A few days before The Avengers debuted I was asked why I was so excited about seeing what’s looking like the most successful comic book movie of all time. This was my answer.

I’m a lifelong comic book fan and the idea that it’s even possible to make The Avengers has my inner 16-year old doing cartwheels — which is seriously impressive because my outer 16-year old sure as hell couldn’t do cartwheels. The idea that The Avengers is doable is mind-boggling; the fact that they hired a lifelong comic book fan to bring the series to life . . . and that they handed the project to the guy who should have been doing The X-Men all along, is beyond cool.

Joss Whedon doesn’t just freely admit his comic book influences — he has actually written comics. He did a run of The X-Men that lived up to the title billing as “amazing.” What I love about the Marvel movies is that, whether they work or not — and even when they have inexplicably awful sequences like the Spider-dance — they all seem to have been written by someone who has actually read the comic books.

The Marvel movies also treat the inside nods to fans like Easter eggs in a DVD or video game, instead of slowing the plot with them and trying to hit various iconic moments as if they were compulsory figures in skating. Sam Raimi’s Spider-Mans featured several sequences that were literally lifted from famous Spider-Man covers.

But fan boy bliss aside . . two words: Joss Whedon. And again . . . not just ’cause he did Buffy, but because Buffy was so clearly inspired by the Marvel universe (especially The X-Men).

Personally, I’d love to see Marvel hand Whedon the keys to their universe, but until that happens here’s why I’m hoping Joss Whedon’s first sequel isn’t a new Avenger’s movie, but a solo story featuring the Black Widow.

1. Scarlett Johansson as the Black Widow.
2. Scarlett Johansson in the Black Widow costume.
3. Did you see Buffy? Did you see Dollhouse? Did you see how Whedon turned a tiny dancer into a lethal killing machine in Firefly and how he transformed the nerdly Fred into a lethal goddess on Angel? Did you see what he did with Black Widow in The Avengers?
4. Because Joss Whedon doesn’t just talk Fanboy, he’s the real deal. Kitty Pryde was his inspiration — and if you don’t know who Kitty Pryde is, you may have written or directed one of the earlier Marvel movies. The whole epic Dark Willow storyline on Buffy was dark Phoenix from The X-Men. Angel borrowed heavily from the Bat-world. Whedon even handicapped a fight between the Black Widow and Buffy.
5. Because somewhere the Mensa reject who pulled the plug on Whedon’s Wonder Woman movie is feeling like he’s just gone 15 rounds with the Hulk, so why not finish him off.
6. ‘Cause I can see it now . . . Black Widow returns to Russia to fight mob corruption. There’s probably a suitcase nuke, a dirty bomb and a love interest, maybe Hawkeye, who will die and need Avenging. (Hawkeye has a tendency to die in Marvel comics.) She’ll go rogue. It’ll be like the ultimate episode of Dollhouse. And, just maybe, the Widow’s sometime beau Daredevil will guest star and Whedon will be able to undue some of the damage done in one of the worst Marvel movies ever made.
7. If it fails, Scarlett Johansson can always come back for the next Avengers movie as the Scarlet Witch. Nuff said.

Mark Leiren-Young won the Leacock Medal for Humour for his memoir Never Shoot a Stampede Queen and was part of the team that adapted the Marvel hero Moon Knight — one of his all-time favourite members of the Marvel Universe — as a live action TV series.

By Montreal Simon

It never made any sense. A movie where children kill each other gets a PG-13 rating, a documentary about children getting bullied gets rated R. So I’m glad to see that Bully has been reclassified.

I’m happy that kids are going to be able to see it, and that the new rating will make it easier for schools to use it as an educational tool. But I’m really hoping that more adults will see it as well.

Because they’re the only ones who can change the situation, a lot of them are living in denial, so they need really need to see what happens when horror meets blindness

Too many older people think that bullying is just like it was when they were in school. When in fact it’s much much worse. Our culture encourages aggression, from our hockey rinks to our Parliament. Kids are being desensitized to violence. The internet is a bully’s happy hunting ground. There are more and more victims.

And they are younger and younger. 

His son then tried to befriend the boys during another recess — “presumably to get them to stop” bullying him, Ratte says. Instead the trio gave him another beating.

“That really affected him.” the father says. “He barely ate for two days, would fall asleep (before six) each night. He was just so withdrawn, and, then, he finally told us.”

And what’s most striking about Bully is how casual that violence is. The bullies in the film knew the cameras were there.

But that didn’t stop them…

Will I see the movie? I honestly don’t know. Seeing anybody young or old bullied makes me really angry.

That’s one of the reasons I hate the Harper Cons so much.

And I don’t need to be educated about the problem, I’ve been blogging about it for years.

But I do know this image haunts me:

Even though the three boys were not allowed out at recess this past week, all his son did the other day “was walk around by himself,” apparently too timid to go near anyone.

And I do know that anyone who thinks they can build a kinder, gentler, more peaceful world, without fighting bullying.

Is blind to the horror, and doomed to failure . . .

Dear Randy Quaid:

I hear Canadian authorities have decided to let you stay in Canada, and, indeed, that Canadian citizenship is now in the works for you. That’s because your wife’s dad was Canadian, so she was able to get her citizenship earlier this month, which means you can now get yours (though I don’t know why I’m telling you these things; I expect you already know).

Anyway, welcome. We’re glad to have you here. Frankly, I’ve always liked you better on screen than your little brother, who’s, well, let’s face it, a bit of a pretty boy (and, let’s face it — you’re not). Giving you refuge is in keeping with our best traditions — ones we seem to have lost touch with lately. And I think you’ll find we’re inclined to give you and Mrs. Quaid, and what some would call your wacky conspiracy theories, the benefit of the doubt.

First of all, if you’re crazy, it’s definitely craziness of the vulpine variety, as your now victorious campaign to stay here shows. But I think you’ll also find we’re more likely to believe you that there’s something fishy going on south of the border, that you might be in danger if you ended up in jail in Santa Barbara, even that there’s such a thing as star whackers. And not just because we’re pretty sure that 90% of Americans carry a gun.

We know that your country — your soon-to-be former country — is pretty messed-up right now, and has been since 9/11. That there’s a big gap down there between official reality and the real thing, and that a lot of people have a stake in making sure that gap isn’t closed. (We have similar gaps up here, but ours don’t matter nearly so much.) For all that we are much more deferential to authority in Canada, we are also less propagandized (at least for now), which means that we will not necessarily believe what we hear on FOX or MSNBC (or TMZ, for that matter). And besides, our longest-serving Prime Minister used to use ESP to communicate with his dead mother, so we’re completely down with the whole “offbeat” thing (which also explains William Shatner).

So welcome to you, Randy Quaid, and also to your resourceful wife, Evi, our prodigal daughter. Now, can I pitch you some movie ideas?

Forget Nancy Pelosi. The news that James Cameron is coming to visit the oilsands, combined with the premiere of Fubar 2 at the Toronto Film Festival last night, creates a perfect PR storm for Alberta.

Cameron (who is, of course, the successfully grandiose director of Titanic and Avatar), advised Premier Ed Stelmach in a letter received yesterday that he’ll be in the province for a three-day fact-finding trip starting September 27th. When Avatar was released last year, its story of rapacious developers vs. indigenous locals raised inevitable comparisons with Premier Ed’s big northern sandbox. Cameron called the oilsands a “black eye” on Canada’s image, and native leaders invited him to visit the area. A step behind as usual, Stelmach followed-up with his own invitation, but now that he’s been taken up on it, his spokesman says “It’s kind of short notice” and that “if it’s possible to do it, the premier would be certainly glad to meet with him for a few minutes.”

That was precisely the wrong response. The correct response would be “Yessir, Mr. Cameron. Any dietary requests for the big state dinner we’d like to throw for you?” It seems to me unlikely that Cameron is visiting out of pure intellectual interest. May I remind the Premier that the director also makes documentaries, and that in between Titanic and Avatar he produced a number of widely seen films about the ocean, precisely because all that time in the water had piqued his interest? If he now decides to turn his attention topside, to the oilsands — if, in fact, his visit is more in the nature of a location scouting trip — it won’t matter how many dollars Alberta throws into public relations campaigns defending its tar baby. It is perfectly screwed. It’s unlikely that cowtowing to Cameron will make much difference — but pissing him off almost certainly will.

As for Fubar II: it is, as aficionados of art house film will already know, the sequel to the 2002 mockumentary about a pair of beer-fisting, mullet-growing Calgary headbangers who make Bob and Doug Mckenzie look like contenders for a genius grant. (The title is an acronym for “fucked up beyond all repair”.) By a neat coincidence, the new movie has them travelling up to Fort McMurray to work on, yes, the oil sands.

 
Hm, let’s see. James Cameron sets his eyepiece on Alberta’s 4700 sq. km. “beauty” mark while a movie about its not-best and not-brightest, featuring shots of the oilsands that, according to its director, look “kind of like Blade Runner“, opens before the international press in Toronto. As they used to say in that old Milton Berle routine: Makeup!

The theory that there are only X number of plots in the world has been blamed for everything from Avatar being basically Dances With Fern Gully to the complete works of Shakespeare.  I’m going to throw more Blame logs on the Blame fire because there is talk of a Les Grossman movie.
 
Remember that time you were watching Tropic Thunder kind of by accident and it ended up being way less shitty than you’d anticipated, especially that one bit where you lost the plot entirely because you were trying to figure out who the fat, freckled actor playing Les Grossman was?  And how the shock of suddenly seeing couch-jumping, thetan-eating Tom Cruise under the bald-cap was the funniest thing about the entire scene?

If you can sustain that sense of amused shock for two hours, there’s the barest chance the Les Grossman film will be straight up your alley. I’m skeptical, though, that the Powers That Be will bother wrangling Cruise into a viable plot as well as a fat-suit.

The pervading opinion seems to be that, given the apparent dearth of fresh stories, a beloved character = a hit film.  SNL has been plying this trade for years, with greater (Wayne’s World) or lesser (MacGruber) success.  Comic book films regularly cash in on the name-brand cow, since Hulk geeks will see Hulk films no matter how bafflingly bad.  The system works, because people are more drawn to the devil they think has had some good moments than the fresh and potentially interesting devil. 

I, for one, am sick of being offered sludge and hearing But you love Indiana Jones when I don’t bite.  I will not be gimmicked by a familiar face, and I refuse to have my favorite jokes turned into shaggy-dog stories.

Megan Fox is the worst, right? I mean, girl can’t act her way out of a paper bag. Also, she hasn’t yet figured out if she wants to be sexy and inscrutable, a la Angelina Jolie, or farty and fun — like Jonah Hill, but with boobs — and all this confusion makes for some cracked-out interviews.

Her robotic acting skillz made her a natural for the Transformers franchise (DO YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE!? WITH THE ROBOTS!?), since her sole responsibility was to exude pheromones while things exploded. However, in true Megan-Fox-is-a-PR-nightmare style, she burnt her bridge last fall by comparing director Michael Bay to Hitler on-set and saying he was a horror to work for.

And that is dumb. One does not bite the hand that feeds one unless one wishes for that hand to no longer feed one. Ya dig? Fox learned this lesson the hard way when Bay booted her from the third installment of a shitty but inarguably money-making series.

Unless girl was right? Crap, you guys! What if Bay really is a movie-making Nazi? What if he actually is abusive and torturous to work for, and La Fox really did leave voluntarily. Awww, damn. Do I have to feel sorry for this wacko, and applaud her potentially-career-damaging-but-dignity-saving-maneuver? Somebody say it ain’t so.

I’m calling this one a draw. I refuse to acknowledge that Ms Fox may have made a difficult yet wise decision, but I won’t laugh at her for talking her way out of a job. Fairsies?

If last year’s film version of the musical Nine is at all true to life (and I hope that it is, as there are gratuitous tambourines) then Daniel Day-Lewis gets all the ladies.  And apparently he is good for what ails you.

Exhibit A:  Nicole Kidman.  The frozen-faced starlet has wandered vaguely about town looking all one color for the past few years, drained of both emotion and of that lovely red hair that made her so stunning in Moulin Rouge.  While proximity to The Lewis failed to resuscitate her auburn locks, it at last gave her a red-gold sheen and about four minutes of actual emoting.

Exhibit B:  Kate Hudson.  Kate Hudson looks like she would cut a bitch.  The girl’s stank-eye switch is stuck in the “on” position, but you toss her next to El Daniel and suddenly she’s all dimples and beaded fringe and kicky dance numbers.

Exhibit C:  Sophie Loren.  Marginally less weathered.

Exhibit D:  Judi Dench.  No, scrap this one.  Judi Dench is and always will be flawless.

Exhibit E:  Penelope Cruz.  Stunning and intimidatingly perfect in real life; winsome and adorably dumb as D-L’s mistress.

Exhibit F:  F is for Fergie. Her stint as Young Dannyboy’s Favorite Beach-Whore saw her lose the severe SpaceLady make-up, gain about ten pounds, and let her hair down.  Pretty!  Relaxed!  Still slutty (Beach-Whore, after all) but way less pointy!

Exhibit G:  Take one Marion Cotillard, add one Daniel D-L and stir gently.  End product: Audrey Hepburn (with one Day-Lewis, remainder). 

Conclusion:  Someone needs to bottle this man’s essence and sell it.  I mean that in the least-dirty way possible.

Sandy B clearly expected to walk home with a shiny gold man on Sunday, rocking a metallic Oscary dress and buffing her hair to a high Oscary sheen, and it comes as no surprise to the guess-makers and sayers-of-things-about-movies that she made good on her nom for Best Actress.  But as honorable a recognition as the golden KenDoll is, nothing sums up the erstwhile Miss Congeniality quite like her congenial acceptance speech at the Razzies the night before.

Sandra Bullock has always seemed nice, right?  Like you could go out for beers with her and she would lend you her shoes and tell you stories about her grandfather the rocket scientist (!) and talk you into flaming shots until you were both too drunk to sneak off with the waiter and stick the other person with the tab?  This may or may not have to do with her constantly playing characters who are exactly that person.

Because honestly, La Bull is almost completely a one-trick pony (like Hugh Grant, but winsome and clumsy instead of charming and rumpled.  Watching Two Weeks Notice was like being at the vortex of the type-cast universe).  And her Oscar win was more a Well-Careered-Actress-Has-Only-Oscar-Worthy-Role-Ever-So-If-We-Don’t-Give-Her-One-Now-She’s-Never-Getting-One-and-Come-On-Guys-She’s-Been-a-Hollywood-Staple-for-Years, because for all that The Blind Side is some two hours of tear-inducing, cockle-warming feelgoodery, no one but no one should win ANY award when they are up against Helen em-effing Mirren and Her Royal Streepness, the Meryl.

But for all that Sandra’s acceptance speech was expectedly adorable, what won my heart more by far was her SHOWING UP at the Razzies, or the Things That Blew About Film This Year awards, to pick up her Worst Actress award for the wretched All About Steve.  Her presence was a bit of a surprise — the Razzies are a fairly two-bit operation, begun by a copywriter in his house in the `80s and still joinable with a few internet clicks and a handful of dollars.  Few actors take the night off to receive their $5 golden raspberries, with good reason.

Miss Bullock not only brought her good-humored self, however, but gave as good as she got.  After gently needling the award system by suggesting that only sliiiiiightly more than half of the voters had actually seen the movie, she hauled out a wagon-load of All About Steve DVDs for everyone in attendance, claiming tongue-in-cheekily that if they just watched the film, “I mean really watch it, you know, with your eyes,“ that they’d get its magic.

I get that the Oscars are political and fairly riggy, and I doubt that Sandra was literally the Best Actress.  But if she has the good spirit to show up at a goofball awards show for kicks, then I’m more than ok with her taking also home a gold-plated doll.  I will pretend it is the award for Most Friendable.

If 2009 was The Year When All Those Famous People Died, 2010 is shaping up to be The Year of Chronic Grave-Robbing (where the “grave” is metaphorical and the “robbing” is more like “exploiting”).

Mind-bogglingly unsubtle fame-whore and living manga doll Tila Tequila (who is famous solely for throwing herself repeatedly and frantically into the public eye) made no secret of her epic grief when her fiancee Casey Johnson passed away in January, which was Actually Really Sad. However,  Tila didn’t allow her overwhelming sorrow to halt her manic twittering, mud-slinging, and spotlight-hogging, and now that the buzz has died down she is poking the hornet’s nest once more by crying “Fetus!”

And I’m no one to throw sunshine at someone else’s grief parade, but now Tequila is all, This baby, that I am totally not lying about brewing currently (even though I have in the past lied about just such a thing, and with far less reason), this baby was supposed to be my baby with Casey, who I know I only knew for like, three weeks, but who I TOTALLY LOVED, and was totally sad about . . . and also still am.  *smiles to camera, slips nip*  Also, I will totally not tell you who the father is, but it is someone “known” and in the “Entertainment Industry” and I will continue to drop hints until your attention wanes, at which point I will probably just tell you.

And while I want to feel for La Tequila and her (probably non-existent) child, when I hear things like this (admittedly paraphrased) monologue, any kernel of sympathy I may have had dries up into . . . something that is drier than a kernel, anyways.  Coal?

Tila can perhaps be forgiven, since she is only being exactly what the industry has rewarded her for being.  Closer on the spectrum to Actual Doucheyness is Brittany Murphy’s husband, Simon Monjack.  Monjack is suing Warner Brothers for dropping his wife from the film Happy Feet, claiming that losing the gig is what caused Murphy’s heart attack in December (not, you know, drugs, or being really really skinny) and suing WB for wrongful death.  Because they should have known this would do her in?  Because they are responsible for her health and well-being?

Leaving aside the fact that Murphy’s death (like Johnson’s) was Actually Really Sad, as well as the fact that Murphy had not yet signed a contract for the cartoon and could therefore not technically be fired, this is pure crazy talk.  Hollywood can no more be responsible for the fate of the stars it chooses not to employ than I can be for the fate of all the cheeseburgers I choose not to eat.  This completely non-sense-making law suit is either a grief-crazed man lashing out, or a thinly-disguised money grab.

Either way, it has to stop.  It is one (admittedly despicable) thing for ambulance chasers and paparazzi to use public tragedy for their own ends.  They, at least, are up front about their motivation.  It is another thing entirely for loved ones of the Famous Dead to cash in on their affection.  Their grief is understandable; their shameless self-serving is reprehensible.

This will come as a surprise to exactly no one, but Avatar is hella awesome. I know! Breaking news, right? But despite its fancy director and budget and cast (Sigourney! Weaver!), Avatar is actually something of an underdog.

I mean, think of ALL THE THINGS about it that are stupid! It’s essentially Dances with Wolves re-imagined with blue, feliney Yao Mings! In space! 67% of the dialogue is ham-fisted voice-over! The unobtainable metal is called . . . “unobtanium” (with, granted, a stupefying but verisimilitudinous lack of imagination. See real-life examples: Californium and Einsteinium)! 

THIS IS ITS TEASER TRAILER!!!:

Remember when that came out? And the intranets were agog with WTFs and OMGs and LOL y are thoze ppl naked n blue!?!? How hard did you think Avatar was going to suck, and how much were you not going to see it (or maybe going to see it with a bunch of friends drunk at the cheap theaters, and then make fun of it later)? SO MUCH, right?

But that is part of the marketing genius, because you were wrong, bitchez! You are going to see it, and you will see it sober and you will pay top-dollar to see it in 3D and you will wait in line outside the theater for two hours weeks after opening day just so you don’t get front-row-neck-breaky seats. You will marvel at the Planet-Earth-goes-clubbing scenery, you will want your own fluorescently tie-dyed bat-bird, you will weep when (here be spoilers) that Really Important Tree a-splodes. You will luv eet, and you will luv eet ALL THE MORE because of how much you thought you were going to steal its lunch money and push it down the stairs.

Damn you, James Cameron, you’ve done it again. You’ve taken something that should be idiotic (at the end of this three-hour movie, everyone will drown, but the audience will know that going in because it is a Major Historical Event) and voodoo’d it into something sort of rad. I tip the hat.