We've seen many fictional American Presidents fight off all manner of alien and/or monster invasions - Who could forget Independence Day's President Thomas J. Whitmore, who suited up and flew a fighter jet himself just to show how much he loved his country? - but the addition of the very real William Jefferson Clinton to Resurrection still seems a surprise, something that writer Marc Guggenheim seems to be enjoying:

I believe we're charting new territory here... For me, the challenge is remembering to write him the same way I would write any of the other characters in the book and not shy away from moments that make him seem real, human and/or vulnerable. The whole point in bringing Clinton into the book as a regular cast member is to treat him like a regular cast member. It's tempting to put him on some kind of presidential pedestal, but even the 'real life' Clinton is, after all, just a man. I'm not making it a story point or anything, but he puts his pants on one leg at a time, y'know?

But we can't help but wonder: Would Clinton be the best President to rely on in an alien invasion? Aren't there better Presidential choices to be made when selecting someone to lead us in out ongoing battle with an extra-terrestial army?

Click Here To Start Our Countdown Of The Presidents We Think Would Manage To Keep Humanity Alive.

Let's get this out of the way right away: Jonze's Wild Things is only an adaptation of Maurice Sendak's classic children's book in the loosest possible sense. It shouldn't surprise anyone that Jonze, whose Adaptation was a dissertation on the impossibility of adapting a literary work to film, has treated the Sendak book as a mere jumping-off point. There are only a handful of incidents in Sendak's book, but at least half of them don't appear in the movie. Instead of using the book's spare narrative as a framework and adding to it, the movie mostly creates a new story from scratch.

In a way, WTWTA is the polar opposite of Watchmen: Zack Snyder faced a 12-book magnum opus of graphic storytelling, and tried to distill it to three hours without losing anything essential or changing anything (except the ending.) Jonze takes Sendak's twelve sentences and expands them to 100 minutes of incidents. And yet, both films wind up feeling lovely but a bit empty, triumphs of gorgeous imagery over substance.

This review is not going to tell you whether Wild Things is good, or whether you'll like it — after talking to tons of people who've seen the movie, I've come to the conclusion that this is such an idiosyncratic, strange movie that it's impossible to predict whether you'll like it or not. So far, everybody I've talked to has either loved it or hated it — and I have a feeling that sharp divide will be the norm. It also may be the sort of movie that you'll only fully appreciate on a third viewing, with the right substances in the mix. (If you want to read an unreservedly rave review of the movie, check out Entertainment Weekly's.)

Wild Things is not a movie about a little boy who wants to be wild, traveling (in his fantasy, or via magic) to a strange land full of monsters who make him their king and let him be as wild as he wants, until he gets homesick. Rather, Wild Things is a movie about the terrors and insecurities of childhood, and the monsters we all have inside of us. It presents an unnerving portrait of childhood as a stormy, exhilerating time, in which play is intensely serious and important, and loneliness is the biggest nightmare of them all.

Max, who's around ten, lives with his divorced mom, who's slowly failing at her job and barely making ends meet thanks to her shitty absentee ex-husband. She's dating a new guy, whom Max hates. Meanwhile, Max's older sister, Claire, who used to be his friend, has stopped hanging out with him because she's trying to get in with a cool crowd at school. Max acts out, trying to get people to pay attention to him, but it only makes matters worse — so finally, Max screams "feed me, woman!" at his mom, in front of her new boyfriend, and then actually bites her. He's sent to his room, but he runs away from home, until he finds a boat, which takes him to the land of the Wild Things.

Whether you love or hate this movie will depend most on how you feel about the Wild Things, who are sort of weird and totemic. They look like the creatures in Sendak's book — until they open their mouths.

What comes out of the Wild Things' mouths is a stream of complaints and bitter observations, punctuated by moments of extreme, shining whimsy. It keeps you off guard: The monsters, one and all, seem miserable, upset and perennially disappointed by life, but then they come out with cute, occasionally hilarious lines. While the monsters serve to amplify the conflicts, anxieties and destructive glee inside of Max, they don't really feel like aspects of a child's psyche to me — they come across more like emotionally stunted, narcissistic middle-aged people.

I didn't realize the main monster, Carol, was voiced by James Gandolfini until after I saw the film, because i saw a super-early screening and hadn't read much press before hand. So to me, Carol just sounded like a cranky, neurotic old guy with anger issues. At times during the main body of the story, I felt like I was sitting on a particularly long therapy session in a group home, or a Seinfeld episode with fewer jokes.

On the other hand, other people I've talked to who've seen the movie found the Wild Things much more convincing, and compelling, as aspects of Max's inner life, made real and massive. So your mileage may indeed vary.

But whatever you think they are, it's made clear that the Wild Things form an utterly dysfunctional family, one where you sense the same arguments have been going on for decades and will continue for decades more. Carol is upset because another one of the monsters, K.W. (Lauren Ambrose) has decided to leave the group and go spend time with her new friends, who turn out to be weird owls that you have to hit with rocks before you can talk to them. Carol is bursting with resentment and neediness, and when we first meet him he's trashing the other Wild Things' houses like an alcoholic, abusive dad. K.W., meanwhile, just acts like she's sick of everyone's shit.

Then there are two other Wild Things, Judith and Ira, who constantly feel neglected and marginalized within the group — Judith complains every few moments that whatever activities the gang of monsters does, she and her companion are pushed to the side. Nobody cares what they think, nobody pays attention to them, etc. There's also a big bull, who's sort of bull-like.

Here's the scene where we get introduced to some of them, and Judith is like "Oh, you don't need to know me, I'm kind of a downer." The tree-destroying thing is cute, though, as is the tongue thing:

So, yeah... dysfunctional family of losers. Who are depressed. A lot.

But it's not all anhedonia — a big point of the film is that Max shows up and shakes up the monsters' dreadful staleness, becoming their King and giving them a whole bunch of new games to play. "We'll take care of each other, and sleep together in a real pile," Max says. Unlike the people in Max's real life, these monsters pay attention to him and are curious about him, and sort of become his minions.

When Max convinces the Wild Things that he's a King, and that he was a King among the Vikings for twenty years already, it's a brilliantly whimsical scene. Max Records, as Max, shines the most in these quirky moments where's spinning a line of amazing B.S., talking about his crazy super-powers and his amazing leadership skills. The "let the Wild Rumpus begin!" sequence is severely fun and insane, culminating in a crazed puppy pile. And later, when Max concocts a crazy scheme to build a huge fort, with a crime lab and spy gadgets and all sorts of other weird superhero/scifi touches, he's the total nerd-kid avatar, with a team of monsters doing his manic bidding.

But you sort of know, all along, that this whole "king" thing will not turn out well — and that's the biggest departure from the book. Forget the fact that the movie dispenses with the book's "bedroom turns into wild jungle" sequence — the biggest change is that it's much clearer that Max is a failed king, and the monsters end up hating him. This happens partly because Max decides to split the monsters into "good guys" and "bad guys," drawing them into a war fought with dirt clods, which quickly turns ugly. Max makes Judith and Ira into "bad guys," exacerbating their persecution complex, and you can just see in this clip the beginning of things going South:

Sorry to give away so much of the movie's plot — this really isn't a movie you'd go see for the plot, though. It's much more about the weird little touches and character quirks, the lush visuals, and the blaring-loud, wordless score by Karen O. and Carter Burwell.

As I said in the beginning, this movie offers the coldest comfort of any film in Spike Jonze's career. It feels like a journey into sheer dysphoria — Max's home life is unrelentingly horrendous, and when he escapes to a fantasy land, it turns out to be even worse. The film's message seems to be that life sucks, growing up sucks, and most of all, any attempt to escape into wildness or fantasy will only turn out even suckier.

I don't think WTWTA is too scary for small children — but I suspect it may be too nihilistic. Teenagers and tweens, though, may love it.

The film reinforces its dark message with an unblinking stare aimed at blank landscapes. When we first meet Max in the "real" world, the world is blanketed with snow, and Jonze's camera zooms in on the unrelenting whiteness. Max builds a snow fort and hides inside, and he appears to be in a blinding snow tunnel. When Max travels to the land of the Wild Things, at first he's in that famous forest/jungle setting, but the film quickly moves to the blank dunes of the Melbourne area, where Jonze filmed. The landscape is meant to reflect the moods of Max and the Wild Things, which grow increasingly joyless and unrelenting.

Here's a bit where Carol and Max walk through a desolate landscape, and Carol talks about how the landscape used to be rocks, and now it's sand, and soon it'll be dust, and who knows what comes after dust? And then Max says the sun is going to die, and Carol tries to put a brave face on that piece of info:

(The film's visuals, it must be said, really are incredible — the film has brilliant design, from the monsters to their weird circular wicker-like buildings.)

If you think of this as a kids' movie, you'll be sadly disappointed. If you think of it as an adventure film, you'll be puzzled. But think of it as a continuation of Jonze's first two movies, and it makes perfect sense. Like Malkovich and Adaptation, WTWTA is about someone who's uneasy in his own skin — Max literally seeks liberation by donning his wolf costume, and this leads him to his adventure — and like the heroes of Malkovich and Adaptation, Max discovers, the hard way, that being someone else is no solution to his problems, but also that it's a kind of trap.

The main difference is that Wild Things feels much more surreal than those first two films, thanks to the weird Jim Henson/CG creatures. And it's about a kid, rather than a thirtysomething or fortysomething guy. In a sense, Wild Things does for the coming-of-age tale what Jonze's first two movies do for the midlife crisis/second chance story: strip away the candy coating on the fantasy to reach the pure existential crisis beneath, and show how insoluble that crisis really is.

Fall is officially in full effect, which means the big bad summer sci-fi season is over! Now, personally, I set my bar so impossibly high that no film could ever come close to pleasing me unless our lord and saviour Michael Bay himself were to direct it. But perhaps some of you plebs are able to enjoy lesser entertainment - though I fail to see how you can watch anything beyond those low brows of yours. So, now that we've had a little while to absorb and reflect the entertainment we've witnessed, what really was a disaster? So, enjoy a mini "clip-show" to refresh your memory and then vote on what was truly a disaster!


WATCHMEN:



DOLLHOUSE:



TERMINATOR SALVATION:



BSG FINALE:



STAR TREK:



X-MEN ORIGINS - WOLVERINE:



TRANSFORMERS-REVENGE OF THE FALLEN:



GI JOE:



SUMMER GLAU:



DISTRICT 9:



OTHER:



Now go vote... and argue!!!

I also want to use this change in format to bring a little news. For a while now, I've been trying to bring you the best Disaster I can with the time that I have when not busy with other ventures. But, in less than two weeks, I will be welcoming a tiny disaster of my own into the world. So between that and other "official" work that I've been involved in, I will be having far less time to put together a weekly "This is a Disaster". So I am going to take a short hiatus.

I will return, I would just rather promise future greatness than deliver regular mediocrity.


I'll still be lurking around here doing the odd 'shop when time and inspiration meet. But if you want to see what work I'm up too check out my blog. I have big plans for ROACH, so continue to check there periodically. And if you are curious what the fuck I'm going to do with a baby, I just started a new blog that I will do my best to keep up with so follow along there.

Thanks for all your interest so far and I will return before you notice I'm gone.

-Garrison Dean

Morgan told reporters that he'd be interested in taking on the role of the grizzled alien with a fondness for dolphins, currently being developed as a movie by The Losers producers Joel Silver and Akiva Goldsman:

Lobo would be very cool. I don't think that I'm as big as Lobo is, but if you could, like, transplant Mickey Rourke's body onto my head, that would be just great... I do have an in. I'll be elbowing somebody soon.

While we're concerned by the visual of Mickey Rourke's body transplanted onto Morgan's head, we have to admit, he could probably pull it off...

Watchmen's 'Comedian' eyes another comic antihero: Lobo [SciFi Wire]

Clickwheel have teamed up with 2000AD owners Rebellion to offer 2000AD Origins, a free collection of the first episodes of such classic strips as Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, Rogue Trooper, The Ballad of Halo Jones and many more (including more recent creations like Nikolai Dante and Shakara) in both PDF and CBZ format. Featuring early work from Watchmen's Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, as well as other comic greats such as Kevin O'Neill, John Wagner, Ian Gibson and Dan Abnett, this is an almost-perfect way to get introduced to the self-styled Galaxy's Greatest Comic. Spludig Vur Thrigg, as Tharg would say.

2000AD Origins [Clickwheel]

We know, we know: the Hollywood development cycle is a slow, lumbering beast. It can take anywhere from a couple years (for a "fast-track" project) to a decade for a movie to see the light of day. But given how many people were saying, this time last year, that The Dark Knight had changed everything, you'd expect there to be at least some films in development, if not in pre-production or actually filming.

And there don't seem to be any movies in "the pipeline" that seem consciously influenced by TDK. Here are a few possible contenders:

• Super-Max. Written by TDK co-writer David S. Goyer, this film has obvious elements in common with Knight. From the scraps we've gleaned, it's about the snotty trust-fund superhero Green Arrow, who gets sent to prison, probably for a crime he didn't commit. And he has to escape from the world's toughest, most advanced prison by teaming up with a host of DC Comics supervillains. Gritty dark action? Check. Moral ambiguity? Check. Heroes who cross the line? Pretty much. Too bad that every time we hear about this film, it sounds more and more like it's stuck in limbo.

• 

• Superman Returns (Again). Every time someone mentions doing another Superman movie in the wake of 2006's underwhelming Superman Returns, they say it'll feature a "dark" take on the Last Son Of Krypton, influenced by Christopher Nolan's take on Batman. Says Warner Bros. president Jeff Robinov, "We're going to go dark, to the extent that the character will allow." More recently, rumored Super-director James McTeigue said something similar. But this "darker" Man Of Steel movie is still stuck in limbo, and Warner Bros. execs told a courtroom that they don't see much box-office potential in another Superman movie. (Granted, they were trying to get out of having to pay Superman's creators' heirs tons of money for Hollywood rights.) In fact, when they talk about doing a "darker" Superman movie, it's usually said with an air of "Well, nobody really wants to make a Superman movie, but if you put a gun to our heads, we'd do a darker one." The confusing copyright situation with Superman means they have to start development on a new Superman film in the next few years, but assuming Warners gets more enthusiasm for the cinematic Man Of Steel again, they'll probably rediscover their love for his fun, escapist side.
• 
  
  
• The Fantastic Four. News sites started claiming last spring that Fox was considering rebooting this super-family series as a darker, "less bubble-gum" version. And now, just the other day, Fox announced it was definitely rebooting the Fantastic Four. On the other hand, they tapped the decidedly non-dark Akiva Goldsman (Batman And Robin, I Am Legend) to produce the new movie, and
  Michael Greene, writer for Smallville, Heroes and the upcoming Green Lantern movie, will write the script. I am having a hard time imagining that team creating a "dark" FF movie. Plus everyone assumes Fox's sudden interest in moving forward with Reed Richards & Co. was motivated by Disney's purchase of Marvel, and the fact that Disney reportedly wants to take back all of the Marvel properties' movie rights as soon as outside deals expire. If Fox wants to impress Disney, a misguided "dark" Fantastic Four doesn't seem a likely approach.
• 
  
  
  
• Shazam. It's hard to believe, but yes, they were talking about a dark Shazam movie in the wake of The Dark Knight. This is the story of a little boy who discovers a magic cave full of statues of the Deadly Sins, plus an old wizard who teaches him a magic world that will transform him into a big galoot whose nickname is The Big Red Cheese. And then he fights an evil mad-science worm with the help of a talking tiger. Actually, screenwriter John August and director Peter Segal wanted to do a fun, upbeat take on Shazam, but Warner Bros. wanted something more like The Dark Knight. So August rewrote his fun script to make it darker:

  This wasn't "Big, with super powers" anymore. It was Black Adam versus Captain Marvel, with a considerable push into dark territory and liminal badlands like Nanda Parbat. It wasn't the action-comedy I'd signed on to write, but it was a movie I could envision getting made.

  But then Warners pulled the plug on the Shazam movie altogether — remember how I said the enthusiasm for "dark" stories often seems to coincide with a lack of enthusiasm for making the movies at all? And now Shazam is back on track, with Bill Birch writing and comics scribe Geoff Johns pitching in. Says Variety, "The studio is now looking to go back to the original DC Comics source material for inspiration." Going back to the original comics source material is slang for "not fucking it up with a dark reimagining."

So what happened? There are a few theories.

Watchmen happened. You could argue that The Dark Knight changed everything, and then Watchmen changed it all back. Zack Snyder's movie version of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' classic graphic novel was everything the studios were saying they wanted: dark, controversial, morally gray, challenging — and it didn't resonate that well with audiences. It had a so-so opening weekend, followed by a steep drop-off. (Sample headline from the L.A. Times: "Watchmen is going largely unwatched.")

Another "dark" movie that came out this summer, Terminator Salvation, did similarly badly. (It wasn't strictly a superhero film, but it had superhero-ish themes, and starred Bruce Wayne himself, Christian Bale.) And while Frank Miller's The Spirit was more goofy than dark, it did have a noir-ish look to it and was the handiwork of the original "Dark Knight" reinventer.

Meanwhile, movies like G.I. Joe and Wolverine, which were fluffy and bubbly and only challenged you to avoid giggling at their ridiculous dialogue and acting, did great. Audiences didn't suddenly stop liking braindead fun just because they liked one smart, bleak movie.

Also, the economy happened. Suddenly, people were hurting and depressed, and there were a spate of news stories saying that people in an economic shitstorm want upbeat, happy films. They want escapism and a pick-me-up, not a dreadful reminder that life is full of no-win situations and suffering. Whether that theory is true or not, it's one that seems to have a lot of currency in Hollywood.

And finally, looking back through those articles where execs are saying "I want a dark Shazam! I want a dark Dazzler! America needs a dark Howard The Duck!", I can't help noticing that this is usually accompanied by a lack of enthusiasm for whatever superheroic properties they're discussing. Sure, superheroes are big right now, but not every superhero movie is a huge hit, and characters like Superman and the Fantastic Four have fallen squarely into the second or third tier of big-screen spandex-flexers in the past decade or so.

Execs cast about for ways to make those lame fillies run again, and the "dark" thing is one of the ideas they hit on. But at this point, nobody seems to think "dark" is a cure-all for tired superheroes. At least, let's hope not.

During an interview to promote his new The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Gilliam revealed what he thought about Snyder's take on the classic graphic novel:

It got trashed, but there are great sequences in there, but the overall effect is kind of turgid in a certain way. I started putting it down to… you know, in the comic book, or graphic novel… They're still comic books to me (laughs)… It's like the Comedian's coffin is going into the grave with the stars and stripes on top of it and reading it in the comic book it's three panels, boom, boom and boom. On film "hhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmm…"

The pace is wrong. I was glad our version didn't get done, the one that Charles McKeown and I had wrote, because we had reduced it down to about two hours and five minutes I think and we lost so much. Comedian was cut down to next to nothing. So (Zack Snyder) did a good job, but it just felt… I also thought The Incredibles had kind of fucked it for him... [S]o much of that material had been in a quarry that everybody had been digging goodies out of and suddenly you get lost. I think Watchmen really bothered me, because I thought it should be better. It was all there. It looked right, but to me it was pace. It didn't have pace. It needed a bit more quirkiness in there. Dr. Manhattan was getting boring, frankly, and then Ozymandias by the end I thought "Oh, come on!" They lost me by the end, frankly, but it was certainly looking better than what I was going to do! (laughs)

Quint chats with Terry Gilliam about The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Watchmen, Pixar, Ledger and much more! [Ain't It Cool]

Nature Abhors A Superhero Vacuum (But Apparently Abhors Wolverine Even More)
After last year's crunch of The Dark Knight, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and Hancock (and you could arguably throw in Speed Racer in there, as well), this summer was remarkably clear of superheroes, if you ignore X-Men Origins: Wolverine (as most who've seen X-Men Origins: Wolverine are probably prone to do). But, even as Hollywood collectively recovered from last year's superpowered orgy and looked around the nostalgiascape to see if there were alternatives, we couldn't help but notice that some of the movies this summer seemed like superhero movies anyway. GI Joe, with your battlesuits and superhero team dynamic, we're looking at you.

It didn't hurt that Joe, like Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen and Star Trek, had clearly defined good guys and bad guys, as well as larger than life stakes and days to be saved - oh, and action set pieces during which the day-saving takes place. Yes, none of these films featured people with actual superpowers (aside from Spock's mind-melding, but come on), but in almost every other respect, they were superhero movies... and all the more successful for it.

Moral Ambiguity Isn't What We're Looking For, After All?
And what of Wolverine? Or pre-summer release Watchmen, for that matter...? Why weren't they Dark Knight-style colossuses (colossi?), striding across the box office landscape? Possibly for the same reason that Terminator Salvation disappointed: Because they were ill-considered, non-sensical pieces of filmmaking that considered style more important than substa - No, wait, I mean, "because neither offered any comfort to the viewer" (Okay, maybe a little of the former, too). Yes, Wolverine "won" at the end of his movie, but it was a shitty victory that still made him look like an easy dupe who'd been used and abused by The Powers That Be. Watchmen's (and, for that matter, Terminator Salvation's) victory was even more ambiguous. And maybe, Dark Knight aside - and who's to say that that movie won't continue to seem more and more like a fluke in terms of hyper-popularity as time goes on - that's just not what audiences are looking for from their blockbusters?

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Reviews
GI Joe wasn't screened for mainstream critics ahead of its release - which, considering the harshness of some of the reviews, seems like a sensible plan - and had a more successful opening than most expected. In interviews, Joe director Stephen Sommers cited the success of the badly-reviewed Transformers 2 as the reason why some movies don't need reviews any more:

I don't think the mainstream critics are relevant here, they have criticized themselves into irrelevancy. `Transformers 2' got the worst reviews in the last decade, and it is the biggest hit of the year. More people will see that than any other movie. On my movie, it became so clear to us. Why not make those reviewers pay their $15 like everyone else?

There is no way that the people behind other blockbuster movies - especially the ones that know that they're unlikely to get good reviews - aren't going to look at this and consider doing the same thing. It's not that critics have "criticized themselves into irrelevancy," but that studios are finally realizing that mass audiences have never, really, cared that much about them.

(Re)Birth Of The Alternative Mainstream
That said, what are we to make of critical darlings District 9, Cold Souls and Moon? Clearly, the great reviews mattered here - although, in D9's case, possibly not as much as Peter Jackson's name and an advertising campaign that's been going on for more than a year - drawing attention to smaller films that may otherwise have slipped through the cracks. Some are using these movies as a case for SF cinema "rediscover[ing] its brains, heart and soul," and there's definitely an argument to be made there... but there's an equally strong one to be made, I think, for these movies to be used as evidence for the need for SF cinema to be used as a vehicle for new voices wanting to exercise their imaginations and engage audiences before they get ground down by industry politics and pretention. It's not that big a step from Being John Malkovich to the rest of Charlie Kaufman or Spike Jonze's movie careers, after all.

By the end of this summer movie season, it feels as if cinema has fragmented: There are the critic-proof (and unnecessarily-reviewed) blockbusters that fit into our nostalgic take on what stories should be, with good guys and bad guys and evil losing in the end, there are the intellectual, playful, indie darlings, and then there're movies that try and straddle the two and fail at the box office (Although, as ever, "failure" is a moving target; Watchmen must have easily made its money back by now, and if not, will do so with the "Ultimate Edition" DVD at the end of the year). Maybe next year, Jon Favreau's Iron Man 2 will shake things up a little. Here's hoping.

Luke's Landspeeder Bed, 17 Again

Ned Gold, played by Thomas Lennon, was mercilessly teased and bullied in High School. But later he grows up, gets rich, and builds his own nerd palace full of goodies, my favorite being his amazing bed. Take that jocks.

Still, the mural next to his foosball room is pretty grand as well. Apparently there's this whole other plot about Matthew Perry being transformed from and old guy into Zac Efron, but I didn't make it all the way through after all the pausing and rewinding to go and drool over Ned's wonderful toys. Here are some shots of the mural.

Dr. Lazarus' Fan Head Piece, Galaxy Quest

By Grabthar's hammer, by the sons of Worvan, I shall have my Galaxy Quest Dr. Lazarus cap.

Brodie's Comic Collection, Mallrats

You just know Jason Lee's stash has some serious classics hidden in there. Plus, this is the collection that stated the rules we all try to follow: "Touch not, lest ye be touched."

The Van, Fanboys

It has an R2-D2 up top. Enough said.

The Trio's Van, Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Since I'm trying to keep it realistic — because wouldn't we all want a working freeze ray — I'm going to have to say the second automobile I covet, and would happily hot wire home, is The Trio's ride. Especially the horn.

Oscar Goldman Acton Figure, 40-Year-old Virgin

Andy Stitzer's toy collection is, well, ridiculous. There were so many boxes around his house that made me go "ohhh and ahhhh" I lost count. He even had The Six Million Dollar Man's boss, Oscar Goldman, action figure. Second only to his toys is the video game chair...which was pretty amazing.

Darlene's Sandman Fodder, Roseanne

Every so often, Darlene would have poster's of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman up in her room. This is why we love her. I desire not just any Sandman poster but her poster, not just because she was a cool art school chick, but because Joss Whedon was crafty enough to get them posted up on the set.

The Detailed Toy Dioramas, Can't Hardly Wait

First off dioramas are cool, no matter how you cut it, but William Lichter's basement is basically his world recreated by his toys.

Milhouse's Watchmen Babies, The Simpsons

Who doesn't want a copy of the Watchmen Babies DVD that set off comic book writer Alan Moore?

Wayne And Garth's Batman Exit Strategy, Wayne's World 2

Additional thanks to Marc Bernardin and Kara Warner.

The new movie is expected to make above $50 million between Friday and Sunday, according to analysts, which would make it more successful than Terminator Salvation and within Watchmen's $55.7 million opening weekend (Joe actually grossed more than Watchmen on the Friday, but Watchmen's Thursday night screenings took it to $25.1 million total for the day officially). This may be the sign that movie executives were looking for, in terms of proof that name recognition and a more general rating - Joe is a PG-13, against Terminator and Watchmen's R ratings - is more important than either positive buzz or the quality of the finished movie.

With mainstream reviews coming in and not being very good (although Roger Ebert's is a masterpiece of snark), it'll be interesting to see if that impacts attendance throughout the weekend. If it doesn't, and Joe ends up making somewhere around the rumored $55 million, expect to see more toy movies being rushed into production... and past the movie critics.

2009 has been a hard year for fans, let's face it. Two high-profile movies had successfully wooed them with trailers, internet teasers and big promises from press junkets, and then failed to deliver when they finally appeared. To add insult to injury, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was dealt a death blow after finally convincing doubters that it had a reason to exist that didn't rhyme with Bummer Blau. Even the renewal of Dollhouse couldn't stop the pain (And, for some, just made it worse in a "Why this and not that? Why is the universe so random, oh God, why?!?" way, to be honest), and even a summer full of Star Trek and Transformers was overshadowed by the potential hall of suck that GI Joe is rumored to be (Although it may surprise us all, and the anti-hate backlash has begun, bizarrely and happily enough). In all the rush to talk about the technical successes of Avatar, one thing seems to be being overlooked: We need this movie to be a success as much as anyone else does. The alternative will be too heartbreaking.

In a way, Avatar itself is almost secondary to the whole thing. I mean, yes; we want to see it and we're excited about seeing it and the footage that's been screened is what we're all talking about and getting excited by, but it's like Watchmen and Terminator Salvation; we're buying into the hype and the promise that this won't just be a good movie, but one that will change our lives in some way. There's every potential that the movie can be good, even amazing, and still seem like a disappointment (It'll be interesting to see what Watchmen will seem like, years later, when it can finally be viewed away from the hyperbole that surrounded it). It's not enough for Avatar to be a good movie anymore; it has to be the best movie starring Sam Worthington about alien warfare in space that we've ever seen.

Where did this pressure come from? Why do some films become avatars (heh) of the hopes and dreams of collective nerddom, and suffer from those raised expectations when the movie is finally ready to be seen by the world? Some movies actively seek to become the nerd grail - Hi, Tron Legacy! - in a way of building enough buzz to try and cross over into the mainstream through noise and net presence as much as anything else (Call it The Dark Knight effect, I guess), but it seems to me that, just like Amy Winehouse's love, it's a losing game: By baiting fans continually with teases and hints and promises that they've never seen anything like this before, they're actively creating a million fictional movies in a million different heads that will be more exciting and personal than the real thing could ever be. The only way to win by doing that is by doing something that isn't what fans expect; getting back to Dark Knight for a second, the structure of the movie and the machismo nihilism - while both were frustrating - came out of left field, and in surprising the audience, deflated whatever expectations they may have gone in with. Watchmen didn't have the luxury to try that, and Terminator Salvation... well, we don't like to talk about that anymore.

Getting back to my point, though; Avatar could still win. So much of the movie is still shrouded in secrecy, and it's that element that allows Cameron and his crew the opportunity to deliver something that we really won't be expecting. What people have seen so far shows that one of the concerns everyone had - that the visual effects would disappoint - isn't really a problem anymore, but even though finding that out raises the stakes slightly (Now we get the "They conquered the effects! What could go wrong now?!?" euphoria, for one thing), we still don't really know enough about the movie itself to come up with a version in our heads that we could fully expect to see.

I hope that they manage it, and that the finished movie lives up to all of their promises and hype; the last thing we need to finish the year is another example of our selfish dreams gone sour.

Standing here, in the middle of San Diego Comic Con, it's easy to feel as though the movie industry is a huge maw — sucking up every stray thought or tingle of creativity that anyone has ever had, and mashing them all into new reasons for Brad Pitt to grimace. Hollywood feels all-consuming, when you're surrounded by hype for upcoming comic-book and disaster movies.

I was actually going to do a list of "gloriously unfilmable books," but then I Googled to make sure io9 hadn't already done that post. We hadn't, but SciFiWire, Screenhead and hard-SF writer Mike Brotherton all have. And after I'd already started writing this post, Wired Magazine did one too. (And io9 contributor Jeff VanderMeer and the CrazyMonk blog have great comments on the Screenhead post.) The unfilmable novels include some literary giants, like Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace and Haruki Murakami, some masterpieces of thought-provoking science fiction, including Ursula K. Le Guin, William Gibson, and Connie Willis, and some giant epics, like Gene Wolfe's Book Of The New Sun and Dan Simmons' Hyperion. I would add at least some of Iain Banks' Culture novels, some Joanna Russ, and a lot of Rudy Rucker's work.

(Incidentally, the movie of William Gibson's Neuromancer? Still definitely happening, according to inside sources I've talked to recently.)

So instead of doing a list of unfilmable novels, let's discuss the whole idea of a book being "unfilmable." First of all, is it true that there are "unfilmable" books (as opposed to books that shouldn't be filmed?). And what makes a book unfilmable? And finally, what do these supposedly unfilmable books tell us about the process of translating a book to film?

Jeff VanderMeer makes a really fascinating point in his response to the Screenhead post. He writes:

I also think this brings up a serious point: more novels should be unfilmable. Because this speaks to what about the form cannot be replicated in other art forms. When I was writing Shriek, one thing I had foremost in my head was to create something that couldn't be filmed (well, except for little excerpts of it...).

Yes, there are unfilmable books.

So is there such a thing as an unfilmable book? I'd say the answer to that is a resounding "Yes." Sure, people used to say Lord Of The Rings and Watchmen were unfilmable, and they were proved wrong. But those two examples don't disprove the existence of the unfilmable book, as a species. Some books are too abstract, too complex, too idea-driven, or too non-mainstream to become a Hollywood movie, or any kind of movie for that matter.

Take Rudy Rucker's Postsingular and its sequel, Hylozoic. They're fresh in my mind because I just read Hylozoic recently, and there's so much in those novels that you could never possibly convert into a series of sounds and visual images. You have the nano-machines, the "nants," devouring the entire world and porting everybody to a virtual Earth simulation called "Vearth." And after the nants are turned back, you have a kind of global awakening via a network of Orphids, machines which turn every object fully interactive. And soon, everybody on Earth is quasi-telepathic and able to spy on each other via the OrphidNet. And people can expand their consciousness by connecting to a kind of group mind called the Big Pig. Oh, and they create plastic self-aware robots called Shoons, and contact giants from another plane of existence (the Hibrane) who show them how to "unroll the Lazy Eight" dimension. I feel like I'm barely scraping the surface here, and any Hollywood scriptwriter would need a week in a sensory deprivation tank after trying to turn this into a screenplay.

We went to a reading and booksigning for Jacqueline Carey a while back, and she mentioned, with obvious glee, that her magnificent "Kushiel" books couldn't be made into movies. Partly, that's because of their huge scope and complexity — but mostly, it's because of the subject matter. Especially in the first three books, the main character is a sacred prostitute who can turn pain into pleasure (I'm oversimplifying a bit), and sex work and S/M are woven into the story so deeply, you can't remove them without the whole thing falling apart. Not to mention, the fact that her story takes place in alternate France that worships the bastard son of Jesus Christ, who teaches that you should "love as thou wilt," including S/M as well as homosexuality. There are many ways to make a terrible movie of Kushiel's Dart, but no way to make a good one — at least within Hollywood.

Some books just aren't visual enough to make good movies — take Le Guin's The Dispossessed. You could, I suppose, make a somewhat lifeless film about a physicist from an anarchist planet who travels to a capitalist one. But it would be missing everything that makes The Dispossessed brilliant, from its exploration of the limits and virtues of Annares' utopia, to its dead-on depiction of academic politics, to the investigation of physics and philosophy that lie at the core of the development of "simultenaeity physics." How do you make a compelling movie about someone coming up with a new way to think about space/time?

Watchmen and Lord Of The Rings, by contrast, are both action/adventure stories. They were already woven into the fabric of tons of other superhero and fantasy movies long before they came to the silver screen. Turning them into movies required a deft touch, to be sure, but there was nothing in either work that was antithetical to the needs of the movie form. (Except, possibly, Watchmen's giant alien squid.)

And novels that are even more unfilmable than the ones mentioned above also exist. Some of them aren't particularly great as books either — there are novels that are so dreadful, so dull, or so pointlessly offensive that you'd go mad trying to adapt them. I've read many of these books, so I know.

I should add a caveat: even if a book really is unfilmable, you can always make a movie with the same title and one or two character names, with nothing else in common with the original. If you include works loosely inspired by a book, then yes, anything is "filmable."

Are there books that can be filmed, but shouldn't?

As to whether a science fiction novel shouldn't be turned into a film, that's slightly more of a value judgment than the question of whether it can. Many people — myself included — argued that Watchmen shouldn't be a movie. In my case, I was groping towards the theory that a movie that was faithful to the graphic novel would be both too dark and too dull. I wrote:

I don't really doubt that we'll end up with a note-for-note mimicking of the graphic novel, transplanted to the screen. But will it be worth watching?... The Watchmen movie won't be able to duplicate the things that were awesome and juicy about the original graphic novel. And in its attempt to grasp at something that can't be captured, it may wind up being kind of boring.

Looking back at what I wrote, I'm not sure I made the case conclusively — I focused too much, in that essay, on discussing the things that Watchmen does that are unique to the graphic novel form, and discounted the possibility that the movie could do similar things in a different way. I didn't talk enough about the story itself, and the things about it that could, or could not, make for a good movie.

And then, a year ago today, I saw a bunch of footage and talked to Zack Snyder, and came around to the idea that his movie could work — it could be about the history of superhero movies, in the same way the graphic novel was about the history of comics. On the other hand, the actual movie that resulted really was a bit lifeless, as I'd originally feared — especially in the final act.

You'll find no shortage of novelists who feel their books shouldn't be movies, that too much would have to be sacrificed to the crudeness of the movie form.

But actually, thinking about it some more, I think it's a lot harder to argue that something shouldn't be filmed than that it can't be. If you're going to argue that it's possible to make a movie of your favorite book, but too much would be lost in the adaptation, you're shouldering the burden of proof. You have to identify just what elements would be lost — and make a stab at understanding how a work gets ported from "book" to "movie."

What does the process of adapting a novel to films tell us about movies and books?

Much of what Alan Moore said, in arguing that Watchmen shouldn't become a movie, is true of all printed works. You read a book at your own pace, with the ability to flip back and forth as you notice connections between things that happened in the previous chapter and things that are happening now. You do much more of the work of imagining the world in your head — even if there are illustrations. The book is frozen; the reader moves. It's the opposite of a film, in a sense.

I think people who believe that any novel that's brave, or complicated, or emotionally rich, will automatically make for an unfulfilling movie are slightly selling the medium of film short. You can do a lot in visual shorthand in movies, and there's a lot more scope to convey information in a way that will go over the heads of some viewers but resonate with others. Any film worth its photons works on multiple levels, for different audiences. A decent actor can convey a whole chapter's worth of backstory with a meaningful look.

Maybe, when adapting a book to a movie, there's something like T.S. Elliott's "objective correlative": you can put in visual cues, props and hints that stand in for complicated ideas and emotions inside a book.

My favorite book-to-film projects include Adaptation, which takes Susan Orlean's introspective work of journalism The Orchid Thief and turns it into a bizarre pomo story of two screenwriter brothers struggling with an inscrutable story. And then there's American Splendor, the film which adapts Harvey Pekar's autobiographical comics the only way you could: with a mixture of documentary and reenactment, with the two crossing over in a surreal fashion.

Of course, both of those movies experiment with the movie format to try and do justice to a quirky, unusual book. It's hard to imagine a science fiction movie doing something similar, unless it was a low-budget indie like Primer or Moon. Certainly, the kind of big-budget movie that a book like, say, Neuromancer demands is not going to support much in the way of stylistic experimentation. But maybe there are other ways of doing what those films do — bringing in some of the metatextual quirks of the books by adding a narrative voice-over, say, or a Verhoeven-esque set of fake commercials.

But really, that brings us to the biggest problem with adapting movies to books — big-budget Hollywood film genres are much more restrictive than book genres, at least right now. You have superhero films, disaster films, space-horror films and the occasional space opera. But that can always change — it was only a decade ago that you could count the number of satisfying superhero films on one hand, and now it's the "it" genre.

So maybe instead of hoping that your favorite book never becomes a movie, you should hope it does — and in the process of being filmed, it expands, just a bit, the circumference of Hollywood's narrow sphere of possibility. After all, it never hurts to be optimistic.

It just breaks my heart that they didn't include the death of Hollis Mason in the original film. Not only does it display more of the beautiful villain costumes from the previous Watchmen concept art, but Snyder's decision to film Mason's last minutes as the Nite Owl fighting off the Top Knots with flashes of past supervillain enemies is brilliant.

It's a sad moment that demonstrates just how careless and cold humanity has become in regards to human life. It's violent and brutal, and underscores the movie's themes perfectly. I'm actually surprised there wasn't more blood, but it's a great scene and it while it's not in the original, it will be on the Watchmen: Director's Cut out on Blu-Ray July 21.

Announced, stunningly, by a flier contained in the packaging for the Watchmen: The Director's Cut three-disc DVD set is Watchmen: The Ultimate Collector's Edition, a five-disc set that will feature a new edit of the movie (The third in nine months, for those counting) that includes Tales From The Black Freighter animated footage mixed with the live action movie (The other discs are made up of special features including the already-released Behind The Hood and Motion Comic version of the graphic novel). When fans compared Zack Snyder's movie to Blade Runner, I didn't think they meant the number of times a new version would be released on DVD.

Watchmen: The Ultimate Collector's Edition will be released in December.

First Watchmen Ultimate Collector's Edition Blu-ray Details [The HD Room]

The movie leaked late Friday and early Saturday this weekend, brightening some Independence Days for Watchmen-obsessed fans but barely unnoticed by the world at large - BleedingCool.com aside, especially compared to the shitstorm caused by the X-Men Origins: Wolverine leak in March. So why the lack of outrage?

One possibility is that, extra footage aside, everyone who wants to have seen Watchmen has seen it already; unlike Wolverine, it's a relatively known - and unsuccessful - quantity by now. Yes, it's a new version of the movie, but still: while the extended Director's Cut may be grounded in rumors of being more satisfactory to disappointed fans of the book, it's also much more of a niche product than not only Wolverine but the original Watchmen release; it's being aimed at those who have already seen and enjoyed the movie in theaters, and those people are more likely to want to see the HD version and extras on disc, as opposed to a torrented bootleg.

It's also much less of a story than the Wolverine leak; Wolverine's leaked print was unfinished and the source of much (faux) intrigue - Where had it come from? Was it an attempt to sabotage the movie's box office? What did it tell us about the movie? Can you see where the reshoots may have been inserted, or why it needed them in the first place? and so on - whereas this is... well, a leaked DVD re-edit, at heart. There are multiple breaks in security where it could've come from, and much less possibility that internal strife will be revealed by what you can see. Not only that, of course, but it's worth noting that Wolverine was a first... this is just "another" leak, by comparison.

(Let's not forget that Fox made the Wolverine leak into an even bigger story with their reactions, whether it was hastily telling everyone that the finished version contained extra footage or hastily condemning anyone who downloaded it. This leak, by comparison, has been met with silence from Warner Bros. so far.)

Alternatively, it's possible that not that many people knew about it, as it broke over the holiday weekend. It'll be interesting to see if it gains more infamy and popularity over the course of the next few days.

Here are five pieces of wisdom that we've gleaned from the last six months (and handful of days):

President Obama Is The Greatest Hero Of All
As his many comic book appearances have demonstrated, there's no end to our current president's ability to save the world from any genre of threat. Amazing Spider-Man has him fighting supervillains, Youngblood shows him carrying massive laserguns to shoot renegade soldiers taking over the White House, Drafted gives us an alien-invasion-battlin' Barack and Barack The Barbarian brings everything back down to sword and sorcery basics. He's like a modern-day Arnold Schwarzenegger - and enough to make us wonder just how the comic industry would've dealt with John McCain winning the election instead.

Threats To Humanity Are Getting Weaker
Last year, it was the Large Hadron Collider and the possibility that it would rip existence apart when someone flipped the switch, and this year, it was... Swine Flu. It can't just be me, can it? I mean, Swine Flu... Doesn't that seem like a step down from the technological "Our Quest For Knowledge May Destroy Us All" conceptual genius that threatened us last year? Even calling it "the H1N1 Influenza Virus" still sounds kind of shit. Okay, so there's no chance of "hardon" spoonerisms, but still: Pandemics? Haven't we done that already? I'm holding out hope that sewer monsters will brighten the remaining months of the year, however.

The BBC Should Stop Making Us Feel Old
Yes, we know that it's just one of those aimless homilies that you know that you're getting old when the policemen and doctors start looking younger, but selecting a twelve year old to be the new Doctor Who really doesn't make us feel very good about ourselves nonetheless. I know that we started with the oldest of the Doctors and have progressively gotten younger since then - well, roughly - but between David Tennant and Matt Smith, I'm convinced that we'll have our first pre-teen Timelord by 2015. And then, the next one will be a little baby, just like in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Joss Whedon Can Defy The Laws Of Nature
If nothing else, the renewal of Dollhouse proves that he can defy the laws of television. I wouldn't put money on him being unable to fly if he really wanted to.

Fuck Dystopia
Terminator Salvation and Watchmen - two downbeat movies offering popcorn versions of pessimistic views of humanity ("Ultimately, man's greed and laziness will lead us to become disconnected from our fellow man and controlled by the machines and mechanisms that we created to ease our daily existences - but doesn't this slow-motion action sequence look hot?") - both failed to meet expectation at the box office, while Star Trek's hopeful, colorful version of a future that may be too lens-flarey to be cuddly but is nonetheless positive surpassed expectations. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles also died a slow death on television. The obvious conclusion? No-one wants to their entertainment to end with the lesson "We're all screwed." The Dark Knight's glossy hopelessness was so last year, people. We hadn't experienced so much of the economic downturn and/or the hopetrain of Obama back then. We were all so much more innocent and desperate to be mistreated by our movies. (Along the same lines - Size Matters: Terminator, featuring human-sized robots, fails to become a hit. Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, featuring giant robots, breaks box office records. I think you can see what I'm saying here. See also: Robot On Robot Action Is More Acceptable Than Robot On Batman Action and Megan Fox Is Hotter Than Moon Bloodgood. Sorry, But There It Is.)

Bolstered with this new knowledge, we look forward to what the rest of the year can teach us - presuming, of course, that the sewer monsters don't decide to team up with Joss Whedon and end the world before then. Pray for us.

For almost as long as there have been superheroes, there have been superheroes who were intended to be patriotic figures representing American values by offering up inspirational speeches, standing up for the little guy and socking Hitler in the jaw whenever possible. Considering the popularity of the medium during the Second World War, it's easy to see why Real American Heroes became so prevalent, even if they've failed to find so easy a purpose ever since (Although trying to do so has produced such great stories - and such sly commentary as Captain America's 1970s villains, the Committee to Regain America's Principles... or CRAP, for short). But this isn't a day to think about troubled times... so let's salute the brave, bold and... others... of America's Fictional Finest.

The Classics
Captain America
Still the best of all of America's superheroes - or, at least, the only one who's really weathered the years and stayed in print the longest. Sure, there was that whole period he disappeared after the War, but that's because he was frozen in a block of ice. Who would've wanted to have read that month after month?

Uncle Sam
Who could be more patriotic than Captain America? Well, how about Uncle Sam himself? Oh, alright; this character, created by The Spirit's Will Eisner, wasn't the Uncle Sam, but instead the resurrected spirit of a Revolutionary War-era soldier who mystically returns in America's various hours of need, but still. Look at that beard and wonder just who could argue?

The Shield
Created more than a year before Captain America, Archie Comics' super soldier patriot may not have the name recognition of Marvel's counterpart, but DC Comics is doubtlessly hoping that J. Michael Straczynski's upcoming revival of the superpowered military man will change all of that.

The Fighting Yank
A character so wonderfully named, he's been revived not once but twice in recent years, and by no less than Alan Moore (in a 2001 issue of his America's Best Comics series Tom Strong) and Alex Ross (in his ongoing Project Superpowers series). But who could resist the lure of a man haunted by the ghost of his War of Independence-era ancestor who fights for his country's honor?

Liberty Belle
What are the odds that a woman could have a spiritual connection with the Liberty Bell so strong that it gives her superpowers and the ability to fight Nazis? if you're a comic book character from the 1940s, apparently they'd be good enough for that character's daughter to take on the same costumed identity and fight crime with the Justice Society today.

The Forgotten Heroes
Mr. America/Americommando
Reason #1 to love this 1941 superhero: His secret identity is a Texan oilman out for revenge against the Nazis. Reason #2: His sidekick's name was "Fatman." Reason #3: His Nazi-fighting technique? Dying his hair black and whipping his enemies until they surrender. Why is this character not getting multiple movies and fan worship as we speak?

Miss America
Sadly unrelated to the above, Miss America gained her powers from a dream where the Statue of Liberty came to life and gave them to her, and thankfully kept up that level of weirdness all the way through her career, whether it was faking her own aging process in order to live a quiet life or making a new body for herself from space debris and renaming herself Miss Cosmos. There's something admirable about that kind of ingenuity, wouldn't you agree?

USAgent
A much more recent patriotic hero than most, John Walker hails from the 1980s and an unsuccessful stint as a replacement for Captain America that accidentally led to his parents' death. His success as a character is perhaps best defined by the fact that he - an American-themed hero with a very American name - was transplanted to Canada by Marvel in a desperate attempt to make him a success. It failed.

American Eagle
Marvel Comics' 1981 attempt at inclusiveness resulted in this Native American hero, Jason Strongbow, whose generic origin story (Gained powers in accident caused by supervillain, seeking revenge for a dead brother) and lazy stereotypical costume didn't hint at the potential that's slowly being unlocked by more recent creators in series like Thunderbolts and War Machine.

Star-Spangled Kid
DC Comics keep trying with this name, even if the characters keep getting popular enough to outgrow it; the first SSK became Infinity Inc.'s Skyman in the 1980s, and the second became the Justice Society of America's Stargirl. Luckily, we now apparently have a third in the Teen Titans franchise, even if she does happen to be martian. Does an alien really count as star-spangled?

The Crazy Ones
The Comedian
Sure, there may be nothing particularly American about his name - or even his outfit, most of the time - but there's no doubting that Alan Moore's Watchmen character served his country - or more accurately, his country's government - better than most superheroes. Not enough to stop himself getting thrown out a window, sure, but them's the breaks.

Nuke
Frank Miller's intentionally-failed attempt to repeat the Captain America experiment may have seemed slightly out of place in the classic "Born Again" Daredevil storyline, but there's no denying that his drug-fueled, crazed Vietnam-flashback rantings made him a memorable indictment of mindless patriotism in Reagan's America.

Superpatriot
An old-school superhero captured, made into a cyborg and going insane and murderous in the process? Erik Larsen's quasi-parody may have a history that's as ridiculous as it is eventful - and that's before you've gotten to the kids he didn't remember having and his half-martian grandchild - but we're choosing to look at him as a man who's just made a few mistakes, is all.

Major Victory
Leader of conservative supergroup the Force of July - Get it? - this DC Comics character was everything some would want in a true American hero: Charismatic, attractive, arrogant and racist as all get out. Never given to complex characterization, the character's descent into political parody continued when he joined a new corporate superteam called the Captains of Industry - Get it? - before, thankfully, dying.

Captain America
Yeah, I know; Steve Rogers isn't crazy, right? But his retconned 1950s replacement most definitely was. After all, how else would you describe a man whose take on American values was deemed acceptable by Nazi supervillain the Red Skull on more than one occasion? Yes, he may think he was a patriot - and, thanks to cosmetic surgery, he even looks exactly identical to the original Cap - but this guy is not the kind of hero you want in your corner.

WTF?
Yank & Doodle
Yes, it's a crime-fighting duo called Yank and Doodle. Even during their heyday of the 1940s, there's no way that kids didn't find these two America-loving teenagers more than a little dumb. Surprisingly, they've just been revived in Dynamite's Project Superpowers series... Here's hoping that new names are forthcoming.

Yankee Poodle
Well, what else would you call the world's most patriotic crime-fighting dog? Part of DC Comics' Zoo Crew, Poodle isn't even the most America-centric of the team... That'd be American Eagle. Who, you guessed it, is an actual Eagle. Stunningly, thanks to Final Crisis, these characters are officially part of DC's main continuity these days.

American Maid
Armed with a boomerang tiara and her quick wits, The Tick's occasional partner in crimefighting stands out as being probably the most capable of all the characters in the comic/show - Dressed like Lady Liberty and working for the US government more often than not, evil will never get away with it as long as she's around.

The First American and US Angel
Alan Moore's turn of the millennium take on the idea of patriotic comic characters was this unusual duo - An overweight, incompetent superhero (The latest in a long line of First Americans) and the former stripper who dreams of taking his place. Social satire, or serious commentary on the impotence of American masculinity in the face of an increasingly revelatory society obsessed with surface glamor above all? You be the judge. But it's not the latter.

US 1
If a trucker who can pick up CB transmissions thanks to the metal plate in his head, and then gets kidnapped by aliens before opening an intergalactic diner in space doesn't sound like the very personification of the American Dream to you, then there's only one explanation: You're not an American in the first place. But even that doesn't stop us from wishing you a happy Independence Day... even if it was independence from you that's being celebrated in the first place.

Say what you will about where Snyder "dropped the squid" in his Watchmen movie translation, you can not argue that the director pored over each shot, set, costume, prop and reference. The attention to detail is borderline unhealthy, but delightful to revisit.

The special features on the new Blu-Ray DVD release are most likely going to be the saving grace for Watchmen. This is where Zack's abilities as a director and fan boy panderer will shine. Who wouldn't get excited listening to him talk about the Ridley Scott references, and how they made the Comedian punch through the wall.

Still, it should be very interesting to see what he has to say about the meddled-with ending. I hope he has the stones to just pull David Hayter on camera and say, ask this guy! Ask him why he handed the most important line of the book from Dr. Manhattan to another character? Ask Hayter why he left out all the destruction and carnage from the last few shots. Oh wait, we did, and we're still not happy with the answer. Trot Hayter out there during the ending scene to answer these questions, I double dog dare you, and I'll be first in line with my fist full of cash for the Blu-Ray.

All in all, it's a cool thing that they are attempting to do with all this new fancy DVD technology, and I think it's marvelous for a film like Watchmen where there was so much detail you almost need a tour-guide to get through the film — and who better than the director? The DVD will be released on July 21st.

[Hollywood Reporter and Slashfilm]

The Big Money notes that Paramount's YouTube version of the trailer received 237,000 viewings and nearly 2,300 text comments in its first four days, but wonders if teasing a movie so far in advance of its release is a sign of desperation that could lead to backlash:

Hollywood is a firm believer in the axiom [that it's] never too early to start building buzz. It doesn't even matter if the crew is still in post-production, evidently... But at some point you'd wonder if teaser trailers posted online a full 13 months before the movie hits theaters is a good strategy? How do you keep interest high then over the long autumn, winter, and spring? By producing trailer after trailer? Hollywood will watch this strategy closely to see at what point trailer fatigue sets in or whether it needs to build interest even earlier in its expensive summer blockbusters.

Of course, Airbender's 13 months in advance isn't anything approaching a record; the first teaser trailer for this summer's Star Trek ended up being released 16 months in advance of the movie's release - admittedly, the movie's release was pushed back during that time - and The Incredibles had a teaser released 18 months before the movie itself. But the question is a good one nonetheless; Watchmen's first teaser came out eight months before the movie, but by the time the movie was released, it already felt outdated (As much as, if not moreso, Trek) - is there a statute of limitations on when we should first see footage from a movie? Or should moviemakers just hold back the amount of footage they allow in trailers no matter when they're released? How much teasing is too much?

Paramount's Premature Promo? [The Big Money]

News broke earlier this week that G4 would be broadcasting Lucasfilm's Saturday afternoon Star Wars panel as part of their five-hour SDCC coverage, and that news was immediately followed by Warner Bros' announcement that a special SDCC Watchmen screening (also on Saturday) will be streamed as a live interactive BD-Live event for everyone in North America who bought Watchmen on Blu-Ray, allowing them to hear director Zack Snyder's commentary and ask the director questions. Snyder is excited about the event:

Comic-Con, it isn't just [for] comic book fanatics, it's cinephiles as well. It'll be cool to discuss what people are thinking.

With the con already sold out - although Comic-Con has hinted that returned or unclaimed passes may be sold closer to the event this year - and the show's schedule still officially unannounced, we're wondering if these two events are special stunts, or the start of a new way to experience the con without the heat, discomfort and awkward chance of meeting your heroes in the restroom before their panel.

San Diego Comic-Con runs July 23rd through the 26th, with Preview Night on the 22nd.

BEST:

Spot, Data's Orange Tabby Cat from Star Trek: The Next Generation
Who: Data's number 1 friend that didn't wear a Devo-esque visor on his face.
Why he's awesome: He's probably one of the only cats in the universe that has an infinitely advanced AI at his beck and call.
Bonus points: Anything that pisses Riker off is a big plus in my book.

Willis the Bouncer from Robert Heinlein's Red Planet
Who: A sound mimicking furry ball that every kid should have as a friend.
Why he's awesome: In a 1960's era future, when a dog just won't cut it, the only way to really impress the kids at school is with an alien that doubles as a soccer ball. And here's a clip from the Fox miniseries adaptation.

R2D2, Star Wars
Who: The yin to C3PO's (annoying) yang that brings logic and light to any situation through a series of flickering lights and bleeps.
Why he's awesome: He's a moving trashcan that manages to be more likeable than most of the Star Wars palz extended cast.

Porthos, Captain Archer's Beagle from Enterprise
Who: Easily one of the more tolerable characters on Enterprise. Mostly because he didn't talk.
Why he's awesome: He's a beagle! How can beagles not be cute? Also, I feel like after the unfortunate Scotty related transporter incident, he deserves a nice memorial.

Ampersand, Y the Last man
Who: The world's ending, every man is dead, you're an aspiring escape artist pining away for your lost girlfriend and you're all alone. What do you do? Have crazy monkey antics with your favorite jungle friend with a punctuation mark as a name.
Why he's awesome: Not to spoil too much, but he may or may not be humanity's key to getting the XY's back in action.

Lockjaw
Who: Marvel's own alien bulldog and member of the non-human branch of the Avengers.
Why he's awesome: He's super strong, can eat anything and once latched onto the Thing.

Dog the Robot from Half Life 2
Who: Alyx Vance's No.1 go to robotic buddy who helps when your path is blocked by other dimensional beings or just wants to play fetch with your grav gun.
Why he's awesome: He's a giant robot with the personality of a dog. Do you need more?

Pen Pen, from Neon Genesis Evangelion
Who: A genetically altered super smart penguin that lives with Misato Katsuragi during the Angel apocalypse.
Why he's awesome: While the series has moments of intense despair and darkness, you can always count on jerky, anime humor involving naked people and penguins to brighten your day.

K-9 from Doctor Who
Who: Dr Who's multi-generational robotic canine companion.
Why he's awesome: He's gotten a series of spinoff stories and was even parodied on South Park.

Nibbler from Futurama
Who: Nibbler is part of an ancient race of Nibblonians who protect the universe from giant glowing brains that make everyone stupid. Er, Stupid-er.
Why he's awesome: He can eat about 1,000 times his body mass to, uh, produce dark matter.

Gaspode, from Terry Prachett's Discworld series
Who: A talking dog with human intelligence that attempts to bring "Hollywood" to Discworld.
Why he's awesome: He's an endless source of snarky remarks and regularly uses his speech to manipulate humans when he needs food.

CJ-7
Who: A puff ball with a body that guaranteed to produce family friendly fun times.
Why he's awesome: CJ-7 can help you repair torn relationships with certain parental figures and bring people back from the dead.

Einstein, Doc Brown's dog from Back to the Future
Who: You might be under the impression that a certain Family Ties alum might be the Doc's best time traveling friend in this series, but you'd be wrong. This adorable little terrier follows Doc whenever her goes.
Why he's awesome: As long as you ignore the craptacular animated television series, Einstein is always cute, helpful and never obnoxious.

Ein, Cowboy Bebop
Who: A super brained corgie that gets stranded on the Bebop.
Why he's awesome: Although they never really get into it in the series, Ein is a "data dog" that possesses super intelligence that allows him to answer phones and steer cars.

Bubastis, Ozymandias' lynx from Watchmen
Who: When you're a super genius David Bowie impersonator with the world at your fingertips what do you do next? You create a genetically engineered psychedelic colored lynx as a companion.
Why he's awesome: He takes one for the team for the sake of furthering an evil plan for his master.

Gizmo, Gremlins
Who: The main furry faced protagonist of the Gremlins series.
Why he's awesome: While I'm pretty much a fan of all the gremlins, I can't deny the greatness that is Gizmo channeling his inner Rambo.

Seymour from Futurama
Who: Seymour is a part of one of the most tear jerking episodes of Futurama involving Fry recounting the story of the most loyal dog that ever lived.
Why he's awesome: Did you see the last scene? He's the most loyal dog that ever lived! Also, we can rest easy knowing that alternate timeline Fry gave Seymour a great life.

Bronx from Gargoyles
Who: Bronx is the dog version of the Manhattan gargoyle clan. During the whole series you only see one other gargoyle beast, but unlike Budeka, Bronx gets a whole episode devoted to him befriending an Amish kid.
Why he's awesome: Gargoyles are already pretty high on the cool supercreatures scale, but add a dog personality to the mix, and you've got gold.

Roach from WALL-E
Who: They weren't lying when they said that after the world ended there would be nothing left but cockroaches. Fortunately, the end of the world also gave them charming personalities!
Why he's awesome: Making me want a roach as a pet is an epic win in my book.

Kevin and Dug from Up
Who: Kevin is a rare, brilliantly colored giant bird that Carl and Russell accidentally find in Paradise Falls. Dug is sweet golden retriever with a collar that allows him to talk.
Why they're awesome: It takes a lot to make slapstick giant birds funny, but Pixar does a magnificent job. And Dug? He's exactly what I imagine an actual talking dog to sound like. SQUIRREL!

WORST:

Tribbles from Star Trek
Who: Fuzzy, purring little meat pets that take over the original Enterprise.
Why they suck: Pets rocks were bad enough, why would they think that a massively multiplying furry pet rock would be better?

ALF
Who: Alien puppet that takes over a really lame sitcom in the 80's. If ever you want to torture someone without the use of waterboarding, show them and episode of ALF… or Small Wonder.
Why he sucks: Look me straight in the eye and tell me you didn't scream in horror when you saw that clip.

Snarf, Thundercats
Who: A fat alien cat that ends every sentence with an annoying "snarf!" sound.
Why he sucks: Is he a lizard or a cat? I'm going to go with meth induced demonic lovechild.

Teddy from A.I.
Who: An animatronic intelligent Teddy Rucksbin from the future that accompanies David in a search for the Blue Fairy.
Why he sucks: Ok, now I understand that some people might take issue with Teddy's position on the worst list but he's a toy that's alive. That's pretty much the worst nightmare of most 8-year-old kids. And me.

Slimer from Ghostbusters
Who: A green ghost that terrorizes the Ghostbusters team by covering everything in slime.
Why he sucks: For those of us born in the mid 80's and watched the Ghostbusters cartoon first, we expected to see cool ghost antics when we finally saw the movie. Instead, we were greeted with a grotesque blob that was pretty evil.

Div-x from Penny Arcade
Who: You might remember the Sony Dix-X player, an ahead of its time technical marvel.
Why he sucks: According to Penny Arcade Comics, he's a foul-mouthed drunk that's teetering on the edge of killing us all.

Pets from Children of Men
Who: When the world's gone infertile, people turn to animals to provide comfort in the end of humanity.
Why they suck: I have nothing against the animals in Children of Men, personally, but seeing all the dogs, cats and birds cluttering people's homes can be an ominous image.

Selacious Crumb from Star Wars
Who: He's a little fox-lizard thing that hangs out with Jabba the Hut and laughs at all his lame jokes.
Why he sucks: Everybody hates the skinny jerk in the corner with the stupid laugh.

Gleek from Superfriends
Who: The alien monkey pet of the Wondertwins.
Why he sucks: Usually if he was featured in Superfriends, you could count on him popping out to end the episode on a lame joke.

Independence Day Dog from Independence Day
Who: If you're like me then you probably laughed at the idea of a ball of flame chasing a golden retriever down a tunnel.
Why he sucks: Was it really necessary to have a slow motion explosion behind a dog? And wouldn't all that heat ultimately cook them all in that storage locker?
Then Again:...he's immune to explosions. And that's pretty cool. Dodging fire like that, he's like a canine Neo. Maybe he should have been best?

Space Buddies
Why they suck: I'll just point you in the direction of this.

Queequeg, X-files
Who: A Pomeranian adopted by Dana Scully and eaten shortly after by the legendary Big Blue.
Why he sucks: He was found snacking on his previous owner.

Krypto
Who: Superman's dog. Enough said.
Why he sucks: I hate pet versions of superheroes. Also, why does he need a cape?

Muffit from the original Battlestar Gallactica
Who: Caprica used to have a variety of tracker dogs but sadly, none of them survived the Cylon attack. Instead a group robotic dogs are created to replace them.
Why he sucks: Is he an ewok? A fuzzy, metallic gremlin on meth? You decide.

MAD Cat from Inspector Gadget
Who: Dr. Claw's chortling fat feline.
Why he sucks: He's the quintessential evil cat meant to taunt the hero. Plus Dr. Claw regularly beat the crap out of him and he seemed to be ok with that.

Frank the Dog from Men in Black
Who: An alien stool pigeon using the guise of a small pug.
Why he sucks: He made me remember "Who Let the Dogs Out" existed.

Gir, Invader Zim
Who: Invader Zim's mentally disturbed robot helper that was given to him as either a joke or sabotage. Probably both.
Why he sucks: Yeah, yeah Gir is really cute, but he's amoral, evil and would gladly watch you die a fiery death while bursting into a fit of giggles.

Astro, The Jetsons
Who: The Scooby Doo knockoff of the 21st century.
Why he sucks: It might have worked with the Scooby Gang, but there's only room for one charismatic dog with a speech impediment ‘round these parts.

Lamar, Half Life 2
Who: The neutered headcrab that resides in Dr. Isaac Kleiner's laboratory.
Why he sucks: Crabs are rarely a good thing. Head crabs are a double whammy of bad.

Joshua from Dark Angel
Who: A transgenic dog-man with an affinity for painting and crappy comedic timing.
Why he sucks: There was only one good thing that came out of season two of Dark Angel and that rhymes with Smensen Shackles.

Honorable Mention: Blarp from the Lost in Space remake.

According to Collider, Snyder announced the release date for the director's cut at a Blu-Ray presentation, at Warner Brothers.

The film will play in theaters "the weekend before Comic-Con in Los Angeles, Dallas, Minneapolis, and New York," and, last we heard, will run at about 3 hours and 10 minutes.

One of my biggest pet peeves of the film (among many) was that Snyder was forced to cut the death of the original Nite Owl. The brutal beat-down with his own award was a horrific moment that clearly demonstrated the current state-of-panicked-mind that the Watchmen world was in, and how different people responded to the tension. Unfortunately, Snyder was forced to part with the scene he had already shot due to time constraints, but promised it would be in the DVD. I'll be happy to see this back in, and hopefully it will help to flesh out the alternate universe and aid in making Ozzy's big decision feel slightly less out of left field (although still shocking to the core). Here's the page for those of you who haven't read it. Go read it, by the way.

It should also be interesting to see how they loop the news stand buddies and the Black Freighter into the live action.

Le voyage dans la lune (1902)
French cinema pioneer Georges Méliès' silent classic is generally considered the first great sci-fi film, with the first great indelible image in movies, of the rocket ship hitting the moon smack in the eye. With his tale of scientists who shoot a rocket from a cannon to the lunar surface, where they meet hostile aliens, Méliès knew he had a hit; alas, Thomas Edison pirated the movie and made a mint from it in America before Melies could taste that sweet overseas box office. Watch the whole silent film below; it's only eight minutes.

Cat-Women of the Moon (1953)
The early 1950s saw a spate of movies built around lunar expeditions. This is one of the silliest — and, in the right light, the most fun. Did you know that there were giant spiders on the moon, or that in lunar caves the air is breathable enough to take off your space mask? The tale of a race of hot chicks on the moon planning to take over the earth has been parodied often, most notably in 1987's Amazon Women on the Moon (which often apes this film shot for shot), but for campy laughs, it's hard to top the original.

2001: A Spacy Odyssey (1968)
It's hard to come up with enough praise for the lunar segment of Stanley Kubrick's mind-expanding space opera. Plotwise, very little happens, save for the discovery of the monolith on the moon that sends Dave Bowman hurtling toward destiny But oh, those visuals! Even while trying to depict commercial space flight as an ordeal as mundane as airline travel, Kubrick still makes it look graceful and lovely. Same thing on the moon's surface, where eerie quiet coexists with beautiful desolation.

Space: 1999 (1975-77)
The whole series (shot in Britain for ITV and syndicated in America) took place on the moon, though not in our solar system. The premise of the show saw the moon sent careening out of earth's orbit and into deep space after a nuclear waste dump on the far side of the moon exploded (oops!), leaving the crew of Moonbase Alpha to fight for survival in hostile encounters with strange creatures. The season 2 opening credits told the story economically, as you can see.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)
Terry Gilliam's overstuffed fantasy did have one minimalist sequence: its trip to the moon. That's because the production ran out of money, so Gilliam's plan for a vast set and a cast of thousands was canceled. Instead, Gilliam settled for a cast of five and a lunar city that consisted of little more than the former Monty Python animator's production sketches shuffled about. The changes worked, however, resulting in an austere yet enchanting sequence in which the human characters encounter the king and queen of the moon, two giants with detachable heads. As the jealous king, Robin Williams brings his usual bagful of crazy, but just imagine the sequence if Gilliam's first choice, Sean Connery hadn't bailed when the money got tight.

A Grand Day Out (1989)
The short that introduced the world to Wallace & Gromit (and to claymation king Nick Park) features a wonderfully daffy story that has the tweedy inventor and his silently suffering dog building a rocket in their basement in order to fly to the moon to satisfy their jones for cheese. This 20-minute short is as brilliant and hilarious as the rest of the Wallace & Gromit tales, and if you haven't seen it, or can't remember the unique nature of the creature our heroes meet on the moon, you must watch now.

Space Cowboys (2000)
Clint Eastwood's adventure about four oldtimers — NASA also-rans who didn't quite have the right stuff — who get another chance to blast off as seniors is a surprisingly sentimental story. But the finale, in which an ill-fated member of Clint's team finally gets his wish to reach the moon, gives the movie an unexpectedly lyrical and moving final shot.

The Time Machine (2002)
This update of the H.G. Wells story (and the 1960 George Pal film) isn't that great (even if it was directed by H.G.'s great-grandson, Simon Wells), but it's on this list for its striking sequence of lunar destruction. Time traveler Guy Pearce learns that, in the early 21st century, we sent demolition teams to level the lunar landscape in order to build condos on the moon, and, well, we broke it. D'oh! Watching the moon crumble over the heads of panicky earthlings is an awesome and horrifying sight.

Bruce Almighty (2003)
Given God-like powers, Jim Carrey emulates Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life, except his ability to lasso the moon to give it to his gal is literal. Who wouldn't swoon the way Jennifer Aniston does to see such a magnificent moon, almost close enough to touch? Unfortunately, Carrey learns the next day, his moon-yanking stunt caused tidal waves in Asia. Gravity's a bitch.

Bruce And Grace Romantic Evening - The funniest movie is here. Find it

Watchmen (2009)
During the revisionist-superhero saga's celebrated opening-credits montage, there's a brief moment that pays homage to a celebrated urban legend. When Neil Armstrong lands on the moon, Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) is already there, taking his picture. Armstrong can be heard saying, "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky!" It's a reference to the old joke (which some believe came from an actual Armstrong utterance), in which Armstrong supposedly followed up his boffo "That's one small step for man..." line with a reference to something he'd heard a neighbor's wife say years before, that she wouldn't give her husband a blow job until the kid next door walked on the moon. Alas, it's not true. Armstrong never said it. Snopes says so.

New comic site Bleeding Cool launched yesterday, by breaking news of the collaboration between Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons, which Millar — whose Kick-Ass is currently being filmed with Nick Cage and Superbad's Christopher Mintz-Plasse in starring roles — initially called "totally wrong" before admitting that the two are planning something for mid-2010:

Dave and I still in very early stages, but would imagine we'll do something for next summer, probably around six issues.

The comic will see something of a return to the mainstream for Gibbons, who has stayed somewhat away from high profile projects since his post-Watchmen Martha Washington series with Frank Miller. Maybe his experience with Zack Snyder got him interested in making more movie dollars. Expect us to give you more details if and when they're released.

Mark Millar And Dave Gibbons To Create New Comic Together [Bleeding Cool]

Yes, I know the idea of a Whedonless Buffy sounds like blasphemy, but the more I think about it, the more it seems like exactly what Buffy and Joss need, even if the hardcore fans don't agree. Join the dots that are my scattered reasoning:

Joss Whedon Has Had More Than Seven Years Of Buffy, Let Someone Else Have A Go
We've seen Joss do Buffy for seven years on television (and two years in comics, for that matter), and do Buffy really well for at least six of those years (I'm one of those people who was unconvinced by the relentless, seemingly-aimless angst of season six. Sorry); that's never going away, no matter what - You all have those DVDs and the reruns and the comics to prove it. But just because Joss created Buffy and did the franchise proud for more than a decade doesn't mean that someone else can't come up with something equally as interesting, and almost as enjoyable. For whatever reason - and this isn't the place to argue about whether or not it's a good thing - our culture has become endlessly recyclable, whether it's movie or TV show reboots or comics where every year sees a new writer, artist and "creative direction." By now, we've had enough Battlestar Galacticas, The Dark Knights and Alan Moore taking on Swamp Things to know that letting new voices take on familiar characters can end in wonderful new versions of old stories, and leave the characters all the better for the experience. Who's to say that a new writer or new director couldn't bring something unexpected and amazing to the Buffy mythos?

(And, if it turned out to be another Bionic Woman or Knight Rider, so what? Like I said, it doesn't invalidate or undo all the stories you already loved, and it's not like the show would've been canceled to make way for this new version. The Whedon Buffy would be left as intact as ever.)

Joss Whedon Has Had More Than Seven Years Of Buffy, Let Him Do Something Else
I don't mean to be overly rude, but have you been reading the Buffy comics recently? Have you noticed that the series has become slightly... aimless? Directionless? There's undoubtedly a nicer way to say it, but after a strong start, it's become infected with the same apathy that laced through the television show's final two seasons; everything that happens - what little has actually happened, since the end of the Fray arc - feels less organic and more like writers filling time while trying to work out what to do next. As an example of where Whedon's head is at as concerning Buffy, it's a pretty good reason for him not to be involved with the movie, because it's as if he's run out of things to say about the character.

Not that that's a bad thing. He's got Dollhouse to think about, now, and Cabin In The Woods, as well; it feels kind of insulting to think that he should always have to be responsible for something he came up with seventeen years ago, instead of being allowed to let it go and move on to newer ideas, projects and things to talk about. It's also somewhat unreasonable; despite his closeness to the material and his ownership of it (in the sense of having invented it, not the legal sense, I mean), why should Whedon still be thinking about the same characters, situations and metaphors six years after it stopped being part of his everyday life (Almost six years to the day, in fact; the final episode went out May 20th, 2003)?

Creators create, or else they stagnate. That's not to say that there's no value in writers staying with characters for a long time (Dave Sim on Cerebus, for example), but there is evidence of diminishing returns when they stay with a story too long (The Phantom Menace, anyone? Or, on a slightly less obvious - yet probably more appropriate - slant, the latter part of Stan Lee's run as Spider-Man writer). With Firefly, Dr. Horrible and Dollhouse, as troubled as some may have been in terms of production and reception, you can see Whedon try to move on from Buffy. Why not let him?

Part of the outcry might be because the idea of this new Buffy movie changes our idea of what it is - Suddenly, it's a renewable franchise, instead of a creator-led show. But it always has been, as much as we forget it; there's been the movie, the TV show, the spin-off show, the comics, the novels, the video games, the very-unlike-the-actors action figures... it's never really just been Joss's show, as much as it's tempting to think that. Sure, Joss Whedon made Buffy, and in turn, Buffy made Whedon into what he is today, but perhaps it's time to let them say goodbye to each other and go on and grow up apart. The very worst that can happen* is that we end up with a disappointing movie version that we all pretend doesn't exist in years to come, and if fandom can survive this year's Watchmen and Terminator Salvation, then I think we can deal with a Buffy that doesn't live up to our dreams.

(* - Okay, alternatively, we could discover that Joss Whedon is actually a magical figure whose existence is entirely contingent on our belief in his version of Buffy, a la Tinkerbell, but somehow I'm not entirely convinced that that'll turn out to be the case.)

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the movie will be released as a "Standard Edition" DVD, a "Director's Cut" DVD, and a Blu-Ray version offering the Director's Cut and all manner of special features... including the ability to sync up with Facebook and nerd out with other people watching the movie at the same time without having to, you know, actually be in the same room as them:

In an industry first, Warner Home Video is set to announce a plan to sync up "friend" networks on Facebook with the interactive community-screening features of Warners' Blu-ray Disc releases, starting with the release of "Watchmen Director's Cut."

The studio partnership with the social network Web site will use the BD-Live interactive feature on high-def discs, allowing "Watchmen" purchasers to view the film simultaneously and share comments with their Facebook friends.

But that's not all; the movie will also be simultaneously released on iTunes, Amazon on Demand, as well as PPV on television, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, although in different formats (Only iTunes and Amazon will be offering the Director's Cut, at least to begin with). Weirdly enough, the Standard Edition DVD will feature only the theatrical version of the movie, lacking any bonus features whatsoever; for DVD owners, the only place to find them will be the Director's Cut special edition, which offers a second disc of bonuses (including director commentary) for just six bucks more. Given that choice, why would anyone buy the Standard Edition?

The release date for the discs hasn't been finalized, but is expected around this summer's San Diego Comic-Con, at the end of July.

Warners teams with Facebook for 'Watchmen' [Hollywood Reporter]

Indeed, Wolverine is in some ways a version of Rambo, with its ripped hero who has been abandoned by his government and forced to go mercenary for justice. And who would deny seeing glints of Apocalypse Now in Watchmen's war scenes with the Comedian? The two movies even use the same music in their soundtracks, to much the same effect: Brooding 60s protest music hovers over scenes of state-sanctioned violence, reminding us that all oppression spawns a counterculture.

Though the last few years have seen the release of a few stately war movies like Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of Our Fathers, as well as some serious gut-punchers like Black Hawk Down and Jarhead. But these films treat war as historical drama, or as pure clusterfuck. There is little of the classic war film here, where the horror and madness of combat (or imprisonment) become an occasion to tell stories of loyalty and tragic sacrifice.

But if you want those themes, you can find them in Wolverine, which despite its cheesiness does make an effort to give us the soldier's eye view. And although he skirts madness, Logan is clearly focused on finding justice. Likewise, Watchmen shows us the way soldiers (in this case, the superheroes who work for the US government) transcend the horror of their circumstances through loyalty. Like many war movies made after the 1970s, however, Watchmen takes a jaundiced view of the soldiering life. Just as we do in Apocalypse Now, we see how a hypocritical government drives its troops mad and turns loyalty into a joke.

And if you want a truly brilliant war movie, check out Iron Man. Its ironic triumphalism reminded me of the underrated movie Lord of War, about the rise and fall of a big time weapons smuggler. Iron Man takes us back to classic war films of the John Wayne variety, but with a 21st Century liberal twist. Iron Man revels in weapons technology, and at many points suggests that the US needs to get more involved in Middle East conflicts. But it also delivers a requisite "war is hell" message, giving its defense industry magnate a change of heart when he realizes that his mega-weapons are falling into the wrong hands. (There's actually a similar set of scenes in Lord of War, which are truly intense.)

While the most recent Hulk film was uneven and ultimately unsuccessful, I'd still claim it as another war film - similar in tone to Full Metal Jacket (though nowhere near as good). Unabashedly liberal, its the tale of a man swept up by a war machine that uses him and finally drives him completely insane.

Later this summer, expect more another superhero war movie: G.I. Joe is coming in August.

Why has the superhero movie come to be one of the only places we can find intriguing stories about war? Possibly it's just coincidence: the US is at war, and we're also in a phase where comic book movies are incredibly popular at the box office. So naturally we tell comic book war stories. Moreover, it's a lot safer to tell war stories when they're safely cloaked in a fantasy: Often, we can convey emotional truths more clearly when they're hidden behind a mask (perhaps a superhero mask).

I also think there's something to be said for the idea that war itself - filled with robots, autonomous vehicles, smart armor, and high tech surveillance devices - has become more like comic books. This comes from an idea that Peter Singer suggested in his new book Wired for War, which is about cutting-edge weapons tech. Singer writes that new weapons tech removes soldiers from the battlefield, turning warfare into what feels like a videogame. And turning some soldiers into people with superpowers.

Perhaps, as combat technologies advance, we'll it will become almost impossible to distinguish between comic book movies and what used to be war movies. I wonder what we'll lose when that happens.

Talking to Newsarama.com, Moore said

I don't think that comic books grew up in the mid-1980s.

I do think that the population, many of whom had deep nostalgia for comic books they had read as children, but were ashamed of being seen reading them on the subway, think that what happened in the mid-1980s with books like Watchmen gave them an excuse to carry on reading Green Lantern, because whereas while previously people might have looked at them as though they were subnormal for reading a superhero comic, now that superhero comics had been rebranded as "Graphic Novels," it was considered sophisticated and cutting-edge to be seen reading a comic, even if it was just a bunch of old superhero stories put together in a slicker format. It looked more grown-up; it wasn't necessarily more grown-up, but it was put together in a way that looked more socially acceptable.

I think that mid-80s period, if you look at the 20-something years since then, we've seen a rise in that comic-book mindset throughout most of our media. We've seen programs on television that are kind of reminiscent of a 1980s comic book. We've seen an awful lot of films that are kind of reminiscent of a 1980s comic book.

And I think it wasn't so much that comic books grew up back then. I think it was that the rest of culture grew down. Or, it had a thing like Watchmen as an alibi, to pursue its guilty pleasures, because it wanted to be free to read the superhero comics it had grown up with, but it wanted to be seen as an adult at the same time. And I think that Watchmen and books like it provided the key.

Mondo Moore: Alan Moore on the League, Watchmen, & More [Newsarama.com]

May 13th has been set as the date for both sides to meet with mediator Daniel Weinstein to discuss whether or not Gordon - whose failure to secure the rights to the comic properly, before offering them to Warners, caused the legal trouble in the first place - owes money to Warners or even Fox as a result of the lawsuit. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Warners are seeking full reimbursement for their costs as a result of the affair, while Gordon's attorneys are claiming that Warners are at fault because they made the movie despite being told that the rights issue may be a problem.

Whatever the settlement, still unsolved will be exactly how much Fox will make from the movie; due to Watchmen's underperformance at the box office, analysts expect the amount to be somewhere around 5% of the film's proceeds, with Warners and Gordon both having to contribute towards that amount.

Date set for 'Watchmen' mediation [Hollywood Reporter]

LexCorp (DC Comics)
Hailed as one of the largest, most diversified multinational corporations in the world, it also happens to be founded by Lex Luthor, who runs it with his characteristic ruthlessness. The list of cities and countries where the corporation has holdings is basically as long as the list of cities and countries on Earth, and the number of companies controlled by LexCorp is almost as long and just as varied. Unfortunately, as of One Year Later, with Lana Lang acting as CEO, the corporation seems to be heading towards bankruptcy. The "No Helping Superman" rule still applies to all employees, however.

Primatech (Heroes)
The Primatech Paper Company of Odessa, Texas is the first Primatech facility the show introduces us to. Of course, they do a lot more than just make paper—They capture and "study" folks with enhanced abilities, but, really, what they do best is operate in a moral gray area. A very dark gray area.

Blue Sun (Firefly and Serenity)
While it's still unclear exactly what the corporation does, it seems pretty implicit that it isn't good. Although most of the Blue Sun products seen on the show seem as innocuous as coffee cans and crackers, River's actions, such as ripping off their labels on food and slashing Jayne with a knife when he wears their logo, suggest that there's something more going on. Some suggest that there's something in the food, but the stronger hypothesis seems to be that Blue Sun is somehow connected to the experiments done on River and is perhaps working with the Alliance.

Merrick Biotech (The Island)
Merrick Biotech's business is keeping clones of their customers around, just in case said customers should need a transplant of some kind. Basically like the ultimate life insurance, right? Except for the fact that it's illegal to allow the clones to be conscious and sentient, which, of course, Merrick Biotech lets happen and lies to their clients about. Therefore, the corporation has an entire population of fully-conscious human beings living totally unaware of the fact that they're basically just an organ farm. And that's just not cool.

Fatboy Industries (The Middleman, TV series)
In the final episode of the series, Wendy Watson is transported into a classic example of a Mirrorverse, where the megacorp of Fatboy Industries is a totalitarian presence, having taken the place of the government. Unfortunately, the morality of Fatboy in Wendy's real world is still unconfirmed, as there's a hint of "more than meets the eye" to both the corporation and its ambiguous founder, Manservant Neville. (This is underscored by the fact that the rest of Mirrorverse turns out to be not so very different from the real world.)

Buy n Large Corporation (WALL•E)
While maybe not inherently evil, the Buy n Large Corporation did govern Earth (perhaps much like the Mirrorverse Fatboy Industries) and did a very poor job of it. Even if rendering the planet uninhabitable wasn't exactly the gameplan, Buy n Large's role in that happening probably makes it a worse corporation than most of the others on this list.

Tyrell Corporation (Blade Runner)
The Tyrell Corporation produces the replicants, lifelike androids designed to the work deemed to dangerous and demeaning for humans, and is named for Dr. Eldon Tyrell, the founder and genius inventor of the replicants. While it's debatable how truly "evil" the Tyrell Corporation is, there is a definite sinister quality to their dealings and it's nigh impossible to deny that they definitely smack of "evil corporation."

Veidt Industries (Watchmen)
A lot of what was said about LexCorp could be repeated here. Once again, the ruthless ambition of the corporation paired with the questionable morality of its founder leaves us wondering how much to trust this (powerful, financially successful) corporation. Meanwhile, the impending release of the film was paired with a Veidt Industries commercial contest, leading to all sorts of fake '80's advertising:

Weyland-Yutani (Alien franchise)
Perhaps the gold standard of evil megacorporations, Weyland-Yutani's main gig is merciless profiteering, no matter what (or who) needs to be sacrificed in the process. (Fun fact: Their logo can be seen on some of the weapons in Firefly and they're said to be a client of Wolfram and Hart in Angel. Maybe this has something to do with the fact that Joss Whedon wrote Alien Resurrection.)

Cyberdyne Systems Corporation (Terminator films)
While the corporation is said to be benign in the first two films, manufacturing parts for bigger companies, they then make the mistake of creating Skynet, a system of artificially intelligent supercomputers that control (among other things) nuclear missiles. This was not a smart move. In fact, it's just un-smart enough to warrant Cyberdyne's inclusion on this list.

Yoyodyne (The Crying of Lot 49 and V. by Thomas Pynchon)
Yoyodyne is a defense contractor that's described in The Crying of Lot 49 as "a giant of the aerospace industry," and a few characters in the novel work for the company. While the morality of Yoyodyne isn't firmly sealed either way, the thread of conspiracy woven throughout the work suggests that it isn't all it seems. (The name "Yoyodyne" is mentioned, as you might remember, in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.)

Earth Protectors (Up, Up, and Away, 2000 TV movie)
Ostensibly a group designed to teach middle schoolers the importance of environmentalism, Earth Protectors' favorite method of persuasion is brainwashing. And while handing out CD's brainwashing kids into recycling isn't a completely bad thing, brainwashing the parents to rob banks is another thing entirely. (Actually, brainwashing in general? Not recommended.)

Omni Consumer Products (Robocop)
Described as dystopian and inhumane, Omni Consumer Products (OCP) is an example of military capitalism taken to the extreme, until the corporation no longer cares who gets hurt or killed as long as the PR stays good. OCP is depicted as having its fingers in almost every branch of life, as long as there's money to be made from it. One of their strokes of genius comes from running both criminal organizations and a private police force, thereby ensuring a continued demand for both crime and justice.

Soylent Corporation (Soylent Green)
It's 2022 and the world is overpopulated and hungry. Who better to step in than the Soylent Corporation with their rations of tasty wafers known as Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow? Well, okay, they aren't that tasty, but thankfully, Soylent's come out with a new flavor: Soylent Green. Much more delicious. So what's the catch? Well, we all know what Soylent Green is.

GeneCo (Repo! The Genetic Opera)
After an epidemic of organ failures, GeneCo steps in to give transplants to those in need. Benevolent, right? Well, sure, until the boss, Rotti Largo, gets permission to repossess the organs of people who renege on their payments. And once a corporation is taking out your insides, the benevolence is kind of gone.

[Destiny Interrupted] Via.