it, puts young Kirk (Matt Damon?) and Spock back at Starfleet Academy.

In other sci-fi television news, J. Michael Straczynski announced he'll be revisiting the world of Babylon 5, albeit in straight-to-video spinoffs.

Also regarding sci-fi on the telly, Battlestar Galactica's Ron Moore showed up to kick some more k-nowledge about BSG Season 3, due in October (which complement the recent spoilers here.)

And lots of other news, including Kurt Russell in Quentin Tarantino's half of Grindhouse, a look at Zack Snyder's 300, talk of the Star Wars spinoffs, teaser posters for Michael Bay's Transformers, and descriptions of clips from Neil Gaiman/Matthew Vaughn's Stardust. Yep, Comic-Con seems like good fun...perhaps I'll make it out someday.

No teens or mutant teens, take your pick: In the near future, Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, and Chiwetel Ejiofor look to save the Earth's last pre-born in the dystopic new trailer for Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men. (Between this and The Fountain, it may be a good fall for sci-fi.) And Michelangelo, Raphael, Donatello, and Leonardo (the turtles, not the artists) get the CGI treatment in the teaser for TMNT. (No Elias Koteas or Sam Rockwell this time around? Bleah.)

Along with word of an unfortunately actioned-up Watchman script and news of some stranger-than-usual comic adaptations (The Doom Patrol? Frank Miller on Will Eisner's Spirit? Benico Del Toro's Deadman?), Latino Review -- the site that first announced Brandon Routh as Superman in 2004 -- discloses that Heath Ledger has an offer to play the Joker in Christopher Nolan's next Batman flick. Hmm. An interesting and slightly-out-of-left-field choice...He wouldn't have been one of my top picks for the part (Adrien Brody, Sam Rockwell, Paul Bettany, or how 'bout Ralph Reed?...His calendar's open), but he's definitely better than some names that were floating around (Crispin Glover, Robin Williams, Michael Keaton, Sean Penn.)

In other comic-to-film news, Transporter director Louis Leterrier has been given the reins of The Incredible Hulk, which is apparently a re-do of Ang Lee's ill-conceived version of a few years ago. A solid choice, but given Marvel's recent non-Spidey track record (X3, FF, Blade 3, etc.), I can't say I'm very hopeful.

Coming Soon get their mitts on the new Spiderman 3 poster, which, it being lenticular, should look even better at your local multiplex.

"Movies would gradually drift away from the ideals of 1970s Hollywood and more to the simplistic, self-deluding certainties and monochrome morality espoused by the new president. In that sense, Donner's Superman, and to come extent Dick Lester's sequel - the one in which General Zod and his minions traverse the universe apparently trapped inside the album-sleeve of Queen's Sheer Heart Attack - were prescient works of art." By way of LinkMachineGo, John Patterson of The Guardian argues that, despite his origins under Siegel & Shuster, Superman's appeal is inherently conservative. Hmm, ok. I'd be more impressed with his thesis if [a] he didn't immediately write off all comic-book adaptations and [b] he actually got Superman's name right.

In today's trailer bin, Brazil alums Jonathan Pryce and Ian Holm reunite (as voice talent, with Daniel Craig and Catherine McCormack) in the Sin City-ish new trailer for Christian Volckman's Renaissance, and Adrien Brody delves into the death of Superman (a.k.a. George Reeves a.k.a. Ben Affleck), with Diane Lane and Bob Hoskins on hand, in the new trailer for Allen Coulter's Hollywoodland. Update: And one more: Edward Norton conjures up trouble for the powers-that-be (with Paul Giamatti, Jessica Biel, and Rufus Sewell) in the new trailer for The Illusionist (not to be confused with Christopher Nolan's The Prestige, due out later in the year.)

Elsewhere, Michael Bay's big-budget version of The Transformers gets a teaser (hopefully the robots work better than the website), and Spiderman 3 gets spoiled rotten over at Dark Horizons -- Seriously, don't go if you don't want to know.

"You don't really love that guy you make it with now do you?" Despite a nice throwback credit sequence to kick things off, and several iconic images of the man in blue throughout, Bryan Singer's Superman Returns is, unfortunately, something of a disappointment. It's by no means a travesty, like X3 -- the FX are top-notch, and the movie does feel like some care went into it. Still, for most of its run, Superman Returns, while hearkening often to the 1978 original and its excellent 1980 sequel, never really reaches the heights of those first two films. Instead, this "requel" feels, for the most part, drab, leaden, and earthbound, and, at best, plays like a badly-paced bodice ripper (or perhaps a forgotten issue of Superman's Girlfriend, Lois Lane.)

Like I said, Superman Returns starts off well, with a brief look at Krypton's fate, kryptonite's origins, and a whirlwind intergalactic tour of a credits sequence (all of which bodes well for a quality Silver Surfer or Darkseid v. Supes movie someday.) But, soon thereafter, trouble arises. We're treated to a jokey Anna Nicole Smith-ish re-introduction to Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey, who never gets the tone quite right -- he's either too whimsical or too dark), some Americana flashbacks of Superman's youth in -- and return after five years to -- the archetypal Midwest, Luthor's visit to the Fortress of Solitude and subsequent experimentation with Kryptonian technology, and finally Clark Kent's reemergence in Metropolis and the newsroom of the Daily Planet, still presided over by Perry White (Frank Langella) and staffed by Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) and Superman's pal, Jimmy Olsen (Sam Huntington). Frankly, all of this section of the movie takes too long -- it seems forever and a day before Superman (Brandon Routh, both better and less Rushmore-esque than I expected) is finally moved to action by a Space Shuttle incident (one involving, of course, Lois.)

I'd like to say the film then finds its momentum, then...but, sadly, it really doesn't. For one, Luthor's diabolical master plan -- involving growing craggy Kryptonian real-estate that will submerge North America -- doesn't make a lick of sense. But, more problematically, the central questions driving Singer's Superman, IMHO, just aren't all that interesting. Will Lois rediscover her deeply-buried love for Superman, the "one that got away," or will she stay true to her good-hearted current beau, Richard (James Marsden, a.k.a. Cyclops, here blessed with Superempathy)? Can Superman make peace with Lois's new life (or, at the very least, will he stop superstalking her happy household?) And where does Lois's doe-eyed child -- yep, cute kid alert -- fit into all this? (Take a guess.) Not to put too fine a point on it, but, in essence, what Singer has made here is a Superman mythos chick flick, and not a very good one at that.

This is not to say that I only wanted to see Superman crush things for two hours. As sappy and unrealistic as it is, the love triangle that dominates this film might've worked in another context (or with another character -- This type of thing works better in Sam Raimi's Spiderman series, but Spidey is generally a more angst-ridden superhero anyway.) But, as it stands, the Harlequin Romance nature of this enterprise, as well as the languid pacing and Luthor's completely absurd stratagem, are like kryptonite here. Superman Returns looks good, and I'd be up to see Routh don the tights again for another outing. But, as a reboot of DC's most famous franchise, the movie is passable at best (and it has nothing on Christopher Nolan's much more enjoyable Batman Begins.)

Also in the trailer bin, Venom gets his curtain call in the impressive and much-awaited new teaser for Spiderman 3, appearing in front of Superman Returns tomorrow. (A better Quicktime version is due later today) Update: Here it is!

AICN posts some pics from the big licensing show in NYC, which includes some impressive looking bears from The Golden Compass, as well as posters for Spiderman 3, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (apparently, the '70's hair is out), Dreamworks' Kung Fu Panda, and (gulp) Fantastic Four and the Silver Surfer.

"Quick answers (as of this date): Golem: yes. Antarctica: yes. Gay love story: yes. Ruins of World's Fair: no. Long Island: no. Orson Welles: no. Salvador Dali: yes. Loving reference to Betty and Veronica: no. Stan Lee: no." Author Michael Chabon blogs in to say, among other things, that Natalie Portman is likely Rosa in the forthcoming film version of Kavalier & Klay, to be directed by Stephen Daldry.

"We can't win this militarily. It can only be won politically; it can only be won diplomatically and internationally...And you've got to listen to realism and what the public wants in the United States." Hopefully (but not likely) heeding John Murtha's words, Dubya's Iraq team retreats to Camp David for a strategy pow-wow. By the way, is it just me or does the "Interagency Team on Iraq" look suspiciously like the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants?

The third trailer for Bryan Singer's Superman Returns, which you may have seen before X3 over the weekend, is now online.

Mutie alert: Despite a few all-too-brief glimpses of a better (or at least more enjoyable) movie scattered therein, Brett Ratner's X3: The Last Stand is, as the fanboy nation suspected, a truly terrible film. In fact, with the possible exception of Ian McKellen hamming his way through Magneto, it's hard to think of anyone who brought above their C-game to this woeful project -- the directing is workmanlike, the effects look cheap, the shots have that Canadian backlot look to them, the score is hamhanded and distracting, the actors seem bored, and, worst of all, the script is flat-out embarrassing. What's more, if you harbor any affection for the comic (and particularly the Dark Phoenix arc ostensibly in play here, although it's been cross-wired with Joss Whedon's early run), you'll probably just leave irritated. In short, X3 is just the type of lowest-common-denominator, dumbed-down rush job that gives both summer movies and comic movies a bad name: Think Fantastic Four.

Compounding the aggravation, X3 seems like it might turn out reasonably decent for the first ten minutes or so. The film begins with two flashbacks: The more interesting one, although it steals much of its subtext from Raimi's Spiderman, involves a teenage Angel trying to clip his wings (the other features not-quite-ready-for-primetime de-aging CGI.) But then we're thrust into a really clunky Danger Room sequence, involving Sentinels that have all the terrible grandeur of an industrial-strength flashlight and a Corman-esque Colossus that screams straight-to-video. (Apparently, the Danger Room was built in Professor Xavier's Bargain Basement.) And, from there, it's just down, down down. As it turns out, Worthington industries (run by Michael Murphy of Tanner), with the acquiescence of the President (a man who's prone to looking into the camera and exclaiming "God...help...us." whenever needed) has, as per Whedon, created a "cure" for mutants, prompting outrage (Storm, Halle Berry), confusion (Beast, Kelsey Grammar), relief (Rogue, Anna Paquin), and righteous megalomania (Magneto, McKellen) among the varied facets of mutantkind. Meanwhile, as tensions mount and the timely metaphors fly thick, a bedraggled Cyclops (James Marsden) ventures out to Alkali Lake -- site of the climax of X2 -- where he, surprisingly, encounters Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) alive and well. Ok, maybe not well...

As you can see, X3 is playing with at least two quality story arcs out of the X-Men canon here, so you'd think it'd just have to ride them through. But, alas, screenwriters Simon Kinberg and Zak Penn -- who, make no bones about it, deserve the lion's share of blame for this drek -- go crazier than Chris Claremont in his post-Mutant Massacre burnout phase. (Speaking of mutant massacres, no less than [Major Movie-Ruining Spoiler] SIX major characters -- Cyclops, Xavier, Mystique, Magneto, Jean Grey, Rogue -- are eliminated by the end of this flick, which, even given the lax standards one must accord this universe, seems both ridiculously brutal and exceedingly lazy writing.) Virtually everybody here -- and particularly Xavier and Magneto -- has at least one speech, quip, or action that seems totally out-of-character. (For her part, Halle Berry plays Storm as if she were Halle Berry.) Neither the good guys nor bad guys' plans make one lick of sense. And, even despite all the X-Men on hand here, the film is overflowing with undifferentiated throwaway characters who all look and act like tattoo-riddled redshirts.

By the way, did I mention this film looks cheap? Oh, hell yes. Beast looks like a cross between a Metallica roadie and an alien on a Sci-Fi channel miniseries. Dark Phoenix -- who, by the way, not once exhibits a phoenix flame -- instead occasionally unleashes the terrifying cosmic force of scrubbly bubbles (a la the distintegrating vampires in Blade.) And the wire-fu...oof, it's just plain sad. So, is there anything good here? Well, very briefly, Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page), Juggernaut (Vinnie Jones), Madrox (Eric Dane), Moira (Olivia Williams)...that's about it, and it all totals about ten minutes of screen time. In short, after the surprisingly delectable heights of Bryan Singer's X2 (Nightcrawler in the White House, Magneto's escape), this film is at best a tremendous disappointment, and at worst an insult to the fan base. If this and FF is how Avi Arad and Marvel have decided to treat their best (non-Spiderman) properties from now herein, make mine DC.

Son, you've got a flamin' panty on your head...The new teaser for Ghost Rider, starring Nicholas Cage as Johnny Blaze (along with Sam Elliot, Eva Mendes, Donal Logue, and Wes Bentley), is now online. Never been a fan of the comic -- it's always screamed Blue Oyster Cult to me -- so I highly doubt I was going to catch this anyway. Still, this trailer didn't help matters.

The new international trailer for Bryan Singer's Superman Returns, which gets a bit more spoilerish and includes a Matrix-y money shot that seems a mite out of place to me, is now online.

Today's trailers: Crockett & Tubbs reunite as Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx respectively in the full trailer for Michael Mann's film version of Miami Vice (This isn't much of an improvement on the teaser, frankly.) And, Dell offers seven minutes of clips from X3: The Last Stand, of which all but 90 seconds or so (thanks to Ian McKellen, who's clearly at home scenery-chewing his way through this badly-written drek) looks and sounds cringeworthy. From this, it seems the real problem with X3 may be less Ratner than the so-far really clunky script by Simon Kinberg & Zak Penn.

According to several reports, the Silver Surfer will show up in Fantastic Four 2. That, of course, probably means Galactus...which would be cause for fanboy rejoicing, were it not for how badly Victor Von Doom came out in the first one.

The trailer bin runneth over this evening, with the english teaser for Daniel Craig's Bond debut in Casino Royale, the new trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest, and the full trailer for Bryan Singer's Superman Returns. More summer fun than you can shake a stick at.

Some actors with big shoes to fill make their online premieres today: Brandon Routh shows off his Kryptonian flying skills in this Superman Returns-tie-in Coke commercial, and new 007 Daniel Craig dons the tux for this French teaser for Casino Royale.

Among a slew of recent announcements, including the writers of Thor (Mark Protosevich of Poseidon), Captain America (David Self of Thirteen Days), Nick Fury (Andrew Marlowe of Air Force One), and Hulk-2 (Zak Penn of, sigh, X3 and FF) -- as well as official word on Edgar Wright's Ant-Man -- Marvel's Avi Arad says John Favreau will helm Iron Man.

In related news, a clip from X3: The Last Stand makes it online, and it looks and sounds as bad as feared. If you would have told me beforehand that a clip featuring the Danger Room, Sentinels, and a Fastball Special would be this inert and cringe-worthy, I wouldn't have believed you. Good going, Ratner.

"This is about camaraderie. It's about teamwork, but most of all it's about history. It's really about knowing your roots. I mean, kids today, they're reading about Wolverine's clone sister. What the hell is that about?" The Secret Wars Re-Enactment Society (By way of Do You Feel Loved?) For old-school comic fans, this is worth seeing for the Kang and Ultron costumes alone. (And, as Chris noted, the payoff is pretty funny too.)

The Longest Yard and 50 First Dates director Peter Segal picks up the reins for Shazam!, the forthcoming Captain Marvel movie. You know the comic-film revival is starting to overextend itself when the old Fawcett characters start getting their own flicks. Who's next, Spy-Smasher?

"People should not be 'fraid of cookie. Cookies should be 'fraid of people." Guy Fawkes, meet Crazy Harry. By way of my sister, experience Jim Henson's uncompromising vision of the future, C for Cookie.

The Religious Affiliation of Comic Book Characters, with a handy graphic of who's a member of what "legion." The site also includes impressively detailed individual entries on each character -- not only the big guns like Methodist Superman, Episcopal Batman, Catholic Daredevil, and Buddhist Wolverine, but also everyone from Presbyterian Wolfsbane to the Mormon Power Pack. (Via Triptych Cryptic.)

The Superman-themed teaser for The Simpsons Movie premieres online, with a street date of July 27, 2007. Excellent.

Directors Darren Aronofsky and Paul Greengrass failed their Rorschach tests -- Still, Alan Moore's Watchmen may soon have a new helmer in Zach Snyder, who's currently finishing up Frank Miller's 300.

Verily, my view on V for Vendetta vacillates. Even with visage veiled, the venerable Hugo Weaving's voice brings vim and verve to the verbose, volatile, and vindictive vigiliante. Natalie Portman is vivacious enough as V's volunteer, and varied English veterans (Stephen Rea, Stephen Fry, John Hurt) bring valuable versimilitude to V's environs. But, various vignettes notwithstanding, this vaunted venture is less vibrant and versatile than I'd hoped. V is too virtuous, and the villains -- from a venal vicar to a vainglorious video host -- too vile. Vendetta is a viable version of Alan Moore's violent vision, I suppose, but a vulgarized one.

If you thought the last paragraph was clunky, be prepared for more of the same in V. Vendetta is an enjoyable night at the movies, and definitely an above-average, smarter-than-usual actioner. And Weaving is amazingly dynamic behind the static mask -- It's hard to think of anyone else who could've pulled this off quite as well. But, like the last two Matrix films, V's bravura moments -- the escape from the BBC, V's talk with the botanist (Sinead Cusack), the domino scene -- are too often interspersed with leaden, expository-heavy scenes where the pacing of the film just goes slack. Particularly egregious in this regard is our Batman-ish introduction to V very early in the film, where even Weaving's mellifluous phrasing can't salvage a similarly V-intensive monologue. (Frankly, the whole scene needed a rewrite.) The film does eventually recover from this Act I stumble, but it takes awhile.

And the larger problem with V for Vendetta is that, for all its pretense of moral complexity, it stacks the ethical deck in favor of our terrorist-protagonist. It's been awhile since I've read the graphic novel, but I remember V coming across as a much more unlikable character. He's a monster created by monstrous circumstances, and as much a symptom as the cure of his society's larger sickness. But here, V is too (anti-)heroic and charismatic, even given the second act twist, and the government too Orwellian and depraved by far. Who wouldn't sympathize with rising up against this Taliban-meets-the-Tories outfit? As such, the subtler elements of Moore's moral economy have been flattened out, and all the choices have been made for us. But perhaps it's a problem of medium -- what worked well on the page comes across as overkill on the big screen. (Exhibit A: Big Brother John Hurt...I liked him better as Winston Smith.)

All in all, I'd say V for Vendetta is much better comic adaptation than LXG or, say, Fantastic Four, and on par with the other Vertigo films, From Hell and Constantine. But it's not a slam-dunk: Vendetta's heart is in the right place, but, sadly, something doesn't quite translate.

"May you have warm words on a cold evening, a full moon on a dark night, and a road downhill all the way to home."

A very happy St. PaVtrick's Day to you and yours. I expect my own holiday will involve some permutation of NCAA basketball, slightly too much Guinness, and a vicinal viewing of Vendetta (which is getting mixed reviews thus far -- Still, as far as Alan Moore adaptations go, it has to be better than LXG, and I'd only be moderately disappointed if it's comparable to the Hughes Brothers' take on From Hell.) At any rate, have a good one...and be sure to don some green!

Extra, Extra: Coming Soon publishes the first pic of Sam Huntington as Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen.

"V for Vendetta may be--why hedge? is--the most subversive cinematic deed of the Bush-Blair era, a dagger poised in midair. Unlike the other movies dubbed 'controversial' (Fahrenheit 9-11, The Passion, Munich, Syriana), it doesn't play to a particular constituency or polarized culture bloc, it's working on a deeper, Edgar Allan Poe-ish witch's brew substrata of pop myth." Vanity Fair's James Wolcott seems to really like V for Vendetta. (Via Blivet.)

Superhero Hype! procures an impressive new pic from Spiderman III, and it's official: Peter Parker is donning the black garb...which means the long-swirling rumors that Topher Grace is playing Venom seem to be on the money. Hmmm. Even with the Sandman involved, I'd have preferred to see more of Spidey's classic rogues' gallery before Raimi & co. got to the peeved symbiote in question. Update: As a keen-eyed AICN fanboy noted, is Parker asleep in this pic? That'd dovetail nicely with the comics, when, pre-Venom, the costume started getting a mind of its own.

Six new one-sheets from X3: The Last Stand make the rounds (as do a few new stills) and, hoo boy -- Let's just say that they're not going to thwart the negative energy surrounding the project ever since Ratner came on board. Will this be the X-Men's Batman and Robin?

Another Superbowl has come and gone (Congrats to the Steelers, some of the calls notwithstanding), and -- while I personallly preferred the FedEx cavemen and Hummer monsters -- some new movie ads were scattered throughout the game, including new looks at V for Vendetta, MI:III, Poseidon, and Pirates of the Caribbean. (And, also in movie news, the increasingly over-stuffed Spiderman 3 picks up another marquee name with James Cromwell as Capt. Stacy, Gwen's father.)

Clone Wars and Samurai Jack creator Genndy Tartakovsky will helm The Power of the Dark Crystal. And, in other fanboy news, Bryce Dallas Howard shows off the Gwen Stacey tresses while promoting Manderlay, and Dark Horizons obtains a pretty large spoiler about James Franco's role in Spiderman 3.

Curiouser and curiouser...The Village's Bryce Dallas Howard joins Spiderman 3 as none other than Gwen Stacy, Peter Parker's doomed childhood sweetheart. I find this somewhat strange, since they'd basically turned Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane Watson into Gwen Stacy in the first film (#6). (Plus, they've switched hair-colors, but ah well.)

Is there life after Serenity? Well, it depends what you call life...Firefly's Capt. Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion), now a small-town sheriff, faces down gruesome space slugs in the trailer for James Gunn's horror-comedy Slither, also featuring Elizabeth Banks and the inimitable Michael Rooker. (Slightly bawdier trailer here.)

By way of LMG, an online exhibit on the response in comics to 9/11, featured on an intriguing site in its own right: The Authentic History Center: Primary Sources from American Popular Culture.

And another spate of Batman casting rumors. This time 'round it's Johnny Depp as the Joker and Rachel Weisz as Talia (Liam Neeson/Ras Al Ghul's daughter.) With the Penguin (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Harvey Dent/Two-Face (Liev Schrieber) also purportedly in the mix, it sounds like something's got to give.

"There's no going back. From that moment on, the series' hero is in a morally untenable situation, and everything he does makes things worse. The only thing Murdock can do is to start lying, and make all of his allies lie for him, too...The second half of the Bendis-Maleev run fills in the gaps of the missing year bit by bit, and suggests what happens when a hero chooses to rule in hell (or its kitchen) rather than serve in heaven." Salon's Douglas Wolk sings the praises of Brian Bendis and Alex Maleev's work on Daredevil.

Happy New Year's Eve to everyone..I'm celebrating in San Diego with old college friends and likely won't update again until 2006. So, without further ado, here's the 2005 movie round-up. Overall, it's been a pretty solid year for cinema, and this is the first year in the past five where the #1 movie wasn't immediately obvious to me. But, still, choices had to be made, and so...

Top 20 Films of 2005
[2000/2001/2002/2003/2004]

[Note: The #1 movie of 2005 changed in early 2006: See the Best of 2006 list for the update...]

1. Syriana: I know Stephen Gaghan's grim meditation on the global reach and ruthlessness of the Oil Trade rubbed some people the wrong way, but I found it a gripping piece of 21st century muckraking, in the venerable tradition of Ida Tarbell and Upton Sinclair. True, Christopher Plummer was a mite too sinister, but otherwise Syriana offered some of the most intriguing character arcs of the year, from morose CIA Field Agent George Clooney's ambivalent awakening to corporate lawyer Jeffrey Wright's courtship with compromise. In a year of well-made political films, among them Good Night, and Good Luck, Munich, Lord of War, and The Constant Gardener, Syriana was the pick of the litter.

2. Layer Cake: If X3 turns into the fiasco the fanboy nation is expecting with Brett Ratner at the helm, this expertly-crafted crime noir by Matthew Vaughn will cut that much deeper. Layer Cake not only outdid Guy Ritchie's brit-gangster oeuvre in wit and elegance and offered great supporting turns by Michael Gambon, Kenneth Cranham, and Colm Meaney, it proved that Daniel Craig had the requisite charisma for Bond and then some (and that Sienna Miller is no slouch in the charisma department either.)

3. Ballets Russes: Penguins and comedians, to the wings -- The lively survivors of the Ballets Russes are now on center stage. Like the best in dance itself, this captivating, transporting documentary was at once of the moment and timeless.

4. Good Night, and Good Luck: Conversely, anchored by David Strathairn's wry channeling of Edward R. Murrow, George Clooney's second film (and second appearance on the 2005 list) couldn't have been more timely. A historical film that in other hands might have come off as dry, preachy edutainment, Good Night, and Good Luck instead seemed as fresh and relevant as the evening news...well, that is, if the news still functioned properly.

5. Batman Begins: The Dark Knight has returned. Yes, the samurai-filled first act ran a bit long and the third-act train derailing needed more oomph. Still, WB and DC's reboot of the latter's second biggest franchise was the Caped Crusader movie we've all been waiting for. With help from an A-list supporting cast and a Gotham City thankfully devoid of Schumacherian statuary, Chris Nolan and Christian Bale brought both Batman and Bruce Wayne to life as never before, and a Killing Joke-ish Batman 2 is now on the top of my want-to-see list.

6. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: As I said in my original review, I initally thought Cuaron's Azkhaban couldn't be topped. But give Mike Newell credit: Harry's foray into Voldemortish gloom and teenage angst was easily the most compelling Potter film so far. Extra points to Gryffindor for Brendan Gleeson's more-than-slightly-bent Mad-Eye Moody, and to Slytherin for Ralph Fiennes' serpentine cameo as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

7. King Kong: I had this film as high as #2 for awhile, and there are visual marvels therein that no other movie this year came close to offering, most notably Kong loose in Depression-Era New York City. But, there's no way around it -- even given all the B-movie thrills and great-ape-empathizing that PJ offers in the last 120 minutes, the first hour is close to terrible, which has to knock the gorilla down a few notches.

8. Capote: When it comes to amorality for artistry's sake, Jack Black's Carl Denham ain't got nothing on Philip Seymour Hoffman's Truman Capote. I think it'd be awhile before I want to watch this movie again, but, still, it was a dark, memorable trip into bleeding Kansas and the writerly id.

9. Sin City: One of the most faithful comic-to-film adaptations on celluloid also made for one of the more engaging and visually arresting cinematic trips this year. I don't know if the look and feel of Sin City can sustain a bona fide franchise, but this first outing was a surprisingly worthwhile film experience (with particular kudos for Mickey Rourke's Marv.)

10. Munich: I wrote about this one at length very recently, so I'll defer to the original review.

11. Brokeback Mountain: A beautifully shot and beautifully told love story, although admittedly Ang Lee's staid Brokeback at times feels like transparent Oscar bait.

12. Lord of War: Anchored by Nicholas Cage's wry voiceover, Andrew Niccol's sardonic expose of the arms trade was the funniest of this year's global message films (That is, if you like 'em served up cold.)

13. The Squid and the Whale: Speaking of which, The Squid and the Whale made ugly, embittered divorce about as funny as ever it's likely to get, thanks to Jeff Daniels' turn as the pretentious, haunted Bernard Berkman.

14. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith: Thank the Force for small kindnesses: George Lucas put the Star Wars universe to bed with far and away his best outing of the prequels. The film flirts dangerously with the Dark Side, particularly in the "let's take a meeting" second act, but for the most part Sith felt -- finally -- like a return to that galaxy long ago and far, far away.

15. A History of Violence: I think David Cronenberg's most recent take on vigilantism and misplaced identity was slightly overrated by most critics -- When you get down to it, the film was pretty straightforward in its doling out of violent fates to those who most deserved them. Still, solid performances and Cronenberg's mordant humor still made for a far-better-than-average night at the movies.

16. Walk the Line: Despite the great performances by Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line ultimately seemed too much of a by-the-numbers biopic to do the Man in Black full credit. But, definitely worth seeing.

17. In Good Company (2004): Paul Weitz's sweet folktale of synergy, downsizing, and corporate obsolescence was too charitable and good-natured to think ill of any of its characters, and I usually prefer more mordant fare. Nevertheless, the intelligently-written IGC turned out to be a quality piece of breezy pop filmmaking.

18. The Constant Gardener: Another very good film that I still thought was slightly overrated by the critics, Fernando Meirelles' sophomore outing skillfully masked its somewhat iffy script with lush cinematography and choice Soderberghian editing.

19. Primer (2004): A completely inscrutable sci-fi tone poem on the perils of time travel. Kevin and I saw it twice and still have very little clue as to what's going most of the time -- but I (we?) mean that in the best way possible.

20. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: The Chronic-what? Andrew Adamson's retelling of C.S. Lewis's most popular tome lagged in places, and the two older kids were outfitted with unwieldy character arcs that often stopped the film dead, but it still felt surprisingly faithful to the spirit of Narnia, Christianized lion and all.

Most Disappointing: The Fantastic Four, which I finally saw on the plane yesterday -- One of Marvel's A-List properties is given the straight-to-video treatment. From the Mr. Fantastic bathroom humor to the complete evisceration of Dr. Doom, this movie turned out just as uninspired and embarrassing as the trailers suggested. Runner-Up: The Brothers Grimm. Terry Gilliam's long-awaited return wasn't exactly a return-to-form. But, hey, at least he got a movie made, and Tideland is just around the corner.

Most Variable: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: I still haven't figured out how I feel about this one. I liked it quite a bit upon first viewing, but it didn't hold up at all the second time around. Still, the casting feels right, and I'd be up for The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, provided they turn up the Ford-and-Zaphod shenanigans and turn down the forced Arthur-and-Trillian romance.

Worth a Rental: Constantine, Aliens of the Deep, Me and You and Everyone We Know, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Island, March of the Penguins, The Aristocrats,Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, Jarhead, Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic, The Ice Harvest, War of the Worlds

Ho-Hum: Inside Deep Throat, The Jacket, Million Dollar Baby (2004), The Ring 2, Kingdom of Heaven, Unleashed, Mr. & Mrs. Smith,
Aeon Flux

Best Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote; Eric Bana, Munich; Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain; David Straitharn, Good Night, and Good Luck

Best Actress: Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line; Naomi Watts, King Kong

Best Supporting Actor: Jeff Daniels, The Squid and the Whale; George Clooney, Syriana; Brendan Gleeson, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Best Supporting Actress: Maria Bello, A History of Violence; Tilda Swinton, The Chronicles of Narnia

Unseen: The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Bee Season, Broken Flowers, Cache, Casanova, Cinderella Man, Crash, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Grizzly Man, Gunner Palace, Head On, Hustle & Flow, Junebug, Match Point, The New World, Nine Lives, Pride and Prejudice, Serenity (although I watched all of Firefly last week), Shopgirl, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Wedding Crashers

2006: Frankly, the line-up doesn't look too exciting at the moment. Nevertheless, 2006 will bring A Scanner Darkly, Casino Royale, The Da Vinci Code, Flags of our Fathers, The Good German, The Inside Man, Marie Antoinette, M:I III, Pirates of the Caribbean 2, Snakes on a Plane (!!), Southland Tales, Superman Returns, Tristam Shandy, V for Vendetta, and X3.