Who Watches The Watchmen Trailer?

I've been going nuts over the Watchmen trailer since it first appeared. This is actually the first time I've ever gotten a song stuck in my head (an unfamiliar song) just from a trailer; I've watched it that many times.

I know that some Horrorthon regulars have not read Watchmen (and I'm not going to talk about the story) but I'm awfully curious how all this looks to the uninitiated.

Somehow it gets back to the effectiveness of the title. I vividly remember crossing the campus in Chicago back in 1985 and seeing Tyler (a girl I knew who collected comics) carrying a bagged version of "Watchmen" #2, which was the first time I'd heard of the book. The title leaped out at me, because (unlike nearly all comics) this cover exhibited a modicum of design sense: the title was in a cool font and was yellow and was turned 90 degrees along the book's spine. (Dave Gibbons gave an interview where he talked about the Watchmen title typography and how comic book stores' domination of newsstands made that kind of cover design possible.) But "WATCHMEN" leapt out at me instantly and conveyed the whole tone of the project: an ominous, uneasy view of superheroes who have been given this strangely paternal, dangerous-sounding epithet.

The same thing happened again at the end of the trailer, when the same yellow font formed the same word...on the movie screen...and made me and many others very happy. It's the same strange phenomenon as the Lord of the Rings movies, but even more so: in that case, we got all excited about a movie, but we already knew the whole story. In the case of Watchmen it's even worse: not only do we already know the whole story, we already know what everything looks like (Tolkien's version wasn't illustrated). And the movie appears to be so faithful that I (and anyone else who's read the book) can tell you exactly what's going on in every single shot of the trailer.

Has anything like this happened before? The trailer says "The Most Celebrated Graphic Novel of All Time" (which is obviously true, if a bit strange since Watchmen is essentially the first graphic novel). It's also the book that famously introduced the element of real time into the comic book world, which is why it's significant that the story takes place in 1985 (and an explicitly divergent 1985 at that). So we've got a faithful period-piece movie made from comics. Seriously, has anyone done anything like this before?

On message boards, many people "admit" they haven't read Watchmen and then gush about the trailer. This intrigues me, because I can't imagine seeing this thing and not knowing what's going on; I'm too familiar with the story and the images. But the trailer (and its uninitiated viewers) are bringing me back to the excitement of 19-year-old Jordan seeing the word "WATCHMEN" sideways on a comic book. Nothing like that comic had ever happened before, and now, 23 years later, it's going to happen again.

Am I even making any sense? You tell me. Watchmen is special, and I have a feeling this movie will be special too, not just because of its quality but because, just like the book, it's something happening that's never happened before.

Are any of you Watchmen neophytes excited? What does the trailer look like to a Horrorthoner who hasn't read the book?

Comic-Con wrap-up: Are superheroes done for?

By Scott Bowles, USA TODAY

SAN DIEGO — Jackie Earle Haley steps inside of the Night Owl's spaceship, walking gingerly past the pilot's seats toward the control panel, touching the blinking gauges and dials.
"It's still a little hard to believe," the balding, bespectacled actor says, "that I'm playing a superhero."

But if this year's Comic-Con convention, which wrapped up Sunday, has demonstrated anything, it's that comic-book and superhero movies are not what they used to be.

If anything, they're the opposite.

Gone are the lantern-jawed heroes whose raison d'être was to save mankind from villains threatening to wipe out the populace.

Instead, the anti-hero rules. He drinks heavily. He has problems performing in bed. He's as likely to kill an innocent as an evildoer. Often, he doesn't care that much for people.

And he's getting hired by the truckloads by Hollywood. After a summer that has seen antithetical superheroes rack up nearly $1 billion, studios can't get enough crime-fighter movies into production, even ones with some unlikely protagonists.

There are more than 42 comic-book and superhero movies in production, and the heroes range from the obvious (Robert Downey Jr. and Tobey Maguire reprising their roles as Iron Man and Spider-Man) to the head-scratching (Seth Rogen as the Green Hornet?).

Even Haley, who returned to big-screen prominence as a pederast in Little Children, concedes he never saw himself as the crusading type.

"When I first started acting, the last thing I thought of was being a superhero," he says as he walks through the spaceship used in Watchmen, the ultimate anti-hero film, due March 6. The 9,000-pound spaceship was rolled onto the floor of the convention and became the most popular display of the five-day pop-culture festival.

"I'm probably the last guy you'd think of playing a superhero," Haley says, signing autographs and taking pictures with fans, some of them dressed as his character, the shadowy hero Rorschach. "I'm no Superman."

Read the rest here

Teens make human skull bong

Teenagers have been charged after digging up a grave to make a bong out of a human skull.

Three teenagers were arrested after two of them told police they dug up a secluded grave near Houston, Texas, removed the skull from a coffin and converted it into a bong.

Kevin Wade Jones, 17, and Matthew Richard Gonzalez, 17 were arrested Wednesday night and were being held on misdemeanor charges of abuse of a corpse.

Police were interviewing Jones about the debit card fraud when he told them about the grave theft.

Asked why Jones would volunteer the information police sergeant John Chomiak said: 'We can only speculate and guess to what goes on in the criminal mind.'

"They dug into this gravesite and that was enough to warrant the abuse of corpse charge.'

Police believe the grave is that of an 11-year-old boy who died in 1921 in an unmaintained 19th-century veterans cemetery.

Spirit panal bombs at Comic Con; Frank Miller apparently a huge dick

During Sony’s Comic Con panel for Pineapple Express, Seth Rogen jokingly wondered if his next project, a comedy based on the classic comic The Green Arrow might be in trouble, since though he’d seen people dressed as characters as obscure as the third guy from the left in Final Fantasy, there was no one walking around in a Green Arrow costume. Luckily for Rogen, his film has something else going for it besides whatever tiny fanbase the original property might have: it has him. No such luck for Frank Miller, who’s adaptation of The Spirit was met with resounding indifference and sometimes outright disgust during its panel debut at Comic Con.

To call The Spirit panel the biggest disaster of 2008’s convention is something of an understatement. This thing went off like a stale pop rock. Miller was cranky and unlikable. The producer they wedged between him and Sam Jackson was controlling, overbearing, and utterly annoying. Jackson was given nothing to talk about except the size of his guns, as if we’re all so stupid that the simple fact of him holding a firearm is enough to make anything he’s in automatically good.

The panel droned on and on and on, while Miller and the annoying producer next to him talked about what a cinematic genius he is, even though he’s only ever directed half a movie. A little humility might have been in order. Instead, we were treated to pre-emptive proclamation’s of Miller’s brilliance, and those who weren’t half-asleep within the first five minutes were eventually treated to never before see clips from the film… which were disastrous.

The first clip shown was footage of Eva Mendes under water, dodging bullets shot by Sam Jackson as the dastardly Octopus. Miller introduced the clip by explaining how they shot it. They wanted to show Mendes underwater, but without actually shooting underwater… because water smears makeup or some such. Apparently he’s never heard of water proof lip gloss. So instead of shooting underwater, they stuck Mendes in front of a green screen and told her to act like The Flash. I’m not kidding. They actually told her to act like The Flash. And once the footage was shown, not so surprisingly, that’s exactly what it looked like. Eva Mendes hanging in front of fake water flailing around as if she’s doing an impression of The Flash. Wow, this Miller guy is a genius.

The second clip shown was a dialogue scene, in which the Gabriel Macht as Spirit talks to a group of people in some sort of office. If you’ve seen old episodes of the George Reeves version of Superman, then you’v seen the sort of bizarre tone used in this footage. I guess it worked back then in sort of a campy, awkward way, but seen now in an actual movie it just comes off as bad writing and bad directing. I wonder if Miller told Gabriel Macht to talk like Superman?

By the time The Spirit panel was over, I was ready to consider abandoning Comic Con and heading back to Dallas. If this was the kind of watered down bullshit the convention was going to deliver, why bother? Apparently I wasn’t the only one, since for the rest of the weekend any time someone uttered the words “Spirit panel”, there was an instant expression of dread and a sickened or depressed shaking of heads from everyone around the speaker. Everything about The Spirit smells like disaster, and Frank Miller came off like such a miserable jerk in the panel that it’s hard not to end up rooting for its failure. The Spirit’s panel stands alone as the most awful, unbearable thing I sat through at Comic Con. I’d have been better off in the lobby eating an 8 dollar hot dog.

Luckily, the next day things improved and the rest of my convention experience was much less of a stinker. More as I get to the rest of our in depth Comic Con 2008 coverage in the days ahead.

Shia LaBeouf needs to get his shit together

From ew, (FROM AP) — Shia LaBeouf, the young star of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Transformers, was charged with DUI after he was involved in a multi-vehicle accident in Hollywood early Sunday morning. LaBeouf was trying to make a left turn at a West Hollywood intersection around 3 a.m. when his pickup collided with another vehicle, rolling the truck over, according to the Los Angeles Sheriff’s office. The 22-year-old actor was charged with misdemeanor DUI and released. He was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for treatment to non-life-threatening injuries to his hand, knee, and head. Also escaping serious injuries were a female passenger in LaBeouf’s car and the driver of the other vehicle. This was not his first criminal incident involving alcohol — last November LaBeouf was charged with criminal trespassing in a Chicago drugstore. Those charges were later dropped.

Early Look at 'My Bloody Valentine 3-D' Teaser Poster

From bloodydisgusting, In the remake arriving in theaters January 16th, Tom (Jensen Ackles) returns to his hometown on the tenth anniversary of the Valentine's night massacre that claimed the life of 22 people. Instead of a homecoming, Tom finds himself suspected of committing the murders.

Terminator teaser poster

Wolverine footage!

See movie footage here

Friday the 13th teaser poster

UPDATE: Movie footage leaked, catch it while you can here

DCD finally gets going

Check it out! I finally learned how to ride a unicycle!
Not really, I started my own damn blog. I expect lots of comments for support!!

'Dark Knight' passes $300 million mark in record time

By Scott Bowles, USA TODAY

The Dark Knight's box office records continue to fall faster than Batman's foes.
Knight took in $75.6 million this weekend, according to studio estimates from Nielsen EDI.

The haul gives the Batman sequel $314 million in 10 days, easily making it the fastest film to earn $300 million. The previous record was held by Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, which did it in 16 days.

Next up: $400 million. Shrek II holds the record as the film to reach that mark fastest, in 43 days; Warner Bros. predicts Knight will do that in 18.

"Four hundred million is yesterday's news," says the studio's Dan Fellman. "I don't know how far beyond that we can go, but certainly $500 million seems within reach."

If it is, Knight would become the second highest-grossing film of all time, surpassing Star Wars' $461 million. Titanic remains the all-time champ with $601 million, and some forecasters are beginning to wonder whether that's in reach.

"I don't think there was ever a time when a movie would be seriously compared to Titanic," says Paul Dergarabedian of Media by Numbers. "But when you're out of the gate this quickly, and keep going this strongly, you have to consider whether the impossible is suddenly possible."

What's probable is a third Batman installment, though Warner Bros. has announced no date.

"We're all still in awe of (director) Christopher Nolan and what he has done," says Fellman. "We're certainly hoping he has a few more ideas up his sleeve, because we're just waiting for him to call."

If he does, one question that will loom over the franchise: How to move forward without Heath Ledger, who plays the Joker and died of a prescription drug overdose in January.

"You have to believe that Heath — and his death — is the engine that's taking the franchise as far as it has gotten," says Glen Whippet, film reviewer and columnist for the Los Angeles Daily News. "And that raises the question of how far it can go without him."

In previous Batman installments, villains are one-shot appearances. The Joker, Two Face, the Riddler and Catwoman all made single-film appearances. Whippet says that should be the case for Ledger, as well.

It would be a mistake to have someone fill Ledger's shoes as the demented Joker, he says. Unlike Batman, who has been populated by the likes of Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney and now Christian Bale, Ledger has made an indelible mark with his villainous turn.

"I'm not sure anyone would accept any other actor," Whippett says. "The best plan would probably be to put the Joker to rest for now. You'd need about a 20-year moratorium before you could reboot that character for the franchise."

The franchise appears impervious to bad news. Last week, Bale was taken into London police custody for an alleged assault on his mother and sister. But ticket sales have been unaffected.

"If anything," says Dergarabedian, "it just raised more awareness about the movie. People don't care about that. They care about the movie."

Moviegoers also cared about Step Brothers, the Will Ferrell comedy, which enjoyed a stronger-than-expected debut with $30 million and second place despite tepid reviews. The story of two stepbrothers who begin as mortal enemies earned recommendations from 52% of the nation's critics, according to survey site RottenTomatoes.com.

The debut was the second strong showing for the team of Ferrell and John C. Reilly, who opened Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby to $47 million in 2006.

Don't expect a re-teaming anytime soon for the agents behind the X-Files. X-Files: I Want to Believe. The only other major newcomer this weekend made its debut at No. 4 with an anemic $10.2 million, about $7 million below most analysts' expectations. The reuniting of David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson lost target audience to Dark Knight after not exactly wowing critics, less than a third of whom gave the film a positive review.

Mamma Mia! held well, dropping just 36% from its debut to take third place with $17.8 million. The ABBA-inspired musical with Meryl Streep has done $62.7 million in 10 days.

Journey to the Center of the Earth was fifth with $9.4 million, pushing the movie to $60.2 million.

Ticket sales were virtually even with the same weekend last year.