Latino Review – who’ve picked up the “rogue nerd-gossip” slack in a major way now that AICN etc have gone a little more legit – have been the go-to guys for scoops on Warner Bros. haphazard scramble to get “Justice League” onscreen, most recently outing Darkseid as the film’s apparent (and really kind-of anticlimactic) heavy. Now they’ve got a new piece of (possible) news: Will Beale’s screenplay for the film might be based on a three-issue JLA story-arc from 1980, “Crisis on New Genesis,” which involved the League and the Earth-2 Justice Society meeting up with Jack Kirby’s “New Gods” characters, of which Darkseid was the main antagonist.

Prior to “Crisis on Infinite Earths” uniting the DC Multiverse, the Justice League books would do annual crossovers with JSA which would typically involve the discovery of more new worlds and characters, which would always be called “Crisis on ______.” JLA 183 – 185’s story was one of those, essentially serving as a “welcome to officially hanging around on our margins!” to the New Gods (while published by DC and technically taking place in the DCU, Kirby’s New Gods books were kept mostly at arm’s length from the rest of things prior to this.)

Some sites find this a lot more exciting than I can manage to. With all congrats to LR for landing another scoop, that the screenwriter of a comic adaptation might be starting out with a story featuring the goodies and baddies he’s been given to work with isn’t exactly Watergate. The idea that, since this was a Multiverse story, it might indicate that Warners might be looking to play that card to get out of continuity hiccups (re: the JLA movie’s Superman, Batman, etc. all coming from different universes instead of just not having run into eachother before) is interesting… but I can’t really see them going there.

A brief glimpse of Christian Bale, Brandon Routh etc flashing by on a monitor while someone monologues about a Multiverse as a wink/nudge throwaway gag? Sure, that I can picture (be pretty cool, too.) Or maybe this would be the way to get Joseph Gordon Levitt’s Detective Officer John Robin Mary-Sue Blake Esquire into the movie for a bit (“On my world, Batman died!”) thus establishing some obligatory link with the “Nolanverse” while still having a Bruce Wayne Batman in this one. That I could get behind, absolutely – great way to move on from that series without having to “overwrite” it.

But, really… Occam’s Razor pretty-much says that they’re gonna fight Darkseid because he’s the most recognizable League-level threat from the animated series and WB has told everyone to start name-checking “Crisis on New Genesis” because they figure “don’t worry, we’re reading the material!” will mollify worrisome fans. We’ll see.

I unfortunately had to miss this big group sit-down of the Boston Online Film Critics Association with the Post-Movie Podcast, but fortunately for you there’s a lot of funny people on here that you probably don’t  hear from all the time. ENJOY!

UPDATE: I will happily report that I was one of the reasons (probably the primary reason, I’d wager, or one of them) that the film that came in at #11 got so close to coming in at #10 – the prospect of which some of the membership found so terrifying. Much as I would’ve liked to see it land there, I can’t say that Sean isn’t right: If that had made the list of a “big debut” for a critics association with “online” in it’s name people would be jumping all over that (because in their minds it conforms to this or that stereotype) instead Jeff Wells innexplicably dubbing us “Beefalos.”

http://html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/2155677/height/300/width/570/direction/no/autoplay/no/autonext/no/thumbnail/yes/preload/no/no_addthis/no/

Holy mother of God…

“G.I. Joe: Retaliation” was supposed to have already come and gone from theaters, but was very publically delayed at the last minute – officially to be re-fitted into 3D, unofficially to exempt Channing Tatum from the “kill everyone from the first one except Snake Eyes so The Rock can be the star” mandate after he surprisingly jumped from beefcake B-lister to bro-comedy icon (“21 Jump Street”) and cougar-crowd sex symbol (“Magic Mike”) mid-production.

Now, with the film getting (slightly) closer to a release, there’s a new trailer (yes, in shitty Yahoo format – sorry) more-or-less dedicated to “Yes, Duke is back.”

http://movies.yahoo.com/video/g-joe-retaliation-trailer-3-163139765.html?format=embed

I’ll say this much: If this is really the plot – the good guys have to protect the rest of the world from a gone-rogue U.S. government – that’s pretty ballsy for a jokey, merch-driven nostalgia property.

And we’re done here.

Things are crazy busy here (and I plan to have more to say on this one soon enough in another context) so you’ll forgive me if I don’t have much in depth to say on the new Superman trailer beyond… yeah, here’s the new Superman trailer:

Oh! And here’s my final SuperGirl “Big Picture” episode, as well!

I’ll say this much: I’m not precisely “elated” by any of this, but that’s possibly because it’s the first trailer for a property like this in awhile that doesn’t feel like it’s aimed DIRECTLY at “me” demographically and I appreciate that. The whole campaign up to this point has been designed to evoke a sense of “This looks interesting… what is thi.. oh! This is Superman?” in an audience, so it’s been light on “holy shit!” moments and comic iconography. Me, I don’t need to be “sold” on the idea that a new Superman movie is a good idea or that the character is “relevant” but apparently a lot of the public does and that’s who this is aimed at.

One of my more widely-read contemporaries on Twitter (Devin Faraci, I want to say) negatively described the “Star Trek Into Darkness” trailer as “chasing ‘The Dark Knight’ in a post-‘Avengers’ world,” and I get some sense of that same undercurrent here (the presence of odious cinematic boogeyman Hand-Held and his partner Lens Flare doesn’t help) but there’s enough present in the margins for me to still hope we’ll get something good out of this. “Dark Knight”-good? Probably not. “Avengers”-good? Impossible. But there’s potential. Maybe.

I’m about to head to bed (long day of Holiday work-planning) but it probably means something that this Warner Bros.Viral-Site – which is supposedly a “countdown” timer using Kryptonian alphanumerics – has gone up online as part of a “Man of Steel” ARG promotion. Will we get lucky and get to see the full trailer before it debuts in front of “The Hobbit?”

I’m not a tremendous fan of “The Lone Ranger,” but having so recently suffered through “Green Lantern” and “The Amazing Spider-Man,” my heart breaks with empathy for what Johnny Depp, Gore Verbinski and Disney have in store for them. Holy SHIT, does this look terrible. Cheap self-parody is one thing, but inconsistent and bad cheap self-parody is another:

Improbably, M. Night Shyamalan is out of Movie Jail again. Here’s the trailer for his latest project, “After Earth,” a Will & Jaden Smith team-up project in which the two play a spacefaring father and son who wind up stranded on a post-apocalyptic Earth that has reverted to a neo-prehistoric state (he wouldn’t have it turn out to actually be the past with Jaden as The Intelligent Designer… would he?)

http://movies.yahoo.com/video/earth-trailer-1-170245149.html?format=embed

The Boston Online Film Critics Association, of which I am a member, has voted on it’s innaugural year-end awards.

The big winner is “Zero Dark Thirty,” taking Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress. Daniel Day Lewis gets Best Actor for “Lincoln.” Go here for the full roster of winners and the “Top Ten” list that “ZDT” topped to win.

Since someone is going to ask, I can tell you that three out of the four acting categories match my personal picks (everybody got three ranked picks per category save for Best Picture which was a 1-10 ranked list, I believe individual ballots will be posted sometime next week) which is pretty cool; and that not only do I have no serious “disagreement” with any of the winners I think it’s an exceptionally good roster.

P.S. For the record: Every elligible film has been screened for critics as of today. While reviews and/or public opinions are embargoed on some of them (i.e. YES I’ve seen Django, ZDT, The Hobbit and Les Miserables but NO I can’t tell you if they’re good yet) awards are not. I’m aware that that doesn’t make much sense, but we don’t make the rules.