…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.

For those who don’t regularly peruse The Other Blog (I wonder if I should fold the two into one thing… by which I mean I wonder how much Adsense revenue would I actually be giving up) the most recent episode of GAME OVERTHINKER went up last week.

http://blip.tv/play/AYOWy1AC.html?p=1http://a.blip.tv/api.swf#AYOWy1AC

It’s about GTA V, and since we’re still sixteen days out from the release of Hardcore Gaming’s next obligatory AAA money-printing aparatus that means GTA V is still theoretically a relevant topic of conversation for… sixteen more days, pretty much. So enjoy.

P.S. There’s also a lower-quality YouTube version.

No good. But you knew that.

Intermission has Fifth Estate, which I did not object to, which of course means I’m part of the global corporate/military/Freemason conspiracy to smear the benevolent and just Julian Assange. Oh, well.

…he just needed the guiding hand of someone who actually likes and/or “gets” the material. For “Man of Steel,” he had the Nolan Bros., and we saw how that turned out. But here he was working in-tandem with Bruce Timm, for decades steward of the yet-to-be-equaled DC Animated Universe; and the resulting “75 Years of Superman” short is pretty incredible…