Hope your sitting down AND buckled up because the first trailer for next year’s Fast & Furious is online. Yesterday, Caffeine Powered posted on my Facebook the homoerotic promo photo of Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel staring each other down. Just when I thought I recovered from that testosterone sandwich, they release the first trailer. Boom! Not only are Vin Diesel and Paul Walker back once again, but Tyrese and Ludacris are up in this bitch as well. I hope they make Tyrese eat everything in sight again, like in the second one.

The movie is officially title Fast Five, which kinda sucks. Let’s brainstorm other titles so I can avoid writing any actual insight on the trailer. Hmmm…5ast & 5urious. Too edgy? How about Fast & Furious V: Axe Body Spray. Nah, too commercial. I give up. This is still gearing up to be the best worst movie of 2011. With NoS.

Update: Deadline confirms Favreau’s departure. Balls.

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Thar be reports pouring out that Jon Favreau isn’t going to direct Iron Man 3. This isn’t an enormous surprise. Both Favreau and Downey Jr. didn’t like the Iron Man 2 script, and felt it was rushed out. As well, Marvel has been developing a reputation for being cheap as fuck, and Favreau may have been/may be anticipating getting low balled. And now there are reports that he has informed Marvel that he shan’t be returning for the third movie.

But still, fucking shit. Favreau’s a talented son of a bitch, and he clearly gets Iron Man.

Over at Slashfilm, they point out that Favreau was even recently wavering on the topic:

Vulture first reported the news of Favreau’s apparently (sic) departure from the Iron Man franchise. He spoke about the third film at length just last week and you can read our report here. The video, from MTV, is below and in it, you’ll hear Favreau talking about his uncertainty concerning Iron Man 3.

Slash then links to a transcript of said conversation:

Kevin Feige, who’s been involved with superhero movies with Marvel movies since the X-Men films, is very aware of his path and how to weave [things together], so in theory, ‘Iron Man 3? is going to be a sequel or continuation of ‘Thor,’ ‘Hulk,’ ‘Captain America’ and ‘Avengers’… This whole world… I have no idea what it is. I don’t think they do either, from conversations I’ve had with those guys.

Balls. I’m getting frustrated with Marvel’s insistence on lowballing directors and rushing bullshit out. When you have a winning director, let them do their own thing with the franchise. Trust me. Maybe Iron Man 2 would have been more than decent but forgettable if Favreau had been able to work at his own speed.

Ask DC about it? Clearly letting Nolan rock out for a bit and then return invigorated to a franchise has worked.

December, and the winter smiles upon us. Its dark bitter smile. Unless you’re one of those fuckers blessed with place of residence that keeps the climate balmy. For the rest of us? Let us escape into the panels, dialogue bubbles, and yes, even the occasional splash page to escape. Ah, escape. Much like I’m escaping into this list of comics that caught my eye this week, to abstain from writing a term paper.

Grab my hand and let’s fly.

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Strange Tales #3
The final issue of the second volume of Strange Tales comes out this week. Just buy this comic book, okay? It’s a collection of indie artists spinning their own unique take on the Marvel characters you’ve come to know. And love. And probably, to an extent, become apathetic to. I don’t usually say this, but even if it’s shitty, it’s probably worth buying. Show some love, so Marvel continues to allow some outside voices to spout off on the characters.

Consider it a dorky political move.

It doesn’t hurt that the comics themselves are generally well done. Some clunkers, but even then, they’re trying. I sound like a little league coach.

Onwards.

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This is fucking marvelous. An entire hemisphere of the sun explodes which then ignites another region. According to io9, this was an event previously thought impossible:

In this ultraviolet light video taken by NASA, you can watch a phenomenon that scientists didn’t believe could exist until a few months ago. An entire hemisphere of the sun explodes, one region igniting another. What does this discovery mean?

It turns out that the sun doesn’t just spurt out gouts of gas in isolated spots. In fact, our star’s magnetic field brings many regions of Sol’s surface into direct relationships with each other, so areas separated by millions of miles can literally spark each other up. The results are called “sympathetic flares.”

G’damn amazing. Hit the jump to watch the explosion in action.

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Max Headroom is one of the most bizarre creations imported to American television in our lifetime. He poked his unholy prosthetic head onto Cinemax in 1986 by way of British TV and quickly began stuttering his way to stardom. Headroom (played by Matt Frewer – who portrayed Moloch in Watchmen) actually has a pretty sweet backstory. I barely remembered what he was all about, but after watching his awesome Christmas special I did some Wiki research. It’s like the best cyberpunk tale never written by William Gibson:

The film introduces Edison Carter (Matt Frewer), a television reporter trying to expose corruption and greed. In the movie, reporter Carter discovers that his employer, Network 23, has created a new form of subliminal advertising (termed “blip-verts”) that can be fatal to certain viewers.

While attempting to flee the network headquarters with proof, Edison suffers a serious head injury, caused by striking a low-clearance sign labeled “Max. Headroom”. Believing him killed, the network’s chief executive orders Bryce Lynch, an adolescent genius working as a scientist for Network 23, to digitally record Carter’s mind. The recording will then be used to create a computer-based replacement for Carter in order to hide his death.

It only gets b-b-better, folks, and I’ll tie this all into Christmas after the break!

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Found this today over at Aesthetically Pleezin, and I gotta be honest with you folks. I couldn’t make it through this entire video. Anyone who knows me, knows that I’m excitable. Like, really. When something gets me pumped up, I begin running around and smiling and acting like a general tardanite. So when I watched this video I began tweaking, and losing my shit.

Uncharted 3. On Jimmy Fallon. This game is going to fucking own my soul.

Hit the jump for the video. Try and not tweak, I got that shit covered for both of us.

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Yesterday, news broke that “doctors who carried out a stem cell transplant on an HIV-infected man with leukaemia in 2007 say they now believe the man to have been cured of HIV infection as a result of the treatment, which introduced stem cells which happened to be resistant to HIV infection.”

This story is awesome, and while it may not be true and the science may as usual be unverified and/or prone to later retraction, let’s just be positive for a moment. There’s usual scientist speak throughout the couple of articles I’ve tracked down about it. You know, the “probably” and “strongly” and “may have”, but let’s just be positive.

Word?

The findings came about when “Timothy Ray Brown, also known as the “Berlin Patient,” received the transplant in 2007 as part of a lengthy treatment course for leukaemia. His doctors recently published a report in the journal Blood affirming that the results of extensive testing “strongly suggest that cure of HIV infection has been achieved.”

Fantastic, no? Even if it’s temporary, or something, or the such? Hope springs eternal. Call me an optimist, I find this awesome.

There’re twelve days until Christmas, the holiday in which we celebrate the birth of a God by telling kids that if they’re assholes all year a fat burglar is going to put coal in their socks. Makes sense. Anyways, there are no doubt fools in our ranks who want the next eleven days to fly by so that they can collect their Christmas goodies. But to that, I say Bah humbug!

We are now in the thick of the best part of the holiday season. We’re close enough to the summit to actually begin enjoying the ascent, but don’t have to start thinking about the dreadful descent. The holidays are making out, baby, and with the shirts being taken off the post-coitus regret isn’t even a consideration.

So put on an ugly sweater, drink some eggnog, and grab the ass of the one who catches your eye.

And while you do that, let me tell you about my upcoming week. After all, Monday Morning Commute is my chance to tell you what I’ve got planned for the next few days. If you’re feeling bold, hit the comments and tell me what you’ll be doing.

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More pictures of the designs behind Tim Burton’s mercifully aborted Superman movie have leaked out. Sometimes you’re like “it’s a shame this project never got off the ground.” But in this case you’re like “Thank god someone took this behind the wood shed, shot it, buried the ashes, and swore to stab anyone who muttered about its existence.”

I will say this, the artwork is cool. I don’t think it fits the Superman mythos I’d like to see executed, but it’s nice. The outfit? Still barf-covered infected fetus.

Hit the jump for more asstacular designs.

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My name is Ian Drinkwater. I am not a remarkable human being. The older I get, the more I accept this. However, being unremarkable, I often think of ways to temporarily boost my self-esteem. A couple of weeks ago, I decided that I needed to complete a Test of Strength (Fat Ass Consumption.)

Being a calorie junkie bent on obesity, combated only by trips to the gym, I decided that I could eat two diner specials from a local joint my band of pederasts, perverts, and horrified girlfriends occasionally visit. What exactly is a diner special? I’m glad you asked. Here’s a video of Pederast Extreme, coder and funder of Omega Level, Senor Poppycock Gravel Dick explaining it. (Sorry dude, this video is going up.)

I decided the only way to justify my continued existence was to eat two of these. The idea was borne from a trip to the diner a couple of weeks ago, when I cleaned up one special, and proceeded to eat half of Poppycock’s. It seemed easy.

It was not.

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