Movies

In order to view this both impressive and oppressive 3D rendering of THE DARK KNIGHT RISES Gotham City one must first allow Nokia—the formerly ascendant Finnish company that was once the world's largest cel phone manufacturer—to tattle to you friends on Facebook every time you look at it AND tell Nokia you like them. Luckily I do like Nokia -- or at least I did like my tiny blue Nokia from 2000 that was my very first cel phone.

While EW is rolling out Marvel comics secrets, it's also revealing the true multimedia triumph of Marvel these days: the way that studio head Kevin Feige and crew have truly been able to replicate the continuity obsession of the comics into a major motion picture environment. And now they're using short films as a kind of "Marvel Showcase" for the movies.

Sea change at the box office with weekend, with three new films catching on and some lingerers falling off. Ted takes the prize and the Avengers exit the top 10, perhaps to cede the masked market for Amazing Spider-Man.

All the signs have been pointing to Guardians of the Galaxy as the mystery 2014 Marvel Movie...and guess what! It is!

How tailored to the Beat's demographic has the summer movie season been? 7 out of the top 10 films are hitting that cartoon/SF/F range. It's really remarkable. The comedies that were supposed to be "big" are massively under-performing and studio executives aren't likely to be skipping Comicon this year. Let's just look at the Top 10 and bask in themes:

Disney comics is a complicated topic. Disney bought Marvel, but the BOOM! had some of their licenses. BOOM! lost the licenses, but Marvel didn't exactly come charging out of the gate with a lot of Disney titles. If you were paying attention to job listings, you'd also see Disney was hiring comics editors and digital comics people for their publishing office in White Plains (which is about to move to Burbank). It looks like we're seeing their first product: the "Brave Interactive Comic."

Although it is branded as a Pixar movie, "Brave" is more like a Disney feature. Is the Golden Age of Pixar over?

Karl Urban alert! Although all we get to see of him is his chin.

For the full effect you'll want to go right to the site, but this trailer has a lot of dark Bane vs Batman footage and less Catwoman. Any chance this movie will top AVENGERS? Probably not. But it should easily vanquish Spider-Man for #2 comic book movie of the year.

THOR 2 filming begins in August.

What if they released Tom Cruise and Adam Sandler Movies, but nobody cared? That's pretty much what happened this weekend. In what's turning out to be a real Geek Chic summer, the top 10 this week was 4 SF/F films and a cartoon at #1.

Nat Gertler has made a chart, and even though his name is not Clarissa, it might just explain it all for you.