The Muppets Take Fox News

It's been a little while, but you may recall when Fox Business Channel talking head Eric Bolling (a.k.a NuBeck) was briefly on the warpath late last year over the evil liberal indoctrination scheme supposedly buried inside Disney's new The Muppets feature. In case the details have slipped your mind (or you've already moved onto more important matters), jump over here and get the full skinny. Well, the felt-and-fabric stars of said opus have taken their movie on the road, and when queried about the non-troversy by international journos, they issued this retort:

Nostalgia Theater: G.I. Joe Extreme

After last week's look at the second G.I. Joe animated show, we continue our archeological expedition into lost Joe history with this oddity, the proverbial Poochie of the brand. In order to understand how G.I. Joe got extremed, I think it's important to understand the era that birthed it. As I mentioned last time, Hasbro's "Real American Hero" line enjoyed a very successful and very long-lived run on the pop culture radar for the entirety of its run, running an impressive twelve years from 1982-1994 when most toy lines faltered after a mere fraction of that time.

But changing tastes and trends (two words: Ninja. Turtles.) as the late '80s turned into the mid-'90s left America's Fighting Man largely by the wayside, even as the toyline trotted out increasingly outlandish subgroupings like "Eco Warriors," "Star Brigade," and, most damningly, a Joe-themed line based on the Street Fighter video games, to try and keep pace. None of these attempts gained much traction, and the final, choked gasp of "A Real American Hero" issued forth in 1995 in the form of Sgt. Savage and his Screaming Eagles.

Recommended Reading

I encountered a technical hiccup in Bloggerville that's going to push Nostalgia Theater to tomorrow from its usual Friday berth, but don't worry, it's a good'n that'll be worth the wait. In the meantime, check out this piece from Robert Reich echoing my own concerns that folks on the left are being a bit presumptuous in thinking that Newt Gingrich getting the Republican nomination would mean President Obama wins re-election in a walk. Says he:

Even if the odds that Gingrich as GOP presidential candidate would win the general election are 10 percent, that’s too much of a risk to the nation. No responsible American should accept a 10 percent risk of a President Gingrich. 

Couldn't agree more. Read the rest here.

Also From The Onion...

I'm normally loath to doing two Onion pieces in a row, but this one was just too hilarious not to post:

Time Traveler From The Year 1998 Warns Nation Not To Elect Newt Gingrich 

WASHINGTON—Saying he came bearing an important message from the past, a stranger from the year 1998 appeared on the Capitol steps Thursday and urged voters not to elect Newt Gingrich president in 2012. "In the late 20th century, Newt Gingrich is a complete disgrace!" said the time-traveling man, warning Americans that 14 years in the not-so-distant past, Gingrich becomes the only speaker in the history of the House of Representatives to be found guilty on ethics charges, and is later forced to resign. "In my time, he shuts down the federal government for 28 days because his feelings get hurt over having to sit at the back of Air Force One. Gingrich gets our president impeached for lying about marital infidelities when, at the same time, Gingrich himself is engaged in his own extramarital affairs. And for God's sake, he divorced his first wife after she was diagnosed with cancer. Won't anyone listen to me?!?" When asked about Donald Trump, the time-traveler said he had no information on the man, as no one from 1998 cared about a "washed-up fake millionaire.

From The Onion...

Romneymania Sweeps America

From the piece:

"It's amazing to hear your deepest convictions articulated so poignantly by a politician," said out-of-work Denver resident Austin Matthews, 36, admitting he had never before encountered a candidate—or any human being, for that matter—who had connected with him on such a basic emotional level. "He comes right out and says that any acknowledgment of income inequality in the United States is driven solely by bitterness and envy from the lower classes and shouldn't even be discussed publicly. It's like he's tapped directly into the soul of everyday Americans."

Read more at the link.

Newt on the March

That the last few weeks have seen Newt Gingrich's presidential ambitions morph from also-ran to frontrunner status is yet another indication of how barren the GOP cupboard has become of viable national candidates, and also how empty Republican rhetoric about family values is when weighed against the prospect of nominating someone the base thinks will unseat the Big Bad Barack (he won't, but that's a separate conversation, obviously). Nonetheless, nowhere is this disconnect more apparent than Gingrich's blowout win in South Carolina last weekend, which many are chalking up to the former speaker's "Screw the media" tour de force during CNN's debate last week after being asked about his marital indiscretions. Jon Stewart's near-meltdown as he ponders the yawning chasm between rhetoric and reality makes for another brilliant segment on last night's Daily Show. Enjoy:

Recommended Reading

Ryan Lizza at The New Yorker uses years of Obama memos from all the way back to before the administration even began to track the narrative of how the president's high-minded rhetoric while campaigning about orchestrating sweeping changes in office bumped up against the pragmatic realities of governing. This is a long one, but it's well worth your time.

When Action Wasn't Enough

I was thirteen when Last Action Hero, 1993's unintentional disaster movie headlined by Arnold Schwarzenegger, hit the big screen, and my clearest memory of it is the hubristic marketing by home studio Sony that positioned it as a worthy rival to halt the impending unstoppable force that was Steven Spielberg's first Jurassic Park. On the one had there's realistic, CGI dinosaurs on a scale that's never before been attempted, and on the other, there's Arnold being Arnold in something with a kid and a magic movie ticket. Sure, which would you watch? Even back then, when Schwarzenegger was one of the preeminent stars in the world, and I wasn't even in high school, it still struck me as a bonehead move.

Nostalgia Theater: The Second G.I. Joe

This week we look back at the animated adventures of everyone's favorite "Real American Hero" action figures -- but not the ones you probably remember. It's easy to forget now, a quarter-century after the fact, just how impactful it was when G.I. Joe first came to television. Based on Hasbro's toys and created by Marvel & Sunbow Productions, Joe (along with their Transformers animated series) was one of the early examples of how the '80s transmogrified televised kidvid into an expansive lineup of animated half hour commercials. Debuting with a syndicated five-part miniseries in 1983  and a second mini the next year, the regular series started in September of '85 and aired until the next fall, with an impressive ninety-five episodes tallied when all was said and done.

But while Marvel/Sunbow ceased production after a G.I. Joe animated movie in '86, the toyline was still going strong, and so, after a layover of three years and after receiving a bargain basement bid from animation house DiC, Hasbro traded down from Sunbow for the next round of animated Joe in 1989. By then, DiC had already built a reputation as a low rent studio that could be counted on to crank out production, quality be damned (its repertoire included such toy-based 'toons as Mask and Hasbro's COPS), and its take on G.I. Joe did little to dispel that well-cemented notion. 

PACs Americana

We've spent plenty of space here lamenting the state of election law in the aftermath of the "Citizens United" ruling in early '10, and while many have failed to grasp the frightening extent of how financial influence on elections was unleashed by the Supreme Court, Stephen Colbert has done a brilliant job of making this point again and again, first with the formation of the Colbert SuperPAC last year, and now by handing control of said PAC to Jon Stewart (with whom he is in no way coordinating) while Colbert "explores" a presidential run in South Carolina. Watch this clip from Tuesday's Daily Show to see Stewart and Colbert push, pull, and otherwise contort the boundaries of the post-Citizens United lay of the land, demonstrating the inherent (and entirely legal!) absurdities of current election law in the process:

Recommended Reading

Andrew Sullivan, with whom I agree just as often as I disagree, makes a pretty compelling case for how effective President Obama has been at playing the political long game to get his agenda items enacted -- even if he doesn't always take the bows. And while the old "He's playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers" defense of Obama isn't exactly a new one, Sullivan does manage to give it some actual weight with some of the examples he cites.

Nostalgia Theater: CHiPs Edition

L-R: Erik Estrada, Robert Pine, Larry Wilcox

For this week's dose of Nostalgia Theater, we motorbike our way back to the late 1970s, when the televisual tastes of the masses were so malnourished that an hourlong drama about glorified traffic cops was able to not only last, but last and last for an improbable six seasons. That's right. You knew this day was coming. It's time to talk CHiPs. For anyone who grew up during its broadcast and syndication heyday during the '70s and '80s, I have a feeling the following theme music (composed by John Carl Parker for the second season and beyond, replacing Parker's original opening from year one) is indelibly branded on their psyche:

A Lifetime of Bondage

It's crazy to me that it's already been ten years since James Bond's last big anniversary celebration, when 2002's Die Another Day marked not only forty years of big screen Bonding, but also the twentieth official film in the longest-lived film series of all time. Given that we're now into the fiftieth year since Dr. No launched Ian Fleming's literary super-spy onto the big screen, and with a new 007 adventure starring Bond-of-record Daniel Craig set to assault theaters this November, it should come as a surprise to precisely no one that the folks at EON Productions, primary purveyors of all things Bond since the very beginning, had something special up their sleeve to make the occasion appropriately festive.

To wit, the just-announced Bond 50 blu-ray set, collecting each and every one of the twenty-two James Bond opuses from Dr. No to 2008's Quantum of Solace in one box. While this isn't 007's first appearance on blu, it is the first time every single movie is being put out with a hi-def spit-and-polish. As longtime readers here should well know, I've been a Bond diehard practically my whole life, and while I've seen each and every one of these flicks more times than I feel comfortable admitting on more formats than I can keep track of, just looking at this box has my mouth watering. The set is due out this fall, but you can lock in your pre-order via Amazon here (and help support this site in the process).

I have every intention of acknowledging the Bond half centennial with more features here throughout the year, but in the meantime, check out the trailer for the big box after the jump and feel your pulse start to quicken.

Monkey Love

Since the release of Rise of the Planet of the Apes last summer and its out-of-the-blue ascent up the box office charts, there's been much discussion about whether actor Andy Serkis might merit a nod for Best Supporting Actor in this year's Academy Awards, which would be the first such recognition for a role that was entirely performance captured. Well, with Oscar-nominating season now upon us in earnest, Rise star James Franco makes the case for why the Academy should have Serkis' back on this one.

Wreathing Wrath

Last week, the wife and I got an evening to ourselves unencumbered by the wee ones, and being an old and boring married couple, we took the opportunity to browse the shelves at our local Barnes & Noble. There, I happened upon a book called Obsessed With Star Trek, which uses a little electronic doodad embedded in its pages to quiz readers on a thousand-plus pieces of trivia culled from the many reams of Trek obscura. I picked it up, paged through it absentmindedly, and two minutes later I'd managed a perfect score on the ten-or-so random queries it had lobbed my way. Afterwards, I glanced up just in time to see a sudden, horrifying realization dance across my wife's eyes: she'd married a Trekkie.

So, yes, as that lengthy preamble should make clear, I'm a Star Trek fan. I have been for most of my life. Needless to say, that's not exactly a credential I brandish openly or even proudly, but it is an abiding fandom all the same, and it's one that kicked into gear fully and irretrievably upon watching The Best Star Trek Ever -- 1982's Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan -- for the first time in 1988. By now it's become such conventional wisdom that it borders on cliché that Wrath of Khan is tops among the many movie Treks (with even the franchise-changing reboot movie from '09, which I wholeheartedly embraced, coming in a distant second). But remember, many clichés become that way because they are, in fact, true and that's certainly the case with Khan.

"The Elephant in the Room"

I've noted a few times the inherent contradiction, in my view, in Muslims identifying as Republican in today's political climate. Not because there aren't areas of overlap for practicing Muslims with certain conservative principles the Republican platform traditionally supports, but more because of the increasingly mainstream anti-Islam and anti-Muslim views espoused not just by GOP rank-and-filers, but party leaders and elites (including, in some shape or form, every one of the leading presidential contenders). As I said in August of '10 (in my first Huffington Post pickup, FYI):

How much more of this stuff do you have to see? After years of systematic marginalization, after the bastardized transitive property that saw Obama labeled as a Muslim and thus intrinsically evil, is the ginned-up Cordoba Controversy that the GOP has cynically run with -- and the rampant Islamophobia that's followed in its wake -- enough to finally convince you that the Republican Party's so-called "Big Tent" doesn't have very much room for you?

Well, in yet another example of how the Big Tent stretches only so far, we have this vid from The Daily Show chronicling one Muslim Republican's windmill-tilting crusade in Florida to proudly brandish his party credentials -- whether they like it or not. I actually followed this story when it was first happened last fall, and even then I thought it was tailor-made for the Daily Show treatment, so this one's been a long time coming for me:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Nostalgia Theater: Manimal Edition

Back in November I laid into '80s artifact Automan, as well as its purveyor, one Glen A. Larson, promising more looks back at Larson's atrocious output from the era. Well, adding further proof to my longstanding contention that Larson did for science fiction television in the '70s and '80s what the Hindenburg did for airship travel, comes another unfortunate dropping from the early-'80s: Manimal. In case the title doesn't make it clear, it was about a man...who becomes animals. Come on, folks. Keep up.

At this point, my running theory is that Larson came up with his ideas title first, concept later. In fact, I could easily see him dreaming this one up while his feet were resting on the very same ottoman that provided him the inspiration for Automan (which premiered two months later). Manimal starred Brit actor Simon MacCorkindale as the mysterious, debonaire Dr. Jonathan Chase, somehow possessed of the ability to transform into a menagerie of different animals. We're introduced to him via the narration at the tail-end of this awesomely cheese-tastic intro sequence:

From The Onion...

Given that the new year marks the beginning of what I fully expect to be a fun time hereabouts vis-a-vis coverage of the upcoming election, and given the opening of festivities with last night's Iowa Caucuses, this one seemed the perfect way with which to inaugurate this year's posting activities:

Obama Openly Asks Nation Why On Earth He Would Want To Serve For Another Term

From the piece:

"My fellow Americans, I come to you today to ask, why?" Obama said to 1,200 people gathered inside a gymnasium at Taylor Allderdice High School. "Why can't our congressional leaders work together to create jobs? Why can't Wall Street ever be held accountable? And most important, why on God's green earth would I voluntarily subject myself to this nonsense for another four years?"  

"I'm dead serious," the president continued, saying that any reasonable person would have walked away the moment the Senate minority leader announced his main priority—above creating jobs and improving American health care—was to make Obama a one-term president. "I'm asking if anybody out there can come up with even one reason why I'd want to endure this unmitigated shit show for another minute, let alone through 2016. What's in it for me, ex­actly? Can anyone answer that? Anyone at all?"

Read the rest here.

Nostalgia Theater: T.J. Hooker Edition

We close out this year's bumper crop of Nostalgia Theater entries with a look back at this 1982-1986 series that proved the enduring star power of Captain Kirk even several hundred light years away from the cozy confines of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

T.J. Hooker was a show about William Shatner as a cop. And that's it. 

Oh, there was some backstory shoved in there about T.J. (Thomas Jefferson) being a detective who returns to the beat and trains recruits, solving crimes and tossing off witty one-liners with his young, hip partner Adrian Zmed and his young, blond partner Heather Locklear, but let's be honest. That was all just window dressing for the show's central conceit: Shatner, Shatner, and more Shatner. I mentioned last week that hourlongs during this era weren't exactly challenging, and this is a good example of how a show could coast through four seasons just by dressing a charismatic star up as a policeman (a similar feat would occur in the '90s with Walker: Texas Ranger -- minus the charisma).

Broken Break

With last week marking all grades and grading completed and submitted from fall semester, I was hoping the additional time in my daily sched would allow for a quick rush of new posts to close out the year strong. Instead, the opposite has turned out to be true. I've found that a) my time isn't quite as plentiful as I'd anticipated, and b) I want to use those few moments I do have to do anything but sit in front of a monitor. I guess that's all a long way of saying that the content here may not be quite as free-flowing in the next few days as we've come to expect. I caught a couple of movies in the last few days I'd still like to get reviews out for before the end of the year, and there's still a few odds-and-ends I need to get to, so let's see how things go.

In the meantime, here's an interesting HuffPo piece by Paul Stoller that echoes the mix of feelings I think many educators like myself experience in this interregnum between our teaching cycles.

Plinkett Cracks Crystal Skull

Pretty much the minute I finished watching Mike Stoklasa's incisive and hilarious feature-length takedown of the last Star Wars prequel at the beginning of the year, my thoughts immediately turned -- as did those of many others -- to wondering whether/when he'd get around to tackling Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, a film that engendered at least as much disappointment among many as the prequels. Stoklasa duly obliged me and the rest of the online commentariat late last week, deploying his "Mr. Plinkett" persona once again for an hour-long video commentary on the much-loathed Indy IV.

Unfortunately, in a weird meta commentary on the film itself, the review seems to coast on goodwill from the previous vids, offering some very cogent points and some genuine laughs, but also a little too indulgent with a hint of obviousness. Some of the rationales offered don't really hold up (do we really like Indiana Jones because he murders people?), and I dunno, the stuff about Karen Allen just seems kind of mean. Also unfortunate, the serial killer bits that bugged me before are dialed up to an uncomfortable degree (there's an Olsen Twins riff I could have lived a long, comfortable life without ever needing to see). Still worth checking out, but be ready to skip through the extraneous stuff.

I've put part one below, and part two after the jump, but the embeds are giving some issues. If they don't work for you, just click over to Red Letter Media and give 'em a watch there.

Nostalgia Theater: The Equalizer Edition

My post last Sunday singing the praises of CBS' urban vigilante series Person of Interest got me thinking of another very-similar skein that aired on CBS and enjoyed a decent amount of popularity during its mid-to-late '80s run, but has been mostly forgotten today. The Equalizer starred late British thesp Edward Woodward in the role of Robert McCall, a former intelligence operative (at some nameless agency) who grows disgruntled with the life of a spy and, seeking to make amends for his shadowed past, heads to New York, where he offers his particular skill set (think: Liam Neeson in Taken) to anyone in trouble who needs balance restored to their lives (i.e. "equalized").

Running 1985-'89 and lasting for 88 episodes, The Equalizer arrived at a point in TV history when we really started to see the transition away from more wholesome programs the entire family could conceivably watch (Starsky & Hutch, CHiPs) into series that pushed the boundaries, both in terms of style and content, of what the medium could get away with. In a sense, this is a show, like Miami Vice and Wise Guy and other trailblazers of the era, that forged the path utilized by many of today's dramas, but which has itself been left by the wayside by all but the most pugnacious of '80s devotees (further marking it as an artifact of its time, McCall's son was played by none other than the the decade's go-to bully: William Zabka).

Zaki's Review: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

As I alluded to last week, I got off to bit of a rocky start with the Mission: Impossible movie series, with my initial outrage at how the first film in 1996 blowtorched the legacy of the TV show whose name it appropriated turning to apathy at how little of its name the 2000 sequel managed to embody. Thus, it really wasn't until 2006 and director JJ Abrams' Mission: Impossible III that I was willing to board the Tom Cruise-starring spy franchise, appreciating how it modernized key facets of its brand while preserving those things that made it unique (a maneuver Abrams repeated three years later with his canny Star Trek restart).

Sadly, despite marking a considerable qualitative step up, that third Mission underperformed in relation to its two predecessors, and so, when it came time to embark on the fourth installment (which dispenses with Roman numerals in favor of a sub-head -- the cinematic equivalent of fudging your birthdate to seem younger), the mission placed in front of studio and star was to convince audiences that this fifteen-year old series still had something fresh to offer, and that Cruise could still put butts in seats even after a stream of bad publicity over the years accumulated like barnacles on his once-spotless superstar bona fides.

Zaki's Review: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

The business of franchise-building is never easy.

When all the hard work and sweat of crafting a solid enough first installment to warrant a sequel finally pays off -- as it did both critically and commercially for Warner Bros.' Sherlock Holmes reboot in '09 -- the filmmakers inevitably find themselves at a crossroads, having to determine whether the next entry should go deeper, plying the audience's investment in the characters and setting to mine more potent thematic and emotional ground, or broader, with surface characteristics they responded to previously accentuated and amplified. For this series' second try, A Game of Shadows, some modest attempt is made for the former, but it's mostly content to remain the latter. I suspect one's enjoyment of the proceedings will depend greatly on how comfortable they are with that apportioning.

New Details, New Trailer For New Dark Knight

While dissecting the very cool teaser poster for The Dark Knight Rises last week, I noted that its image bore some resemblance to a similarly iconic comic book moment that ended with the Batman's back broken, and wondered whether that's where this movie was headed. Well, today we have what amounts to tacit confirmation of my conjecture via Bleeding Cool, conveying the word of one "well tried and certainly trusted individual" purporting to have the inside scoop:

...we’ve been told – amongst a few other things that we hope to make sense of and share in the near future – that The Dark Knight Rises gives Bane the opportunity to break Batman’s back...Our source cracked wise about the various “rumours” surrounding Bane in the film, expressing some amount of disbelief that people thought the back-breaking might, somehow, not be featured.

Time will only tell if this is smoke and fire, or smoke and mirrors. In the meantime though, check out the first full trailer for The Dark Knight Rises, which gives us our first sense of the ideological conflict that pulls the Batman back into the center of the action after several years in exile (Hi, Anne Hathaway!), as well offering a sense of the size and scope of what's planned for this trilogy's last at-Bat. This was a pleasant surprise in front of Mission: Impossible last week, and I'm sure you'll agree that it does its job well:

Interesting Person

If you follow me on Twitter, you already know that one of the new TV shows I've wholeheartedly embraced this past fall season has been CBS' Person of Interest. The twisty premise of the skein, produced by JJ Abrams and created by Dark Knight co-writer Jonathan Nolan (brother of Christopher), hinges on a mysterious computer outputting a single social security number every week that's connected to some unknown crime that is likely to occur in the near future. The number represents either a perpetrator or a victim, and it's up to the vigilante duo of The Passion's Jim Caviezel (the brawn) and Lost's Micheal Emerson (the brains), to follow the clues and prevent said crime from happening.

If that description sounds either perplexing or simply uninteresting, I can't say I blame you. In truth, it's one of those premises that risks falling all over itself by being too-clever by half. The brilliance of the show, however, lies in how it takes that conceit and repurposes it into the latticework upon which to hang what is one of the more involving, cerebral techno thrillers to emerge in quite awhile. More than that, it's essentially a superhero series in disguise, with Caviezel, as mysterious, ass-kicking former Special Ops agent John Reese, the "Batman" of this diad, and Emerson, enigmatic genius Harold Finch, the "Alfred" directing traffic from behind an array of digital display screens. 

Nostalgia Theater: Mission: Impossible Edition

Peter Graves, flanked by (L-R) Greg Morris, Leonard Nimoy, and Peter Lupus

I caught a screening of the new Mission: Impossible movie earlier today, and hope to have a review up shortly, but in the meantime, I wanted to use this Nostalgia Theater entry to take a fond look back at the TV show that got the whole brand rolling. A unique merger of the spy genre that had exploded in popularity in the post-Bond '60s with the tried-and-true procedurals that were fixtures of the primetime landscape even then, Mission: Impossible premiered on CBS in 1966 and ran for seven seasons.

Although it initially starred Steven Hill as no-nonsense "Impossible Missions Force" leader Dan Briggs during the first season, it really wasn't until the late Peter Graves took over the lead in year two, as slick, silver-haired Jim Phelps that Mission: Impossible gained itself a signature star who, together with Lalo Schifrin's signature theme music, helped give the show much of the iconic resonance it retains to this day. Here's the intro from one of the second season episodes:

A New Lowe

Serving as the perfect punctuation point to my last post, here's Jon Stewart and The Daily Show's take on the Lowe's/All-American Muslim non-controversy, with the show's resident Muslim correspondent Aasif Mandvi offering some helpful context:

All-American Muslim Not Worth The Fuss

Remember the overheated bloviating last year about Park51 (a.k.a. the "Ground Zero Mosque")? Nearly all of 2011 had passed without a similar Muslim-related controversy du jour to take up media bandwidth, but based on the last few days, it looks like one has manifested just in time to beat the buzzer with reality series All-American Muslim. I watched the first episode of the skein -- chronicling the day-to-day struggle of some Muslim families in Dearborn, MI -- when it aired last month, and it didn't really do anything for me, so I didn't bother commenting on it (though a quote from me did make into this post by Zahid Lilani).

G.I. Joe 2 Looks Great

Holy crap, how the heck did this happen?

As you know, I wasn't a big fan of 2009's movie, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, so I was extremely wary when a sequel was announced. That initial skepticism turned to optimism, however, when Zombieland writers Paul Wernick & Rhett Reese were drafted to craft the script, followed immediately by more skepticism when it looked like director Stephen Sommers would return. This turned back into optimism when Sommers exited, and then skepticism again when director Jon Chu -- he of several dance movies and that Justin Bieber flick from earlier this year -- was announced as the project's new helmer. So, that's pretty much where we'd left things as of last February.

Well, that calculus changed somewhat yesterday, thanks to the first teaser trailer for the follow-up feature, G.I. Joe: Retaliation. With most of the original cast jettisoned, and returning stars Channing Tatum and Ray Park teaming with the Rock and Bruce Willis for what amounts to an "in-continuity" reboot, I have to admit to being very pleasantly surprised by what I see so far. The set pieces are grandiose without being over-the-top, same with the stuntwork, and they've nailed down an even more impressive cast. Did I mention Bruce Willis? I'm not ready to file this one in the "win" column just yet, but given how much ill will there was going in, the fact that they've put out a decent trailer is practically half the battle.

Check out the new vid after the jump and tell me if it's got you sold:

Broken Bat

Things were quiet for awhile, but the promo machine has now begun to gear up for The Dark Knight Rises, as we start the countdown clock for its highly-anticipated release next summer. There's this week's release of the film's prologue in front of select IMAX screenings of the new Mission: Impossible movie, and there's also the new, very sweet teaser poster showcasing lead baddie Bane, played by Tom Hardy.

(Click the pic for a crazy big version)

In addition to being an effective, iconic image in its own right, the poster also gets some mileage by calling back to a signature moment from Bane's debut storyline, the early-'90s Knightfall epic, wherein the brilliant, steroid-enhanced villain orchestrated a weeks-long psychological and physical campaign against Batman that culminated in his breaking the hero's back (he got better, natch). Not sure if that's where Christopher Nolan is going with this trilogy-capper, but it sure does evoke that same imagery, as seen below.

1000!

Time once more to mark another meaningless Internet milestone -- though as meaningless milestones go, this one is slightly more meaningful than most. That's right, I've hit 1000 followers for this site via Networked Blogs. The last few years have been very good to me in terms of the personal and professional dividends this site has reaped, whether we're talking about my Huffington Post work or Geek Wisdom, but knowing there's four digits worth of folks out there who find value in my brain droppings is the biggest ego boost I could ask for. Thanks again to everyone who'se been reading, enjoying, and spreading the word over the years. Here's to more big things in the near and far future.

Let's make sure we preserve this moment for posterity:

Exactly nine months ago, I said I'd bust out the confetti and streamers when we hit a grand, but I can't think of a better way to mark this momentous occasion than by watching a cartoon George C. Scott get hit in the groin with a football:

Nostalgia Theater: Animated Apes Edition

In the lead-up to the theatrical release of Rise of the Planet of the Apes last August, I spent a week's worth of posts taking a fond walk back through the misty history of the original Apes film and its many theatrical offspring, but I only briefly touched on the ways those damn, dirty apes made their mark on the small screen. Well, with Rise making its home vid debut come Tuesday, this installment of Nostalgia Theater offered the perfect opportunity to re-revisit one of those selfsame small screen excursions.

By 1975, Planet of the Apes' time as a dominant force in pop culture was beginning to wane. The movie series had wrapped two years prior, and while a live action show premiered with a lot of hype behind it the previous fall, a combination of unambitious stories and overambitious scheduling doomed the series -- starring Apes movie icon Roddy McDowall -- to a here-and-gone 14 episode run. Still, though the primetime version died a quick death on CBS, that didn't dissuade NBC from taking another shot, this time in cartoon form. Thus was born the final entry in the original Apes onslaught: Return to the Planet of the Apes.