Many congratulations are in order to fellow Boston film critic Wesley Morris, who just won this year’s Pulitzer for criticism. The occasion reminds me that a few other local associates of mine have things going on worth promoting – something I generally don’t do too often on this site but will gladly make an exception for in these cases:

Daniel M. Kimmel – onetime head of the Boston Society of Film Critics, genre film/lit expert and teacher – is nominated for a Hugo Award this year for his published collection of essays “Jar-Jar Binks Must Die …And Other Observations About Science Fiction Movies.” Well worth your time.

And while I’m here, I also reccomend checking out Ian Pugh’s academic examination of “The Dark Knight,” “The Faces of Gotham” – now available in e-book format.

This is getting interesting.

The big question-mark of the “Iron Man” franchise (before anyone knew about The Avengers plans, at least) was always how it was going to deal with the fact that the character’s most (only, really) noteworthy villain was The Mandarin; a villain who while interesting in his own right is pretty-much a “Yellow Peril” caricature left over from the hero’s heyday as a Cold War commie-smasher.

The first film teased his existance with a terrorist cell called “The Ten Rings” (Mandarin augments his “magic” with borrowed alien technology housed in ten rings) whose leader was obsessed with Ghengis Khan. Sir Ben Kingsley (who is half Indian and has played Eastern characters in Ghandi and Prince of Persia, among others) has evidently been cast as IM3’s main heavy, though Marvel was quick to say that he was NOT playing The Mandarin.

BUT then the casting-call went out for Asian and Middle-Eastern extras, and now the film is going to the trouble of lensing in mainland China, so it’s not too difficult to imagine some element of that will come into play. It’s possible to do versions of dated characters like The Mandarin and make them work – David Lo-Pan is a memorable example, though that was 20 years ago…

Hat-tip: Latino-Review

Seriously! Take a look:

No, but for real the actual one is finally the piece-of-marketing-that-doesn’t-suck I’d been waiting for on this movie…

MUCH better, no? There’s still plenty I’m not sold on here – Spidey’s terrible new costume, the webshooters as guns, the tone, the missing-parents mystery, hints of heroic predestination, the too-tidy “everything leads to OsCorp” plotting, the on-the-nose casting (Sally Field as a concerned mother-figure? Way to think outside the box!), the whole lost-parents backstory, The Lizard still looking incredibly crappy, etc – but at least this is a well-cut trailer for something that might look pretty decent… if only I could forget that it’s a pointless, licensing-rights-driven, bean-counter-mandated reboot of “Spider-Man.”

I can’t quite place the male voice of who that is telling Peter he needs to “look within” for answers about his parents/self/powers(?) etc. It doesn’t sound like Ifans, Sheen or Leary; and we already know that J Jonah Jameson isn’t a character in this, so… who is it? Quickie guess: It’s a yet-to-be-officially-announced Norman Osborn, and this dialogue is coming from his nigh-innevitable “Joker Tease” reveal at the end of the movie.

Go. Go see. Go see NOW.

I’m also very proud of this week’s “Intermission.”

And hey, here I am on a PAX East panel!

Rian Johnson’s (late of “Brick” and “The Brothers Bloom”) scifi movie “Looper” finally has a trailer:

Premise concerns future mobsters who dispose of victims by zapping them 30 years into the past, where specialty hitmen called Loopers whack and dispose of them (the guys aren’t supposed to exist yet and thus register as just another John Doe is, I’m assuming, the logic in that.) Joseph Gordon Levitt is the Looper of the title; whose most-recent assignment hits a snag when the intended victim (Bruce Willis) turns out to A.) have an escape plan and B.) actually be himself from the future. I’m gonna guess the idea is that “you will at some point off your elderly self” is something Loopers agree to (hence the hoods so they don’t know when it happens?) and the origin of the name.

Killer idea, hope it works.

Naked hit-baiting? Not above it.

“Avengers” held it’s Los Angeles Premiere last night, and LA journos took to the (apparently not-embargoed) Twitter right after to opine. The verdict, thus far, seems immensely positive.

The reliefs. I has them all.

Here’s DEADLINE’S report, which is mostly business-side, but there you go.

Here’s Jeff Wells, complaining about not being invited to screen a movie he’s already sure he’ll hate (gotta love this guy, seriously)

BAD’s Devin Faraci posted his and other people’s Twitter reactions. I’m hesitant to post this one, since he drops what may or may not be a SPOILER (I’m told it’s a REALLY early one, if so) but if you don’t fear such things there you go.

Paul Dini’s Twitter Feed Said: “Just arrived home from #THEAVENGERS premiere with mind blown, shit lost and a smile that won’t leave my face. The superhero movie perfected.”

There’s also early word that the customary Marvel Studio’s “wait for huge next-movie-reveal after credits” rule is in effect, though so far no one has spoiled it that I’ve seen. (I’ve a reasonably good idea what it might be based on years-old rumors, but my lips iz sealed.)

Before anyone asks: No, I don’t know when I’ll be seeing it. If you think that dissapoints you, just imagine how *I* feel 😉

Here’s Batman and Catwoman from “Dark Knight Rises” on the cover of the new Entertainment Weekly. I hate to sound like a broken record here, but the “Nolanverse” costume/character designs – Joker excluded – just keep looking worse.

Yeah, yeah, “haters gonna hate;” but just LOOK at those monstrosities – they look like they made their suits out of old tires. I’m sure the movie will be fine, but between these two and Bane it’ll be fine in spite of how bad everyone looks. Ugh.

I’m not sure why this story hasn’t yet gotten more attention today, but “Amazing Spider-Man” director Marc Webb has confirmed to MTV that the film isn’t just re-telling the title character’s origin story… it’s re-writing it, too. More after the jump:

Speaking to MTV, Webb delivered the “headline” story that – as pretty-much everyone has been guessing since the first teaser – the mystery of what happened to Peter Parker’s biological parents will form the background continuity of the (hoped-for) new series. But buried amid the quotes was this doozy, which seems poised to confirm some of the speculation that came out of the “sizzle reel” presentation back in February:

“This is probably a reveal,” [Webb] said, “but there is no wrestling match in this movie. The character is evolving in a different way. It’s about finding a balance between iconic elements of the ‘Spider-Man’ mythology—like how Uncle Ben’s death transforms him emotionally—but it happens in a different way.”

No Wrestling? Well, okay, maybe a necessary concession to reality – unlike the early 60s, people pretty-much know that pro-wrasslers don’t generally issue take-on-all-comers challenges to random folks off the street now. But the circumstances of Ben Parker’s death – shot by a criminal who pre-vigilante Spider-Man had earlier let escape – strikes me as one of those perfect/necessary details you just can’t change without essentially creating an entirely different character. Then I think back to some educated-guessing Badass Digest’s Devin Faraci did back when the aforementioned “sizzle reel” showing took place. Said Devin:

“There’s one more thing I took away from this footage presentation: I’m worried that Uncle Ben’s death is changed. In the footage Ben has to come to school when Peter gets in trouble for humiliating Flash Thompson using his new powers. He tells his nephew that because of this incident, he had to change his shift at work. I am willing to bet that this shift change leads to his death in some way. But the footage (which felt really comprehensive) doesn’t have Peter using his powers to make money, or a scene where he lets a criminal go. Could Ben’s death just come from the shift change? That would be a massive disappointment, as the set-up of his death in the original origin is, frankly, perfect. Again, there’s not enough to know, and I’m not against this film changing up things to find its own identity, but not having Ben killed by a crook Peter let get away is like having Bruce Wayne’s parents killed by a drunk driver. It just doesn’t work.”

Sigh. Still waiting for something significant about this movie to look interesting/optimistic without some kind of gigantic caveat.

Here are three things that are more or less constant in terms of how I view the world:

1.) There are essentially two kinds of people: THINKERS and BELIEVERS.

2.) The previous statement refers to the manner in which one looks at the world, NOT necessarily to whether or not one is a “person of faith” – though, obviously, there are some incidenta correlations.

3.) While the situation may have been different in the past, Believers haven’t been doing much in the way of long-term good for the world in a long, long time; and today they function almost exclusively as a series of annoying roadblocks holding the rest of the world back from a better future.

Anyway…

When right-wing muckraker Andrew Breitbart passed away suddenly earlier this year, the mainstream news outlets that he’d made a career of slandering with bogus “bias” charges bent over backwards to be generous and recall the good points of the guy; partly out of deference to his grieving family, but also perhaps in the knowledge that his legion of ill-informed followers – Believers who’d absorbed the ridiculous mythology of the Liberal Media Boogeyman whole – were poised to descend upon them en masse if they did otherwise.

Try to keep that extension to goodwill in mind, as you read the comments from Breitbart’s acolytes posted on this Breitbart blog post announcing the death of actual journalist Mike Wallace.

Some choice samples from the comment thread:

“A charming socialist is still a socialist.”

“Obama has one less vote now.”

“A shining member of the mentally retarded left-wing liberal mainstream media, the people who conspired and lied, AND CONTINUE TO CONSPIRE AND LIE, in order to advance an equally retarded left-wing liberal agenda, an agenda that CREATED America’s Second Great Depression.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

“WHAT EVER! Sorry for Chris, lost his Dad but all this nonsense about this liberal knucklehead being legendary is so much baloney.”

“Wallace personally caused SeeBS to be involved in several costly lawsuits by his skewing of the facts(remember Gen William Westmoreland) . Wallace was a commie ideologue, plain and simple. Every a$$clown on “60 minutes” was, whether it was Wallace, Ed Bradley, Morley Safer, and worse of all, Andy Rooney.”

“Wallace was a sham. He refused to go after hard left figures(he once refused an assignment to interview Bill Ayers in 1974), yet some of his harder-hitting “stories” turned out to be somewhat less. Like most media, he was a commie ideolgoue first, and it showed in his reporting.”

Adorable.

For all the nonsense about “voter fraud” currently slithering through the media – both as a desperation-gambit to suppress Democrat-leaning voters during the election and fuel the accusations of Obama’s illegitimacy after – it bothers me a hell of a lot more that some of these people are actual voters. Churchill may have been correct when he called Democracy may be “the worst form of government except all the others;” but forgive me if I seem increasingly less romantic about a system that holds the governing input of the ignorant and the paranoid “equal” to that of the intelligent and the rational.