Pictured: Armie Hammer and Johnny Depp as The Lone Ranger and Tonto, respectively. In answer to the obvious question: Yes, on his mother’s side, apparently.

Yeah, okay, whatever. Johnny Depp has a bird for a hat and that’s reeeeaaaalllllyyyy weird and everyone has already made that Nicholas Cage joke. What I wanna know is what’s up with The Ranger’s new look.

Not necessarily that they seem to have ditched the traditional red/white/blue color scheme (red kerchief, white hat, blue shirt typically, though it has differed), but what’s the deal with the Marshall’s badge? Traditionally, The Lone Ranger is a vigilante – a onetime Texas Ranger (or sometimes the civilian brother of a Ranger) left for dead who adopts an anonymous masked-persona to gain advantage over his would-be murderers. Is he an “official’ lawman in this version? And, if so, why the mask?

As expected, the success of “Chronicle” put director Josh Trank at the top of the to-call list for damn near every still-gestating superhero project; and now it appears he’s about to take his pick: A stand-alone vehicle built around “Venom.” Yes, the Spider-Man villain.

Wait, what?

Okay, so the reason this is happening is because – despite not having been interesting once since the end of his main origin story – Venom is one of Marvel’s cash-cows in terms of marketing (unless what you’re trying to market are comic books, in which case everyone stopped giving a shit after Maximum Carnage.) Sony has been planning to give Venom his own movie franchise since before “Spider-Man 3,” which is one of the reasons the character was forced into the movie (against director Sam Raimi’s wishes) in the first place.

But… that’s what makes this a head-scratcher: Sony has now re-booted Spider-Man, meaning that the Venom this new franchise was initially supposed to “start” from is kaput, right? I mean, they can’t very well call “Venom” a continuation of “Spider-Man 3” at the same time that the new “Amazing Spider-Man” franchise is just getting off the ground, can they? Wouldn’t that confuse the crap out of everybody? Or is this inadvertently spoiling that the “seeds” of the Venom story will be making some kind of appearance in “Amazing?” (Which, given the raging hard-on the producers have for this character, would be the least surprising thing that could happen in that movie.)

The answer, of course, is likely that the film will be “it’s own thing” with no connection to the Spider-Man series and some totally new character getting infected by The Symbiote… except here’s the problem with that: Spider-Man is the ONLY reason anyone cares about Venom.

The reason Venom is a great seller of t-shirts, toys and other sundry merchandising is that he looks cool; and what looks cool about him is that he’s a “monster-version” of Spider-Man – right down to all of his powers being Spider-Man’s powers. If this movie doesn’t have any connection to Spider-Man, how do you explain the living-costume putting Spider-Man’s logo on it’s chest and using his web powers? I mean, you can’t just leave that stuff out – take away the spider-powers and the “evil Spidey” look and this ceases to be the uber-marketable Venom that justified making the movie in the first place.

Here’s the new episode. Here’s some stuff you probably need to know about first.

So… this is the trailer for this year’s SECOND least-needed threequel, “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted.” Do you see what I see?

Is that a fucking DECAPITATED PUPPY at 1:13? Because I’m pretty damn certain that’s a fucking decapitated puppy at 1:13.

What.

The.

FUCK?

People forget this, but the purpose of “irreverent” humor is to get to the fundamental truth of something by cutting through the solemnity or import that surrounds it – to refer to disreputable pharmacuetical companies as “Drug Dealers,” for example.

So it was when I read this Washington Post opinion piece from Lisa Miller; which aims to take an “if-it-walks-like-a-duck” look at the image of American “conservative” politics of the moment as typified by the movement’s two dominant public-images: Pols and pundits crusading for the moral-right to keep women away from birth-control on one hand; Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum’s campaign-images as patrician papas flanked by their beaming, obedient wives and armies of offspring on the other. What she comes up with is nicely summarized by the headline the Post’s online-version used to tease the piece: “The Republican Fertility Cult.”

Short, accurate, incendiary and to-the-point. Well done.

“Men In Black 3,” possibly the least-demanded threequel since “Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles,” has a newer, longer, plot-explainier trailer. Will Smith (who should really have better things to do with his time) time-travels back to the 60s to partner with Josh Brolin as the younger version of Tommy Lee Jones (who does have better things to do with his time, hence the time-travel storyline.)

Ah hah hah hah hah hah! A notably-unusual famous person is actually part of the MIB/Alien-Coverup scene! That bit NEVER gets old, amirite?

OMG, you guys… seriously… this is like SOOOOOO FUNNY! ThIS car is driving all slow-mo and people are looking all like “day-um!” but it’s the suburbs instead of like New York or something and it’s totally not that kind of car; and there’s TOTALLY a rap song playing but they’re all dweeby white dudes! LOL!

In the time it took to watch that trailer, you have already seen, shrugged and immediately forgot about this movie about five times.

There’s my Chippy.

“Intermission” follows-up on “Act of Valor”

The original “Frankenweenie” short-film – about a monster-movie obsessed kid who ressurects his dead dog with mad science told in as a black-and-white Frankenstein parody – is like a time-capsule of what used to make Tim Burton such and exciting voice in filmmaking.

The first trailer for the feature-length remake (still b&w, but now executed in stop-motion a’la That One Movie That Makes Us Keep Giving Burton Another Chance) hopes to recapture some of that magic; and other than insistently reminding us of “Alice in Wonderland” it seems to succeed: