Entertainment

One episode to go. Let's discuss "What They Died For" after the jump. spoilers ahoy. That's more like it, right? We got some answers without the...

While Heroes is floating into that great TVLand in the broadcast spectrum -- and become the target of a lawsuit by Jazan Wild over who thought of a carnival first -- NBC is not abandoning the world of superheroes, as we reported yesterday. In keeping up with the times, they are swapping out a complicated, sci-fi tinged multi-character soap opera in the Lost manner, with a single character drama about a dad who wants to make things right. The synopsis sounds pretty lame:

The young people of today can hardly be expected to understand the impact that Tim Burton’s Batman had on movie-goers in the summer of 1989. The general audience of 1989 knew Batman only as the campy, self-conscious, broad-daylight superhero of the Adam West TV show. Nothing in movies prepared viewers for this radical re-thinking of the character, the weird darkness of the themes, the dense, oppressive production design or Jack Nicholson’s performance as The Joker. All of it was alarming, electrifying stuff back then. (Of course, it was all familiar territory for people who had read The Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke, but that’s another story.)

More leaks from the set of GREENLANTERN, this time, via Splash Page, Ryan Reynolds in his mocap suit. Aside from noting how fit Reynolds...

Housekeeping notes: • The OLD Beat is up at a new URL: whenmonkeysattack.com. Believe it or not we're still trying to get all the old...

If I lived in a world where this was real, I'd be so happy. In truth, it is a fake commercial by Phil Lord and Chris Miller made in 1998 for a series of educational shorts about action figures based on historical figures. It was never aired. Thank god for YouTube.

We're sure there will be plenty of debate about "Across the Sea." Let's just get to it.

Cartoon Brew showcases some just for fun test footage for a cartoon version of Bone by animator Andrew Kaiko. Amid Amidi takes the occasion to suggest that Bone would look better in 2D:

Some dude was walking by the Green Lantern movie set in new Orleans and totally got lucky with this photo of Peter Sarsgaard as villain Dr. Hector Hammond. In the comic, Hammond is one of those guy--with-a-giant-deformed-head--who-rides-around-in-a-chair types who are so prevalent these days, a problem caused by a run-in with a meteor back in the day.

§ If you're wondering wondering what happened to the Pepper-kisses-Iron Man's-helmet scene from the IRON MAN 2 trailer that was nowhere to be found in the movie, Gavok's Iron Man 2: The Deleted Scenes has a lot of answers by comparing the novelization of the movie (based on an early version of the screenplay) to the finished version: The most obvious removal is the scene of Pepper kissing Tony’s helmet and throwing it out the aircraft as he tells her, “You complete me!” ...Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t help but think that the combination of that scene would have led to a big wave of racial awkwardness if left unchanged. ...In a comic book store, if you're focusing primarily on periodical comics, and that's still a significant portion of everybody's business, every single week you're getting somewhere between 60 and 100 comics that aren't interchangeable the way chocolate ice cream is with another ice cream. ...A few images from the Conan set in Bulgaria have leaked out , and apparently ancient CImmeria has been dressed to look like Camden, New Jersey. § A New Zealand newspaper takes umbrage at the way J.

That's more or less what Matt Zoller Seitz is saying in this widely-quoted Salon piece : The comic book film has become a gravy train to nowhere. The genre cranks up directors' box office averages and keeps offbeat actors fully employed for years at a stretch by dutifully replicating (with precious few exceptions) the least interesting, least exciting elements of its source material; spicing up otherwise rote superhero vs. supervillain storylines with "complications" and "revisions" (scare quotes intentional) that the filmmakers, for reasons of fiduciary duty, cannot properly investigate; and delivering amusing characterizations, dense stories or stunning visuals while typically failing to combine those aspects into a satisfying whole. As Iron Man 2 is poised to become the biggest opening ever, it's worth revisiting the genre and pointing out that as movies -- like movies with themes and acting and set pieces that aren't fights and so on -- the genre has gotten as formulaic as the wifebeaters all of Marvel's heroes wear. We'd slap Seitz on the wrist for conflating "comic book" with "superhero" in the above quote -- and while we can't argue that SUPERMAN RETURNS and Ang Lee's HULK were the most daring attempts at a larger meaning, they still weren't all that...successful.

Joining the elite three-time (Stardust, Kick-Ass) club for comic book movie directors, Matthew Vaughn has signed on to direct X-Men: First Class after a lot of back and forth. Bryan Singer was originally on board to direct but he pulled out due to scheduling -- the helmer of the first two X-flicks will stay aboard as producer. Vaughn had been rumored for a while -- he was originally scheduled to direct the third X-men movie before pulling out at the last moment himself, leaving Brett Ratner to have his way with the franchise.