Nothing came out this week, okay?

“Intermission” has canceled screenplay fun.

I was not an enthusiastic fan of JJ Abrams’ “Star Trek” reboot. It was good… just not especially good. Passable. Decent. Not-unwatchable. Might’ve been better if Chris Pine were capable of displaying a recognizable human emotion beyond vague self-satisfaction.

Anyway, here’s the trailer for the sequel, “Star Trek Into Darkness” (no, I didn’t forget the colon, they did) which doesn’t really reveal what everyone wanted it to reveal, i.e. the identity of Benedict Cumberbatch’s villain. Everyone has been assuming he’s Khan, which would be an overly obvious and safe choice (which is why it probably IS Khan) but the case could also be made for him playing Gary Mitchell. The only “special” thing we see him do is display some sort of superhuman strength, so really it could be either of them (in modern movies, telekinesis gives you all the other super-powers too, generally.)

In any case, he’s blowing shit up in front of big crowds while ranting about Starfleet/Federation/etc not being as secure and safe as everyone thinks, so… yeah, whoever he is looks like another riff on The Joker. I let that slide with Silva in “Skyfall” because theres was a bit more to him eventually… I’m not inclined to be as kind here.

Whatever. Low-priority release on my end. Could be good, could be bad, not going to make or break my year one way or the other. We’ll see. Would like to know if the new blonde gal is playing Nurse Chapel or Yeoman Rand, though.

“Tron: Legacy,” like “John Carter,” was a project that (barely) made it to screens before Disney decided to cut off their plans to take over the “boy market” (their words) with their own genre properties and instead just buy Marvel and Star Wars’ catalogue. Both films got a mixed reception from critics and audiences, but “Tron” at least made money… though for awhile it seemed like not enough to justify a planned new set of sequels.

Apparently, that’s changed. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the project is back on with director Joseph Kosinski returning to direct. No word on a storyline, though extra scenes and clues from “Legacy” point to Cilian Murphy (as the son of David Warner’s human heavy from the first movie) having been set up for a larger role. Whatever, it’s more Tron. I’m there.

I really want to still like Johnny Depp. Good actor (most of the time) and seems like a decent guy. I don’t even mind that he’s evidently decided to just keep riding the “offbeat actor being weird in bloated franchise epics”gravy train, really… just that he keeps doing such a terrible job of it. “Dark Shadows” didn’t work, “Pirates 4” was godawful, “Lone Ranger” looks like a disaster, etc.

That said… if ever there was a symbol to summarize just how much Depp’s career/image/persona has “turned around” in my eyes, singing up for another big, comfy Disney project that’s basically a version of a vastly more interesting Terry Gilliam project he almost made back before “Pirates” made him the new It-Boy would do it. Yeesh! If you had to make a movie about Terry Gilliam’s career, him standing in front of a theater advertising the premiere of THIS movie would be the final shot.

Cinema Salem is a great little outfit in Salem, MA that brings not only major releases to it’s screens but indie, arthouse and foriegn features to a local, downtown movie scene. These are the good guys, and like many others they are in danger of being left behind in the push to convert to digital.

They’ve started a Kickstarter to help get themselves secure for the Digital Future, I’ve already backed them, and in the spirit of The Holidays I’m asking any of my fans (local or otherwise) who’re in the giving/seasonal mood to think about kicking in what they can if they so wish. You can do so HERE. Thank you.

I tend to be high-strung and on-edge during the holidays for a number of reasons, but I’m actually quite fond of American Christmas – aka the modern holiday of commercial consumption (presided over by neo-pagan deity figures like Santa, Rudolph and Frosty) that has about as much in common with the Christian holiday it grew out of as that holiday itself had in common with the pagan seasonal celebrations it originally co-opted. Hence, stuff like this tickles me.

Loathe as I am to link to batshit-insane, racist, homophobic birther “news” site WorldNetDaily, this video (and th unfuriated comments it inspired) is kind of delightful: Richard Rives – a controversial “Christian Archeaologist” (he runs Wyatt Archaeological Research, which promotes dubious expeditions seeking out scientific evidence for Biblical lore) who has also dedicated a series of books and scholarly articles to “exposing” the (otherwise well-documented) pagan origins of modern Christian traditions with an eye towards getting back to some “pure” original form – here argues matter-of-factly that present day Christians oughtn’t celebrate Christmas because the holiday itself has almost zero Biblical basis, instead being a Pagan festival “adapted” to Christianity later.

http://player.ooyala.com/player.js?embedCode=Z5Y2ZlNzqdZeWVpnR4DYBfI2zMTYT8pG&height=295&video_pcode=9kcm06PtVGNZkFkXR2898mHnBha_&deepLinkEmbedCode=Z5Y2ZlNzqdZeWVpnR4DYBfI2zMTYT8pG&width=525

What’s fun for me in this is that, while Rives is almost certainly a nut, he’s not “wrong” in his data. This is why – much as I loathe the Rich White People Faux-Victimhood Pageant that is “The War on Christmas” – I’m also increasingly annoyed with the snarky “holiday takedown” campaigns waged by activist-Atheism this time of year. I mean, guys (meaning Atheism) …I’m on YOUR SIDE vis-a-vi “fuck the fundies;” but going all Anti-Xmas is a meaningless and kind of mean-spirited “cause” to take up – whether they admit it to themselves or not, MOST Americans are celebrating a secular holiday whose “gods” are acknowledged fictions created by pop-culture folklore of the 20th Century. Chill out.

Supergirl, Part The Second.

And hey, did you notice this “Game OverThinker” Special?

Uh-oh.

Warner Bros. cannot catch a break in their awkward dash to get “Justice League” onto the big screen for 2015. They already faced having to open the pic in the same relative space as “Avengers 2,” and then found out that they’ll also be contending with “Star Wars: Episode VII.” All of this, of course, comes on top of the fact that the whole project is hinging on “The Man of Steel” doing the kind of business (and audience word-of-mouth) that no DC superhero not named Batman has done in the 30+ years between “Superman II” and right now.

Now, their working choice of nemesis for the “Justice League” screenplay (currently being hammered out by Will Beale) may have been discovered by Latino Review – who are very rarely wrong on these things. If they’re right… honestly, I’m a lot less enthusiastic for this project already.

READ ON if you want the details…

 
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According to Latino Review, The Justice League will face off against DARKSEID, alien dictator from Planet Apokolips.

Meh.

He’s not a BAD choice, certainly. He makes sense from a plot standpoint, he has lots of foot soldiers and flunkies to make trouble, he’s passably-familiar to non-devotees because he’s been in a bunch of the cartoons and he’s “powerful” in the sense that he can get into fistfights with Superman. I get the sense that that last one is the main reason he’ll be onhand: WB’s approach to their DC properties is easily shallow/disengaged enough for me to believe they take the “Superman is too unstopable to be compelling!” thing seriously.

Problem is… even though Darkseid came first by many years, he’s really similar to prospective “Avengers 2” antagonist Thanos; and even if “League” were to open first Thanos is likely going to be hovering around in the various Marvel movies over the next two years – no matter how you slice it, this is the exact wrong way to go if your trying to not look like your playing catch-up to another movie. Honestly, even Lex Luthor (who I still wouldn’t count out in some fashion) again would be automatically more interesting because of the kind of scheme a mere human would have to be working to challenge a team of near-demigods.

Also problematic: Unless their hiding a massive (and, frankly, rather unwelcome) “It’s actually ALL about Darkseid!” angle from “Man of Steel;” he doesn’t really have much of a connection to the other characters or their worlds – he’s not anbody’s father, brother, mortal enemy, etc; and there won’t be any movies in-between the retcon him into being involved in some new way.

That’s actually the most potentially interesting thing about Darkseid being in a movie: that he’s part of a much larger pantheon of cosmic figures in Jack Kirby’s cult-classic “Fourth World” books. The prospect of all that business turning up would be spectacular… but probably not going to happen. Kirby’s “New Gods” have a silly-name problem (a sample: “Granny Goodness & Her Female Furies”), and like Darkseid they were designed to live mostly seperate from the rest of the DCU until the line faded (Kirby was a great artist, prolific-but-batshit-insane “idea man, yes… not-so-hot as a writer) to mostly being background noise for “Darkseid: Catch-All Big-Bad For Any Scenario.”

So… yeah, it’ll come as no surprise if you read my column over the weekend that this doesn’t exactly fill me with hope. Definitely doesn’t mean the movie will be “bad,” and it’s totally possible that they’ve got an interesting story to tell with him or a bigger picture yet to be revealed (“Darkseid… aaaaand also a ginormous army of enemies from across the entire DCU!!!”); but this just isn’t as immediately ‘cool’ to find out as Loki was (“a magic user whose more about fucking with The Avengers’ mind-game style than brute force? Interesting!”) and it just feels like an incredibly safe, calculated, risk-averse move in a movie (and genre) that needs to be anything but.

I could, of course, be completely off-base on this one.

This is of interest to me, it may be of interest to you.

In what are easily two of the most socially and historically significant changes to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (aka “DSM” – the leading though not exclusive manual by which professional psychiatry diagnoses and classifies patients) since the publication removed Homosexuality from the list of mental-disorders two decades ago; a major change has been made to the guidelines for diagnosing the Autism Spectrum that effectively removes Asperger’s Syndrome as a seperate diagnosis… and Gender Identity Disorder has been rendered a “disorder” no longer.

While Autism itself will continue to be classified as a disorder (though one with a broader spectrum than previous,) Aspergers and other High-Functioning forms of such will now be incorporated into the broader Autism Spectrum diagnosis. The change, the subject of debate for awhile now, has been praised by some advocacy groups but disdained by others. One imagines that “Aspergers” will still be used as a colloquial shorthand for a long time, given how visible and mainstream the term has become.

While likely effecting fewer individual patients/persons overall, the Gender Identity change is perhaps more long-term significant: The condition previously classified as “Gender Identity Disorder,” i.e. persons who feel that they have been born the wrong gender, will now no longer be classified as a “disorder” – instead, it’s official medical/psychiatric title will be “Gender Dysphoria.”

The second change that has been hard fought for by many in the Transgendered community, but will now likely raise a new set of legal issues to be fought over since the “disorder” diagnosis has allowed for some trans people to file anti-discrimination lawsuits in certain cases (wrongful termination, for example); and the legal wrangling over insurance companies’ obligations in regards to gender-reassignment surgery – already certain to be a heated issue in the age of Obamacare – will likely intensify.