This has been innevitable for at least a year now, but it’s still a pretty cool new checkpoint for the “this is really happening” cycle to cross, at last: As of yesterday, the still-in-pre-production “Avengers” movie has officially transfered it’s “rights” from Paramount to Disney.

Disney bought Marvel Comics with a plan in mind: They wanted an equally-massive “boy brand” to compliment their massive “girl brand” re: the “Disney Princess” franchise(s), and buying a few thousand superheroes all at once made a certain amount of sense – except it came with a “catch”…

Between the late-1990s and 2009 when the Disney deal was struck, Marvel had already spread-out the FILM rights to a lot of it’s “A” characters among multiple studios – so even though Disney now owns, say, Spider-Man… they don’t have the rights to make MOVIES about him.

Strictly in terms of the film-rights, it breaks down roughly like this: Sony Pictures owns “Spider-Man,” Fox owns “X-Men,” “Daredevil,” “Ghost Rider,” “Fantastic Four” and various ancilliary characters; while Marvel Studios and Paramount had a joint-agreement on the Avengers-connected franchises (Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Nick Fury and the rest.)

Under the terms of this deal, when “Avengers” and “Iron Man 3” come out in 2012/2013 (and their hoped-for sequels after that), they’ll come out under the Disney banner – Paramount will retain the rights to “Captain America” and “Thor,” both still releasing in 2011 (but if they’re both hits, look for Disney to buy THEM “back,” too.)

For fans, the immediate-takeaway here is overwhelmingly positive: “Avengers,” even before the Disney deal, was meant to serve as the “hub” of the shared-universe-continuity Marvel is hoping to finally bring from the comic world to the film world… and now, there’s NO extra red-tape keeping it from interacting with the VAST majority of characters and properties owned by Disney/Marvel. If they want, say, Luke Cage or Doctor Strange or Black Panther or whoever to show up in a big “Avengers” movie to promote THEIR feature; it can happen easily.

25 years ago today at FAO Schwarz in Manhattan NY, the first Nintendo Entertainment Systems went on sale in the United States. Home video-gaming had died completely in the U.S. three years earlier in The Crash of 1983, and Nintendo had to package the device with a toy robot in order to convince retailers to carry it.

The system launched 18 available games: Balloon Fight, Baseball, Clu Clu Land, Donkey Kong Jr. Math, Duck Hunt, Excitebike, Golf Gyromite, Hogan’s Alley, Ice Climber, Kung Fu, Mach Rider, Pinball Stack-Up, Tennis, Wild Gunman, Wrecking Crew and, of course, Super Mario Bros. 

I still have mine.

As of today, I’m one full week into a diet-experiment in vegetarianism (NOT veganism, though I’m largely switching to whole-wheat pasta and leaving out eggs for the most part) I’m aiming to stretch over the month of October.

I hate it.

I’m gonna stick it out, but I’ll tell you right now: This sucks. I have NO CLUE how legitimate vegetarians put up with this shit. I ate an entire bag of carrots and a whole pack of mushrooms for supper last night, and I was still hungry.

Granted, I’m also on Slimfast, but still – if there was a pig walking around near me right now I’d absolutely be tempted to pounce on it and just eat the damn thing…

Realistically, there will probably come a day when I’ve matured sufficiently to no longer be captivated by suspiciously-timed, certainly-not-at-all-publicist-generated gossip-dumps about beautiful actress/singer/models being “outed” as bisexual – but it’s not today.

Has “I’ll be in my bunk” jumped the memeshark yet?

I remember being back in High School when the whole “pretty-much every woman born after 1978 or so is bi or at least looking to take a shot at it” thing started to hit; attempting to explain to an older lady “counselor” (they had us doing these godawful weekly “sit in a circle and discuss topical young-people issue” things) why it was such a “big deal” for guys our age to “discover” that famous women we were (probably) only ever going to gawk at and/or fantasize about were “into girls.” My top-of-my-head explanation back then: “It’s sort-of like if you found out Christopher Reeve actually could fly.”

I’m still kinda proud of that one…

So… “Top Gun 2,” huh?

Of course, it won’t be called “Top Gun 2” – it’ll be one of those Title: Subtitle sequels. “Top Gun: Something-Plane-Related.”

Here’s my question: Does anyone give a shit?

Granted, this could easily be one of those “oh, right, you live in a different world than most people” moments – but as far as I’ve ever seen “Top Gun” has for a long time been up there with “Dirty Dancing” or “Young Guns” in the pantheon of 80s nostalgia-trip movies where the remaining appreciation is entirely ironic; i.e. people remember it mainly to goof on it for the cartoonish misrepresentation of the Air Force, the cheeseball score and soundtrack, the furiously-sincere pouting from Crusie and Kilmer and the comically-blatant homoeroticism. Hell, I honestly doubt that most people under-20 are even AWARE of it… unless maybe their parents or older siblings showed it to them.

Am I missing something? Is there really a big enough contingent of people out there for whom “Top Gun” is still this big, important piece of the culture – and who’re really eager to find out what’s going on “now” with Maverick?

Apparently, all it takes is ONE: The “cute” part of the story is that this is essentially a “fanboy” project – David Ellison, son of ridiculously-wealthy Oracle Corp founder Larry Ellison, is a film school grad and aviation-afficionado (he produced and acted in “Flyboys,” which was basically Top Gun in WWI) and HE’S the one leaning on Jerry Bruckheimer to make TG2 happen – though, as that linked-article pointed out, they’ve first got to figure out what the make the movie about now that the Air Force is less dedicated to dogfighting and more about precision-bombing.

http://cdn2.themis-media.com/media/global/movies/player/flowplayer.commercial-3.2.5.swf
I liked it.

“Intermission” is about “Secretariat.”

Have we seen this yet?

Nissan has a new electric car out, “The Leaf.” Here’s how they’re advertising it:

Two things immediately jump to mind:

#1: Yes, that’s adorable, agreed. Well done. On the other hand… uh, Nissan? Electric Car manufacturers in general? Guys? Yeah… “buy this car and Gaia will thank you” is the epitome of preaching to the converted, y’know? Like it or not (and believe me, I don’t…) if you want to actually sell electric cars, you kinda have to make an ad for Michael Bay’s America – i.e. the thousands-strong nitwit-army that looks at this and goes “dude bro, that’s sooooo ghey!”

#2: Um, Internet? This has been out there for like a month – so WHY can’t I yet find a “parody” version where The Bear then heads across the street and mauls some douchebag with a Hummer? C’mon, get cracking!

People may have already seen this in one form or another, but what the hell – slow news day…

The setup: What appears to be a Japanese version of Scare Tactics staged a fairly-elaborate prank; convincing a trio of extremely young children (“Santa Claus age” I think would be the Western shorthand re: how likely they are to have “bought” this) that they needed to defend their home – and a conveniently holed-up news crew – from an attacking Zombie. To complete the illusion, a guy in a sure-to-traumatize-a-six-year-old Zombie costume comes trudging onto the scene. Here’s what happened…

Egged-on by the reporter but mostly left to their own devices, the kids (understandably) freak the hell out… but then proceed to set “Home Alone”-style Zombie traps, “beat” the attacker into submission (he’s “going along with it”) and attempt to suffocate him with saran-wrap. The oldest-looking one goes at him with a plastic sword, shouting “I will destroy you!” and berrating the reporter for not helping them. You would not want to be in Zombie Guy’s place had they not (presumably) made sure nothing that might actually HURT was at their disposal – these kids are not fucking around.

And people wonder why no one ever wants to fight Japan hand-to-hand….

According to The Wrap, we now know which villain actor Rhys Ifans will be playing as the main heavy of Sony’s Spider-Man reboot: Dr. Curt Connors, aka The Lizard.

Fuck. That is all. Just… Fuck…

Okay, perhaps a little more – but still “fuck” basically covers it.

No information is provided (yet) as to what the character will actually “do” in the film, but in the broad strokes this would seem to make perfect sense: The reboot is (still, supposedly) aiming to transform the franchise into a “Twilight”/early-“Buffy” style high school genre flick, and Connors usual origin as a science teacher who turns into a monster after using genetic experiments to try and grow his amputated arm back would fit very snuggly into that kind of template – it requires VERY little explanation (“What is ‘The Lizard?'” “um… he’s a lizard.”) his story-arc can occur independently of Spidey’s until they cross and being a schoolteacher he can be “around” the main plot without bending the story (such as it is) into knots.

However…

If you recall, the original three Spider-Man films spent a bunch of B-story time setting up Dylan Baker as the Lizard-to-be. So now, not only will fans (to say nothing of Baker) not get to see that storyline culminate, they’ll see a cut-rate version in it’s place. Joy.

Chris and Kyle, aka “The Armchair Thinkers,” had your’s truly as their guest on the Podcast this week. I thought it went pretty well, Judge for yourself.

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