“Post-modern” has officially become the new “not even trying.”

Intermission talks “Our Uncertain Future”

Hey, remember that time when Disney bought “Star Wars” and announced a new Trilogy right off the bat and we all got kind of excited because maybe they’d get a really good, talented, maybe even “visionary” filmmaker attached who could revive the franchise and take it in new, exciting and interesting directions?

Well, so much for that idea…

Oh, well. Nice thought while it lasted, though. Hey, did you watch the new AoTGO yet? Cause you totally still can 🙂

Remember what you were doing today, because some day your daughter may ask you.

A little over an hour ago at an official press conference, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced that the U.S. Military’s official ban on women serving in front-line combat roles has been lifted. The full rollout will be a three-year integration process, set to climax with the first (official) female combat troops appearing in 2016… which should make for some interesting juxtaposition, as it’s still widely-expected that that same year will feature at least one major female contender for the Presidency.

Predictably, someone isn’t happy.

SOURCE: Latino Review

Latino Review (who are really, really good at smuggling this kind of shit out of Warner Bros lately) has what purports to be a confirmed lineup for the surging-through-development “Justice League” movie. Drumroll, please…

SUPERMAN, BATMAN, WONDER WOMAN, GREEN LANTERN and THE FLASH.

Random statistics: 1 less total membership than The Avengers but same basic male/female ratio, 2 natural-born metahumans, 1 “created” metahuman, 2 “normal” humans – one with “powers” and one without, 3 with prior movies, 4 with prior TV shows, zero live-action debuts zero (comic-canonical) minorities, zero magic-users, zero non-humanoids.

So… about the roster you would expect, really. No head-scratchers but no surprises, either.

What sticks out to me most is, given that this entire project has been willed into existance as a counter-measure to Disney’s “Avengers” juggernaut, there doesn’t immediately seem to be any attempt at hitting their rival in it’s most vulnerable spot: Even the most enthusiastic fans of Marvel’s innaugural team-up had to concede that the all-caucasian, one-woman outfit was decidedly un-21st Century in the diversity department; and yet here’s the Justice League putting up the same basic vanilla sundae. Putting one more woman on the team, at least, would immediately generate several days worth of free “DC sees Marvel’s heroine gamble, raises” publicity.

The problem with that, of course, is that WB is going with “everybody knows” characters here since they’re doing the team-up first and solo movies after; and apart from Supergirl and Batgirl Wonder Woman is the only female DC Hero that anyone outside of fandom has heard of. With apologies to, say, Vixen, Black Canary or Zatanna; the headlines would’ve been “Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and WHO?”

That said, if you’re in the position to make or take bets on this sort of thing, I’d say right now there’s very good odds that “League’s” Green Lantern will end up being African-American John Stewart instead of Hal Jordan. Aside from the obvious upside, it would be the easiest way to further minimize associations with the “Green Lantern” movie disaster and Stewart is probably the Lantern most familiar/remembered by the sought-after Millenial demographic; who grew up with him as THE Green Lantern of the Justice League cartoons. There’s seriously no good reason for WB not to do this, other than to appease a minority of comic purists. (This wouldn’t be like the “John Blake is Batman” thing, where you’re junking the significant Bruce/Clark relationship from the books – there’s no comparable Hal/Anybody “thing” to lose.)

Interestingly, Latino Review goes on to say that while this five is being set up as the primary group, there may or may not be smaller-scale appearances planned for The Martian Manhunter and Aquaman, which makes a certain amount of sense: The film’s plot supposedly concerns an alien invasion of Earth, so there’s plenty of room for J’onn J’onzz to turn up in a supporting (or surprise “holy crap this random guy we met is actually a Martian shape-shifter!”) role; and Aquaman is technically the ruler of an underwater kingdom so they could go to meet/consult with him (maybe Wonder Woman already knows him? Just a guess) without him actually having to be part of the team… like, if they needed to borrow a bunch of sharks or something.

The film is still without a director or a 100% locked-in screenplay, and I doubt we’ll be seeing anything more concrete taking shape until we all find out how “Man of Steel” performs.

Head’s up, the latest all-new “Adventures of The Game OverThinker” is now up and running on Blip and The Other Blog:

http://blip.tv/play/AYONt1gC.html?p=1http://a.blip.tv/api.swf#AYONt1gC

One of the big thrills of my year thus far was A.) getting to meet and hang out with a bunch of the crew from TGWTG’s side of the interwebs at MAGFest and B.) having everyone turn out to be super, super cool people. This is a weird business, and it’s quietly exhilirating to be able to chill out, “vent” and talk-shop with people who otherwise occupy that nebulous space where you’re simultaneously fans and colleagues of one-another.

I bring this up as a segue into clarifying that, despite “knowing” (and finally not just in the digital sense) a bunch of the principals involved here – no, I had no idea this was coming either…

Anyway, pretty much THE big news in this “industry” a few months back was that Doug Walker (whom I have not had the pleasure of meeting personally as yet) went and gave his Nostalgia Critic series – the nominal “backbone” of TGWTG – a send-off, filing a final episode for the show and sending the character to his final reward as the meta-plot of the site’s annual teamup movie. This was kind of a big deal, since these things rarely “go out” while still exceedingly popular. In it’s place, Walker and his team have been trying out some new material (“Demo Reel,” most notably) which I’ve actually found pretty interesting but was met with… “mixed” reactions from fans, to be charitable.

Well, about an hour ago, THIS went up on their site…

http://blip.tv/play/gbk7g42vDgI.x?p=1http://blip.tv/api.swf#gbk7g42vDgI

I’ll admit it: As a fan of the series, I’m definitely glad to see it coming back in some form… but I’d be A LOT less so if it didn’t feel like Walker was in a good place about it coming back, which is the sense I get from this. This is some of the better acting/staging he’s offered up, period, and what that says to me he’s being sincere about going this route because he wants to – not just because people having been begging him to do it.

I’ve been through the burnout/stagnation rollercoaster in this business myself, to say nothing of the change-averse fandom ride that can come with it. And while I can thank terrific editors for pulling me out of such funks on a few occasions I also understand how rough making these kind of career-direction decisions can be in scenarios where you’re effectively your own boss. It’s hard to make a big change to your own output, but it’s even harder to say that maybe you didn’t change 100% for the better. This is one of the classier versions of the “okay, maybe I spoke too soon…” walkbacks I’ve seen; and I’m now really looking forward to seeing where he goes with this – especially under the more open “directives.”

Hell, I’m so (cautiously, because again I know approximately nothing of the behind-the-scenes business at hand here) happy that I’m not even that put-out about having to scrap “Timothy Green” from the Big Picture to-do list…

For some reason we’re getting two “Die Hard In The White House” movies this year, innevitably to be differentiated as “the one with the black president” and “the one with the white president.” “Olympus Has Fallen,” whose debut trailer showed up today, is the white president installment with Aaron Eckhart as POTUS, Gerard Butler as the lone Secret Service agent left in the danger zone and North(?) Korean Terrorists (seriously?) as the bad guys. Antoine Fuqua directs.

The “black president” version is “White House Down,” which comes later this year courtesy Roland Emmerich with Channing Tatum as the Agent and Jamie Foxx as President Faux-Bama. That one is supposed to be more action/comedy flavored, with Foxx’s character getting in on the heroics.

Not really, but when not watch me spend five minutes elaborating on that?

Exactly 40 years ago on this day, The United States made one of it’s most landmark affirmations of being a nation of laws built not on superstition but rather on reason, reality and science.

At the end of the day, there are two kinds of people: Thinkers and Believers. Today is the anniversary of a day when the Thinkers won out. The fight goes on.

It could be worse.

“Intermission” features things that would probably have been worse, and my fault.