Marvel has released a new trailer for the upcoming Wolverine & The X-Men cartoon, this one without the unapproved alt-rock Foo Fighter soundtrack (which got the show’s producers a lawsuit — why not just use the classic theme from ’90s toon?), plus some extra scenes featuring tons of cameos from both mutant and non-mutant Marvel characters. Really looking forward to this — love the costumes, the tone, and the blend of the movies and comics — though between this and X-Men 3, I’m a little tired of seeing Cyclops portrayed as soft serve!

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My Criterion Collection newsletter told me this:

Dear Criterion Collection Newsletter subscriber (THAT’S ME! - ed.),

We’ve got some exciting news for this fall, and we wanted you to hear it first.

Our first Blu-ray discs are coming! We’ve picked a little over a dozen titles from the collection for Blu-ray treatment, and we’ll begin rolling them out in October. These new editions will feature glorious high-definition picture and sound, all the supplemental content of the DVD releases, and they will be priced to match our standard-def editions.

Holy shit, people. This is going to be amazing. Here’s the list of their first 13 Blu-ray titles:

The Third Man
Bottle Rocket
Chungking Express
The Man Who Fell to Earth
The Last Emperor
El Norte
The 400 Blows
Gimme Shelter
The Complete Monterey Pop
Contempt
Walkabout
For All Mankind
The Wages of Fear

This is all good stuff, but I’m really looking forward to Chungking Express and Walkabout, which apparently will have a new transfer.

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A funny thing happened when I received this DVD in the mail. I immediately called my brother and, chuckling with sadly predictable Gen X smartass irony, told him what 80s TV show box set I had in my hand. His revealing response: “What the hell is that?”

My bro was the target audience for Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors when it debuted in 1985, and he had no memory of it. I was a couple years older at the time and remember specifically avoiding the show because it looked so epically lame.

This was in the mid 80s — the heyday of TV cartoons for licensed properties — and poor little programs like Jayce had to fight with unstoppable juggernauts like Transformers, G.I. Joe, Thundercats, Voltron, He-Man, Robotech, and dozens of others vying for the attention of little dudes all over the country. To say Jayce had an uphill battle to capture eyeballs and wallets is a vast understatement.

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Steve: Batman Begins is a tough movie to grade because it has all the ingredients for a great movie, but shits the bed after the Bruce Wayne training sequences. The nonsensical and physically impossible (by any universe’s established rules) monorail/subway/train sequence alone knocks 10 points off the movie’s score. Add to that the insanely bad water poisoning plot, the fact that Nolan can’t seem to direct a fight scene without turning off all the lights and the ridiculous bit with the Batmobile running along the rooftops of century-old buildings and the horribly ill conceived romantic subplot is almost unforgivable. 65%

Duncan: The first third or so of Batman Begins is great, gritty pulp, and for a good while you’re convinced this is going to be something special. Then, despite a superb cast and Nolan’s cool, stylish approach, it falls prey to an all-too-typical superhero movie problem: it tries to do too much and becomes a clunky, self-indulgent mess. There are some nice moments here and there, and overall I still think it’s worth watching. But that can’t hide the fact that Nolan cannot direct an action sequence to save his life. 77%

Pros:
• Genuinely enjoyed seeing it in the theater.
• The young Bruce Wayne sequences were genuinely entertaining and well done.
• Cillian Murphy’s Dr. Crane/Scarecrow was fantastic. Too bad the character was basically a non-starter of a villain.

Cons:
• We’re not sure WTF we were smoking/drinking while watching it in the theater.
• Why does everyone in Hollywood insist on muddying Batman movies up with horrible romantic sub-plots?
• Nolan’s “action” sequences are dull and lifeless - at least, we think they are. When you shoot them in the dark, it’s kind of hard to tell.
• The poisoned water supply and climactic train sequences were worthy of the Adam West version of the character.

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In a show if pretty big support for “The Spirit,” Lionsgate just emailed out an announcement that they’re changing the release date for Miller’s adaptation to Christmas Day 2007.

On behalf of Lionsgate, we are pleased to announce a new release date for THE SPIRIT - now opening on CHRISTMAS DAY! Frank Miller’s upcoming film adaptation of Will Eisner’s legendary comic strip will now be hitting theaters nearly a month earlier than originally planned. According to VARIETY, “Lionsgate prexy of theatrical films Tom Ortenberg said the decision to shift the film to Christmas Day came after the project was presented to fans at New York Comic-Con.”

The complete story is here.

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It’s a sad state of affairs when someone pays $10.50 for a ticket to see something like “Superhero Movie,” and an even sadder one when Comedy Central pays $2.7mm for the TV rights to the same movie. It’s so sad, it makes little children cry. Why do you hate little children, Comedy Central?

“Superhero Movie” is blasting its way onto Comedy Central, which has agreed to pay the Weinstein Co. $2.7 million for cable rights to the picture as part of a deal that also includes pre-buys of two unreleased titles: “Fanboys” and “The Promotion.”

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Mark Millar = ________

Steve: I have to go with Tarantino for this one. As much fun as I find his movies to be, he’s an overly cocky guy who ultimately gets by (for the most part) on shock and flash. Millar’s very much made in the same mold, both in the over-confident public persona department as well as the over the top storytelling tendencies with an intense love for shocking twists, scenes, character behaviors, etc., often at the expense of the actual plot itself.. If it was physically possible for Millar to insert himself into his comics, I guarantee he’d write himself a cameo in every one.

One thing they aren’t altogether similar in is their ability - or in Millar’s case, inability - to write a decent ending. Leaving the mess that was “Death Proof” aside, Tarantino generally wraps things up nicely in his stories, as opposed to Millar’s tendency to seem to remember at the last minute that he’s on the last chapter of whatever arc he’s working on and “Oh shit, I need to wrap this up STAT!” Still, for the most part, I see more similarities than differences.

Andrew: With Millar I don’t see that comparison at all. As far as Tarantino goes, I think Garth Ennis is the (almost too) obvious analogy there since he seems highly inspired by The Q’s style and aesthetic. Not to mention Tarantino dabbles in skillful, dialog-heavy cult film genre mash-ups of noir, blaxploitation, and kung-fu, and Millar’s work is usually an action-oriented, poor man’s version of the epic and confrontational “widescreen” (sorry…) fantasy/sci-fi superheroisms of Morrison and Ellis. True, Millar and Tarantino are both deeply concerned with The Cool, but that’s where the similarity ends.

No, I think Millar more closely resembles another cultishly adored and highly successful director: Michael Bay. Unabashedly big and corny and unafraid to please the crowd with well-worn cliches and elaborate, ridiculous set pieces, both Millar and Bay are brash, and they both think and create huge. Tiny little distractions like plot and character and plausibility and realistic conclusions become secondary to the overall excitement and style of the ride. Not sure if Michael Bay will ever come up with something as nifty as “Red Son,” though…

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Some clever and inventive person or persons is running around switching up elements of advertising posters on the NYC subway. I’m not sure exactly how they’re doing it, but it’s neat-o.

I’ve seen the sort of random ripped collages people have been doing for a while (the posters now are essentially big plastic stickers stacked on top of one another), but nothing with structure and meaning like the ones in the link. I’ll be on the lookout from now on…

Thanks to And I Am Not Lying for the heads up and pics.

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