Look, I actually like Justin Timberlake. I think he’s got a very charismatic personality and is a truly great entertainer… but I love my mom too… doesn’t mean I think she can act. Justin Timberlake can not act. Period. it’s as simple as that. And I’m sorry folks… but doing some light improve skit stuff on SNL does not constitute “acting”.

Granted, I think he would be better for the role than Jack Black… but then again who wouldn’t? I will officially lose any and all hope for that movie if they cast Timberlake.

The guys over at Fused Film stumbled across this toy image of the character and snapped up some pictures.

Now, you guys know I think this movie will suck major ass… BUT… I have to admit I don’t mind this new look for the Commander. The blue hood may have worked fine in the cartoon… and the flat faceless silver mask… but in a live action environment I think this look is much better. But that’s just my opinion.

What do you guys think of the look?

So me personally, I wasn’t as taken with the trailer (District 9) as you. I decided to do a little experiment. I used my Vegas editing program to take the District 9 trailer and just edited out Neill Blomkamp’s and Peter Jackson’s names and inserted Michael Bay’s name. When I got to work I showed a couple of people the version with Jackson’s name and then some other people the version with Bay’s name. The results were sad.

Every single person I showed the trailer to with Jackson and Blomkamp’s name on it (I explained who they both were) loved it and thought it was awesome. When I showed the exact same trailer with Bay’s name on it instead, people said it looked awful. The only change I made was the name on it. Nothing else.

So anyway, i got on skype with another movie webmaster friend of mine and shared this little story and we both watched the trailer again and in our minds just replaced the names of Jackson and Blomkamp with Bay… and holy shit he’s right! Suddenly the trailer didn’t seems all that great… it was actually bad.

How much of a mind fuck is that?

Try it... tell me what you come up with.

But they lost. The judge decided that while they have the rights to a share of income from the DC properties, the film rights were sold at a fair value to the parent company, and they already received their agreed share of that amount. They got a slice of any profit DC makes off the character, not WB (despite WB owning DC, it is a separate company/subsidiary) However, a side effect of the trail might actually be in a decision that could force them to move on a new Superman film.

JoBlo.com says:

Warner Bros. head Alan Horn testified at the trial about the future of the SUPERMAN franchise at the studio saying that while they “hoped” to make another film, “the property wasn’t under development” and “no script had been written.” Perhaps even more interesting was the court’s ruling that if Warner Bros. did not begin production on a new SUPERMAN movie by 2011, “the Siegels will be able to sue to recover their damages.”

I’m no lawyer, and this might have something to do with that guy who smashed my car who didn’t have insurance that the judge determined would be my butler.

Apparently the rights revert to the Siegels in 2013 and nothing with Supes in it can be made without licensing it directly from the Siegel and Shuster estates (so I expect a new contract before then to ensure DC/WB retains the rights) but all I got out of all that was that the LAW is going to make sure we get a Superman movie soon!!

Brandon Routh’s contract to play Superman expired because a sequel to Superman Returns (or the proposed reboot that potentially could have starred him anyways) never happened in the time frame.

Routh proved that the task of replacing Reeve’s Superman was doable (even if unlikely) but I fear that lightning couldnt strike that lucky twice, but thankfully Routh has said that even though he is not officially the Blue Boyscout on paper, if they call he would be more than eager.

I vote Routh, and I vote Reboot (or hire me to write the sequel as my idea is awesome)

Anyway, Jared gave me the heads up on this new teaser trailer for his upcoming film “Cemetery Junction” which he also co-wrote and co-directed and it has to be the funniest trailer I’ve seen so far this year. And here’s the catch… there’s not even any footage from the movie in the trailer. It’s just Gervais, Merchant and Ralph Fines standing in front of a white wall talking to the camera… and it’s brilliant. Check it out:

Rama Screen

The plot centers on Page as a petite teenage girl who rebels against her beauty-pageant-obsessed mother (Marcia Gay Harden) and boring Texas town by joining the rough-and-tumble world of roller derby under the name Babe Ruthless, which brings us to the coolest thing about this movie, the Derby names.
Barrymore plays a character named Smashley Simpson and Wiig plays her sister named Maggie Mayhem. She was going to be called Malice In Wonderland but I’m glad they didn’t go with that one. Their team, the good guys, is called The Hurl Scouts.

Fallon plays the derby announcer and Lewis gets to be called Dinah Might, the leader of rival derby team The Holy Rollers, who finds out a secret that could force her tiny new foe from the competition. And badass stunt woman Zoe Bell (Deathproof) is Bloody Holly

The cast looks awesome and there seems to be a positive buzz with Barrymore at the helm.

At very least it will provide us some toughass roller eyecandy and witty stage names.

He is looking forward to a first draft and should this hold enough potential, he will be off and running with the continued franchise.

CinemaBlend quotes Ramis on the idea of doing this “just for the paycheque”

You could reap the reward, we could do anything, and we’d all make some money probably. But no one wants to do that. We don’t need the work, we don’t need to do it. The public, if they only had two Ghostbusters, we’d all be fine. But if we’re gonna do it, it’s impossible to say we want to be better than the first one, but who knows?”

So it sounds more to me that this isn’t a done deal, but it is certainly on the radar. The ball is rolling, but will it get to the end of its path?

ReelComix says:

Spiderman 4 is slated for a 2010 release date and at this time there is no solid word on what the storyline will be but there have been plenty of rumors and speculation. The script was originally written by James Vanderbilt.

I try my best to look upon them as positive things in hopes that we dodged a bullet. Maybe the script was horrible and they can the first guy for a potentially better script. Perhaps they just wanted to go a different way.

Either way I try to keep positive about it and hope that they are not just throwing it away for no reason.

Gary Ross wrote Seabiscuit (The film that was the basis of the first ever TMB post) and Pleasantville, both movies that played to Tobey Maguire’s strengths as an everyday man. And he also wrote Big.

I am looking forward to seeing what he does with Spiderman, but I wonder if this sensable storywriter has the digs for action and adventure.

Christina Warrenwrote up a fantastic little run down on what happened… why things went off track and where things stand now with the project. I quote it in full here:

Two and a half weeks ago, Columbia Pictures shut-down the Steven Soderbergh helmed Moneyball, just days before it was to start production. Last week, Soderbergh formally bowed out of the project.

Since then, the explanations as to why the project was put into turnaround at the last-minute, especially with a big star like Brad Pitt have been fast and furious, with each side wanting to get their view across.

Trying to parse the entire situation is very (forgive the pun) “inside baseball.” That said, here is a brief summary of this summer’s hottest off-screen drama.

Initially, the explanation for the “Moneyball” axing was blamed on a script that had deviated from its original awesomeness. By all accounts, the original script by Steve Zaillian was great. Soderbergh’s rewrite, well, the consensus was “not so great.”

Sony’s Amy Pascal echoed this idea (while not directly calling Soderbergh’s script “bad”) in a softball interview with the LA Times:

“I’ve wanted to work with Steven forever, because he’s simply a great filmmaker,” Pascal told me today. “But the draft he turned in wasn’t at all what we’d signed up for. He wanted to make a dramatic reenactment of events with real people playing themselves. I’d still work with Steven in a minute, but in terms of this project, he wanted to do the film in a different way than we did.”

ScriptShadow then posted an e-mail from someone purportedly close to the project, which told Soderbergh’s side of the story. That blog entry was forced offline by the Sony lawyers (and other websites reprinting the e-mail were similarly threatened), but if you search Google for cache:http://scriptshadow.blogspot.com/2009/06/more-on-moneyball.html, you might be able to find it.

Regardless, Gawker got an e-mail with similar information, and as a policy, Gawker doesn’t cave to takedown threats. Essentially the Soderbergh side is, that the script everyone loved so much was inaccurate in ways that would cause both Major League Baseball and the real Billy Beane to refuse to sign-off on the film.

Lose the MLB and you might as well forget about trying to make a professional baseball picture. It’s probably also not a good idea to allege that a longtime married man is a skirt-chaser.

So Soderbergh made these changes, wanted to keep the story accurate, and according to the original ScriptShadow e-mail and Gawker, Sony was well aware of these changes in advance.

The Hot Blog’s David Poland has a nice take on the situation, that argues many of the same points as the Gawker and ScriptShadow tip letters, but also says,

“Movies die every day. Feelings and careers are hurt. (Over 200 people were put out of work unexpectedly by this cancellation.) But the cheap slaps at Soderbergh are way over the top and as unnecessary as slapping down someone you just fired with gossipy attacks (even if accurate), adding insult to injury. Hollywood treats artists like shit because of money and ego. But there is no excuse for those of us who cover the industry to be equally venal.”

Now that the dust has settled, the proverbial post-game analysis has started, including an interesting piece in The Daily Beast that calls into question why Sony would cancel a project with Pitt (despite already spending $10 million), only to sign a production deal with other frequent Soderbergh collaborator George Clooney.

It’s an interesting question, especially in-light of how the two actor’s projects stack up financially. I ultimately think the numbers don’t quite add-up for “Moneyball” to be, about money. As Poland says, “movies die every day.”

After reading through the deluge of “Moneyball” commentary, I’m starting to think that THIS saga might make a better movie than “Moneyball” would have ever been.

Or at the very least, one heck of a book!

Christina Warren can be found blogging at The Unofficial Apple Weblog and Flickcast