Kevin Smith @ Batman: Cacophony Signing

On Saturday, November 8, I drove out to Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash in Red Bank, NJ for the Batman: Cacophony signing with writer Kevin Smith and artist Walt Flanagan.  First of all, I had a blast despite the fact that it rained most of the afternoon.  Many of the other attendees were members of Smith's infamous message board (shout outs to the guys I stood in line with!) and had attended his Q&A the night before.

The line extended around the block, although the people I was standing with told me it seemed like a pretty short line compared to the previous signings they'd been to at the Stash.  I got to meet a bunch of really cool people from Smith's board, including two dudes who take the Askewniverse very seriously:

Apparently at the Q&A the night before, Kevin tried to convince a couple in the audience to head to the hotel after the night was over and get to fuckin'.  They arrived at the signing late in the afternoon, pulling up as if they were celebrities.  I'm telling you right now that goofy lookin dude didn't get laid the night before, but the two of them ate up the attention. Here's the supposed seductress competing with our devoted duo:

While in line I also had the chance to meet Cohee Lundin, the fingercuffs guy himself, John Willyung who was running the door all afternoon. In a somewhat hilarious turn of events, I also got to witness John try and turn the VP of DC Comics away from the store.

Smith was extremely gracious to his fans who waited all day in line, giving each person a few minutes of his time for conversation and book signings. He seemed quite disappointed with the Zack and Miri box office, but hopeful that it would have a strong life in theaters.

It was a great day all in all.  I recommend you take the time to head out to his store as Red Bank is a beautiful little town, and the store really is quite awesome. Leave some comments!

I officially HATE Brett Ratner

First, Ratner (the Rush Hour franchinse, X-Men: The Last Stand) wants to make a Guitar Hero movie (idiot) and now he wants to make... wait for it...

wait for it...

just a little longer so that the impact of this will be brutal...

A Joker spin-off! (and check out the link for equally stupid quotes from Ratner)

What the hell man! This is the worst idea I've heard in a long time. First of all, as much as I don't think the Joker should just never be considered for a villain again, I don't think he should be considered anytime soon. We need to let Ledger have that performance for a while. And second of all, I don't want to see more of this character! He's scary because he's batshit crazy and has no motives. If you give him his own movie, you have to explain motives, and thus the veil is lifted and the Wizard is revealed to be a crusty old man, and that would suck for The Joker. And god help Ratner if he tries to make him sympathetic. Argh! I hate that man!

By the way, he also mentioned doing a Halle Berry led Storm spin-off, which I'm neither here nor there about.

Anyone actually like this dude? Or think this is a good idea?

I believe in Harvey Dent's death

It's true folks, Harvey Dent is dead.  Not like comic book dead, where he could hit the lazarus pit and come back.  Nope.  He's dead, dead.  Straight from Two-Face(Arron Eckhart)s mouth "He is dead as a door nail.  He ain't coming back baby!"  So now Dent's death has been confirmed by the script, the director, the actor who played him, and the novelization of the story.  He's dead people!  He will not return for Batman 3!

By the way, here's an interesting tidbit, something I think most of us suspected but I had yet to see confirmed by anyone.  "No I'm not coming back.  I think unfortunately, Heath was supposed to go on and that didn't work out."  This was my, and I think most people's, assumption all along, but it's nice to have some closure on it.

So who's next?  Eckhart says he actually likes the idea of Angelina Jolie as Catwoman.  Dumb.  Nolan must have something  better than that up his sleeve.

What /film knows about Batman so far...

Peter Sciretta of /film just posted a short list of the little bits and pieces of information we have on the third Batman movie thus far. I'm super glad he did this because all of my friends who know I'm a super movie nerd have been coming up to me over the past week and acting like they know who the villains are for the new Batman. And I'm all "Oh yeah?" And they're all "Yeah!" And then I'm all "Well hit me with it playa!" And then they proceed to tell me that Johnny Depp will be playing the Riddler and Philip Seymour Hoffman will be the Penguin. And when I try to explain that those are just rumors, and are completely unconfirmed, and that Nolan hasn't even signed on to MAKE a third Batman yet, let alone begun writing it, they simply go "No, I read it online. I'm pretty sure they're all ready to do it." Well thank you Mr. Sciretta for clearing this all up by posting a list of the FACTS.

Most interesting for me is the one dated July 9th. I'm so glad Goyer is considering all the different stories they could play with and the variety of characters that exist in the Batman universe. I want to see some villains we haven't seen on the big screen before. I think this is what it will take to top the Ledger Joker: a new villain general audiences are unfamiliar with that will make the Joker look like a clown. No... wait... ugh.

Any suggestions as to what villain might fit that bill?

The Dark Knight Returns! Nooch.

Check out this fanmade poster for the third installment in the Nolan Batman series. No, this is not the official poster, or title, as there is no official third installment yet. And no, neither the Riddler nor Catwoman have been confirmed as villains yet (can you spot the Catwoman reference?) But it's still pretty fuckin awesome! I never considered The Dark Knight Returns a possible title until seeing this, which makes me feel totally dumb.

What do you think? I'd pay to see the movie based on this poster alone.

Newsmania!

Well I didn't get to a computer in time to do a bunch of updates, so I'm going to do one big news update that I'm gonna call Newsmania! I'm just gonna rant about what I'm excited about and point you in the direction of the original articles. Beginning with...

Rian Johnson, writer/director of Brick is gearing up to do a sci-fi film called Looper. He says its gonna be in the vein of the first Terminator (ie, character driven, time-travel plot device) which made me drool all over the keyboard here at work. Brick was definately one of my favorite films from 2005. It is overwhelmingly impressive. He seems to know exactly what story he wants to tell and exactly how he wants to tell it. And some new sci-fi from a new director with that kind of vision which he is calling similar to Terminator? Save me a seat, please.

Aranofsky's The Wrestler (pictured above) finally got some stills online, and they're... underwhelming. I want to be really excited about this movie, but if it wasn't for Aranofsky's name being attatched, I really would not give two shits about this movie. However, the fact that his name is attatched gives me hope that this will be the kind of edgy, dark fare that has made Aranofsky an essential part of my DVD collection. It's just that a story about a wrestler... I dunno... didn't David Arquette try that once?

Holy fanboy meltdown Batman! I've only recently been turned onto the genius of Joss Whedon (and by recently I mean Dr. Horrible recently) and I am rapidly becoming an avid fan. I am so damn excited to watch Firefly, as well as Buffy. Apparantly, Whedon was developing his own idea for a Batman reboot at the same time Batman Begins was being developed. It would've dealt with a villain that he created. While I love the villains in the Batman universe, I think it would be super awesome to see what Whedon had in mind for a villain. And we may get that oppertunity, as he drops a hint to the comic industry at the end of his quote "Maybe I'll get to do it as a comic one day." Please call him tonight DC! Interrupt his family dinner and get you some Whedonized Batmanliness!






Speaking of awesome people working on awesome stories, how about Henry Selick (Nightmare before Christmas!) adapting Neil Gaiman's (Sandman!) Coraline? (see the orininal article here) How fuckin awesome is that? They posted a production video from the set today, and it looks fantastic. I'm not familiar with the source material here at all, but Selick has yet to disapoint for me, and Gaiman knows exactly how to tell a fairytale. I love getting new fairytells, and i'd venture to say there's no one better than Gaiman when it comes to that.

So is anyone as excited as I am for this stuff? Huh? Anyone!?

If I were ruler of the world...

I would make this guy let me take one, glorious roof-top ride over the mean streets of philly with this amazing DIY replica of the Tumbler from Christopher Nolan's new Batman series. Apparantly this dude also wants to build a Batpod, but as /film points out, its design made it nearly unridable.

This thing's been all over the internet today, so i'd like to point to geekadelphia, my favorite philly blog, where I first discovered this gem. And also to /film, where I rediscovered it not 30 mintues later.

Who else wants one? Perhaps if there are enough "Me!" comments at the bottom of this post we could get the guy to build us one. I got dibs on keeping it for the first week.