Memo to: Target –
Fuck you.

Sincerely –
Various peoples’ moms.

Ironically… isn’t the “real” Iron Man’s costume technically home-made?

So… this made it to the air HOW, exactly?

So, you’re a Target executive in an ad-pitch meeting, and someone says “we need a character-type we can take down a peg for comedic effect,” and someone else says “Ooh! I know who we can totally slap around for funnies: budget-conscious middle-class moms!,” and you say “Brilliant!” – because it’s not like that’s anyone whom Target’s business relies-on or anything.

(hat-tip: Jezebel)

I hate myself for resorting to that joke, just for the record.

The “news” is a little old by now, so I’m not up for deciding which link “deserves” traffic or credit, but in case you hadn’t heard Mike Meyers is being sought to voice the title character in a new feature film based around Looney Tunes mainstay Pepe La Pew.

In principle, I’m not opposed to the idea of building individual features out of the Looney Tunes stable, which Warner Bros. is aggressively pursuing right now (having also greenlit a “Speedy Gonzales” feature with George Lopez earlier this year.) They’re strong characters built around reliable comedy types with proven appeal, and Warners is in a mad-dash to secure as many franchise-tentpoles as possible to be ready for when the Harry Potter cash-cow gets put to pasture next year – which is ALSO why they were so eager to start Green Lantern, sign someone for Superman and are likely within weeks of formally announcing The Flash.

However, two things about THIS property stand out in particular, to me:

#1: Does anyone still “get” that the joke of Pepe is built entirely around a wink-wink ethnic caricature, re: it’s “funny” that a romantic skunk is French because “frenchmen smell bad?” That’s really pretty much it – he’s an American spoof at the expense of French sexuality and (percieved) grooming-habits.

#2: How do you, in 2010, “work around” the fact that – as far as cartoon-animals go – Pepe’s “schtick” is basically to be something close to a serial-rapist and/or sex-addict? There’s really only one Pepe “arc”: He aggressively-pursues an unwilling female cat after mistaking her for a skunk. Yes, technically she’s only so insistently-resisting because he’s a skunk, but the “grownup side” of the joke (and with the Looney Tunes, there always was one) is that we’re pretty-much watch sexual-assault-as-slapstick.

All of that, to be sure, is still funny – hysterical, in fact, in the cartoons… but where’s the feature in this? Assuming the idea is a feature version of the shorts (it’ll almost-certainly by 3D computer-animation or an animation/live-action hybrid) you can bet they won’t be having Pepe aggressively tackle-humping a female cat for 90 minutes – so what, then? One imagines some sort of “romantic comedy” scenario, wherein Pepe pursues The Cat in more of a “hapless romantic dweeb” Lloyd Dobbler manner, comically-oblivious to the real reason he’s being rebuffed – of course, he’d “figure it out” midway through act 2 and go to some foolish length to mute his olfactory-offensiveness, though ultimately both he and The Cat will learn Very Important Lessons about looking past flaws and being comfortable with who you are.

Egh. THAT was actually depressing to type – imagine how it’d be to watch it?

Loathe as I am, as always, to discuss BoxOffice numbers… well, what do you know? Defying my initial skepticism, “The Social Network” is actually doing quite well for itself – though what’s most impressive and gratifying in this case is that it did so this weekend by coming out ahead of a ghastly-looking Katherine Heigl rom-com and Disney’s big juicy ass-kiss to the “Family Values” set, “Secretariat.”

“Secretariat,” incidentally, isn’t a BAD movie (it’s nowhere near as vile as “The Blind Side,” which is the movie it wanted to be) so much as it’s an incredibly dull, uninteresting one. This is mostly due to trying to impose the “plucky underdog” inspirational-sports-movie formula onto a story where it doesn’t fit – Secretariat was highly-regarded as a genetic miracle of a super-horse, and it was the MARGIN of his victories that were surprising, not the outcome – but it’s also due to the self-conscious pandering to “Blind Side’s” audience.

See, since the movie doesn’t have an “underdog” in the horse, it has to find one in it’s female owner i.e. “hmph! What’s SHE doing here? Horseracing is a MAN’S sport!”… except, well, “Feminist” is still a dirty-word to the “Values” crowd; so all the conflict is muted in THIS part of the story, too: Marriage-strife kind of just “fixes itself” (in real life, they divorced), and all the grumpy-old-men “come around” without much fuss and the only real “bad guy” is the owner of the rival horse who is, of course, a swarthy “ethnic” caricature.

Requires no explanation.

By the lucky happenstance that I’m right next door to Cambrige, which has a sizable Indian-American population and a theater that caters to them, I was able to see “Endhiran – The Robot” this evening. It’s a scifi/action blockbuster from India (specifically the Tamil Nadu region and cinema, which I’m told means makes it not technically a “Bollywood” film.)

The experience was… actually pretty damn awesome and wholly worth seeking out, providing you’re familiar-with or at least prepared-for the cultural-eccentricities of Indian popular-cinema; i.e. it’s 3 hours long, changes tone between action/comedy/drama/suspense and romance often in the course of a single scene, and stops periodically so that the main cast can perform in a big-scale Music Video not-entirely-related to the plot. But yeah, if you can get into that “groove” it’s easy to see why this giant-scale hybrid of Mega Man, Terminator, I Robot, Spider-Man and Frankenstein is the biggest thing in the Eastern World right now.

That said, it DID leave me with a few questions that perhaps some Indian readers (I’ve got to have some by now) can help me out with?

In case you’re wondering, YES, that is a Giant Robot Snake made out of hundreds of Robot Humans all linked together you’re seeing in that trailer – and that’s not the coolest thing they end up making. The film is a star vehicle for Rajinikanth aka “Superstar Rajini” (that’s how he’s billed – he even gets his own opening credits seperate from everyone else) the biggest South Indian actor in the world and the highest-paid Asian star outside of Jackie Chan. And when India says “star vehicle,” they aren’t kidding: Rajini plays a scientist who makes a super-powered robot duplicate of himself, meaning he is both the lead and the co-star… and it gets better: In the third act (re: the third HOUR!) of the story, man and bot have a falling-out when the robot becomes romantically-obsessed with his maker’s girlfriend (Aishwarya Rai) and Robot-Rajini restyles himself as a strutting Supervillain with his own duplicate-army… meaning that in the bigger-than-big action finale the Hero, the Villain and the Villain’s several-thousand Henchmen are all played by the same actor. (Um… let’s not let Mike Meyers find out that you can do that now, okay?)

Alright, so, to the questions:

#1: Granted, I’ve not been to India, but do people really speak as much English there, casually, as they do in this movie? You only see a few snippets of it in that trailer, but something like 20% (at least) of the spoken dialogue – along with all the road and business signs – in this is in English; especially from the Robots, sundry bad guys and Rai. I knew English-fluency was “preferred” for folks that wanted to enter business and tech fields, but is it that widely spoken in casual conversation? (Forgive my ignorance – I’m an American, the concept of multilingual-fluency as “normal” still amazes us.)

#2: I get that “modesty” is a very important thing in India and Indian entertainment (it’s actually kind of a plot-point in the movie re: Robo-Rajini not “getting” modesty) but where exactly is “the line?” Because the food-as-sex-metaphor thing in almost all the song lyrics come off really lurid in the subtitles, and in the dance scenes Rai is rocking some MAJOR corset/cleavage action. Also, I didn’t notice any translated cursing in the subs, but everyone says “shit!” in English a lot.

#3: Okay, kinda half-kidding here, but… is “Superstar Rajini” seriosuly considered some kind of “sex-symbol” in Indian popular culture? I mean, I get that he’s this incredibly-popular, long-standing cross-media entertainment god, sure… but is there really no “dissonance” intended from having this kinda-doughy, thirty-years-her-senior guy being fawned over by a woman the calibre of Aishwarya Rai? Cuz… if that’s actually a “standard” male-hotness-to-female-hotness dynamic in India, I’m thinking I should go there…

Oh, for the love of…

Y’know if someone was to make a list of video-games that ABSOLUTELY DO NOT NEED TO BE MADE INTO MOVIES, surely the “Uncharted” franchise would be right up there. Actually, thinking back on it, I DID make a list… and yeah, “Uncharted” was on it.

Back when I wrote that, an “Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune” movie was already being prepped with director and anger-managment-dropout David O. Russell set to helm once he’d finished up his Boston-Area boxing movie, “The Fighter” – which incidentally looks very good; though unfortunately I can already feel myself getting sick of the near-religious REVERENCE it’s going to elicit from every tempermental whiteboy hoodlum in my general vicinity when it comes out. (Yeah, America? I know we’re all in loooooove with Jeremy Renner in “The Town” but, trust me – in reality “that guy” gets soooo old after a few minutes.)

Heh. That’s Christian Bale in there as Mark Whalberg’s brother. What would you give to have been a fly on the wall had Russell pulled any of that “Huckabees” crap on his notoriously short-fused ass? Given that Russell reported has all of his extremities still attached, one has to assume they got on well enough…

In any case, “Uncharted” seemingly faded when Russell left to make “Pride & Prejudice & Zombies” – but now he’s quit that, too, and now THR says he’s signed back on to bringing Nathan Drake to the screen. Fuck.

For those blissfully unaware, “Uncharted” is an Indiana Jones (if Dr. Jones lived in the present-day and were a complete douchebag) knockoff noteworthy mainly for graphics and for being among the rare non-Kratos-related PS3 exclusives anyone gives a damn about. The series is built around Nathan Drake; who distinguishes himself by being the single most emminently-hateable ostensible “good guy” in video game history outside maybe that dog from Duck-Hunt.

Egh…

So… this is how it’s gonna be, huh, Hollywood? Before I even get close to seeing a proper Mario, Luigi, Link, Zelda, Bowser, Ganon, Kirby, Sonic, Donkey Kong, Samus or any of a thousand video game personas more deserving of cinematic realization onscreen… I have to get Nathan FUCKING Drake first. Great. Super. Can’t fuckin’ wait.

The search will now be on for the “right” actor for the lead, as the filmmakers go through the motions of pretending that Nathan Drake can’t just be played by any generic young-ish white guy.

http://cdn2.themis-media.com/media/global/movies/player/flowplayer.commercial-3.1.5.swf
Go see it.

“Intermission” is about Superman.

These days, every “auteur” director wants Christopher Nolan’s deal; i.e. helm a big-budget studio tentpole – preferably a franchise, preferably action genre – and use the boxoffice clout to get the studio to pay for the projects you REALLY want to make.

Darren Aronofsky – currently riding a wave of positive buzz (which I think we’re still pretending is soooo totally NOT at least partially due to the promise of Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis sex scene) for “Black Swan” – has been trying to get in on this racket for something like five or six years now, his named bandied about alongside Zack Snyder’s for the “Superman” gig and even an active pursuit of an ill-advised “Robocop” remake awhile back. Now, apparently, Fox wants him on the “Wolverine” sequel. Joy.

Fox has been the universal fanboy punching-bag over the last decade of superhero movies, mostly owing to how badly “X-Men 3,” “Wolverine,” both “Fantastic Fours,” “Daredevil,” “Electra” and “Dragonball” turned out. But they’ve recently started making moves with their projects that sound uncharacteristically positive: Hiring the “Crank” guys to do “Ghost Rider 2” and letting Matthew Vaughn make a 1960s-set X-Men versus Hellfire Club movie, mainly.

Having Aronofsky try to salvage Wolverine after the stunning awful first one would seem to be another step in the right direction – but then none of these films have actually come out yet.

Have we all heard about THIS by now?

So, apparently Obion County, Tennessee, doesn’t have it’s own fire department. About 20 years ago, in lieu of getting one they made a deal with neighboring South Fulton to help them out… on a subscription basis: $75 annually gets you on a “list” of homes the South Fulton Fire Department is compelled to save. An “insurance premium” for a civil service, basically. Why not just pay into South Fulton’s fund via a tax and make sure ALL of Obion County’s homes were covered? Well, we’re talking about the Heartland of America, remember, so you’ve probably answered your own question: A TAX!? What are you, a SOCIALIST!!?? 😉

So a week ago, a couple of houses in Obion County caught fire. The firefighters came out and promptly hosed-down the home that had “paid up.” The one next door, where the fire had originated, was not paid up… and not only did they just let it burn – they didn’t rescue the cat and three dogs who were trapped inside and burned to death.

Now… setting aside the fact that this kind of bullshit is EXACTLY why I gave up calling myself a “Libertarian” – I mean holy hell, people, I think even Galt’s Gulch probably eventually got a fucking fire truck… though, for my “Conservative” readers, here’s YOUR GUY defending the policy while his sidekick makes fun of the victim. Really. For fuck’s sake… even the most rigidly anti-social-spending people will usually make the obvious exception for police and firefighting.

But setting aside all that, even IF you can “get behind” this whole a’la carte civil service thing… HOW exactly can anyone from the fire department upwards justify letting the animals die along with the house? Alright, he didn’t pay to protect the HOUSE so they “had to” let that burn, okay, maybe… but the pets didn’t have any “say” in whether or not the check got mailed!

What kind of human being is either staffing or running this fire department that doesn’t help them anyway when the tools to do so are literally right at their disposal? Would they have also done nothing were the homeowner himself trapped inside? I almost don’t want to know…

So the next time my tongue slips about vast stretches of “humanity” being basically worthless? THIS KIND OF CRAP is probably what I’m talking about.

Zack Snyder, late of “300,” “Watchmen” and the upcoming “Sucker Punch,” is the director of  “Superman: The Man of Steel” for Warner Bros. and producer Christopher Nolan. So says The Hollywood Reporter, who also mentions rumors of a certain returning bad guy.

Call me… “cautiously psyched.”

It’s en-vogue to knock Snyder right now – “300” has been swallowed-up – with some justification – in the broader geek-community rejection of Frank Miller and “Watchmen” remains divisive. For what it’s worth, I remain of the opinion that it’s the third best Superhero movie ever made after “Dark Knight” and “Spider-Man 2” (“Iron Man” and Donner’s “Superman” being 4 and 5) and I’ll maintain that while it’s not as “solid” as TDK it’s the braver, bolder, more intellectual and more challenging of the two by far. Also, his first non-adaptation effort, “Sucker Punch,” has yet to be seen.

Obviously, it would’ve been more “interesting” had the job gone to also-rumored Darren Aronofsky, but I can’t find anything to be upset about. The web will be full of tedious jokes about “speed-ramping” (like, err… the one in the title of this article, for example…) but I like the sound of it. Snyder can direct actors, “gets” the genre, handles big-scale action like a seasoned master and is thus far distinguished in comic-adaptations by his fidelity to the material – I’d LOVE to know what his “favorite” Superman era or story-arc is, if he has one, because then you’d probably know what the movie was going to look like.

In any case, this will be the first time a Superman movie has been made by a filmmaker more known as a visual-stylist, which should actually be pretty refreshing at this point. Imagine a “Superman” movie that looked as close to any given Superman comic as Dr. Manhattan’s origin looked/felt like it’s source material? Yeah, I’ll file this one under “optimism,” for now.