The Chronicles of Narnia Rap
Missed this when it was on SNL, hilarious. Chris Parnell stregnthens his reputation as the world’s greatest white rapper.

This is easily one of the best movies in the past decade. If not the best.
As an early birthday present to myself I finally grabbed The Iron Giant special edition DVD. While I’m not nearly as interested in bonus features and such on DVDs as I used to be, I’m super happy just to have this film in my collection.
Brad Bird, the visionary behind Pixar’s The Incredibles, brings Ted Hughes book to life as a visual and narrative masterwork. Its a simple tale of a robot who fell from the sky and is taken in by a young boy and taught wrong from right and bad from good. Cold War hysteria rears its ugly head and the Giant becomes the target of a government investigation with the aim of destroying him.
It sounds awfully simple and the kind of thing you’d expect from televised animation, but it really isn’t. Its a well plotted and well executed film with many layers. And unlike a lot of animated movies that drop in jokes intended to fly over the kids heads for the parents, The Iron Giant never dips that low and instead treats all viewers the same and allows them to understand the characters intents and morality in a very natural way. Theres no sexist humor, no brutal violence, and certainly not sugar coated or dumbed down.
This is the thinking man’s children’s movie. Its a magnificent example of how fantastic a child’s imagination and perception can really be. If kids really do pick up on all the bad media they take in, then its certainly possible for them to learn about being good and kind and accepting others and not jumping to conclusions from The Iron Giant.
I don’t know who might read this blog entry, but I feel strongly that if you’ve never seen this movie, at least rent it. And watch it with a kid. Its got ET, Bambi, and Superman all wrapped up into one and has enough heart to touch a viewer of any age or background.

Brett Ratner’s bid to doom the franchise!
Ok, maybe not. Take away what I know about the movie from spy reports and this actually looks good. Not as killer as that first X2 teaser with Holst’s “Mars” playing over the footage of the army invading the masion all with Magneto’s voice-over… but its still decent. Nerd note: Vinnie Jones as Juggernaut in Magneto’s army doesn’t make sense since he isn’t a mutant. But if we got organic webshooters, we’ll get this and no-one will probably care too much.
The Xverse has some nice caps of the trailer if you can’t watch it for whatever reason. I already made myself a new desktop celebrating the infamous Magneto quote from the X-Men Arcade game: Welcome To Die!

New Game Informer magazine (Splinter Cell cover) has a 6 page story about the X3 game from Activision. 3 playable characters: Wolverine (obviously), Iceman (cool!), and Nightcrawler (huh?).
The game itself bridges the gap between 2 and 3, and will feature missions returning to Alkali lake to salvage bits from Stryker’s Cerebro to fix the one damaged during the assault on the mansion. Wolvie also meets up with Deathstryke who’s survived, and will go to Japan (Silver Samurai?). His levels will be brawlers, taking on many enemies and taking cover only long enough to heal before pounding through more enemies.
Iceman gets very fast paced levels as he’ll race around using that ice surfing trick I loved so much from the old Spiderman show. Looks like his levels will use some Sonic the Hedgehog type stuff. one of the screen shots show him using an ice blast against a fire engulfing a nuclear plant (likely Pyro’s handywork).
Nightcrawler’s levels will supposedly set his story out away from the action of X3, hopefully explaining away why he’s not in the movie. He gets *bamf* around people, kicking them in the back and also sneak around.

Movie games are SO hit and miss these days, which is better than they used to be, which was all miss. Though I know I should prepare for another ass game linked to what may very well be an ass movie, x2 was too kind to me to just abandon it now. I still saw Batman Forever after all, but learned my lesson by Batman & Robin.

VS
AP and MTV report that in Baltimore on Thanksgiving night, former Creed and current butthole singer Scott Stapp got into a fight with the surprisingly still popular 311.
The whole things sounds pretty cool how Stapp was being a shit and threw the first punch but the 311 knocked him back. Its a shame they couldn’t be met with arms wide open and he had to be taken down and things got all mixed up. Stapp won’t serve any jail time, but he’s got his own prison. 311 have sent a message loud and clear to him: dont tread on me. It sounds like a beautiful disaster happened in that bar, but thats his sacrifice.

Ultimate Avengers is a new Direct-to-DVD release funded by Marvel. With Daredevil, Punisher, Blade, Hulk, F4, and even the X-men franchise heading for disaster, animated movies are the way to go. They still got Spider-Man I guess, but these little animated features have great potential for Marvel since they don’t have to comprimise the source material at all with odd effects or casting.
I’d still pay to see a sweet World War 2 era Captain America movie. Toss in a Hugh Jackman/Logan cameo for fun…

The original King Kong is finally available on DVD, and was also run on TCM this past week.
Having never seen this movie with the appreciation I have for cult cinema and special effects as an adult, I was shocked. I mean, this was pretty graphic, and once the action started rolling with Kong’s introduction it really didn’t stop. I have no idea whether Peter Jackson’s fondness for storytelling or fondness for Kong fights will win out in the remake, but even in 1933 with stop motion effects, its all giant ape attacks until the very end, and its all great to watch.
I was astounded by how many people were crushed, eaten, or just chewed up and let go. Between Kong and all the dinosaurs, this had to be the biggest body count of any film of that era.
Performances were good for their time, and certainly the concept carried the picture, but this movie is quite a bit like The Wizard of Oz. Its a classic that can’t really be improved upon or modernized in any fashion without losing something. PJ’s remake really has more to fear from stepping out of Kong’s shadow than the Rings trilogy.

Never buy your DVDs at a supermarket.

Superman Returns teaser trailer is finally available. But is this really a teaser for the new movie? It uses music from the original movie as well as Marlon Brando’s voice for Jor-El. The clips are clearly the new movie, but its a kinda confusing deal.
For the first time I’m wondering if Singer’s boyish love of the Donner original might be more detrimental than helpful. Bah, nothing can keep me away from this movie…