Many smart cinephiles and comic book geeks will avoid watching Watchmen this weekend. Not to avoid the crowds of opening weekend, and not to patiently await word of mouth from friends and reactions from critics. No, these bright few will ignore the out-of-season blockbuster event because there is absolutely no reason to see this movie. They recognize that any Watchmen adaptation (particularly this one that’s been made) is completely unnecessary. Well, for anyone not out to profit from it, anyway. Of course, even Warner Bros. might have been better off not producing the thing, since the studio won’t be making as much money as it had initially envisioned thanks to that profit-participation settlement with Fox.

The point of this post is not to call Watchmen watchers stupid. Rather, our list of five reasons the film is unnecessary is to help moviegoers get smart. After reading this, though, if any of you are still determined to waste your time sitting through almost 3 hours of redundant, rehashed, irrelevant, ridiculous and inescapably disappointing superhero cinema, we’ll be left with no choice but to consider you mindless sheep, the kind that deserve to be duped. And if Dr. Manhattan chooses to vaporize us (or fans choose to curse us out in the comments section) for exposing the truth about this enterprise of excess, then so be it. We believe we’ve served justice here.
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• Threat of a SAG strike is now nearly eliminated following the guild’s National Board of Directors’ firing of national executive director and chief negotiator Doug Allen. Also, the board disbanded the TV/Theatrical Negotiating Committee. While we can now rest assured there will be no work stoppage, though, SAG’s lack of unity will unfortunately continue.
• Brendan Fraser may have bombed at the box office this past weekend, but his career will always be safe as long as he’s willing to do movies like Furry Vengeance, in which he’ll play a real estate developer battling against “a band of angry critters.”
• While film writers are being axed everywhere, at least two are finding other gigs in filmmaking: Latino Review’s Kellvin Chavez and IESB.net’s Robert Sanchez are two of the producers working on the comic adaptation El Zombo Fantasma, which is described as a “Latino Hellboy.”
• Anyone who has ever wished to see Hilary Duff gunned down by machine guns rejoice! The former Disney Channel starlet will play Bonnie Parker in a new telling of the story of Bonnie and Clyde, ingeniously titled The Story of Bonnie and Clyde. Transamerica’s Kevin Zegers will play Clyde Barrow.
• Fans of Defiance rejoice! Jamie Bell and Daniel Craig will be reunited for Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, in which they’ll play Tintin and Red Rackham, respectively.
• Fans of Carl Franklin’s Devil With a Blue Dress rejoice! Denzel Washington will be reunited with Jennifer Beals in the Hughes brothers’ The Book of Eli. She’ll play a blind woman who is both daughter to Mila Kunis and sexual prize of Gary Oldman.
• Sundance attendees who loved Sin Nombre rejoice! Director Cary Joji Fukunaga has lined up his next two projects at Universal/Focus Features.

When it comes to lazy film clichés, Nazis are one step above slow-motion gunfights and barely underneath “the hero must get the girl and save the day.” It’s fitting that Nazis manage to encompass everything  from being the symbol for the Big, Bad Guy to perversion, occult beliefs and Holocaust Porn. Pop a swastika on someone and it becomes abundantly clear he’s the bad guy, whether it’s Samuel L. Jackson ripping through shoddy green screen in The Spirit or the lit-deviant prison guard Kate Winslet tackles in The Reader.

But sometimes, there are types of films that need to go “Full Nazi.” These select few films embrace the red, black and white because they’d have no other claim to fame otherwise. The eight films below have merit on their own, but it is through their use of the Nazi symbols that they remain on the cultural brain.

Apt Pupil

The effective start of Bryan Singer’s ode to the Reich involves Arthur Denker (Ian McKellen), a Nazi war criminal masquerading next door to Todd Bowen (Brad Renfro), who discovers his neighbor’s previous life. Being an obsessive sociopath in progress, young Todd demands Arthur (neé Kurt Dussander) regale him with tales of World War II and Nazism in general. He goes so far as taking a uniform from the attic and demands Arthur march for him. Pupil embodies the sadomasochistic nature that the fetish community places on the Nazis along with the concept that only scary, evil people ever want to learn about history. The duo develop a creepy grandparent/child vibe, as Arthur threatens to rat out Todd if his grades don’t improve, and both become encouraged to torture small animals and get some small pleasure out of it.

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Nerds the world over have been juggling feelings of confusion and excitement over the laundry list of projects reportedly attached to their favored son, Guillermo del Toro. The list of films he is rumored (if not confirmed) to direct and/or produce are as follows: The Hobbit, Pinocchio, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Slaughterhouse-Five, At the Mountains of Madness, The Champions, Drood, Frankenstein, Hellboy III, Hater, Crimson Peak, Dr. Strange, and a segment of a new Heavy Metal film.

Many have wondered how it’s possible to have so many irons in the fire. Is he going to shoot Frankenstein on his cell phone during the 14-hour flight from New Zealand after meeting with Peter Jackson? Is the Heavy Metal segment just going to be a deleted scene from Hellboy III? No, the truth is much more exciting. Del Toro recently lost one of his legendary sketchbooks, in which he constantly records his many ideas. We have obtained that sketchbook. Amid the detailed sketches of demons, faeries, and man-eating toads, we found the secret to his insane schedule: All thirteen aforementioned projects are actually a single film. A fantastic eight-hour epic the likes of which cinema has never seen!

The following is the pitch Mr. del Toro delivered to the executives of Universal Studios, as transcribed in his sketchbook:

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• Following his five-year commitment to the two-part Hobbit movies, Guillermo Del Toro already has enough projects lined up to keep him busy and us entertained through the end of the next decade. In his pipeline are new, more faithful versions of “Frankenstein,” “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” and “Slaughterhouse-Five,” as well as an adaptation of Dan Simmons’ upcoming novel “Drood,” about Charles Dickens. Oh, and there’s always that chance of him making another Hellboy sequel, too. Apparently he’ll be able to keep all productions alive simultaneously by maintaining a split personality and an uncontrollable ability to become unstuck in time.
• Remember that TV series that involved five individuals who came together to make one bigger superpower? I mean Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, but if you were thinking of Voltron, you were kinda close. Mark Makowski, whose biggest credit is for directing episodes of Queer Eye, is in talks to helm the bigscreen, live-action version of Voltron: Defender of the Universe.
• Unsurprisingly, Disney’s direct-to-video Little Mermaid prequel, Ariel’s Beginning, sold like hotcakes last week. Now I can still hope for DTV spin-offs and sequels like Caterpillar’s Hookah-Induced Adventures and Song of the South II: Intolerance.

I apologize if you thought this was going to be an action-packed fan-made movie, a la Batman: Dead End. But I’ve loved these Mac/PC parodies for some time now, and I couldn’t help myself. This one not only bridges the past weekend with the upcoming weekend by including Hellboy and returning DC toy Batman, but it also seems to unite all the summer 2008 superheroes, save for Hancock, who apparently does not have an action figure tie-in.

Of course, this one doesn’t beat the best of the series, which came earlier this year with the Iron Man/Batman showdown (eventually we’ll similarly need each a Quicksilver/Flash movie showdown, an Aquaman/Namor showdown and a Plastic Man/Mr. Fantastic showdown), but it’s fine until this winter, when we’ll probably get another “I’m a Marvel; and I’m a DC” clip featuring The Punisher and one of the many characters from Watchmen (toys for which hit stores in January — unfortunately no comparative Comedian action figure, it seems).

Hellboy is everywhere these days promoting Hellboy II: The Golden Army: on Ghost Hunters, American Gladiators, Inside the Actors Studio, auditioning for mun2 (if you lift a rock you’ll find him hanging out with one Chuck or another.) My favorite “trailer” is a spoof of a “The more you know…” PSA. But spoofing a PSA is not nearly as funny as this genuine PSA where R2D2 tries to bring a cigarette from his retractable clamp to some undisclosed robotic orifice.

Bonus PSA after the jump!
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(photo: La Jetée, Hellboy II: The Golden Army)

Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army hits theaters this Friday. Del Toro is a rare filmmaker who, despite his unique vision, often works on projects based on material from an outside source (Pan’s Labyrinth being a notable exception). Assuming all the legal issues get ironed out,  he’ll next direct a two part film adaptation of Tolkien’s The Hobbit, the most prestigious property to date to get the del Toro treatment. Here are seven either failed or unjustly obscure movies ripe for being remade by Hellboy’s father.

1. Spawn - Todd McFarlane’s comic about a Hell-trotting anti-hero indebted to the Devil opened my young eyes to genuinely dark storytelling. While the 90s were a simpler time in terms of comic to movie adaptations, I was already dreaming about a big screen adaptation after reading the first issue. Unfortunately, my dream came true in 1997, when Mark A.Z. Dippé’s god-awful Spawn slumped into theaters.

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I would love to continue from yesterday’s clip of the day, and spotlight more of those clever Hellboy II: The Golden Army promos (here’s another one with Lipton; and another one; here’s one with “Wolf” from American Gladiators; here’s one with Zachary Levi of TV’s Chuck; and another one; here’s one with TV’s Ghost Hunters).

BUT tomorrow is Independence Day, aka the 4th of July, and that means it’s time for MUPPETS. Specifically the most patriotic Muppet of all: Sam the Eagle, who presents us with a rendition of “Stars and Stripes Forever” performed by Beaker, Animal, the Swedish Chef, Bobo the Bear, a penguin and some chickens. Sam also recites part of the Declaration of Independence, Crazy Harry provides the fireworks and Statler and Waldorf show up for some criticism. Forget the hot dogs and the red, white and blue boxer shorts; this is all you need to make your holiday complete.

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Who needs Will Ferrell’s impersonation when the real James Lipton is willing to do stuff like this. It’s short, it’s sweet and it’s helping me maintain my excitement for Hellboy II: The Golden Army. And I wasn’t even a fan of the first movie. In fact, I can’t remember a darn thing about Hellboy except for the Nazi-heavy prologue, which gave me the first impression of Indiana Jones knockoff (the subsequent plot made me think Indy meets Men in Black). Fortunately, the follow-up looks more like Pan’s Labyrinth, which was at least directed by Hellboy helmer Guillermo Del Toro.

To get me back up to speed before Hellboy II drops next Friday, I’ve rented the DVD of the original. And I’ve also watched this animated prologue, which gives us background info regarding the Golden Army. Personally, I’d be OK with the whole film being in this style. I just have lots of love for minimal animation. I definitely need to check out Broken Saints, the web series directed by this prologue’s animator, Brooke Burgess.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army opens nationwide July 11.

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Guillermo Del Toro’s previous film, the Spanish fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth, scored three Oscars (half of those it was nominated for), received honors from 15 separate critics groups and featured on at least 91 end-of-year top ten lists (or 94, if you count this year’s lists, too). But it didn’t quite make as much money as Del Toro’s movie before it. Actually, that movie, Hellboy, also ended up some top ten lists, but really it was just another well-made comic book movie. And by well-made, I mean that it looked great (shot by Pan’s Oscar-winning cinematographer, Guillermo Navarro) and was directed efficiently. I certainly don’t mean that the writing was all that remarkable. In fact, with all its generic ancient paranormal stuff, Hellboy’s plot was terribly derivative (I can do without the non-Indian Jones-based Nazi baddies for awhile, thanks) and even got confused in my memory with Bulletproof Monk, which was probably my least favorite film of 2003.

So, you can imagine I’m not all that excited about Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Yet thanks to this trailer, I’m a little more interested than I had been. Never mind the lack of Nazi bad guys, this trailer really wants to capitalize on the fact that it was directed by the guy who gave us Pan’s Labyrinth. First, we see a little insect-like creature that evokes the fairy/mosquito thing from Labyrinth. Then there’s a shot of Doug Jones (who also returns as Abe Sapien) as the Angel of Death, an eye-less character evoking Jones’ Labyrinth characters, Fauno and Pale Man, and a scene set in some Autumnally leafy place that closely resembles Labyrinth’s labyrinth. Yet the trailer also plays on this capitalization by addressing the fact that this world is not part of someone’s imagination (as in the case of Labyrinth’s Ofelia). Will Universal be able to combine the audiences of the comic book movies and foreign language films with this strategy? Well, Hellboy II isn’t going to be winning any Oscars, and it’s probably not going to gross more than the first Hellboy. But at least Del Toro (who has acknowledged the parallels between Labyrinth and Hellboy II) seems to be trying to respect his fans and appeal to the whole spectrum in which they exist. That isn’t something all filmmakers who fluctuate between highbrow and lowbrow fare are able to do successfully.