Y’know, guys? I understand we’re all very, very fond of our tablets and phones and such and there’s an innate tragic irony to a man of vision dying young… but do we really need to be in a rush to enshrine the legacy of Steve Jobs? I mean, it’s not like he was President. Or some kind of great humanitarian (or great villain, for that matter). He didn’t CURE something, and “invent” is kind of the wrong word for his (still exceptionally substantial) contribution to the tech field. Given, couldn’t we have waited for the distance necessary to get a full picture of the man’s life before we churned out the glamorous movie-star biopic version ready for the pedestal?

It’s not so much that “Jobs” (with Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs and Josh Gad as Steve Wozniak) looks “bad,” but that it looks so depressingly expected – the Legend of Jobs (offbeat hippie visionary revolutionizes home computing, exiled for being too awesome for square colleagues, returns like Gandalf The White and CHANGES THE WORLD, MAN!!!) meticulously maintained by the iCult solidified into a “Social Network” wannabe. This is actually one of TWO Jobs bios we’ll be getting, incidentally.

Were you feeling, perhaps, that the “Earth = Third World, Space-Station = America” border-control/immigration/class-uprising allegory in “Elysium” didn’t look quite on the nose enough? Well, here are two trailers for Bong Joon-ho’s (of “The Host” and “Mother”) upcoming “Snowpiercer,” in which an ice age has so blighted the planet that the remainders of human society now exist entirely on a gigantic train that travels constantly on a globe-circling track – the richer you are, the closer you live to the engine and get to run the show, while the progressively-poorer live further and further back into the tail. Chris Evans is guy who leads a rebel-uprising among the poor to storm the engines.

Worse than you’ve heard.

Intermission looks ahead to Fall.

I don’t necessarily believe that all things in the world have a purpose – a reason that they come into existence. But, if I did, I would probably conclude that Syfy’s purpose has now been served.

http://www.syfy.com/_utils/video/embed.php?/videos/small/_vid2659154

Depressingly (both in content and because I haaaaaaate “tracking numbers” bullshit being part of the film discussion, but such is life) the “story” of “Pacific Rim’s” impending release has turned toward suspense because it’s tracking numbers (of likely domestic boxoffice) aren’t anywhere near what the people who paid $200 Million+ to make it wanted to see (it’s currently projected to open behind “Grown-Ups 2.”) But I’m still pulling for it and “Elysium” as the champions of original studio genre-movies this year, and this epic new (final?) trailer is a good reminder WHY:

I can’t say that I’m shocked by the tracking though – it feels like the massive ad push that Warner Bros. threw behind making sure “Man of Steel” didn’t disappoint (which, incidentally, thanks to the studio’s own sky-high projects it still somewhat has) sucked all the oxygen out of their schedule. The press for this thing should’ve been choking the airwaves (especially on the kiddie networks) and overflowing the toy-aisles to the point that every parent of a school-aged child should be sick to death of hearing about it by now; but it still feels like they’re only really pitching to an audience that was already sold back when they greenlit it based simply on the name “Guillermo Del Toro.” I’m glad Warner Bros. likes seeing guys like me go nuts for their SDCC rollouts, but guys like me were going to see this anyway – your job is to making my mom want to see your robot movie.

The film is still unlikely to “bomb” given the fact that basically none of this Summer’s tentpoles other than “Iron Man 3” have had strong legs for the long-haul; “The Lone Ranger” is almost-certainly DOA, “Man of Steel” will be on its way out of the top-ten by then. And it’s all-but garaunteed to do extended, long-term, gangbusters business in the now-vital Chinese/Asia market. But “optics” still count, and the spectacle of one of Summer 2013’s few non-sequel/reboot/franchise blockbusters opening second (or worse) to Adam Sandler’s yearly “my comedian friends have bills to pay” make-work project is a persuasive-looking argument for turning down good original scripts in favor of “what the hell can we make out of ‘Knight Rider’??” 

In the background of all of this, by the way, are the substories that A.) Warners and “Rim” co-producers Legendary Films are in the midst of a nasty break-up and B.) WB is supposedly devoting the vast majority of it’s attention to turning the post-“MoS” DCU movies into another decade-spanning corporate safety-net a’la “Harry Potter.” Such is the way of things.

…you know the rest.

BTW, did you buy my book? Because you can do that now 🙂

You can now buy you’re very own copy (in print or ebook) of “SUPER MARIO BROS 3: BRICK BY BRICK” from Fangamer. So, please, won’t you kindly think about doing so?

Surprisingly awesome.

Intermission has more Superman, because why not?

So, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (one of the unfortunate “will THIS get you assholes off my fucking back?” toxic-compromise maneuvers of the Clinton era) in key areas, ruling that the Federal Government is Constitutionally prohibited from denying any federal benefits of marriage to same-sex couples married in states where such marriages are legal.

A big win, to be sure, and another step on the inevitable path to full equal marriage for all. But the court also stopped short of ruling one way or the other on a challenge to California’s repeal of the gay marriage ban Proposition 8, finding the issue improperly brought before the court and punting it back to the state. So California gets to keep equal marriage… but for now, other states get to keep banning it. The DOMA provision allowing less-enlightened states to refuse to recognize marriages conducted in states with differing laws is also still in-effect; though that will almost-certainly fall on a separate challenge (for example: a military same-sex family is reassigned to a marriage-ban state sues to avoid losing multiple legal protections) either to this court or by the Justice Department.

This is a big, big step and should be recognized as such; but it’s not a slam-dunk. The troubling thing about both this and the shameful gutting of the Voting Rights Act yesterday is that both give heavy credence to the prehistoric notion of “State’s Rights” conservatism as envisioned by Bush II appointees John Roberts and Samuel Alito. As I’ve said elsewhere, “State’s Rights” is a nice idea for small, local issues but for big broad-effect stuff has no functional place in a modern society of instant communication and coast-to-coast air travel;  and the nonsense we saw go down in the Texas legislature overnight is rather illustrative of that.

So, then, what we have now is a country once again divided between states where all citizens are equal and states where only some are equal; and the last time we were in that place it went pretty bad for all involved and really, really bad for the states/people who were on the wrong side of history. Hopefully it won’t come to that – hopefully we’ve evolved in that regard, too.

Wow.

From Texas KXAN Local News (relevant part begins at 2:10)