Electronic Arts has posted the gorgeous trailer for Superman Returns on Xbox 360. In light of the lack of a new trailer for the movie and the fact that the game features a giant boss fight with Metallo, this is pretty cool.

Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy sequelizes probably the best Star Wars game in years, and certainly the best based on the prequel trilogy. Doing episodes 4, 5 and 6 I really, really hope to get a LEGO Admiral Ackbar.

Already hotly rumoured, a conference call today according to IGN confirms Activision to develop the game for the Transformers movie.
Activision’s got some solid developers making Spider-Man and an endless stream of Tony Hawk titles.  Few publishers are better suited for this type of license…

This picture of Chris Penn in all his hairy-chested glory is more flattering than the one on his IMDB page that has already been used on one of the first sites to report his death. I first saw it reported on MTV News in a brief rundown of minor stories earlier tonight, and it wasn’t until an hour or so later than Google News turned up something. No word yet on cause of death, but dude was only 43.

Top 10 Reasons Chris Penn was awesome:

1. He handled being the 3rd most famous Penn brother with grace and humility. Or maybe he was a bitter, egotistical ass, I don’t really know.

2. He was in Rush Hour, but I tend to think of him more for his appearance as a bartender in the video from the movie’s soundtrack for Jay-Z’s “Can I Get A…”.

3. His other notable music video role was in Sublime’s “Date Rape” video, as the titular date rapist.

4. Cribbed from his IMDB page: “Is in three different movies with close-range shootout scenes at the end (Reservoir Dogs (1992), True Romance (1993), and Corky Romano (2001)).”

5. He filmed a scene in True Romance right after Michael Madsen’s rottweiler ripped his throat out.

6. Also cribbed from IMDB: “Originally had role in American Pie 2 (2001) as Stiffler’s dad but the scenes were cut since they were not deemed to fit in with the original movie.” Stifler’s dad! Can you imagine that? Mabye if they hadn’t cut him, he’d have gotten a spot in the straight-to-DVD American Pie Presents Band Camp with that kid who played Stifler’s brother.

OK, six reasons is enough. One love, CP.

Mel Brooks’ 1968 directorial debut The Producers won him an Oscar for his original screenplay, and earned Gene Wilder his first Oscar nomination, but for years remained relatively little known compared to Brooks’ later genre parodies like Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, and Spaceballs. But it was always a favorite in my family, and over the past few years I was pleased to see The Producers take on a second life as a hugely successful stage musical starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, which meant that finally “Springtime For Hitler” really was a Broadway smash. And since the waiting lists and ticket prices for the Broadway run meant I’d probably never get a chance to see it live, I was glad they decided to make a movie version of the musical so I could see for myself what they did with it.

Although I still highly reccomend the 1968 version to any fan of the musical, it’s very clear from the jump that 2005’s The Producers is a very different beast, and much more was changed in the translation to Broadway than the addition of a few more songs. But since Mel Brooks was still intimately involved in the writing of the stage book and the new screenplay, the new scenes and new jokes retain the inimitable Brooks voice of the original. And at 134 minutes, compared to the original’s 88 minutes, a whole slew of new scenes and subplots are present. The role of Ulla, which was relatively small and received 7th billing in the original, is beefed up to 3rd billing for Uma Thurman’s perfect performance in the new version (Uma…Ulla…Uma…Ulla…I wonder if Letterman is excited to make note of this role). And one of my favorite characters in the original, Lorenzo St. DuBois (aka L.S.D.) is gone entirely to make more room for Will Ferrell’s Franz Liebkind.

At over 2 hours, The Producers definitely felt a bit overlong for a comedy, especially compared to the original’s brisk pacing. Movie audiences might’ve benefitted from the same intermission that Broadway audiences got. But it seems as if director Susan Stroman, who also directed the play, was hesitant to cut any of the handful of songs and scenes that could’ve been lost. And I sometimes found myself wishing the movie didn’t feel so much like a stage production minus the audience. That said, the movie had constant laughs and great performances. I’m a huge fan of Gene Wilder in the original and count it among his top 3 performances ever, and Matthew Broderick was definitely paying homage with his take on the role, although sometimes he lapsed into mere impersonation. And though Nathan Lane diverged more from Zero Mostel’s perfect performance in the original, he makes the role his own, particularly in the song and dance sequences.

On first viewing, I had to get over a little of the shock of just how much the filmmakers changed from the original, but now that I know that, I look forward to enjoying the 2005 version for what it is in future viewings. And every time I started to feel as if the original spirit of the original had been tossed out the window, they preserved some small detail that I loved, like the fact that Mel Brooks once again dubbed his voice for the storm trooper who says “Don’t be shtupid, be a shmarty, come and join the Nazy party!”

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.