Sometimes there are bad ideas, and sometimes there are monumentally bad ideas.

I first mentioned the Spider-Man Broadway show back in April of 2007, and it is just finally coming togehter with previews starting January 16, 2010, and full production begins February 18, 2010.  Considering how nine shows recently closed their doors on Broadway, I’m not sure right now is the best time to be launching a new show with a multi-million dollar budget, let alone one that is just probably going to be filled with angsty sounding songs about how much Spider-Man’s life sucks.

I love Broadway shoes, so I don’t say this out of a dislike for the style, I just feel that this is a show that’s going to be any more than a marketing gimmick without a whole lot of substance.  I’m sure far more effort is going into making some amazing effects to make it look like he is swinging through the city streets, but that does not necessairly mean the story will be any good.

There was a time I would have killed for the exposure comic book properties are getting now, and while putting them out as movies has certainly worked, I just don’t know about a singing and dancing Spider-Man is going to have the same allure.  Clearly Marvel, the company behind the comics and this show) think it will work, and getting half of U2 to help you with your music doesn’t hurt, but I just get a really sinking feeling in my gut that this thing is going to go so wrong that it will damage the planned fourth film, not to mention the comics themselves.

I hope I’m wrong and it is a huge success, just don’t ask me to hold my breath over it.

Scattercast is 32 and wishing its feet didn’t hurt.

- Blisters suck.

- More thoughts on the whole Samuel L. Jackson thing.

- Michael Cera finally joins the Arrested Development movie… ingrate.

- Netflix may soon offer streaming-only subscriptions.

- Why aren’t there more movies like Slumdog Millionaire, and why is Hollywood remaking things like Total Recall and The Neverending Story?

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It’s amazing how fast the status of an actor can change in Hollywood, and Samuel L. Jackson is a perfect example of this.

Just yesterday I wrote about the numerous comic book movies coming out, and one of the statements I mentioned was the rumor that Mr. Jackson would not be reprising the role of Nick Fury in any more Marvel Comics movies.  In case you are confused by the word “reprising”, he did appear at the end of Iron Man, after the credits, to talk with Tony Stark.  Originally it was rumored he would again appear in Iron Man 2, and possibly a few other Marvel movies, but then word came out that talks between him and the studio had broken down over money, and he would not be back for any more appearances.

Well, literally hours after I wrote up my article came out yesterday, rumors popped up that he had indeed reached a deal with Marvel.  There was no word of which movies he would be in, but that was taken care of by an article from Variety today stating that he has signed a nine picture deal with the studio.

Yes… NINE.

Not only will he supposedly appear in small roles through out the Marvel films, but there is a possibility of a S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division) movie.  Though the character of Fury, and S.H.I.E.L.D. itself, have changed over the years, one thing has remained constant that Fury is in charge of the organization.

While his own movie may be a ways off, I think it is safe to say that four of his nine movies will be Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America and The Avengers. Now I just wish I had held off one day longer on that original post…

Anyone else remember when it was a special event to see a comic book related movie, and not a seemingly weekly release?

New information is popping up all over the place of what the future holds for fans of people in tights fighting… well… other people in tights.  First, here is the current slate of comic book related movies with announced release dates.

• Watchmen – March 6, 2009
• X-Men Origins: Wolverine – May 1, 2009
• Iron Man 2 – May 7, 2010
• Thor – June 4, 2010
• Green Lantern – December 17, 2010
• The First Avenger: Captain America – May 6, 2011
• Spider-Man 4 – May, 2011 (tentative)
• The Avengers – July 15, 2011
• Kick-Ass – To be announced, but my guess is sometime in 2009

As I’ve said before, I think the Marvel slate is overly ambitious.  Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America and The Avengers technically form a series, and if one of them bombs, (my money is on Thor doing lackluster box office) the whole series could be thrown off kilter.  Whatever, it’s their money to throw around as they like.  Never mind I think they are making mistakes behind-the-scenes.  Rumors are circulating that Samuel L. Jackson is out of the films as Nick Fury due to Marvel not paying enough (about four hours after I published this, news broke that he was back in Iron Man 2), and there is also word they offered Mickey Rourke $250,000 to play Crimson Dynamo, a Soviet-era version of Iron Man, in the second Iron Man movie.  Sure I think actors are overpaid, but even I have to say that $250K is a fairly lowball offer.

Although Marvel is regrouping the original cast and crew for Spider-Man 4, can we all just hope it is a lot better than the third film?  That one was just painful to watch, and it doesn’t make me super anxious to see a fourth.  Course, to get us all worked up for the franchise again, you can see the Broadway musical starting in February 2010.  I’m already afraid of that project.

Aside from Marvel, and as much as I have desired it, the news of the Green Lantern movie leaves me a bit concerned.  The December 17, 2010 release date was announced just today, but there are two immediate problems with that date: the movie doesn’t have a director or cast yet, and it is the first super hero movie ever released near the holidays.  Typically big comic movies launch in the summer, but the 2010 summer slate is pretty full already, so they moved this one to December, which seems fair enough.  However, announcing a release date before you even have a director or cast on board?  That isn’t just overly ambitious, it seems screamingly stupid to me.

For a movie of this type, one that is sure to be special effects heavy, you need to do a ton of pre-production work.  Until a director is locked, that is virtually impossible.  So you are currently asking a director to come on to the project cold, and drop what will hopefully be the first in a new franchise for your studio in just over 21 months?  The schedule is tight for such a venture to begin with, but by the time this ramps up, it could be even worse.  Hopefully Warner Brothers will rethink that release date a bit.

I’m hopefully there won’t be any big duds in these films, but you have to wonder when the movie going public is going to tire of these projects.  For now, I am most anxious for Green Lantern, and just hopeful they don’t completely botch it up.

Here it is only February, and we already have our second teacher student sex scandal of the year.

24-year-old Holyoke, Massachusetts teacher Lisa Lavoie was arrested Monday night in Morgantown, West Virginia after fleeing with a 15-year-old student a week ago.  According to CNN, the parents of the unnamed child first reported their suspicions to the police on Friday, February 13th.  The police went to the Maurice A. Donahue Elementary School to question her, but she had already left for the day.  They were going to try again on Monday the 16th, but that entire week was a break for the school.  The student was reported missing that day, but the teacher was not reported until Monday the 23rd when she did not show up for work.

The police used financial and cellular communication records to trace the duos whereabouts, but they know they were in Vermont on last Thursday, and were in West Virginia on Monday.  An arrest could not be issued until more evidence was gathered, once it was, the Morgantown police were sent to pick up the teacher and charge her with enticement of a child, and statutory rape is still being investigated.  Ms. Lavoie, who had the student in her 8th grade class, has only been teaching at the school for 5 months, and she has been placed on administrative leave as the investigation into the allegations continues.

Christine McCallum was the first teacher scandal of the year, and that was just back on January 11th, and I was blown away we already had one this year, but even this one seems a bit early for the year.  Most of these types of scandels tend to happen later in the spring, towards the end of the school year, so it seems some teachers wanted to get an early start this year.  Never mind that I think that Ms. Lavoie may be the first to have been a teacher less than a year before getting involved in such a situation.

My biggest uestion in this case (beyond the usual “Why?”) is why the police didn’t pursue things further on that first Friday.  Did they go to the school and go, “Oh, she’s not here?  Oh, well then, no possible problems will happen over the weekend, no need for us to go to her home and question her!”  Why was there no follow up from the police at that point?  Why did the mother wait until the 16th to report the son missing?  Did she not notice on the 14th or 15th?

There are several questions remaining in this one, but at least the boy is now safe, and hopefully some of the answers will come out as to what motivated yet another teacher to commit the ultimate betrayal of parental trust.

Other teacher sex scandals for 2009

• Christine McCallum of Boston, MA
• Christy Lynn Martin, St. Petersburg, FL
• Linda Nef and Valynne Bowers, Bountiful, UT
• Sarah L. Tolzien, Richton Park, IL
• Autumn Faulkner, Randolph County, WV
• Lindsay Massaro, Frankford, Sussex County, NJ
• Lauren Breslin, Vineland, NJ
• Kristina Anna Baeta, Union City, CA
• Reanna Jewell, Apache Junction, AZ
• Jennifer Lea Burton, Orangefield, TX
• Tamara Hofmann, Chandler, AZ
• Jennifer Marie Collier, Jacksonville, FL
• Gina Marie Watring, Durham, NC
• Alison M. Peck, Greenfield, MO
• Maria Guman Hernandez, Hialeah, FL
• Helen Goddard, London, England
• Amy Elsworth & Brian Drake, Waterford, MI
• Alini Brito & Cindy Mauro, Brooklyn, NY (no students involved)
• Amanda Watkins, Muscle Shoals, AL

The winners for the 81st annual Academy Awards have been announced, and, not too much to my surprise, I have seen hardly any of these films so far.  I have been dying to see Slumdog Millionaire, and surprisingly, it is actually in my town now!  I’m going to try to sneak out of work and see it as soon as possible.

That being said, there weren’t too many surprises with this year’s awards.  Slumdog Millionaire winning just about everything was expected, but I find it fascinating for all of the awards it won, it received no acting nominations.  Did the script just magically appear on screen without anyone acting it?

- Kudos to Kate Winslet for finally winning on her sixth outing.  She is a great actress and has been deserving for some time of winning.

- Heath Ledger put in an amazing performance in The Dark Knight, but I wonder how much of his win was his passing away and how much was truly the role.  I felt he was deserving, but you will alway shave to wonder.

- Hugh Jackman did a good job hosting, although the format was way different than it has been in the past.  And yay for him getting to sing.

- How was Don LaFontaine left out of the remembrance video of those who passed this year?  He was the voice of the movies to millions of people.

- What was Whoopi Goldberg wearing?  Did she get dressed in the dark?

- On the flip side… Tina Fey was… wow.

- Speaking of Tina Fey, her bit with Steve Martin was fantastic just for the thinly veiled joke at Scientology.  A mighty brave move in Hollywood these days considering the big names that buy in to that sham of a “religion”.  Wonder how many of the millions of people watching actually caught the meaning of that joke.

See all the nominees and the winners after the jump.

Continue Reading ->

For only the fourth time in movie history, a movie has surpassed the $1 billion mark in box office receipts.

According to Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood, The Dark Knight surpassed the $1 billion dollar in box office take on Friday.  This is only the fourth movie to ever do so, sharing the honors with Titanic ($1.8 billion), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King ($1.1 billion), and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest ($1.066 billion).  None of these numbers are adjusted for inflation, but it is still an impressive haul for any film to make.

This will surely add to Warner Brothers, the studio behind the franchise, to want director Christopher Nolan and actor Christian Bale to return for a third film.  For now Mr. Nolan has been hesitant to confirm his attachment to a third outing in Gotham City due to his claim that he is lacking in story ideas at this point in time.  He has not completely ruled out doing another, but he wants to be sure it is a story worth doing.

I have to agree with him at this point that while Batman has interesting villains, very few of them are capable of carrying a movie like the Joker could.  The only other one who I would immediately say could would be Two-Face, but that is no longer an option after the events of the last film.

So, who does this leave us with?

• Catwoman – She really isn’t a villain per se.
• Clayface – Interesting idea, but hard to pull off in the “realistic” world setting these films have established.
• Harley Quinn – While she’s fun, she’s second fiddle to the Joker, and it would be hard to introduce her without the Joker around.
• Man-Bat – Again, hard to pull off in the setting they have introduced in the films.
• Mr. Freeze – Hard to forget how badly he was handled in the Batman & Robin movie, but Batman:The Animated Series handled him with a lot more class.  He could possibly work.
• Penguin – Nolan has expressed his dislike for this villain, and I tend to agree with him.  He is too absurd to be believable as an actual threat.
• Poison Ivy – Good grief no.  The crazy plant lady never thrilled me.
• Ra’s ah Ghul – Could return possibly from his seeming death in the first one, but I doubt it.
• Riddler – I’ve never cared for the Riddler.  He leaves a trail of evidence behind him a mile wide, and he just has always struck me as silly.
• Scarecrow – They pretty much played him out.
• Talia ah Ghul – The daughter of Ra’s, not sure she could support a movie on her own, plus she has that “love of Batman” thing going on.

As you can see, not many more of his core villains would work, but you can take a look through his Rogue’s Gallery and see if there any that you think would work in the inevitable third film.  Who would like to see?  Who do you think would work?  And will a third film make as much, or was it Heath Ledger’s doing?

As anyone who reads this blog knows, I love Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, and I sing that fact from the rooftops every chance I get.

Well, the thing with a series that is over is that it can feel daunting to go back and watch seven seasons of a show to see if it was really as good as someone like me says it was.  Well, some brave soul has attempted to condense all seven season into an abridged video that runs only 3 minutes and 20 seconds.  While it is certainly very abridged, it sure does seem to hit the majority of the high points of the series.

As a fan of the series, I did enjoy it, but I’m not horribly sure what an uninitiated viewer would get from it beyond a whole lot of flashes that make no sense.  Trust me, there is some cool stuff in there.  You can check out a sampling of full episodes on TheWB.com, and you can follow my synopsis of each issue of the Buffy Season 8 comic book, the official follow up to the TV series, right here on the site.

Scattercast is 31 and considering its own mortality.

- Raccoon War 2009 comes to an end… kinda… sorta.

- My thoughts on the first episode of Dollhouse.

- The Rihanna bruise photo is just disturbing .

- Death on the Internet is a subject that always interests me.

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There are some things in this world that are inexcusable, and the beating of singer Rihanna by her boyfriend/singer Chris Brown is one of those.

While I have actually avoided this subject on purpose up until now, now that TMZ has released the first image of the beating Rihanna took at the hands of Christ Brown, I can not even fathom how anyone could defend something like this.  For those who missed it, it is reported tha Rihanna, 20-years-old at the time, got in an argument with her boyfriend, 19-year-old singer Chris Brown.  After that details get sketchy except that when the police arrived, Rihanna was sitting in Chris’ car in the passanger seat, and Chris Brown was gone.

She had been beaten, that much is definite, and Chris Brown had fled the scene.  After that there have been rumors of Rihanna having given Brown herpes, which died a quick rumor death.  There have been others saying that Brown got a text from Paris Hilton and that set her off, and on and on and on.  Who knows when, if ever, we will learn the true story, but does it really matter?

I got involved in some comments over on The Inquisitr where I said:

Unless Rihanna pulled a weapon on Brown there is NO excuse to hit a woman… EVER. I don’t care if she smacked him, I don’t care if she called him every name in the book, there is zero reason to hit a woman.

To say I have been shocked by the responses I have received would be to put it mildly.  You can go check them out for yourself, but essentially I have been given an endless list of reasons why hitting a woman is okay, and how some women deserve it.  I want every single person to look at the picture with this post, and then tell me this is okay.  I don’t care if it’s a man or a woman, this type of bahavior is never okay… ever.

I have come close to punching a woman exactly once in my life, but notice I said “close”.  Her gender was the first thing that stopped me, but the second thing was that I also realized that violence was not the answer to situation, and it never should be.  I really don’t care what Riahanna supposedly said to Chris Brown, I don’t even care if she did give him herpes, the thing to would have been:

1. Pull over
2. Tell her to get out and/or discuss it

No where in there should there have been hitting involved.  He also did himself no favors by fleeing the scene, that doesn’t exactly help his case, and it certainly doesn’t make him look innocent.

Again, I am not one for celeberity gossip in general, but this has nothing to do with gossip.  This image is a cold hard truth that a young person was beaten by someone they have been dating, and there is never an excuse for such an action, nor should there be.

All of you who is waiting to learn the line-up of crab boats in Deadliest Catch season 5, we’ve just been thrown a curve ball.

Back in December  I speculated on which crab boats would appear in Deadliest Catch season 5 by working off the 6 ships of last season.  It was hard to guess which ships amongst Cornelia Marie, Early Dawn, North American, Northwestern, The Wizard or Time Bandit would make it out to the Bering Sea off of Alaska, let alone onto the show.  I did some digging, and Deadliest Reports found the official registery of all the ships that went out for opilio season, and all six of the season 4 ships are registered as being out there fishing.

The curve ball I mentioned came in the form of a blog post on the official blog of the show on Tuesday.  According to the post we will be introduced to the crew of the Lisa Marie.  You can see a picture of Captain Wade Henley and four of his crew members to the right here.  Apparently Lisa Marie is the smallest ship we will have been shown yet seeing as she can only carry 55 crab pots, well below the numbers we’re used to seeing on ships such as Cornelia Marie.  Beyond the captain’s name, number of crew and the pot count, I can not find any other information on this mystery ship.

Of course the biggest question is which, if any, of the other six ships will not be appearing on the show this season.  I think Cornelia Marie, Northwestern and Time Bandit will be on the show for as long as it exists, the other three are toss ups.  My hesitant guess is that Early Dawn is out, and replaced by Lisa Marie.  I just base this on the fact the Early Dawn has not really embraced being on the show like the other five ships of season 4 have, so I’m thinking they may have opted out of this season.

Introducing a ship that only carry 55 pots makes sense to me as we always see the ships pulling up 100+ pot strings, but how do you place your pots when you only have half od that in total?  Can you even afford to soak test pots?  I think they’ll have to just pick a spot and that’s it, that is where you’re fishing, so your captain better have chosen wisely.

The show will probably debut in April (last year it was April 15th), although there has been no firm date announced yet, but I’m sure I and all the other fans will be speculating on the ship roster from now until then.

UPDATE: Deadliest Catch Season 5 Premiere Announced

UPDATE 02/10/10: Capt. Phil Harris of the Cornelia Marie has passed away

Well, this was a pleasant surprise today.

Time came up with a list of the 25 Best Blogs 2009, and while they didn’t assign numbers, somewhere in that mass is my employers, Mashable.  You can read the entry about us here, and I have to say it’s interesting to see.  When you’re working on something day-in, day-out, it is sometimes difficult to know what is going on outside of your “cubicle”.  I quite often go days without even talking to my co-workers at the site as my particular assignments keep me pretty autonomous.  I get a batch of assignments, I write them one at a time, leave them notes on which ones are ready, and by the time they see that, I’m already on to the next one.

Working in such a manner can make it easy to forget sometimes that there is a whole world out there reading what we publish, and to wake up to something as auspicious as Time naming your company one of the 25 best in its field?  Well, it’s a bit humbling to say the least.  Don’t get me wrong, I am just one of the cogs in the machine at Mashable, there is a whole team of us that this honor goes out to, but it is still nice to notice someone is noticing our caffeine-fueled ramblings.  (Maybe this will finally bring in that coffee sponsorship editor-in-chief Adam Ostrow and I have long dreamed of…)

Do make sure to check out the full list of 25 as there are a lot of great blogs in there that are well worth your time.  And thank you to all of the loyal readers of Mashable for making this possible.  Well, and thank you to Pete Cashmore, the CEO of Mashable, for taking a chance on me back in July of 2007 when I joined the site.  Sure I had been a writer in print media before then, but let me tell you all, blogging is a whole different beast, but I’m glad I could play at least some small part in all of this.