If you still haven’t had enough goodies from Comic-Con, feel free to check out the bootlegged clip of the new traiiler for X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Personally, I’m ready to move on, and so here’s a look at another superhero story: Oliver Stone’s W. Or, as I like to call it, U.S.-President Origins: George W. Bush.

It looks a little more serious than I anticipated. For all we’ve read and heard about the campiness of the script, the thing is now at least being marketed as a drama about a clash between father and son. Even the roll call of characters (captioned as such, rather than crediting the players) makes each part look less like caricatures than I’d expected.

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The Harold and Kumar panel opened with a disclaimer from moderator Adam Vary of Entertainment Weekly. “This is family day at Comic-Con, but in case you didn’t know, this is for an unrated DVD of a stoner movie.”

But what better way to sell a DVD to your teenage fan base, then to get your hooks into them when they’re in close proximity to parental wallets?

Cynicism aside, it looks like there are some pretty cool elements to the package for the fans. In addition to a “12-15 minute mini adventure of what would happen if Harold and Kumar had decided not to smoke weed on the plane, and made it to Amsterdam,” there’s an extensive interactive feature called “Dude, Change the Movie,” which allows the viewer to swap out scenes from the theatrical cut for other options. Remember the bottomless party? You can choose to watch it topless. “Most of the options,” said co-writer Hayden Schlossberg, “Are extremely unrated, and extremely…”

“Nude,” John Cho interrupted.  “You’re welcome.”

Some vague details about Harold and Kumar 3, and disappointment for fans who want to believe that John Cho and Kal Penn are really Harold and Kumar in real life, after the jump.

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Jeff Wells points to the above clip of Kal Penn talking about Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, and it’s worth watching just for the spectacle of seeing an actor on a cable news program explaining the “dual purpose” of poop jokes.

But I must do a bit of fact checking: Olbermann introduces his guest by bragging that Guantanamo was “reviewed by one critic as a ’scatological remix of a Keith Olbermann tirade.’” That “one critic” was Joe Leydon at Variety. The actual sentence? “Not that the entire pic is a slapsticky, scatological remix of a Keith Olbermann tirade.” Olbermann/his producers justify centering their top story of the evening on a stoner comedy in its third week of release by loosely tying it to the recent release of a Sudanese journalist from the military prison, but it’s not enough to cover up the evidence that this is a Google Alert taken out of context.

The sequel to Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle opens in theaters today, and you can read my SXSW review of the movie, titled Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay, over here. Though I enjoyed it, H&K2 disappointed me for taking on too much plot. But apparently some other reviews are favoring the second installment, and according to Craig Phillips at Green Cine, the matter has critics divided.

Phillips, who marginally prefers the sequel, uses the opportunity to revisit those sequels that improved upon the original. Obviously, the list includes The Empire Strikes Back, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and The Road Warrior. However, surprisingly, The Godfather Part II is not in the top ten, because he considers the first and second films tied, and he claims both Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Gremlins 2: The New Batch are only honorable mentions, because their definite superiority is up for debate (true, I’ve never been able to decide if I like them better than their respective counterparts).

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It started off seeming like a joke. But Oliver Stone’s Bush biopic was legit — even if it then appeared to indeed be “a joke”. And now, because the internet can’t lay off writing about the thing (Bush=traffic), we are able to see just how much of a joke the thing is. Thanks to The Hollywood Reporter’’s Risky Biz Blog, we can read the first three pages of the script (originally titled Bush, now known as W), which looks like it was written by a student in a high school creative writing class (it was in fact written by Wall Street scribe Stanley Weiser). Well, obviously Bush experts would declare it inaccurate. Are we to really believe that Bush called Karl Rove a “turdblossom”? If the script wanted to get the facts straight, he would have used “butthead” instead.

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• *Blush*––New York Times blogger David Carr has called our Oscar party “the white hot social center” of the Oscar-party landscape. If you’re in New York that night, you simply must stop by. Details here.
• “If you’ve seen Daniel Day Lewis’ portrayal of a greedy, sinister oilman in There Will Be Blood, it’s just another example of the Hollywood left’s contempt for capitalism.” That’s Tonight Show producer Dave Berg, speaking at a meeting held to try to rally Hollywood’s Republican troops against Barack Obama. Via Wilshire and Washington.
• David Edelstein is worried that Juno will win Oscars in just about every category it’s nominated due to better choices splitting the vote. “As one of the few critics to dislike Juno, I would be devastated,” he writes in the first of what will apparently be a series of bloggy exchanges with Lynda Obst. “But weirder things have happened in these silly awards.”
• From The Department Of Questions That Don’t Need To Be Asked: Jeff Wells wonders, “Is there anyone who doesn’t suspect that Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay will somehow play fast and loose, water down or otherwise make light of that deplorable situation?” Commenters to proceed to argue whether or not Gitmo detainees should be transfered to domestic prisons.

Exciting news! Harmony Korine’s Mister Lonely (which I love) and Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (which I’m totally excited about, even if shouldn’t admit it) are among the titles recently added to the lineup of the 2008 SXSW Film Festival. Other titles announced today: Stuart Townsend’s Battle in Seattle, starring Woody Harrelson and Michelle Rodriguez; Crawford, described as “a balanced and comprehensive documentary look at the town of Crawford, TX and how it evolved once George W. Bush moved there”; The Promotion, a comedy starring Seann William Scott and John C. Reilly; and live action/animation hybrid The Toe Tactic, directed by Emily Hubley. The rest of the lineup drops February 5.

• Oh man … I totally forgot about the Val Lewton blogathon, and now I’m way too busy with Sundance prep to write something up. In any case, it starts today, to coincide with the TCM premiere of Val Lewton: The Man In the Shadows. I saw Kent Jones’ doc (narrated by Martin Scorsese) at Telluride, and it’s definitely a must-see for fans of films like Cat People and I Walked With A Zombie who want a taste of Lewton’s lesser-known works.
• Anyone could have guessed that last night’s Un-Golden Globes would be “weird”, but who could have guessed that it would have moved so many journalists to lapse into poetics? First Variety likened the experience to a dream; then, the NY Times topped their coverage with this photo of an unusually long-faced E! anchor, with a caption pointing up his supposed existential dilemma. Now, David Poland’s getting into the act, with this revelation: “I don’t really like ghosts as much as I enjoy the living.”
• A week or so ago, Jurgen Fauth mentioned that he’d bought an URL that he didn’t know what to do with. He’s since figured it out: IDrinkYourMilkshake.com has now become a web portal dedicated to aggregating discussions––and inevitable video mashups, as above––concerning There Will Be Blood. Act now, and you can even get an @idrinkyourmilkshake.com email address!
• Bob Westal ponders Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. “Could this film be the next Duck Soup combining the silliest comedy and the sharpest satire?”