Now that Kevin Costner has up and left Django Unchained  for assuredly suckier shores, Johnson has swooped in and claimed the role Waterworld was previously holding down.

edit: Johnny Hall correctly points out to my dumb ass that Johnson isn’t taking  Costner’s role. -1 to close reading for me.

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Busy, but not too busy to prevent me from posting a venue for wanking off to/hating on the trailer for The Avengers. Me? It’s like every fantasy made (digital) celluloid.

Hit the jump to check it out.

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This here is the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE, the spot where I explain what I’ll be up to in the following days. We all hate the workweek, so let’s share what we do to get through it. Kinship. Solidarity. Pizza?

After you check out my basket of goodies, show off the wares you’ll use to ward off the stress of daily livin’.

Let’s rock!

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Stop me if you’ve heard this story before. An idealistic asshole takes up a campaign only to be ground down into a scabby, hateful douchebag of malaise. It’s a trope as old as dirt, as desiccated as the political foundation that it ridiculous. This is the tale of Ides of March, a tale that succeeds partly because of the truthfulness of the tale. Partly because of the excellent acting. Mostly because it’s a gorgeous proxy for the viewer to nod their head to, leaving the theater commenting on “how true it is”, vicariously critiquing the state of things for a moment before going home to reality television, saccharine sweets and processed cheese products.

It lets us vent our angst at the bullshit that is our sociocultural predicament before going on with our lives.

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[OCTOBERFEAST is the greatest celebration of the year, a revelry dedicated to pop-culture’s most nutritious Halloween detritus. Plastic screams and artificial sweeteners have never been more bountiful. In the old country, villagers refer to the extended party as Satan’s Snacktime]

Mythology is a facet of human existence that is simply unfettered by the constraints of space and time. With its archetypal structures firmly embedded within the collective unconscious, mythology is both prehistoric and ever-persistent. Heroes and villains. Tragedies and triumphs. Narratives will always be around, adapting accordingly and continuing to provide guidelines for livin’.

The messiah is Jesus is Neo. The sage is Virgil is Ben Kenobi. The bildungsroman is Holden’s excursion into NYC.

You get the point.

Operating under the presumption of narrative omnipresence, it becomes clear who can be credited as the most dastardly of villains. While dark forces work against every era, there are also those especially evil forces that’re willing to plague innocent folk across the epochs. These overachievers traverse space and time, doing their best to snub out the dwindling flicker that is human benevolence at every vulnerable moment.

Of all the malignant space-pirates floating around the universal ether, and there’s no shortage of `em, one is a notch above. This is a man whose powers allow him not only to travel through time, but to stave off death in a manner impossible for mere mortals. Yes, this is a man who upon being killed (which required he be shot, stabbed, hung, stretched, disemboweled, and then drawn and quartered) remarked, “Death is but a door. Time is but a window. I’ll be back.”

So, if you would, all of the OCTOBERFEAST celebrants are asked to please give a warm welcome to a magician who needs no introduction but will get one anyways. A man who almost ruined NYC’s 1989 New Year’s Eve festivities. A fellow who almost killed Bill Murray.

The one. The only. Vigo the Carpathian.

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There’s some new set-photos out of the Superman filming camp. Nothing too spoilery, though it does have our Clark Kent looking a bit rough around the edges.

Potential spoilers beyond the jump!

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There’s three new photos of the Avengers, the most tasty of which shows Cobie Smulders getting her Maria Hill on.

Behind the jump, folks!

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Matthew Vaughn ripped it up this summer with X-Men: First Class, and his hankering for comic book adaptations hasn’t subsided. He’ll be adapted Mark Millar’s pretty uninspired and schlocky Superior  next. (Yeah, fuck you Millar.)

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Yo, fuck  Cillian Murphy. The greatest actor of all time almost played the Scarecrow in  Schumacher’s third Batman flick. Can you only image the utter insanity that would have been a Cage-powered Scarecrow? An insane man with hallucinations playing an insane man who induces hallucinations.

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Steven Spielberg is a master filmmaker. At times, he is also an erratic one. Not in terms of quality (which, on the whole, is consistently good to great), but in terms of output. For most years, when he isn’t producing up a storm and making bundles of money off of the movies, he pumps out about one film every year or two. But then, every so often, he ends up taking a break from directing before bursting back onto the scene with two movies together–and both are usually very different, in terms of commercial and Oscar-gold potential. In 93, he came out firing with an absurd (and absurdly great) combo: Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List. In 97 (after a few years off after the aforementioned combo), he gave the world a sequel to the dino-spectacular, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and Amistad, a movie chronicling the legendary slave rebellion and Supreme Court case. 2002 brought us Minority Report and Catch Me If You Can (though this duo muddies the water a bit because both are pretty damn commercial.) Then in 2005, he nearly obliterated the human race with War of the Worlds before turning his eye towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Munich.

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