What Is Superman Fighting In This "Man of Steel" Clip?

Below the jump (in case this turns out to be some kind of spoiler) are three frames of footage taken from approximately the 2:06 - 2:07 mark of the new "Man of Steel" trailer that seem to show Superman in combat with... something...

(POSSIBLE SPOILERS!)

So! Big swirly vortex, what look very much like tentacles or tendrils of some kind, possibly a glowing "eye" or orb of some kind at the center? Could be mechanical in nature, could be a creature, could be something else entirely?

The "arms" immediately make me think of Starro The Conqueror... but I can't believe Nolan and company would go for that. Brainiac? Some new, weird version of the Phantom Zone?

Captain America's New Costume Kind of Sucks

Aw, Marvel... you were doing so fucking well with this stuff! Bad form. Very bad form.

JFX Online (yeah, me neither) has "spy" photos from the set of the now-shooting "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" that would appear to reveal that Cap's look has undergone yet another overhaul. I'm putting it below the jump for the especially spoilerphobic, but if you want a basic idea it's pretty-much that dull number he was wearing in the "Heroic Age" books while Bucky Barnes was still the "acting" Captain America but with a Cap hood/helmet added. The crucial "missing" detail is the lack of identifying red/white stripes at the midsection (there's some red-ish armor plates, instead) so mostly it just looks dull and anti-iconic - to say nothing of mildly irritating in a story sense: The getup he had in "Avengers" was A.) a variant on the one he designed himself in WWII and B.) was itself designed in part by the late Agent Coulson - you'd think that out of all the Avengers, Steve Rogers would be the one who'd be sentimental about that kind of thing...

Original image: JFX Online

Too bad. Won't lie - bums me out. Doesn't necessarily indicate a "bad" movie by an stretch (Batman, for example, has had a shitty costume in every single live-action movie he's ever appeared in and those average-out pretty good overall) and maybe there's a story-reason for it (i.e. maybe the good one got damaged? Maybe it's temporary? I can hope?) but it's aesthetically dissapointing: Comics being a largely visual medium, part of the fun of adaptation is seeing iconic imagery played-out in the flesh; and that's significantly diminished when the various characters look not only "not like themselves" but look boring.

FWIW, there have been a few "concept art" sketches seen around showing the same basic new suit for about a week now. I didn't post them before partly because I was really hoping it was a fake and also because I'd seen other official concept-art that showed him wearing the "classic" outfit. 

"Man of Steel" New Trailer (UPDATED!)

Well, here's this then:


And that would be why Warner Bros. is supposedly so pysched about this particular movie. Some potentially-spoilery thoughts after the jump...


Interesting that, though by all accounts the film is really, really action-heavy, WB is still mainly leaning on the iconography and the American Pastoral stuff as the selling point.

Equally interesting that they're not going the traditional route of selling the central threat/villain harder than the hero. There's still very little Zod in here - no real sense of what his motives, personality or "plan" are.

So now Lois is hunting around for Superman even before he's put on a costume and publicly declared himself to be such, rather than just meeting him within a week or so of meeting Clark Kent at work. Clever shift, makes her more immediately proactive, wondering how they avoid Superman coming off like a stalker if he decides to put on a human-disguise and get hired at her workplace after this, though.

It looks like Krypton goes down in a war or some kind of invasion this time around. Not liking the idea of that, particularly if Zod or some other "major evil" force is somehow behind it.

That little exchange at the end? Cute. Less cute? The idea that the writer/producer team who decided they needed to jump through seven or eight different hoops to explain why Catwoman All-Purpose-Crime-Lady wore high-heels and goggles that kinda-sorta-from-some-angles looked like cat ears will now treat us to a tedious, wholly unnecessary explanation for why Superman is dressed like Superman. Yes, I know the comics also like to do the "here's what the S-shield really means" business, but it's usually a toss-off and done in the understanding (an understanding, incidentally, that Team Nolan has never quite managed to grasp) that anyone who'd be seriously bothered by stuff like this was never ever going to watch this movie to begin with.

Still, though... looks good. I'm not knocked-out a'la "Pacific Rim," I'm not comfortably assured of impending awesome a'la "Avengers"... but it looks good. I'm not expecting it to be as good as the '78 movie, or "Dark Knight," or even Snyder's own "Watchmen;" but if the only thing this manages to get right is reminding the world that Superman isn't inherently "boring" by using him to deliver a huge actioner, maybe that'll be good enough.

Big Picture: "Shock Treatment"

Here's a show about Bioshock Infinite, because once in awhile I like to talk about small, obscure things that aren't getting attention from every corner of the internet.

MAJOR SPOILERS!

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Shock Treatment

66th Festival de Cannes Short Films and Cinéfondation Lineup

While the Official Selection of feature films for the 66th Festival de Cannes will be revealed on Thursday 18th April, the list of Short Films is unveiled today.

As we already know the Cinéfondation and Short Films Jury, presided by Jane Campion, will announce the award winners for the Short Film Competition and the Cinéfondation Selection.

Short Films Competition

This year, the Selection Committee received 3,500 short films, representing productions from no fewer than 132 countries.

Nine films will compete in 2013 for the Short Film Palme d’Or, to be awarded by Jane Campion, President of the Jury, at the Closing Ceremony of the 66th Festival de Cannes on 26th May. For the first time, a Palestinian film will take part in the Short Films Competition.

37°4 S, Adriano Valerio, France, 11'
Bishtar az do saat (More Than Two Hours), Ali Asgari, Iran, 15'
Condom Lead, Mohammed Abou Nasser and Ahmad Abou Nasser, Palestine and Jordan, 14'
Hvalfjörður (Whale Valley, Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson, Iceland and Denmark, 15'
Inseki to Impotence (The Meteorite and Impotence), Omoi Sasaki, Japan, 10'
Mont Blanc, Gilles Coulier, Belgium, 14'
Olena, Elżbieta Benkowska, Poland, 14'
Ophelia, Annarita Zambrano, Poland, 14'
Safe, Moon Byoung-gon, South Korea, 13'

Cinéfondation Selection

The Cinéfondation Selection selected 18 films (14 fiction films and 4 animated films) among the 1,550 submitted this year from 277 schools from all around the world

By focusing on the quality of work submitted by lesser-known institutions, the Selection is a true reflection of the diversity of film schools. This year sees a particularly significant broadening of scope, with a third of the schools being selected for the first time and one country – Chile – which has never previously been selected.

The following are the short films in competition; the schools are in parenthesis.

Asunción, Camila Luna Toledo, Chile, 21', (Pontificia Universidad Catolica)
Au-delà de l'Hiver (After the Winter), Zhi Wei Jow, France, 19' (Le Fresnoy)
Babaga, Gan de Lange, Israel, 26' (The Sam Spiegel Film & TV School)
Contrafábula de una Niña Disecada (Fable of a Blood-Drained Girl), Alejandro Iglesias Mendizábal, Mexico, 25' (CCC)
Danse Macabre, Małgorzata Rżanek, Poland, 5' (Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw)
Duet, Navid Danesh, Iran, 24', (Karnameh Film School)
En Attendant le dégel (Waiting for the Thaw), Sarah Hirtt, Belgium, 20' (INSAS)
Exil (Exile), Vladilen Vierny, France, 16' (La fémis)
Going South, Jefferson Moneo, USA, 15' (Columbia University)
În acvariu (In the Fishtank), Tudor Cristian Jurgiu, Romania, 20' (UNATC)
Mañana Todas Las Cosas (Tomorrow All The Things), Sebastián Schjaer, Argentina, 17' (UCINE)
Needle, Anahita Ghazvinizadeh, USA, 21' (The School of the Art Institute of Chicago)
O Šunce, Eliška Chytková, Czech Republic, 6' (Tomas Bata University in Zlίn)
Pandy (Pandas), Matúš Vizár, Czech Republic, 12' (FAMU)
The Magnificent Lion Boy, Ana Caro, UK, 10' (NFTS)
The Norm of Life, Evgeny Byalo, Russia, 23' (High Courses for Scriptwriters and Film Directors)
Seon (The Line), Kim Soo-Jin, South Korea, 27' (Chung-Ang University)
Stepsister, Joey Izzo, USA, 18' (San Francisco State University)

The three Cinéfondation Prizes will be awarded at a ceremony prior to the screening of the winning films on Friday 24th May in the Buñuel Theatre.

Check trailers for some Cinéfondation shorts at MOC.

After reading, see film stills and/or trailer for all short films, can say that some seem very interesting; unfortunatelly not all have trailers and/or film stills but will be frequently checking to post at MOC trailers when they are released.

Cheers!!! Cannes has started.

FREEEEEEEZE IN HELL, SPIDER-MAN!!!

The Daily Mail has the first snaps of Jamie Foxx in his makeup as Maxwell Dillion aka Electro for "The Amazing Spider-Man 2," restoring equilibrium to the movie-verse by stopping the slow drip of shockingly-NOT-shitty-looking/sounding-stuff gradually being revealed about the project.

"Hey, Jamie Foxx! Congratulations on headlining one of the biggest and most critically-lauded hits of the year - what are you gonna do next!?"

"I was thinkin' I'd put on Arnold's metallic-blue bodypaint from "Batman & Robin" to play second-fiddle to Less-Expensive-Robert-Pattinson in the sequel to a cheap reboot that even people who liked it largely shrugged off. Sounds fun, right?"

"..."

Here's the thing about Electro: I love the guy. He's one of my favorite Spider-Man nemesis, and he's also one of the more prominent figures in the "powered-up bank robber" tier of Marvel Universe villainy. Problem is, the reason for both of those is pretty-much his iconic costume - without it, he's really just another lightning-throwing electricity baddie - which probably wouldn't "work" in live-action period and definitely won't be a good fit with the po-faced "realism" aesthetic of Gritty Reboot Spidey.

Okay, fine, a redesign is in order (the shabby state of the pants and hoodie indicate they're part of the "costume" at least for this scene, as opposed to "Mr. Foxx is chilly today") but it looks to me like they're going with a variation (almost-innevitably to be augmented with VFX) of his blue "charged up" form from Ultimate Spider-Man. Probably the easiest route to go (in the newer USM animated series he does both looks, but I wouldn't count on that here) but somehow the prospect of "Spider-Man Versus Much Less-Powerful/Less-Interesting Doctor Manhattan" doesn't exactly set my world on fire.

But okay, it is what it is. Now, let's see what it looks like with the glowy CGI lightning stuff... and whatever they have planned for The Rhino.

Safe Haven