http://cdn2.themis-media.com/media/global/movies/player/flowplayer.commercial-3.1.5.swf
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escape-to-the-movies/1839-The-Twilight-Saga-Eclipse

Because I didn’t have too much to do this week…

Regularly-scheduled episode also scheduled to run on Friday, as well, so nobody freak out.

Original story: http://www.deadline.com/2010/06/alice-eve-joins-x-men-first-class/

Deadline’s Mike Fleming says that Fox wants actress Alice Eve for the (not especially) sought-after role of Emma Frost, aka (but probably not in the movie) “The White Queen,” for Matthew Vaughn’s “X-Men: First Class,” which apparently no one can confirm as being either a “reboot” or a second-prequel following the disasterous “Wolverine” movie. Either way, it’s a “teen years” story for the main group, with Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy as less-old versions of Magneto and Professor X.

Exactly how the “prequel” angle would work when we’ve already seen Magneto and Xavier as “middle aged” men coming to collect Jean Grey as a young girl in the third movie (she’s presumably the same basic age as the rest of the “first class”), unless maybe their taking the opportunity to wipe EVERYTHING from “The Last Stand” completely out-of-continuity, which would actually be fine by me. (FWIW, Frost appeared sans last name via a different actress as “diamond skin girl” in the Wolverine movie.)

If the boxoffice is any indication, you probably DON’T remember Eve as “She” in “She’s Out Of My League.” In any case, fans can now begin The Procedure of processing this information which, in case you’re wondering, goes something like this:

PHASE 1: Awareness.
PHASE 2: Excitement.
PHASE 3: Realization that there’s almost no chance she’ll wear The Costume, thus negating two out of three reasons anyone gives a shit about this character being in the X-Men movies.
PHASE 4: “So is Wolverine in this one or not?”

So… evidently, quite a few folks take offense to me using the word “Teabagger” to refer to the “Tea Party.” Well, y’know what I take offense to? As an American who happens to be living about 15 to 20 minutes from where the ACTUAL “Tea Party” took place? I take offense to one of the defining moments in American and indeed World history – an act of disobedience against actual tyranny by actual freedom fighters – being co-opted by a “movement” that can’t even be bothered to form a coherent ideology outside of “irrationally infuriated.”

So, yeah… I’ll probably keep on using that particular word here and there – just like I’ll keep calling liberal walking-jokes like MoveOn.org, Code Pink and Cindy Sheehan (remember her?) “nutters” and worse. Because it puts a sharp point on things, and gets a “rise” out of people. I make dismissive, bad-taste jokes about things that are comical to me… it’s kind of my “thing.”

BUT…

It also occurs to me that, fairly or not, the preponderance of similar-style mockery in the current political world means that my meaning may be taken more “broadly” than I intend it. So I should probably put this on the record:

I don’t hate “conservatives.” Or “liberals” for that matter. And I’m not an especially big “devotee” of President Obama at this particular point. In fact, I think that Obama – or at least the initial “Obama Phenomenon” – has to shoulder some of the blame for the “Tea” business: Nothing in politics comes into being without bringing an opposite-number with it, and Obama proving that you can build a functional coalition on vauge emotional appeals to “hope and change” meant that you can ALSO build one on vauge emotional appeals to “fear and anger,” and hence, well… you get the idea.

Frankly, I’m fairly “situational” when it comes to ideology – which I suppose falls under “relativism” but my ego keeps telling me to call “thinking on my feet.” There’s a copy of Atlas Shrugged within walking distance of my desk here, and it’s on the same shelf as “Dude, Where’s My Country?” During my daytime commute, the car-radio is almost always tuned to an overwhelmingly-conservative local talk station, and if this were any other night but Friday I’d be typing this with MSNBC on in the background (Rachel Maddow runs the best show on Cable, hands down.) I’m happy to talk, debate, converse and be friends with conservatives, liberals, libertarians, socialists, whatever.

My disdain for the “Tea Partiers” – and thus use of “Teabaggers” – is NOT a disdain for rational Republicans, conservatives, libertarians, etc. I don’t even necessarily have anything specifically against individual people who turn up at the damn rallies… at least not in theory, after all I don’t know ALL of them. My GENUINE disdain lies for the self-proclaimed “public faces” and “leadership” of this thing. Mrs. Palin, Mr. Beck, the various D-list celebrity hangers-on and the “real” politicians who’ve signed on either out of a cynical short-term power grab or because they actually buy it (not sure which is worse.) THOSE are my “Teabaggers” and, no, under the circumstances, I don’t feel particularly bad about giving them a risque nickname.

http://cdn2.themis-media.com/media/global/movies/player/flowplayer.commercial-3.1.5.swf
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escape-to-the-movies/1820-Knight-and-Day

Intermission: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/moviebob/7739-That-Wont-Be-in-the-Movie

Do the math, i.e. the now-resigned General Stanley McChrystal: No four-star U.S. Army General is going to give the kind of interview he did to Rolling freakin’ Stone and NOT expect to get shitcanned for it. If you’re TRYING to lose your job in spectacular fashion, openly mocking your boss is a good way to do it.

So, then: Within the next few months (after “staying out of the spotlight) for a bit, General McChrystal will be on the Teabagger circuit as a “martyr” to Obama’s “disregard for the military” or whatnot, and he’ll probably be a Senatorial (Presidential?) candidate not long after that. Just you watch.

Singer-songwriter Stan Bush has, for the better part of the last decade, been experiencing one of the most improbable late-career rebirths in recent rock history. A quintessential stylist of 80s “power ballad” metal, he was mostly known for composing moderately-noteworthy tracks that wound up used in B-movies like “Bloodsport” and (more recently) on “Sailor Moon.”

All that changed with the overdue re-release in the U.S. of the original “Transformers” movie, reaquainting fans with the “You’ve Got The Touch” and “Dare” – two tracks he recorded for the movie which have gone on to become ironic cult-classics in their own right. Since then, Bush’s “second win” career has primarily involved performing said songs at Transformers conventions and composing NEW songs also related to the aforementioned intergalatic robot war. At least two such songs were offered (by Bush) to the producers of the Michael Bay Transformers movies… and rejected, presumably as part of Bay etc’s resistance to all things that are awesome.

In any case, Bush is evidently planning to ride this train as far as it’ll take him. The video game “Transformers: Battle For Cybertron” – handily described as a giant bucket of interactive 80s Transformers fan-service – is out this week, and KOTAKU already has a video up of the game’s ending credits. Playing over said credits? Yet ANOTHER new Stan Bush song about Transformers. Give it a look: http://kotaku.com/5570343/transformers-credits-are-a-joy-for-old+timers

In other news, “Transformers 3” is still on a track to suck about a year from now.

(Hat-tip to Chud: http://chud.com/articles/articles/24159/1/GREEN-HORNET-LOOKS-LIKE-AN-ACTION-MOVIE/Page1.html)

Since about 1989, you could count on one thing above all else in “new” superhero movies: The first trailer would try as hard as it could to stress how similar this “new” movie was to a Batman movie: Tragedy. Angst. Darkness. Resolve. Pounding Danny Elfman score. Hero-says-his-own-name. BAM! Title. Coming Soon.

With that in mind, this (otherwise pretty rote) first trailer for Michel Gondry’s “Green Hornet” movie – with Seth Rogen as the titular hero – perhaps marks the beginning of a new era: Batman? Batman WHO? “The Green Hornet” wants you to know that he’s more like – and I mean A LOT more like… Iron Man.

Here’s my principal “nerd” question about this franchise: The two characters being “owned” by different companies would make direct reference impossible, but will they be making any allusion to Britt Reid (aka Green Hornet) being the Lone Ranger’s great-great (great?) grand-nephew? Yeah, that’s actually true. Go look it up.

I’m sitting here torturing myself via Syfy’s two-movie-length modernized “reboot” of “The Phantom,” which is about as terrible as one would expect. It also (so far) features possibly the worst example of hero-costume “realism” I’ve ever seen. They’ve basically got him wearing somebody’s idea of a “movement friendly” bomb-disposal suit – which looks about as bad as you’d imagine.

http://cdn2.themis-media.com/media/global/movies/player/flowplayer.commercial-3.1.5.swf
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escape-to-the-movies/1809-Toy-Story-3

“Intermission” picks up where last week left off: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/moviebob/7707-Please-Film-These-Games

Generally speaking, I’m bad with predictions. Except this time I wasn’t.

See, back in April when I did “Game OverThinker” episode 34, “Waggle War,” I made a mostly-kidding joke about how funny it’d be if – because the “OMG-it’s-a-sidescroller!” trailer for the new Metroid had just come out – when the E3 show came around Sony and Microsoft’s big motion-control unveilings got undercut by a bunch of 2D retro Nintendo games. At the time, it was the most unlikely prospect I could think of. Here’s the episode, the revelant bit come in at 7:40…

http://v.giantrealm.com/saf/272828ab50091da6eb1ae85133def12ae9a44eb4
http://screwattack.com/videos/Episode-34-Waggle-War

So… fast-forward to this year’s E3 show, and what happened? Well, Sony and MS hacked everyone off with shows mostly devoted to their new motion controllers and pimping ESPN partnerships (Microsoft) and 3D TVs (Sony.) Nintendo’s show, on the other hand? Well… 2D sidescroller revamps for Metroid, Kirby and Donkey Kong Country; plus the next Zelda going with an ultra-colorful retro art scheme and along with what look to be ports of EVERY noteworthy franchise they’ve got (and then some) for the talk-of-show 3DS… it’s “flagship” game is the return of KID ICARUS. So, basically, E3 2010 was “won” by a game lineup from about 1998.

Why can’t I ever do this when there’s money on the line?