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This, my friends, is a sign of the apocalypse.

Found via Mike Sterling

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In a newly released featurette, Watchmen director Zach Snyder talks about the main characters of the movie and comic and discusses some themes of the story, including what being a superhero does to you.

Also, if you think about it, we get to see some of the key scenes of the movie.

Watchmen Exclusive

Damn, this movie looks pretty.

Let’s just hope that Fox backs off of their current plan to delay the release and the studios settle soon.

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So what comes out next year that we Comic Book Fanboys and Fangirls have been simultaneously looking forward to and absolutely dreading? That’s right! NOTHING. Fox has won the rights to the upcoming Watchmen movie according to IESB.net. Now before you light your torches and sharpen your blades, nothing is confirmed as to whether or not the release date will be pushed back yet again or if the movie will be canceled altogether but I for one, am worried.

DC Comics, a division of Warner, created The Watchmen in 1986 and since then the book has become one of the largest milestones in the Comic Book industry as a whole. Now Fox comes along just months before the release of the movie and decides to claims rights to the title. Warner obviously pushed forward, ignoring Fox as much as they could, continuing their mass marketing of the movie. Back in the mid 90’s Fox was given the opportunity to do something with the title (Why Warner did this I have no idea.) but they did nothing with it. So here we are now. Fox can potentially cancel the movie completely and piss off all of us and there is nothing we can do about it.

Unfortunately there is not much more to be said here other then…

FUCK FOX!

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This just popped up on my feedreader and, after sharing it with a few friends, has already elicited some very strong responses that can’t be reprinted even here, so you know they’re bad.

Federal Judge Gary A Feess issued a ruling earlier today (now yesterday for me, Wednesday the 24th) stating that “Fox owns a copyright interest consisting of, at the very least, the right to distribute the ‘Watchmen’ motion picture.”

Here’s the article from the Los Angeles Times:

LOS ANGELES — In a surprise ruling, a federal judge in Los Angeles said he intended to grant 20th Century Fox’s claim that it owns a copyright interest in the “Watchmen,” a movie shot by Warner Brothers and Legendary Pictures and set for release in March.

The decision was disclosed in a five-page written order issued on Wednesday. Gary A. Feess, a judge in the United States District Court for Central California, said he would provide a more detailed order soon.

Fox has been seeking to prevent Warner from releasing the film. The superhero adventure, based on the “Watchmen” graphic novel, is being directed by Zack Snyder (who also directed “300”) and has shaped up as one of most eagerly anticipated releases for next year.

A Warner spokesman, Scott Rowe, declined to comment on the ruling and the studio’s plans.

At an earlier hearing, the judge said he believed that issues in the case could be settled only at a trial, which was scheduled for late January. On Wednesday, however, Judge Feess said he had reconsidered and concluded that Fox should prevail on crucial issues.

“Fox owns a copyright interest consisting of, at the very least, the right to distribute the ‘Watchmen’ motion picture,” the ruling said.

Fox acquired rights to the “Watchmen” graphic novel in the late 1980s for the producer Lawrence Gordon, but eventually dropped its own plan to make a movie from its story, about the underside of life for superbeings.

Mr. Gordon later pursued the project with Universal Pictures, and then with Paramount Pictures, before shooting it with Warner and Legendary under an arrangement that allows Paramount to distribute the film abroad.

In ruling on Wednesday, Judge Feess advised both Fox and Warner to look toward a settlement or an appeal.

“The parties may wish to turn their efforts from preparing for trial to negotiating a resolution of this dispute or positioning the case for review,” he said.

It seems fairly obvious to me that it’s in the best interests of both Fox and Warner Brothers to work out a settlement and release the film, but many fans are going to be very nervous over the holidays.

Update: MTV’s Splash Page pointed out something that had slipped under my radar. Fox and Warner Brothers have also been arguing over the distribution rights to the 1960’s Batman TV series - Fox wants to release them on DVD, WB has been blocking them. Perhaps a potential benefit to their settlement will involve WB finally allowing Fox to release those DVD’s.

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People, I think I may be about to cry.

It was bad enough when Punisher: War Zone, a movie that I was really and truly looking forward to, turned out to be damn near unwatchable. I was heartbroken, but I figured I’d survive. I mean, at least it wasn’t Battlefield Earth, right?

Then I read Jondough’s review of an advance screening of the last movie to which I was looking forward, The Spirit, on Ain’t It Cool News, and I’m devastated.

Jondough apparently feels that The Spirit will dethrone Battlefield as the absolute WORST. MOVIE. EVER.

I… I’ll just let him tell you. These are obviously excerpts of his review. Click here for the entire thing.

[...]
And now I’ve seen something that has taken the top prize from “Battlefield Earth.” I mean, I honestly thought that would never happen. And it’s not like there aren’t MANY shitty movies made every year, and it’s not like I don’t SEE many of those. In fact, friends of mine and I have recently started a “Bad Movie Night,” where we have an opening act, a main feature, and a dessert: all of incredibly bad film & TV (the last one we did featured a vampire theme, so we started with “Knight Beat” (only available on VHS, but highly recommended), we feasted on the horror that is “Lost Boys 2: The Tribe”, and then for dessert, watched the (very) little-seen, “Paul Lynde’s Halloween Special” (holy crap! Amazing!). They’re our very own “MST3K” nights.

Yet, despite all of the “badness,” I’ve never had that potent sense of “this is bad on a level worthy of B.E.” before last night.

“The Spirit,” as written and directed (hahahahahaha) by Frank Miller, is that movie. I can’t go into specifics of HOW, exactly, I saw the film (I use that term loosely here), as there are privacy issues at stake, but it’s not even all that important. What is important is that the two of us who stayed awake (one of us has a “real” job…he’s already an outsider, no reason to ridicule him further) for the film in its entirety could talk about nothing else for the remainder of the night. After 2 hours of ruminating, pondering what had just happened, we came up with this description of what the viewing experience was like: “I feel like I just watched a movie in a foreign language, where you speak JUST enough of the language to realize that the main character just said he had sex with your mother and then wrote a movie about it…a movie that you can’t fully understand except for the nagging feeling that that’s your mother up there getting reamed.”

Or, as said about a half hour later by my buddy, in all seriousness, “I think I now know what it feels like to be raped.” (The sense of betrayal, the sense of loss, the sense that somehow it was his fault.)

Yeah… ouch. And that’s just the beginning.

He starts in on the actors :

Let’s start with the acting. Oh lord. I didn’t know who Gabriel Macht was before this film, and I don’t really care to know him after. But according to IMDB at least, it looks like his agent’s pulled an “Ari” and gotten him a bunch of work based off this lead role before anyone saw it. Good for his agent. Because when people see this steaming pile of shit, where Macht is on screen the vast majority of the time, he’s going to take the biggest hit. To be fair, I’m not sure it’s ENTIRELY his fault (see “Actors: Self-Direction”), but Christy Christ, son. Going to the gym a lot does not mean you’re prepared for a role. If your director doesn’t give you any help, for god’s sake, HIRE AN ACTING COACH. I mean, do you realize that the nature of film is for people to SEE it? People are going to see this movie (granted, not many), and when they meet you on the street (assuming you’re wearing a stick-um mask, as he sports it during the entire movie…maybe that was his idea, to protect his face), they’re not going to be able to say anything other than, “Oh, hey. You were in the Spirit…(starting to laugh)…no, no, it’s not anything you did…(laughing harder)…no, I was just thinking of something else…(bent over now with laughter, then slowly recovering themselves)…But seriously, you were awful.” This scene will be played out all over town, all over the country. Probably not all over the world, though, as it’ll tank well before it gets real distribution. (Then again, this movie may actually MAKE more sense if you don’t speak English, so maybe your star has finally come after all, Gabe.)

To be honest, Old Gabe doesn’t even come off that bad…at least not compared to Sam Jackson. I mean, seriously, what the fuck? Sam: what the fuck, man? I’m not going to rehash your old glories here: you know them better than I do (hell, you’ve been reliving them on screen for the last decade). But come ON. I would have said you’re better than this…but you’re really not, are you? How big is your coke habit? Who do you owe money to? WHAT THE FUCK????

Dude…didn’t you suspect something was amiss when they asked you to bring all your own costumes from home?

(Costumer Designer: Hi Mr. Jackson, it’s Susie over at Lionsgate. Listen, we’re wondering if you have anything you’d be willing to bring in for the shoot tomorrow. Do you have any old costumes from movies you’ve done in the past? Mr. Miller wants to blow the whole budget on “the look,” as he calls it.

Sam Jackson: Well…let. Me. See, little lady. I do still have my mutton chops from when I played Vincent in Pulp Fiction. Will that work?
C.D: Perfect. What else you got?
S.J.: I’ve got some old mothafuckin’ samurai robes from a chewing gum commercial I did in mothafuckin’ Japan. Don’t MAKE me smell yo’ bad breath! That was the tag line.
C.D.: Fantastic. Anything else?
S.J.: Well, I really wanted to be in Valkyrie, so I bought an authentic Nazi uniform. A hat and everything. But that SONOFABITCH Toooom Cruuuuise said there WERE no Black Nazis. I said, “There weren’t no mothafuckin’ black Jedis either, bitch, but that didn’t stop George Lucas from putting me in there.” Oh, that reminds me, I have my purple light saber. Will that help?
C.D.: Yes to the Nazi uniform, hold off on the light saber. Aww, hell, bring it all! I don’t know how, but we’ll shoehorn all this stuff into something. Thanks!
S.J.: Hey, I’ve also got a huge plaster-of-paris Iron Eagle Nazi emblem. You know, just in case.
C.D.: Yeah, that’d be the props department. I’ll have Skipper give you a call.)

Samuel Laura Jackson, you should know better. That’s just all there is to it. Maybe you aren’t BETTER than this, but you should certainly KNOW better than this. This…well, this is a mothafuckin’ horrible movie.

You know it had to be bad if he’s willing to take on Samuel Muthafuckin’ Jackson.

But he saves his special, SPECIAL attention for Frank Miller:

[speaking directly to Miller]
You clearly don’t have any idea what you’re doing. Someone, ANYONE, over at Lionsgate should have known this. Fuck, it’s their JOB to know this. But they didn’t. They somehow bought the idea that you “co-directed” (hah) Sin City, which even if it WERE true, doesn’t mean you directed the movie. It means you sat in a seat next to Rodriguez and took notes on what words to say when (we see Frank scribbling furiously into a steno pad, tongue out in concentration. Close up on the notebook: “Action” – say this at the beginning when you want the pretty people to talk. “Cut” – say this when everyone looks at you). How could the suits know that your direction to the actors was, apparently, “You guys’ve done this before, just do what you normally do.” (Look! There’s Sam Jackson doing Sam Jackson. There’s Eva Mendes playing sexy. There’s Eric Balfour doing…what the fuck is he doing in this movie?) Seriously, how on Earth could they know that your idea of direction is to place the camera on a tripod and have your two actors walk back and forth for five minutes in front of a dimwit committing seppuku? They couldn’t, of course, but they should have. You apparently storyboarded the whole film. Did they LOOK (like, with their eyes) at these? Didn’t they notice the length of the scene? Didn’t they notice the lack of dramatic action? Didn’t they know that high school plays directed by a middle school teacher who’s only directing because he hates his life has better staging than this? They SHOULD have.

Yeah, I think that’s enough pain and depression.

So I leave you with a question - do two bad films in a row signal the beginning of the end for the glut of comic movies that we’ve had? What if Watchmen actually comes out and totally tanks? Is it all over?

Will there ever be another good comic movie again?

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Ladies and Gentlemen, New York Magazine blogger Lane Brown is trying to engage in an activity commonly known as “starting some shit” by encouraging Harry Potter fans - angry with Warner Brothers over The Halfblood Prince’s delayed release - to try to take out Watchmen fans disgruntled over Fox’s suit to block the release of the Watchmen film.

If the multitudes of ticked-off Harry Potter fans really wanted to bring Warner to its knees, we’d suggest they focus on stymieing the protests of the weaker, lesser-in-number Watchmen fans, thus allowing Fox’s copyright suit to continue apace.

What Lane Brown fails to realize is that Watchmen fans are not necessarily weaker or lesser in number, we are just quieter. We are also commonly older, disappointed in life, idolize ultra-violent anti-heroes, and - with Fox’s threat to block our obsession’s release - have very little to lose.

Does that really sound like a group of people you want to fuck with?

I love me some Harry Potter, but the first robe-wearing, ridiculous-spectacle-sporting, wand-waving punk who steps to this is getting an owl shoved up their ass and then getting shoved up Lane Bryant’s ass.

I’m just sayin’.

Technorati Tags: Harry Potter, Watchmen, Fox, Warner Brothers, New York Magazine, Lane Brown

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Image via Wikipedia Nicki Finke is reporting on Deadline Hollywood that Warner’s motion to dismiss Fox’s lawsuit over the Watchmen movie has been denied. The judge has ruled that there is merit to Fox’s claim that they retain at least partial rights to any Watchmen film adaptation and thus Warner Brothers did not have the right to adapt the movie without them.

While this is obviously a blow against the WB and Fox has requested an injunction against releasing the film, Warner Brothers reminded us in a released statement that this has yet to be decided. The judge has only ruled that Fox has satisfied the requirements to file the lawsuit, not that they’ve won the suit.

Read Finke’s entire, exhaustively detailed article here.

Technorati Tags: Warner Brothers, Fox, Lawsuit, Watchmen

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Apparently devised for those who want to brush up on their Watchmen familiarity but are too lazy to turn pages, iTunes has the classic comic series in a format called “Motion Comics” for 1.99 an issue or 19.99 for a season pass.

Assuming this is similar to the trailers that Marvel develops for their major events, the format seems to consist of a camera scanning the panels to simulate animation or movement and bad voice actors reading the speech bubbles. Unless the product is something of much higher quality than that, I’d much rather buy the graphic novel.

Actually, I’d rather have the graphic novel, anyway, since I already have my precious precious Absolute Edition.

Anyway, I’m sure it will appeal to some folks and who am I to gripe as long as it gets the word out about a good story?

Technorati Tags: Watchmen, Motion Comics, iTunes, Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons

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I haven’t really had much to say about Freddy vs Jason vs Ash since my review of the first issue, mostly because I figure that most people who are interested in it already know about it, but I had to share this sequence from the fourth issue.

Technorati Tags: Comics, Freddy, Jason, Ash, Necronomicon, Ozymandias, Freddy vs Jason vs Ash, Watchmen

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Robert Parizek at Between The Staples directs us all to Chip Zdarsky’s internet winning mash-up of the recent OMD hoopla and Watchmen:

Quesada is an evil genius.

An evil something, at least…

tag: Comics, Satire, Spider-man, One More Day, Watchmen, Joe Quesada

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