This is the year when something genuinely subversive got made in the form of a Disney Princess(TM) movie.

Spoiler-free review HERE (and embedded below.)

And here’s where we start spilling ink on all those BIG SPOILERS:

…and do I even need to say it?

I’m putting the actual image (which if fake is a pretty good fake scooped from Twitter by ComicBookMovie) after the jump, because one of the three is still not “officially” announced even if it’s the least surprising thing possible. Suffice it to say, sanding The Rhino and Electro – two of the most interestingly-designed iconic Spider-Man villains, easily – down to “Man In Hoodie” and “Boring Robot” is kind of an accomplishment in and of itself. “Different” is one thing – this is just boring.

Hit the jump for the “spoiler”…

Part of why I’m disinclined to think of this as a fake is the work that’d have to go into it: Make the fake image, print it out onto parchment-style poster and hang it in a plausible location.

In this case, the wallpaper screams “hotel conference room,” which would suggest this was probably snapped at a merchandising meetup – i.e. “here’s what you’ll be putting onto lunchboxes and party-plates.” Therefore, it’s possible for this to be a “real” poster but not a final poster. I imagine it’s pretty close, though.

The less said about Electro the better, at this point. I know that Rhino is here being drawn from Ultimate Marvel’s R.H.I.N.O. concept… and I don’t like it here, either. It really is amazing that the entire “Ultimate” experiment didn’t yield a single not-shit new idea outside of the Samuel L. Jackson gag. Speaking of which, it looks like you can see a closer shot of Green Goblin’s face on the billboard/screen in the upper right-hand corner – the gossip on this one is that A.) it’s actually Harry Osborn who becomes the Goblin this time, and B.) this will be “Ultimate” Green Goblin – who’s basically a less-interesting version of The Abomination.

So here’s a thing that happened:

Remember that cheeseball Bible miniseries from Roma Downey and company that the press felt obliged to pretend was a really big deal earlier in the year? Well, they’ve re-cut and added scenes to the New Testament parts and are releasing the result as a theatrical feature called “SON OF GOD.”

In case you were wondering what the #BRINGBACKBRIAN thing exploding social-media overnight was all about, FoxTV has released this official (unlisted) video (SPOILERS)

So… yeah. Prevailing theory seems to be that this is a long-ball gag to pay off next new episode or maybe some sort of lead-in to the rumored Family Guy feature film.

Here’s my one-finger salute.

Intermission: “Franchise Dos & Don’ts”

A spiritual-successor to THE GREAT MUPPET CAPER? You have my attention.

…in as much as it makes the film merely look like a pointless, bland “modernizing” of the original; as opposed to the “eye-gougingly horrible shit” approach taken by the two U.S. trailers. Still, I could’ve gone on living quite contentedly having never seen Robocop do the three point landing bit.

Wow, who had a busy few days? Bob did. Here’s some of what might’ve been missed while I wasn’t posting:

SUPER MARIO 3D WORLD – REVIEWED for The Escapist (yeah, I’m doing this now)

AGENTS OF SHIELD: “THE WELL” – RECAPPED.

MARVEL’S NETFLIX SHOWS – Um… Talked About For Pageviews!!!

“CALL OF DUTY: GHOSTS” – On The Game OverThinker!

So… remember how FX – Fox’s barely-watched teen/college-age basic cable channel – spun off a sibling network called FXX earlier this year? If so, remember wondering what sense that made, given how FX doesn’t really even have enough content for one channel as it is? Well, now we have our answer: THE SIMPSONS needed a cable home.

And just like that, the basic cable landscape just got shook the fuck up.

Okay, briefly: A few months back, the magic-number of years and money passed for 20th Century Fox to put THE SIMPSONS up for cable syndication deals. This previously wasn’t possible, because the syndication deals for the series were struck long enough ago that it was still not uncommon for network syndication contracts to include agreements that kept the series off of cable competitors. Hence why you haven’t seen, say, TBS, TNT or USA using this show to fill rerun-blocs like they do with LAW & ORDER, HOUSE, FAMILY GUY, NCIS, etc.

But now that’s over, and FXX has won the very competitive bidding war and can now run all 530 episodes from THE SIMPSON’s first 24 season (subsequent seasons will become available as they conclude on Fox) whenever and however they wish on the channel. Even if you’re in the “it hasn’t been good since Season 10!” camp, even just that would a crop of well over 200 episodes to work with. And they have precisely zero incentive to not run this massive backlog of content from one of the most recognized and popular multimedia properties of all time as often as they possibly can.

The “dirty” secret of minor cable nets like FX/FXX (or USA, TNT, TBS, etc) is that they pull serious ad revenue by booking blocs of familiar “comfort food” TV reruns (either one show or similar shows, see: USA’s daily LAW & ORDER: SVU marathons) largely on the calculation that people who keep their sets on all the time just for background chatter will just leave that channel running as they go about their home-stuff. THE SIMPSONS – whatever you may think of it now or previously – could not be more perfect for this: It’s colorful, it’s immediately recognizable, it’s family-friendly and thus can be on at any time of day, etc. Hell, add in the obvious 90s Nostalgia factor and it’s also the most ideal possible fit for the college/stoner/work-from-home “overnight programming” time-slots… which is why if you’ve got money tied up in Comedy Central or Adult_Swim, you are not about to have a happy morning.

The “special” programming possibilities are staggering, from ratings/ad-rev perspective. Consider: On Halloween, FXX could run all 23 “Treehouse Of Horrors” specials as a day-long marathon – I could see people building Halloween parties around that. Every Sideshow Bob story? Do-able. Smithers-centric marathon on Secretaries Day? A Moe Marathon? Holiday episodes? Hell, you don’t think legions of devoted SIMPSONS fans wouldn’t make lucrative “live tweet this” events out of, say, Bumblebee Man Night? Any half-decent programmer should be salivating at how easy this would make their jobs.

The deal also gives FX’s On-Demand arm, FXNow, exclusive streaming rights to every episode – which, yes, likely means you’ll be able to watch any of the 530 whenever you want on TV, mobile, PC, whatever.

My only immediate question is what (if anything) they plan to do about the significantly large number of episodes that were produced pre-HD. That handily includes all of the “Classic Seasons” and a good deal of the Silver Age, and its apparently why some network syndicators have dialed back on re-airing those because they worry people will be turned-off by non-HD visuals. Will they do an optimizing-pass on the classic seasons to make them HD-ready?