Put A Little Hot-Rod Red Into Your Day

The latest Iron Man trailer is up. You can find it at IGN.com by clicking HERE.

These trailers keep piling on the wicked-awesome. This not only looks to be the best flick of the Summer, but it might just rival Spider-Man as Bestest Superhero Movie Since Ever. And so I must now impose a personal media black-out of all things Iron Man. I'm avoiding all further trailers, articles and other spoilerish internet shenanigans. I've seen enough to know I'll be there opening night. I don't want to know anything else before experiencing it properly- in a dark room full of nerd-stench.

Conversely, I'd love to see more about this Summer's other Marvel movie- The Incredible Hulk. All we've seen so far is a few stills. And they make me worry. Ed Norton showing off his sculpted pecks and GQ haircut doesn't exactly convey Bruce Banner's meek scientist. Otherwise the cast sounds great and I like that they're going all HULK SMASH actiony with this flick. But why have we not seen a trailer yet? Maybe they're just not marketing to the geeks this time. After all, we'll be there regardless. Maybe they're just waiting to launch a campaign aimed at 'tweens and teens. Maybe they're just not willing to gamble a lot on marketing after Ang Lee's 2003 Hulk shit the bed.

And then there's the Batman. That Jokercentric campaign for The Dark Knight slammed it's breaks after Heath Ledger's sudden demise. Looks like WB is waiting a month or two before resuming it's rollout of gruesome Ledger footage. Regardless, this one is surely a safe box office bet.

Summer 2008 is going to be a great time to be a 12 year old. Excelsior!

A Public Service Message

I don't write enough about infant care. So here are some helpful tips I found online (you can click the image to biggify it):

I love the chess one. That kid is so angry, you just know his dad isn't letting him win.

Brendan Fraser, Unsung Hero

The trailer for the digital 3-D flick Journey To The Center Of The Earth is available.

Click it HERE to watch Brendan Fraser spit in your face.

The first thing I thought was, "That was really horrible."

The second thing I thought was, "My ten year old self would have loved this shit!"

The effects look crappy. I mean 80's styled blue screen crappy. Darkman crappy. But it's got all sorts of cool monsters and you can't go wrong with Mr. Verne's premise of discovering a fantastic world right beneath our feet. It looks like it will take full advantage of the 3-D gimmick by throwing everything from books to toothy fish in your face (I hope there's a Friday The 13th styled eyeball pop, too!). And it's also got one of the most underrated assets in Hollywood- Mr. Brendan Fraser.

Fraser broke out with the dopey teen-oriented comedies Encino Man and Airheads. He elevated these flicks from forgettable to good with a natural charisma and some excellent comic timing. Ever since then he's been straddling the line between adult drama and brand name blockbusters for the kids. His role as director James Wale's boy toy in Gods & Monsters is probably his best work to date. But when it comes to the goofy kids stuff, this guy is the most dependable star since Mickey Rooney.

He's carried a lot of movies with that aforementioned charisma and wit-

George of The Jungle- This is the rare live-action adaptation that betters it's source material. It's got plenty of slapstick gags to keep things moving. It repeatedly breaks the fourth wall and talks directly to the audience, often to acknowledge it's own absurdity. And frankly, there's barely a plot to speak of. But Fraser holds it all together by managing to be simultaneously moronic and heroic.

The Mummy- Before Stephen Sommers destroyed Carl Laemelle's entire legacy with Van Helsing, he was a promising director. Kind of a poor man's Robert Zemekis. The Mummy was a summer popcorn flick that managed to bombard audiences with outrageous visual setpieces and still retain a sense of legitimate fun. With Fraser in the lead, it was like Raiders of The Lost Ark starring Jack Burton. Geeks have clamored for a sequel to Big Trouble In Little China for years. I say this is it.

The Mummy Returns- Sorry. Not even Fraser could could carry this fetid sack of CGI donkey shit.

Looney Tunes: Back In Action- Another underrated gem. It's absolutely fucking criminal that Space Jam raked in the receipts, while this funny ode to Chuck Jones barely registered a fart on Box Office Mojo. By the time Fraser filmed this one he should have been a legitimate star. A Bruce Campbell for the kid set!

Even with a solid portfolio of films it's hard for this guy to get the respect he deserves, especially from geeks. His name was thrown around for Superman a few years back and it got less fan support than Putty from Seinfeld. But hey, I'm not gonna cry for the guy. He's also starring in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor this August, a Mummy sequel that promises to be marginally better than The Scorpion King! It's hard to feel bad for an actor headlining two summer adventure flicks (even if both of them are as faithful to their source material as The Lawnmower Man).

But maybe he would like to do more. Maybe he would like to take on complex adult characters. Maybe he would like to explore the murky realm of human behavior in all of it's ugliness and glory. Whatever. That's what the theater stage is for.

Keep making mor kiddy advendchur moovys, plz, K? Thnx!

The Academy Gets It Right For ONCE

The Academy Award for Best Song is traditionally a horrid little ditty that reveals the voting members to be bigger squares than your mom and dad. This year looked like no exception as three (for chrissakes, three) empty pop confections from Enchanted went up against a splendid little number from Once. It wasn't surprising to see Enchanted's That's How You Know get a nod. That's one of those show stopping numbers that weasels it's way into your brain and pulls up a permanent seat next to Under The Sea and that doe a deer song from The Sound of Music. But seeing two more examples of forgettable treacle from that movie ooze onto the nominee list left my gast thoroughly flabbered. Especially when you consider that EVERY song from the Once soundtrack is far more deserving. But hey, this is the same academy that gave an Oscar to Mary Poppins' Chim Chim Chi Ree while A Hard Days Night couldn't score a single nomination. With three nominations it looked like the Enchanted fix was in.


That's why it was so goddamn wonderful to see the little-film-that-could trounce all over Disney.* How genuinely moving was that live performance by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova? And how classy was that when Jon Stewart brought Marketa back out to give her acceptance speech after the dunderheads in the band cut her off? And maybe I'm just projecting, but didn't it seem like the audience knew full well that this song deserved the win more than any other?

Anyway what I'm saying is go rent and/or buy Once. For yourself, that is. Your kids will be bored silly and hate you forever if you try to make them watch a love story about actual adults who don't talk to squirrels or fight sassy New York bus drivers. Once is the best kind of musical- one that blends songs seamlessly into the story and uses music to explore characters. This is coming from a guy who traditionally hates musicals. It totally deserved the win last night. I guess next year we'll see talent vacuum Randy Newman get a statue in order to balance the cosmic scales.

Oh yeah, and huzzah for Best Animated Picture Ratatouille! Too bad you wuz robbed for the Best Original Score.

*But really, Enchanted is a movie not without it's charms. The songs are fine if you're an 8 year old girl (which I've been accused of more than once). But they're hardly Oscar worthy.

Wild Things Movie Might Be Too Good For Kids

I try to stay away from speculation and rumor whenever I run a newsy type entry. But since I've been posting a lot about Wild Things lately and because CHUD.com's Devin Faraci is a reliable source, I'll break my rule.
There's now talk going around that the movie will go through a massive reshoot because it's just too offbeat. From Faraci's article-

Yet I'm hearing that just such a massive reshoot is what is on the table right now. And it's not because of technical issues, unless you want to consider the lead kid actor and the script technical issues. Sources tell me that the suits at Legendary and Warner Bros are not happy with Max Records, the actor playing Max, the mischievous boy who is crowned King of the Wild Things. Worse than that, they don't like the film's tone and want to go back to the script drawing board, possibly losing the Spike Jonze/Dave Eggers script when they do it.

Where The Wild Things Are screened for a test audience in Pasadena late last year; my friend BC, who watches a horror movie a day, caught the screening and liked what he saw, but I've also been told that the movie is 'subversive,' which is just the sort of thing that drives studio suits up the wall. The film, I keep hearing, is pretty great at this early stage of post-production, but it could very possibly not be a commercial movie. You can imagine the panic at Warner Bros when they realized they'd made a reportedly 75 million dollar kiddie art house film.

You can read the full CHUD.com article HERE.

Let's hope the good guys win and we get to see an unmolested version in theaters next year. The thought of an adaptation with poop jokes and a Hannah Montana cover of the Troggs' Wild Thing (complete with end credits dance number) makes me throw up in my lap.

Where The Wild Clip Is Now

That test footage and a new pic from Where The Wild Things Are have turned up at Collider.com.

They're also running this explanation from director Spike Jonze:
"...that was a very early test with the sole purpose of just getting some footage to Ben our vfx (visual effects) supervisor to see if our vfx plan for the faces would work. The clip doesn’t look or feel anything like the movie, the Wild Thing suit is a very early cringy prototype, and the boy is a friend of ours Griffin who we had used in a Yeah Yeah Yeahs video we shot a few weeks before. We love him, but he is not in the actually film...Oh and that is not a wolf suit, its a lamb suit we bought on the internet. Talk to you later..."

So, yeah. Yesterday I was praising the movie based on a clip that doesn't "look or feel anything like the movie". Oh well. Just keep that gentle sunset and I'll be happy!

Where The Sullen Depressives Are

Click it HERE to watch a snippet of Spike Jonze's Where The Wild Things Are.

UPDATE- The clip has been pulled from AICN. Such is life on the internet. You can probably find it somewhere else, but you'll have to Google that for yourself.

Now let's discuss.

I have high hopes for this adaptation. The writer/director combo of Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze was enough to sell me. Then came that excellent still. Now this little piece of unfinished film. AICN says this is pretty much what we can expect the final product to look like, but that soundtrack definitely sounds like it will go through some tweaking. There is a pleasing feel to this (even if that monster sounds like he could use some Prozac). It's in the way the kid acts like a real kid. It's in the cinematography that reminds me of the filmed segments on Sesame Street circa 1976.

The recent Dr. Seuss debacles have demonstrated how difficult it is to turn a scant childrens book into a feature length film. Those flicks were padded out with obnoxious filler that undermined the source material. Where The Wild Things Are poses an even greater challenge. We're talking about a book ten sentences long. Dave Eggers has a lot of room to fill between pages. But so far he seems up to the task. His writing style is even similar to that of the book. Maurice Sendak's sentences flow for pages before finding themselves at a period.

Of course it's too early to start rolling out the accolades. But I can tell you this much- I'd choose that clip over Horton Hears A Who every time.

That pic courtesy of www.IWatchStuff.com

Some of The Best Star Wars Merchandise That Never Was

What I wouldn't give for a Jabba The Hutt beanbag chair.

Toy blog Action Figure Insider has a fun look at rejected Star Wars merchandising concepts. Not a hoax. Not a Mad Magazine article. These are real ideas thought up by paid professionals to pitch to LucasFilm.

Indeed, some of these ideas are visionary. Things like the Darth Vader gumball machine that dispenses Death Star gumballs or the Taun Taun suit are truly inspired. But whoever designed the Galactic Game Trophies really needs to explore another line of work.

Click it HERE to see them all.

First Indiana Jones Trailer Hits The Net

Click here for the exclusive Yahoo trailer.

The first trailer for Indiana Jones And The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull is the talk of the town today. That town, of course, being Nerdsville. But while us old heads are dissecting quips, plot spoilers and that mysterious bulge in Ray Winstone's pants there's an entire generation of kids out there who could care less. These are the kids who will make or break Indy at the box office. Paramount knows this, which is why the trailer is making it's premiere in front of The Spiderwick Chronicles and not Diary of The Dead.

The opening text and accompanying glimpses of iconic imagery do a nice job of simultaneously introducing Indiana Jones to kids and heralding his return to nerds. Then the moneyshots roll out. As far as movies about old men swinging from whips are concerned, this looks alright. There's lots of crash-bang-boom and that kid from Transformers. I just wonder how well it will play to folks who aren't already driven to pavlovian fits of spastic joy at the mere sound of the famous theme. Does this old fashioned rough and tumble flick have anything to offer the Matrix generation? Can it hope to compete with the ass-kickery of Iron Man this summer? Well, Spielberg's no slouch when it comes to action/adventure, so chances are it can.

I wonder if Paramount's marketing crew can get those tweens 'n teens into the theater to find this out.

BTW- I still think Iron Man looks better.

Cry For Ferd'nand

Such a maudlin little tale. The first three panels portray one mankind's oldest jokes. And a merry jest it is. But that last panel- the prestige, if you will- takes us into the darkness of self awareness.

Ferd'Nand regards his visage in the mirror, recognizing for the first time that yes- he truly is a monster. Does he long for redemption? Or is it a look of quiet resignation? Perhaps the answer lies within our own hearts.

Read more Ferd'nand strips HERE.

Black Garfield

In the 70's Marvel and DC were eager to capitalize on the civil rights movement by introducing a few black superheroes. Of course these characters were most notable not for their powers, but for their blackness. Black Lightning and Black Goliath were basically generic copies of established heroes. Much like Supergirl or BatGirl, they were absurdly obvious attempts to attract another demographic. Comic books aren't known for their subtlety.

Slate.com recently launched what might be called Black Slate (as a matter of fact, it has been called that). TheRoot.com isn't exactly subtle in it's invocation of Alex Haley's famous epic, but the name is hardly Black Racer either. It's pretty good if, like me, you're already a fan of Slate's format. It's obvious they still have more space than content right now, but with this being Black History Month and Obama rising up the charts I guess now is the best time to launch.

So what does this have to do with nerds and/or kids anyway?

A recent article drew my attention to a kind of comic strip act of solidarity that occured yesterday. From the Root article Funny Business On The Funny Pages:

Feb. 4, 2008--Comic strips inked by black cartoonists are about more than just being black. Yet their reach is limited. National syndicates, comics page and newspaper editors rarely allow more than two "black" strips on a funny page at a time.
The situation is so maddening to black cartoonists that ten of them have banded together to stage a "draw-in" of sorts on Feb. 10. Each cartoonist will draw their individual strips with an identical plot.

So, "Candorville"—a strip about culture clashes in the inner city and "Watch Your Head"—a strip about college students—will have different characters, but the same exact storyline.
But will anyone notice? Will anyone care?

"It's probably going to fly over a lot of heads," said "Watch Your Head" creator Cory Thomas, who organized the draw-in. Stephen Bentley, creator of "Herb and Jamaal," said, "Frankly I don't think very much is going to happen the next day, but what I envision is at least the conversation will be there."

In the late 80s familiar strips like "Curtis," created by Ray Billingsely, "Jump Start," by Robb Armstrong and Bentley's "Herb and Jamaal" successfully broke into national syndication. Although they faced the unspoken two-strip maxim then too, there were only a handful of black cartoonists competing on the national stage, so the situation was less obvious.

Then came the boon of "Boondocks," Aaron McGruder's wildy popular strip about two inner-city kids relocated to the suburbs, and with it a new wave of young artists looking to be the next McGruder. The problem now, according to many black cartoonists, is that industry hasn't caught up.

Now, as Stephen Bentley predicted above, I missed this entirely. I'm not quite sure what this was supposed to illuminate. That there aren't enough comic strips with black characters? That seems pretty silly to me when most of the minority characters out there are just as original as Black Lightning. The strips I'm familiar with that have predominately black characters (Herb & Jamal, Jumpstart, Curtis, Wee Pals) are otherwise indistinguishable from Funky Winkerbean or Hi & Lois. That is to say, they all suck. Now if the bulk of "black" comics being produced were innovative like indie favorite The "K" Chronicles or the now defunct The Boondocks*, I could see the point of raising awareness. But the running theme of this organized storyline seemed to be "Our comics are just as good as Beetle Bailey".
Is that something you should be bragging about?

See more about the Cartoonists of Color Draw-In HERE.

*Full disclosure- I never cared much for Boondocks either. While I admired its attempt to try something new, McGruder's execution was static and witless. It worked much better as an animated cartoon.

Wall-E International Trailer

I should just change the name of this place to Pimpin' For Pixar. But if they wouldn't keep making awesome movies I wouldn't have to keep writing about them. Here's a link to the latest trailer for Wall-E:
http://www.worstpreviews.com/trailer.php?id=758&item=6
It's the kind of leisurely paced coming attraction reel theaters used to run before we were born. God bless Pixar for recognizing a child's ability to pay attention to one image for more than 2.7 seconds. I guess it also helps that they provide compositions worth looking at for more than 2.7 seconds. So what words can I apply to this trailer that I haven't already used to describe Pixar lately? Sophisticated? Innovative? Scrumdeliumptious? Hmmm. I'm gonna need a bigger thesaurus.*

*That joke dedicated to the late great Roy Scheider.

Pertaining To Muppets and Giant Frogs

A Jim Henson biopic?
Muppet News Flash reports that Empire Films has a script, a $30 million budget, and a 2009 release date. Fan casting has already commenced. But I'd like to see a more avant garde approach to this. Why not make this a true Henson homage and employ a cast of muppets instead of people? For a real twist, humans can portray the muppet creations. Steve Buscemi would make an excellent Kermit and get that fat kid from Superbad for Fozzie.

In case you missed them Sunday night-
The Iron Man site has that trailer they premiered during the Super Bowl. Even with dodgy tank effects, it still looks like the one to beat this summer. Dig it HERE.
You can find the Prince Caspian trailer at the official site HERE. Is it just me or does nobody give a crap about another Narnia flick? I mean, not to be a jerk or nothin', but there seems to be no buzz around this one.

I have no idea if the Spiderwick Chronicles books are any good. They kind of hover in my periphery along with Lemony Snicket and every other Harry Potteresque series. The commercials for the film adaptation (opening next Thursday) look average at best. I mean, who doesn't like giant evil frogs? And it should be noted that acclaimed indie director John Sayles is a co-writer. And it should also be noted that it's being released with the first trailer for Indiana Jones And The Temple of The Quest of The Legion of The Crystal Skull of Doom attached. So if that's an added incentive to any parents out there, take the kids and report back to me. I know I won't be seeing it anytime soon because my daughter says it looks "stupid". Perhaps she and I will watch Sayles' Lone Star this weekend instead.

Won't Somebody Think Of The Children?!

On last night's Democratic debate Obama was asked his thoughts on the FCC's post-nipplegate crackdown on "indecent" television. This is such a bullshit issue. Many politicians rally around FCC censorship because you can pick up easy votes by "thinking of the children".
Obama had the right answer. He said it was the parents' job to monitor the media for content. He also supported advancements in home technology that allows parents to police television and the internet themselves. Then he went and said what I've been ranting about for awhile now. He suggested that the media take a look at the way they market themselves. Like, perhaps, not running advertisements for gruesome horror films during kids programming. He's right. Commercials for Law & Order- Fist Raping Unit shouldn't run during the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Special. I especially liked the way he maintained that this was something advertisers could regulate themselves, not something he would encourage the FCC to enforce.
I 'd love to see a president dismantle the FCC since it's nothing but a den of corruption and graft, but I doubt that's high on Obama's list. Still, it's nice to know he's not a politician who endorses censorship in the name of family values.
It's nice to know he trusts us to protect our own children.