A September Follow-up Post

Hello! If you don't know the drill by now, what follows are links to previous blog posts I've written, along with updates and further thoughts that I wanted to put down, but I didn't feel warranted an entire new post by themselves. Lots of television and superhero related stuff this time. Here we go.

Can We Talk About the Justice League? - After the success of "The Avengers," there's been a lot of chatter about an upcoming "Justice League" film that would skip the individual introductory films and just go straight into a big team adventure. Will Beall was hired for scripting duties, release dates have been rumored, and Ben Affleck was offered the chance to direct, which he declined. The most interesting wrinkle here is that it Warners is going to fast track this movie, they're not going to wait for a Batman reboot, opting instead to introduce the new version of the character in the "Justice League." Also, it's not clear if the film will have any direct connection to "Green Lantern" or the upcoming Zack Snyder "Superman."

Where Are the Female Directors? In Television! - Alas, only one Emmy nominee to add to the list this year, Lena Dunham for "Girls" in the Direction for a Comedy Series category. Good luck Lena!

Keeping Up the Theatrical Habit and The New Dominant Media - As we're slogging through the post-summer doldrums, financial analysts keep charting further declines in the fortunes of the movie studios. This past weekend, theaters had the lowest attendance numbers in over a decade, and there appears to be no relief in sight. There has been another round of studio soul-searching as a result. Gavin Polone wrote this great piece about the comparative quality of current television and the movies, detailing the dysfunctional movie development process that that favors unoriginal concepts and franchise properties. This is the reason why it feels like you've seen everything playing at your local multiplex already.

My Second Annual Holiday Wishlist - I've been pretty happy so far. "Akira" has been put on the back burner at Warners. "Twilight" is giving way to "The Hunger Games." Nobody spoiled anything too important about "The Dark Knight Rises" or "The Avenger" for me, and Josh Larsen is doing a pretty good job so far at filling the shoes of Matty Robinson on the Filmspotting podcast. On the other hand, that last "Doctor Who" Christmas special was only so-so and the fourth season of "Community" remains a giant question mark.

A "Munsters" Reboot? Really? - Bryan Fuller's "Munsters" reboot is now "Mockingbird Lane," starring Portia de Rossi and Jerry O'Conell as Lily and Herman, with Eddie Izzard as Grandpa. A four minute trailer for the pilot was shown at Comic-Con over the summer. There was some talk of the series being a prequel focusing on the courtship of Lily and Herman in their younger days, but the current version has newcomers Mason Grant and Charity Wakefield in the roles of Eddie and Marilyn, so it looks to be a pretty straightforward update of the original series.

Evil Queen Ascendant - After seeing all of their movies, I wasn't too impressed with most of the villainesses I discussed. Julia Roberts in "Mirror, Mirror" was pretty mediocre. Charlize Theron's role as Meredith Vickers in "Prometheus" showed some potential, but it was completely squandered. Her nasty evil queen in "Show White and the Huntsman" was much more fun, but the movie was pretty blah. As for Catwoman, I have no complaints about the Anne Hathaway performance, but I wasn't all that enamored with her either. To date, my favorite villainess of the year is Marge Nugent from "Bernie," played by Shirley MacLaine.

Thundercats" Ho! - After twenty-six episodes on the Cartoon Network, it does not appear likely that the new "Thundercats" reboot is going to get a chance to come back and finish its story, which ended on a cliffhanger. The ratings sank after the premiere, and the show's creators are starting to scatter to other projects. It's a real shame, because I've recently caught up with some of the later episodes, and the quality of the animation and the worldbuilding and character development stayed pretty stellar throughout the whole run. The worst part is that this will probably discourage studios from doing similarly ambitious shows in the future. Oh well. At least I've still got "Korra."

I Gotta Talk About "Wonder Woman" - Finally, last week Vulture reported that the CW is going to try and crack the "Wonder Woman" reboot after David E. Kelley's version went down in flames last year. It's currently only in the earliest scripting stages, with the working title "Amazon," and will likely be an origin story skewing to a much younger audience than the last one. Note that there's also supposed to be a "Wonder Woman" feature film in development, which might complicate things.
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