The audience in Hall H was ramped up for Iron Man 2. They booed moderator Scott Mantz of Access Hollywood, who plowed on. (I had read some Tweets complaining about him earlier today.) Sure enough, he was flustered and not in tune with the Hall H crowd, which is fairly sophisticated.

Jon Favreau knows how to play to the room. So does Robert Downey, Jr., who broke onto the panel in supposed protest of the cheesy Marvel promo piece (conceived by Favreau as just that). Downey got some 6500 people to sing Happy Birthday to Favreau's son Max. "No one cared before you guys," Favreau told the hall. "Roll the other footage. Let's go."

The clip starts with Iron Man, helmet off, lounging inside the Randy's Donut sign. He confesses to not being in touch with reality during a diner scene with a threatening Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. At a Senate hearing, Tony Stark takes on a nasty Senator (Gary Shandling) who wants to confiscate the Iron Man weapon. It's great fun watching them go after each other as Pepper (Gwenyth Paltrow) tut tuts behind Stark.

Mickey Rourke as Ivan Venko aka Whiplash (two characters from the comics combined) threatens Downey at a race track, whirling his nasty fired up lariat. When Rourke heard that his character was a refugee from a Russian prison, he checked out a Russian prison, Favreau learned from TMZ.

At the panel, Sam Rockwell (who plays arms monger and Tony Stark wannabe Justin Hammer) had no clue how to charm the crowd. (That's one reason he's a great actor and not a movie star.) The crowd roared for Scarlett Johannson as Natasha Romonov, or Black Widow. She dyed her hair red before she took the role, took her training seriously, ate egg white omelettes and insisted on doing her own stunts so that her action scenes would look authentic. For his part, Cheadle had never worked on a movie with this level of scope and effects, he said. The War Machine costume was "heavy." When Rhodes makes his first appearance in the Senate scene, the movie deals with Cheadle replacing Terrence Howard by having him say, "I'm here, deal with it, let's move on." Cheadle asked Favreau to screen the footage again because he had missed it.

The movie wrapped last week, as those following Favreau on Twitter are well aware. He was tweeting and shooting photos from his iPhone from the Hall H stage too. With the sequel, "we wanted to add characters but not too many," said Favreau, "to maintain the same tone and dynamic, adding people to further move us toward the eventual Avengers film still coming."

The story was assembled through an elaborate collaborative process among Favreau, Downey, Marvel's Kevin Feige and writer Justin Theroux (who worked with Downey on Tropic Thunder), with much further improvisation on set. Set six months after the first film, Tony Stark is dealing with the pressures of having declared himself as Iron Man. He's a wealthy industrialist playboy operating on the world stage, but there's more to deal with--like his relationship with assistant Pepper and his old military pal Rhodes. He meets Natasha at his bacchanalia of a birthday party. "I wanted to deal with how he struggles with his own id in the face of being a larger than life character who is in fact saving the world," said Favreau.

The director has another year to go; he hopes to be involved in Marvel's upcoming The Avengers in some way, but that will depend on timing. Zak Penn is outlining the film now. After the panel, Marvel production chief Feige said that Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Nick Fury, Black Widow and the Shields Organization will all be in The Avengers--the characters interacting with each other is key. But they're taking it slow to make it right.

We'll see the final product May 7, 2010. Paramount and Marvel have nothing to worry about.

Comic-Con 2009 is front-loaded. Most of the key movie stuff happens on the first day, Thursday July 23, and Friday, with Iron Man 2 the main play on Saturday. (Here's the EW Iron Man 2 cover-preview.) The trick is to balance the crowded Hall H panels, trawling the exhibition floor, backstage interviews, screenings and parties with actual blogging. Yikes.

Last year I took the Fox City of Ember train down to San Diego, which worked great, actually. I loved not having to worry about a car, but I was staying at the Omni, right across from the Convention Center, so I was spoiled. This year I'm farther away, so I'll drive down at the crack of dawn Thursday to get my pass in time (!) to start off the day with the 11 AM Disney 3-D panel. Tim Burton (Alice in Wonderland) returns to the Con for the first time since college, while Bob Zemeckis (A Christmas Carol ) is coming for the first time. Burton will stay to do some press, Zemeckis will not.

The combo of Disney's 3-D animation panel and James Cameron's Avatar pushed the Comic-Con folks to install 3-D in the 65,000-square-foot Hall H. The Titanic director will attend the Con for the first time to show the first U.S. 3-D footage of Avatar, along with stars Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver and Stephen Lang. (Exhibs in L.A. screen the 20 minutes already shown in Amsterdam at Cinema Expo on Thursday July 16.) Sam Worthington, who debuted at The Con last year with Terminator: Salvation, is stuck in Wales playing Perseus in Louis Leterrier's Clash of the Titans. (Check out the photo: Gerard Butler, watch your back.) Fox will also promote off-site Diablo Cody and Karyn Kusama's horror comedy Jennifer’s Body , starring Megan Fox.

Cameron is participating in another Thursday panel on The Future of Filmmaking with Avatar's VFX czar, Weta chief Peter Jackson, who is also coming for the first time--he usually beams video to Hall H from Wellywood. Attendees are expecting to see Adventures of Tin-Tin footage. Jackson is also pushing his production of the sci-fi thriller District 9 on Friday. He's not involved in LOTR fan site Onering.net's side panel on pre-production of Guillermo del Toro's The Hobbit, which Jackson is also supervising in Wellywood. UPDATE: Word from Jackson's people: it's way too early for a Bilbo announcement.

Another Comic-Con virgin is Disney/Pixar animation czar John Lasseter, who will host an animation panel Friday with Japanese master Hayeo Miyazaki (must-see Ponyo screens Wednesday night), Disney's John Musker and Ron Clements (2-D The Princess and the Frog), and Kirk Wise (Toy Story 3). This is my idea of Heaven.

Thursday's crazy madness will be the Twilight: New Moon panel. Heartthrob Rob Pattinson will appear (reminder: must pack earplugs) with co-stars Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner and director Chris Weitz, but lovelorn vampire Edward Cullen isn't the main character in the movie, so Pattinson won't participate in any backstage interviews. Summit is screening Twilight for the fans with cast members on hand. Summit is scheduled to film the third installment of the Twilight Saga, Eclipse, from August 17 through October 31 in Vancouver with David Slade (30 Days of Night) directing Melissa Rosenberg's screenplay.

To promote Park Chan-wook's vampire movie Thirst (which played well in May's Cannes competition), Focus Features mailed the press a pouch of blood in advance of the Thursday panel, and will screen the intense horror film Friday night.

Some films won't be rating panels at this year's Con, although they may have some viral or off-site happenings or displays on the exhibition floor. Universal, for one, is skipping Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood. Disney is ignoring the live action Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and Surrogates. Cash-strapped The Weinstein Co. passed on promoting Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, Rob Zombie's Halloween II, The Road (starring Viggo Mortensen), Youth in Revolt (starring Con-friendly Michael Cera), and Piranha 3-D.

Warner Bros. probably isn't bringing Joel Silver's long-delayed screen adaptation of the graphic novel Whiteout because it was promoed last year. Also missing are Ninja Assassin and Zack Snyder’s animated 3D Guardians of Ga’Hoole. It's early days yet for MGM to promote the Joss Whedon/Drew Goddard horror comedy The Cabin in the Wood, but Whedon fans can catch the first three webisodes of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Thursday night.

Brian Lowry vets Comic-Con on the TV side.

I was going to leave Saturday, but David Tennant is showing up for a Dr. Who panel on Sunday morning. I may have to stay on.

Last year, I remember a few diehard fanboys mocking me when I flagged Twilight as a big deal at Comic-Con. The power of Twilight fans became clear as thousands of girls screamed their lungs out for emerging star Rob Pattinson. Helping to avert certain traffic gridlock, Comic-Con organizers pushed apart back-to-back Thursday panels for Twilight: New Moon and James Cameron's Avatar, by far the most anticipated two panels of the Con. Many were concerned that the threatened tsunami of fans surging toward Hall H Thursday morning (many of them female, in this very male-dominated universe) would make it tough to also cover Disney's 11 AM 3-D panel (Zemeckis's A Christmas Carol, Burton's Alice in Wonderland) and James Cameron's Avatar on the same day. Now New Moon is at 1:45 pm and Avatar is at 3:00 pm. Covering media may have a tough time getting into New Moon without some kind of press pass.

As THR covers how the studio marketers are harnessing the rising power of the online fansites--many of whom will participate in Comic-Con's annual Masters of the Web panel on Thursday at 2 PM--The Wrap examines the countering impact of Twitter on movie openings. As the studios try to use Twitter to disseminate information, word-of-mouth is taking on a whole new meaning in the Twitter universe. The Wrap also posts a handy short-form entertainment sked (the full Comic-Con schedule is packed with cool but not movie-centric graphics and comics panels). Here's Marvel's collection of panels, including Hall H's intro to Iron Man 2.

HitFix is also tracking Comic-Con. Stay tuned. I'm covering. I'm looking forward to seeing Hayao Miyazaki and Pixar's John Lasseter for one of my fave movies of the year so far, Ponyo, and seeing Terry Gilliam again, who is showing some footage but not the entire Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassas, starring Heath Ledger, who made the cover of Vanity Fair this month, a must-read. And for the first time ever, New Zealander Peter Jackson is appearing at the Con in person, to introduce District 9.

First the media touted the uptick in 2009 theatrical business, now they're pointing to a downturn compared to last summer's b.o., a few big flops and the absence of blockbusters. "Through Sunday, summer B.O. revs stood at $1.46 billion, compared to $1.47 billion last year," reports Variety.

Hold on folks, it's early days yet. Everyone knows what the blockbusters will be (besides Up): Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Disney's pairing of Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds in The Proposal should yield strong returns with the femme demo. But word is that neither Universal's Bruno nor Public Enemies will break out huge. And Sony's Year One and Paramount's G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra (which had a disastrous preview) look soft indeed.

Here are some summer lessons:

2. Origin myths sell. Star Trek skipped behind the other ten movies and went back to the beginning. Director J.J. Abrams found the right balance for Trekkies and newbies alike. Gross to date: $233 million so far.

3. Smart R-rated dumb male comedies sell. Always have, always will. The Hangover is the summer's sleeper hit, grossing more than $110 million in its first two weeks. The best news for Warner Bros: no talent profit participants. The bad news: they have to share with partner Legendary Pictures.

4. R-rated dumb male comedians don't sell in family movies. Universal miscalculated by starring Will Ferrell in $100-million remake Land of the Lost. The studio pulled the second weekend print ads on the picture, an unusual move. Gross to date: $36 million.

5. Eddie Murphy without makeup doesn't sell. I rest my case with Imagine That. Put Murphy under pounds of makeup playing a character, and they show up. Give him a role playing someone close to himself and audiences stay away in droves.

6. Lackluster sequels sell--but don't break out big. The key with these tentpole franchises is keeping up the quality.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which cost $150 million, opened huge and dropped off drastically. That means Fox's massive marketing budget pulled the core comics fanbase, but the movie failed to broaden. Gross to date: $176 million domestic, $353 million worldwide.

The sequel to The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons, also scored big overseas ($415 million) but did middling business stateside ($124 million). To my mind Ron Howard delivered a better E-ride this time. But the book and the movie lacked the compelling Christian scandale that the first one had. This movie was (expensive) standard-issue.

Despite McG's $200-million budget, Terminator Salvation failed to improve on its predecessors and seemed oddly retro. The highlights were not Christian Bale, who seemed to be channeling Batman, growl and all, but supporting performers Sam Worthington and Anton Yelchin. Gross to date: $115 million, plus $100 million overseas.

Stephen Colbert turns on the charm for the troops in Iraq. Pretty funny. Here's the full episode.

L.A.'s v. cool comics store Meltdown on Sunset is hosting an after midnight book signing with director Guillermo del Toro on Tuesday, June 2. He's flying in from the New Zealand set of The Hobbit to sign 500 exclusive copies of the first book, written with Chuck Hogan, of The Strain Trilogy, which is about a virus-infected plague of monsters invading New York City. (You can preorder Book One). Here's my earlier story.

UPDATE: Wired talks to del Toro and posts a trailer:

UPDATE: Del Toro talks to Craig Ferguson:

Iron Man was a huge winner. So while Marvel is still in charge of the sequel--and didn't hand the reins back to director Jon Favreau until he jumped through some hoops--I can't wait to see what he does to "deepen the chroma," as they say in Hollywood. In other words, a blockbuster brings the leeway to go even further in the right direction. Take it too far and you can get in trouble. Three weeks into production, USA Today's Scott Bowles talks to Favreau.

Tony Stark is out of the superhero closet, and it's no picnic.

The sequel to last summer's blockbuster, which began shooting three weeks ago and opens May 7, 2010, takes place six months after Stark revealed his identity as Iron Man, says director Jon Favreau. And the development is playing out with unexpected results. "How many superheroes are open about their true identities?" he asks. "We wanted to play with that idea. But it obviously has consequences — in his relationships, on the team. There are a lot of areas we can explore."

While Watchmen delivered a robust opening of about $55.7 million in North America, it came in lower than expectations--and much lower than Snyder's last film, the blockbuster 300--both domestically and overseas. Finally, Watchmen works best as the narratively complex, visually dazzling comics series from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Originally published in 1986, the graphic novel is flying off the shelves. I hope people do read the book, which instantly draws you in with its compelling, never confusing storytelling, deepening and peeling new layers as it goes. The movie, on the other hand, is hard to fathom, boasts too many characters, and doesn't add up to much. Set in the 80s, Zack Snyder's film deals with the Vietnam and Cold War, and the end of the world via nuclear attack, but supplies a new ending with strange shades of 9/11. Moore always did insist that his comics were unfilmable.

The Brits are unhappy with Barack Obama for the way he treated Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who may be the ultimate workaholic policy wonk but lacks a few volts in the charisma department. His countrymen are even complaining about Obama's gift to Brown of the AFI set of 25 DVDs.

Gold Derby reports that the Academy is delivering Heath Ledger's Oscar to Michelle Williams.

Ray Pride and Jamie Stuart celebrate the 10th anniversary of Stanley Kubrick's death. Here's a wonderful 2001 Kubrick special on Charlie Rose featuring Kubrick's wife and producer and Martin Scorsese:

[Posted by David S. Cohen]

It’s a happy accident for fans of comics and sci-fi pictures that Watchmen and Monsters vs. Aliens open within a few weeks of each other, because in some peculiar ways, they’re two sides of the same coin.

Granted, in some ways the two movies could hardly be more different: Watchmen is an R-rated, hyper-violent, serious-as-a-heart-attack deconstruction of the superhero genre, based on a graphic novel that has garnered praise as a serious work of literature. MvA is a joke-a-second kid pic created by DreamWorks Animation that pays affectionate homage to cheesy sci-fi movies of the 50s and 60s. It’s nearly inconceivable that anyone working on MvA was in any conscious way influenced by Watchmen.

But the superhero and sci-fi genres have always overlapped, and the comics Watchmen deconstructs are rooted in the same pulpy pop culture as those old sci-fi pictures. It’s not shocking there are some overlapping ideas. But to an extent no one could have anticipated they’re also mirror images of each other.

In a nutshell, Watchmen shows that “heroes” can be monsters, while Monsters vs. Aliens shows that “monsters” can be heroes. (Spoilers follow.) To be sure, superhero comics have long grappled with characters who flip-flop between good and evil or at least can be morally ambiguous. Movie fans have seen that in the X-men and Punisher movies, not to mention The Dark Knight. But Alan Moore’s graphic novel took the concept to another level.

Similarly, the idea that monsters can be heroes is nothing new to horror fans. MvA isn’t even the first picture to make the notion explicit. Godzilla, to name just one example, started out as a menace that destroyed Tokyo, but over the life of the franchise protected Japan from worse menaces and became a kind of hero. And the monster-as-hero is the whole gag in King Kong. Kong is the scourge of Skull Island – and Manhattan Island -- but turns out to be a big lonely ape who sometimes is as much Anne Darrow’s protector as her tormentor. By the 60s he was deemed cuddly enough to have a Saturday morning cartoon show and a kid buddy, like an overgrown Lassie. (Speaking of Saturday morning cartoons, by the way, here’s something to make Watchmen author Alan Moore’s head explode: Saturday Morning Watchmen Be sure to click “Watch this movie.” But I digress.)

Beyond that, MvA and Watchmen have some odd similarities. Both start in a world where the protagonists are despised outcasts. The masked vigilantes of Watchmen are despised by the public, and as a result are outlawed or working for the government; the monsters of MvA are feared by the public and therefore are prisoners of the government. “Watchmen” has one true super-hero, Dr. Manhattan, a brilliant scientist who is transformed by a experiment gone wrong into an indestructible blue human demigod. MvA has Dr. Cockroach, a brilliant scientist transformed by an experiment gone wrong into a nearly indestructible human roach. It also has B.O.B., a lab experiment gone wrong that turned into an indestructible blue blob.

Watchmen's Thursday midnight screenings grossed $4.6 million, reports Variety. Here's the boxoffice forecast. We know the comics epic will open huge. The question is, how will it play, not just here, but around the world? Here's my story in The Daily Beast. (I must say I enjoyed writing a full-length column again. I'd been missing it.)

The Wrap wraps up Watchmen. So does Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics' consensus is at 64%--the RT critics' base is wide and includes many online critics. UPDATE: The Guardian has issues with the way women make the transition from comic to screen.

Now that more of you have seen the movie, do you agree with me that it is disappointing and perhaps unfilmable as an action tentpole? And should have been done as a sophisticated, sexy, violent 12-part HBO series?

Reaction is starting to come in on Watchmen, Zack Snyder's much-anticipated follow-up to the blockbuster 300, first from the London opening, which was mixed, and now Variety's review, which broke today.

I saw the movie Wednesday night. Clearly, I am not the target audience for Watchmen, which will play like gangbusters for fans of the legendary Alan Moore graphic novel, but will likely leave everyone else on the outside looking in. Warners and Legendary Pictures decided to drink the Kool-Aid on this one: after the global blockbuster 300 they banked on Snyder delivering an action tentpole that would perform worldwide.

Snyder got some leeway from the studio. Watchmen is a devoted take on a cult 80s comic. It's R-rated, sexy, mature, violent, long, expensive--from $120-$150 million plus worldwide marketing costs. The studio wrangled with the filmmaker to cut the movie down from three hours to 161 minutes, but for the most part he got his way.

Here's my Comic-Con Snyder interview and panel coverage. Check out Snyder's own website. And here are snippets of what Snyder told me back in July:

"If Dark Knight got two and a half hours, Watchmen should get fifteen minutes more,” he pleads. “I’m trying to be reasonable."

But the studio still thinks Watchmen is too “too long, too sexy, and too violent,” says Snyder. For him, “that’s a reason to go. That’s the why. If you take that out you take out the why.” Otherwise it’ll just be another “watered down version of Watchmen, and then you might as well make another superhero movie. There’s a million characters out there you could do instead.”

The gorgeous R-rated movie is ultra-violent. I can take neck-crunching body-bashing blood-spattering action, but this was even tough for me to sit through. For the most part, women will not go for Watchmen.

While the movie is set to open big on March 6--some folks are guessing as high as $70 million--I'll wager that the ultimate audience will be limited to male action fans only. As someone with only fleeting exposure to the graphic novel, I watched the movie with little engagement or understanding of what was going on. Back stories on too many characters often left me confused. Why did Rorschach wear the mask (it was so much better when we saw Jackie Earle Hayley's face)? What was the nature of the old relationship between Rorschach and Nite Owl (well-played by Patrick Wilson)? The love triangle with Nite Owl, Billy Crudup's impressive blue super-hero Dr. Manhattan and Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman) worked best for me, although Manhattan's frequent frontal nudity and strange animated mouth may be off-putting to some. But what was the point, finally? The big mystery reveal, with shades of 9/11, was confounding to me.

In other words, while Warners may sell these eye-popping visuals and effects and characters--Snyder is a compelling filmmaker--Watchmen will not be an unabashed home run.

For a studio, a 30-second Super Bowl spot announces, "We're behind this movie." But is it really worth the cost? To reach 97 million viewers in the sweet male demo for $150-million-plus tentpoles like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, oh yeah! What's $3 million more?

DreamWorks Animation is actually pioneering a 3D Bowl spot for Monsters vs. Aliens which requires special Intel 3D glasses (Target, Best Buy). And here's a preview of some Super Bowl ads.

Other expected movie spots are Sony's The Year One, Disney's Up, Paramount's Star Trek, Sony's Da Vinci Code prequel Angels and Demons, and Universal’s Land of the Lost and latest The Fast and the Furious sequel. The final Bowl spots will be posted online at NBC.com, Hulu.com and Superbowl.com.

UPDATE: Here's the spot for J.J. Abrams' Star Trek starring Chris Pine as Captain Kirk:

And Land of the Lost, starring Will Ferrell:

Finally, Harold Ramis's Jack Black/Michael Cera Sony caveman comedy The Year One looks hilarious:

The Watchmen Duel of the Titans between Fox and Warners has been resolved.

Winners: Warners. They get to open the movie as planned on March 6. Fox is also a winner. It gets a back-end gross share of the movie. And gets rewarded for chasing after a legal opportunity. And the audience wins: they get to see the movie sooner rather than later.

Loser: Producer Larry Gordon, who lost face when the judge blamed him for not nailing down the rights; plus, he may have to give up some of his share of the gross, to make up for what Warner has to pay to Fox.

Ever since I saw early footage of Frank Miller's The Spirit at Comic-Con, I've been underwhelmed by the materials on the movie, which I haven't had a chance to see. Justin Chang delivers a pan.

Miller may work best with directors like Zack Snyder and Robert Rodriguez who are executing his vision. Miller has been writing a follow-up for Snyder to 300. And I can't wait to see Sin City 2, if it ever gets made. Last time I spoke to Rodriguez, he said it was not on the front burner at Weinstein Co.

My Comic-Con interview with Miller re: The Spirit is on the jump:

Hollywood loves comics. No question about that, as Warner Bros. denies that Megan Fox will be filling a Wonder Woman costume any time soon (Beyonce wants the role in Justice League), despite this fetching fake poster, and Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson assemble the financing for Tintin.

One current debate questions whether most of the really strong comics have already been exploited for movies. Are only the second tier titles left still to make? Are the ones that haven't yet made it to the big screen out of their time, no longer relevant, or simply not commercial? Even mighty Marvel could soon find this out. Den of Geek lists 75 upcoming comics projects.

Sony and Paramount are in talks to co-finance two Tintin films in the Steven Spielberg/Peter Jackson series based on the Belgian Tintin comics. (The NYT first announced the story.) Both studios confirm that talks are under way.

After resolving the Paramount/DreamWorks divorce, putting together a studio deal for Tintin was next on Spielberg's agenda. After Universal balked at partnering on the first installment, which will be directed by Spielberg, Paramount offered to back the first Tintin movie with a reduced back end at $135 million.

Spielberg had planned to be already shooting the 3-D performance-capture film, and lost the participation of his lead actor Thomas Sangster when the financing fell apart at Universal at the last minute, on the eve of DreamWorks/Paramont divorce. This is not a DreamWorks picture; if the deal goes through, Paramount is planning to distribute in North America and some other English-speaking territories, while Sony will handle the foreign release. Tintin should be completed for a 2010 release.

Jackson was planning to direct the follow-up. The DreamWorks deal was originally for three films. The NYT is reporting two: one Spielberg, one Jackson. As I understand it, Jackson wasn't thrilled with the Paramount offer, so a partner offered another way to go. Jackson went through an ugly lawsuit with New Line Cinema over monies owed on The Lord of the Rings. His DreamWorks film The Lovely Bones has been delivered to Paramount for release in the fall of 2009.

Oscar season is under way. How do I know? Well, Paramount Vantage has published its Academy screening schedule and is pushing hard for The Duchess, Defiance and Revolutionary Road. You'd never know that the label had been slashed within an inch of its life. That's because Paramount marketing co-head Megan Colligan is still on the Vantage case.

Another bellwether: LAT blogger Geoff Boucher's "three-part exclusive" interview with Christopher Nolan. Yes, Warner Bros. wants to sell The Dark Knight DVDs, but no director submits to a long interview in the LAT in advance of a DVD release unless Oscar is at stake.

The Dark Knight (which is sneaking up on Titanic's all-time worldwide boxoffice gross, as James Cameron well knows) should nab some Oscar noms and might even win some awards, for the late Heath Ledger, as well as various tech contributors. But director, screenplay, best picture---that's another kettle of fish for a comic book blockbuster.

While Dark Knight scored 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, and many critics will put it on their ten best lists, it's not going to win year-end critics' group prizes, because they tend to spotlight smaller pics that need help, such as Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York or Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky, two films that were summarily dismissed this weekend by at least one of At the Movies' Two Twerps. (Why do I keep watching? The habit is ingrained but painful.)

Iron Man is another example of a deserving film that nabbed better reviews than most films this year (93% on Rotten Tomatoes) and may be overlooked in major categories at Oscar time. On the other hand, Jonathan Demme's horrific thriller Silence of the Lambs and Peter Jackson's fantasy trilogy The Lord of the Rings weren't supposed to be Oscar bait either. Justin Chang examines the superhero Oscar phenom.

Also climbing up a high Oscar wall is the year's best-reviewed movie---as of late October, unlikely to be unseated--Disney/Pixar's Wall-E, from Andrew Stanton. It earned 97% when it first opened June 27. Here's my story about why it's tough going for an animated film to earn a best picture slot. Again, critics groups will likely stick the film in their animated category and focus on rewarding smaller fare.

But bowing to pressure from the community, Disney and Pixar are going for it. I've got insider info: Variety's running a Disney ad on Thursday that not only asks for Academy members' consideration for Wall-E for best animated feature but for best picture as well. (Here's the LAT's look at the new Disney animation under John Lasseter, who cracked the whip on Disney's upcoming Bolt, UPDATE and the NYT on big movies going for Oscar.) Disney's going to put on a concerted marketing effort to push Wall-E with AMPAS, the guilds, critics, producers, the works.

Wall-E deserves a shot at best picture. And it couldn't be more timely, in terms of nailing the zeitgeist. It won't take long, the way things are going, for us all to wind up in Wall-E's world.

Latinoreview cornered a DC Comics exec and tried to advance the status of the next Superman installment, but we still don't know where Bryan Singer and Brandon Routh and the writers are...

Meanwhile, how are Brandon Routh/Superman fans going to feel about their boy's role in Kevin Smith's potty-mouthed Zack and Miri make A Porno as a one-time high school jock star returning to his high school reunion with his gay porn star boyfriend Justin Long?

Give Betty White a good writer and nobody beats her. In this hilarious exchange between her---as John McCain's speechwriter--and Craig Ferguson, she calls Sarah Palin "one crazy bitch" and Barack Obama "incredibly sexy." You call it, Betty.

[Hat Tip the Dish Rag]

"I'm not soft on Barack," said "tough critic" Michelle Obama on the Jon Stewart Show.

The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw channels the Hulk to write his The Incredible Hulk review:

Hulk not scary. Hulk look like Shrek. Wait. Critic have ... second thought. Hulk look like Shrek when Shrek turn handsome, in Shrek 2. Like Gordon Brown. Hulk rubbish. Hulk not look powerful. Especially when Hulk do jumpy bouncy floaty thing. Over New York buildings. Then Hulk look wussy. Big. Yet wussy. Not good combination.

Funny.

Tina Fey isn't the only comedian who can nail a public figure. Saturday Night Live's Andy Samberg captures Mark Wahlberg in this talking to animals sketch.

Saturday Night Live continues to score ratings during election season. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler went after Katie Couric's notorious interview with Sarah Palin.

Two smart British gents make fun of Wall Street hedge funds selling dodgy debt packages, and bailouts that "reward the ingenuity of the market." Very amusing. And as it's several months old, on the money, as it were.

On a more serious note, on Charlie Rose, Democratic congressman Barney Frank shows why he's one person who has shown leadership in this financial crisis: he can explain it.

And in one of his trademark e-mails, Michael Moore thinks we're all getting rooked:

Friends,

Let me cut to the chase. The biggest robbery in the history of this country is taking place as you read this. Though no guns are being used, 300 million hostages are being taken. Make no mistake about it: After stealing a half trillion dollars to line the pockets of their war-profiteering backers for the past five years, after lining the pockets of their fellow oilmen to the tune of over a hundred billion dollars in just the last two years, Bush and his cronies -- who must soon vacate the White House -- are looting the U.S. Treasury of every dollar they can grab. They are swiping as much of the silverware as they can on their way out the door.

No matter what they say, no matter how many scare words they use, they are up to their old tricks of creating fear and confusion in order to make and keep themselves and the upper one percent filthy rich. Just read the first four paragraphs of the lead story in last Monday's New York Times and you can see what the real deal is:

"Even as policy makers worked on details of a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, Wall Street began looking for ways to profit from it.

"Financial firms were lobbying to have all manner of troubled investments covered, not just those related to mortgages.

"At the same time, investment firms were jockeying to oversee all the assets that Treasury plans to take off the books of financial institutions, a role that could earn them hundreds of millions of dollars a year in fees.

"Nobody wants to be left out of Treasury's proposal to buy up bad assets of financial institutions."
Unbelievable. Wall Street and its backers created this mess and now they are going to clean up like bandits. Even Rudy Giuliani is lobbying for his firm to be hired (and paid) to "consult" in the bailout.

Clearly, Warner Bros. is abandoning the idea of sending Superman into a movie with other superheroes, like a Superman/Batman movie or Justice League, because as Warner prexy Jeff Robinov admits in this long interview with The Wall Street Journal about his studio's future strategy, right now Warners doesn't know who Superman is. Wanted: a new model Superman.

Figuring out how the iconic DC comic character will proceed is front and center for the studio, which was not entirely happy with Bryan Singer's Superman Returns. Neither were many fans, who objected to the love triangle with a married Lois Lane, as well as her child, fathered by Superman. They also want a mightier and more formidable villain than Lex Luthor, played by Kevin Spacey. Director Bryan Singer, who is currently attached to what was to be a Superman Returns sequel, had promised fanns at Comic-Con to go "Wrath of Khan" on it. If Singer, who has been preoccupied with his upcoming World War II Tom Cruise movie, Valkyrie, can't find a "reboot" that meets Warners' expectations, they'll move on.

Clearly, the fans care deeply about this superhero. Comments flood in whenever we touch on the subject. There's life in the venerable comic book character yet, if Warners can crack this challenge.

Comedian Bernie Mac was just 50 when he died early Saturday morning from complications of pneumonia. According to the A.P., the Oceans Eleven and Original Kings of Comedy star told David Letterman in 2007 that he planned to retire and focus more on enjoying the rest of his life:

I'm going to still do my producing, my films, but I want to enjoy my life a little bit," Mac told Letterman. "I missed a lot of things, you know. I was a street performer for two years. I went into clubs in 1977."

Here's Todd Gold's obit. And MTV.com.

The stoner comedy Pineapple Express, an inspired Seth Rogen/Evan Goldberg/James Franco/David Gordon Green/Judd Apatow collaboration, will score big time. "I always thought Superbad would get made," said Rogen at the Pineapple Express panel. "But this I never expected to get made. When I watch this stuff I am amazed."

See photos from "Pineapple Express" panel at Comic-Con.

Besides the fact that both Rogen and Franco are growing into leading man status, the revelation in the film is the third leg of the stoner trio, Danny McBride.

I ran into him at the Pineapple Express party Friday night, the best of the Con (three agency parties thrown by CAA, UTA and WMA were packed with agents, mostly, while the PE party was poolside, civilized, not too crowded). It turns out that McBride really wants to direct. He studied film at the North Carolina School of the Arts, where he and Jody Hill and Ben Best concocted the raucus martial arts comedy The Foot Fist Way, which played at Sundance and was eventually picked up by Adam McKay and Will Ferrell. He also has a juicy role as a special effects wrangler in Tropic Thunder and is coming up in Land of the Lost and Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles as well.

McBride now has a rising comedy career as a member of the McKay/Ferrell and Apatow comedy troupes. The ungodly stoner trio of Rogen, Franco and McBride did a lot of improvising, he said, including the last scene in the movie. (Apatow says that Rogen is unusually gifted at improvising entirely in character.) "I let the cameras roll," said Green at the Pineapple Express panel. "We do a lot of improvising. I let the actors have as much fun as possible which hopefully will translate to audiences. We started with a sober take, then went higher and higher until they were dancing on the ceiling."

"You don't have to know how to read," added Rogen.

"You don't have to memorize lines, which is nice," said McBride, who was told his character had shaved armpits, but not the reason why. "That's what you have to figure out," Rogen told him.

And nobody smoked dope. There were dangerous stunts, McBride pointed out. "I smoked a lot of weed in high school," said Rogen, who admits he once smoked pot with a fishbowl on his head. "You can't smoke weed when you're making a movie. It's too hard. There's too much heavy equipment around."

McBride answers a few questions on the Comic-Con press balcony:

Frank Miller's The Spirit may be too smart for the room. (Here's my interview with Miller.)

The footage for Miller’s homage to his comics mentor, the late Will Eisner, looked fun but strictly narrow niche, much the way Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse played best for folks who felt the same way about their B-movie inspirations.

Miller is a gifted, crafty storyteller/entertainer who clearly is having fun playing with his new medium while staying true to Eisner. “I grew up on Superboy, my love of telling stories derives from that,” said Miller at a director’s panel. “Any way I can explore the hero and bring him to life is another way to do my life’s passion. It’s my job to give you what you don’t ask for and don’t know you want.”

“We wanted the voice of the artist on the screen,” said producer Deborah Del Prete at The Spirit panel. “We went to Frank because of that vision.”

Miller embraced the advantages of his new medium, he said at the directors' panel. "I first went crazy with sound and movement. You don't understand how big that was. I was doing boxes with words over heads. My idea of an explosion was to write BOOM. I had some wonderful moments cutting shot to shot. Some aesthetics you develop translate beautifully into film."

When Samuel L. Jackson (The Octopus) kept demanding bigger and bigger guns, Miller asked the prop department to wire some guns together. “We made up the meanest, nastiest bad guns you’ve ever seen in your life,” said Miller. “When he holds them he looks like a robot transformer.”

Then Jackson had to work out in order to carry them. “I lost some weight that day,” he said. “I became a black skinhead.”

Lead Gabriel Macht plays a cop who comes back from the dead with some extra skills and juiced up pheromones, so that every woman he meets falls in love with him. While there are a bevy of bodacious babes (from Eva Mendes to Scarlett Johannson) in this stylized Sin City-style green-screen movie, and leads Macht and Jackson make powerful opponents, Lionsgate has some tricky marketing challenges ahead on this pic, which opens Christmas Day.

Miller says he dropped a half-finished graphic novel to work on this movie. According to Zack Snyder, Miller is also working on the prequel to 300, about an historic Spartan battle set shortly after the Battle of Thermopylae. Miller handed in the script for Sin City 2 some time back. I asked Rodriguez what was going on with that. Clearly the Weinsteins did not encourage him to rush ahead with that one, and he’s put it on a back burner in favor of something else, he said.

Here's The Spirit trailer.

Comic-Con Photo Gallery: The Spirit Panel

The question hovering after Watchmen's delirious reception at Comic-Con is what will Warner execs Alan Horn and Jeff Robinov do now? They were both at the panel, and could see how well the Philip Glass-enhanced extended trailer played. It was gorgeous, visually arresting stuff, and the actors on the panel all reinforced the idea that there were real, rich characters to play here, well-written, with depth.

Of course what Marvel cut from The Incredible Hulk was the extra character nourishment added by Edward Norton. So will WB do the same here? Studios are responsible for looking carefully at the bottom line. So will cutting the movie down and losing some characters hurt the project? Every movie has a perfect length--but is it what's perfect for smart discerning Watchmen-philes and film critics, or the general public?

Here's my interview with Zack Snyder, and here's Reelz' video interview and Time's Watchmen take.

"Superhero movies don't exist just as summer popcorn mindless entertainment," Snyder told the 6500 fans packed into Hall H. "Watchmen talks about stuff that's important and serious. Serious filmmakers and actors are making these into cool movies. There are a lot of other cool graphic novels out there like Frank Miller's Dark Knight to make into movies."

Snyder said most of the movie was not shot the way 300 was made, on green-screen, but rather live action with practical effects--except for the Mars sequences and other FX being dropped into the movie, like Rorschach's moving inkblot mask. Billy Crudup did have to wear a suit covered with 140 dots as the very blue Dr. Manhattan.

"Getting into a costume and sticking a scar on my mouth helped me get in the mood to kill people," said Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who plays Comedian (pictured here).

Matthew Goode took a big leap from the very twee Brideshead Revisited to Watchmen, which he admitted he had to look up on Wikipedia.

Snyder is taking the pirate story and animating it and putting it out on its own DVD, he said at the directors panel, with Gerard Butler doing the voice of the sea captain. He says he shot the transitions in and out of the black freighter so it can be added on the Watchmen DVD, too.

Artist Dave Gibbons expressed his amazement at walking around a real set (in Vancouver) and seeing his drawings brought to life. His trademark boxed signature will be visible on some of the sets in the movie, he said. He wished that Watchmen creator Alan Moore hadn't had such a bad experience on his last adaptation (V for Vendetta) that he refused to have anything to do with this one. That doesn't mean, Gibbons added, that the official Watchmen website shouldn't mention the guy's name.

The movie opens March 6, 2009.

Comic-Con Photo Gallery: Watchmen Panel

Here's the trailer.

While many of the questioners in Hall H were fans, one perky babe started to build a fanbase of her own after approaching the mike several times. They're even following her on youtube. She's Leah d'Emilio from Mahalodaily.com and the reason she's doing the public access: PR. Traffic. The usual.

It will be interesting to see how much interest there is today in the remake of Robert Wise's 1951 sci-fi classic The Day The Earth Stood Still. One trend at Comic-Con is star managers pushing clients who are fans of a remakeable brand-name project. Erwin Stoff pitched Keanu Reeves for this one 15 years ago, and Rick Yorn pitched Benicio del Toro for Wolfman after seeing the poster in his house.

Stars always need tentpole movies. And Reeves seems to be a good fit for the alien Klaatu; he has an ethereal stillness to him that works in the footage we saw in Hall H Thursday. "'That guy can play the alien,'" Reeves joked to Stoff, who liked the idea of a movie that looks at the denizens of earth from an alien POV, Stoff said.

Director Scott Derrickson was also a fan of the original and actually met Wise when he was still a film student. Wise told him to do a horror film to show his stuff. And so he did, with The Exorcism of Emily Rose. "The original film was such a product of its time," said Derrickson. "The idea of updating it made sense. We're not dealing with a nuclear threat. The U.N. exists. The issues are different. The idea of an alien coming to earth who looks at human nature from an outsider perspective is an interesting take. In some ways it's about what it mean to be human."

"There was an objectifying and containment to him," said Reeves, who says this interpretation of the character is less "warm and fuzzy and human. I'm not that guy. He goes on a journey of seeing and looking and being affected by humans."

The relationship of Jennifer Connelly and her stepson (Happyness star Jaden Smith) shows Klaatu what humans are all about.

Derrickson completely reimagined the look of the alien technology as more organic and "ecological," he said. Wellywood's Weta Digital is beavering away on the elaborate VFX.

Comic-Con Photo Gallery: FOX (Includes The Day The Earth Stood Still)

[Posted by David S. Cohen]
Now that the Watchmen trailer has hit the web, giving us a tantalizing look at the film's visual effects and overall style, here's a tidbit about how those wicked-cool Dr. Manhattan effects were created. Billy Crudup appears in the trailer as Jon Osterman, who becomes a superbeing after a laboratory accident. (Shades of Bruce Banner!) For his post-accident scenes as Dr. Manhattan, Crudup is replaced in the film with a motion-capture CG version of himself. During filming on set, Crudup acted opposite his co-stars, wearing a suit covered in blue LEDs, so he would give off an otherworldly glow in real life, just as Dr. Manhattan does in the movie.

I'm not going out on a limb to say that the most anticipated presentation at Comic-Con will be Zack Snyder's panel on Warner Bros.' The Watchmen. Remember, 300 exploded out of Comic-Con two years ago.

The trailer hit the Web this week, and the HD version is stunning. I love trailers where you don't know what the hell is going on. Of course afficionados of the Alan Moore comics can identify the origin story of Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) and the shadowy bipolar Rorshact Rorschach, among others.

Snyder himself explains some of his secrets here. UPDATE: And here's EW's Snyder and Alan Moore interviews. And Comic-Con preview. Stay tuned to Variety's ongoing Comic-Con coverage.

Today I talked to someone who has seen the movie, Legendary Pictures producer Thomas Tull, who goes 50/50 with Warner Bros. on such films as Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, Superman Returns, 300 and The Lady in the Water (the only film he didn't actually produce). An old Watchmen comics fan, Tull wanted in on the film as soon as Snyder pitched it, even though many people have regarded the complex, layered sci-fi narrative about superheroes who are real as unfilmable. After Tull saw a cut of the movie he told Snyder, "You got it. You nailed it the spirit of it and made it come alive."

"It's a smart visually stunning movie," he told me. Of course he's vested.

He's also vested in making the next Superman installment, which is still years away, come to life. While Bryan Singer has been working on Valkyrie, Tull and the folks at Warners have been listening to various screenwriters pitch their solutions to how to make the next Superman work. "It's an iconic character," says Tull. "After everything that went into the first film, it's important to make sure that nothing is rushed and we come out with a fantastic second film." One thing they all agree on: Superman needs a powerful antagonist, a "worthy opponent," he says.

Coming sooner is Louis Leterrier's follow-up to Incredible Hulk, Clash of the Titans. And no, Leterrier is not being talked about to direct Superman. "He's laser-focused on Titans," says Tull.

After our Monday editorial meeting I bet some of my colleagues that the Obama New Yorker cover controversy would not just blow over in a few days. And it hasn't. Here's Jon Stewart on the issue. "It's just a fucking cartoon!" he says, memorably.

The point is not whether people who read the New Yorker get the joke. It's about the potency of the image, transmitted via the internet, everywhere else.

As a distraction from The New Yorker issue, Barack Obama gave campaign trail reporters his four-star film review of Wall-E after seeing it with his daughters in Chicago, writes the A.P.:

"'WALL-E' was great. Thumbs up. It's terrific. I really enjoyed it. And the girls had a great time."

UPDATE: Not surprisingly, New Yorker editor David Remnick wasted no time in pleading his case to Charlie Rose Wednesday. Remnick fiercely defended the cover as satire that was not over the heads of non-New Yorker readers. The cover felt right to him, he said, when there are many covers that don't make the cut. He also thanked Jon Stewart from the bottom of his heart.

Bloggasm posts some other great Barry Blitt New Yorker covers.

Hold your horses everybody. Patrick Goldstein and Stu Van Airsdale pile on Murphy after the disastrous $5 million opening of Meet Dave, which was stupidly marketed; Fox should have kept the title Starship Dave. But the studio's problem with this $75-million comedy was insurmountable: They were selling a movie starring Eddie Murphy playing Eddie Murphy.

All the guy has to do to have a hit comedy is play someone else. Eddie Murphy works best in movies like Shrek and Norbit when you can't see his face.

It's that simple, and that's the reason why the star has enjoyed a much longer career (26 years) than most comedians in Hollywood. He's a chameleon shape-shifter. You love him as the fat guy in Nutty Professor, not the thin one. Even in Dreamgirls, Murphy was playing someone utterly different from himself. And grabbed an Oscar nom for it. And he will surely do well playing all the characters (under makeup) in the upcoming Fantasy Island. But any studio that has an Eddie Murphy project that involves no disguising makeup (like Beverly Hills Cop IV) or isn't animated had better think twice.

Or you could meet another Dave or Pluto Nash.

Comic-Con is coming at the end of the month, and two movies sure to make a splash at the San Diego convention center are Frank Miller's neo-noir The Spirit and Catherine Hardwicke's vampire romance Twilight. I interviewed both directors for my column: Miller says The Spirit is in color, not black and white, and that he colors with emotion. Hardwicke talks about auditioning Robert Pattinson to play the vampire Edward Cullen opposite Kristen Stewart's Bella--- on the bed of her Venice beach pad. Only with those two was there serious heat.

And here's the Comic-Con sked. UPDATE: And here's EW's cover story and backlash to their ultra-glam cover shoot, which alters the appearance of the actors from the movie.

A key story of summer 2008 is the rise of Marvel Entertainment. Now in charge of its own destiny with Iron Man and Incredible Hulk, the company is actively developing its own characters for movies down the line. And execs are willing to defend Marvel's long-term interests, whether that means negotiating tough with Jon Favreau on directing the Iron Man sequel or telling Edward Norton that some of his favorite scenes in Incredible Hulk will have to wait for the DVD.

At the Hellboy II premiere, Favreau told me he that while he was planning to do Iron Man 2 and wanted to do The Avengers as well, Marvel was unlikely to wait for him to do both. The "official" announcement will likely wait for Comic-Con.

Now execs at DC Comics are taking note. Long more passive in their relationship to their films, there are signs of change, reports David Cohen. Still up in the air are such DC projects as the next Batman and Superman movies (how about those Louis Leterrier rumors?) and Justice League, not to mention the long-in-the-works Wonder Woman.

My father raised me on the Marx brothers; thanks to Jeff Wells for tantalizing me with with this too-short clip of the infamous State Room sequence from A Night at the Opera, probably their best film.

Here's another sample of their greatness: Thank Yaw! Thank Yaw!

MTV stars the Wildboyz dunked themselves in the Ganges and dumped water on an elephant during their escapades in India. Naturally, they couldn't pass up an excuse to do their own Bollywood dance number.

Finally, I would have preferred to see The Dark Knight in 35 mm, not IMAX. (I will go see it again when it opens July 18.) While the sequences that were shot with giant cameras were stunning at the IMAX venue--especially the deep detailed helicopter shots over Gotham and the amazing car/truck chase filmed in Chicago's freeway tunnels--I found the movie overwhelming. My brain starts to shut down when it gets over-pixillated, and this film goes on for two and a half hours. (Here's Justin Chang's review.)

My instincts told me when I first saw The Dark Knight trailer: Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins follow-up would fall into the trap of the summer tentpole sequel. It's not entirely his fault. The studio gives him his marching orders: top the last one. Make it bigger, better, bolder, more FX, more action, more scale and scope and characters (read toys). What else should a poor boy to do with $180 million?

Nolan delivered on the first Batman reboot and he does it again here. The Dark Knight will work at the boxoffice and keep the franchise alive.

In many ways, this movie functions as a western, with an honorable sheriff (Gary Oldman's lovable police detective Gordon), a nasty outlaw (Heath Ledger's extraordinary, anarchistic Joker), a lone gunman hero operating outside the law (Christian Bale's Batman) with loyal veteran sidekick (Michael Caine as Alfred), and the lovely lass that the outsider cannot have (Rachel Dawes, the delightful and wily Maggie Gyllenhaal).

And then--here's where the movie starts to go off the tracks--we have Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent, the too-virtuous-to-be-true D.A. who is in love with Gyllenhaal, thus forming a love triangle, as well as another Batman accomplice, inventor Lucius Fox (read James Bond's Q), played by the over-exposed Morgan Freeman. Then add a bunch of mafia guys led by deliciously wicked Eric Roberts.

Somehow, David S. Goyer (who wrote the story), and screenwriter Nolan brothers Chris and Jonathan manage to play out all these plot strands. But they wind up with a half-hour finale on top of the two hour main movie, which is really about Batman vs. Joker, who wind up in an iconic face-off on a main street in Gotham. (Ledger dominates Dark Knight news coverage, natch. The LAT addresses the movie from that angle, while EW goes way overboard. Clearly, Warners is making an Oscar push for the film. Ledger's acting nomination is inevitable; while James Dean and others have been nominated after their deaths, only Network's Peter Finch has won a posthumous Oscar.)

Oddly, because The Dark Knight is busy servicing all these other characters, the movie doesn't spend enough time with its leading man, Bruce Wayne/Batman (BTW, Batman's basso-growly voice is silly).

After twists and turns aplenty, some more satisfying than others, the movie comes to a gratifying conclusion (setting up the next sequel). But while Eckhart is winning as Dent, his character detour as Two-Face does not pay off.

I suspect that the filmmakers should have figured out the shorter version of this movie before they shot it, not after, because by then they couldn't cut it, according to Nolan (the full Q & A from one of my Guild spies is on the jump). Nolan shot The Prestige before he came back to work on the final drafts of the script. And by then he was locked into studio-mandated start and delivery and release dates.

My fantasy of the ideal version of this movie doesn't matter a whit, because it will play. The complexities of the plot are more fun to talk about than anything since Wall-E or Iron Man, and that makes Dark Knight one of the best movies of the summer. Maybe some dark over-nourishment is better than a simpler, structurally perfect masterpiece, after all.

Universal threw yet another Westwood block party premiere Saturday night, this time for $100-million summer sequel Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, the closer of the Los Angeles Film Fest, which lured some 100,000 attendees, up from last year. Hellboy 2 director Guillermo del Toro handed out two jury prizes worth $50,000 each to documentary filmmaker Darius Marder (Loot) and feature director Sean Baker (Prince of Broadway).

His "insanely ambitious movie" Hellboy 2, Del Toro said, "comes from an exotic country inside my brain and my gonads. People think I do two types of movies: strange little Spanish films and big studio movies. This movie comes from a different place. It's the first of those big movies that belongs to the same world as Pan's Labyrinth. The imagination in it is unbridled."

True enough. Hellboy 2 is a hybrid of those two things. And thus some moviegoers, especially the core fanboys who loved the Dark Horse comics and the first installment, will embrace Hellboy 2's fantastic eccentricities, while others will be left behind, scratching their heads. I doubt the visually sumptuous pic will break out into wide acceptance, especially given the stiff summer competition. The first Hellboy was not a global hit in 2004 (it topped out at $98 million worldwide) but sold well over the years on DVD.

At the party, Del Toro admitted that the film's war between the ancient magical underground universe and modern humans is far from black-and-white. Like Del Toro himself, red-skinned warrior Hellboy (Ron Perlman) is ambivalent, caught between the rich primal forces that spawned him and his powerful human masters. Here's the trailer:

No matter how well this movie does, Del Toro is about to enter a new fantasy portal that will take four years of his life: J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. Working closely with producers Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, phase one will involve writing for three weeks in L.A., one week in Wellywood, phase two will reverse that (one week in L.A., three weeks in Wellywood) and then the directing and post-production phases will take Del Toro to New Zealand full time.

Here's the filmmaker's two-part Q & A at LAFF.

For his part, critic John Anderson likes Hellboy 2 a lot:

But the reason the movie plays so well has nothing to do with the leading man's paternal instincts; rather, it's rooted in del Toro's rococo instincts for the stylishly creepy and crawlingly macabre, his clockmaker's preoccupation with detail, and a flair for combining state-of-the-art technology with his taste for the antique, the gothic, the Catholic. Not to disparage the f/x guys, but what's onscreen in "Hellboy II" is all about the seismic eruptions in del Toro's head. Comparing his work to most fantasy cinema is like comparing cave drawings to the Cathedral of Cologne.

The LA Film Fest opened with the premiere Thursday night of Universal's Wanted, followed by a Westwood block party. Spirits were high, because the smart director's showcase played.

Wanted is a stylish R-rated, violent adaptation of the comic books by Mark Millar and J. G. Jones. Producer Marc Platt matched up the comics with a series of screenwriters (Michael Brandt & Derek Haas and Chris Morgan) and director Timur Bekmambetov, the established Russian auteur of the stylized, over-the-top horror thriller Nightwatch and its Daywatch sequel, huge hits. Bekmambetov doesn't just do action, he said last night, smiling slyly. He also released a recent hit romantic comedy.

Bekmambetov's WMA agent Mike Simpson was over the moon because this is the kind of director Hollywood studios fantastize about--a Tim Burton with visual flair who can do action. Bekmambetov could do a Mission: Impossible or Bourne movie (that's Universal) if he wanted to. It was Universal that had the guts to put him on a $100-million actioner (Universal's official budget is $80 million)--and lured reliable stars Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman to support James McAvoy. The ads sell Jolie, who's terrific, but McAvoy carries his third American-accented picture--sans dialogue coach. He gives the movie a believable center. And yes, these people are playing actual characters. The movie breathes.

And it delivers action on a Bourne or Matrix level.

Suspension of disbelief is required. But the direction is so controlled, precise, detailed and inventive that you go for the ride. Bekmambetov has another plus: his own visual effects house in Russia, like Peter Jackson does in Wellywood. The f/x by Bazelevs are superb. Jolie and McAvoy skip along elevated subways, do metal-bending aerial car stunts, and boast special skills that enable them to alter the laws of gravity. SPOILER ALERT: Just when I was wondering when they'd stop working so hard and get sexy, the movie delivers a major kiss. And there's a stunning train derailment off a mountain abyss.

Assuming Wanted plays widely when it opens June 27 (a lot of arguments Thursday night were about whether it was a two-or-four-quadrant movie), McAvoy is signed up for two sequels. But, he predicts, "There won't be more than one. I don't want to do action movies." Bekmambetov was mum about whether he would return. (They will likely have to pay him.) He's setting up something called Saga, I hear. (Is it a movie version of the videogame?)

Here's Variety's review.

Universal could have a big summer. Marvel's remake of The Incredible Hulk dropped dramatically on its second weekend, but should be steady as they go. Next up is Guillermo del Toro's $100-million sequel, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, which closes the LA Film Fest. The movie musical Mamma Mia! has global pull with women thanks to its long-touring theater show. And Rob Cohen's $170-million (official studio budget is $150 million) reinvention of the Mummy franchise, The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, shot in China with Brendan Fraser, Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh and an army of Terra Cotta warriors, opens in August. A test screening this week yielded a positive AICN posting.

What these movies have in common--and this will be an interesting test of what the box office will bear--is that "they all know exactly what they are," says Universal co-chairman Marc Shmuger, "and who they're for."

Universal threw an Incredible Hulk premiere Sunday on the lot (which a week later, still had a tinge of smoke in the air). After all the grief and belly-aching about problems behind-the-scenes, Transporter director Louis Leterrier's movie played great at the Amphitheatre, and got thumbs up not only from me, but from 18-year-old Nora and Variety editor-in-chief Peter Bart. (Here's Variety's Incredible Hulk Movie Page.)

Edward Norton (who does not take a screenwriting credit) manages to make his tortured scientist-on-the-run sympathetic, not just as a man in love with fellow-scientist Liv Tyler, but as the raging-green Hulk, who seems to have learned a few things this time around from Peter Jackson's King Kong. Hulk (animated by Rhythm & Hues) does the chest-pounding dance on a rainy mountain crag routine--as his soaked lady-love looks on appreciatively, the only person who can reduce his heart-rate--and releases his rage in a satisfying lion-like roar. SPOILER ALERT: He also does gratifying big-scale battle with another gamma-tainted uber-being, The Abomination, played in human form by Tim Roth. Bill Hurt chews up the scenery as the villain of the piece. This time, they got it right.

The Incredible Hulk reveals the hazards of taking your movie to Comic-Con--God Forbid your presentation doesn't go over with fans. Bad Internet buzz killed dogged the first Hulk and threatened this one, too. One producer of Michael Bay's Transformers 2, which is currently filming in Pennsylvania, admitted that he'd just as soon not take anything to the July comic-book convention in San Diego until they have something really fab to show.

Here's the trailer:

Here's Todd McCarthy's review of Ang Lee's 2003 Hulk. He sees the 2008 incarnation on Tuesday; we'll post his Thursday print review on Wednesday night.

Finally, though, ultimate fanboy Harry Knowles' enthusiastic response and advance tracking indicates that Marvel (which made Iron Man, too, which has already grossed $289 million) will score another big opener this weekend: The Incredible Hulk is expected to gross in the same range as the last Hulk and last weekend's Kung Fu Panda: $60 million or so. The tracking is strong with men, as you'd think, and weak with women, who might build on word-of-mouth, because of the Norton/Tyler love story.

As the movie was unspooling, though, I was thinking, "wonder how they'll set up the sequel?" and, "when is Robert Downey, Jr. going to show?" Both of those things do make possible Marvel's planned Avengers movie, which could combine the likes of Giant Man, Thor, Captain America, Hulk, Wolverine and Iron Man, to name a few likely suspects we discussed with Kevin Smith on the way out. He responded to my query about Marvel setting up Avengers with, "you have to be retarded not to think that!"

UPDATE: Here's Cinematical on the reveal of Tony Stark's cameo, which is at the very end of the movie. And Film School Rejects has a Hulk Guide.

Frank Miller of Dark Knight, Sin City and 300 fame is blogging about his directorial debut The Spirit. And there's a possibility he will direct a Buck Rogers movie, reports IGN.

Two playboy superheroes with sidekicks and gadgets and comics fans are duking it out at the summer b.o.: DC's Batman and Marvel's Iron Man. Watch the two action heroes take each other on:

Yes, Samuel Jackson as Nick Fury is in Iron Man--his scene runs after all the credits. Marvel withheld it from press screening prints. I was visiting the Balboa Theater in San Francisco this weekend, where theater manager Gary Meyer (also co-director of the Telluride Film Fest) was having some ILM folks talk about the effects afterwards, and I saw the clip setting up the next movie, which will also, I am told, give Stark sidekick Terrence Howard's Rhodey the chance to morph into War Machine. Marvel is going full steam ahead on their next batch of pics, including Iron Man II, but may have to pay Downey a little extra to get him back--I had understood that he signed for three pics.

I managed to convince Paramount to show me Iron Man earlier this week, and grabbed director Jon Favreau for a phone interview from the European leg of his round-the-world press tour, from Paris to Rome to the London Premiere. Here's my Iron Man column, which even explains why Samuel Jackson and Hilary Swank aren't in the movie.

The movie rocks, in case you were wondering. It's light-on-its-feet, nimbly blending comedy, action, and VFX. Robert Downey, Jr. as a 60s-style playboy weapons mogul and anti-superhero and Gwenyth Paltrow as his updated Miss Moneypenny have real chemistry. And yes, Marvel and the Iron Man team have got themselves a franchise. Fantasy Moguls Steve Mason has upped his prediction of how the movie will open on May 2 from $60 million to $100 million, the kind of b.o. forecasting that is giving Paramount execs heartburn.

Here's the first of Variety.com's ongoing look at summer blockbusters. And here are Todd McCarthy's Iron Man reviews for Variety and Reelz:

Demand is so over-heated for Iron Man--which word is, may actually be good--that Paramount is planning to play the game of debuting the film the night before, on May 1. The Arclight in L.A. is selling tickets to a Thursday night midnight show. At the same time the studio is worried that the film may be overhyped, so it's trying to keep most media breaks closer to release and not overheat expectations that this will be one BEHEMOTH of an opening. If Paramount says $45 million, expect as much as $70 million. Fantasy Moguls' Steve Mason reports that tracking is pointing toward a huge Iron Man opening of $60 million plus.

Here's one example of who's coming out of Iron Man way ahead: Robert Downey Jr., who talks to EW here.