New 'Spider-Man' Stills: Amazing Is The Wrong Word

BLUH. That's the start of my every thought when thinking, pondering, writing about, or debating the upcoming reboot of the Spider-Man franchise, creatively titled The Amazing Spider-Man. Coming less than ten years after Sam Raimi's definitive and massively successful interpretation--be honest, these movies were HUGE, and the first two were smashes both with audiences and with critics--going back to square one seemed, seems, and will continue to appear like a bad, almost tragic, choice. Bad, because at this point the only people who don't know how Peter Parker became Spider-Man are either never going to see a Spidey flick, or live in a hut in Africa, and tragic, because hot DAMN the cast is truly the goods.

The issue is a matter of focus--why are we seeing this story again? The trailer and the official line is some vague "mystery" that will be revealed concerning Parker's parents, but even that holds no interest to me. I don't care about Parker's parents, or what their history was with SHIELD, and I especially don't care if they created the symbiote in the Ultimates comics. The reason? Because alive or dead, government spies or not, as long as Peter has Uncle Ben, he has no reason to be Spider-Man. Without that death on his conscience, without the words "With great power comes great responsibility" echoing in his mind, all the intrigue and mystery is just fluff and noise.

The official Facebook page posted seven new images, and none of them do anything to spark my interest. I hate the idea of mechanical webshooters on film, I think Andrew Garfield, while a fantastic actor, is way too pretty to ever sell Parker as a social outcast, and just the look of the film is so...small scale. It's like a pilot for Spidey High, airing Thursdays on The CW. And that's a shame, because Denis Leary is more than likely going to rock as Captain Stacy.

Click the pic of Garfield bringing the smolder to see the full set:

Source: Collider via CHUD

Now Available: Brandon Bird's Nuclear Family

Brandon Bird is quickly becoming one of the best providers of bizarre pop culture art on the internet. While anyone with a community college level course on Illustrator can make a "minimalist poster" of some beloved geek favorite, Bird has developed a much more different bent, taking pop culture and geek icons and putting a surreal, usually comical bent on it. From his Deep Space Nine-meets-a-Rennisance-painting The Death of Jennifer Sisko to his best seller No One Wants To Play Sega With Harrison Ford, Bird is right behind the Mondo team of must-own wall art for geeks.

His latest release, Nuclear Family, is a different format--it's a sticker for your car, or wherever you want!--but still every bit of awesome. It gives Ghostbuster fans something different to spend their fandom on other than the ridiculously expensive statuettes that keep getting released, and will probably make my laptop cover look all that much cooler. Click the pic to link to the purchase page--I'm sure there's a flat surface somewhere that could use a family portrait of everyone's favorite paranormal investigators and eliminators.

Source: BrandonBird.com

Fake Bill Murray makes the Right Call for 'Ghostbusters III'

You gotta love Bill Murray. Not only because he's one of the best comedians of the last forty years, but because after a string of critically and commercially derided film in the 90s, he fired his agent, and started relying on his instinct (and a randomly checked answering machine) to choose his projects. For the most part, it's been a smart move--instead of The Man Who Knew Too Little and Larger Than Life, we've been treated to Lost in Translation, Broken Flowers, and most recently Get Low and the best cameo of the decade in Zombieland. He hasn't always picked winners--that Passion Play film was a particular embarrassment--but his choosiness has served him well over the last ten years.

That insinct has paid off in another--albeit, almost certainly made up--way. According to the highly dubious National Enquierer, Murray is officially done reading new drafts of Ghostbusters 3--going so far as to mail a shredded copy of the latest drift to Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis with a note reading "No one wants to pay money to see fat, old men chasing ghosts." Aykroyd & Ramis are reportedly furious over the gag, and vow to get the film made without him.

While the story is at least 98% horse manure (really? The effin' Enquirer?), the idea here is sound. Ghostbusters is a classic film, but it's also lightning in a bottle. No one involved has been able to recreate the magic since then; Ghostbusters II is proof enough. And frankly, after the tragic disappointment of recent dragged-back-from-the-80s sequels like Crystal Skull and TRON Legacy, the idea of another Ghostbusters movie with the same crew after 22 years just fills me with a gravest sense of "Ugh." And who wants to feel like that about Ghostbusters?

Source: The National Enquirer via reddit

Vin Diesel Skips a Number, Confirms Fast & Furious 7

I've never understood The Fast & the Furious franchise. The first film was a serviceable, if extremely derivative, Point Break knock-off. It was a surprise sleeper in the summer of 2001, aka the summer where nothing really came out (Sure, we got A.I., but you assholes didn't appreciate it), so it getting a sequel wasn't surprising. Then the outrageously homoerotic 2Fast2Furious happened--really, it just happened--and Tokyo Drift attempted to make the franchise name bigger than anything else, but after that the franchise seemed due for DTV-ville.

But what people missed, I guess, was Vin Diesel and Paul Walker making "I've always loved you vibes" during a block-of-wood-acting-off. The grammatically challenged Fast/Furious scored a new franchise best, and earlier this year, Fast Five topped even that one with the addition of Dwayne "Can I Please Star in Something That Makes Money That ISN'T a Kids Movie" Johnson. I still haven't seen it, but I hear the fight between him and Vin is particularly...greasy, in a baby oil kind of way.

So of course there's going to be a sixth one. That was to be expected. But the real shocker of the day is Vin Diesel revealing that not only is there a sixth one being prepped, there's already a SEVENTH flick in the scripting stages. During a talk with THR, Diesel proclaimed that the story they've concocted for number six is so big, they're splitting it in two. Of course they are. The franchise has become a self-sustaining cash cow for the forseeable future, and working on these projects means Walker, Diesel, and the ever-growing cast of interchangeable actors can keep cashing checks.

The most fun I can wring from the franchise anymore is trying to figure out how screwy the titles are going to get. Since #4 dropped the "The"'s and the "And," and #5 dropped the second half of the franchise title altogether, I'm guess the next one will be Furious Six, with the seventh one finally merging the whole thing into one word, Fasturious, with a 7 replacing one of the letters to solidify its moldy edginess.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Groucho Marx: Still The Best Around

There are few humans in history who had a better grasp on the English language than Groucho Marx. His ability to play with words was so legendary that even today, there are few who could even contend to be considered on the lower rung of his level. Maybe George Carlin came close, but even he's off feeding fertilizer at this point.

People generally just think that Groucho was only good for puns, and while that certainly made up a large part of his arsenal (I'd also contend that coming up with puns like he did on the fly takes some serious talent), it wasn't all he was good at. He was also a vigorous writer: he never got an education past the third grade, and spent most of his adult life reading and writing to make up for it. He also loved his fans, and every so often someone who wrote him a bit of fan mail would end up getting a letter from the King of Snark.

The pretty interesting blog lettersofnote posted one such letter today, written to a Corporal Darrow in the Pacific Theatre during World War II, showcases Marx's wit, while also giving a glimpse at the more human side his on-screen persona never had much use for. It's fascinating stuff, and cements Groucho's place as one of America's greatest treasures. Read the letter yourself:

Source: lettersofnote via BuzzFeed

'THE HOBBIT' releases a Long-Expected Trailer

After years upon years of false starts, lawsuits, director changes, re-writes, budget battles, and generally the biggest case of development hell for anyone whose name doesn't rhyme with Smelly Gilligan, Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is finally upon us. The link is here, the embedded version below, but before you watch, do yourself a favor:

Forget the endless hand-wringing debates about splitting the story in two, the worries that this was going to shift the focus from Bilbo's journey and make it 'Lord of the Rings Episode 0: The Phantom Ring Menace'. Forget the controversy at losing Guillermo DelToro as director. Forget the rumors that Peter Jackson had lost his touch, rumors that got fanned by how remarkably underwhelming The Lovely Bones was. Forget all that, and instead think back to eleven years ago (holy shit), right before we got our first glimpse of Middle Earth, and think of all the debates that raged even then that seem pointless now: Where's Tom Bombadil? How could they cut out the Scouring of the Shire? DO BALROGS REALLY HAVE WINGS?! Remember how you let it all go once you saw the teaser, and THEN give this a go:

Feels good, doesn't it? The tone is lighter than Lord of the Rings, but it should be: The Hobbit is, of course, a kid's story. Tolkien wrote it for his grandkids. It works. 

Of course, now we get to sit and wait a whole other year to get the actual film. Oh, if only there were other films to distract us...

The Little Moments: BREACH

The best moments in film are sometimes big. Big reveals, big moments, big emotions tying into big realizations. "Luke, I am your father." "Mein Furher, I can walk!" "You can't handle the truth!" It's moments like those that reverberate in pop culture, blaze and sear their way into our collective memories. But I find, more and more, as I dig and expand my cinematic pallete, that it's really the small moments in films that give those big moments weight. A glance. A softly spoken line. A shaking hand that betrays a hidden fear or grief. Little pieces that, taken out of context, might not seem so impressive, but executed in their given story can hit you harder than the biggest plot twist ever. Without these moments, those big ones would diminish, and that's what I'm going to start focusing on.

"I matter. Plenty."

Breach is one of those films built on small moments, which never give way to big ones. It's very uncommon for a thriller, in the modern sense of the word, anyway; the film tackles a recent event but feels like something more akin to the mid-70s, when Hollywood was free of the Production Code but hadn't yet been taken over by corporations. You can easily see where it would be tempting to sex the story of Robert Hanssen up, to indulge and make it a more recognizable spy thriller.  There's the 25 year FBI agent who is really a traitor. The young and eager to impress analyst, yearning to make agent, who is assigned to trail him and also gain his trust. And of course, the stern but noble director whose focus never wavers from her target, but also makes sure the little greenhorn doesn't lose his way. Throw in some neon lighting, eighteen too many camera swoops per scene, and an average shot length of 1.8 seconds and this could've been a Tony Scott film, except the whole story would've been relocated to war torn Kosovo or a train that won't stop, and Hanssen would be recast as Denzel Washington.