The world we live in now: If you want something done, make sure it’s something The Internerds will take vaugely-ironic pleasure in. A privately-funded, web-donation-based effort to install a statue of RoboCop in Detroit has exceeded it’s financial target, and they’re going ahead with it.
io9 has an interview with the guys in charge. I know some people aren’t crazy about this – wishing the money had gone to other more useful sources, viewing the whole thing as a silly fit of geek/hipster irony, etc. There’s probably some truth in that… but on the other hand there’s going to be a statue of Robocop in Detroit. Awesome.
io9 has footage of actress Tanit Phoenix auditioning for David E. Kelley’s “Wonder Woman” TV show (the role has ultimately gone to Adrianne Palicki.) The results seem to confirm many folks’ worst fears about what a superheroine reimagined by the creator of the noxious “Ally McBeal” would sound like. Watch on, if you dare. My impressions, after the jump…
In the sequence in question, Diana is critiquing a new run of Wonder Woman action-figures; with subsequent dialogue explaining that merchandising the WW “brand” (hence the “corporate CEO side-job) is how she funds her superhero operation. So, yeah… a multimillion dollar prime-time network TV project from one of the most successful writer/producers in the business based on a 70 year-old property has borrowed the entirety of it’s “new hook” from a defunct Adult Swim series.
The “humor” of the bit is Diana being annoyed that the dolls are wearing an older version of her outfit instead of the one she wears now (which she feels is “a tad more appropriate”) because the “more iconic” one sells better. So… take this as pretty close to confirmation that they’ll be using something akin to the godawful “modernized” uniform from Straczynski’s current run, and taking cheap-shots at the original-iteration for good measure. “Ho ho! Isn’t this source-material stupid? Aren’t you thankful we clever TV writers have been able to rebuild it into something good? Success!”
SIDEBAR: Listen to this dialogue, then google up some of the Adam West “Batman” for an excellent comparative-demonstration of “affectionate parody” versus “I’m too good for this genre” smugness.
Finally, since “strong” leading-women on TV only come in two flavors – “Humorless Hardass” (“The Good Wife”) or “Bucket Of Insecurities” (“Grey’s Anatomy,” “Brothers & Sisters”) – she get’s a mini-monologue about how insecure she feels because the dolls have nicer breasts than she does. Because when you picture an immortal superhuman Amazon, the first scenario that leaps to mind is crying into her Ben&Jerrys about her cup-size.
The Marvel Studios employee-selection procedure: “Leak” risky hiring decision to web. Gauge fanboy-press reaction. Hire accordingly. And so it comes to pass that one of the least-likely candidates plausible for a $150 million tentpole follow-up to what could be the biggest (in terms of scale/scope/buildup) superhero movie ever will get the job – so sez Deadline.
OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER: MovieBob is not, nor has he ever been, an Atheist. That having been said…
MovieBob’s Definition of a Flawed Thought-Process: Sincerely believing that a benevolent, all-powerful supernatural being has your best interests at heart and – in fact – “loves you” because he only allowed a Tiger Shark to devour a portion of your body, rather than the whole thing.
Below, the trailer for what already looks like a top-contender for one of 2011’s worst movies, “Soul Surfer” – the “inspirational true story” of that teenage girl who kept on surfing through the Power of hard work, modern medical science and positive thinking Jesus after a Tiger Shark munched her arm off.
Good God (irony!) does that look terrible – it’s like “The Blind Side,” “Jaws: The Revenge” and Kirk Cameron gangbanged “127 Hours,” and 9 months later “someone” left THIS movie in a basket on somebody’s doorstep. I can’t remember the last time I felt as bad for actors as I do for Dennis Quaid and Helen Hunt for having to be in this.
Anyway, a minor kerfluffle has erupted over this – apparently the real-life folks depicted in the film were rather angry to learn that one of the producers had opted to digitally remove the words “Holy Bible” from the cover of a copy of “The Holy Bible” in one scene, on the logic that this would help the film have boxoffice appeal beyond the ghetto of the Christian Film market.
First off: All of my requisite snark about the basic premise and message of the thing aside… that’s bullshit, a dick-move, and they had every right to be pissed off. If you want to make the movie about these people’s story, and their sincerely-held religious beliefs are a vital part of that story to them, then you’re obligated to present it as such. If you want the movie to be about fighting back from injury through some other inspiration, change the names. But if you want that golden “true story” marketing-hook… you’ve gotta play ball, simple as that.
Secondly… what the HELL sense does that even make? Show of hands: Even without any explicit reference to such, can anyone look at this trailer and NOT immediately recognize that it’s a big steaming pile of “Overcoming Adversity Through Faith” anyway? I mean… if you took every mention of the word “Force” out of any given “Star Wars” trailer, everyone would still know it was about “Star Wars.”
When details actually got confirmed about David E. Kelley’s “Girl Tony Stark: The Series” reimagining of “Wonder Woman,” the principal thing that stood out as a “maybe” for me was that it sounded like it was written with a decisively adult-aged (read: mid-30s or older) vision in mind for the lead character: Kelley’s Diana has apparently been living in “Man’s World” long enough to not only engage-in, break-off and be-wistful-about a relationship with Steve Trevor but also to establish herself jointly as a metahuman crimefighter and serve as CEO of a self-founded industrial corporation – all of which would seem to demand a certain amount of “gravitas” that age tends to add. Yes, Amazons are supposed to functionally-immortal, but visual-cues are visual-cues. Lisa Edelstein plays “House’s”boss while Olivia Wilde plays one of his minions for a reason. My train of thought was “Oh, they’re actually going for Wonder WOMAN as opposed to Wonder GIRL? I like that.”
Well, first impressions be damned. They’ve made their choice, and the new Wonder Woman is Adrianne Palicki, age 28, late of “Supernatural,” and “Friday Night Lights.” Her highest-profile film appearance was in “Legion,” though some may recognize her as Holly Rocket in “Women in Trouble.” She’s also part of the Seth Green Cartoon Clique – doing voices for “Robot Chicken,” “Titan Maximum” and “Family Guy.” Not a bad actress, and you certainly can’t say she doesn’t meet certain basic “aesthetic” requirements: striking, statuesque, and it’d be uncharitable to describe her physique as anything less than “smokin'” – all the more reason to lament how unlikely they are to preserve the classic uniform.
Still… a little young-looking, I think. Not a deal-breaker, but I’m not getting “intimidation” here. Bad guys should be a bit “struck” by WW even before the “can throw a bus at you” aspect kicks-in, from where I sit.
For me, the only real downside to Hollywood’s current love-affair with superheroes is that along with the “official” adaptations it seems like everyone is pulling their “revisionist take” retreads out of mothballs to try for a greenlight. Every post-“Watchmen” variation on “what happens when they retire??” “What if they weren’t as a good as we thought??” “What if they lived in the REAL world??” was done and re-done five times over by about 1998, but tell that to the geniuses who thought “Hancock” or “My Super Ex-Girlfriend” were a good idea.
But “Golden Age,” unofficially “announced” on Deadline as a Matthew Vaughn project based on a yet-to-be-published Johnathan Ross comic, actually sounds worth being cautiously-optimistic about…
The idea, as described by Vaughn, refers to retired WWII-era heroes who’re drafted back into service when their children’s generation of heroes “screw up the world.” So… “Kingdom Come,” basically – but with an added element that makes me take notice: The rest-home supers will fight their children’s mistakes alongside their superhero grandchildren – The Greatest Generation and Generation X versus The Boomers.
I’m kind of a sucker for “elderly/kid” teamups to begin with, but the potential for something uniquely “zetigeisty” in this intrigues me. There’s a strong undercurrent with a lot of my generation (and the generation directly behind us) of feeling like we “relate” more strongly to our grandparents than our actual parents. Some of it is the mythologizing effects of media (“grammy and grampy defeated Hitler and were awesome, mom and dad were smelly hippies who couldn’t win ‘Nam”) and some of it is probably the dramatic rise in two-income families and with them extended-grandparent-babysitting… but whatever it is it’s there. Heck, it’s not even ENTIRELY new to the genre – Carrie Kelley’s whole arc in “Dark Knight Returns” was quite-directly about young teenager rejecting her Boomer parents – still getting stoned and musing about old rock songs well into parenthood – for Old Man Batman.
I’m on my way to bed (early-ass screening tomorrow – ugh!), but rest assured that I WILL have more to say when time avails itself about the ungodly, horrible way the Smithsonian is going about the “public voting” aspect of it’s “Art of Videogames” exhibit. Don’t get me wrong: The effort is appreciated, but everything from the selections to the categorizations on this thing are so wrongheaded, slapdash and uninformed as to make me honestly think it’d be better if they didn’t do it at all. For example: The voting (which seems to ignore Arcades ENTIRELY, btw) divides the history of the medium into five “eras,” with options to vote for which of three games will be each console/eras “representative” title in each of four genres. Only FOUR? Yes: Action, Adventure, Target and Combat/Strategy. That’s right: No platformer, no puzzle, no RPG – in the 8-bit/NES/Adventure category, it’s Final Fantasy vs. Zelda vs. Shadowgate… and only ONE can “win.”
This. Is. FUCKING. ASININE.
Where did they get this system? Did they just make it up without consulting anyone who knows thing-ONE about the medium? Gaming is young, but there’s NO shortage of historians and credited experts out there who could’ve given them a better outline. This isn’t a matter of nerd-nitpickery… obviously not every game can get in there… but trying to tell the “history” of the form and classifying Zelda and Final Fantasy as the same thing? That’s like if I opened up a Bird Museum and added an Octopus on the basis that it has a BEAK.
And here’s the email address associated with the page: AmericanArtGames@si.eduBE RESPECTFUL if you do write in, regardless of what you have to say. We gain nothing by being crass.
My favorite “Donald Duck” cartoon ever, also my go-to clip to refute the whole “only Goofy holds up today” thing i.e. Disney shorts. I love how minimal the setup is – as though Donald and the Nephews exist in a permanent state of antagonism. If I had had the kind of ridiculous snow we’ve had here this year when I was, say, 10… I’d have probably contracted serious hypothermia trying to recreate this stuff…
Even today, the quality of the animation on these things blows my mind, especially considering it’s ALL oldschool ink-and-paint stuff. And you can tell the animators had a field-day playing around with the physics of snow/ice/water – I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that was the whole reason for doing the cartoon itself.
MOVIEBOB CENTRAL 