Legendary Pictures was at ComicCon handing out augmented reality t-shirts to promote their new film, Godzilla.

There is one thing, and one thing only, that will make me not hate this movie forever. If Legendary actually makes a suit and puts a man in it, I will support this film 100% no matter how shitty the trailers look. However, if a suit is not made, if they use a CG Godzilla instead, I will unleash an unending slew of hateful invectives to ensure that no one will go see this film. Ever.

This is your one and only warning Legendary. Man in suit. Or get the fuck out.

Source: Robojapan

There’s going to be a lot of ComicCon stuff to sort through this week. Lots of other sites out there have done a fairly good job of covering the event, although honestly, no report or blog or live streaming feed of ComicCon can ever truly compare to the actual experience of being there. It is wonderful and overwhelming and just as awesome as you think it is. You’ll miss a lot of the cool stuff that will be reported on for weeks after the event, but you won’t care. It’s ComicCon. You belong there.

It’s been years since I’ve gone and I miss it terribly. Sure, it’s becoming more of a movie festival than a comics celebration, but the shit is cool.

Anyway, among the many things Marvel revealed over the entire event, the one that really grabbed my attention was this movie accurate prop of the Infinite Gauntlet. There was no word on what film it would be featured in, but from the aesthetics of the prop, we can make some fairly good educated guesses. The stylings of the Gauntlet match the aesthetics of the magic/tech/armor/disco suits of what we’ve seen from the Thor film. I think we’ll see it introduced in that movie somewhere. If it does show up in the Avengers film, it’ll probably be in the end credits or something. But I think it’s more likely to be found on Asgard. I can totally imagine Loki getting his hands on the Gauntlet and causing all kinds of mess. Or maybe we’ll even see Thanos.

What do you Angry Zen Minions think? Is the Gauntlet headed for a Thor debut? Or does Marvel have a truly epic, cosmic film in the works? Or does it just look like a stupid, shiny disco glove?

Source: Marvel

Inception is pretty damn amazing. Go see it on the big screen because your computer screen will just not do it any justice.

The movie kind of traps you in its layers so that your left pondering what you saw hours after you leave the theater. It kind of winds its way into your conscious and won’t let go. Which is why today, we will be having a spoilerific discussion of the film. I will hide all the spoilery stuff behind a cut so no worries for those who haven’t seen it. Once you have, come back and check out what we’re all geeking over.

For the non-spoilery review, I’ll say that plot-wise it’s really better if you just ignore all the reviews and see it for yourself. This is one of those movies that’s better experienced first hand than read about. The practical special effects are amazing. I hope more filmmakers take note and move away from CG as a fix-all. Inception proves that you don’t need fancy effects to tell a compelling sci-fi/heist film.

Character-wise, Leo is really the only person in the film who gets any depth. We see so many different sides of him. The rest of the cast is along for the ride with Ellen Page serving as the voice of reason/voice of the audience. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just that I didn’t feel as connected to any of the other characters as I did with Leo. We’re not really given that chance. It’s clear it’s his film. Having said that, there are some great performances. Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Leo’s right hand man is fucking fantastic. Ellen Page is the best I’ve ever seen her. Ken Watanabe is awesome. I kept silently cheering “WATANABE” any time he was on screen. Marion Cotillard is not as strong as she normally is which kind of makes sense given her role in the film. But I do wish she had more to work with.

Overall, the film was totally enjoyable. I got completely lost in all the intricacies and layers. Believe the hype. Go see it.

And now, we spoil ourselves!
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That’s right ladies. In Brightest Day and Darkest Night, movie Green Lantern is ribbed to pleasure you just right! Oh yeah!

Whenever Toei releases photos of the next Kamen Rider, there’s a typical fan reaction cycle. We spend a few months hating on the new suit, then we see it in action in a trailer and kind of like it, then the show premiers as we lose our shit over the new suit and can’t remember why we hated it in the first place.

It could be that Ryan Reynolds’s CG ribbed Green Lantern suit might follow that same fan reaction cycle. I’ve been proven wrong about Kamen Rider suits many times. Who knows, maybe this shit looks good when it’s moving. However, I’m putting my money on FUCK THIS SHIT! Sometimes more is just more and this ribbed bullshit deal here really irks the shit out of me. Yeah, I get that it’s an alien suit. But alien suit doesn’t equal ribbed disco ball of blech.

It’s not the suit that makes Green Lanter fucking awesome. It’s the ring! Fuck, dress Hal Jordan up as a hobo and we would still love him because of the ring. They’re putting all the flash and wizbang into the suit which is exactly the wrong thing to focus on. Color me green with totally unimpressed.

Okay, so it’s not exactly Gundam. But dammit, that’s the goddamn Space Battleship Yamato right there!

These latest clips from the live action Space Battleship Yamato sent over by AZM Ally Henry Marx are fucking awesome. Now that’s how you translate anime to live action! The only thing that sucks is that I will not be in Japan on December 1 when this film is released. It will be an epic opening day.

Perhaps if there actually was more *BEEP*-ing in Sarah Conner Chronicles, FOX would have kept it on the air. Actually, there was a lot of *BEEP*-ing in Dollhouse and they kinda killed it off so never mind. If SCC was on SciFi, that shit would have lasted longer. No wait, SciFi is now BullShit. Fuck! Ah well. This shit is funny.

Some of you may not be old enough to remember the cool toys Disney put out for the original Tron. They were molded in clear blue and red plastic. Now this may not seem like such a big deal today with our sophisticated injection molding that can spit out the tiniest part of a toy in any custom clear, chrome, glow-in-the-dark, or regular color imaginable, but in the 80′s clear plastic was fucking epic. It seems that Disney is once again intent on blowing little kids’ minds with their latest batch of Tron toys. Just check out this crazy video screen face shit that AZM Ally deepfreeze sent over.

Okay, so the quotes from the movie sound like stupid shit, especially when we haven’t seen the film for context. But that’s a fucking video face! VIDEO! FACE!

This second video is even more crazy.

The Lightcycle. Drives. Up. Walls.

*nerdgasm*

Yes, it’s not quite proportional. In fact, it kind of looks like a boxy slug. But it drives up walls! That’s fucking cool!

So if the movie sucks, at least the toys will be fucking awesome.

Oh god, this fucking Ke$ha song again! This fucking song has a long ass shelf life.

It’s true, the Enterprise always seemed like the party ship of the fleet. At least in TOS. TNG was a lot more formal, more stuffy. DS9 had a decent party atmosphere. Voyager probably should have had more parties. I’m surprised the entire crew didn’t have one big orgy to relieve all the sexual tension. Enterprise? No one should have watched Enterprise. The new movie crew seems like it could be a party crew. Observe:

Anyway, this song fucking sucks. But Star Trek makes it suck less. Kinda. Sorta.

Okay, it still fucking sucks.

Not much going on the Gundam world for Gundam Wednesday, but we’ve got new about the next Kamen Rider. You’re looking at Kamen Rider OOO which I will always pronounce as ooh and make big octopus lips! The name is pretty stupid, but the suit isn’t too bad. I don’t love it but I don’t hate it. And besides, I’ve learned to never judge a Rider show on the suit alone. Hated Den-O’s suit and hated the show. Loved Kiva’s suit, hated the show. Hated Decade’s suit, loved the show. Loved W’s suit, wasn’t sure about the two dudes in one (especially how weird Philip looked), loved the show. So anytime they reveal the next Rider’s suit, it’s a good policy to wait until you see it in action before you decide.

What we can tell from the photo is that OOO uses an animal motif. Red part appears to be an eagle, the yellow a tiger, and the green a hopper. Yay! Love me some hoppers. Not terribly pleased with Wolverine claws there. Those were played out in the 90s. But it could be cool. The belt looks kinda wonky. It kind of looks like he grabbed a stop light and taped it to his waist. I’m guessing those three slots will be used to change into different forms. Multiple forms are kind of the standard now for the Heisei Riders and I’m always a fan, even if I dislike the show.

I’ll be sad to see Double go. I’ve loved every bit of it. Very curious to see how Ooh shapes up.

Source: Henshin Justice

I know I’m late to the party, but I was send a copy of the Avatar DVD for review. If you were looking forward to seeing all sorts of crazy behind-the-scenes footage of artists and animators creating the world and creatures of Pandora, this is not the release you are looking for. The Avatar DVD comes with the movie. And that’s it. No commentary track. No extra scenes. No making-of documentary. No trailers for anything else. From a technical stand point, I guess this makes some sense. There’s a whole lot of movie to fit on to a standard DVD. If you want to put the best quality digital transfer onto a disc that’s not Blu-ray, you want to squeeze in every last byte of information you can.

Instead of a second DVD with all the fun featurettes and documentaries you might have been expecting, you’re given a card with a website and code. Head over to that website, type in some information like your name, birthdate, city, state, country, and zip code along with the code you’re given on the card and you’re sent a URL in your email that takes you to a download page where you can grab the Avatar active desktop thingy. Really, it’s a fancy Adobe Air application that takes over your desktop and links you to the official Avatar website, plays that really annoying theme songs, gives you information on how you can plant a tree in Brazil, and some links to some videos. When I saw the video links, I thought, “hmmm… This could be a cool kind of way to do extra features. I mean, it kinda makes sense that they used the entire disc for the movie. Maybe they decided to put all the fun extras online at a secure site that you can only access from this desktop thingy.” I thought wrong. Only two of these videos are exclusive to this desktop experience. The rest are linked from YouTube. *sigh*

While Avatar may have changed the way digital movies are made, the DVD experience falls horribly short of that high mark. I can’t really recommend anyone getting this and if you already have, I’m sorry that my review came too late to save you the money. My advice is to wait for a special edition release which will probably come out sometime this year that will have all the fun stuff you were expecting. Man, I really wanted to see some render farms and some polygons and some texture painting. Ah well.