Lo Pan’s Link Dump 08-20-08

Ed. Note: Lo Pan’s Link Dump is a weekly roundup of the latest geek culture headlines, ripped off gathered from various websites and news sources, all brought to you by your favorite 3,000 year old Chinese sorcerer, David Lo Pan!

Look kids, brand new posters for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen! I like the one taken from Optimus Prime’s audition for The Dark Knight. Heh.

Brian Austin Green says he wants to play the Riddler in a sequel to The Dark Knight. Yeah, okay David Silver. I have a better chance of riding on a winged unicorn with a naked Scarlett Johannsen through an enchanted kingdom made of gumdrops and rainbows then you do of even sniffing the door to Christopher Nolan’s office. In a related story, Ian Zeiring stated that he would dress up as Catwoman for a grilled cheese sandwhich.

You know, just as an aside, I really don’t get all this talk of the Riddler as the next Batman villain.  I mean, for the third act, you’re going to follow Batman’s arch nemesis with a second-rate baddie like the Riddler? The way I see it, there’s really only one way to go, and that is to re-cast the Joker. That may seem sacreligious after what Ledger has done with the character, but hey, the show must go on. There have been six James Bonds, Three Jack Ryans, and five Batmans, so there’s absolutely no reason why there can’t be a fourth Joker.

Tom Cruise wants to make a comic book movie. Wonderful. I’m sure this project will feature absolutely no Scientology propaganda.

It looks like the Voltron movie has some new financiers and may be close to being green-lit for production. Apparently it won’t be a huge-budget production like Michael Bay’s Transformers, but rather a moderately-priced feature with lots of green screen effects ala 300 and Sin City. Hmmm, so are we going to get a shirtless Keith screaming, “Madness? THIS. IS. ARUS!!!!” ?

Bad news for Superman movie fans: it looks like the proposed sequel, The Man of Steel is in a “holding pattern” over at Warner Brothers, until studio executives “figure out what to do with the property next”. Translation: “We need to hire someone who won’t make Superman an effeminate, whiny, jealous super-stalker. Oh, and also the movie was a giant, smelly turd.”

Here’s a really cool article about the making of the 1980 film, Flash Gordon. God, I love that movie. The highlight of the piece is Brian Blessed (the guy who played the Hawkman leader, Vultan), talking about how he would laugh and chase midgets around the set. Awesome.

Last but not least, here’s an awesome and hilarious blog called Springfield Punx, which features all manner of superheroes, sci-fi characters, and other random pop culture figures rendered Simpsons-style.

Movie Review: ‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Jabba’s effete, sissified, feather-headdress wearin’, neon tattooed, nightclub-owning Uncle Ziro. WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW!?

Well, congratulations George, you’ve succeeded in creating a character that is gayer than C-3PO and more annoying than Jar Jar Binks. Wow…just typing that sentence has completely blown my mind.

Ziro pops up about 40 minutes into the new CGI animated feature film Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which I caught at a matinee showing on Friday afternoon. That  40-minute mark will henceforth be known as the point of no return for you Star Wars fans wishing to hang on to whatever shred of hope you still had left for this saga to retain some manner of dignity and magic. Consider yourself warned, because after you see and hear Ziro the Hutt squirm on screen and threaten Padme with his effeminate, Truman Capote-esque southern drawl, all will be lost forever.

Honestly, nothing George Lucas conjures up shocks me anymore. The man obviously has a bad motivator. He’s blown a restraining bolt. He’s nuttier than a Gungan. He’s batshit insane.  I have absolutely no clue what happened to George in the decade between Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and The Phantom Menace, but somewhere along the line he decided that what movie audiences really wanted to see were horrific Asian, Arab, and Jamaican stereotypes in the guise of aliens, inept battle droids that say “Roger! Roger!” endlessly and cannot remember numeric coordinates given by another battle droid, despite the fact IT’S A FUCKING ROBOT!!! A WALKING, TALKING COMPUTER CAN’T REMEMBER A TEN-DIGIT COORDINATE??? *sigh* Oh yeah, and there’s that big, homo Hutt I mentioned before. Thank you George…thank you for all you have given us.

Oh, the movie? It was actually pretty good. Fantastic battles and lightsaber duels. Smooth animation, nice voice work. The TV show that starts in the Fall should be pretty entertaining.

*** (out of five)

Lo Pan’s Link Dump: 08/13/08

Ed. Note: Lo Pan’s Link Dump is a weekly roundup of the latest geek culture headlines, ripped off gathered from various websites and news sources, all brought to you by your favorite 3,000 year old Chinese sorcerer, David Lo Pan!

Tropic Thunder hits theaters today. Go see it and do your part to piss off the retarded retards who are holding retarded protests outside theaters because people in the movie say ‘retard’ too much. That’s just retarded.

In all seriousness, these disability groups that are calling for a boycott of this flick are totally missing the point. No one in this film is making fun of mentally challenged individuals, they’re making fun of all the pretentious actors and scumbag movie executives who try to exploit mental disability as subject matter in order to gain critical acclaim and parlay that into Oscar nominations. What’s more astonishing to me is the fact that no African-American organizations have made a peep about Robert Downey Jr.’s blackface character.

Awesome images from the upcoming Science Ninja Team Gatchaman CGI animated movie. Those of you you who were kids in the late 70’s/early 80’s will know Gatchaman as the original Japanese title for Battle of the Planets, which featured characters in kickass bird-themed outfits zooming around in a super-cool spaceship called The Phoenix. The animated film from Imagi Studios (the folks who did the CGI Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), is set to hit theaters in April 2009. Dear Lord, I can’t wait for next Spring! Battle of the Planets was God-like to me as a small child, second only to the mighty Star Wars. Unfortunately, the film will not feature Seven Zark Seven.

Not content to simply ruin music, MTV is now going to attempt to ruin comic books and geek culture with their new blog, Splash Page. This week the blog featured two very interesting stories: 1.) Joss Whedon made a Batman movie pitch to the studio? WTF? Man, I had absolutely no idea that ever happened. I knew he wrote a script for a Wonder Woman and was pretty close to directing it before it was inexplicably shelved, but a Batman script? I had no clue. Does this mean my geek membership is going to be revoked? Anyway, I’m glad it was rejected and we got Nolan’s awesome take on the caped crusader. I love pretty much everything Joss Whedon has ever done, but creating a new villain that’s a “Hannibal Lecter” type in Arkham Asylum? Pretty lame, Joss.  And 2.) Comic Writers chime in on how to reboot the Superman franchise. I love this article. It’s basically paragraph after paragraph of Mark Waid, Grant Morrison, and Brad Meltzer ripping Superman Returns to shreds.

Seth Green and Breckin Myer set to join ‘Heroes’. They will supposedly play two comic book geeks who get involved with a few of the Heroes. I recently watched the DVD extras of the Robot Chicken Star Wars special, and what I saw horrified me. From what I could glean from the footage, Seth Green and Breckin Myer spend all day hanging around a cool studio filled with action figures and puppets shooting eachother with nerf blasters. Oh yeah, and they also got to go to Skywalker Ranch, hang out with George Lucas, and have their DVD release party in the private Skywlaker Ranch theater. I fucking hate them.

Finally, Star Wars: The Clone Wars comes out Friday. It will be interesting to see if anyone cares. Anyone taking bets on whether it will top The X-Files box office gross?