By all rights, a movie based on a line of toys wherein the toys THEMSELVES not only star, but star alongside toy versions of other mass-market branded characters should be THE symbol for the final victory of creeping-corporatism in film.

And yet… “The Lego Movie” looks kind of incredible.

Animation buffs take note: What you’re seeing is (apparently) all CGI, but animated in such a way (other than the facial-features) so as to imitate the look of stop-motion made using Lego people. I’m not 100% sure what this technique is called, but I think it’s roughly similar to the way the Nicelanders were animated in “Wreck-It Ralph.”

Spoilers, ho!

Hard to believe, but in a few short months “Awards-Worthy (Studio) Movie Season” will be upon us. One of the incoming expected-biggies is Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street,” in which Leonardo DiCaprio continues his quest to shame his peers by winning an Oscar while he still looks about 19 years old.

Pic is another “rise and fall of hard-partying late-90s capitalist douchebags” saga, this time based on the memoirs of Jordan Belfort, who got busted in ’98 running athe crooked brokerage firm that also served as the inspiration for “Boiler Room,” one of the brighter spots from that strange “Vin Diesel is going to be a serious actor – no, for real” phase the industry was going through at the time.

Anyway, here’s a trailer:

The first printing has been completed on my first book, “Super Mario Bros. 3: Brick By Brick.” Very exciting.

And here we go…

Also: What will probably end up being one of the year’s best comedies is playing right now.

There are two Great Hopes for original Hollywood genre-movies this Summer. One is “Pacific Rim” (hey Warner Bros? Now that “Man of Steel” is out can we get a hundred trailers and constant TV-exposure for that?) and the other is Neil Blomkamp’s “District 9” follow-up “Elysium;” which now has a full(er) trailer.

Premise: It’s the future, and class has stratified to the point that a wealthy few live lives of disease, crime and pollution free bliss on an orbital space-station called Elysium while the working-class toils on an increasingly-blighted Earth below – kept from breaching into Elysium’s borders (MESSAGE!!!) by ruthless space-defenses, a robot army and bionically-augmented human soldiers. Matt Damon is a worker bee from Earth who, after being mortally-injured in an industrial accident, gets outfitted with a strength-enhancing mechanical exoskeleton so he can fight his way into Elysium to snatch medical supplies for himself and his fellow-afflicted.

http://uk.movies.yahoo.com/video/elysium-trailer-4-224018929.html?format=embed&player_autoplay=false
I love how this is shaping up. Blomkamp does the “looks plausible AND looks cool” school of scifi design better than almost anyone (gotta love how Henchman Number One is lugging around a Future Sword in a world crawling with automatic weapons), and the design of the robots and exoskeletons are awesome enough to sell me on this movie without the clever, possibly-incendiary setup – I want to see the guys with the power-suits (cosplayers to your soldering irons!) shoot and punch their way through those kill-bots yesterday.

“300” is one of them “phenom” movies that was absolutely huge for a moment in time and now feels like kind of a weird “why exactly were we all so hot for this?” footnote, so I’m not sure what kind of audience is waiting for a sequel. But they went and made one anyway, and now it has a trailer.

The actual plot of this one hasn’t been widely disseminated (largely because, again, nobody really seems to care) but from what has been said and from what this trailer reveals (new additions include boats and the color blue) it’s likely that they’re attempting a larger focus than the tightly-contained original; likely focusing both on the battles of Artemesium and Salamis (naval engagements taking place during and after Thermopylae from the first movie) and apparently also the Battle of Marathon.

Rodrigo Santoro is back as Xerxes (the film will also feature extended flashbacks to the God-King’s origin story) as are Lena Heady, David Wenham and Andrew Tiernan as Ephialtes. Our principal New Hotness is Eva Green as Queen Artemisia, commander of the Persian-allied naval forces.

Well. So much for that, then.

It’s basically the “Steve Rogers: Super Soldier” outfit from the brief overlap between “Bucky is Cap now” and “Steve is alive again” from a few years ago (which was in tern an in-joke homage to Jack Kirby’s Cap-parody “The Fighting American”)  but with a cowl and shield added. And yes – it’s the lack of stripes that does it. It’s not like dropping the yellow oval from the Bat-symbol; the stripes (or at the very least a healthy amount of red and white to go with all the blue) are effectively Cap’s “trademark,” the only thing that keeps him from just looking like a Power Ranger who’s missing a bunch of his mask. This is taking Superman’s “S” shield away.

These things aren’t really “all important” when you get right down to it (as I’ve said many times before, Batman has never once had a good-looking outfit in live-action and it didn’t stop his movies/TV shows from averaging out pretty decently) but it’s a bummer all the same. I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve seen a character-design from a Marvel Studios project and just completely hated it top-to-bottom, and it stings doubly-much given just how excellent Cap looked in both appearances so far. Doesn’t really mean anything regarding “The Winter Soldier’s” overall quality, again… but still disappointing (and I bet Phil isn’t a fan, either…)

It is going to be so weird if Orlando Bloom and Other Orlando Bloom Luke Evans have any scenes together…

Memo to all would-be humorists: “Calling” that The Barrel Scene would be turned into a big, elaborate action-sequence in this doesn’t qualify as especially prescient. Dial back the snark and enjoy your big-ass dragon.

I don’t see “Man of Steel” until later tonight. Stop asking.

Until then, here’s Superman.