UPDATED: Good Gravy -- IT'S TOY FAIR!!!

Yes, while love and the Olympics may be dominating the universe, furtive thoughts turn to the amazing surprises being revealed in Manhattan at the collector event of events: the annual Toy Fair trade industry show up, where astonishing previews of what's in store for 2010 can briefly be glimpsed from Sunday the 14th through Wednesday -- here's an early image:

Hasbro's Clone Wars Mandalorian!

New goodies will be posted as they materialize, so keep checking back!

Iron Man 2: Tony Stark's rolling headquarters!

Predator!!!

Gigantic, super-colossal ATAT (Imprerial Walker) -- prepare to have your ceilings raised!!!

Stop the insanity

As we mentioned earlier this week, it seems there’s been a real increase of movies dealing with more apocalyptic themes. Certainly a sign of post-millennial anxiety and recessionary fatigue. But now I’m afraid we’re seeing honest-to-gosh signs of an actual impending apocalypse – because now comes word that Hollywood has in mind to take Jennifer Garner and Jessica Biel and mount a “reimagining” of – sorry, I had to swallow – Laverne & Shirley. No, it ain’t April Fool’s, this harbinger of the End Times is seriously being considered.

So I think before the lava starts erupting out of manhole covers and skeletal Valkyries begin swooping down out of the clouds, we need to stop this nonsense in its tracks. ENOUGH WITH THE REMAKES AND REIMAGININGS!!!

Lately Hollywood’s bankruptcy of original ideas has become a complete epidemic.
Admittedly, sometimes a franchise reinvention can yield spectacular results, with last summers’ J.J. Abrams' Star Trek being an example of how to pull it off. But for every Star Trek, there’s an avalanche consisting of Dukes of Hazzard, Bewitched, Scooby Doo, The Avengers…and of course, Wild, Wild West. There’s something about seeing nostalgic old TV shows from another era blown up with $100 million budgets that’s surreal to contemplate. Do we for a minute think that the guys toiling away on The A-Team TV series thought that their breezy network action-fest would someday have to stand up to transmutation as a mega-budget summer tentpole starring Liam Neeson as Hannibal Smith?!?

The problem is, sometimes they work and make money – even if they’re not very good. Mission: Impossible, The Addams Family, Get Smart all did well enough to justify their budgets. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled that Ronald D. Moore came up with his reinvention of Battlestar Galactica, one of the best entertainments in the last five years. And I love that The Magnificent Seven evolved out of Seven Samurai. But this remaking TV shows and movies business is Hollywood eventually swallowing its own tail. Sometimes that zeal to repackage a recognizable property for a new generation borders on necrophilia. 2010 is going to bring us remakes of Footloose, Red Dawn, and way too many others to list here – plus we continue to see spectacular foreign films get “Americanized,” with the brilliant Let the Right One In about to materialize as “Let me In,” because the Swedish title was just too complex and confusing.

Sure, Scorsese remade the Hong Kong Infernal Affairs as The Departed and it was super cool. But how far away are we from seeing Amanda Seyfried in a "reimagining" of Audition? Sorry, made that one up, but you see where this is all going.

Remakes of movies and old TV shows is by no means a new phenomenon. But remakes are coming that really ought to give us pause. Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes production company has been trying to remake Hitchcock’s The Birds in the same mold as they did with Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hitcher and Amityville Horror.

Filming begins next month on a prequel to John Carpenter’s horror classic The Thing. Now The Thing is a freaking cult sacred cow. The rawness of it, the casting -- when the pistons are firing that good, you need to leave that baby alone. Anyone care to bet that all the effects will be CGI, rather than Rob Bottin’s legendary practical effects? And no, the irony of the fact that The Thing was itself a remake of a 1951 movie does not escape me...

But if we’ve learned anything from Avatar, people are hungry for something fresh and different. They are not hungry for leftovers. So stop treating us like a bunch of Schlemiels.

Or worse yet, a Schlemazel.

Mysteries of the Vault...

You may have heard, I have this toy collection.
Surprisingly, I've been getting a lot of requests from "known associates" to occasionally showcase some of the hidden treasures in my subterranean chambers and share them with the world at large.
So today marks the beginning of my recurring Mysteries of the Vault feature.
To start things off, a couple of real gems -- unique and one of a kind. Well, two of a kind.
Yes, it's Vincent and Jules, as seen in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction.

Now hold on, Sunny Jim, I never ever saw these bad boys anywhere -- what gives?!?
Oh, no? Oh, well allow me to retort.

No licensed Pulp Fiction toys were ever produced (only Kubricks/Minimates-scale Ge-Oms block style figures from NECA...)! These babies are custom jobs, made as a labor of love by an enthusiastic fan. They are beautifully detailed 12" scale and I discovered them on good old eBay, purely by accident. You know when you catch a glimpse of "More from this seller?" There they were, phenomenal -- hiding in plain sight.

What a terrific piece of custom work! I don't see too much of this kind of thing, as custom work of this quality is usually so crazy expensive. But these were -- trust me -- a steal. Trading emails with the creator, he'd also made a custom 6" set of all the characters for another enthusiast who'd seen his work displayed in a toy shop...an enthusiast named Samuel L. Jackson...

"They're coming to get you, Barbara..." Zombieland and beyond

There's a lot to like in Zombieland, new to home video this week. Is it in the same rarefied stratosphere as Shaun of the Dead? Not quite. But it's worthy company. There's been a real apocalypse trend in movies over the last year -- The Road, 2012, The Book of Eli -- evidently the world is about to end no matter what. But there's something about a zombie apocalypse that makes for a uniquely American mythology. A numb, brain-dead populace looks to devour those last few misfits, consuming both flesh and self-awareness. This Dawn of the Dead-meets-Superbad gore comedy has its uneven spots, but on the plus side it's one of those rare movies without an excessive running time, zipping along at a fast clip. Zombieland has great effects that really entertain and not just the gore and splatter. The unhinged opening credits are positively explosive and the same visual glee keeps popping up throughout the film.

Face facts, there'd be a gaping hole in the middle of this movie without Woody Harrelson. He makes the movie and his character's now-or-never catchphrase ought to have entered the vernacular permanently by the end of the weekend. Harrelson is having a ball and I couldn't help but feel a little regretful at not having seen this mayhem in the theatre as it undoubtedly benefits hugely from an audience reaction.

Superbad's Emma Stone adds coolness and has good chemistry with nerdy Jesse Eisenberg. On the other hand, Little Miss Sunshine's Abigal Breslin seems a little adrift and unsure of herself. That's all okay, because you never have to wait long for more Woody. Zombieland is definitely worth seeking out and as a snickering splatterfest, delivers the goods.

But for me it did more than that. It also got me even more excited for what without a doubt is going to be the mother of all super-cool zombie apocalypses ever -- the cable TV adaptation of Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead.

This is without a doubt one of my favorite comic book titles and Kirkman has been at it for well over 60 issues and his characters and their landscape are phenomenal. You never know what's around the corner and frequently it's a genuine horror...and too often the zombies are less horrifying than what other survivors can be capable of. The rhythm and multi-issue story arcs of The Walking Dead make it just ideal for cable. AMC, the same network that brought us Mad Men has had the good sense to bring the property to genre god Frank Darabont to adapt, which if you're a fan of The Mist -- one of the great modern shockers -- imagining Darabont putting the spurs to these stories is cause for delight -- as he's all about the shock and awe, but never forgetting the characters.

A full-on zombie TV series for adults?! The Walking Dead is available in collected graphic novel format, so you can easily sample a few volumes and get an idea of why this has me so excited.

Cameras have yet to roll on this opus, so it's probably 2011 at the earliest before we get to feast our eyes.

So who will they cast as Rick, The Walking Dead's long-suffering main character? One thing about characters in this comic series, their permanence is about as safe as a character on The Sopranos. Bad things happen and let's just say that character prominence in The Walking Dead changes from time to time. Rumor has is Lost's Josh Holloway will soon be in need of a job...

Personally, I'm hoping the only apocalypse I have to experience is the vicarious kind. That I can handle. But the undead are clearly thriving and it's one of those genres that can't help but make us feel better about the world at large. My fellow shoppers at the local Safeway hardly ever try to take a bite out of my arm. Well, maybe on a Saturday night...

Big Talent, Big Season, Big Love... (...the truth about Teenie)

If you haven’t checked in on HBO’s Big Love this season, rest assured the series continues to be spectacular. If you’re not an HBO subscriber, this is definitely a series worth finding on DVD as the characters are consistently fascinating.

The Prophet may be gone, but his influence continues to loom large from beyond the grave. This is a short season – just nine episodes – but they’re cramming a lot of emotional high stakes into the time they have. Bill’s actions and ambitions are sending him down a road where some kind of comeuppance or fall from grace seems inevitable. The climax of last week’s fourth episode left me stunned, gasping at what Bill was capable of justifying.

Nicki continues running wild, but she’s got nothing on Alby who is taking the character into the stratosphere this year.

Everyone is changing, their worlds spinning faster than ever before.

Speaking of change, one odd development is the inexplicably awkward recasting of daughter Teenie. “Welcome back from Camp, Teenie.” Yeah – plastic surgery camp…

The producers claim that Jolean Wejbe simply grew too tall – but new Teenie Bella Thorne is so contrastingly glamtacular one has to resist the urge to call her “fake Jan Brady,” as she’s nothing like the Teenie we knew…

Regardless, there is amazing television happening here. The storytelling is compelling and they sure understand the golden rule of episodic TV – end each week so that the audience can’t imagine not tuning in to see what happens next.

New Lost figures...?!

Check these kooky castaways out! 8" retro style action figures from Bif Bang Pow, their first crack at the license, set to appear by August.

Not sure I'm quite ready to go there -- Ben looks like a mime -- and not nearly as cool as the brief and much more realistic figure series McFarlane Toys put out a while back -- wish they were making more...

http://www.spawn.com/features/lost/

“You can let go now…”

CAUTION -- contains spoilers...

Lost returned to the forefront of consciousness last night and it did not disappoint. Always willing to elude audience expectations, the premier of this new and final season delivered like a freight train, turning our notions of how an atomic “reset” of the timeline might somehow prevent Oceanic 815 from having ever crashed in the first place. Do mysteries still abound? Do they ever. Where we’ve had flashbacks and flash-forwards, now we have “flash-sideways,” as last year’s finale explosion has seemingly created two realities – and two sets of primary characters.

Attempting to change their fate has actually returned the characters to outcomes far bleaker than they might have imagined. Suffering hasn’t been avoided, it’s merely been re-assigned, as the show made clear in some achingly memorable sequences. Locke, no longer able to use his legs, being wheeled off the airplane in Los Angeles, looking utterly defeated and ashamed. Charlie being escorted off the plane by the authorities, looking at Jack with complete hatred for having saved his life, for having robbed him of the escape of death, perpetuating his lonely misery. Because Jack (and presumably Faraday) miscalculated when assuming that a reset would only effect their group. Like the butterfly in Ray Bradbury’s classic A Sound of Thunder, their small change has seemingly wrought enough additional consequences that in one reality, the island now lies at the bottom of the ocean. Their “reset” has had repercussions far beyond the changing of their own immediate destinies. Seemingly other enormous changes have occurred in the world as well. A lot of things have changed. What’s the story with that blood Jack notices on his neck in the airplane bathroom? Why is Desmond on the plane? Why isn’t Shannon?

In the reality of the still-above-sea-level island, a new wrinkle is the discovery of a group of Temple-dwelling Apocalypse Now Jacob devotees, including the always cool John Hawkes, who I believe makes the sixth former Deadwood actor to appear on Lost, including Titus Welliver as Jacob’s nemesis.

It seems we now have the identity of the smoke monster and it seems Jacob is still moving through at least one reality. Resurrection looks like it will be a potentially major theme this year. Will sacrifice also loom large?

This was an utterly fascinating and completely involving return, with Lost doing everything it does best. I was surprised we didn’t revisit Jacob’s nemesis in that briefly glimpsed timeline from last season, where it appeared we were about to see the arrival of the Black Rock. But a lot is bound to happen between now and the end of these roads.

I, for one, can’t wait.

Celebrities, start your engines...

Well, I was watching live at 5:40-ish this morning when the announcements aired, how about you?!

Some surprises to be sure, but nothing earth-shattering. My eyes rolled up into my skull when The Blind Side was announced as a Best Picture nominee. Not sure why I have such an aversion to this flick, not having seen it. I have to admit I was sad to see a field of 10 nominees and no Star Trek. Where is the love?!

But good to see District 9 get in there as well as the Coen's A Serious Man (on video next week!). I think one of the nicest surprises was Jeremy Renner for Hurt Locker as he carries that picture. His performance has not received the attention it deserves, so his nomination here was really nice.

Speaking of underdogs, one of the most important categories that never gets the props it ought to is cinematography. That is the craft of the motion picture and that they read the screenplay nominees and not cinematographer every year is always a sore spot. So I was thrilled to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince score a nomination here, joining Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds and The White Ribbon as the most visually cinematic films of the year.

Maggie Gyllenhaal's nomination seems like it's a popularity nod, but a sure sign of Crazy Heart's traction increasing to the point that Jeff Bridges is pretty much a lock. So Bridges, Bullock, Mo'Nique and Waltz. Pretty much all predetermined at this point. I don't see any races there, unfortunately. Though I would love to see Bullock lose to Meryl.

Penelope Cruz?!? Puh-leeeeeeeeeeeease...At least Nine didn't get a BP nod. Total door-slam on Daniel Day Lewis for that movie.

The big race is the "battle of the exes" between Cameron and Bigelow. If there was ever a year we could see a split for director/picture, this is it! Too early to say how this is going to end up yet as a lot can happen this far out and Cameron still has to launch his "I'm an okay guy!" campaign. But my gut says this is all Bigelow for the director slot, Avatar for picture. That way everybody gets something (just like any other divorced couple)...but we'll have to wait and see.

Oh yeah, and something called Lost (?) returns for its sixth season tonight...? Brew a pot of coffee, whatever you have to do!

Officially the front-runner...

Bigelow with last year's DGA winner, Danny Boyle.

____________

Hurt Locker's Kathryn Bigelow officially became the front-runner for a Best Director Oscar this weekend by becoming the first woman ever to win the top prize from the Directors Guild of America, exclaiming, "This is the most incredible moment of my life." Adding to her previous Producers Guild win, the DGA nod means her ex-husband James Cameron may have to content himself with that Golden Globe win for Avatar, as Bigelow's been gaining traction among insiders.

Since 1948, only six DGA winners have not gone on to win Best Director Academy Awards. Could this year make it seven? No woman has ever won an Oscar for Best Director.

Expect to see Cameron doing a lot of press in the next few weeks aimed at making him appear more likable.