SUPER VILLAN MOMS TARGET MARVEL AND DC OVER GAY HEROES

Hot off the blistering box-office success of The Avengers, principal photography on Marvel Studios’ Iron Man 3 began in North Carolina this week.  I wonder of how intolerant Tar Heels feel about the movie now that Marvel Comics has announced they’ll feature a same-sex wedding in next month’s issue of Astonishing X-Men?  

As if an entire state wasn’t enough, now One Million Moms, a conservative Christian group, is launching a campaign to stop Marvel and DC Comics characters from coming out of the closet.  Earlier this week, both publishers made landmark announcements that has these super-villainous matriarchs up in arms.

CAN WILL SMITH REVERSE SHYAMALAN’S SLUMP?

Will Smith is back on the big screen this weekend after a four year hiatus.  Men In Black III is his first film since the mawkish Seven Pounds misfired. But if trite sequels are going to be his stock in trade, he’s going to have a hell of a time maintaining his title as the “World’s Biggest Movie Star”.  The only certainty about Smith's future, based on the projects he has lined up, is more of the same.  In addition to the Men In Black theequel, he has follow-ups to Bad Boys, I, Robot, and Hancock all in various stages of development.  He passed on a remake of the South Korean revenge thriller, Oldboy, with Spielberg at the helm.  Then couldn’t get his act together for Tarantino’s Django Unchained.  Instead, Smith signed on to M. Night Shyamalan’s After Earth, which may be the most baffling career move of all.

SUMMER BLOCKBUSTERS BEWARE “BEAST OF THE SOUTHERN WILD”

The business of marketing summer tentpoles has gotten out of hand.  After three movies and $2.5 billion in worldwide ticket sales, is a four minute super-trailer for The Amazing Spiderman really going to convince audiences to check out the latest version of old Web-head?  How elaborate does the viral campaign for Prometheus, Ridley Scott’s long-awaited return to the Alien franchise, need to be to ensure box-office supremacy?  Even though they're sure things, this summer’s blockbusters have been over-marketed and over-hyped to the point where my anticipation has been completely extinguished.  I’m not foaming at the mouth see The Dark Knight Rises.  A six-minute prologue was attached to IMAX screenings of Mission: Impossible back in December, so I can wait a little while longer to see exactly how Christopher Nolan plans on bringing Gotham City to its knees.  Again.  But one film, amidst this exhausting advertising blitzkrieg, has managed to pique my interest.

"BLADE RUNNER" AND "SIN CITY" SUFFERING SEQUEL SYNDROME?

This week, the sequel status of two highly influential cult favourites came down the press release pipeline.  Follow-ups to Ridley Scott’s sci-fi neon noir, Blade Runner, and Robert Rodriguez’s hard boiled neo-noir, Sin City, are both moving full steam ahead.  For better -- but usually for worse -- sequels, prequels, spin-offs, remakes and reboots have become Hollywood’s bread-and-butter.  I’m not fundamentally opposed to the idea of franchise building or continuing adventures.  After all, The Godfather: Part II is simultaneously prequel and sequel, and the greatest parenthesis ever committed to film.  But for every new Toy Story there are three Saw films.  For every Punisher or Hulk, there’s another Punisher or Hulk.  

MAGNETO’S HOLOCAUST ORIGIN: INSENSITIVE OR INSPIRED?

Do culturally sensitive historical events like slavery or The Holocaust have a place in superhero comics?  That’s a question I wrestled with while reading Magneto Testament, Greg Pak and Carmine Di Giandomenico’s five-issue Marvel Comics miniseries.  The book details the unspeakable horrors suffered by an adolescent Magneto while imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp.  The notion of Magneto as a Holocaust survivor isn’t new, but it never fails to court controversy.

TIM BURTON IS BACK WITH A VENGEANCE. WHO GIVES A RAT'S ASS?

Photo by: Tim Walker, HARPER'S BAZAR

This year sees the release of two films by Tim Burton, a director who’s claim to fame is that he makes middle-of-the-road adaptations, and brands them with kooky black-and-white spirals.  Dark Shadows, his big-screen take on the camp-classic TV show about a vampire and his dysfunctional family, hits theatres this weekend.  It stars his on-screen alter-ego, Johnny Depp, and reunites him with Michelle Pfeiffer for the first time since she slinked her latex-clad way into our collective Bat-fantasies.  In the fall Burton will release a feature length remake of his charming 1984 stop-motion animated short, Frankenweenie.  He’s also producing Timur Bekmambetov’s anachronistic actioner, Abraham Linclon: Vampire Hunter.  It’s a great time to be a Tim Burton fan.  I couldn’t care less.

AN OPEN LETTER TO JOSS WHEDON’S OPEN LETTER

Yesterday, writer/director Joss Whedon posted an open letter to his fans, reacting to The Avengers record smashing opening weekend.  He was gracious and funny, and mentioned Jai Alai (thrice).  Here's my open letter to Mr. Whedon's open letter.

KIMCHI IS A DISH BEST SERVED COLD: REVENGE THRILLERS ARE A SOUTH KOREAN DELICACY

Oldboy (2003)

For almost a decade South Korea has produced a steady stream of  revenge thrillers that are stomach churning, but compulsively watchable.  They’re unflinchingly violent, morally ambiguous and border on the exploitative.  But more often than not, the results are Shakespearean in magnitude.

Chan-wook Park’s Oldboy is the sub-genre’s finest example.  It’s one of Quentin Tarantino’s favourite films, and has critical cache to spare.  It won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2004, and is being remade by Spike Lee, a director who excels at courting controversy.  Oldboy is just the tip of the icepick.

FILM CRITICS SQUARE OFF OVER "THE DICTATOR"

Late last night two titans of online film criticism grappled in a candid but civil Twitter debate about the eroding ethical state of showbiz journalism.  I’ve been reading both Devin Faraci of Badass Digest and Drew McWeeny of HitFix on a near-daily basis for the better part of a decade.  They’re among the best web critics currently working; always insightful, articulate and passionate.  They are the giant shoulders upon which I stand.

The discussion was sparked when Faraci sent out a tweet to his 10,000+ subscribers, lamenting a growing trend that finds junket critics selling out themselves and their faithful readers.  “So few of your favorite film critics are trustworthy.  What a state of affairs when opinions are for sale. “

Faraci was referencing a Paramount Pictures press conference, held earlier in the day, for Sacha Baron Cohen’s new comedy, The Dictator.  Journalists were inexplicably required to submit questions for approval beforehand.  Cohen proceeded to field the questions in-character, as Gaddafi-composite Admiral General Aladeen, of the fictional Republic of Wadiya.  Faraci's concern was that attending journalists became complicit participants in a shameless PR stunt masquerading as a legitimate press conference.

A carefully considered Professor X vs. Magneto polemic unfolded between Faraci and McWeeny (I’ll let you determine who’s who).  They agreed upon the core ethical dilemma, that truth and honesty are fundamental to their profession, but disagreed on how a responsible journalist should react to offending parties.  Both gentlemen asked tough questions in what emerged as one the most intelligent discourses on journalistic integrity I've read in ages.

The following is a transcript, from May 8^th, 2012, of the Twitter conversation between Faraci and McWeeny.

WHILE "THE AVENGERS" BREAKS BOX-OFFICE RECORDS, COMIC BOOK SALES PALE

The Avengers took North American audiences by force this weekend, grossing over $200 million, and tallying the biggest three-day opening of all time.  It's writer/director Joss Whedon's first ever bona-fide big-screen hit.  Whedon, who honed his talent juggling eclectic ensembles on TV shows like Buffy The Vampire Slayer, has spent the last decade suffering trigger-happy Fox execs. After they prematurely axed two of his shows (Firefly and Dollhouse), he abandoned network TV altogether, producing the cult favourite web-series, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.  While the success of The Avengers guarantees Whedon will live to story-tell another day, it’s really the comic book medium itself that needs rescuing.