Pictured right, Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher in “The Iron Lady.” The Academy’s most favoritest actress ever? Doing an accent? Doing a BRITISH accent? In a period piece? About a tough-yet-dignified woman making strides in a tradtionally-masculine political role? Ye Gods! Why even hold a vote at this point?
Director is Phyllida Lloyd, who previously worked with Streep on the insipid “Mama Mia!”
Hat-tip, BAD
Someone tweeted the Mayor of Detroit, Michigan a wacky idea: Erect a statue of RoboCop, arguably the most famous fictional character to be associated specifically with the city. The Mayor, naturally, said no.
Y’know what, though? I think it’s actually a brilliant idea. Detroit should totally do this.
Anyone who knows anything about Detroit knows the place is in trouble – the collapse of the U.S. Auto Industry has brutalized that whole area, and it’s in serious need of new revenue streams. Lots of economically-shaky regions have successfully rebuilt themselves as tourist destinations, but thus far most attempts at turning nostalgia for the Golden Age of American manufacturing into landmarks have fallen short… y’know what DOES sell, though? Kitchsy, semi-ironic pop-culture relics.
I live a short drive from Salem, MA, a city that relies on tourism for the overwhelming majority of it’s revenue. A few years back, TV Land lobbied for and bankrolled the construction and installation of a statue of Samantha from “Bewitched” downtown (on the rather shaky premise that the show had done an episode there once), and it’s become a very popular site in a city that lives and dies by it’s landmarks. This is the best-known one, but TV Land has actually done this for other icons like Andy Griffith and Ralph Kramden, too.
I bring that up less as precedent and more as a suggestion of how something like this ought to get done: Whoever owns the rights to “RoboCop” (whatever’s left of MGM, I believe) isn’t really doing anything with them that this point – it wouldn’t cost much, in “Hollywood dollars,” to buy a piece of property in Detroit and stick a statue on it, and you have to imagine the city would be more amenable to it if it weren’t costing THEM anything. It’d be a HUGE publicity-coup for the rights-holders, and a net-positive for the city in terms of press coverage, tourism and image-building.
There’s actually some pretty solid precedent for this, too: Remember those monuments of the Ten Commandments that caused so much trouble in the U.S. recently? A LOT of those weren’t put there for specifically religious purposes – they were publicity-stunts to promote Cecil B. DeMille’s “Ten Commandments” movie in 1956.
Seriously, someone needs to get a letter-writing or facebook/twitter campaign going to both Detroit and the owners of the Robocop character. There’s no reason for this NOT to happen.
I do sort-of wish the first look at this was a proper, more deliberately-paced “story trailer” as opposed to a frenetic action/action/joke/action/joke/joke/action/joke Superbowl spot; but otherwise FUCK YEAH, looks good. Suit looks great in motion, overall palette looks much more Raiders than Ryan (good call) and Chris Evans looks 100% believable.
Two things to look out for: That looks like The Howling Commandos flanking Cap going through the door, and it looks like (at least at some point) Hugo Weaving is actually wearing a human mask over his (100% source-faithful) Red Skull face; which is a fun twist considering it’s usually the reverse.
UPDATE! The listing has been pulled from eBay. As of this writing, the Kotaku link still has the image in question posted for those seeking some context. I maintain my earlier position that the whole thing is creepy as hell and raises all kinds of “call Child Services” flags, to me anyway.
Hat-tip: Kotaku
Some guy in Georgia wants YOU to help him punish his kids… and he seems to be getting a real kick out of it. Kinda uneasy-feeling details after the jump:
The story: Allegedly, this guy’s two kids busted up the bath tub by using it as an “arena” for their Beyblade toys (a spinning-top game based on an Anime series); so to punish them, he’s selling-off said toys on eBay to pay for the damage. Yes, it’s real, here’s the eBay page… though the numbers may look a little shocking, as “Anon” – alias the web-vigilantes from 4chan – have apparently been screwing with the auction via fake bids all day.
Okay, so… sounds a little harsh, but also sounds like a sensible “cause and effect” type of punishment i.e. a kill-two-birds mix of “actions have consequences” and “use it properly or lose it.” Probably wouldn’t be my approach… but okay, he’s got kids, I don’t, etc.
Here’s where this tips over into “red flag” territory for me: Instead of posting a good photo of the actual items up for sale, he posted a picture of the two kids holding them up. I don’t want to put the image here, go look at the auction to see it. For those who didn’t: Two boys, one looking about six or seven, the other older, holding up the offending playthings in a ziplock baggie. The older one is bawling like E.T. just flatlined, the younger one is staring down the camera like Vincent D’Onofrio’s last day at Boot Camp. It’s pretty striking.
This is where my head is at on this: What exactly is he REALLY selling here? There’s no specific detail on what the items are for anyone who wants to buy them, and no image you can see from, so he’s pretty-much selling “bag of random toys.” But the picture of the two kids, both of them clearly captured in a moment of very real (deservedly or not) trauma… I’m sorry, but what this says to me is that his (apparently sincere) sales pitch isn’t the bag of Beyblades so much as “Hey, y’see this sobbing child? Bid NOW for the privilige of being part of making that happen!”
For those who’ll offer that “context is everything,” he doesn’t describe the items in the text-description, either – instead, he relates the story of the punishment, plus the exact dollar amount of what he’s already confiscated from their piggy-banks. Oh, and it’s capped-off with a rather gleeful exclamation of “and then it’s on to their other toys!” And let’s not forget: He’s showing-off a picture of his visibly-shaken post-punishment children on the internet, for all the world to “enjoy.” Folks, I’ve been punished in my life – often severely and quite deservedly… but my parents NEVER took a photo of my anguished expression and plastered flyers of it reading “look what Bob did!!!” all over the neighbor, to say nothing of THE PLANET. And if they had, I imagine Child Services would be knocking on the door for that sort of thing.
So… am I NUTS, or does this just scream abuse? I don’t mean the initial punishment – fine, sell the damn toys, whatever – but proudly showing it off for The Internet like some demented cross between the dad from “This Boy’s Life” and that Tiger Mother sociopath… wouldn’t “subjecting child to public humiliation” constitute abuse in and of itself? And if not, wouldn’t it at least be probable cause for Child Services to maybe show up and check these kids for bruises or whatever else could cause the younger-looking one to have a goddamn thousand-yard-stare at that age? I’m NOT “accusing” the guy, I’m just saying… if I was a cop in Georgia, and I saw this, I’d be inclined to follow-up on this.
A big hurdle (maybe the biggest) for anyone making a new “Superman” movie is that unlike other comic-heroes you’ve got a general-public that has JUST as strong an impression of what the character “must be” as the fans do – except said impressions are entirely different. Superman is the most iconic fictional figure on the planet Earth, everyone who knows him also “knows” what he’s supposed to be… and for the mainstream audience, the “supposed to be” framework is largely limited to the everybody-knows origin story and the various movies and TV shows; with ONE simple question hobbling even the most earnest of attempts: How do you “refresh” Superman for today without simply revisiting “Superman: The Movie?”
According to Latino Review, Zack Snyder (director), David Goyer (writer) and Christopher Nolan (human fanboy-proof-shield) have apparently found the answer: By revisiting “Superman II,” instead.
Earlier today, word “leaked” that the new “Superman” movie was casting a major female part… but that it wasn’t Lois Lane. In fact, the “shortlist” seemed to be favoring blondes. “Who could this be!?,” wondered The Internets. Lana Lang? Cat Grant? Supergirl!?
Sez Latino Review: It’s actually URSA, the female member of the troupe of Kryptonian ex-cons led by General Zod in “Superman II.”
This makes a lot of sense, really. Zod etc. are really the only Superman enemies other than Lex Luthor and MAYBE Brainiac that non-comic readers have heard of, so it’s familiar for “everyone else” while fans can likely look forward to the “Superman fighting someone/something else with super-powers” movie they’ve been demanding since before “Returns.” The obvious question now becomes “so is Zod in there, too?” Probably, yeah… if for no other reason that I can’t imagine them having the ONLY combat in the film being Superman punching the crap out of a woman, super-powered or not. The still-secret storyline supposedly involves a younger (20-ish) Clark Kent traveling the world (in-between leaving Smallville but before settling in Metropolis) trying to decide exactly what form his “use powers to help world” form will take; so make of that what you will. “Clark doubts powers can actually be helpful, same-powered heavy threatens world, Clark realizes purpose and becomes Superman,” maybe?
Actually, Zod could be the “teased for the sequel” bad guy, too… or would that be Luthor?
Quick head’s-up: The Armchair Thinkers podcast has yours truly as a guest for the most recent episode (Feb 3 2011) and we get pretty into depth on stuff like The AntiThinker, Other M, etc. Check it out HERE:
Scans from Empire, via ComingSoon.The problem with Cap is that, comics/cartoons being abstract mediums, it’s generally been kind of hard to get a handle on what he’s actually supposed to be wearing – the “blue part” of the suit is usually supposed to be some kind of armor, until-recently that was usually “visualized” by drawing little curve-mark “scales” all over it. When Alex Ross paints him, it usually ends up looking like plate-mail. Most of the time artists just say “eff it” and treat it like the standard painted-spandex onesie.
But I REALLY like this. You almost never see one of these made out of practical-fabric, which really makes the “muscle-padding” work a lot better than they do in rubber. Above all else, you can tell it was built to MOVE, so hopefully it won’t have the Batman Problem where the fight scenes all happen “around” a main character who can (very obviously) barely lift his own feet.
ALSO: Samuel L. Jackson confirmed on Jimmy Fallon’s show (so that DOES exist!) that Nick Fury is set to turn up in both “Captain America” and “Thor” – the Thor part is news, previously it’d been said that he wasn’t in there. This would also seem to confirm that we’ll see Cap’s arrival in the present-day in the movie (or at least after the credits) since Fury couldn’t possibly have appeared in WWII.
Although… this does bring up the still-wonky question of how OLD Nick Fury is actually supposed to be in these. In Iron Man 2, he says he knew Stark Sr., who has been dead a good amount of time already as that series opened. Movie-Fury looks like the “Ultimate” version, who’s just a regular secret agent; but the traditional Fury is actually slightly older than Cap is, and has been kept artificially young(ish) by a serum derived from the stuff that created Cap in the first place – he was original a WWII-era character, “Sgt. Fury,” and some version of his team “The Howling Commandos” have been rumored to turn up somewhere in the Cap movie, so… who knows.
MOVIEBOB CENTRAL 