“American Bob” RETURNS with my (belated) take on “It Gets Better.” Summary? I’m a fan and supporter; but I hope it’s seen as the beginning of a movement – not the end. There’s a long road ahead for equal rights, even still.

I’m glad to be bringing this show back – feels good to be doing the political thing “on it’s own,” especially given how crazy this election year is already getting.

I’ve spoken before of my admiration for the folks at “That Guy With The Glasses;” who I think are putting out not only some of the best stuff in the “pop-culture critique video” genre but are also bringing a much needed injection of diversity (intellectual and otherwise) the medium.

Among the best examples of said strength-in-diversity is critic/filmmaker Lindsay Ellis, aka “The Nostalgia Chick;” whose taken what could easily have been a token gig (“the girl version” of the site’s nominal leader) and turned it into vital part of the geek-culture conversation – often working in concert with a cadre of fellow TGWTG-affiliated female reviewers to not only review “nostalgiac girl stuff” but also to provide the often-overlooked female perspective on the general Nerd Ephemera. Her latest offering, viewable HERE, (and embedded after the jump,) in which she provides a non-sarcastically gender-flipped answer to the “hottest animated chicks” meme, is as good an example as any of why that’s so welcome and necessary…

http://blip.tv/play/AYLrrxAC.html?p=1http://a.blip.tv/api.swf#AYLrrxAC

Gotta admit, I’m as thrown by #10 as she is; but that’s why I like having this perspective presented in the first place. Sooooo much of the discussion of “Women in Geek Culture” is dominated by men talking about ‘the female psyche’ like this elusive, seldom-observed mythical creature (how many PAGES have been written by men half-jokingly trying to “figure out” the Team Edward/Jacob thing?); it’s refreshing as hell to see actual women speak for themselves about it.

Even Michael Bay seems to realize that Michael Bay has a Michael Bay problem: His work on the excerable “Transformers” films – which even HE doesn’t seem to like – has made him a wealthy man (and has banked him considerable boxoffice clout) but it’s also shifted his public image from being the crown prince of willfully-overblown “guy movie” excess to being just one more journeyman action-specialist working the branded-franchise assembly line; while upstarts like Zack Snyder, Timur Bekmambetov, Joe Carnahan and others have pushed into his territory.

For the last several years, Bay has been trying to get (his version of) a small, personal passion-project off the ground – a $25 Million (chicken feed for guys working at Bay’s level) dark comedy called “Pain & Gain,” based on a true story (recounted in the Miami New Times in 1999) of steroid-abusing bodybuilders who got wrapped up in a kidnapping/extortion/drugs clusterfuck. Bay returning to the bad-taste Miami-flavored sleaze of the Bad Boys movies for what sounds like “schlubs in over their heads” crime flick starring juiced-up gym rats? PERFECT combination. But he’s had difficult securing a studio for the project thus far, even with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Mark Whalberg – two actors practically factory-designed for Michael Bay movies – attached to star.

But now Paramount has apparently stepped up to do the deed, with the contingency being that Bay has to take one more slog through the world of Autobots and Decepticons. When not even Michael Bay and two of the only consistently-bankable male action leads (both of whom are taking salary cuts to help keep the budget down!) can’t get a $25 Million flick made without agreeing to also do a summer-tentpole/toy-commercial; it’s clear that license-mania has grown out of control.

This all got announced waaaay earlier than Paramount wanted, when infamous producer Lorenzo Di Bonnaventura got in front of an MTV mic at ToyFair and said Bay was coming back for a Transformers “reboot” – by which he (apparently) means that the robot characters will be segueing into a new storyline featuring new human characters, as none of the original (non-CGI) cast has signed on to return. That’s probably why twisting Bay’s arm to keep him on was so important to them – his continued presence as director will be the only thing keeping this from looking like a “B-Team” sequel.

It feels almost surreal that we’ll actually be enduring another of these things, after all the build-up of #3 being the big finale. But I do really want to see “Pain & Gain.”

Okay, so… I don’t want to be “that guy,” but… didn’t we learn from “Snakes on a Plane” that the whole “OMG LOL THATLOOKSLIKEAFAKEMOVIEBUTITSAREALMOVIE LMAO!!!” thing drives up your online traffic but doesn’t actually get people into theaters?

This got greenlit a few years ago, back when “actual books that look like parody book-titles from a Simpsons background-gag” like this were a big bookstore fad. The progenitor of the trend, “Pride & Prejudice & Zombies,” has gone through about a dozen failed starts so far.

I hate to be a spoilsport, because I like most of what I’m seeing – Bekmembatov, Burton etc. clearly understand that the central joke of Lincoln-as-Blade is funnier if the movie keeps a straight face and doesn’t acknowledge that it knows it’s funny; and that last shot is just about perfect – but that’s the problem: is “Hah! This exists!” amusing enough to sustain a whole movie… and will people show up to find out?

I haven’t read the original book yet (guess now I should…) but I’m given to understand that the “key” (and the reason it initially “broke-out” from the parody-book pack) is a certain degree of political-subtext drawing paralells between Vampirism and The Confederacy – in this version, vampire-hunting is Abe’s “true calling;” and he becomes President and wages Civil War because The South is actually controlled by vampires who use the slave-trade as an easy food supply. That’s clever, and if it makes it to the movie intact one imagines the outcry from the “stop picking on us!!!!” Lost Cause Revisionism crowd will be entertaining as hell in and of itself…

hat-tip to CBM

See what they did there?

Look again: The hand that grows-in “fresh” is more like an actual lizard’s (four digits, bigger claws) while the other one is more of a mutated-human’s hand.

That’s really cool – kinda wondering why no one has done it before (or have they?)

Would still look better with the lab coat.

Did you see “Melancholia” and think; “man, this would be sooooooo much better as a wistful/quirky middle-aged rom-com?” Well, you’re in luck:

Episode I is not as bad as you remember it being. Yes, I said it.

Also, surprising absolutely no one, “Intermission” does the Spider-Man trailer scene-by-scene.

I really wish the “Spider-Man” trailer could’ve broken a day earlier, so it could’ve gone in here for a further example of the brand-fixation sickness…

(UPDATED after restoration of Internet service!)

Well, on the plus side, now we no longer need to wonder what the aborted early-90s Canon Films version of “Spider-Man” would’ve looked like – save that, in the early 90s, this CGI would only look one or two years out of date…

I’m sure I’ll have more to say about this in some other capacity soon enough, but for now let me hit the stuff jumping out at me right off the bat:

#1: I really like that one bit of Spidey fighting the cops – the Raimi movies had a paucity of hand-to-hand group fights since the villains didn’t generally have henchmen and it’s nice to see it here.

#2: Really kinda hoping SOME of this takes place in daylight. I know this is the darker/edgier/grittier/hardcore Spider-Man; but like I keep saying: NOT EVERY SUPERHERO NEEDS TO BE BATMAN.

#3: Dennis Leary appears well cast. I like the idea of Captain Stacy as a middle-aged working-dad type instead of the wizened elder-statesman from the comics.

#4: Well, there ya go, kids – snarky/jokey Spider-Man leaps into live-action… aaaaand in live-action it comes off as “douchey” instead of charming – like Dane Cook in a Power Rangers outfit. Who could’ve possibly predicted that??

#5: The dark eyepieces make him look like a villain. Sorry, they do. If I saw this version as a kid, my first assumption would be that this is an “evil” duplicate and that “good” white-eyes Spidey was going to fight him.

#6: The Lizard, as currently glimpsed here, would not pass muster in one of the “Resident Evil” movies – bad CGI rendering of a poorly-designed creature, a real shame.
#7: Well, there we have it: Peter’s missing/dead biological father was a super-scientist partner of Curt Conners at (Gasp! No way! NEVER saw it coming!) OsCorp, and they were working on whatever mad-science stuff turns Peter into Spider-Man and Conners into The Lizard. Ah, “Ultimate Marvel” – the gift that keeps on giving… even though you beg it not to.

#8 Y’know what? I’m not done with #7 yet. That’s awful. That’s what you’d put into a pitch making fun of unnecessary, convoluted, bullshit Hollywood revisionism to origin-stories. I’ve tried my best to find the good in this utterly pointless cash-grab of an endeavor, but then this trailer comes along and tells me with ONE SHOT pretty-much all I need to know. At the 1:53 mark – directly following the asinine “The Untold Story” title-card – we get another black-and-white flashback of Young Peter staring at…

…A spider under glass, also black-and-white and thus implied to be either directly or indirectly part of the same flashback. In other words: It’s NOT totally an accident anymore. It’s – symbolically, anyway – pre-ordained: The Spider (or, at least, the manner by which it’ll give him powers) and at least TWO of his major enemies (one in the film, one obviously being set-up) are all part of a path that’s been awaiting him… the laziest possible screenwriting crutch: DESTINY. Instead of being a story about Great Power being thrust onto someone accidentally, Spider-Man becomes yet another ersatz-Skywalker “Chosen One.”

Fuck. That.

Robert Rodriguez’s “Machete” evolved out of a parody trailer, and now the same thing is set to happen with the first film’s “pre-made sequels” joke (teasing “Machete Kills” and “Machete Kills Again,” respectively) at the ending: Deadline reports that Rodriguez has closed a deal to make “Machete Kills” for real, with Danny Trejo expected to reprise the title role.

The script by Kyle Ward (“developed” by Rodriguez) apparently finds Machete tasked by the U.S. Government to bring down a Mexican drug-cartel that is somehow tied into a billionaire arms-dealer’s scheme to start a world war with a superweapon in outer space. FWIW, Rodriguez has also “joked” in the past that “Machete Kills Again” would have Machete traveling to space, “Moonraker”-style.

Below, my review of the original film on “Escape to The Movies”: