Happy Halloween! Good news, THE LEGO MOVIE still looks like the best thing ever:

Well… it’s still early yet, right?

I’m not sure what feels more low-rent/half-assed about this first DOFP trailer: Using both the “Sunshine” AND “The Thin Red Line” scores – the most overused trailer-music lifts outside of “Crimson Tide” and “Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story” – or having Wolverine spell out why it’s stupid to send Wolverine on this mission (quantum-leaping back into his 1970s self to help the cast of “First Class” fight Tyrion Lannister’s army of Transformers and presumably retcon “X3” and “Origins” further out of existence) for no other reason than “he’s the popular one.”

Hey – remember that part in “The Avengers” where everyone else just hung back and did nothing the whole time so the camera could focus on Iron Man because he’s the money-shot? Oh, right… they didn’t do that.

I’m sure it’ll be just fine, but there’s no shaking the sense that “First Class” was probably as good as this series was going to get while still moored to the first two Bryan Singer entries. With apologies to Singer… the guy was never cut-out to make blockbusters like this, and he probably wouldn’t be doing them at all if the first “X-Men” hadn’t been so surprisingly-not-shit-for-a-pre-“Spider-Man”-superhero-movie. Maybe he’ll pull this one off, and better him than Ratner again, but still…

Happy Halloween!

This year’s (mostly complete) Halloween costume, as I continually checking off the list of “guys I maybe kinda look like in certain clothes” …SGT. SLAUGHTER (G.I. Joe-era uniform, for you completists):

Basically, my physique is ideal for certain pre-WWII cartoon characters, certain early arcade characters and any heavyweight pro-wrestler from before the bodybuilding/steroid era. So there’s that…

…I’d say really dissapointing, but until this moment I’d completely forgotten they were even making this. Oh, well.

As good as you’ve heard.

So it’s Captain America versus Halliburton, basically. I can deal:

Wow, that looks really good – Captain America as a Marvel/American James Bond, or maybe a “Bourne” movie without its head up its ass. Just wish I could enjoy the Hellicarrier crashing over D.C. without having traumatic flashbacks to “Into Darkness.”

It’s odd that there isn’t more dialogue laying out who and what is supposed to be going on (how many people are going to “get” that The Winter Soldier refers to the guy with the robot-arm?) but it looks like borrowing the broad strokes of Ed Brubaker’s pre-“Civil War” books is a good solution to making the man-out-of-time angle work: Cap essentially fighting against post-9/11 paranoid/corrupt militarism is a nice way of stripping out the more discordant stuff (“um, Steve… didn’t they still have Whites Only bathrooms in your day?”) from the “WWII-era Good America returns to teach Modern America a lesson” angle that’s built into the character.

I’m still not a fan of the drab new outfit, though, but compared to how cool the rest of this looks that’s small potatoes – Batman has had a shitty costume in every single one of his eight theatrical movies and those average-out pretty decently (really, only Schumacher’s second and Nolan’s third are outright BAD films). Plus, I’m getting the sense it’s a thematic thing along with the bigger plot. Post-“Avengers” S.H.I.E.L.D morphing into something evil (I want Robert Redford’s obviously evil government/business guy to pull of his rubber “human” face to reveal The Red Skull, Baron Zemo or Arnim Zola in the worst way… but hat might read as kind of a mean joke from Redford’s perspective – and yes, I know he’s probably just Lukin from Brubaker’s run) seems to be a big element of this, and Cap ditching “their” version of his uniform would be an easy symbolic moment for Act 3.

Plus, it looks very much like the guys we see him fighting in a version of the classic costume are wearing modern-day tactical gear – y’know what’d be great? If, since they’re in D.C., he broke into the Smithsonian to steal the original or a replica thereof (leaving behind a very polite “sorry” note and some cash to cover the cost of the glass, of course.)

Below is (sigh) the teaser for the trailer for “CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER,” the actual trailer for which should be hitting the web sometime Thursday. There’s little of note to be seen, save for small details like a Washington D.C. setting, the presence of Nick Fury and Black Widow sporting her third new haircut in as many movies…

…except that bit at 0:10, which appears to show Cap wearing a uniform that’s different from the odd-looking all-blue number that had been teased for the film previously. – but is also not the same as either of his prior getups. So what’s the deal?

At firs glance, it looks like he’s just wearing his WWII era uniform – which would imply that this is a flashback. But it’s not precisely the same gear: The fabric is different, for one thing, but most obviously the torso has an extra red stripe in the center which the “First Avenger” costume lacked – it looks like a hybrid between the WWII and “Avengers”-era looks, which is fine by me.

Presumably, we’ll get a better sense of what might be up from the full trailer whenever they decide to put it up.

Back to the camera/glance-over-the-shoulder is a bit of a cliche, but it’s a nice image – and the placement of the shield here does double duty obscuring the changes to the uniform, saving the discussion about that (I’m still not a fan) for the trailer apparently set to drop later this week.

Also, the placement in the middle of the cargo door forms a subliminal “A,” so that’s fun. The geographic placement of those D.C. landmarks looks a little… “off,” though, right?

Is anyone taking odds on whether any of the “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D” characters will turn up here? It feels more appropriate than were they to pop up in “Thor,” and Cap gets name-checked on the show more often than the other Avengers (so far.) I’d enjoy that, it’d be like when The Lone Gunmen were in the “X-Files” movie – except, y’know, somebody would give a shit.

Oh, don’t get me wrong – this is funny… but so far it seems like the only thing the “ANCHORMAN 2” trailers are selling is more scenes of The News Team dicking around, which was only one of the components that made the original so worthwhile.

I understand the probable logic – this sequel seems to be about Ron dealing poorly with race the same way he dealt poorly with feminism in the original, so a new character has effectively taken Veronica’s role – but I think people underestimate how important her part (the supposed “straight-man” whose just as nuts as everyone else) was to the chemistry that made the film work.