Bah.  I thought it was awesome.

Well, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol finally has a trailer out.

http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/mission-impossible-ghost-patrol/trailer

While it looks good, I'm not fond of the song in most of the trailer and the Kremlin bit at the very beginning has strained my suspension of disbelief to the breaking point. But I really like the supporting cast of Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Josh Holloway of JJ Abrams' Lost and Paula Patton of the film Deja Vu. The shooting in Dubai definitely gives it a different look. Of course, you have Ethan Hunt who never takes the easy route to gain entrance to the building. You'll see why in the trailer.

Supposedly, according to rumor, Tom Cruise is doing his last hurrah as Ethan Hunt and the reins are being handed off to Jeremy Renner after this. Definitely a positive step in the right direction IMO.

Enjoy!

I think it looks awesome.  Holding on to disbelief is a terrible way to watch movies like this.

[Nikita's been renewed!]

AMC Passes on Pilots this Season: See? This is why I love AMC (read: why I think they're hands down the finest TV outfit in any broadcast format right now, even factoring in the atrocious misfire that was The Prisoner). It takes guts to say "no" to everything you have in development, and even more guts to say, "not yet." Bravo, good sirs. Well played.

Meanwhile, there's a bit of good news out of the CW: Nikita's been renewed! And there's still more good news (in the same story): both One tree Hill and Hellcats have finally received the fitting end they always deserved: they're canceled. Actually, that's not entirely true - if they received a truly fitting end the masters to every episode to date would fall into an acid vat before any DVDs could be pressed, so as to curb the contagion's spread. But I'll take cancellation. That works too.

Nikita, BTW, turned out to be my surprise underdog success story this year. I loved pretty much every minute of it, and I suspect you'll be seeing some of its influences in a certain product on the horizon...

Nikita is indeed teh awesome.  The special guest in the finale was very cool (though I actually like Amanda more, I think). 

However, I must admit that Hellcats was my guilty pleasure.  Even my wife was turned on to it once she realized it had more than just abs in it.

In the interest of full disclosure, Hunger Games is technically a YA trilogy, but it has none of the sappy emo introspection of Twilight.

As a parent, I actually find it too dark and violent for its intended audience.

The return of Vampire Diaries was quite awesome.  I think the plot and pacing of the show are quite extraordinary.

Haven't had a chance to watch Nikita yet.

(And since I know Pat's a Lyndsy fan too, I'm disappointed she wasn't cast in The Hunger Games.  She would have been awesome as Katniss.)

Re: Camelot.

I'm really pissed off that there is this attitude to take these classic stories and make them 'adult" and "edgy," which really just means, "tits."

Just in the promotional material alone: "Forget everything you ever knew."  "Fleshy."  "Camelot for adults." "Sexy."

Explicit sex does not create a new re-telling of a story.

(And I've never even read A Game of Thrones but I could kick the producers in the teeth for how much they're pushing that what makes it worth watching is all the explicit sex.)

The Wonder Woman costume has officially changed (complete with video of filming).

The producers listened and changed all the major complaints: darker pants, matte fabric (for the pants), red boots, flat boots.

And yet, the sites I've seen seem to suggest that the nerd rage continues.  I'll never understand why our community is so obsessed with "pre-disappointment" in things that are made for us. 

It's not a statement against soldiering; nor am I looking for a moral debate.

And yes, Cap was always a soldier.

Right back to you: YMMV, but some do find it noble to say, "I'm not going to kill you even though you are trying to kill me and kill others."  I'm not preventing Cap from punching Nazis in the face or suggesting he let them do evil.  I'm just asking him not to kill people.

As for it being foolish for him to be "unarmed," that misses the point: he's friggin' Captain America.  With his shield, he is better armed and more competent than a group of enemy soldiers and doesn't need a gun to get the job done.  In fact, most of his abilities and talents are useless if he can stand back and shoot a gun.  In that case, what did the government pay for?

But really: this is all secondary.  My complaint is a "literary" one, if you will.  It's not true to the comic - or, at least, not true until a few years ago.  And I thought an iconic character should be portrayed more iconically.

All THAT being said, had they done it my way, there would have been way too many people unfamiliar with the character that would have asked, "Why doesn't he pick up a gun?" And so it goes. 

See, that's the perfectly logical approach that the present Cap comics are going with: Cap was a soldier, so of course he'd carry a gun.  He was a soldier, so of course he killed Nazis.

But the reason he hasn't used a gun for the first 50 or so years of the character's existence is because he is basically the moral Marvel equivalent of Superman: the man who holds to the highest code of morality, even though he doesn't have the powers of a god.  But that attitude is not very popular these days.

In the 80s, there was a plotline where Cap had to pick up a gun and shoot a terrorist to stop something horrible from happening (I forgot exactly what it was).  He saved the day, but killed the terrorist...and that event spiraled him into guilt for months for failing to live up to his own ideals.  I still prefer that brand of heroism, and no, I don't find it unrealistic.

So, really, for this hardcore Cap fan, if he uses a gun throughout the whole movie and never once comments about not striving for a more noble way, I'll be disappointed.  It won't ruin the movie for me, but I'll be disappointed.

I am incredibly thrilled about this movie as well, and I don't mind movie Cap to the modern day because, if they do it well, the contrast in perspectives should play out nicely, for both humorous and dramatic purposes.

The only stumbling block I'm having is watching Cap use guns.  I know Brubaker's explanation of it, and I can't deny it making a certain realistic bit of sense, but I prefer Cap to be unarmed.  He's just more heroic that way.

My hope (and honestly, my expectation) is that by the final act, Cap will not be using a gun, especially in his inevitable duel with the Red Skull.  It would be awesome if Cap had some bit of dialogue that expressed a desire to "rise above" fighting with guns.

Ya know, I've read dozens and dozens of comments about this pic since it came out yesterday, as I've been strangely fascinated by it, and this is the first time I've heard this observation.  I suppose it's plausible.

That being said, I'm Pollyanna old-fashioned enough to say that I think that stinks if its true - if for no other reason that I still like to pretend that when I look at a photo that I'm looking at some element of reality. 

That wonder woman costume is hilarious. It looks like a cheap cosplay outfit.

I've seen this perspective on a lot of sites already - but I have to ask: how could it NOT look like a cosplay outfit and still look like a superhero costume? There's a reason cosplay outfits look like they do: because they're supposed to look like superhero costumes.

They could have done "red tank top and blue jeans" and then people would have said she didn't look like a superhero.  Or they could have done something with leather, and people would have said she looked like a dominatrix

Given the fact that we're looking at a TV show, not a big budget movie, and that we're looking at a single static image that has no doubt been photoshopped to death, I think it looks pretty cool.

Um...if that's real (and it seems to be), I have to say that that's pretty awesome for TV.  I approve (though one can already smell the hate...)

I concede that I was wrong about Red State's genre; I knew it was a horror movie, but I thought it was a comedy horror movie.  My bad.

I'll say the preview looks solid enough, though it strikes me as a little too close to the torture sub-genre for my tastes.

So the movie may be better than I was willing to give it credit for, but honestly, that makes Smith's self-promotion all the more confusing to me.

Oh, I'm familiar with the movie.  I was actually referring to his own self-promotion of the movie, where that quoted self-identifying phrase is used more than once.

Combine that with that fact that I haven't liked any movie since JaSBSB, and I'm not eager to give Red State a chance (and besides, bashing political conservatives and religious fundamentalists is not exactly a bold comedic direction).