Warner Bros. has narrowed down the choices for the star of its Green Lantern movie, and considering the three candidates have been publicly named, courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter, I’m thinking the studio should let the fans decide. Put the screen tests up online, allow us to ask a few questions of each of the eligible bachelors actors and then permit us to pick our favorite as though it were some kind of movie-casting version of The Dating Game.

In a way, we, the moviegoers, will end up entering a long relationship with the person put in the role of Hal Jordan, aka Green Lantern, and we don’t want this to be the old-fashioned arranged-courtship sort of ritual we typically get from Hollywood. It didn’t work for the last Superman movie, and many of us aren’t even that happy with the current Batman. Warner Bros. needs to learn from its mistakes and embrace democracy.

So, who should it be? The runners-up are: Bradley Cooper; Ryan Reynolds; and Justin Timberlake.

If you need help making up your mind, check out what the film bloggers have to say after the jump. I’m sitting this one out due to my unfamiliarity with the superhero, but I’d be curious to see how Timberlake would do in such a role.

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Here’s some late breaking news today: Martin Scorsese is set to direct a biopic about Frank Sinatra, which is being scripted by Phil Alden Robinson (Field of Dreams). That’s about all that’s known so far, as the project is in early stages. Apparently Scorsese, whose past biopics include The Aviator (Howard Hughes) and Raging Bull (Jake La Motta), has been quietly developing this one for a few years and just recently secured both the life and the music rights.

Now it’s up to us bloggers to fill in the rest with speculation about what it will be called, what it will include and, most importantly, who will play the lead. Most writers are guessing that Leonardo DiCaprio will land the part, but I’m hoping Scorsese concentrates on the later years so that Dennis Hopper can reprise his portrayal from the Australian film The Night We Called It a Day. After all, isn’t it about time Scorsese directed Hopper? They were both in the Scorsese-produced Search and Destroy, but that’s just not enough. At least let Hopper play the old Sinatra after DiCaprio (or Robert Pattinson) plays the young version. And obviously Kate Beckinsale gets to reprise her role as Ava Gardner from The Aviator, right?

Also: if the title is anything other than The Chairman of the Board, I’m not going to see it. So what if it’s too close to a movie starring Carrot Top? It’s time to take the name back for Ol’ Blue Eyes!

Okay, let’s see what the rest of the net is saying about this exciting project:
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Now that Star Trek has opened, broken some records and delighted an apparent majority of critics and moviegoers, it’s time for the backlash to begin. The complaints are not tremendous, but they have popped up here and there on the web today, and it’s worth taking a look at some of them, especially for those of us who haven’t yet gotten around to watching the thing. I’ve already learned, courtesy of actor/comedian Aziz Ansari that I should be careful in choosing where I see J.J. Abrams’ reboot if I want to see it in IMAX. What else might I be wary of before I go into the movie, in general? Let’s see what negativity is coming out of the blogosphere after the jump:

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In speaking of Star Trek, JJ Abrams’ origin story prequel designed to sex up the venerable brand and relaunch it as again-viable film franchise, I can’t speak for the fans, and I probably shouldn’t risk inciting their wrath by regurgitating the plot. Suffice it to say, all the familiar characters are rendered here as 20-something and absurdly attractive; they all end up on the Enterprise, from which they fight a Romulan who blows up a planet; there’s some time travel mumbo-jumbo that complicates things just enough to allow for a cameo from Leonard Nimoy; and the sexual tension between Young Kirk (Chris Pine) and Young Spock (Zachary Quinto) is the stuff that viral video makers in the “1 + 1 = GAY = LOL” mold dream of.

Fans and critic-fans will be predisposed to liking this film more than I, because they have more invested. Though I have a working familiarity with both the original TV series and The Next Generation, I didn’t walk into the film with opinions as to how something like the Kobayashi Maru test should have been handled, and I didn’t walk out anymore convinced that it matters one way or another. I can only offer the perspective of a viewer who walked in not really giving a shit about Star Trek, and from that perspective, Abrams has done a sufficient job. After all, the reason Star Trek exists is to support the theory that more Star Trek films should exist, and in painlessly demonstrating how the motley, almost incredibly diverse crew of the Enterprise fits together, in convincing that it wouldn’t be unpleasant to watch these seven space soldiers take on further missions, and in setting up a soapy workplace love triangle that will mandate sequels to resolve, Star Trek does that job. I walked out still not giving much of a shit about Star Trek, but at least I didn’t resent the expenditure of time, and though the central mythology of the series still fails to get a rise out of me, the pretty faces assigned to mobilize that myth offer their own rewards.

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Yesterday I attended a special Star Trek event at Paramount Studios where they showed us 20 minutes of footage from J.J. Abrams’ upcoming reboot of the classic sci fi series, much like Warner Bros. did with Watchmen recently. While the footage was already screened in London and New York, this was the first time I’ve had a chance to see it, and I didn’t read any of the other reports so I could go in fresh with my somewhat jaded fanboy eyes and ears.

While it looks fairly slick and high-tech (and yes, the bridge of the Enterprise does indeed look like the inside of an Apple Store), I was more interested with how they treated the development of characters that have been around since 1966. It’s hard to judge the film based on the four scenes we saw; it’s a bit like reading four random chapters of a book and being asked to write a report about it. But, with that in mind, I definitely have some thoughts about it. One thing is for sure: it looks a lot better than the scenes we saw from The Spirit at Comic-Con.

Check out the breakdown below of the scenes from a Star Trek movie that will probably draw a line right down the middle of hardcore Trek fans, but will draw a lot of people who have never seen the TV shows or the previous films into theaters. And just as a note, Abrams sides with the Trekkers in the “Trekkies vs. Trekkers” debate.

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Earlier this week a slew of images from J.J. Abrams‘ Star Trek reboot, reimagining, redo, do over, what have you hit the web, and today an accompanying article from Entertainment Weekly talks to the actors and reflects on the footage shown to the magazine. Since we weren’t able to see that same footage (why not show it to everyone, Paramount?) we’re basically left to conjecture on the images themselves, and pat our inner fanboy on the back in consolation.

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Last year’s 2007 Comic-Con featured a massive Paramount Pictures panel, which did everything from give us a live broadcast from the set of Indiana Jones (where we found out Marion Ravenwood was in the picture), to introduce both Leonard Nimoy and Zachary Quinto as Spock in the new Trek film. However, Paramount’s only presence this year was a Tropic Thunder screening outside the Con, and some freebie Trek posters on the show floor. Where was the most cinematic representation of the Comic-Con audience to be found?

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