I’m historically not a DC Comics defender, but the company could really use some support today following the very weak reception of an announcement that DC and Warner Bros. have some new film ideas up their sleeves. Sure, the news isn’t that exciting, but that may be The Hollywood Reporter’s fault for making it sound like DC is “storming the film world.” Compared to Marvel, DC’s plans still seem more like a light breeze, and therefore it’s understandable that the geeks and fanboys are disappointedly bitching today.

But as much as I’d love to see a Flash or Aquaman movie, neither of which I’m expecting anytime soon, I have to continue giving DC & WB credit for having given us the first and last great superhero movies. Superman is still the film to which comic book adaptations are compared, and it’s more than 30 years old. And now we also have The Dark Knight to judge every other movie against. Marvel has more films to show for themselves, but they actually have fewer great adaptations and therefore fewer films I’d call classics. Even Iron Man, in my opinion, fails to hold up as well as a number of DC films.

So let’s just be patient. It might be worth it. Or, feel free to keep up the whining and ridiculing in the comments section below. First, check out what the film blogs have to say after the jump:

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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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Kevin Kelly covered the Watchmen press preview in Los Angeles last week, and the same footage was shown when the preview came to Manhattan yesterday. Kevin’s piece has all the nuts and bolts of what happened in the footage, so check that out if you haven’t, but since I’m fundamentally incapable of fanboy enthusiasm, I thought I ought to weigh in with just a few additional thoughts, from my ignorant/cynical perspective.

With that said… OMGITSFUCKINGAWESOME!!!!!

Just kidding. But not completely. More after the jump.

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We were invited to a Warner Bros. event tonight to see 26 minutes worth of footage from the Watchmen film that’s due out on 03.06.09 next year, and it was pretty impressive stuff. Even the ice cold comic book fan inside of me enjoyed it, and I didn’t think The Dark Knight was worth all the hype everyone was laying on it. As far as a graphic novel turned into a film goes, Watchmen looks like it’ll set the bar for future adaptations.

Director Zack Snyder was on-hand to setup the footage and talk about what’s been done so far, and he was joined by costume designer Michael Wilkinson and production designer Alex McDowell. Interestingly enough, it took place in the same place where they held a similar event for 300. Head after the break to get a full rundown on the footage we saw, and what Snyder and company had to say about the film that’s still six months away. Forgive me if I slip into a bit of fanboyism, because this is one of my favorite comic book properties.

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This article is filled with sour notes about the state of Batman video games, but if you want some pure audio delight, click here to listen to Frank Gorshin (he played The Riddler on the Adam West Batman TV show) sing “The Riddler.” Awesome.

Batman is known for vanishing into the night in order to instill fear into his foes, and to confound Commissioner Gordon who always wonders how he disappears so quickly. However, his video games are also known for leaving store shelves just as quickly and quietly. Is that why there’s no Dark Knight video game? Commission Gordon himself, looking a bit like Garth from Wayne’s World, was shown a tiny bit of the game, as you can see in this clip… so where is it?

It’s no secret that video games based on the Batman franchise have been anything less than lackluster. …Read more

Even though some of last year’s Comic-Con secrets were leaked to the web ahead of time, the 2007 SDCC was a huge deal as far as revelations go. Whether it was the unveiling of Karen Allen’s involvement in Indiana Jones and the Then-Still-Not-Subtitled Fourth Installment or cast updates for Watchmen and Star Trek or a bit of clarification on what the hell that Cloverfield movie was, Comic-Con 2007 left us super excited and highly anticipatory for the next year of movie releases.

But after a quick glance, the 2008 convention doesn’t seem like it will have as many big announcements. There should be plenty of new footage shown from movies like Watchmen (making its second Comic-Con round) and The Spirit (hopefully there’s some better looking stuff than the most recent trailer gave us), but what secrets are set to be let out of the bag?

Here’s 10 things I hope they reveal over the next few days:

1. Arnold Schwarzenegger is back in Terminator Salvation - If this really happens, I’ll be flabbergasted. But a guy can hope, at least for official word on a cameo. And there’s no better place than Comic-Con for a confirmation to happen. Well, I guess if Warner Bros. could keep it a secret until the movie opens next May, then that would actually be better. But that’s impossible nowadays.
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As many reviews have already made clear, The Dark Knight sets the new gold standard for comic book movies. I think a big reason for that lies in the casting of a new heroine for Batman, Gotham City. Dark Knight evokes adjectives like epic and edgy. It feels like something is really at stake, but what? Writer/director Christopher Nolan crafts a handful of brilliant characters, but the one we’re really gunning for is Gotham City herself.

While it’s easy to say Gotham City is an allegory for society as a whole, in The Dark Knight Nolan intentionally paints a unique urban environment. The film opens with stunning aerial shots of Gotham City (played beautifully by Chicago). A lot has been said about Nolan’s choice to shoot certain scenes of the film in IMAX, and it’s no coincidence that nearly all of them fill the frame with an urban landscape. There is something truly breathtaking about seeing Batman leap from the roof a building and spread his wing-like cape in IMAX, but what’s equally important is what’s below him: an endless grid of streets, buildings, and people.

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• Hollywood loves the energy crisis! Not only is there evidence that “higher gas prices boost boxoffice by prompting consumers to opt for the local multiplex over longer trips,” but foreign oil investors, prompted by a desire to avoid taxes on windfall profits, “look more favorably on the film biz — any film, really — because it means that even if a movie loses, say, 20% or 30% of its money, investors still come out on top because those losses pale compared with what a government might have taken.”
• “There’s a superhero summit under way at Warner Bros,” says David S. Cohen at Variety, as the studio and subsidiary DC Comics meet to work out a “master plan” for shilling superheroes going forward.
• The Chinese censorship board is demanding that cuts be made to the third Mummy movie––which shot for three months in China, and incorporates a replica of the Great Wall––but they’re not publicly specifying what it’ll take to let the film be shown in the country. Is anyone else starting to suspect that the Chinese censors just have really good taste?
• The AMPTP won’t accept any of SAG’s counter-offers, and SAG won’t settle for the AMPTP’s “final” deal. So what now? No one knows for sure, but with SAG members continuing to work with no contract, it’s possible that the studios will “declare an impasse and impose the terms and conditions of the new offer.”