It’s Officially Official: Patty Jenkins Directing Thor 2

This afternoon comes official confirmation of what Variety reported month. Patty Jenkins will direct Thor 2. Here's the press release:

"Marvel Studios announced today that Patty Jenkins will direct Thor 2, which will be released in theatres on Friday, November 15, 2013. Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Portman will return to star in the film along with Tom Hiddleston. Marvel Studios' Kevin Feige will produce the sequel to this summer's blockbuster Thor, which has grossed over $448 million worldwide to date.

Patty Jenkins previously directed Monster starring Charlize Theron, who won an Academy Award® for her performance in the film. Jenkins, who received an Emmy nomination for directing the pilot of AMC's acclaimed series The Killing, has also directed episodes of Entourage and Arrested Development. Most recently, she directed 'Pearl,' one of the five short films that comprise Lifetime’s original movie Five."

This morning it was also reported (as per THR) Thor 2 was shifting gears and moving out of the prime late July 2013 release to November 15.

An intriguing release (You remember the last superhero epic that opened on the eve of Thanksgiving? Me neither) to go along with an intriguing directorial choice (One that I personally approve) for the sequel to an intriguing fantasy film (Labeled as a superhero film – it truthfully isn't one) that surprised everyone this summer.

An Honest-to-God Muppets Trailer That Isn't a Movie Parody!

Someone must have advised Disney you can't just say, "Hey! We're bringing the Muppets back! Get excited, people!" and wait for The Muppets to open next month.

A new trailer is here for your viewing pleasure courtesy of Yahoo! Movies.

It's cute, funny and sure it gives away some (but not all) of the celebrity cameos but they finally knocked it off with that movie-parody trailer bullshit. Thank God.

This Means War Trailer Asks Plenty of Questions - None of Them Good

Is Reese Witherspoon really worth all this destruction?

Why would Chris Pine, who’s been so careful with his choices since Star Trek, pick this?

Can McG dig himself into an even bigger hole with the Internet community?

Is Ed Harris secretly watching my every move?*

These are just some of the questions I asked myself after watching the trailer for This Means Wars, the action/comedy from the afore-mentioned director-turned-Internet Whipping Boy.

*It wasn't even a half-hour ago I made a smart-ass, off-hand remark about this movie in an article about one of its stars Tom Hardy. I look up and there's the damn trailer on Apple. Weird.

Tom Hardy Says Mad Max Sequels are Back On

Tom Hardy was supposed to be the new Mad Max for George Miller. Vehicles were constructed specifically for use in Mad Max: Fury Road and Mad Max: Furiosa, sets were built and other actors like Charlize Theron and Nicholas Hoult were cast.

Then the money fell through and Christopher Nolan grabbed Hardy before anyone else could and made him Bane in The Dark Knight Rises.

The backers behind the new Mad Max films appear to be hoping the British actor will live up to all that "He's the next big thing" press made of him since nabbing the Batman gig. Hardy tells the Daily Beast he'll be back in training for the role by March and production has moved to Namibia in place of Australia where cameras were long originally planned to roll.

Great an actor as he is (He walked away from Nolan's Inception with the flashiest, most movie-starry performance), it's not a good idea to bask in all this pre-release hype this soon. Gavin O'Connor's wonderful Warrior (the first big release where Hardy was the star) flopped, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy could be a hit stateside but like Inception it's an ensemble piece where he isn't the lead and who the Hell knows what will become of McG's action/comedy This Means Wars next February.

He'll never stop getting work thanks to his acting prowess. But let's not get ahead of ourselves saying he's going to be a movie-star.

Get Ready for More Awkward Sex Predicaments – American Reunion Red Band Teaser

Universal is hoping you're feeling nostalgic for American Pie, the series for its day deemed the pinnacle of the R-rated raunchy comedy movement of the 2000s for my generation.

MSN has the red band teaser trailer for next spring's American Reunion and it promises more awkward moments for Jim (Jason Biggs, evidently happy to be getting a paycheck), Michelle (Alyson Hannigan, who would have thought she'd be the one with the career?), Stifler (Sean William Scott) & Co.

If you were big into that franchise (It was never my thing – I was more of a Kevin Smith kinda guy), then you should enjoy this:

The Avengers Trailer Delivers on Promise of Epic Superhero Team-Up

Three years, four movies and a whole bunch of shoving down our collective throats (not to mention, floods of set pictures the last few months and fan speculation ever since the post-credits coda from Iron Man) and Apple Trailers has the trailer for Marvel's The Avengers for your viewing pleasure. Check it out at the link or below.

On the simple promise of seeing superheroes together in the same room fighting off baddies (the implicationalthough not specified is an alien invasion involving Tom Hiddleston's Loki), it delivers and as usual Robert Downey Jr. has the best zingers. Plus we get to see how the silver screen's third iteration of Bruce Banner/the Hulk (aka Marc Ruffalo) looks. Spoiler alert: he's green and angry.

But I'm leaning towards the "Eh..." side with this trailer. It's OK over all. Nothing Earth-shattering, but prepare for all the nerdgasming you're going to have to endure today from the online community.

Don't Like a Movie? "Sue the Distributor!" Says One Moron

Everyone has their own taste in important, life-altering topics like religion or politics and more meaningless bullshit like film, television, music, fashion and so on. Having your own train-of-thought that doesn't gel with others is perfectly fine and doesn’t make you stupid.

On the other hand, filing a frivolous lawsuit against a film distributor because you didn't like the motion-picture in question definitely makes you a jackass.

Detroit station WDIV-TV (via Gawker) reports local Sarah Deming filed a claim against FilmDistrict for the art-house actioner Drive starring Ryan Gosling and Albert Brooks and directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Her argument is the movie FilmDistrict sold to her and the general movie-going public wasn't the movie they saw. While there's legitimacy to her claim (I can vouch my audience walked out hating Drive), such practice has been going on for as long as film has been a viable medium. We see this happen all the time.

Where she loses what admittedly-little credibility she had is the claim Drive is also anti-Semitic stating it "contained extreme gratuitous defamatory dehumanizing racism directed against members of the Jewish faith, and thereby promoted criminal violence against members of the Jewish faith." Yeah, Driver (Gosling) totally went after Bernie (Brooks) and Nino (Ron Perlman) for being Jewish and not because they were violent gangsters who were after him.

When the judge inevitably dismisses this case, I sincerely hope they also make Deming cover the costs of the proceedings for wasting everyone's time with this crap.

Possible Bond (2)3 Title Sounds Less 007, More Roland Emmerich

If it's to be believed, and after Quantum of Solace (Remember when we all thought it was going to be called The Property of the Lady?) we shouldn't put anything past Sony and Eon, the title for Bond (2)3 may have been discovered.

What Culture! (formerly Obsessed with Film, and for a second there, I thought was a Yakov Smirnoff fan-site) caught wind of a slew of URLs being registered for Sony via a brand protection company:

"http://whois.domaintools.com/jamesbond-skyfall.com 
http://whois.domaintools.com/jamesbond-skyfall.net 
http://whois.domaintools.com/jamesbondskyfall.com 
http://whois.domaintools.com/jamesbondskyfall.net 
http://whois.domaintools.com/skyfall-film.net 
http://whois.domaintools.com/skyfall-thefilm.com 
http://whois.domaintools.com/skyfall-thefilm.net 
http://whois.domaintools.com/skyfall-themovie.com 
http://whois.domaintools.com/skyfall-themovie.net 
http://whois.domaintools.com/skyfallfilm.net 
http://whois.domaintools.com/skyfallmovie.net 
http://whois.domaintools.com/skyfallthefilm.com 
http://whois.domaintools.com/skyfallthefilm.net 
http://whois.domaintools.com/skyfallthemovie.com 
http://whois.domaintools.com/skyfallthemovie.com"

If the title is Skyfall, fine so be it. Not what I had in mind. Surprised the Broccolis didn't go for something more akin to Ian Fleming but I just want to see Daniel Craig cracking skulls in the role for a third time before calling it a day. Get the impression this will be his swan-song from the franchise and I hate the idea of him repeating what happened to the (also) great 007 Timothy Dalton.

Who Wants to See Tower Heist in Their Pajamas?

Sure, it's a pain in the ass going to the movies. It used to the biggest problem was sitting in front of some asshole that talked during the movie and didn't understand the concept of shutting up. These days finding that guy would be a Godsend compared to the little pricks that spend 90 minutes playing video games with their cell phones or texting instead of watching a movie in a darkened room with hundreds of strangers. Because God forbid they turned off the Goddamn phone. Gasp, indeed.

Universal is hoping that rage will translate to you being stupid enough to shell out six times the amount of the average movie-ticket just so you can see a big-release in your home (where you can worry about your own damn kids texting, babies crying, etc. instead of someone else's) three weeks after it opens theatrically.

That's part of an experiment the studio, via their corporate master Comcast, will conduct in Atlanta, Georgia and Portland, Oregon next month, reports the Los Angeles Times. Instead of using some piece of crap they know is going to fail anyway (which yours truly thinks would make the most sense) they're going to make the Brett Ratner-directed, Ben Stiller/Eddie Murphy-starring comedy Tower Heist as their guinea pig. Fork over $60 and you too can see the shenanigans of Stiller, Murphy, Ferris Bueller and Precious as they con the douche from Crimes & Misdemeanors.

Doesn't matter how hard they try to replace DVD with Blu-Ray on the market, home video sales as a whole are on the decline and studios are desperately looking for a new model that can squeeze as much money as possible out of their products with the rising costs to production and distribution. I'd hate to live to see the day when movie theaters go extinct as the drive-ins did for our parents. Those assholes I vented about notwithstanding, nothing can beat the experience of seeing a movie on the big screen with an audience.

Julia Roberts Set to Scare Humans & Dogs in Tarsem's Snow White

A YouTube video of a dog afraid of Julia Roberts made the news-circuits yesterday and this morning, Entertainment Weekly has the first-look at Roberts as the Evil Queen in Tarsem Singh's untitled Snow White film.

This is either the strangest case of coincidence or a genius piece of viral marketing by Relativity Media.