Most anticipated film of the year my ass, that was The Avengers. Not that Spidey doesn’t look like being good fun, just as long as he doesn’t dance at all.

There’s a history of rare, brave sequels that are better than their predecessors, G.I. Joe looks set to continue this proud tradition. Not that it looks like it’ll actually be “good good”, but it certainly looks like it’ll be “dumb fun good”.

Is it a trademark of G.I. Joe films to destroy great cities? This time instead a swarm of microscopic robots turning Paris into grey goo, it looks like COBRA are somehow using a satellite weapon to earthquake London into the dark ages.

If you haven’t already seen Homeland then:

1. Shame on you, it’s brilliant, go watch it now.
2. Don’t watch this trailer, it’s spoileriffic.
3. Don’t let this season 2 teaser put you off, it’s really quite weak, but I expect the show will be great.

Watching this scene, with Tony Stark struggling to conceal his fear, yet still managing to threaten Loki.

All they have to do to make the movie good is treat Thor & Captain America as background characters, focus on the smart guys – Banner & Stark – and definitely not have any dancing at all.

I am so excited right now.

Simon Pegg has never failed me, so I’m going to pretend I don’t have huge reservations about the awkward dirty whimsy quotient in this one, hold my nose and say it looks like it’ll be great.

But if it wasn’t for Pegg, well who knows. Probably I’d never so much as consider watching it, for one thing.

On the “oh, well, hmm” hand, it has two directors, and Pegg didn’t write it. So, ah.

Colin Farrel is a better actor than Arnold Schwarzenegger could ever dream of being, so this remake of 1990′s Philip K. Dick inspired Total Recall is off to a pretty good start.

If you have a woman deliver a line like “Oh and by the way, you haven’t even begun seeing me trying to kill you.” you shouldn’t follow it up by her batting at our guy like a panda. It’s time for filmmakers to stop trying to pretend women can beat men in a fight by fighting like men. It might just be that most actresses are piss-poor at screen-fighting, but so far it just hasn’t ever seemed to work at all. So either get that girl from the Cylob Rewind video to do your fight scene, or have the woman use a weapon that evens up the playing field. Also doesn’t help that the actress is stick thin and looks like she’d probably faint if she had to walk up a few flights of stairs.

I’m not sure if I’m relieved about this or not, it appears that the “get ready for a big surprise” woman’s head disguise from the original is replaced with a hologram projection of a males head. More believable, to be sure, but still.

I’m definitely not happy that it looks like John Cho bites it within moments of being introduced. I love that guy.

The film’s not coming out for about 5 months, so expect a couple more trailers to dribble out, almost certainly giving away far too much of the story.

The Newsroom is a new series created by Aaron Sorkin, starring Jeff Daniels. It’s about a popular middle-of-the-road news anchor, who snaps and reveals that he actually does have opinions on things. Cue: outrage.

It’s schedule to start playing on HBO in a couple of months. Looks great so far, predict this one will be popular with liberals and non-Americans, but hated by Republicans.

Michael Cera is on today’s release of Marc Maron’s popular WTF podcast, he talks about various of his movies and TV shows, as well as his childhood and how he got started in acting, but of course what people are most interested in is the upcoming Arrested Development movie, there aren’t any new revelations, but it’s nice to have confirmation from the horse’s mouth.

He hasn’t seen a script yet, but reiterated what we’ve already been told that the whole cast is “absolutely” on board.

“I think the idea is now we’re going to do 9 episodes before the movie. One for each character, kind of giving some back story.”

“Mitch figured if you were to spend 5 minutes on each character in a move that’s a good hour of the movie already.”

Marc:

“It’s also you know spending an episode with the character 6 years later, which could be interesting because with a few of these characters things have gotten maybe sort of grim.”

Cera:

“Right, I think that’s what he’s planning on doing.”

Cera also confirms Netflix are doing the new series as a streaming exclusive, not a more conventional TV network, Arrested Development was originally on Fox.

As soon as you get your first glimpse of Johhny Depp in odd makeup you know it’s time for another Tim Burton movie. Another one just like the others. Where the whimsy has just the wrong shade of creepiness. Just the wrong amount of get me the hell out of this theatre. Just the wrong amount of try-hard look-at-me being desperately, boringly, “interesting”.

You already know this, but I feel a need to point it out. It’s a Tim Burton movie, so it has Johnny Depp in it. What’s the other yawnful ingredient that always comes along with Tim Burton movies?

Helena Bonham Carter.

Just who is it that keeps going to these movies? Please think about what you’re doing, if you stop going, there’s a chance someone with interesting new ideas will get the money instead.

As befits a film about the terrifying and brilliant Lisbeth Salander, the DVD designed for Sony’s new DVD  release of  the film is designed to look like a bootleg.

It’s a long time since I’ve seen discs like this, the sort of people who used to pass them around now do everything in bits & bytes, not with plastic discs.

Lovely as it is, it’s been causing some trouble for rental companies and libraries, who upon opening the box find what looks like a dodgy fake. If the price of awesomeness is a little confusion, so be it.

It’s not the first time this gag has been played though, Borat did it, and even that may not have been the first.

//via MWT News