This is probably only a curiousity item for most of you, but here in Boston this is probably the biggest local news story in very long time. James “Whitey” Bulger has been CAPTURED after 17 years on the run.

Bulger was South Boston’s very own master-mobster in the 70s and 80s, leader of the feared “Winter Hill Gang” that more-or-less OWNED organized crime in the city for decades. He’d been a career criminal for almost his entire adult life – while interred at Alcatraz in the late-50s, he was one of the human test-subjects in the CIA’s infamous MKULTRA Project. And in case he didn’t already sound like something out of a bad movie, he had a “good guy” brother who was a State Senate President and President of the University of Massachusetts during the same period he running his syndicate.

At the height of his power, he was essentially untouchable; operating practically right out in the open yet invincible to police and making short work of rival gangs – he’s even reputed to have double-crossed the IRA without incurring direct retribution. As it turned out *gasp!* his power had a less-than-mythic source: He was protected by his status as a high-level FBI informant. (Yes, this is where Frank Costello in “The Departed” mostly came from.) In 1994, his FBI handler allegedly tipped him off that arrest was imminent – driving a bitter wedge between Boston cops and the FBI that lingers to this day – and he’d been on the run ever since.

I’ll promise you this: There are A LOT of aging gangsters in Boston being woken up to some bad news by their underlings and/or shady live-in grandkids right now – this is a guy who knows where ALL the bodies are buried, and probably won’t be hesitant to resume his guts-spilling now. He was at one point, for example, believed to have had a hand in (or at least knowledge of) the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist – the largest single property theft (by value) in recorded history.

Alright, so… as you can probably tell, there is now a PayPal “Tip Jar” button on the sidebar of both blogs. I just wanted to clarify a few things about that after the jump.

Here’s the thing of it, folks: While I DO get paid to produce some of the content that is linked/embedded to this site, a good deal of it I do not – i.e. Game OverThinker, American Bob, “pieces” posted directly to the two blogs themselves, etc. So I figured that, on the off chance that folks who enjoy those things ever wished to “express” said enjoyment in the form of a tip here or there, it couldn’t hurt to make the option available.

I want to be very clear on this point, though – the “tip jar” is EXACTLY what it says it is, and nothing else. It’s not going to effect or be effected-by the content of the site – i.e. you will NOT see things in the vein of “if the tip jar gets X-amount full, this or that will happen on this or that show.” Because that would be INCREDIBLY tacky and lame. It’s a virtual jar by the virtual till, period; and will have no influence on content – PERIOD.

Conversely, please know and take seriously any comments/emails/whatever along the lines of “if I put X-amount in the jar, will you start/stop doing this/that?” will be ignored. In fact, I’d prefer not to talk about it AT ALL – even in the well-meaning “hey man, I liked that so I tipped etc etc” in the comments/feedback or otherwise because – again – that seems tacky and uncomfortable to me.

The “tip jar,” much like the ads, is STRICTLY a way for me to break a little bit more even on this whole “free entertainment and content” thing. If you like the blogs, content, etc and want to “show support” by tossing some change in the jar or clicking the ads; awesome, bless you, thank you very much. If not, that’s cool too and thanks for reading/watching all the same.

“Pacific Rim,” a treatment/spec-script from Travis Beacham, has the good fortune of being Guillermo del Toro’s next movie… and the bad fortune of being the movie del Toro “fell back” on when “At The Mountains of Madness” fell apart a few months ago – meaning that everyone was too upset about “Mountains” to give it the proper “Holy shit del Toro doing a giant monster movie!!!” hyping it deserved. Now that it’s begun to add a cast, maybe that can turn around.

“Rim” has been more-or-less pitched as “Gundam vs. Godzilla” – or, more appropriately, “Stuff From Japanese Pop-Culture Americans Like: The Movie.” It’s premise involves an interdimensional portal opening up in the Pacific Ocean that starts spitting out angry giant-scale monsters. The good guys are humans who pilot “building-sized” robots to fight them. That’ll work.

Elba and “Sons of Anarchy’s” Charlie Hunnam are signed to play the two human leads. There’s been some speculation that the script may have been reworked so as to not focus too much of the monster-destruction business on Japan (which it initially did) in the wake of the recent disasters there.

Trailer for David Cronenberg’s upcoming feature, adapted from the play “The Talking Cure.” Viggo Mortensen is Sigmund Freud, Michael Fassbender is Carl Jung, Vincent Cassell is Otto Gross and Keira Knightley is a patient hankerin’ for a spankerin’…

“Twilight – But For Psych Majors And Not Sucky” is supposed to debut at the Venice Film Festival in September, no U.S. release date has been set.

Hat tip: Hollywood Elsewhere

Conan the Comedian offers the most concise appraisal of “Green Lantern” yet:

http://i.cdn.turner.com/v5cache/TBS/cvp/teamcoco_drupal_embed.swf?context=teamcoco_embed_offsite&videoId=12967

In case you’re wondering, yes – Ryan Reynolds really does have that exact “actor-not-recieving-any-direction-while-standing-on-a-greenscreen-set” bewildered stare in EVERY damn FX shot in this movie.

I done another thingee:

Steve Head and John Black invited me back to the PMP this past weekend; mostly to help deliver a eulogy upon the untimely passing of “Green Lantern.” Give it a listen. (direct-player after the jump.)

http://player.wizzard.tv/player/o/i/x/130864088250/config/k-48276aa9ffcfb432/uuid/null/episode/k-a28ecb2dc9dedfbc

Hat-tip to Hollywood-Elsewhere

Magnet has picked up U.S. distribution for mad (and criminally overlooked in the States) Spanish shock-cinema auteur Alex de la Iglesia’s “Balada Triste,” re-named for English-language markets as “The Last Circus.” It’s the story of two Spanish circus clowns – a “sad” one and a “funny” one – driven to violent conflict and mutual insanity as they vie for the affections of an acrobat during the brutal Franco dictatorship. And it looks INCREDIBLE:

Alex de la Iglesia is a “Troma-but-with-talent” guy in the vein of early Peter Jackson, Guillermo del Toro, Sam Raimi, Robert Rodriguez, Tarantino, etc – but his stuff hasn’t yet managed to gain traction with U.S. audiences.

His “best” known release in the West was probably the fantastic “800 Bullets;” about a troubled rich kid who goes looking for his grandfather – a stuntman from the Spanish-filmed Eastwood “Spaghetti” Westerns whose fellow former cowboy bit-players turned aging drunken nutcases have reworked the decaying sets into a makeshift tourist attraction. Here’s a trailer:

It strikes a weird balance between Spielbergian childlike-imagination worship (he has to help the cowboy actors become “real” outlaw heroes to defend their “home” from evil developers led by his coldhearted-businesswoman mom) and vauge-misogyny (it edges toward implying that the kid’s behavior issues are the result of an overly career-focused mother and an absent father figure, and posits a gang of violent gun-toting drunkards and a stunning prostitute who’s a little TOO friendly to a pre-teen boy as suitable substitutes) but the end result is pretty damn cool.