Friday, April 30, 2010

YES WE CAN


blind intolerance for douches


Thursday, April 29, 2010

Michael Steele at SRLC 2010

poloticians have a.d.d.


Wednesday, April 28, 2010

The One Thing: 4/27

The One Thing: 4/27

Threequel Alert: Murray Talks Ghostbusters 3, Favreau Talks Iron Man 3, And The Fallen Talks Transformers 3!

Threequel Alert: Murray Talks Ghostbusters 3, Favreau Talks Iron Man 3, And The Fallen Talks Transformers 3!

Threequel Alert: Murray Talks Ghostbusters 3, Favreau Talks Iron Man 3, And The Fallen Talks Transformers 3!Iron Man 2 reviews include enough spoilers to power an arc reactor. Ghostbusters 3 may be exorcised. Plus trailers for Toy Story and Survival of the Dead, and a Jonah Hex poster. Also: Doctor Who, Transformers, Fringe, Supernatural and Lost.

Iron Man 2:
As we mentioned yesterday, this film is getting mixed reviews — which include a lot of spoilers. Here's a summary.
The whole plot revolves around a defence contract, which is presumably discussed at the Senate hearings held by Garry Shandling's senator character. Also in the mix: the government wants the Iron Man suit, so the U.S. Army can have a thousand Iron Men fighting for our interests.
Pepper Potts has been promoted to Tony's old job as head of Stark Industries. Technically, this makes her Tony's boss, but she's frantically trying to get his attention as his company falls apart. Meanwhile, Natalie Rushman/Natasha Romanoff is hired to replace her as Tony's assistant. The scene from the trailer, where Tony tells Pepper "You complete me," has been cut, and they only kiss at the end of the movie. Natasha, meanwhile, kicks lots of ass, and at one point gets Stark's bodyguard Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) between her thighs. She also hands Tony a martini and asks if it's dirty enough for him.
Tony, meanwhile, is busy trying to save himself from poisoning as a result of the palladium powering the arc reactor in his chest. He's searching for an alternate power source, but keeps getting thwarted. And the various mods he's made to his armor means the reactor eats up palladium batteries faster. He's also becoming a bit of a megalomaniac, and is addicted to being Iron Man. He's "privatized world peace," kicking ass in Darfur and taking down terrorist cells single-handed.
Mickey Rourke's Ivan Vanko is genuinely menacing and akin to this movie's Joker. He was raised to hate the Stark family for stealing the secret of the arc reactor from Vanko Sr. Slimy arms merchant Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) kidnaps Vanko to get him to design his own Iron Man suits, and even though they form an alliance, Vanko has total contempt for Hammer. The main complaint seems to be that Vanko doesn't get enough screen time.
The big racetrack fight between Ivan and Tony nearly kills Tony, as the world watches — and this motivates SHIELD to get more involved in Tony's life and Justin Hammer to try harder to catch up to Tony. Tony's blood poisoning gets a lot worse, and he gets drunk in the Iron Man suit on his birthday. (He shows off how he relieves himself while wearing the suit, among other things.) Rhodey sees the drunk, dangerously irresponsible Iron Man and has no choice but to suit up as War Machine to stop him, and this turns into an emotional scene where they work out their issues. (But the "rift" between Tony and Rhodey is obviously mostly a feint, to fake out the bad guys.)
Later, Tony watches some 16mm films of his dad, played by John Slattery. We also get some clues about the role Tony's dad played in founding SHIELD. Ultimately, the poisoning subplot gets resolved way too quickly and easily. Tony Stark whips up a "new element" to save his own life, which News Of The World jokes should be called "unexplanium." And Samuel L. Jackson turns up, after being absent for most of the film, with a deus ex machina that allows Tony to upgrade his suit and trash the bad guys. But then in the penultimate scene, Fury tells Tony that Iron Man is invited to join the Avengers — but Tony Stark isn't, suggesting that someone else might be Iron Man in the Avengers movie.
[Den Of Geek and Indiewire and Variety and Hollywood Reporter and AICN and Cinematical and ViewLondon and NewsOfTheWorld and Hollywood.com and Empire and ComingSoon]
Meanwhile, Jon Favreau says Iron Man 3 is a long way off, and he may not be involved at all:
'Iron Man 3' is years down the road, and that has to reflect the reality of what's been established not just in 'Iron Man 1 and 2,' but in movie time, between this film and that film, is 'The Incredible Hulk,' 'Thor,' 'Captain America,' and 'The Avengers.' I haven't had to inherit anybody else's backstory yet—it's just simply what we chose to use or not use from the comic books—so I'm feeling like I'm passing the baton and after all those movies are done, it's time to sit down and discuss if there's something I can bring to it, if it's something we want to do together, but that's way down the road.
But separately, Robert Downey Jr. seems bullish about the third movie, which he says will draw on storylines from the decades of Iron Man comics. [Coming Soon via CinemaBlend and MTV]
Ghostbusters 3:
Iron Man 3 may still happen before this film. Bill Murray says he thinks this movie is a myth, like the white alligator of the sewers, and will never really exist. Even though supposedly there's a script floating around from some of The Office's writers, Murray seems to believe that no decent script exists. And he's appointed Sissy Spacek as his spokesperson on all Ghostbusters matters. [CinemaBlend]
Toy Story 3:
Here's one "threequel" that's definitely a reality — just check out a new trailer.


Jonah Hex:
Megan Fox is apparently a big selling point about this film, judging from a new poster. [Yahoo! via JoBlo]


Survival Of The Dead:
OMG a new trailer!


Transformers 3:
Tony Todd, who voiced the Fallen in the last movie, has once again said he'll be playing a human in this film, according to people who saw him at a convention over the weekend. (Todd also played Worf's brother Kurn on Star Trek: The Next Generation.) [TLAMB]
Doctor Who:
The Daily Mail has a few more pics from the second half of the Weeping Angels two-parter, showing the Doctor figuring out a way to defeat the Angels, and explaining it to Amy. He asks her if she trusts him. Meanwhile, he also checks her vitals because she's continuing to have Angel-induced problems. [Daily Mail]


Squickage alert. Alex Kingston says that she had assumed that River Song was the Doctor's future lover, but after reading the scripts for the Angels two-parter, she decided that maybe she's his mother. Although there's still a lot of flirtation between the two, which wouldn't be "quite appropriate" if she was his mum. [Gallifrey News Base]
Fringe:
Here are some behind the scenes photos of the finale. Since this is apparently our last chance to see Leonard Nimoy, it's good that he's actually popping up a lot. [SpoilerTV]


Plus some promo photos for the penultimate outing of the season, "Northwest Passage." [SpoilerTV]


Supernatural:
Here are a ton of promo photos for the season finale, "Swan Song." [SpoilerTV]


And here's another sneak peek from Thursday's episode.


Dean is about to make an expensive and dangerous deal with Death. (I'm guessing that's them in the pizza parlor in those pics we posted recently.)
V:
Don't expect Val's half-alien fetus to cause too many way-out pregnancy symptoms — the focus in the next few episodes will be much more on the human side of being pregnant and how it affects the characters, says Lourdes Benedicto. [Fancast]
Laura Vandervoort says Lisa gets a lot edgier and nastier in the last few episodes of the season. [E! Online]
Life On Mars:
Here's a nice write up of episode five which includes some spoilers, including hints that the Mars/Ashes continuity is starting to dovetail in some fascinating ways. [Life Of Wylie]
Stargate Universe:
Here's a sneak peek from episode 15, "Lost":


Lost:
There are multiple huge heartbreaks coming up very soon — I'm guessing next week, since the following week is the Jacob/MIB flashback episode, followed immediately by the three-part finale. We'll have tears of sadness soon, followed by happy tears when we witness the ending. [E! Online]
And here's a sneak peek from next week's episode! [The ODI]


TV Guide Magazine hints that next week's episode will be fatal for a number of Losties. (Clearing away characters before the three-part finale, no doubt.) And Jin might be one of them — considering that Daniel Dae Kim was able to leave the Lost set for three weeks to go film the pilot for his new series, Hawaii Five-O. But Kim says that until Jin gets closure with his wife and daughter, "the island won't be done with him." [via SpoilersLost]







 

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