Presented without (much) further commentary, the trailer for NUIGURUMA Z: GOTHIC LOLITA BATTLE BEAR; the first feature film to star Shoko Nakagawa (she’s kind of like Japan’s Zooey Deschanel, except she didn’t have to make movies first – she’s just sort of… “professionally quirky”), directed by Noburu Iguchi – late of the magnificent (and very NSFW) TOKYO GORE POLICE.

The film, based on a book and novelty song by otaku musician Kenji Ohtsuki, finds “Shokotan” (Nakagawa’s professional name) as a girl who becomes a superhero by merging with her magic teddy bear to battle an evil counterpart who has unleashed “the largest number of zombies ever featured in a Japanese film” on the populace:

Confirmed just over an hour ago, actor Paul Walker – likely best known as Brian O’Connor in the FAST & FURIOUS movies – died in a car crash in Los Angeles on Saturday, 11/30. He was a passenger, the car was a Porche belonging to a friend, they were apparently leaving a charity event. He was only 40 years old.

I doubt anyone would try and argue, even now, that Walker was one of the great actors or noteworthy movie-stars of his day. He was always one of those performers who seemed to have come up in the wrong era, and would’ve worked continuously in the 50s or early-70s when essentially looking like a walking Ken Doll and affecting unironic sincerity garaunteed you steady leading-man work (see: Alan Ladd.) By all accounts he was one of the good guys, and the FAST movies were among those that (eventually) knew exactly how to put him to good use – it’s very possible that Vin Diesel’s “exotic” pan-racial ubermensch character wouldn’t have “popped” so notably in that franchise without Walker onhand as the “regular guy.”

But he had an active career beyond that series, one that yielded as couple of bona-fide (if little-seen) classics that suggest he would’ve had a strong career heading into middle age as a character actor “handsome mature badass” type;” the unquestioned masterpiece of which was 2006’s mind-bending pitch-black crime thriller RUNNING SCARED:

I’m also very partial to “EIGHT BELOW,” where he played the main human component in what’s effectively a wilderness-survival movie primarily starrting a group of dogs trapped alone at the South Pole.

He also had HOURS due out for mid-December, which if nothing else features a particularly novel twist on the “ticking clock” in the form of a baby hooked up to a life-support device that needs to be manually re-charged once every three minutes:

He was also active advocate for the preservation of endangered shark species, and operated the humanitarian aid group Reach Out World Wide.

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)

Here’s my one-finger salute.

Intermission: “Franchise Dos & Don’ts”

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