Category: Fanboy

It’s Clobbering Time.

In case you never saw the 20-sec promo last week, the full-on Fantastic Four trailer is online now and, well, what is there to say, really? Like Spiderman and X-Men, The Fantastic Four is one of Marvel’s signature franchises…so I’m surprised how leaden this one’s turning out. In no way does this look or feel like FF to me, with the possible exception of Michael Chiklis’ early-Kirby Thing look. Turning Doom into a deranged budget Emperor Palpatine was a particularly bad call.

Speaking of which, not to get too old-school fanboy up in here, but what is Julian McMahon doing with them up there in space anyway? (And what’s with the space station? I seem to remember a 4-seater test shuttle…don’t fix it if it ain’t broke, y’all.) Oof, I’ve got a bad feeling about this…could this actually end up being worse than The Hulk?

Prepping for Arkham.

In today’s trailer bin (Warning: This being IFILM, you may have to suffer through a commercial for the Catwoman DVD), Gulf War vet Adrien Brody gets experimented on by evil Dr. Kris Kristofferson (and only Keira Knightley can help him) in our first glimpse at The Jacket. Looks intriguing, and I like the cast…but, really, next time somebody locks up Brody in an insane asylum, I want to see him come out as the Joker in Nolan’s Batman Begins sequel. (He’d be so spot-on for The Killing Joke.)

Gallifrey Needs Little People.

By way of Quiddity, the BBC’s Dr. Who revival runs into trouble trying to cast actors of diminuitive stature — they’re all busy being Oompa Loompas and Gringotts goblins for Willy Wonka and Harry Potter IV respectively. Somewhere, Jack Purvis is smiling.

Great Caesar’s Ghost.

Quite a bit of new comic-to-film news today: Hugh Laurie and James Marsden join Superman as Daily Planet editor Perry White and Richard White (Lois’s non-Super love interest) respectively, the Dark Knight cradles Katie Holmes in this new EW pic from Batman Begins, and 20 seconds of the new FF trailer appear online (along with this shot of The Thing, also from the new EW.) I know I keep piling bad vibes on this project, but really, the litany of hard-to-discern FX shots coupled with the “Kick out the Jams”-style whiteboy-angst-metal does nothing for me.

A Little More.

In no surprise to anyone after the seemingly somewhat abbreviated RotK:EE, PJ announces a probable “Ultimate Edition” of LotR, to be released in a few years. The UEs would include more deleted scenes (not re-integrated into the films), more documentaries, and the blooper reels. (I wouldn’t expect to see any of this until well after both Kong and the pending format wars.)

Silicon Council.

Seen and taken from Cliopatria, Crooked Timber holds an online symposium on China Mieville and Iron Council, which includes informed essays by John Holbo, Belle Waring, Henry Farrell, Miriam Elizabeth Burstein, John Quiggen, and most notably, Mieville himself. I haven’t gotten through all of these yet, but there’s some really good stuff here, including Mieville’s nuanced analysis of the great Tolkien-Moorcock divide in fantasy writing. (I for one think that, when it comes J.R.R.T., Moorcock is full of it, as is Phillip Pullman.) Of Mieville’s books, I most enjoyed Perdido Street Station and most admired The Scar. Iron Council was a good read in fine phantasmagoric Mieville form, but I ultimately thought it was too self-conscious in its historical agenda — At times I felt I was reading J. Anthony Lukas’s Big Trouble by way of Mervyn Peake. I appreciate what Mieville was trying to do…I just don’t think he quite pulled it off.