Hey readers! If you go by the Gregorian Calendar, and you write out the date using American shorthand, it reads 1/21/11. What does that mean? The stars have ordained an Open Thread!
First, American Idol is back, with new celebrity judges Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez. Your correspondent’s take: it feels simultaneously too early for Tyler to be a fixture on reality TV and too late for Lopez. Ryan Seacrest, however, is in the role he was born to play.
Singer, Actor, Jackson, Guy
Fans were treated to some teaser pics from X-Men: First Class, hitting theaters this summer. Your correspondent’s take: deviating from canon by making Charles Xavier, Emma Frost and Havok contemporaries is an odd choice. But then, I always encourage deviating from canon if it means a better product.
Welcome to the 60s!
New casting details announced for Christopher Nolan’s next Batman pic: Anne Hathaway as Catwoman and Tom Hardy as Bane. Your correspondent’s take: could this mean a Nolan-style gloss on the infamous Knightfall storyline? Let’s just hope this one doesn’t end up on a treadmill (am I dating myself? do people get that?).
And a quick rundown: Ricky Gervais blows up the Golden Globes; No Strings Attached fires the first shot in the War of Sexing Friends; there’s a new Spartacus series, in case you needed more breasts and/or blood; and Warner Music Group is on the auction block if you’ve got $360 million lying around.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDh0z_ZeZ60
If Magneto held the cast of American Idol hostage, could Batman stop him? Or is there something we missed? Sound off in the comments, for this is your … Open Thread.
Re: Idol: I didn’t know anybody was still watching Idol in the first place- honest, everyone I know that has ever watched it has stopped in the past few seasons. I never did, but I’m curious as to how anyone that has and still is thinks Lopez and Tyler are doing thus far. I know a lot of people totally loved Ellen- and why not? I do! But some of the people I know that recently stopped viewing did so because she left, after all- is it better or worse off without her?
Re: Batman: Well, one thing Nolan has been good at is selecting various elements from the different (and darker) Batman plot arcs and combining them to make his own. So while Catwoman doesn’t show up in Knightfall in an origins-type fashion (which is needed because she can’t just pop up as an established figure out of nowhere for it to make sense in this case), I can definitely see part of that arc working in a mixture with elements from some of hers. Would Nolan be so brave and bold as to break Batman’s spine? Will Alfred retire? Will Selena have a cat-bat in the oven by the end? Too many questions, too many questions…
But I agree with your assertion, Perich, that stepping outside canon is fine, if it makes a good story- I see it as becoming a new part of the canon itself, if done well enough, actually. That’s how “canon” in comic universes works- there are how many “origin” stories for these superheroes and villains, after all? I guess it also depends on how much of a “purist” one is, in the sense that one may or may not think the myriad animated series or live films “count” in the overall story. I tend to think they do, but that’s a personal choice. I know less about Marvel than DC*, so I can’t speak to the X-Men thing so much, but I am rather fond of some of the more “controversial” Batman arcs that “stepped outside” canon or however you want to put it. So I wouldn’t mind much if the cast in the new X-Men movie is somewhat anachronistic to preexisting canon. I imagine there were some moments of, “Huh?” in the first two movies, but I really liked those. (The third had some elements that could have made for a great story, but it was too sloppily stapled together, especially because of the character-dropping that even a person with hardly any knowledge of X-Men could pick up on; and the Wolverine movie, well… but that’s another rant.)
*That’s not because I am anti-Marvel on purpose, I just find myself liking DC characters more, supporting or not.