Quick links to awesome

It's been a while, so here's a few randomly cool movie and movie-related things I've been meaning to post for a while. It's The Dark Knight Rises, The Dark Tower, G.I. Joe 2, and Marvel's continuing plans for world domination, if you're interested. And why wouldn't you be? Click ahead to read all about it.

"Red Tails" promises awesome air battles

Get More: Movie Trailers, Movies Blog

If you ask me what my absoulute favorite thing about the original Star Wars film was, I'd say it's the dogfight when the Rebels attack the Death Star. I grew up on that. Of course your average Star Wars fan knows that George Lucas based those fights on footage from WWI and WWII dogfights, and now it looks like Lucas has decided to make a movie about those dogfights. Red Tails is based on the true story of the African American pilots of the Tuskegee training program, and stars Cuba Gooding Jr. and Terrence Howard. This may or may not be a good film, but the plane on plane action already looks awesome.

I need to read more

The lack of reading updates on this blog is due to the fact that I haven't read any books worth mentioning (read: anything that wasn't a comic book) in the last couple of months. Yesterday, NPR released the results of survey of the top 100 science fiction and fantasy books of all time, and I realized that as an author, there's a lot of books I need to catch up on. My rough count is that I've read about a third of the list, counting a series like Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth, which I've only read a part of (but also The Wheel of Time which I've read completely). Now some of the omissions are so legitimately embarrassing that I wouldn't mention it if it didn't present such an opportunity.

Catwoman, Dwarves and Superman

Here are three images from upcoming films that I believe warrant a closer look. First--and possibly the most exciting--is this hi-resolution look at Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle in The Dark Knight Rises. I like the practical look of Hathaway's costume. Unlike some versions of Catwoman, it doesn't look ridiculous. I'm also glad to see the return of the Batpod, and I wonder if Bruce Wayne will be sharing the technology or whether Catwoman will be "borrowing" it from Wayne Enterprises.

A look at "In Time" from Comic-con

Comic-con also revealed this sizzle reel from Gattaca director Andrew Niccol's upcoming science fiction film In Time, starring Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried, and most of the other Hollywood actors in their twenties. The film was originally titled Now, and came it as my eleventh most anticipated film for this year. Finally have seen the trailer, it looks like it will meet my expectations.

Cool bits from the interwebs

Comic-con has come and gone since my last post of links, and as expected, there were some exciting pieces of news and great reveals over the last couple of weeks. I'm not going to try to cover everything that came out of the con, but here's a few of things that particularly stood out to me.

"Captain America" is summer's superhero

Captain America was my most anticipated film of this year, and I was seriously worried that it would fail to meet my expectations. However, after seeing the film, I think I have to say that this is the most satisfied I have been with a film since The Two Towers, and this movie was everything I hoped it would be.

Much of my excitement sprang from trailers that showed the film would be a combination of war film and superhero movie. Fortunately, director Joe Johnson pulled this off perfectly, incorporating classic war film elements (a mission behind enemy lines, a squad of elite commandos) with the superhero origin story in a way that felt natural.

So happily, this passes X-Men: First Class and Thor to become my #1 movie of the year and I can only say that if you are a fan of any of these movies, than don't forget to stay through the credits, because that's something you won't want to miss.

Teaser shows off "Amazing Spider-man"

Here's the first teaser for next summer's Spider-man reboot, which sees Social Network actor Andrew Garfield fill out Tobey Maguire's old spandex. The inclusion of Peter Parker's parents is certainly an interesting addition, and it looks like Emma Stone's Gwen Stacy will be more than just Parker's high school crush. All in all, a nice trailer, though I'm not sold on the Spider-vision POV. My guess is it's supposed to look awesome in the 3D. Whether it will or not is a different story.

Harry Potter goes out with a bang

I went to a midnight showing of the final Harry Potter film. It was last-minute decision, but I felt like I was missing out on something important, and it turns out a lot of people felt the same. It's been almost ten years since the release of the first film, I've seen everyone on the opening weekend and picked up the last two books at midnight, so I won't pretend I'm objective.

However, I was disappointed at the pacing of the previous film, and since I'd loved the conclusion to the books, I was concerned as to how it would play out on film. I wasn't thrilled with the way director David Yates directed the action in Order of the Phoenix or Half-Blood Prince, with his style leaning toward the frenetic, confusing style that adds realism to The Bourne Identity but made Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen a jumbled mess.

However, I wasn't disappointed as the film started with action and never let up. Unfortunately, it came at the expense of the characters, and there's no way Part II can stand alone as a piece of story-telling. So this is possibly the best Harry Potter film, but if you aren't serious Harry Potter fan, you're going to be left scratching your head. Heck, even I was confused a few times, and it'd only been six months since I'd seen the previous film. That's one of the reasons that makes this my #3 film of the year. There were some great parts, and few disappointing ones that I'll mention ahead, but they are spoilers, so you've been warned.

Dwarves, heroes, and other stuff

The dwarves from The Hobbit are revealed in all their bearded glory, news from Marvel on bringing their heroes to the screen, cool commentary by io9 on a TV show that shouldn't be good, awesome LEGO, and some steps toward becoming Iron Man or Captain America. That right, it's time for another collection of links from around the interwebs.