Movies

Over on FB Star Wars FINALLY announced the cast of Star Wars: Episode VII via a black and white photo of them sitting around director JJ Abrams. The ODC secretive Abrams had kept everything under wraps but since it's beginning filming soon, they had to make an announcement. The photo is of a table reading for the new script with player old and new.

As I've written before, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2 is probably my favorite superhero movie after the original Christopher Reeve Superman. (I'm not in love with the Nolan Batmans although I get why people like them.) It's one of the very few superhero films with an autuer's imprimatur, and it's just plain goofy as heck, veering between horror pastiche of the directors own work, sappy musical and a sad meditation on middle-aged loneliness. Raimi is old enough to have the original Ditko Spidey as his inspiration, from the upside down kiss to the rogue's gallery of old men in greying wife-beaters—supposedly one of the reasons Raimi and the studio parted ways on Spidey 4 was that Raimi wanted the Vulture as the villain, and the studio wanted a more up to date bad guy. In Marc Webb's Amazing Spider-Man 2, all the references have been updated. This is the ultimate world of Bryan Hitch, Greg Land and Greg Horn, all blazing cgi and mottled, gloomy photoshop. The soundtrack has been similarly updated, with a group known as the Magnificent Six—which includes everyone from Pharrell Williams to Johnny Marr—blasting catchy singles. In what passes for innovation here, a scene where Peter Parker does the obligatory Google search to find out a mystery, instead of the chugging string music of every other superhero movie, we get a Phillip Phillips song.

Fox pictures have a number of exciting movies coming out this year, spanning a number of different audiences. Guest moderator Ralph Garman introduced the first...

(Some minor spoiler ahead) Located in the Arena of this year’s Anaheim Wondercon, Warner Bros. treated us to a sneak peak of three upcoming movies...

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It seems that Fox—which controls the X-men and Fantastic Four film franchises— and Sony—which controls Spider-Man—have come to an agreement to create their OWN variant earth-2 Marvel Cinematic Universe, starting with a cut scene at the end of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2. Foreign viewers are already tweeting about it. I've greyed out the relevant info below.

Avengers: Age of Ultron is currently filming in Aosta, Italy which has to be tough because one bowl of pasta and it's going to show in your spandex, but luckily, as these photos show, some of the costumes have pasta-concealing features. Elizabeth Olson said she wasn't going to go around in a scarlet swimsuit as The Scarlet Witch and she is sure not wearing a swimsuit. Sensible shoes and everything!

With time travel and tons of extra characters so Fox can make sure they have them on their Marvel roster, even this new POSTER...

Fox announced it future Marvel moviesslate last night, including a sequel to the FF movie they haven't even shot yet. But Fox has to...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RIFqHn_Ul0M Nine years after the first SIN CITY created a whole new look for the movies, the first trailer for the sequel has been released....

As you may have recalled, Ridley is actually one those big comics fans in Hollywood and spent a while writing comics for Wildstorm, including a run on the Authority, the mini-series Razor's Edge: Warblade, and The American Way. The latter is a book that really deserves to be on more comics reading lists—an 8 issue mini-series drawn by Georges Jeanty and Karl Story that has similar themes to Darwyn Cooke's New Frontier about the cold war and superheroes, but treats them with a much harsher view. The book follows the government's development of the Civil Defense Corps, a pr-driven team of superheroes introduced in the early 60s, and the turmoil that stem from the first African-American member in the Civil Rights era. A lot of comics mini-series have tried to be "the Next Watchmen" and The American Way is one of the few series that takes that tired "What if superheroes really existed???" idea and gives it a take based on the real world and not the imagined one.

So, your waistline (and gastrointestinal tract) has recovered from the Super Bowl.  You're sick and tired of the weather.  You seek another diversion.  Well,...