Reports are still coming in, but the title says it all: North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, one of the worst and most brutal dictators on Earth, is dead tonight.

Power will almost-certainly pass, however symbolically, to his son Kim Jong Un – who is reputed to be either legitimately insane, mentally-impaired or both – though it’s almost a foregone conclusion that the myriad military/government officials who’re alleged to have been the real operators during the elder Kim’s dotage (he’s been in failing health for years) will be vying to either take power themselves OR get the hell out of dodge with whatever they can carry in the event that the house of cards collapses entirely.

I feel more than a little crass doing to the “blah blah something HUGELY important happened somewhere that’s not America… but here’s how it will effect America!” hard-segue, but this is really the only thing definite you can say about this right now: Any illusions that Barack Obama or his various would-be Republican challengers may have had that with Iraq “finished” and Afghanistan winding down this would be a strictly meat-and-potatoes “domestic issues” presidential election just evaporated. If you are the “China Policy Advisor” to an American politician, you are very likely about to learn that you are working this Christmas.

Here’s the situation: Setting aside the very real long-held concerns that Kim Jong Un (who is essentially a mystery – no one even knows how OLD he actually is outside of the NK government) will not have the official loyalty or ability to hold the system together; this is almost certain to cause a significant amount “rumbling” in the nation itself, which will be most-directly felt at it’s borders with China and South Korea (the former of which is seperated by a demilitarized zone patroled by U.S. forces) both of whom will be looking to their American allies to help out (or, in China’s case, “back off”) with management of what could be a ‘failed state’ crisis at their respective borders. Here’s to hoping things don’t get too much worse for North Korea’s impoverished citizens, in any case.

Place your bets now as to which GOP Presidential candidate will have the dumbest thing to say about this tomorrow morning.

Below, test-footage of an unused makeup-concept for Willem Dafoe’s “Green Goblin” makeup (before they went with the mechanical helmet design instead) by ADI. Left unsaid is whether this was intended to be a (very) elaborate rubber mask like in the comics or some kind of full-on physical transformation…

Characters like this go through LOTS of designs on their way to the screen, and it’s not unusual at all to see full-functioning suits, appliances and props being made to test them out. The reason you very seldom SEE any of them is that the studio/license-holder owns the rights to the character AND the work and usually doesn’t want them shown for one reason or another.

So why would you be seeing it now? Probably no reason. Maybe because Sony is testing the waters for what GG should look like when he innevitably turns up in the rebooted series? Who knows.

Very, very good.

Wondering where my feelings on the (extremely mediocre) “Mission: Impossible” and (shockingly terrible) “Sherlock Holmes” sequels are? Right here…

Better? Worse? I dunno…

What if Hollywood’s big award show sucked as much as gaming’s?

I’m “that guy” who really liked Stephen Sommers’ first “G.I. Joe” movie. Yeah, it was far from perfect – mostly thanks to having been a “strike script” victim – but from where I sat it more-or-less delivered a faithful-in-tone adaptation of the animated series and comics (read: aggressively silly scifi-military nonsense as-envisioned by 8-year olds playing with action figures) and I maintain that most of the excessively-negative reactions would’ve been greatly reduced if it had been the same movie but with more source-accurate costuming…

…which more or less seems to be what the out-of-nowhere AWESOME debut trailer for the sequel, “G.I. Joe: Retaliation,” is offering:

The new director is John M. Chu, who’s mostly made dance and concert movies up to this point. At some point he’d made some noise about this one going “dark and gritty,” but this looks like anything but: It’s the same basic look and feel as the first one, just with bigger action heroes in the cast (The Rock is “RoadBlock,” who is apparently our new lead, while Bruce Willis is supposedly playing a retired soldier named “Joe” from whom the organization derives it’s name) and characters like Cobra Commander, Snake Eyes and Jinx (Jinx? For real?) looking more like they’re “supposed to.” But does that make it look “better?”

…Yeah, kinda. I’ll admit it: Seeing Cobra Commander in the blue uniform with the mirrored-faceplate is all kinds of awesome, I’m always a sucker for color-coded ninjas and the ‘money shot’ of the Cobra Flag flying over the White House is sort of incredible.

I wonder how “seriously” to take the storyline implications in this particular trailer, though – are they really so committed to the “sorry about the last one” angle that they’ll kill off everyone from the first one except Snake Eyes, which is what the trailer is implying?

I’m not quite ready to change my “innevitably recieved as a dissapointment, regardles of it’s actual merits” projection of “The Dark Knight Rises.” But the new poster, which builds on the idea that this is the end of the story as opposed to just the part where they stop, has a lot of promise.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: If they did go all the way and kill Batman, that would be the kind of ballsy move that could concievably “top” the last one.

Here’s that new trailer for “Battleship,” the naval-centered sequel to “Battle: LA” (remember that?) that nobody asked for:

I’m still fairly curious about this, as I kinda like the idea that Berg basically wanted to make a navy vs. aliens movie and got it done by offering to name it after the board game… but it’s hard to stay optimistic when it still looks so much like “Transformers” on the water.

Also: Is that the Freedom Tower they’re blowing up?

Also: Is Rihanna doing a Carribbean accent? EDIT: Apparently that’s her real speaking (as opposed to singing) voice… which I now realize I had never actually heard until now.

Not great.

“Intermission” is about movie theaters.