The producers of the “Evil Dead” remake would like you to know you can go to this website and record yourself being freaked-out by the recent trailer. So… yeah, that’s a thing.

For those of you asking, YES I’ve seen Adam Quigley’s “You Don’t Understand ‘Sucker Punch'” video on Slashfilm and YES the similarities to my own work from four months ago – starting from the title and down through… everything else, really – are hard to miss. But no, this isn’t a Coulton/”Glee” thing; the movie has a pretty specific through-line, so there isn’t anything “shady” about two critics coming to the same basic set of conclusions about it. Still, might as well watch them and judge for yourself…

I maintain that I haven’t been unfair to “The Amazing Spider-Man.” It was a bad film with an infuriating production history, and I covered both aspects as such – nothing more, nothing less. I’ve also continuously maintained that if the production of ASM2 made any moves that I thought sounded good, I’d say so.

THIS, then, I will say makes me cautiously optimistic: THR reports that Paul Giamatti is being sought for “The Rhino.” That’s more like it – maybe.

Understand – I don’t know that this signals anything having been corrected in the myriad flaws that are just built into the DNA of this rebooted franchise: Garfield’s miscasting, Webb is simply not good at directing action, the “new” backstory (even assuming they just junk the non-starter missing-parents stuff) doesn’t work, etc. There’s not much to indicate that any of that is going to get ironed out.

BUT! …I love The Rhino. I love everything about The Rhino, from the simplicity of his name and costume (yes I know it’s technically supposed to be some kind of high-tech body-armor skin-graft but it LOOKS like a costume) to the basis of his existance: It’s a superhero story, visual dynamism is a premium, so why have just a muscleman when it can be a muscleman dressed as a rhinocerous? And Giamatti is a great actor who’s often at his most enjoyable when he goes waaaaay over-the-top in villain roles; so he could be a lot of fun here.

The one caveat to this, of course, is the same as the one attached to Jamie Foxx as the sequel’s other heavy, Electro – interesting casting or not, the main thing that makes both of these guys “awesome” in the comics are their look and gimmick – both of which will be very difficult to put onscreen, especially in a series that’s thus-far trying very hard to distance itself from the campier aspects of it’s source material. It’s unlikely that Foxx will show up wearing Electro’s iconic star-mask, and likewise one assumes Giamatti will probably not be throwing Andrew Garfield around in horn-hooded gray pajamas (in fact, given that Giamatti is most-definitely not a “bruiser” to begin with, I imagine he’ll probably be wearing some kind of vaugely Rhino-esque armor or be a human/rhino mutation of some kind.)

hat-tip: RWWBlog

Just in case you were expecting to feel good things about the state of humanity today, here are some delightful Christian radio-hosts with their thoughts on 21st century feminism:

Two kinds of people in the world: Thinkers and Believers. You know where these guys line up. And please bear in mind – there are millions of people who line up right next to them… and they’re all allowed to vote. Pleasant nightmares.

If you’re the guy who thought “In Time” was too blunt about it’s scifi-conceit-as-metaphor-for-classism angle, “Upside Down” is probably going to give you an anuerysm. See also: The guy who’s angry about “Looper” being more interested in the plot/characters turns that could come from it’s scenario than it was about explaining how it’s time-travel worked.

I’m tempted to say that the film – a star-crossed-lovers story set on two conjoined planets aligned so as to effectively be one-another’s floor and ceiling where the wealthy live on top and the working-class live below – looks like a Christopher Nolan reboot of an unwritten Dr. Seuss story… except the main characters appear capable of expressing recognizable human emotions of romantic desire. New trailer is below:

“Post-modern” has officially become the new “not even trying.”

Intermission talks “Our Uncertain Future”

Hey, remember that time when Disney bought “Star Wars” and announced a new Trilogy right off the bat and we all got kind of excited because maybe they’d get a really good, talented, maybe even “visionary” filmmaker attached who could revive the franchise and take it in new, exciting and interesting directions?

Well, so much for that idea…

Oh, well. Nice thought while it lasted, though. Hey, did you watch the new AoTGO yet? Cause you totally still can 🙂

Remember what you were doing today, because some day your daughter may ask you.

A little over an hour ago at an official press conference, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced that the U.S. Military’s official ban on women serving in front-line combat roles has been lifted. The full rollout will be a three-year integration process, set to climax with the first (official) female combat troops appearing in 2016… which should make for some interesting juxtaposition, as it’s still widely-expected that that same year will feature at least one major female contender for the Presidency.

Predictably, someone isn’t happy.

SOURCE: Latino Review

Latino Review (who are really, really good at smuggling this kind of shit out of Warner Bros lately) has what purports to be a confirmed lineup for the surging-through-development “Justice League” movie. Drumroll, please…

SUPERMAN, BATMAN, WONDER WOMAN, GREEN LANTERN and THE FLASH.

Random statistics: 1 less total membership than The Avengers but same basic male/female ratio, 2 natural-born metahumans, 1 “created” metahuman, 2 “normal” humans – one with “powers” and one without, 3 with prior movies, 4 with prior TV shows, zero live-action debuts zero (comic-canonical) minorities, zero magic-users, zero non-humanoids.

So… about the roster you would expect, really. No head-scratchers but no surprises, either.

What sticks out to me most is, given that this entire project has been willed into existance as a counter-measure to Disney’s “Avengers” juggernaut, there doesn’t immediately seem to be any attempt at hitting their rival in it’s most vulnerable spot: Even the most enthusiastic fans of Marvel’s innaugural team-up had to concede that the all-caucasian, one-woman outfit was decidedly un-21st Century in the diversity department; and yet here’s the Justice League putting up the same basic vanilla sundae. Putting one more woman on the team, at least, would immediately generate several days worth of free “DC sees Marvel’s heroine gamble, raises” publicity.

The problem with that, of course, is that WB is going with “everybody knows” characters here since they’re doing the team-up first and solo movies after; and apart from Supergirl and Batgirl Wonder Woman is the only female DC Hero that anyone outside of fandom has heard of. With apologies to, say, Vixen, Black Canary or Zatanna; the headlines would’ve been “Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and WHO?”

That said, if you’re in the position to make or take bets on this sort of thing, I’d say right now there’s very good odds that “League’s” Green Lantern will end up being African-American John Stewart instead of Hal Jordan. Aside from the obvious upside, it would be the easiest way to further minimize associations with the “Green Lantern” movie disaster and Stewart is probably the Lantern most familiar/remembered by the sought-after Millenial demographic; who grew up with him as THE Green Lantern of the Justice League cartoons. There’s seriously no good reason for WB not to do this, other than to appease a minority of comic purists. (This wouldn’t be like the “John Blake is Batman” thing, where you’re junking the significant Bruce/Clark relationship from the books – there’s no comparable Hal/Anybody “thing” to lose.)

Interestingly, Latino Review goes on to say that while this five is being set up as the primary group, there may or may not be smaller-scale appearances planned for The Martian Manhunter and Aquaman, which makes a certain amount of sense: The film’s plot supposedly concerns an alien invasion of Earth, so there’s plenty of room for J’onn J’onzz to turn up in a supporting (or surprise “holy crap this random guy we met is actually a Martian shape-shifter!”) role; and Aquaman is technically the ruler of an underwater kingdom so they could go to meet/consult with him (maybe Wonder Woman already knows him? Just a guess) without him actually having to be part of the team… like, if they needed to borrow a bunch of sharks or something.

The film is still without a director or a 100% locked-in screenplay, and I doubt we’ll be seeing anything more concrete taking shape until we all find out how “Man of Steel” performs.

Head’s up, the latest all-new “Adventures of The Game OverThinker” is now up and running on Blip and The Other Blog:

http://blip.tv/play/AYONt1gC.html?p=1http://a.blip.tv/api.swf#AYONt1gC