Category: Fanboy

When They’ve Raised Hell, You’ll Know It.

“So, to quote J. K. Simmons in his magisterially wicked coda to Burn After Reading, ‘What did we learn, Palmer?’ Well, for my part, I learned a few things…More significantly, I learned — or rather re-learned — that the Coens have made an awful lot of really good movies. Out of all 16 features, I enjoyed re-watching all but two: The Ladykillers, which I have always considered their worst effort by orders of magnitude; and, somewhat to my surprise, The Hudsucker Proxy, which I’d always placed in their bottom tier, but which I had looked forward to giving another try.”

On the thirtieth anniversary of Blood Simple — and as we all await Hail Caesar! — The Atlantic‘s Chris Orr has revisited and ranked all sixteen Coen films in sixteen days. I’d quibble with some of the rankings of course — Lebowski and A Serious Man are top-shelf, imo, and Intolerable Cruelty is oft-overlooked — but anybody who has Miller’s Crossing atop their list is my kinda people. Character. Ethics.

Obviously, You’re Not a Golfer.

“The rug is a moveable barrier which move backwards to reveal more of the rug as the shot is repeatedly hit. Unrolling the rug really pulls the room together and starts one of the modes featured below.”

Speaking of the brothers, it might be a really good time to kidnap yourself, dude: The Dutch Pinball team just made us all privy to the new sh*t at a launch party for their all-new, fully licensed, and very spiffy Big Lebowski pinball machine — available 2Q, 2015 for the ransom of 8500 simoleons (tho’ for your information, the Supreme Court has roundly rejected multi-ball.)

Here’s the official site. If I had ridiculous money/room to burn and were the sort to treat objects like women, man, I’d buy one in a heartbeat.

Diana of Themyscira.

“‘Wonder Woman’s origin story comes straight out of feminist utopian fiction. In the nineteenth century, suffragists, following the work of anthropologists, believed that something like the Amazons of Greek myth had once existed, a matriarchy that predated the rise of patriarchy. ‘The period of woman’s supremacy lasted through many centuries,’ Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote in 1891. In the nineteen-tens, this idea became a staple of feminist thought.”

From the recent bookmarks: Jill Lepore previews her new book, The Secret History of Wonder Woman, in The New Yorker. “Superman owes a debt to science fiction, Batman to the hardboiled detective. Wonder Woman’s debt is to feminism. She’s the missing link in a chain of events that begins with the woman-suffrage campaigns of the nineteen-tens and ends with the troubled place of feminism a century later. Wonder Woman is so hard to put on film because the fight for women’s rights has gone so badly.”

Wars without Williams.


As making the rounds of late, the raw C-SPAN feed of the Yavin 4 medal ceremony was a considerably weaker PR hit for the Rebellion, and no mistake. (Chewie in particular comes off much worse — This is like learning of Lincoln’s squeaky voice.)

Also in recent Original Trilogy-related humor, Black C-3PO (BL3PO? Either way, probably still less offensive than Jar Jar et al) and this analysis of the insurgency on Endor’s moon. “The Ewoks are not soldiers, but a tribal insurgency — and a remarkably successful one once they receive the backing of foreign special forces.”

The Mad and the Sinful.

A few other trailers that popped up via Comic-Con ’14…


Reborn as Tom Hardy, Australia’s most notable post-apocalyptic survivor looks to need a hand or three from Charlize Theron in the first trailer for George Miller’s long-anticipated Mad Max: Fury Road, also with Nicholas Hoult, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, and Zoe Kravitz. Eh, ok…looks like The Road Warrior with better production values.


Meanwhile, the survivors of the enjoyable first film look to go all Smokin’ Aces on Powers Boothe in a new red-band trailer for Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, with Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Bruce Willis, Jaime King, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Eva Green, Dennis Haysbert, Martin Csoskas, Christopher Lloyd, Ray Liotta, Juno Temple, Stacy Keach, Christopher Meloni, Jeremy Piven, and Lady Gaga. Not particularly inclined to throw any more money at Frank Miller, but the first one was good fun.


Update: One more: Julianne Moore and the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman briefly discuss the political ramifications of one Katniss Everdeen in the most recent teaser for Francis Lawrence’s The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Pt. I, with Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Donald Sutherland, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Sam Claflin, Elizabeth Banks, Jeffrey Wright, Stanley Tucci, Toby Jones, Gwendoline Christie, and Natalie Dormer. Alrighty then – Not bad, but I thought the two recent addresses by President Snow were savvier (and creepier) marketing.

Amazons and Androids.

Also among the riches of Comic-Con ’14: Zack Snyder released a second image of the Batfleck (not to be confused with Bruce Wayne) and our first look at Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman from Batman v. Superman. So Diana’s meant to be Kryptonian, then (re: the tiara)? That’s a rather dramatic change.

Elsewhere, Joss Whedon’s Avengers showed up to gab and release, over a few days, this robot melee from Age of Ultron. Both properties also showed short teasers to the attendees, but thus far I’ve only seen them online in unflattering Kramervision form.

A Hobbit Will Rise.

Also in this year’s Comic-Con cache, a few posters and the teaser for Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies. Eh…I dunno. As y’all know, I’ve been a big booster of PJ’s Middle Earth from jump street, and I thought well of the first Hobbit, tho’ the second showed signs of strain.

But this looks tonally off to me — The Hobbit just isn’t Return of the King, and, while I know the Battle of the Five Armies is the bulk of the material remaining to be covered, I’m still going to be depressed if two-thirds of the running time here is Pelennor Fields II: Prequel Boogaloo. Fingers crossed.

Brick by Brick.

“These days the holy grail is an octopus or a dragon. I only know of three octopuses being found, and one was by me, in a cave in Challaborough, Devon. It’s quite competitive. If you heard that your neighbour had found a green dragon, you’d want to go out and find one yourself.”

By way of Dangerous Meta, BBC briefly looks into the Lego infestation of Cornwall. “[On February 13th, 1997] 62 containers were lost overboard about 20 miles off Land’s End – and one of them was filled with nearly 4.8m pieces of Lego, bound for New York…shortly after that some of those Lego pieces began washing up in both the north and south coasts of Cornwall. They’re still coming in today.”

Dark Have Been His Dreams Of Late.

“I’m the Doctor. I’ve lived for over 2000 years. I’ve made many mistakes, and it’s about time that I did something about that.” You like soccer? You know what else is (a) awesome and (b) frightfully British? Doctor Who, whose full-length Season 8 trailer aired across the pond during halftime of the World Cup Final.

Can’t wait! Even if us Yanks have ruined the phrase “into darkness for the time being, y’all had me at Capaldi. I really hope he and Moffat, et al follow through on the darker Doctor they’ve hinted at. The kids have grown up — no more Dinosaurs on a Spaceship. I’d say it’s time for some proper adult Doctoring, in the manner of old.