Close The Blast Doors

There's been fan-scripts and fans-becoming-writers, but this might be the first time in history that a TV series has opted to create a spin-off series and a theatrical movie... effectively based on it's own fan-art.

"Equestria Girls" is a spin-off movie (and apparently also a series pilot) from the rebooted surprise crossover-hit "My Little Pony" cartoon; built on the conceit of the main character dimension-jumping into the human world; where she and the other recurring characters appear as human versions of themselves. If we're going to start building movies around Deviant Art trends, I'll just assume that some other franchise will take "____ If They Were Mega Man Sprites" and "_____ But Everyone Is A Dog."

Not really my thing either way, but I'm familiar enough with both the harmless and decidedly-less-pleasant fringes of "Brony" culture to comfortably predict that this will probably do surprising boxoffice... and that if any of the main character winds up with a boyfriend he's going to be the most frighteningly-hated cartoon love-interest since that guy from the later seasons of "Daria" in certain unfortunate circles of the web.

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Full "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." Teaser

And now, here it is: The first teaser for "Agents of S.H.I.E.LD.," which effectively frames the show as "'The X-Files' But More Funny And With Those Guys From 'The Avengers.'" The mysterious-man sequence is now unblurred, and we can now clearly see that the unnamed superhuman in question is indeed a black man wearing a hoodie. I still say it's probably Luke Cage.

Gotta chuckle at how they manage to work in ultra-short "cameos" for The Avengers without having to show (and thus pay) the actors associated with them - Thor's hammer, Cap's shield, Iron Man flying, Banner in Hulk-form, etc.

I'm excited about this. There's a lot of fun stuff to mess around with in the Marvel universe that may not need or warrant a full movie or full act in a movie - you could probably get a solid syndication-worthy run of shows JUST out of having them chase B and C-list supervillains around every week.

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Screencaps: Who Is This Hero(?) In The "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." Teaser?

A moment ago I posted the "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." pre-tease, which opens with a motion-blurred action shot of an unidentified person(?) rescuing a woman from a burning building by jumping out the window and landing safely with enough force to crater the pavement on impact.

Below the jump, some screencaps of the very brief action-shot for a clearer look and possible guesses as to who this might be:

1. Basic window-jump shot, nothing too unusual looking under the circumstances.

2. Little more clear, can see "jumper" separate from "cargo." Tan/gold color blur at play. Iron Man cameo, maybe?

3. Much more defined now. "Cargo" is wearing gray suit and skirt, jumper has gold/tan pants or leggings. Arm of jumper, visibly distinct from white legs (stockings?) of cargo suggest either dark skin-tone or clothing.

4. There's a motion-blur effect on the footage, so this is about as clear as it's going to get: Unidentified red-haired woman in a gray suit being carried by a larger person (likely but not definitely male) wearing what appear to be tan or mustard-colored pants - could be bellbottoms, but probably the wind.

5. Whoever the rescuer is, he's strong/heavy enough to both land safely and do major damage to solid concrete when he lands. Still motion-blurred, but this last one looks about as good as it's going to get for now.

While allowing that the aforementioned motion blur could be further obscuring things, what this looks like is an unknown woman being rescued by a larger and unusually-powerful unknown man of apparently darker complexion. Is this The Hulk? I don't think so - he's not quite "Hulk Big" and I don't think the current Movieverse Hulk runs on the Silver Age comics mechanics of Hulk changing size depending on his mood like the Ang Lee Hulk did. Also, this guy appears to be wearing shoes, and his hair is either blown-upwards or styled in a manner that doesn't scream "Hulk" to me. My (and I'm betting a lot of other people's) best guess? Assuming for a moment that this is a Marvel character and not someone made up for the series, this could be our first glimpse of a live-action Luke Cage. 

A mainstay of Marvel's aggressive (if occasionally awkward) diversity push in the 70s, Cage was a wrongfully-imprisoned black youth who was subjected to experiments in prison (yet another half-formed attempt to recreate the Super Soldier Serum that created Captain America) that wound up making him super-strong and virtually indestructible. You'd think they'd test something designed to that on anyone other than convicts, but there you go. He was mainly popular in the 70s before getting sidelined for a good long while, only to be brought back to the forefront in "Alias" and soon promoted by positive fan response to being a major fixture of the post-Mansion Avengers lineups.

If this is him, it makes a lot of sense: Cage is a street-level guy, doesn't go in for elaborate costumes or gear and his abilities are fairly simple to visualize. He also has (or had) a fun, story-ready gimmick: Cage was New York's resident "Hero For Hire" - instead of going out looking for wrongs to right, he let clients come to him and procure his day-saving services. He'd been previously set to be a recurring character in the "Alias: Jessica Jones" TV series, which never went to air and may or may not have had some of it's assets folded into this project.

Secondary possibility: That the rescuer looks to be of notably darker complexion than the woman could be an illusion of the blur/shooting, in which case that could be anybody. There've been various "official" explanations, for example, as to how Coulson is back; but a popular fan theory going all the way back to "Avengers" has been that the original Coulson is indeed dead and this one is an LMD ("Life Model Decoy," aka "a robot") that will wind up being coverted into The Vision for a future "Avengers" sequel. Some additional tangential "evidence" to that end: Of all the onscreen superheroes, Coulson is most closely associated with Captain America; whose movie featured a hard-to-miss cameo by a certain artificial-man who, in the comics, was used to build Vision's body. It doesn't look like a suped-up Robo-Coulson is making the save here, but it's a possibility sure.

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First (Brief!) Tease of "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D."

A "teaser" for Joss Whedon's Marvel TV franchise "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." is set to air during tonight's season finale of "Once Upon A Time." For now, here's the - um... teaser for the teaser?

Egh. Y'know what? There's still enough residual goodwill from "The Avengers" that I can't even be mad about this kind of marketing. Yes, Marvel (and Whedon) are allowed a pass on this - they did the impossible, they earned it.

Previously, everybody's top question was: "How is Coulson alive again?" But now, I'm guessing it's either about to be equaled or passed by a new one: "Who is that (apparent) super-human pulling a rescue at the beginning?" It all goes by pretty fast, and I'm about to do some screencapping to see if it can't be made clearer, but check it out yourself for now:

UPDATED: Screencaps and guesses HERE.

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"The Venture Bros" in 8 Minutes

The curse of being a "Venture Bros." fan is that a big part of the show's charm (at this point) is the way it's gradually turned making fun of the self-referential moebius-strip nature of comic books and "cult" genre series (OMG! This suddenly super-prominent character was in the background on that random flashback three seasons ago!) into a functioning continuity that's rewarding in it's own right... which becomes REALLY hard to keep track of since there are such lengthy breaks between seasons.

Fortunately, since the break between seasons 4 and 5 (debuting June 2nd!) was longer than usual, Adult Swim has posted this compressed recap of the important-ish stuff - though what I'm most excited about is the apparent Season 5 returns of Captain Sunshine and Ghost Robot (a ghost living inside a robot, which we are told is completely different than a machine with a soul.)

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Escape to The Movies: "The Great Gatsby"

I liked it.

RIP Ray Harryhausen.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : The Great Gatsby

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Better Living Through Chemistry

I don't generally get professionally jealous of other people in my industry, but seeing James "AVGN" Rolfe getting to work with Troma founder and "Toxic Avenger" creator Lloyd Kaufman recently got me close - damn, that must have been awesome. But then, James has worked his ass off building his brand and more-or-less inventing a big slice of web video business - if anyone deserves to have things finally start paying off big-time, he does.

In any case, Kaufman is still doing his thing as a vanguard of authentic, no-bullshit independent moviemaking. He and Troma's latest offering, a reboot(?) of "Class of Nukem High" (one of their better 80s offerings, about a High School whose student body is mutated by a leak at the nearby nuclear power plant) officially titled "Return to The Class of Nukem High" has had a teaser up for a bit now promoting the film's scheduled premiere at Cannes 2013 - ULTRA NSFW, but check it out if you haven't already:

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