“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
— Socrates

THR and Deadline both report that Disney/Marvel may have made up their mind as to who will direct the sequel to “Thor,” (yes, already greenlit – that’s what that monster of an overseas boxoffice gross will net you) and that the selection will be yet another Marvel Studios head-scratcher: Patty Jenkins, primarily known as a TV director (late of the pilot for AMC’s “The Killing”) save for 2003’s “Charlize Theron Needs An Oscar” (released in most territories as “Monster.”)

If selected, this will make Jenkins the first woman to direct a Marvel Studios feature. The extremely-underappreciated “Punisher: WarZone” was directed by Lexi Alexander but produced and released by a different studio.

This is the part where we’re all supposed to speculate that the script may have a heavier emphasis on the relationship drama and/or Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster (the issue of “how did Thor come back to Earth?” will, of course, be answered by “The Avengers” because Continuity Is Your Friend) or that female villain The Enchantress may make an appearance; but the truth is probably closer to Marvel’s “Moneyball”-style management (re: right fee, right availability, project is producer-driven enough to afford a directorial risk, etc.)

In any case, it’s pretty interesting as a development: Female directors have a tough time in the feature realm unless they’re working in the “chick-flick” ghetto, and women getting assigned to big-ticket genre fare is basically unheard of; to say nothing of getting assigned to the follow-up to what is thus far Marvel’s second biggest-earning screen hero. Kenneth Branagh turned out to be an inspired choice, so we’ll see.

It’s kind of strange for me to realize that Tim Burton has now been around for so long that it’s time for film students to add him to the “stylistic homage” pool, but there ya go. With that in mind, below you’ll find what is apparently the “teaser” for a movie called “Monstrosity” which appears to be – I shit you not – a mashup of “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Dragon Wars.”

As near as I can determine, the premise here is that Earth and a planet of Monsters (which looks more like Planet Halloween, actually) get fused together somehow. The director is Colton Tran, who (again, near as I can determine) is a youngish dude mainly doing shorts and spoofs on the YouTubes, and the film itself is a feature(?) extrapolation of an earlier short called “Unpleasantville,” which appears to be an Addams/Munsters riff with a kiddie/Halloween aesthetic.

For what it’s worth, the project’s “official site” can be found HERE. Anyone who may have a better idea of what the hell it is I’m looking at here is invited to tell me 😉

Via Hollywood-Elsewhere:

Director Joe Carnahan aims to one-up “The Edge” in the respected-British-actor-in-silly-killer-animal-flicks game with “The Grey;” in which Liam Neeson leads a group of plane-crash survivors through an Alaskan wilderness beset by a pack of hungry wolves. Given that they’ve evidently managed to survive against both the elements and a psychotic governor’s bloodthirsty helicopter death-squads, I’m inclined to bet on the wolves…

The title, of course, likely refers to both the breed of wolves themselves, the bleakness of the harsh Alaskan landscape they inhabit and also the morally and ethically ambiguous depths of both psychology and behavior the characters will have to plumb in order to blah blah blah WHATEVER. Did you SEE that last beat?? Qui-Gon is wearing improvised DIY “Wolverine” knuckle-claws so he can fight the Boss Wolf hand-to-hand. That’s gonna be fuckin’ awesome.

In case you’re given to ask; the reason these are getting posted as blogs instead of new “American Bob” episode is that A.) I’m tinkering with that format and B.) This takes five minutes whereas the videos take several hours…

OBSERVATION #1:
There is not a single “radical” thing about either President Obama or the era in which his Presidency is taking place. Everything from his policy proscriptions to his general tone to his fixation on centrist-compromise are the polar opposite of “radical.” The non-superficial differences between him and the last 30-40 years of Democrat Presidents and politicians in general are essentially nonexistant. What’s more, the economic downturn currently occuring is, while grim, not meaningfully worse for most Americans than the economic/energy crisis of the late-70s to the recession of a decade or so later.

Despite this, both Obama and his Presidency have been regarded AS “radical” to such a wide and fervent degree that an entire movement, the so-called “Tea Party,” has sprung up specifically as a “counterweight” this supposed radicalism. Given the (empirically provable) lack of actual radicalism or even meaningful policy difference between Obama and pretty much ANY Democrat or even moderate-Republican who has taken the national stage in any of our lifetimes… what, precisely, would be the “Occam’s Razor” answer to the question of what it is about him that really fills the “Tea Party” – on the primal, subconscious level – with so much panic and consternation?

OBSERVATION #2:
The key problem facing Obama’s so-called “Buffet Tax” or “Robin Hood Tax” is that – despite the fact that a plurality of Americans tend to favor such a measure – 40 years of an incredibly successful campaign of subtle race-baiting subterfuge on behalf of conservative/Republican political strategists has successfully conditioned huge chunks of Middle America to hear “Tax the wealthy to help the poor” as “steal from hardworking Whites to give away to ‘undeserving’ Blacks and ‘illegal’ Latinos.” (What, after all, do you suppose the repeated dog-whistle stump phrase of “Real Americans” is supposed to mean?)

Hat-tip: Jeff Wells.

Leonardo DiCaprio has the title role in director Clint Eastwood’s biopic of FBI founder J. Edgar Hoover. This is the sound of Oscar season beginning.

http://cdn.springboard.gorillanation.com/storage/xplayer/yo033.swf

Folks in my circle who fancy themselves fans of serious science-fiction movies are seriously excited for Andrew Niccol’s “In Time;” set in a world where they’ve cured aging. To keep overpopulation from being an issue, nobody physically ages past 25… but all hearts are on a “timer” and “minutes left to live” is now the sole form of currency – rich people get to be immortals, poor people live day-by-day. Justin Timberlake is the hero, a working-class schlub who winds up with a suicidal rich guy’s massive time-surplus and ingratiates himself into wealthy-immortal society, ultimately becoming a Robin Hood-esque figure stealing time and giving it to the poor. I like this concept because it’s the best kind of “idea scifi,” using a “what if?” hook as a metaphor for something relevant to the real present (in this case, social-economics.) Hollywood, on the other hand, no doubt likes this concept because it provides a story-driven excuse to cast every single role with model-gorgeous twenty-somethings (Olivia Wilde and Amanda Seyfried co-star, so… there ya go.)

Now, as if the incidental tea-leaves weren’t already looking good for this one, the film has now crossed into a potential-scifi-blockbuster rite of passage: Being sued for copyright infringement by Harlan Ellison.

Ellison believes that the film shares enough similarities with his 1965 short story “Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman;” and is suing to block the film’s release and for compensatory damages. This sort of thing happens a lot in genre film – typically it’s quietly “taken care of” by a settlement to avoid bad press. Ellison, however, prefers to go big with this stuff – famously, he sued “The Terminator” for similarities to two of his “Outer Limits” episodes.

FWIW, “Repent” is prescient less of this film and more of “V For Vendetta” – the main character dresses like a clown and commits acts of vigilante nuisance in order to disrupt a dystopian society where timely schedule-keeping is federally-enforced and punishable by lowering life-expectancy.

Depending on your level of investment in interwed-outrage memes, you may either have forgotten or never been aware of the “#NotRightForAlyssa” incident of a few weeks ago. In which case, Long Version HERE; Short Version: Gizmodo tossed up an altogether-poor article in which an intern publically-humiliated (by name) a guy she’d met on an online dating site because he was a professionall “Magic: The Gathering” player (or, to use her words, “champion dweeb.”) Subsequently, the author was made to endure an Internet piling-on that was – at least in the initial moments, more or less well-deserved from my perspective.

Of course, since The Internet tends to accelerate “justifiable irritation” up into “reign-of-terror-level-overreaction” almost overnight; eventually some late-comers to the “event” had to go and take things too far – which means it’s now time for the “backlash against the backlash” articles…

Geordie Tait has used the “Alyssa” story as the jumping-off point for a lengthy and overally rather worthwhile (with HUGE caveats that will be dealt with in a moment) article for Star City Games – in the form of an “apology letter” to his own hypothetical future daughter – about the thorny problem of misogyny in gaming culture; primarily focused on the way sexual/romantic “entitlement” often manifests within a culture that paradoxically considers itself to be an oppressed and/or disregarded minority (i.e. the “Women prefer assholes over Nice Guys like me… THOSE BITCHES!!!” mentality.) It’s a long piece with a fair amount of rambling, unnecessary digression and cutsie-poo self-deprecation, but I reccomend everyone give it a read – especially if you plan on reading the rest of this.

Seriously. Read it and come back. I’ll wait.

…

All set? Okay, then…

For about half of the piece, I was mainly feeling sad for Tait. See, I’m very much in agreement with his overally point: For all the pride geek-culture has in itself as a “haven” where a certain segement of overlooked-outsiders can find a community of shared-interest… it tends to have REAL serious problem accepting any perspective on the content of said interests that doesn’t come from (or isn’t willing to conform-to) a white/male/heterosexual/western viewpoint. Too often geeks/gamers are raging against their own ostracization from mainstream society/culture… while in the same breath delcaring that anyone who offers a “feminist” or “race-conscious” criticism of a given game, movie, comic etc. needs to “shut up” and fall into line. So, on that level, I think that the discussion Tait wants to have is vital, necessary and long, long, LONG overdue…

…but, because he chose to “ground” it in what amounts to a defense of fairly indefensible behavior re: Alyssa Bereznak; his otherwise VERY worthwhile points were going to go unheard. When your trying to make a bigger point via a specific example, it’s HUGELY important to pick the right example: The fact that O.J. Simpson was made the poster-child for racist-persecution by the  probably did more to ensure that the LAPD’s massive institutional-racism and corruption remained in place than anything else possibly could have.

But, yeah… up to that point I was reading and thinking “This is SUCH an important, thoughtful piece… WHY did he have to throw away it’s chances of being heard by making it a ‘Leave Alyssa Alone’ thing?” So imagine my surprise when, about halfway through the piece, Tait opts to simply blow his own point completely to smithereens…

In Part C of Section 4 (it’s a loooong article), Tait ascribes a portion of the blame for the “overreaction” to “Internalized Misogyny;” helpfully-explained by a quotation about “House Negros” from Malcom X. Here, Tait criticizes the female voices in geek/gamer culture who wrote/spoke against the article for – as he sees it – attempting curry favor with the overwhelmingly male demographic through their condemnation. Or, as he puts it:

“[Tait] is very interested in integrating the gaming industry and is always ready to encourage any budding Jacqueline Robinsons. However, it is hard for girls to be taken seriously in gaming when dozens of wannabe FragDolls are tap-dancing on top of the dugout and offering opposing players “a shine.””

He goes on to single-out Gizmodo Australia’s Elly Hart, who wrote a response-piece to the original Gizmodo (U.S.) article. Tait psychoanalyzes Hart thusly:

“She’s a female writer for a tech website, and that is a very, very difficult job. In order to fit in, she has had to internalize all the ways that boys in her industry treat girls poorly and take them for granted.”

The level of presumption and condescension here would make for hillarious irony if it weren’t so shocking to find in the midst of an article that not only tries to be studiously even-handed otherwise but is also largely dedicated to telling it’s readers NOT to engage in the kind of  misogynist or inflammatory language he is now employing – right down to refering to Hart’s article as “shucking and jiving” to “appease the multitudinous, nerd-raging masses.”

“In her defense, master’s house was on fire, and there was a warm corner in the attic waiting for her if she was able to dump some water on the blaze.”

Holy crap. I mean… what do you eve SAY to something like that?

Don’t get me wrong – I understand the genesis of where he’s coming from: The fact that the “gamer girls” most often focused upon by the media are those willing/able/eager to don a catchphrased baby-tee and/or revealing cosplay outfit as walking embodiments of “sexy nerd” fetish-iconography isn’t 100% “helpful” to the problem of intrinsic nerd-misogyny – agreed.

But the idea that Tait can’t percieve ANY woman disagreeing with him on this issue other than by assuming that they are lying, kowtowing or suffering some sort of Stockholm Syndrome is the height of arrogance – and the language he uses (“Wannabe Frag Dolls”) and the condescending “oh, those poor foolish little girls” tone come perilously close to what actual feminists often call “Slut Shaming.” Agree or disagree with their point, but pieces like Emily Hart’s condemnation of the Gizmodo article or even the “Apology on Behalf of Ladies of Nerdland” spearheaded by Susan Arendt (the Escapist editor responsible for me look like I know what I’m doing every week) or Skepchick’s Rebecca Watson do not strike me as anything deserving of the snide “Wannabe Frag Dolls” moniker that Tait blanketly ascribes to any woman on the “other side” of this incident.

This is the point where it all becomes utterly perplexing to me – clearly, Tait has a solid and well-reasoned grasp on what the problems and solutions to the misogyny he’s talking about in his own culture are… so what could possess him to go and drop a misogynistic mini-rant of his own right into the middle of it? I don’t know that it completely invalidates the bigger picture – Tait’s overall call for male gamers with what could politely be called “issues” in dealing with the opposite sex to grow the fuck up is needed and well-taken, in the end. But still – why taint the point with this AND the unnecessary (and bound to make people miss-the-point) defense of Bereznak; especially when it turns out what really spurred him to action was an entirely-unrelated Todd Anderson article.

So… that happened.

An 8-minute “sizzle reel” of David Fincher’s adaptation of “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” was shown to critics and audiences at various screenings throughout the U.S. this past week. I was at one of them, here’s what I saw:

It’s already a given that this movie is going to be the stuff of a three-way public spat between film geeks for whom David Fincher can do no wrong, fans of the book who will resent any changes and OTHER film geeks annoyed that this is being made at all when it was already turned into a wholly-decent movie in it’s native country. Now, as before, I remain comfortably in Fincher’s camp – everything about this material is comfortably in his wheelhouse, and he’s assembled a hell of a team.

The footage itself wasn’t “in order,” it was more of a very long trailer explaining the basic plot and who the two main characters are. From the looks of things, it appears a certain amount of tinkering has gone on with the structure of the story in terms of streamlining the complicated process of events it takes for the two heroes’ stories to intersect; but people who were worried things are going to be “toned down” should chill – the ‘iffy’ stuff (Salander’s bisexuality, the ‘payback’ sequence, the murders) seems to have made the transition more than intact.

The interesting thing will be to see how Fincher chooses to “play” the material. The odd thing about the series (book and film) is that they’re that strange mix of very-silly and very-serious that often informs pop-phenomenon bestsellers, “The DaVinci Code” being the best recent example. Storywise it’s a giant grab-bag of lurid pulp: A crusading activist/journalist teams up with sexy goth/punk/biker/computer-hacker girl to root out the culprit in a decades-spanning series of unsolved Biblically-themed murders from among a wealthy family of decadent ex-Nazis; but all that kitchen-sink oddness is actually there as lead-in to mini-polemics about misogyny and political-corruption.

So… how does he play it? Do you trim down on the “silly” and aim for the ‘serious’ movie that it’s bestselller-stature would be assumed to demand, or do you keep all the wacky business and go for broke? The footage shown seems to be looking at the second option, which strikes me as the better option.