Here’s Justin Chatwin as Goku looking like he just walked off the set of “Gossip Girl.” Audrey and I get two flavors of CW on our cable-less tele and I swear, the network is a factory for generic emo boys and vapid women.

Anyway, back to Chatwin. Just not feeling this. The only thing I’ve really seen him in was that Invisible movie. He had the same expression throughout the film which is slightly disturbing as I think if you suddenly found out you were a walking spirit, you’d show some emotion other than vacant emo stare. I just don’t see him as goofy, fun loving, slightly demented, Goku. You never see Goku without a big toothy grin unless he’s kicking some ass. And even then, he laughs his way through fights. I don’t know, maybe they’re trying to inject some seriousness into this thing.

Not sure who I would cast instead. Hell, not sure I would even bother making this thing. I always want to see more of Tony Jaa. He certainly has the action chops and I think he can pull off a big toothy grin while kicking major ass. Meh. Whatever. I think I’m genetically disposed to not like this.

[Via Dragonball The Movie]

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Here’s some special effects test footage of Optimus Prime that Michael Bay used to help Hasbro envision what a live-action Transformers movie might look like. Somewhere along the way between this test and the final film, the production design went through a few changes. A bit of a shame, really, because I feel that this little snippet is actually superior to the effect work we saw in the movie.

Thanks to Solkana who posted the link on Twitter.

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Kamina’s introduction from Gurren Lagann has to be one of the greatest character intros in anime!

Gurren Lagann is on my long list of anime series that I have to catch up on. All you have to say is “giant freaking robots” and “Gainax” and I’m fucking there. Reader Kevin Bahrt sent me all sorts of Gurren Lagann goodies to temp me including this screen shot that demonstrates Gainax’s tendency to sneak cameos of some of their previous shows.

I think Bandai has acquired the U.S. license to release this on DVD which means you’ll get three episode discs for $50. Yikes! Way to buzz kill Bandai. Still, looks like a lot of fun.

Anyway, here’s an English language trailer when ADV was still around.

UPDATE: From the comments, Kamen Otaku informs us that Bandai is releaseing three 9 episode subbed DVD’s over July, August and September for $29.99. Could be full of awesome!

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If the live action feature fails to live up to the awesome of puppet benders, M. Night Shyamalan’s Avatar will suck an egg. I think if he gets the right cast together, that might boost my expectations.

So dear readers, who would you cast in M. Night Shyamalan’s Avatar movie? I dream of bald Tony Jaa! I’m trying to think where Bryce Dallas Howard would fit because he seems to like using her a lot, but for the life of me I don’t think she fits in the world.

Thanks to AZM regular Kevin Bahrt for the link.

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Let the music play. Worries for another day. Dance your cares away. Down at the big screen debut of the Fraggle Rock movie!

The Jim Henson Company will produce a big screen feature of Fraggle Rock with the Weinstein Company distributing. How fun! And about freaking time. Okay, so I don’t hate all 80’s remakes. Such a perfect idea for a family feature, it’s a wonder why they haven’t made a Fraggle Rock movie until now.

[Via Variety]

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I love the fact that we can embed South Park now!

Reader Kevin Bahrt sent over this clip where the boys give a presentation on the savage hypocrisy of hate crime laws. South Park usually comments on current events within the context of the show, but I’m not entirely sure what event this episode was riffing on. Regardless, I think it’s a fairly sensible assessment of hate crime laws in general. Well, as sensible as you’re going to get from the tele anyway.

[Via Comedy Central]

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Not only did Henshin Justice’s Keith Hayward get flown out to LA for the Kamen Rider Dragon Knight wrap party, get exclusive photos, be one of the first to view the first official trailer, but he also snagged an exclusive interview with Kamen Rider Wing Knight Matt Mullins and stunt man Mark Musashi AND saw the first four episodes!

As I told Keith, sometimes fandom is its own reward. And sometimes, you get flown the fuck out to LA for a Kamen Rider wrap party! AWESOME!

It’s all in R5 Central episode 51. Seriously, Dragon Knight is going to kick all kinds of Ameri Toku ass!

Also, if you’d like to get your hands on a Kabuto Zector, R5 Central’s Mike Dent is running a giveaway contest so be sure to head over to R5.

[Via R5 Central]

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Since I never heard of the original news story, Mikey D sent along some follow up information to the Stuck trailer. Fox News posted a time line of the incident and the Wikipedia article indicates that it’s been whored out as a CSI episode and a Law and Order episode before heading to the big screen as Stuck.

Crime dramas taking inspiration from real life started way back in the day with Dragnet. There was even an old time radio show, Night Beat, a precursor to Cops where the host rode in a police car along with officers as they went out on patrol. The purpose of these early shows was to demonstrate how scary good the cops were at taking down criminals, to discourage regular citizens from committing crimes, and to entertain. While it could be argued that this early form of entertainment served some kind of educational and preventative purpose, modern crime dramas would be hard pressed to make a similar claim. These days, crime dramas focus entirely on the entertainment aspect. If an episode is inspired by real events, they tend to get sexed up for the camera (although in this case, I don’t think you can get more sensational than leaving a guy in your fucking windshield).

Exploiting real life for entertainment’s sake has proven successful for studios. Reality TV is cheap to produce and brings in gobs of money. And hardly anyone bats an eye when a movie is inspired by real life events. That said, Stuck smacks of sensational exploitation. There’s no message here, no deep meaning, no self discovery. Just a horrible story thrown up on a big screen to grab some cash. It may seem slightly hypocritical of me to be outraged over Stuck when I admit to enjoying a movie series that once featured a woman’s rib cage being torn from her body after she stuck her hand in a vat of acid. Probably a valid criticism. But for me at least, knowing that some sick fuck imagined the “tests” in the Saw series somehow seems much less exploitive than basing a movie on a sick fuck who leaves a man to die in her own garage.

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Thanks to reader Devlin Browning, I now know who I’m voting for in the 2008 Presidential election. Who can argue with smelling with your tongue? Brilliant! I fear that this, along with Destro and Baroness’s “Get Money” music video will both be better than the live action flick.

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Audrey showed this to me last night. No one has ever filmed something like this before. It’s so compelling that National Geographic is actually doing a Mother’s Day special decontructing and analyzing this amazing battle for the “Caught on Safari” series.

The message is clear. Don’t fuck with the buffalo! From now on when ever I get the chance, I’m eating only buffalo burgers and buffalo wings to gain their amazing powers of awesome!

[Via National Geographic]

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