Over at The Bureau Chiefs, Ken Lowery and I take a look at the trailers for films coming out in September.
In comparison to the summer months, this fall is actually looking pretty decent.

Here’s a beardy, brooding Ryan Reynolds, star of Buried:

Over at The Bureau Chiefs, Ken Lowery and I take our monthly look at trailers for upcoming films. It’s not just me, right, this has been a rough summer for films, hasn’t it?

Since one of the films we looked at is Mark Wahlberg’s move back to comedy, The Other Guys, I thought I’d share a picture from the days when we had no idea he’d eventually star in a film about homicidal foliage.

Ken Lowery and I take a look at the “>trailers for some of the films coming out in July over at The Bureau Chiefs

So if you want to know what two random cynics on the internet think about big fantasy block-busters like The Last Airbender and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice or indie thrillers like The Wild Hunt or Jim Carrey’s attempts to play a non-offensive gay role in I Love You, Phillip Morris, you should head over there.

Over at the Bureau Chiefs, Ken Lowery and I look at the trailers for several films releasing in June. It’s a dire looking month, to be honest, but hey, watching Ken rip into the trailer for Grown Ups is probably more entertaining than reading yet another gay-baiting Sex and the City 2 review today.

Over at The Bureau Chiefs, I take a look at the made-for-cable film Beyond Sherwood Forest, a fantasy version of the Robin Hood story that manages to incorporate a dragon and villainous hench-men that appear to have been cast after appearing in back-issues of Drummer and Bear.

It’s also got Robin Dunne as Robin Hood.

I’ve got no idea how it compares to the new Ridley Scott directed version of the Robin Hood story, but on the quality scale it’s better than the Kevin Costner version but not as good as the Disney version.

Over at The Bureau Chiefs, I give a minute by minute account of the experience of watching the Ben Foster/Dennis Quiad sci-fi/horror flick Pandorum.
You know, I’m not sure I’ve seen a Ben Foster film where he keeps his shirt on.

Books for the pre-teen girl you don’t want confusing abusive relationships with romance.

Your best bet in this regard is going to be the Tiffany Aching series from Terry Pratchett. They start with The Wee Free Men, the story of a young girl who discovers her magical heritage when she’s got to go out and rescue some dumb boy because he went and did something stupid. The series continues with A Hat Full of Sky and Wintersmith, with Wintersmith being as strong an antidote to emotionally abusive supernatural boyfriends as you can get.

Video game for people who want to piss off the religious right.

It’s pretty much just going to be Dragon Age: Origins for the XBox 360. Not only can you have sex with a bisexual elf assassin, you can also have sex with a bisexual female spy. Hmmm…what, exactly, is Bioware implying about bisexuals, anyway? There’s also a Dragon Age: Origins PC version, which is the lead platform and probably plays better than the console version, unless you’re like me and are tired of having to reconfigure your PC rig every time a new game comes out.

For fans of over-wrought medical drama and snarky gay men.

Not long after they were the poncy yin to Rik Mayall’s and Ade Edmonson’s Bolshy yang, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie starred in Jeeves & Wooster: The Complete Series, a television adaptation of P.G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster stories. They’ve got that arch, odd pace that British period shows all seem to require, so bear that in mind, but they’ve also got Fry and Laurie back when they were young and pretty.

For the person who likes Arthurian stuff but is getting a little tired of the usual tropes.

For younger readers, there is Gerald Morris’ The Squire’s Tale, a light-hearted take on the knights through the eyes of Gaiwain’s apprentice. For older readers, there’s Douglas Clegg’s Mordred, Bastard Son, about how Mordred and Lancelot became lovers. Yes, that’s right, gay Arthurian fantasy. And it’s about time.

For the animal lover.

WE3 Seriously. If the book doesn’t break your heart, Deckard needs to be alerted.

For the friend who likes comic books but doesn’t like like comic books.

Your best bet is All Star Superman, Vol. 1. Everything you need to know about the character, a story you can jump into even if you don’t know anything about the character, Morrison’s most humanistic story and the usually stellar Quitely art.

For a nerd.

I’d go with Castle: The Complete First Season. You’ve got Nathan Fillion, so while the ooh and aah because he’s one of the five actors they can remember the name of, they might actually end up watching a mystery show with some wit and clever writing.

For a mystery or horror fan frustrated with what passes for good in those genres.

I was getting really sick of mystery solving cats, mysteries that start with letters of the alphabet, yet another funny zombie novel and wimpy vampires. And then I found John Conolly’s Charlie Parker series. It starts with Every Dead Thing, but I recommend sticking with it for the next couple of books. The first book ups the gore, but the real meat of the series, and the overlap between the mystery and the supernatural elements come to the fore later. It’s also worth noting that Parker’s frequent partners in crime are Luis, a black gay Republican ex-assassin and his lover Angel. Multi-layered gay characters in a mystery/horror book that aren’t cartoonish victims? Amazing!

For a little kid you really like.

They totally deserve this totally kick-ass Playmobil Pyramid. You will win Christmas hands down.

For a little kid whose parents you don’t like.

There’s always healthy competition for this category, but this year I think the winner is the Fisher Price Splatster. It’s loud, it’s annoying, it takes up valuable TV time and it takes the place of actual artistic activity by turning it into a passive experience for the kid.

Music to Torment Customers and Coworkers Delight Friends and Family With.

Stirring and hauntingly beautiful songs.

Fantastic dance/r&b fusion.

Prog-rock that doesn’t suck.

A b-sides album. Yes, they still make those.

And, that’s about it for specific recommendations. Remember, anything you buy from here gives me a little bit of a kick-back to help me spread some joy to my friends and family, and it’s vastly appreciated by me. Thanks!

Chris Sims debuted a exploitative brilliant new action comic.

Kevin Church is a very smart, very cruel man.

This is very, very funny.

Kevin’s right, of course.

I wish I could be as determined as Kevin to avoid the film, as Watchmen the comic book is a work I respect tremendously, but between Pete expressing an interest in it, the presence of Jeffrey Dean Morgan in the film, and my own morbid curiosity over just how bad it’s going to be, I’m pretty sure I’m on the hook to see it at some point. Of course, what really fascinates me in that link is the fact that, once again, for stating an opinion Kevin is being raked over the coals by people unable or unwilling to see his point. And that’s funny to me, because Kevin is a hell of a lot more politic about it than I would be.

I mean, let’s all be perfectly honest here: Watchmen the movie is not for comic book fans. It’s for the people who made Paul Blart: Mall Cop the number one film in the country for several weeks. It’s for the people who read The DaVinci Code and patted themselves on the back because they read big, thick books. It’s for people who keep Fox News on the air.

And you can’t blame Kevin, who is in most things a man of taste and discernment, for not wanting to subject himself to a film crafted for that audience. Which begs the question: why would anyone take Watchmen, one of the most important texts in the history of comic books, and turn it into a film aimed squarely at the lowest common denominators of the American public? And that’s when we get to the tragic truth…

Most people didn’t read Watchmen and come away with an indictment of the fetishization of nostalgia. They didn’t read it and find a critique of authoritarian power structures in global politics and how that is mirrored in popular entertainment vigilante fantasies. They didn’t find an examination of the limits of that whole “power and responsibility” thing and how that absolutist notion of morality falls apart when faced with reality. Nor did they find an amazing example of story-telling structure that fully exploits the idiosyncratic nature of the comic book medium to tell a mature story that is, quite literally, only possible within the comic book medium.

No, they found a cynical super-hero beat-’em-up comic with sex and swearing. They skipped the text pieces. They skipped the “boring stuff with the pirate comic.” And they found that if they threw the word “deconstruction” around when discussing the comic, they sounded smart.

And that’s the movie Zack Snyder is giving us:  that shallow, superficial reading of the comic translated to film. I mean, honestly, what else did anyone expect?

• Good news, everyone! Dave Campbell is blogging again, at The Society for the Advancement of Dave. And you know what that means: we can stop pretending that Chris Sims is funny!
  (I kid. A little. Maybe.)

  Also, check out Dave’s awesometastic new video:
  

• Speaking of Sims, he has a Christmas themed web-comic up at the Flashback Universe: The Saturn Knight Before Christmas.
• Speaking of web-comics, the latest installment of Kevin Church’s latest strip is up: Waimea