Red Right Hand

BUSY. VERY BUSY. HERE... WATCH THIS.

2009-11-10T09:48:00.000-08:00

EVIL IS AFOOT

2009-11-02T13:16:00.000-08:00

Principal photography has gotten underway. Logo is designed. Theme(s) being composed. Other stuff...has not been done yet. The virtual sets, for instance. Oh, yes. Weirdness is part and parcel of the plan. A plan that is sheer elegance in it's simpl-- Umm.

Anyway, reports from the set have things progressing very well. Loss of the light forced some rescheduling, but still, a lot was accomplished. And thanks to our expert crew of volunteers, including Dave. That was a nice surprise.

Still, certain other crew members are being sought for the latter part of the shoot. Particularly, anyone with experience in lighting with green screens. Contact me at the address in the right sidebar (or in the comments) and I'll put you through to our esteemed director.

RETURN OF CAPTAIN TIGHTPANTS

2009-10-30T07:35:00.000-07:00

In case you missed these few seconds of shiny.

And it was just the beginning of the geeks reference bonanza...

MAYBE JUST A LITTLE BLEACH

2009-10-28T10:52:00.001-07:00

I noted that White Collar did pretty well last week. USA owns Fridays pretty consistently, so not entirely a surprise.

I also noted that I quite liked it.

I also noted some people who don't get the core concept behind pretty much any USA show. They are fun. And those "some people" just took the show much more seriously than the show takes itself.

There was one point consistently made. That the prison break was unbelievable. And it was. It had holes you could drive a prison transpo bus through. When I watched it, I was happy to overlook it, but there's a part of me that tends to think "why do I need to overlook it?"

Would it be so hard to have simply written a jail break that could withstand a little more scrutiny than a cursory glance.

The facts as they were:

Awesome criminal dude Neal Caffrey broke out of a Super Max prison by shaving his beard while hiding in a staff bathroom and putting on an incomplete guard uniform that he ordered on the internet. He restriped a key card using the record head on a tape recorder. He walked out the front door.

It's important because it shows Neal's intelligence and ingenuity. The record head thing...I don't know if it works, I don't care. It sounds good. If I were writing it, though, I'd probably feel compelled to research illicit methods of restriping* and maybe try to do it myself. Fun for me, but sucking the fun out of the script.

My problem is the beard, which he'd only had for a matter of weeks and the internet guard uniform order. Also, the prison depicted is very considerably nothing like a Super Max. Not even in the same cell block.

So no one was supposed to remember what Neal looked like before he grew his thin, scraggly beard? And the Super Max, of all prisons, is the only one that doesn't open the inmates' packages?

As a criminal genius, how hard would it have been for him to maybe concoct some kind of hair dye MacGyver style and perhaps even create one of the cop mustaches that law enforcement types have out of stuff scavanged from the barber shop? He could even change his skin tone with some kind of goop he made with common prisonhold materials...and internet research, if you like. That's much more likely to actually work than relying on the guards looking him right in the face and not remembering that he looked like that two months ago.

And I'll believe that he managed to get into the locker room or bribe/blackmail a guard before the whole internet order thing.

You still get the ingenuity and the cool factor of walking out the front door. And you can do it in the same space of time that the original escape was depicted in.

Also, I think I'd avoid further examination as to the plausibility of such an escape by not actually mentioning the security level of the prison in question (especially if the location doesn't match the concept). That just invites skepticism.

All I'm saying is I hate it when shows cut corners when they really don't have to. Why open yourself to criticism. Especially in a pilot, the only episode not written in the crunch of a season full of production.

All this is a minor detail. As I said, it's a fun show. I like the characters. I like the It Takes A Thief premise. I'll be watching it every week...right after I watch Dollhouse.

* I'm probably going to do that anyway.

FRninGE

2009-10-22T08:42:00.000-07:00

A lovely collision of two of my favorite things: Nine Inch Nails and weird television. Mister Reznor has recorded a special version of "Zero Sum" from his concept album Year Zero (which in itself has been on a slow track at becoming weird television) for a Fringe promo.

Not just that, but the rewritten lyrics are actually lines of William Bell's. Nimoy/Reznor mashup for the win!

Wait, it gets better...if you're as geeky as me. When Year Zero was first coming out, there was a big ARG (which I've previously written about here) and part of it was leaking the songs prior to release. If you ran the noise bursts at the end of the songs through a spectrograph, it would reveal images relating to the storyline. Thus has Reznor been up to his sneakiness by embedding a Fringe glyph into the new version. As I don't imagine mast people have access to spectrothingy software, it is included below.

Pretty.

Lastly,...

From EW:

After Fox’s marketing department showed the Fringe producers a version of the promo that used “Zero-Sum,” series exec producer Jeff Pinkner simply asked a nearby Reznor acquaintance - that’d be co-creator J.J. Abrams - if the NIN musician might be interested in a collaboration. One email later, Reznor was on the case. “We offered him compensation, and he said, ‘No, no, I just want to have fun and be part of something cool,’” says Pinkner, adding: “How often do you get the chance to work with somebody like that?”

Yeah, so...umm...how can I get word to Reznor that I need a 15-30 second theme song for the Mastermind web series (which should be going into production within the next week and a half or so, barring swine flu, water main breakage and random mutation). No compensation, but it's something fun and cool.

MASTERMIND SCREENPLAY - PAGE 14

2009-10-21T08:51:00.000-07:00

EXT. SKANKYTOWN - DAY
A big concrete block of a strip joint. Sign promises sports television and an all-you-can-eat lunch buffet.
INT. SKANKYTOWN - DAY
Sparsely populated with somewhat icky PATRONS and the STRIPPERS not good enough for the night shifts. Delgado sits at the stage eating lunch, staring up at either the a stripper with track marks or at the Cubs/Dodgers game. Possibly both.
BRAD (O.S.)
If you were anybody else, I’d say you were a rude, stuck-up asshole.
DELGADO
I am.
BRAD (30s, FBI poster boy) takes a seat beside Delgado.
BRAD
We were having cake. Big “Congrats, Brad” on it and you walk out and come here. Real d-bag move, Tony.
Delgado nods. He takes out a fold of singles. Delgado reaches out and pushes it down.
DELGADO
Don’t. Then she’ll never leave.
Brad takes the advice.
BRAD
You think it should have been you getting the A.D. gig instead getting this close to a four-bagger?
Holds his fingers imperceptibly close together.
DELGADO
Don’t you?
BRAD
Yeah. I do. Mastermind aside, you are one bad-ass G-man.
Brad snags a french fry.
BRAD (CONT’D)
Them using that Mastermind crap against you, that was bullshit.
DELGADO
They said I was casting a bad light on the Bureau. That I basically planned the Lavulite job for him. That I failed to-- Masterschmuck saved me from his bomb because he thinks it’s better to have me chase him than not.
BRAD
None of the rest of us could even keep up with that comic-book reject.
(bites off some fry)
Oh my God, this...really good.
DELGADO
I don’t come here for the talent.

DISTURBING

2009-10-16T07:14:00.001-07:00

GOODNESS GRACIOUS

2009-10-10T07:59:00.000-07:00

DOLLHOUSE: "Belle Chose"

Written by Tim Minear

Production Script

here

WHERE THE TRUTH LIES

2009-10-05T00:22:00.000-07:00

Consider these poorly thought out comparisons.

NOTE TO COMIC GEEKS: Well be using the classically remembered version of Superman, not Superman as he exactly is today, married to Lois and having had his origin retconned every five years for the last two and a half decades.

Baby Kal-El was rocketed from Krypton and his dead parents and landed in a rurual area and raised by the people that lived there. Baby Don Draper was raced from his dead parent to a rural area and raised by the people who live there.

Clark Kent lives has a secret identity. Don Draper has a secret identity.

Both have alliterative names.

Both are dishonest with their women.

Supes is weakened by Kryptonite and cannot see through lead. Don is weakened by drugs and cannot see past pussy.

Clark can leap tall buildings. Don does this:

And Jon Hamm would make a kick ass Superman.

And Warners, letting anyone other than Grant Morrison write the next movie is autofail. All-Star Superman is exhibit A. It's the only workable update of Superman into the modern world without having to jettison who and what Superman is in the process. Which is exactly what every director who's come in contact with the character in the last 15 years has said before fucking it up (either on film or thankfully before it got on film).

SICK AS A SWINE

2009-10-01T08:34:00.000-07:00

The past week, phlegm has been backed up into my brain. A most unwelcome congestion (though I'm hard-pressed to think of a welcome congestion, in fact I'm hard-pressed to think at all).

I will now do nothing but simply list everything I've watched in my delapidated state (not including freshly aired new stuff (i.e. Flash Forward, Glee, Good Wife, etc. - I watched all that too, some of it twice or more) just the DVDs).

Dollhouse

Man On The Street
Echoes
Needs
Spy in the House of Love
Haunted
Briar Rose
Omega
Epitaph One

Homicide: Life on the Street ( I suppose I was on a little Reed Diamond kick)

Kellerman, P.I. (1)
Kellerman, P.I. (2)
Shades of Gray
Bones of Contention
The Same Coin
Homicide.com
A Case of Do or Die
Sideshow (2)

The Middleman

The Pilot Episode Sanction
The Accidental Occidental Conception
The Sino-Mexican Revelation
The Manicoid Teleportation Conundrum

Doctor Who

The Deadly Assassin

Dexter

It's Alive!
Waiting to Exhale
An Inconvenient Lie
See-Through
The Dark Defender

WRITERS DANGLING OFF THE EDGE OF THE VERGE

2009-09-22T15:00:00.000-07:00

And now I will speak of this...

This year I made it out of the pile for the NBC Writers on the Verge program. I had sent in my Mad Men spec. It was a kinda random choice. That spec is getting a little old and I'd been concentrating so much on other things that my spec pile as a whole was/is getting a little dusty. Of ABC/D, WB and NBC, I wound up sending each place a different spec. And WotV got this one.

There was the phone call on a rather lazy Monday. Jolted from bed, I was, in point of fact. Certainly one of my more preferred ways to begin a week.

Then, there was the interviewing. I hate the interviewing. Whenever these things don't pan out, I tend to blame the interviewing (whether accurate or not, and I'll never really know). Surely enough, twenty seconds after the point of too late is when I realize there were two or three things I should have/wanted to get in there and failed to do so.

There was the waiting. There was the trying not to think about it. There was the inevitable thinking about it. I didn't even want to tell anyone, because that led to the thinking about it.

Then, today, there was the not-getting-it.

Now I need to figure out what I'm going to submit next year. Then write it.

So instead of accepting congratulations and curses, I open the comments to condolences...and curses. There are pretty much always curses.

THAT'S NOT HUGH LAURIE IN THAT PICTURE...

2009-09-15T17:14:00.000-07:00

Nor is it Robert Sean Leonard. I do not understand.

THAT AUSLANDER, HE"S ONE COLD SUMNABITCH

2009-09-15T06:53:00.000-07:00

...largely because the latest adventure of the Austrian Avenger takes place partially in a meat locker.

The latest issue of Astonishing Adventures is now available, both online and in print. And it's my understanding that there is a special incentive to get your pulp in literal pulp form. This month's print edition includes an audio adventures by John Donald Carlucci and voiced by "vocal jihadist" Robert Page.

And, of course, as usual, a new adventure of The Auslander, written by me. This time around, the Fightin' Foreigner uncovers black marketeers and their dastardly plan!

Open publication - Free publishing - More pulp

"RUINER"

2009-09-11T10:55:00.000-07:00

nine inch nails
the last show
los angeles, ca
9.10.09

shot on my first gen flip video

---

The final show of Nine Inch Nails as a live, touring entity was also the longest NIN show ever, running over three and a half hours with a 37 song set list.

Featured guests included avant garde pianist Mike Garson, Gary Numan, Atticus Ross, Dave Navarro (who originally performed on a remix version of "Piggy" 15 years ago and performed that version tonight), and the whole of Dillinger Escape Plan (who demolished a significant portion of their gear).

Before "The Day The World Went Away," Reznor thanked his band and various crew, then stopped the opening of the song twice to thank more crew in different parts of the venue.

"Home"
"Somewhat Damaged"
"The Collector"
"Discipline"
"March Of The Pigs"
"Something I Can Never Have"
"The Frail"
"The Wretched"
"Ruiner"
"Head Down"
"Burn"
"Just Like You Imagined" (featuring Mike Garson)
"La Mer" (featuring Mike Garson)
"Eraser" (featuring Mike Garson)
"The Becoming" (featuring Mike Garson)
Mike Garson extended piece
"Down In The Park" (featuring Gary Numan, Mike Garson)
"Metal" (featuring Gary Numan, Mike Garson)
"I Die: You Die" (featuring Gary Numan, Mike Garson)
"1,000,000"
"Letting You"
"Survivalism"
"Suck"
"Down In It"
"The Hand That Feeds"
"Head Like A Hole"

lights down

"Me, I'm Not" (featuring Atticus Ross)
"The Warning" (featuring Atticus Ross and Dave Navarro)
"Piggy (Nothing Can Stop Me Now)" (featuring Atticus Ross and Dave Navarro)
"Gave Up" (featuring Dave Navarro)

lights down

"Mr. Self Destruct" (Dillinger Escape Plan)
"Wish" (featuring Dillinger Escape Plan)

lights down

"Atmosphere"
"Dead Souls"
"The Good Soldier"
"The Day The World Went Away"
"Hurt"
"In This Twilight"

And I hung out in line with some filmmakers/actors/editors. The one guy I spent a lot of time talking to (about The Prisoner, among other things) was familiar looking to me and his name was familiar, but I couldn't place him. With the amount of TV I watch, it could have been from any number of shows he'd mentioned having done recently. Turns out, it was because he was Kyle from three seasons of Roswell.

THIS PLEASES ME LIKE A GREAT PLEASING THING

2009-09-09T12:15:00.000-07:00

From The Guardian UK:

Richard Curtis, the creator of Blackadder and driving force behind Comic Relief, is to write an episode of Doctor Who.
Curtis, whose film credits include Notting Hill, Love Actually and Four Weddings and a Funeral, will write one of the episodes starring the new doctor, Matt Smith. Filming began on the new fifth series of Doctor Who, which will air next year, around six weeks ago.

The most important credit is, of course, Blackadder.

SCREENPLAY FIRST DRAFT - DONE

2009-09-08T03:30:00.000-07:00

brain fry.

THE PLAN - FALL '09

2009-09-08T03:03:00.000-07:00

MONDAYS
House
Trauma*
Lie to Me**
Castle
Big Bang Theory (occasionally)

TUESDAY
The Good Wife***
Sons of Anarchy
Warehouse 13

WEDNESDAY
Glee
Eastwick***

THURSDAY
Flash Forward****
Fringe
The Office
30 Rock
Archer

FRIDAY
Dollhouse
Southland
White Collar*
Stargate Universe (maybe, cuz I am not a fan of any other Stargate. I'll give this one a shot)

SATURDAY
Nothing.

SUNDAY
Mad Men
Dexter

*Read the pilot, will probably stay with it.

**Will try it out now that Shawn Ryan's running the show. Wasn't thrilled with the first season.

***Didn't read the pilot script, will give it a try.

****DID read the pilot script, plan on being hooked.

EVERYBODY TOTALLY F@#%ING LIES

2009-09-03T09:18:00.000-07:00

The real job is crushing me like a great crushing thing (now with Crushometrics™). Have been rewatching House S5 before passing out. The scaling back of Cameron in the last couple of seasons means I've been missing this. If the show were like this, I'd watch it 27 hours a day.

Eventually there will be my thoughts on network branding, and there will be another thing to talk about before the end of the month. Preserving keystrokes for the last act of the screenplay, then back to the tv stuffs.

HURRICANE MASTERMIND NOW JUST A TROPICAL DEPRESSION

2009-08-24T08:58:00.000-07:00

...but it could build in strength back to a category one.

Last night was the close of Hurricane Season at the Eclectic Company Theatre, of which Mastermind was a part. After the show, there was the presentation of the judged awards as well as audience awards. Mastermind was honored with Audience Awards for Best Actor (Brad Wilcox) and Best Playwriting.

I am proud that we won the awards we did tonight. Michael wrote a play worthy of Joss Whedon that had both clever, brilliantly funny dialog as well as deep, complicated personal relationship issues. He gave us plenty to play with!
-Susan Lee, director

I'll be cutting her a check forthwith.

Hurricane Season is an annual playwriting competition/festival at ECT. This year, nine plays were chosen out of more than 100. Mastermind was selected as one of the top six best plays and was sent (with the other five) to an outside panel of judges to select the top three. They didn't pick Mastermind.

The juried winner was Spoken For a delightful, creative and funny piece, by S.L. Daniels, set in a world where the affluent can hire people to speak for them, affording them the luxury of being inarticulate, grunting single words and having it translated into coherent thoughts. In this case, it's about two speakers (one very good at their job, one not so much) and the rock stars their work for and fall in love with.

COOL STUFF BY PEOPLE I KNOW: THE WOMEN OF MASTERMIND

2009-08-19T08:42:00.000-07:00

Here's some stuff by the women who worked on the productions of Mastermind that have gone up this year (so far). This is what they're doing now and that you should endeavor to check 'em out.

MANUSCRIPT - KATHARINE BRANDT
Mastermind - Liz

Katharine originated the role of Liz in the premiere production of Mastermind, the one-night only show last April.

You can distinguish her in the photo by her being the one that is a her.

Katherine is one of the principals of Tall Blonde Productions, and not jsut for being a tall blonde, so that makes her both star and co-producer.

She told me of her plans to bring this play (herein lies a review of its Broadway run) to LA for its west coast premiere back when we in rehearsals for Mastermind. I was immediately intrigued by this tale of deception by people a little too clever for their own good. Aside from that, Katharine is a hellishly good actress, so I'm totally checking this out. Click the pix for tix.

GROSS INDECENCY - SUSAN LEE & BETH RICKETSON
Mastermind - Director & Mastermind - Liz

Susan took Mastermind and really made it her own in its recent run at the Eclectic Company Theatre. Now, at said theatre of which she is a company member, she's directing Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde. With her keen eye and ability to reach into a piece and pull out the emotions buried within combined with the fact that that Oscar dude was wild, this should be a party (like it's 1899).

Also, it was written by Moises Kaufman, who's five kinds of hot these days. His 33 Variations was all over the last Tony Awards and he's prehaps best known as the writer behind The Laramie Project.

Featured in the cast is Beth Ricketson, who also played Liz. Another excellent actress who has a fantastic and piercing stage presence.

I'll be hitting this one as well. September should be a good month for live theatre. Again, click pix tix.

GRAND MOFF ROUNDTABLE

2009-08-17T07:51:00.000-07:00

A little dated. A little fanboy, but inbetween that there's some good bits on writing and general television.

I ONCE SOLD TOM MORELLO A COPY OF ESSENTIAL IRON MAN VOL. 1

2009-08-15T08:47:00.000-07:00

I think it was Vol. 1.

THINGS IN MY BRAIN

2009-08-10T08:35:00.000-07:00

Halfway through a full-on screenplay. Not a teleplay. A screenplay. The management team...~~Team Sullivan~~...yeah they don't really say that, but I'm not opposed to it...they want a screenplay to flog. I've been reluctant. I don't think that way. Never quite had the right idea that could be done in that form, but now I do. As for it's marketability...I don't think about the market, but there might be some confusion when it goes into the Hollywood sorting hat. It's weird how sometimes it seems that TV shows can be more difficult to categorize (thought it faces the network brand issue (I'll have a post about that eventually) but films it seems have to fit into more rigidly shaped holes, despite that they exist in and of themselves, not as part of a programming block.

Rewriting the Fringe spec based on some really awesome notes in the in-between spaces of the screenplay. Though the screenplay is flowing well enough that there haven't been a lot of those. Whatever still needs doing after first draft will be done, to clear the screenplay from my head before a draft review.

The Area ~~FiveThree~~ Four pilot lies in wait. Not a priority at this time, letting the draft sit for a while.

Some other pilot season action may be afoot. That's all I'll say of that.

Hit a lot of TV commentaries of late. The Leverage commentaries work on a number of levels, the writing approach, lots of tech discussion as well, but there's always someone in the commentary who sounds like there weren't enough mics t go around. Dollhouse commentaries are also great, as any with Joss Whedon are. He's entertaining and informative and open about network issues. Wish they'd taken some time to do Torchwood commentaries for Children of Earth. Still on the docket: The Middleman, Mad Men 2, Pushing Daisies 2.

Came up with a wicked Dollhouse spec idea. That I'll probably never write. I don't think it's a productive use of writing energy to execute a spec that has a low probability of being read. Though it's worth noting that about 75% of execs I met with last staffing season watched it, but there was the Fox one...and the clearly geek one...and the one that revealed herself as closet geek...so probably a spread a bit off the standard deviation. And the thing about Dollhouse is it's such a unique concept, I don't think my idea will ever translate to anything else anywhere else, though it isn't dependent on specific characters.

Checked out Callan. An ops series from Great Britain circa 1970. Clearly a precursor to the likes of La Femme Nikita or the Sandbaggers. Starring Edward Woodward. Not bad. Drawback, you basically have to start with the third season because most of the first seasons just don't exist anymore. Thanks for the recommendation on that, Mad Pulp Bastard.

I will admit that I not only watched Defying Gravity, I will continue to watch it for no reasons I can justify. It's Grey's Anatomy in space and I cannot watch Grey's. It has like nine things wrong with it. At best I appreciate it's attempt to hit sci-fi with a different tone for the genre, but the tone is misfiring like big misfirey thing. Mock me in the comments, I can't defend myself. It's open season.

Still staying open for new venues for Mastermind. Let your stagey theatre friends know. BTW, the Canadian premiere is off the docket for now, as it's producer, Tommy Gushue, got busy in the business of TV manufacturing and he got into the CFC. Good luck to him!

THE SANDBAGGERS

2009-08-07T09:06:00.001-07:00

WHY SO IMPATIENT?

2009-08-02T06:55:00.000-07:00

Today, let us briefly turn to the realm of cinema. In specific, cinema which features certifiable, though good-hearted, insane vigilantes.

In this post from The Guardian's (UK) film blog, a young man, we'll call him Ben Child (largely because that's his name) has chosen to scold Warner Brothers for not coming out and announcing a third Batman flick. In so making this admonishment, he says:

"All of this serves once again to make the company – and its wholly-owned division, DC Comics – continue to look like a slow-moving behemoth, incapable of making decisions, compared with the new kid on the block, Marvel Comics, which set up its own studio in 2004..."

To him, I say this.

"Shut your festering gob, you tit!"

While I do forcefully agree with his assertion that Marvel knows (for the most part) how to exploit their characters in the realm of film and have done so with plenty of success (even the sucky movies still made money). DC and WB, despite having been part of the same corporate monothingy for...ever, have a track record of (despite The Dark Knight) utter failure in this regard (though improving, with The Losers and Green Lantern coming forth).

Regardless of what you may think of Superman Returns, the true failure is that Superman III and IV were allowed to exist and that it took twenty years to get a reboot/relaunch under way. For SUPERfuckingMAN. Especially when Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher were allowed to do molest Batman four times over.

And then there's Wonder Woman. The third of DC's trinity. Yeah, she had her own TV series...30 years ago. Jonah Hex is getting a movie before she did (and from the looks of it, I think they fucked up Jonah Hex). Even with Joss Whedon, no go. And there was a fantastic spec by Matthew Jennison and Brent Strickland that bought by Joel Silver (largely as a kill fee). Silver didn't want it to be a period piece. Why the fuck not? If it's good, make the godamn movie. Then bring her forward in the sequel if it's that important.

OK, I'm off point. Back to the subject at hand.

Warners hasn't announced a new Batflick. Good. For one thing, he's taking the word of Gary Oldman at Comic Con as gospel. Oldman said they'll start filiming next year. No one else, anywhere, has said a goddamn thing.

Actors will say all manner of stuff. Rarely should any of it be taken seriously.

But this is Gary Oldman.

Yeah.

That actually makes it less trustworthy, because I see Oldman as exactly the sort that will have it on with the 6000 people in that room and the rest of the damn internet...because he can. I like Gary Oldman. (But that's a whole other post).

And assuming all the pieces are in place, how is not announcing it even relevant. It's gonna be at least two years before it even hits the screens. Minimum. Announcing it just doesn't mean shit. The only that matters in bums in seats. They could shoot it in absolute secrecy for all I care. Just give it a good P.R. push when they're ready and all will be well. It's done when it's done and not a 'mo before.

Let's not push Warner into making a Batmovie until everyone is ready. After all, I don't just want a Batfilm. I want a really fucking good one, and that last one raised the bar pretty damn high.

I seem to recall that Fox was in a big damn hurry to cash in on some mutie money and forced a release date on X-Men 3, a film which had, at that time, no director and two completely different scripts which were about to be mashed up (questionable in every way shape and form).

While it made some cash and still spawned yet another sequel (in the form of the Wolverine movie), the fact is...compared to X-Men and X2 (and even just on it's own)...it sucked. It suffered creatively by non-creative concerns.

So shut up, Ben.

Zip it.

Shhh.

stifle, edith

Oh, and with regards to Superman Returns...

"Even JJ Abrams's much-maligned script could surely not have done more to damage the character."

Yes, it would. It was an abomination. Just...be quiet.