Patrick Sauriol’s revivified Corona Coming Attractions has a rumor up purporting to describe the trailer for “The Man of Steel;” which many are presuming (still without a shred of real evidence) has been secretly constructed for a surprise debut in front of “The Dark Knight Rises.” It reads a little fishy to me, reading like a fanfic made up from guesses about the context of the more well-known set reports and “spy” photos, but if it is legit then the trailer is set to reveal that the film will be giving Kal-el some value-added features to go with the usual Faster/More-Powerful/Able staples.

Learn what it may be (and polish up your “hurr durr Zack Snyder likes to mess with the camera-speed” jokes) after the jump:

THIS COULD POSSIBLY BE A TINY SPOILER

The alleged breakdown says that the trailer includes the expected montage of Young Clark Kent learning to use his powers, and that one of these scenes depicts him “…spinning a pencil in the air using telekinesis.” Yup, that would be new.

Assuming for a moment that any of this is legit, my guess would be that “telekinetic levitation” isn’t so much an entirely “new” power as it is part of a way of explaining the mechanics of one or more of the other powers (i.e. “this is how he makes himself levitate/fly”); a to-be-expected result of having the must-provide-explanations-for-every-damn-thing Nolan Brothers producing and working on the screenplay. Either way… I honestly don’t have a problem with this.

Superman’s power-set has pretty-much always been ill-defined. Originally, he just did whatever a normal human could do only MUCH better – he didn’t fly but rather just jumped insanely high, he could see through walls because his eyes were just that strong (“heat vision” was literally “I can look at you so hard it BURNS!”) and he was even super-smart to boot. While over time it evolved into the specific-powers-manifested-in-Kryptonians-via-exposure-to-radiation-from-Earth’s-yellow-Sun form we know today, throughout the Golden and Silver Ages Superman would routinely sprout outlandish new powers “just because;” a tradition that carried over into the earlier movies with… mixed results, to say the least:

So, yeah. Telekinesis? I can roll with that. Now let’s just see a trailer for the damn thing so we can get a sense if this is going in an “Avengers” or an “Amazing Spider-Man” direction…

It’s good. Go see.

“Intermission” talks with the director of “Detention.”

I’ll be starting my weekend-long stint at PAX East tomorrow afternoon. If you see me around the floor, feel free to say hi – in addition, I’ll be featured at the following two panels on Friday night:

6:00 PM – “BLANKETY BLANK PANEL” (Manticore Theater)
A gamer/geek centric version of The Match Game. Should be a blast!

10:30 PM – “ESCAPIST MOVIE NIGHT” (Wyvern Theater)
Escapist editors, Shamus Young, the LoadingReadyRun crew, The Space Janitors, myself and others present select episodes of The Escapist’s most popular shows (including some never-before-seen new stuff!) preceded by a live Q&A.

See you there!

The big question of the “Ted” trailer was “is this funny without the profanity?” The general-release trailer says: “Pretty much, yeah;” though it does appear to have the “you have now seen the whole movie” problem…

I like the red-band better, less for the profanity and more for how great the build-up/fake-out/payoff reveal of Ted plays out; but this one obviously does a better job explaining the “E.T./Hobbes/Elliot sticks around and becomes the immature holding-you-back buddy from an Apatow movie” premise – which I still think is kind of inspired. I really hope they’ve already licensed a Talking Ted, because that will be a big grown-up gift later this year…

I can’t decide if it’s more of an asset or flaw that this is so clearly the Seth MacFarlane Comfort-Zone in live-action – i.e. Ted/Whalberg are so very much Peter/Brian or Stan/Roger, Kunis turning up and Patrick Stewart doing his best Patrick Stewart Narration parody – but the bear legitimately cracks me up. Plus, it looks like they went to the New England Aquarium, so that’s pretty awesome.

People have been uploading what look an awful lot like unfinished scenes from “The Amazing Spider-Man” unlocked from a Kelloggs promotion to YouTube, and they look… not very good. Not very good at all. But, again, they also look unfinished, so maybe the benefit of the doubt is in order. The Escapist points me to a set that has all three together:

Yeah… that’s pretty painful.

I’m willing to consider, until proven otherwise, that the “messin’ with a mugger’ scene is presented extremely out-of-context; i.e. that maybe this movie’s version of “I was a self-centered wrestler first” is “I started out as a massive douchebag.” Because otherwise… wow, that is show-stoppingly horrible stuff as presented here. Set aside the fact that stand-up-comedy-Spidey (still) doesn’t seem to work in live action – I stand by my original appraisal of “Dane Cook as a Power Ranger” – and whole thing still feels… “off.”

It’s a weird distinction, I realize, but in the comics/cartoons/whatever Spidey verbally dressing-down the bad guys generally comes off as “playful;” partially because his sense of humor is generally so corny (THIS is the thing Sam Raimi “got” that few others ever do – even when he’s Spider-Man, Peter Park is still a total dork.) but also because you’re reading it to yourself and can make Spidey sound agreeable to you. Everything about this clip feels exactly the opposite of playful and/or agreeable. Spidey comes off like a bully here – from the awful “stop hittin’ yerself”-style douchebag humor to the “come at me bro!” stance and posture. Couple that with the ugly visual scheme (though, again, this is probably an unfinished scene) the still-not-working black eyes and the fucking MUZZLE FLARE on the webshooters (duuuuuuuuuuuude! hardcore!!!) and this continues to look every bit the awful grimdarkedgygritty bullshit version I was soooo relieved we avoided the first time around. BUT… it could be out of context, so who knows?

That bit in the bathroom, on the other hand… you’ve got decades worth of superhero movies to steal from, and you choose to steal from “X-Men Origins: Wolverine!?”

Remember that joke-that-snowballed Kickstarter project to build and install a life-sized bronze statue of Robocop in Detroit? It fell off a lot of people’s radars, but it’s still going on and seems to have entered the home stretch – not only have they officially licensed the image from MGM, the foam version of the final product is now being assembled in Canada so that it can be shipped to Detroit and cast in bronze by a local company.

Still to be decided is exactly where in the city the statue will be installed, though the most likely candidate is a private plot of land owned by Imagination Station, which has been a contributing partner to the project from early on.

I know that a lot of people find this whole project to be in bad taste, i.e. non-Detroit-residing film nerds putting a statue referencing a movie about a crime-ridden future dystopia up in a city currently facing a very real crime-ridden present dystopia; but I say the more the merrier to pop-iconography like this. New York could use a Spider-Man or Ghostbusters statue, while we’re at it…

Boston-area film criticism mainstays Steve Head and John Black graciously invited me back to their “Post Movie Podcast” show (which you should ALL totally be downloading and “liking” on iTunes HERE) to talk “Wrath of The Titans,” “Mirror Mirror,” “The Raid” and other sundry things. Embed after the jump:

http://player.wizzard.tv/player/o/i/x/133351014130/config/k-48276aa9ffcfb432/uuid/null/episode/k-5c5c3639e07186ab

Because I’m not done talking about TMNT reboots, apparently.

I’m the guy on the Internet who doesn’t reflexively hate Seth MacFarlane. His shows can be hit-or-miss, but he’s ridiculously talented in his own right and when he’s “on” he and his ‘family’ of writers/actors routinely pull off some great stuff. In any case, he’s now branched out into feature films; and his debut feature – shocker! – centers around a lovable jerk whose best buddy is a thing-that-should-not-talk-or-act-like-a-human-and-yet-does voiced by MacFarlane himself:

The “big idea” is that it’s the hypothetical sequel to every “boy and his magical friend” story ever: Mark Wahlberg’s character wished his Teddy Bear to life as a child, but now it’s two decades later and his “magical adventure pal” is now his “magical perpetually-adolescent-troublemaker-who-gets-in-the-way-of-his-relationships pal.”

I think it looks hysterical. I love that Ted’s design is just “basic bear,” and MacFarlane-alumni Kunis is always fun in these things.

I’m not really bothered by the idea that the remake of “Total Recall” evidently doesn’t involve Mars or three-breasted hookers. I AM, however, bothered by the fact that the remake of a movie that felt very fresh and visually-unique in it’s day is trying so hard to look like just another plug-and-play generic scifi/action movie. Oh well.