And now I’m left trying to figure out who I’d want to see cast as The First Avenger: Captain America.

The word on the street is that the movie is going to be Cap’s origin as a runt kid volunteering to become a World War II super soldier, so it will be a period piece or, if it is set in modern times, it will be heavy on the WWII flashbacks. It’s speculation at this point whether the movie will touch on plot points such as the U.S. military testing the super soldier serum on guinea pig black soldiers (from Marvel’s Truth: Red, White, and Black mini), which could create an interesting context for all those rumors about Will Smith being considered for the role of Cap (he just wouldn’t be Steve Rogers). There’s also no official word on how much if any of the plot will involve SHIELD or Iron Man or, as it happened in the comics, Namor the Sub-Mariner fishing a frozen-in-ice Captain America out of the ocean and thawing him out to become a modern-day Avenger (though it’s probably a safe bet the movie will at least get us up to the moment, even if the whole reawakening bit doesn’t play out until the actual Avengers movie).

The casting of Steve Rogers may need to cover two roles: the scrawny kid with a big red, white, and blue heart and no chance of passing his army physical, and the genetically-enhanced super man that he is tranformed into–the ultimate blond-haired, blue-eyed Nazi ideal ironically engineered to kick those Ratzis up and down Europe, while en route to popping Hitler one on the jaw. Cap will need to look like he was injected with super soldier serum–big, muscular, imposing. Before that, he’ll need to look like a sunken-chested twerp. I suppose it is possible that technology can make it so we’re always looking at the same actor’s face, even if a stand-in needs to play the body of pre-serum Steve.

I believe in the comics Steve Rogers is from Brooklyn, but one change they should make for the movie is to make him more of an all-America boy from the heartland. He can always move to New York when he’s older (and discover his inner cartoonist, just like in the comics), so such a change shouldn’t be a problem to anyone. This consideration has more to do with an actor’s ability to play country mouse over city mouse, more than it has to do with the actor’s look.

And even though we tend to think of Cap as older–mainly because he’s got the midset of all the other Marvel heroes grandfather–he’d be a kid in this origin story. Thirty-plus-year-old men don’t generally enlist in the military. Steve is going to be 18, 19, maybe 20, to start things off. Even if the story has him in the military for years, he won’t be more than 20-something by the time he winds up in ice. Casting that is going to be tricky. The best bet will be to cast someone young enough to pull off a clean-shaven, bright-eyed 20, but who can then man up convincingly enough to ultimately wind up as the man barking orders at Tony Stark and the God of Thunder in the Avengers. But you can’t just cast Jon Hamm or Matthew McConaughy or any other actor pushing 40 who have been suggested.

So who can be our Star-Spangled Avenger? Here are a few possibilities:

Blond hair, blue eyes, strong chin, all-American looks–it makes sense that Paul Walker’s name has been floated for the part for a while now. He’s young enough–but not too young–to play the age range necessary for Cap, from young roughneck recruit to eventual leader of the World’s Mightiest Heroes.

Channing Tatum has already played one super soldier in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, so maybe he could slip on the wing-eared mask as well. I’d worry that he’s a little too young, and pretty green as an actor. But then again, if he’s surrounded by the kind of A-list actors Marvel has been putting into it’s recent crop of movies, maybe there will be some impressive castmates around to help elevate the kid’s game:

And then there’s The Marine–John Cena. He’s a genetic freak, but he’s still relatively young. And I’m a pro wrestling fan who knows what the guy has to do every night in front of live arena crowds for WWE, so I don’t doubt his acting ability or his capacity for physicality. Like the other two, his name has already come up in the rumor mill, but wrestlers are always mentioned and quickly dismissed when it comes to super hero movies. But if you want to get across the idea that the pipsqueak Steve Rogers is transformed into the ultimate prototype super soldier, it wouldn’t hurt to have the beanpole end up looking like this:

Who would you cast as Captain America?

“They’re a little bit gun-shy with ‘Watchmen’ not doing the numbers they’d like… But I’ve met people who make $5 million dollar movies for a living, and they walk around with the biggest grins on their faces.”

Spawn

But instead of brains, all I want to eat right now is a bagel with cream cheese.

Mainstream comics, in particular (almost always what I mean by “comics”), are the blending of words and pictures, which discounts even the most able and ambitious novelist from this conversation–we’re not talking about the gift to paint a picture for the reader’s mind’s eye. And even if we were to forgive that limitation, we’d also have to negate or water down decades-strong plotlines tangled up in more history, nostalgia, and continuity (for better or worse) than any one writer with a multi-book deal could capture without a struggle. And forget about Hollywood attempting to capture that big budget blending of art and story larger than any celluloid or CGI budget. Even if some studio found the money and the manpower, they’d never find the time to do more than scrape the surface. It would take an army of movie studios and the lifetime of any author to come even close to recreating what Marvel has done in 600 issues of any one of the titles that hit that milestone this year–Captain America, Spider-Man, Hulk–or the ones that have passed or are approaching it. The same goes for DC with Batman, Superman, et al, and the complex web of continuity that runs through the family of spin-off titles associated with them, even just the ones from the past few years. You watch a superhero movie or TV series adapted from one of these comics and you’re getting a filtered, neutered, altered beast. Even the best is only as good as can be crammed into 90 to 200 minutes, and that’s usually including the mediocre junk they save for the DVD extras.

But then I go and watch all five seasons of HBO’s The Wire over barely twice as many weeks, and I find myself thinking–comics can’t do that.

Talk about a complex web! The sprawling epic about Baltimore’s finest and foulest, and the shell game of who is which, from the cops to the crooks to the congressman with all the cash. The constantly unfolding, yet always growing, onion of an underworld of drugs and violence, corrupt politics, backroom and back alley dealings, and straight-up back-stabbings (symbolic or not). The struggling school system and floundering newspaper from seasons 4 and 5, respectively, that would look sternly upon me for this string of sentence fragments.

Each season is a tight, stand-alone tale that puts any and all prime time cop shows to shame. But then each season combined with the last becomes so much more, until you finally realize, toward the end of the series, that you’re not watching a product of creator David Simon or a handful of writers or a few hundred crew hands or even a thousand+ actors and extras. You’re watching the bruised-but-beating heart and desperate-for-salvation soul of Baltimore itself.

Sure, comics can make me think and care about fantasy worlds in the way I find myself caring about this fictionalized real city. Comics have the power to make me concern myself with the plight of impossible beings in unbelievable situations, so long as they’re surrounded by optic blasts, hopping dimensions, and/or wrapped in ridiculous costumes and gadgetry that scream, “This is escapism!”

But even if you go hard boiled–give me that stack of all your favorite Frank Miller, Ed Brubaker, and Brian Azzarello crime comics–what of it that rings anywhere near as true will move at a snail’s pace in the comic format, lose the life and energy of the beating city, and only amount to one or two good seasons. I know some people who might chime in and suggest David Lapham’s Stray Bullets, but even when I knew it was good, that series couldn’t hold my interest as a loyal reader. The comic book format is simply flawed for providing whatever it is that this show was to me.

It’s not that comics can’t do reality, because there’s plenty of honest heart, humanity, and truth reflected in even the most fantastical escapist hero piece. But just like there are some stories that simply cannot be executed in any other medium the way they are in comics–be they 4-colors, black and white, floppy, hard back, serialized, or in trade–some stories just can’t thrive on the comic page.

The Wire as a comic? That would suck, and it wouldn’t sell for shit.

So tell me: What else can’t comics do? And what else can only be done in comics?

But Wolverine is cool. Overexposed, yes, but that’s one of his mutant powers.

He’s got one of the best power sets, personalities, and (in broad strokes) backstories in superhero comics. There’s a reason he’s on every other cover of Wizard Magazine, why his name gets top billing on the latest X-Men cartoon, and why he stars in at least four monthly comics that I can think of. I guess it’s also why he got his very own shitty feature-length movie.

That lovable dandy of a showman Hugh Jackman has taken such a liking to Old Man Logan that he’s already hard at work producing the (hopefully less shitty) sequel. And who wouldn’t take a shine to a hairy Canadian crank if it meant they got to wear those shiny, sharp shnikity-shnarling claws?

Now guess what the grand prize is in the latest UGO.com The Rush sweepstakes?

Shall I call you Weapon X, Logan?

DISCLAIMER: Adamantium bone grafts and memory implants not included. Contest void in Genosha.

I’m a devoted Tarantino fan. I’ve seen all of his films, most of the movies that have cribbed his style since his debut, and even a bunch of the obscure forgotten B-movies and foreign flicks he’s championed through the years. He’s one of the central figures in my movieverse, influencing my preferences and my own attempts at writing.

I think what he does on film is cool. I think the people he puts in his movies are cool. I think what he thinks is cool is cool.

He’s not cool, by the way. Quentin Tarantino is a big weirdo and a total dork. But he knows cool.

And at the end of the day, the reason I am such a fan is because I think he knows me. My first exposure to Tarantino was True Romance, which I saw in the theater with my mother and brother.

The story of Clarence and Alabama had all the quirky, dangerous, romantic appeal of star-crossed lovers like Sid and Nancy and Bonnie and Clyde, plus Clarence worked in a comic shop and liked kung fu movies! And Tarantino was working in a video store when he wrote the thing. He was living my real life while writing about my fantasy life. How could I not love this guy from the start?

And I can forgive the occasional over-indulgences, like the droning monologues about pot and car chases in Jackie Brown and Death Proof, respectively. Those happen to be his weakest films because of those and other indulgences that killed the pacing and mood for me…but there’s still some greatness in both.

As for his other flicks–I love them all and can watch them repeatedly. I even have some personal sentiment toward them. I saw Natural Born Killers at a sneak preview while on a cross-country road trip (not a killing spree, though) with my brother. Reservoir Dogs was one of a handful of movies me and my video store co-workers would quote during every shift, taunting each other in our best Michael Madsen voice or imitating a gut-shot Tim Roth from the back office while customers wondered what the hell was going on. Pulp Fiction was the movie I watch on video with my wife-to-be the first time I stayed over her place. The bridal party at my wedding came out to the Crazy 88′s theme (from Kill Bill) at the reception.

And now, if my fancy new throat scar heals the right (wrong?) way, I’ll have the perfect Halloween costume as Aldo Raine!

MOON is a small sci-fi psychological thriller one-man-show about existentialism and the value of life and love and human contact, even if that life and love may be a lie and the human contact is with something not quite human. It was quiet and simple and lazily paced, almost the antithesis to what we get in the big, noisy District 9. In fact, next to Moon, D9 may as well be Transformers 2, for all the screaming and exploding and chaos.

I really liked this film, and Sam Rockwell should be nominated for both lead and supporting actor awards for his performance.

Unfortunately, I’m stumped as to how I can review this movie any further without giving the whole thing away, and it is one of the small, limited-release movies that would actually suffer by losing even a handful of ticket sales or rentals over a spoiled plot. So I leave you instead with a video of another favorite Sam Rockwell performance of mine, and one far more fitting for this particular blog. First watch this movie, and then go see Moon:

Yep, I’m about to pick apart a movie because it is too fresh and too inventive.

I already feel like a jerk for it, but the closest thing to nostalgia I have for the story of aliens forced to live among us is that I remember liking Alien Nation better.

I’m not about to pan this movie by any means. I agree with the reviews and opinions I’ve seen from friends and critics and critical friends, all saying this movie will go down as an instant sci-fi classic. It does what other classics–Blade Runner, Mad Max, The Matrix–did in raising bars and setting precedents for what science fiction can and should look like on film. District 9 doesn’t feel like other alien-invasion movies, and the lack of any cliched hero or cookie-cutter storyline helps immerse the viewer into the District 9 world, rather than take us on a predictable popcorn escape. It’s all very organic and interesting, and even elevates the fake documentary/shaky-cam style that Hollywood has been trying to perfect since the Blair Witch. So, stylistically, it’s a big win.

Director Neil Blomkamp has been refining this particular type of grainy, kinetic, tech-heavy CGI action for a short while now, and he has clearly mastered it. The special effects in District 9 are especially amazing when it comes to technology–the giant alien mothership hovering in the haze over Johannesburg, the powerful alien weaponry, even the way those weapons interact with their targets–turning inorganic material into dust and popping humans like blood-filled balloons.

As for the aliens–the prawns–interacting with the human actors and environments, it was all convincing enough, but the prawns themselves still looked very much like CGI cartoons. Like the monkeys in Jumanji, the bugs in Starship Troopers, and the army of Agent Smiths in The Matrix 2, the prawns never looked quite real enough for me to be believe. I was never pulled out of the movie by these CGI visitors, but I was never sold on them being real, either. Some shots in particular, like the close-ups of “Christopher’s” young child playing in front of their shack or hiding in the shadows, looked superimposed onto a real-world backdrop. So even though the film is inventively stylish and clever with the effects, it is hardly visual perfection.

Moving on to characters, we get the greedy businessman villain, the brutish soldier villain, and the sobbing wife at home…but we spend so little time with the supporting cast that you can almost forget how generic they are. As for the one character we do spend time with–I loved how the movie’s protagonist Wilkus (played by Sharlto Copley) was no Arnold Schwarzenegger or Bruce Willis action hero, but more like Steven Carell in The Office–all sweaty, nervous, twitchy energy. He was charmingly inept at the start of the film, which helped even more than the visuals to dissuade any preconceptions that this film would be business-as-usual sci-fi. And he did some truly disreputable things early in the story that surprised me. How could such a buffoon also be a sadistic speciesist jerk? And, more importantly, could I get behind this guy as the “hero” of the piece?

I liked having to answer these questions for myself as a viewer, though I’m not sure my answers were in the movie’s favor. Wilkus’ characterization was certainly a positive toward throwing out expectations, but I found myself wishing for a more relatable (or even likable) protagonist as the plot unfolded. Wilkus does change for the better over the course of the story…sort of. Mostly, those changes are physical (that was a spoiler, by the way). But when his views change–philosophically and politically–those changes are clearly forced by necessity–what else is the poor schmuck going to do? His one resoundingly heroic act, which I won’t spoil, comes only minutes after he reminds us that he is still pretty much a selfish, prawn-prejudiced tool. It’s only when his ass is back on the line and his alternative is to lay down and die, that he acts selflessly. Still sweaty and twitchy, but selfless, nonetheless.

My final nit to pick is the overall premise of the film–the prawns arrived on our planet in a seemingly broken down mothership and have been forced into a South African slum, where they’ve been for 20 years. They arrived with a stockpile of weapons and no explanation as to how or why they came to Earth–even after decades and enough communication that humans and prawns can speak to one another in their respective languages. It’s a neat idea if you dismiss the violent and untrusting nature of humans toward humans–let alone how we might act toward another species altogether. The fact that the aliens arrived fully armed would be enough justification for the governments of the world to agree to, at the very least, shoot down the giant mothership at some point in those 20 years. And the bit involving Wilkus, the crazy effects of human exposure to alien fuel (the driving plot point), is the kind of thing that only makes sense for the purposes of making a movie. I can’t figure out any reason why the aliens would have a substance that has the kind of effect that this stuff does on Wilkus. So, while the movie looks cool and is brimming with originality, the premise and the plot ring false to me. It’s hard for me to get too excited by a movie when those are the problem areas.

So, I liked District 9. I didn’t like it nearly as much as most people seem to have, but I appreciate that it is going to elevate sci-fi for the non-geek crowds and it is going to help elevate the quality of the sci-fi action movies that follow. Still, I doubt I would watch a TV series based on it, like I did for Alien Nation.

I loved that show.

Since man first rocketed into space, he’s had but one thought on his mind: how to totally do it in zero-g. Though reports of real-life astronaut hanky-panky are apocryphal at best (whenever asked, both Russian and American scientists flat-out refuse to answer), we can still boldly go where no one has gone before at the multiplex. So let’s take a look at the top ten movie scenes that made us rethink the term “close encounters.”

10. The Immaculate, Face-Hugging Conception, Alien (1979)
OK, so technically it’s not sex, but damn if that alien doesn’t know how to get people pregnant. Slap a face-hugger on anyone and several hours later, bam: alien babies popping right out of your stomach. I guess if you really wanted to talk about “sexy,” we could have gone for Sigourney Weaver stripping down to her undies as she prepares for deep freeze, but what can I say… There’s just something about hot alien-on-human action that really fires me up.

Continue reading “Sex… In… SPACE! The Top Ten Close Encounters of the Scintillating Kind” »

Sure, the Internet people are all plugged into the same sources, all day and night, and usually tripping over themselves (ourselves, really) to outscoop the rest by posting links and opinions on Facebook, Twitter, or wherever else one does that sort of thing. But Average Jane and Average Joe, with their healthy social lives and Vitamin D counts, who have put the childish things behind them, except for the occasional Saturday night at the movies…they haven’t got a clue, and it blows my mind.

I don’t expect everyone to know everything, because I sure don’t. But this is the fun stuff here! I just feel bad that, with all the technology and geeks like me linking to the stuff left and right, that there’s still anyone out there who’s out of touch with my good time. Seriously–there are people who don’t even realize companies still print comics, let alone have any clue what is going on inside of them. They don’t have obsessively thought out opinions on the casting of Thor and Captain America, the destinies of The Losties, or the release schedule for Harry Potter movies. They hear old rumors and swear by them, or get the facts so mixed up that they become false (“Hey Matt, are you excited about that Justice League movie they’re filming now?” [They're not.]). They download fan-made trailers from YouTube and think they’re the real deal (“I can’t wait for that Thundercats movie, Matt!” [That's fake.]). It’s like dealing with a foreigner or an alien species.

This stuff is just in my head at this point, and I can’t wrap that junk-loaded mind of mine around the idea that it isn’t in theirs.

But it isn’t fair of me to judge. When I’m not at home convalescing, I spend a solid 40-50 hours a week sitting in front of a computer at work. That is a lot of time to surf the handful of sites where I go to feed my brain. But I want to do some good in the world and help these less-fortunate souls. I want to bring them into the loop. If not for them, then for me–because when they don’t know, they don’t care, and if they don’t care, I am forced to talk about real stuff, like religion or politics, instead, and that is just no fun at all.

What better way to help these poor fools gain the knowledge they need than by sharing with them my own sources for geeky information? These are the sites I go to at least once a day, usually way more often than that, to find out what’s the what:

TWITTER — Forget about all the “everybody’s doing it” peer pressure or the fact that reading people droning on about every mundane activity is only a notch below jamming a stick in your eye. The bottom line with Twitter is that, if you follow the right people (ie, celebrities you like, bloggers you trust) and pay attention to the always updating list of “Trending Topics,” you will start each day with an overload of information about what is going on in the world around you.

BUZZFEED — If you like your popular trends with a little lag time and after vetting by a collective of hipsters, you’ll like Buzzfeed. The site basically just posts videos, images, and topics that happen to be making the rounds on the web each day. So instead of waiting for your mom to forward you that viral video next month, you can see it here, while it is still a conversation piece. Aggregating celebrity shenanigans, viral videos, and memes is their specialty.

AIN’T IT COOL NEWS — A team of film insiders share scoops on upcoming releases, early reviews, casting news, and spoiler reports for a legion of snarky, foul-mouthed haters in the comments section who crap all over every bit of information they get. The content and opinions on the site give a pretty accurate picture of what matters to geeks like me when it comes to TV and movies, and the constant bilious back and forth between the AICN writers and readers is.

EW POPWATCH BLOG — When it comes to content and tone, Entertainment Weekly’s pop culture blog is sort of the office water cooler equivalent to AICN’s nerd dungeon. If you like a more polite and polished source for entertainment buzz, you’ll probably be willing to forgive the fact that PopWatch does more picking up on other sites’ scoops than providing it’s own gets. But when it comes to the Internet, the difference between a scoop and a link usually comes down to hours or minutes, not days. PopWatch is also the home of my favorite source for all-things Lost, Jeff Jensen, who digs deep to analyze, theorize, and jazzercise his way through every episode of my favorite TV show.

BLEEDING COOL/COMIC BOOK RESOURCES — Rich Johnston used to write a weekly news and gossip column about the comic industry, “Lying in the Gutters,” for a bigger comics site called Comic Book Resources. He’s since left CBR to start his own site, which is essentially Lying in the Gutters 24/7. I like CBR, but aside from reading their extensive comic convention coverage a few times each year, I’d only visit the site once a week for Rich’s column. So far, Bleeding Cool has managed to capture all the big industry stories while doing away with the overload of Marvel, DC, and Image press releases that CBR presents as “news.” Read them both, however, and you’ll know everything you need to know about comics (and in BC’s case, whether the comic industry wants you to know it or not).

MTV SPLASH PAGE — While other sites cover my interest in the printed side of the comic industry, I like to visit MTV’s newish site dedicated to comic book movies. The MTV name and notoriety leads to more cooperation from the filmmakers in terms of offering interviews, and those interviews are where all the other buzz sites tend to pull their “scoops” about casting, plot spoilers, etc. Splash Page is a good source for actual news, even if the topic is a little limiting.

WRESTLEVIEW — With as many as 10 hours of original, repeat-free, weekly programming on US television, and a huge following worldwide, there’s no denying that professional wrestling is a major part of pop culture. And, since, next to superheroes and G.I. Joes, the Superstars of Wrestling were my drug of choice as a kid, it is firmly embedded in my nostalgia-fueled heart and mind today. It’s crude and corny and the antithesis to sophisticated, but the kid in me still likes to check in on what’s going on with the muscleheads we’ve been watching for decades. But the adult in me is way more interested in what is going on with them behind the scenes. I don’t know or care who the current champions are, because, even though the athleticism and acrobatics are cool to watch, that aspect of wrestling is fake and predictable. It’s almost like checking in on old friends on Facebook…and the stuff you can find out goes beyond faces and heels. What do they look like now? Who died? Who got fired? Who got suspended for drugs? Who’s trash-talking who in interviews? This is where you go to find out.

These are not the only websites I visit, and they’re not necessarily the proven authorities in their respective areas. But whatever pop culture buzz, meme, announcement, or scandal is bouncing around the web on any given day either starts or ends somewhere within these pages. Maybe not all of these sites will suit you like they suit me, but there are plenty of alternate sources for the same information online. Seek it out and you will find it. Now you know.

But keep up that healthy social life. I may win in useless knowledge, but you’ve probably got me beat in exposure to daylight and physical fitness. Of course, if you’re an overweight shut-in, you’ve got no excuse. Study up!

I didn’t really like the first issue of Mark Millar and John Romita Jr’s comic version (the movie went into production before the first issue was even released), and chose to sit out on it until it was collected, to see if the whole piece was worth it. If the comic is as good as this trailer, I’m sold.

Of course, we’ve got some time before we find out whether the MOVIE is as good as the trailer. It does co-star Nicholas Cage, after all, and that hasn’t worked out for me since Face-Off.

In addition to my love for comics and movies, one of my favorite passtimes is riding the coattails of my most famousist friend, Peat. This guy is probably the only person I have ever met who has managed to successfully live the dream that he first had as a teenager, and did it without compromise and with pure drive and determination. He’s a freakin’ fantasy novel writing machine!

And the machine is currently cranking out a new book, so Peat has asked me to guest blog on his site to kick off a new contest that will hopefully satisfy his readers until he returns to a regular blogging schedule.

So–check out his blog, read up on his creations, and if you’re so inclined, take part in the contest.

“That was the best movie I’ve ever seen!” — pre-teen boy

“Ya know, that movie was rather good.” — 20-something female

“That was pretty cool. And actually wasn’t cheesy.” — my wife, who had no interest in seeing it

I had zero presumption that G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra would be a good movie, but I owed it to my 8-year old self to suck it up and buy a ticket. That kid watched the Real American Hero animated iteration of G.I. Joe every day after school, had nearly every one of the original line-up of Hasbro action figures and vehicles, and would choose an issue of the Marvel Comics series over anything else on the Cappy’s spinner rack at the time.

That kid is smiling tonight, and so am I. As skeptical as I was, as low as my expectations were, and as stupid as I think putting a mouth on Snake Eyes’s mask is, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra was great!

Now, let me translate that for those of you not driven by nostalgia or childish glee when choosing your entertainment. G.I. Joe is not a good film, but it is a thrilling romp. It’s an amusement park ride.

Joe purists will be disappointed that Sienna Miller’s Baroness doesn’t have that sexy Eurotrash accent that helped put us all on the fast track to puberty, or that Arnold Vosloo’s Zartan doesn’t wear Kiss make-up and a towel on his head…but other than that, I’m hard pressed to think of any way director Stephen Sommer’s and company failed to make exactly the kind of movie I would have gone ape shit over as a kid.

In fact, considering those two possible gripes, consider these upsides:

>>The Baroness’s revised backstory may not be 100% what you remember as a kid, but the changes they’ve made are what drive the story in order to fit all the other mythology that they do get right into a fast-paced 2 hour package. Plus, fellas, she still causes plenty of mayhem and shows more than enough cleavage to make up for that corny accent you think you miss.

>>Zartan is a relative bit player next to the other bad guys, but Vosloo–who, by the way, deserves your eternal thanks for helping make Hard Target awesome so many years ago–captures the sinister cutthroat mercenary edge that made the master of disguise my favorite Cobra creep back in the day.

You should also keep in mind that, despite that annoying case of mask mouth, Ray Park IS Snake Eyes. So is Leo Howard, the little kid who plays “Young Snake Eyes” and has an even better fight chemistry with Young Storm Shadow than Park does with the adult white ninja.

And, if I can take a moment to drop a SPOILER…they filmmakers don’t waste their resources by killing off all the great villains in the first film, leaving us with nothing bu Croc Master and Major Bludd for the sequel. Instead, they leave the possibility for any one of them to return. (END SPOILER)

I didn’t love every single frame of this movie. It has it’s plotholes, a few hammy actors, some shoddy CGI, and even the stuff that works is covered in extra cheese. But you can’t get hung up on plotholes and cheese when you know the source material–with all it’s Weather Dominators, Cold Slither, and evil acrobatic twins who feel each other’s pain. The bad CGI is totally overshadowed by more than enough effects that really are special. And if you’re worried about hammy acting in a summer action movie, just brace yourself for the Dennis Quaid factor (not to mention an early Brendan Fraser cameo).

This is the kind of movie where a character is named “Dr. Mindbender” with no explanation or apologies. This is a movie where Marlon Wayans plays an action hero, and you believe he can save the day. This a movie where every scene is filled with ridiculous feats of technology, gadgetry, combat, and physical endurance…yet doesn’t require any feat in plausibility or patience to accept in the cartoon hyper-reality that the story is set.

G.I. Joe is more fun than Funny People, has more tricks than Harry Potter, and is loaded with more vehicular mayhem than Transformers. It’s a movie made for little boys who love their toys. I’d imagine you might get a similar movie-going experience if you were to view The Hurt Locker after a 6-pack of Red Bull and a few hits of crack. This movie doesn’t just deserve those jumbo collector’s cups–it demands them, and it earns all 32 ounces of slushie within!

If you want to have a good time at the movies, go see G.I. Joe.

THIS I command!

Wait, what was that? You didn’t like Hard Target? Really? Not even the part with Wilford Brimley dodging explosions on horseback? You probably won’t like this one either. Sorry.

The amount of comic books I read dwarfs the number of movies I see in a given week or month, so when it came to choosing a focus for my blog, it was really no contest. But I do watch a lot of movies. I just came back from one, as a matter of fact–The Collector.

I wanted to see Funny People, but my wife wasn’t around and wants to see it with me. I also wanted to see 500 Days of Summer, but who wants to watch a romantic comedy alone or as a third wheel? So I settled for the new horror movie of the week.

I love me some horror movies, and especially in the theater. No matter how thin the plot or hokey the scares, I’m always entertained by the well-received screams, misplaced laughter, and inappropriate crowd commentary in horror movies. I actually look forward to what would be a nuisance during a film in any other genre. And considering The Collector is just a series of escalating torture-porn setups and executions (pun intended), the audience of mostly date-night couples and a few groups of teens was quite vocal.

I enjoyed the movie, though I won’t go as far as to call it good. Just like the Saw movies–some of the creators of which had a hand in this flick–the very basic premise is really just an excuse for some creatively sadistic special murder effects. I like how, with the Saw movies, the story that drives the killing is simple and to the point, and there is continuity running through each of the sequels that makes an otherwise ridiculous story feel almost organic. I can buy into the dime store moralizing behind Jigsaw’s serial killings in those movies, and I like the films stylistically.

The Collector looks and sounds like a Saw movie. It even kind of plays out like one in broad strokes. The eponymous villain in this movie isn’t nearly as developed or interesting as Jigsaw, but that lack of development (really a lack of any explanation or justification at all) makes him more unpredictable and scary. However, I definitely don’t see this franchise playing out over 6+ episodes without some serious character development in a follow-up. Really, my favorite part of the movie is the idea of the premise, which is given away in the previews: a thief is forced to play the hero when he breaks into a home on the same night as the Collector. I like that the protagonist, my anchor for the movie, wasn’t some squealing teenage girl, but rather a shade-of-gray anti-hero.

If you’re like me, and enjoy the collective theater experience for horror movies, you’ll have a good time with this one. If (also like me) you hate paying theater prices, this will probably play better on late-night cable or as a rental. Be sure to put the kids to bed first, though, unless you want them dreaming of bear traps through the skull, melting cats, and exploding German shepherds.

So, having pretty much never looked back at the movie since walking out of the theater a few years back with my nerdy heart broken by it’s suckiness, I sat back on the couch and hoped for the best. And you know what? It’s a pitch-perfect Spider-Man movie…for about 40 minutes. The Peter/MJ dynamic established in the previous two films is there, recurring characters like Aunt May and Harry Osbourne pick up where they left off, and new characters–Eddie Brock, in particular–step into the mix convincingly. The J. Jonah Jameson-driven plot driver pitting dueling Daily Bugle photogs Parker and Brock against each other to get a shot of Spider-Man showing his “true colors” as a villain, with a staff job as the prize, is right out of the comics, and the tongue-in-cheek tone of the setup translates well to live action. It’s fun and hokey and, considering the context, believable. The Sandman origin is also handled really well. I like the way he looks in the movie and I like the way the role is acted. Surprisingly, the action and conflict surrounding Harry Osbourne as “Goblin Jr” is probably the most satisfying part of the movie for me, in that it actually follows through on threads from parts 1 and 2 and, despite some cosmetic changes from what happens to Harry in the funny pages, feels like a true adaptation of Harry’s ongoing comic story–right down to the coma, bouts of memory loss, and “dying.” I think a lot of people dismissed the Harry stuff because they didn’t like the idea of changing “Green Goblin 2″ into a hover-boarding, bomb-throwing extreme sports caricature. In retrospect, it’s a pretty cool character design and a nice step forward from the Power Ranger-esque Green Goblin in part 1. Without changing all that much, Harry becomes something new for the Spideyverse and, given how things play out in the movie, the kind of slick anti-hero who nearly outshines the hero hero of the piece.

But nobody went to see Spider-Man 3 for Sandman or Harry.

No, Spider-Man 3 was all about Venom–the alien symbiote that latches onto Peter Parker and, in the comics, became an evil, brain-eating perversion of everything Spider-Man stood for. In the comics, Spidey “becomes” Venom in a sense, before Venom becomes his own being, wearing the black alien as a costume while adventuring on another world in a comic plot far too convoluted to translate to film. But seeds had been planted by the filmmakers, so there wouldn’t be much trouble altering the origins of the alien in order to bring Venom to movie Spidey’s Earth in an exciting but sensible way.

As you’ll recall, in Spider-Man 2, Parker’s girlfriend MJ was engaged to marry astronaut John Jameson, but she left the poor sap at the alter to be with her web-headed honey. So, when John Jameson went off on his next space adventure, his heart was filled with anger toward MJ and Parker, and this anger drew the alien symbiote to him. A little far-fetched, but still logical within the context of a movie about a guy in tights fighting crime with the proportionate strength and agility of a spider. So, one thing leads to another, and Jameson returns to earth with the alien in tow, feeding off of his anger, and fueling his aggressive urges toward Parker and MJ. This gives him a reason to bring the symbiote into contact with Parker, allowing the rest of the Venom origin to unfold as it did in the comics, and allowing MJ to redeem herself from her runaway bride routine in part 2 by at least suffering some consequences in part 3, a common thread tying the sequels together toward a fulfilling conclusion.

I’m sorry, what is that? The alien just falls out of the sky? The symbiote just happens to come into contact with Spidey because Parker…steps on it? MJ’s jilted ex doesn’t even get mentioned again?

Oh yeah, right. And that’s why this movie sucks. An unlikable love interest who makes the protagonist fawning all over her unlikable by extension, a major villain generated from some random space junk, and not even the slightest attempt to resolve a pretty major character-defining act from the previous film.

Also, about 40 minutes into the flick, we find out that (in the movies, at least) Sandman killed Spidey’s Uncle Ben. So, not only are we going to ignore that whole “leaving a good man at the altar” bit from part 2, we’re also going to reach back to part 1 and change the tried-and-true origin story that has suited Spidey for decades and across mediums…just to add an unnecessary dramatic twist to the B-villain subplot?

Why don’t they just add a dance number, while they’re at it?! (They did.)

Needless to say, my viewing experience fell apart fairly quickly. And the thing about already knowing how the movie ended? Well, it gave me license to do the only sensible thing–turn the crap off early.

But fear not, true believers! I was able to cleanse my palate with an episode of The Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon, which happened to be sitting in my DVR queue and featured an infinitely more satisfying take on Venom. If there’s any moral to this story, I guess it’s that anyone looking for a live-action Spidey fix is better off settling for the far more intelligent cartoon on Disney XD.

Me and about a million other geeks have read book 1, The Warded Man (released six months earlier in the UK as The Painted Man), which is an adult-minded coming of age tale about three kids from very different areas of life dealing with the hardships of a world beset upon by elemental demons, known as corelings. I’m one of only a few who’ve had the opportunity to read an early draft of the sequel, which expands the world and focuses on the prophesied “Deliverer” destined to conquer the corelings.

It’s simple, visceral, exciting stuff that would make for an excellent comic series. It could probably make for an even better movie.

Oh, what’s that you say, Hollywood Reporter?

If this plays out like Entourage, do I have to be Turtle? I just hope I get to play a coreling.