I remember when Nolan picked Heath Ledger for the Joker. I was like, well, not my pick. But he was amazing. I could see Hardy taking on someone like the Riddler, for example, and really making him scary.

Sadly, they neglected to mention one of her best movies, The Long Good Friday, which is one of my all time favorite crime films. It was a low budget British flick that came out in 1980 starring Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren. I saw it when I was living over there. It has Pierce Brosnan’s first movie role (no dialog). Here’s the trailer. Watch it if you haven’t. It’s fantastic.

I hope to be seeing Red this weekend. Looks fun.

His music albums are really great. His show, the Honeymooners is still funny and played on TVs all over the world half a century later. And it only ran 39 episodes.

It’s interesting to listen to him talk about that show and his description of it, because it reveals why it hits home. It’s about real people, in a situation that should be depressing, but it’s funny and the characters have great affection for each other despite their battles. People can relate to the show because it has truth in it that so many shows could fail to come close to. While the Honeymooners is about a loser bus driver always trying to get rich and failing, a lot of TV shows today are about some elite team of incredible detectives or spies or some such rot. Perfect people are boring. Today’s TV is full of actors based on their youth and looks. Gleason was a fat man making $15 million a year in TV when that was like half a billion. There’s a lesson to be learned from that, I think. Gleason made a couple’s miserable life funny and in turn help a lot of other people deal with their own lives by making it a little brighter with humor.

[via Cinematical]

Part 2 Part 3

“It is with regret that I have been informed by my friends at C2 Ventures, Ben and Phillip, that I am not to be invited to C5 this year or any other Lucas Film associated events. After enquiring, the only thing I have been told is that I have ‘burnt too many bridges between Lucas Film and myself’ – no other reason given…I have also been advised by the promoter of Paris Manga in September that LFL (Lucas Film Limited) have requested no photo opportunities with the 501 Squadron, even though I am commander in chief of the 501″

It’s possible this stems from complaints he made to Slashfilm last year that he isn’t getting any residual checks because, according to LucasFilms, the films “never made a profit.”

My latest Big Hollywood piece.

It’s how Hollywood has turned the traitor into stock and trade. The latest in a long lost of cliches they tend to overuse.

It’s about how boorish Hollywood partisans have become. How they’re shooting their careers in the foot.

I just started watching ABC’s Flash Forward by comics scribe David Goyer and lo and behold, guess who some of the villains are? Take a wild guess.