Breaking from the bitchiness that threatens to consume my soul, I'm a gonna report on some fun stuff.

Punisher: War Zone - Optimism
At this link, you can find a LOT of interviews from the cast, the director, the writer, and the producer, as well as a few clips from the movie. Most of the interviews are just repetitive; and they are all one-sided in that the interviewer isn't heard nor seen on the camera, so you kinda have to guess what everyone is talking about. Still, it's nice to actually hear something about this, rather than just see the usual trailer and tv spots. The one clip where Frank shows up at the house to talk to the wife of an FBI agent he mistakenly killed was a little bleah, mainly because Julie Benz puts on a truly wooden performace, which makes me wonder how the rest of the movie will be... but I'm liking Ray Stevensen and Dominic West here. Hopefully they carry the film.
I'm certain it will be corny and filled with mindless violence - which is what the Punisher is all about, so it works for the fans of the Punisher, just not everyone else. I mean in that respect, so is Knocking on Heaven's Door... fans will have a better appreciation of that kind of follow-up. The 2008 Comic-Con Footage was ultra-violent, with blood splashing everywhere, heads and arms shot off, chair legs going through people's eyes, etc... and it's pretty sick, but that's the Punisher. He's not going to shoot a web at you, throw a shield at you, or smack you up-side the head with a billy-club... no, he SLAUGHTERS people. He's not a hero: he's a vigilante who is fighting his own holy war against criminals. Most of the problems people seem to have with what we've been able to see is on the surface: it's either the neon-lighting and bright colors or the extreme violence. The bright or neon colors probably won't bother me just because I know why they are used, but other people liken them to the Joel Schumacher Batman movies, which is absurd seeing as how the Punisher is not being portrayed as campy or even remotely sexualized. It's directed by Lexi Alexander, who no one has really ever heard of because she used to be a stuntwoman, as well as a champion kickboxer. She's made it abundantly clear that this isn't going to be some stylized action flick that borders on comedy.
So yeah, I'm looking forward to it coming out on dvd, which probably won't be too long after its December 5th release, being that the movie more than likely won't even make it to the top of the box office, due to the violent content and it's R-rating, and the fact that the Punisher just isn't all that popular these days. One thing that I really appreciate is that the title studio producing "Punisher War Zone" is "Marvel Knights", and not "Marvel", which gives fanboys left and right hope that we might be seeing other characters from Marvel Knights series' make it to their own movies: such as Black Widow, Luke Cage, and Black Panther. Anyways, it's the last Marvel film of 2008... probably the best year Marvel Studios has ever had.

Fox screws up with WOLVERINE
The trailer for Wolverine is supposed to be attached to "The Day The Earth Stood Still", however, Twentieth Century Fox has stated that it won't be appearing online afterwards for quite some time. Poor marketing to say the least. This is also pretty ominous, being that the movie is set to open May 1st, 2009, and the only thing available online or anywhere is a bootleg recording of the Comic-Con Footage, which is almost unintelligible. Are they hiding something? Is the movie really expected to tank THAT much? I really don't see how it could, financially, even if it does get an R-rating, which is possible but not probably. Wolverine is a huge pop-culture icon, I mean EVERYONE wants to see him. That's why he appears in almost every single freakin Marvel comic book because the writers know he'll attract readers. The fact that Fox properties "Max Payne" and "Live Free or Die Hard" were rated PG-13 despite their respective series' rated R or Mature (moreso with Max Payne: the first of RockStar's super-violent games) just go to show that the violence will be dumbed down a lot to get a larger audience and, in the end, make a larger profit. That's how Fox works, which is why it's a shame that they own the rights to all X-Men characters, Daredevil, Elektra, the Silver Surfer, and the Fantastic Four. This wouldn't be such a problem with Silver Surfer and Fantastic Four, being that they are geared towards the general audience; but Fox has always taken this approach where they feel the necessity to change things because they're afraid the original material wouldn't be accepted or welcomed by the larger demographic. Galactus was made into a cloud and has absolutely no voice. Elektra is made into some kind of a hero who looks after a father and daughter she was hired to kill.
And then there's the X-Men movies. I loved these movies, and I still do, but let's face it, they could have been more. If Fox didn't interfere like they love doing, and Marvel owned the rights to these characters, they could have been more. Wolverine, as he always does, took over the franchise. He did this with the animated series, and he took the lead in the movie trilogy. As Magneto teases: "once again, you think it's all about you." The X-Men of the first movie are Xavier (check), Cyclops (check), Jean (check), Storm (nope), and then Wolverine (nope). The Brotherhood of the first movie are Magneto (check), Mystique (nope), Toad (check), and Sabretooth (nope). It's fairly-balanced, but it's not really all that accurate. The first X-Men are Xavier, Cyclops, Angel, Iceman, Beast, and Jean. Wolverine and Storm don't come about until at least 10 years later. The first Brotherhood are Magneto, Toad, Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, and Mastermind: Sabretooth didn't join until the year 2000 (RIGHT after the movie came out) and Mystique created her own Brotherhood in the 80s... neither Sabretooth or Mystique ever took orders from Magneto. So the inaccuracies with the X-Men are more chronological than material, while the Brotherhood is more material than chronological. This is often over-looked, as the characters are still mostly compatible with their respective placement.
The problem is that down the road, a lot of characters are taken to a ridiculous amount of modifications to fit in with the storyline, almost to the point where they are unrecognizable. Lady Deathstrike, for example, is given a more conventional makeover, which is fine and welcome, but she is for all intents and purposes, a tool. She is completely irrelevent to the story: her role could have been substituted for a competent bodyguard, but they wanted a big fight scene between a supervillain and Wolverine. The role of a bodyguard is completely unlike Deathstrike: she's an assassin who is out to kill Wolverine whenever she gets the chance because she thinks he stole her father's work in adamantium. And then we have Colonel William Stryker, or, in the comics: Reverend Stryker. In order to tie Wolverine into the center of a loosely-based adaptation of the "God Loves, Man Kills" story, Stryker is now a military scientist who headed the Weapon X department that gave Wolverine his adamantium skeleton. Big stretch from a Christian fundamentalist televangelist who killed his own wife and mutant son once she gave birth to him. So now, Stryker is going to be in "Wolverine", though in the comics he has no connection to him whatsoever, played by Danny Huston (he was the main vampire in 30 Days of Night).  
Judging by the comic-con footage, Fox is at it again. How can I tell? Well there's a bunch of probably great cameos, and most belong in the movie, but one doesn't... at all. Because of the quality, I thought that the mutant who turns to diamond might have been Husk, but then I thought: "why isn't she taking her skin off?" No, that is because she is Emma Frost. Being that she has no real connection to Wolverine at all in the comics, I really can't understand why she would be in an origin story. Granted, not all characters have to have a connection with Wolverine to be in his story, but her whole origin is so far away from him. Now if she's introducing the Hellfire Club, and her character isn't there just to go: "oh look it's Emma", then I'm ok with that, but I kinda doubt it. This is reminiscent of Callisto and X-Men: The Last Stand. The character is supposed to be UGLY, scarred, and wearing a signature eye-patch. None of these physical attributes are given to the Dania Ramirez in the movie, and instead of having night-vision powers, she has an amalgam of Quicksilver's speed and Caliban's mutant detection. I'm almost positive that in the early script, she was there as the leader of the Morlocks, which she sort of gives off but this is never confirmed. There is no mention of an underworld hideout in the sewers, and she is never actually attributed to being a leader, just someone who gets Magneto's attention. The probable purpose of her character was to move the Morlocks over to Magneto's Brotherhood and expand his army, but again, this was never confirmed. Psylocke was a villain, whose signature psi-blades were never explored (which I assume is because of Fox thinking pink knives of energy would look stupid, as they did with Gambit). She has two lines: "They wanna exterminate us!" and "Going somewhere?" and that is all. She get's no action scene, nothing, and is vaporized by the Dark Phoenix.
Now obviously Gambit is in "Wolverine", and that makes me a little confused, seeing as how Lauren Shuler Donner said that they didn't want to put him in the third movie because his appearance wouldn't have done the character justice. That's cool. But this is a Wolverine movie... and unless he is going to steal the show from Hugh Jackman (hahahahaha), I really don't think his appearance is going to do the character justice, but we'll just have to wait and see. As expected, I wanna see Deadpool more than any other character in the movie. I'm really happy that they gave Ryan Reynolds the role - no one else COULD be Deadpool.
Depending on the financial situation at the time, I probably WILL see it in the theatre, provided of course, that I have a job.

Carry on.