Movies

Shannon O'Leary brings you up to speed on the week's developments in nerd-themed entertainment, starting with a mysterious photo of Catwoman.

A new GREEN LANTERN trailer has been released that should be titled "Green Lantern Lore 101" for it explains about Oa, and Guardians and rings and .... yellow powers and all that stuff. As someone who has never been that into Green Lantern, I learned something.

The countdown to THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, the highly anticipated third entry in Chris Nolan's Batman trilogy, kicked off today with a new new site, which thus far contains ominous chanting. The site was linked to via a Twitter account, @TheFireRises, which sends you to a page where you can upload your Twitter or Facebook avatar to help collate a collage of an image of Tom Hardy as Bane, one of the villains in the movie.

-The Norse God continued to bring the hammer down at the North American Box Office for the second weekend in a row, contradicting industry buzz that Thor's premiere would herald the comics movie...

Kazu Kibuishi's AMULET series has been a strong seller for Scholastic and also a strong candidate for the next graphic novel series to get a big movie bump -- IF the movie gets made....

TINTIN is coming this Christmas! Did you remember? The Steven Spielberg-directed, Peter Jackson-produced film -- shrouded in veils of mystery for the most part -- has just released its first trailer, and from the looks of it, it's fitting right into the Holiday Uncanny Valley Mocap Vacation slot that Robert Zemeckis was dragged from kicking and screaming.

Filmmaker Anthony Desiato became so fascinated by the social scene at the local comic shop that he decided to make a documentary about it. "My Comic Shop DocumentARy" (SIC) explores Alternate Realities Comics in Scarsdale, NY and its owner, Steve Oto.

If you follow our Twitter feed - and who doesn't! - you know we're been having lots of computer problems. We'll share our exciting process when it's finished, and hopefully successful (for the moment we have to use our travel backup) but it's already taken up the whole weekend, which, what with FMB being out of town for a (from what we hear) very successful signing at Black Cat Comics in Salt Lake City, we slaved away all weekend with a steady background of whatever happened to be on the TV, giving us a chance to rewind with a fine selection of films from our nerd heritage collection and a few new gems as well.

Hollywood is a tough place. Grant Morrison may be a god of comics -- the most inventive superhero idea smith since Kirby, even -- and his new book about superheroes called SUPERGODS just got...

To no one's surprise, THOR scored a hit at the weekend box office topping the domestic till with $66 million, adding up to a worldwide gross of $242 mil. The thunder "god" lagged only IRON MAN and SPIDER-MAN's debuts, making the third biggest first appearance for a Marvel character. (But NOTE the others didn't have the benefit of inflated 3D ticket prices. It was also proof that a film can make a big debut despite two weeks of piracy: THOR opened two weeks ago overseas to take advantage of various local holidays and the Royal Wedding 3-day weekend in Britain. Although THOR also handily blasted the Mel Gibson come-back vehicle, THE BEAVER, it was not all good news:

It's very obvious that Marvel Studios movies have developed a style and look that's quite consistent, from the type of villain to the type of love interest to the Stan Lee cameo. On the spectrum of Marvel movies, THOR falls a little bit south of the first IRON MAN in terms of sheer enjoyability, but north of just about everything else. The good parts of the formula as developed by Avi Arad and perfected by Kevin Feige are just common sense: a reliable, solid director; respected, award-nominated actors in the villain, father figure, troublesome government figure and love interest roles; and a charismatic hero who looks good in a wife-beater. In the typical Marvel movie, science is both the hero's friend and enemy -- he (and it is always a he) uses science to better his own powers, but the forces of evil are always trying to duplicate and better that research, with the resulting showdown between the forces of order and the forces of chaos at about the 1:45 mark.

If you've been enjoying Jason Momoa's portrayel of Khai Drogo, the Dothraki warlord whose fierce nature is tamed only by a knowledge of new sexual positions on Game of Thrones, you will enjoy this first full-length trailer for the new CONAN movie which is action packed, full of lovin' and killin' and Hyborean era fashion. And also someone who looks kinda like Lord Voldemort about 45 seconds in.