Monday, January 11th, 2010

The past year, this blog has been littered with casting rumors for Spider-Man 4. I woke up this morning to an AICN post where John Malkovich had supposedly confirmed that he would be playing the role of the villainous Vulture in the upcoming installment of Sam Raimi's Marvel franchise, a story I was sure would head the blog. That is until Sony's official Twitter feed announced that when the web slinger returns to the silver screen in 2012, he would be going back to high school, signaling a reboot. Then, later, Harry Knowles posted the official Sony press release announcing that Spider-Man 4 is officially dead and that Raimi, Tobey Maguire and all the old players are out. I can see canning the fourth installment of the series, but making a reboot of a fairly new, pretty well received series? I know that Spider-Man 3 has its enemies, but are we to say that this was so cataclysmically bad, like Batman and Robin bad, that it deserves to reboot the entire franchise, throwing the brilliant Raimi and the fitting Maguire to the wayside? Ridiculous.

Some better comic book news coming from the DC side of things as The Hollywood Reporter announced that Blake Lively has been cast as Carol Ferris/Star Sapphire in The Green Lantern film. I've not heard, but I doubt that Lively will take on the transformation into the Star Sapphire role that Ferris eventually plays in the comics. Still, I've not really watched Lively in anything other than her Saturday Night Live appearance, so this could be as terrible of an announcement as the above Spider-Man disaster.

The Writers Guild of America announced the nominees for their two major awards. There was really no surprise, especially with Inglourious Basterds and Up being disqualified for the writers not being part of the WGA, that (500) Days of Summer, A Serious Man and the much lauded The Hurt Locker would gain a nod for original screenplays, but two shocking picks popped up. First, James Cameron's screenplay for Avatar, which has its fair share of detractors. Even more shocking however, is the raunchy Todd Phillips comedy, The Hangover, to the delight of myself, but the chagrin of Erik Childress of Cinematical, whom broke the story for me. The category of adapted screenplay wasn't nearly as exciting, except keeping the fanboys happy with a nod for Star Trek, with Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci's script competing against Up in the Air, Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire, Julie and Julia and Crazy Heart.

For a small note, I am going to try my damndest to expand my convention-going this year to visit Dragon*Con in Atlanta if my school schedule allows, but AdventureCon in Tennessee is an almost confirmed event, so I am happy to say that the tiny convention announced today that Billy Dee Williams, Lando fucking Calrissian, the black Harvey Dent and some memorable spots on Robot Chicken, will be a guest for the event.

On a final note, I saw this gallery of Star Wars burlesque featured in L.A. Weekly all over the Interwebs from a place called the Bordello Bar. Enjoy, some decently bizarre pictures.