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I’ll keep this succinct, since there have already been clever reviews and informative reviews and the movie as a whole is pretty review proof. In the sense that it is a well acted and crafted action/superhero/summer movie. The story moves briskly enough from set piece to set so you’re never really thinking about it because if you did you would ultimately walk away wishing you had just waited to rent it or download it.

Dr. Bruce Banner is on the run in Brazil and looking for a cure to his Hulk issue so that he can reunite with the lady he loves, Dr. Betty Ross. He’s doing everything from science to breathing exercises to control his anger, well, actually his heart rate. Seems this time around he Hulks out whenever his BPMs get above 200. Good thing the military isn’t trying to hunt him down! Oh wait. They are. So Banner has to run around. A lot. You can imagine what that does.

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Hard to believe that David Fincher’s Fight Club is almost a decade old. Watching it now it seems as fresh as ever. JoBlo got their hands on a cut scene of Brad Pitt and Ed Norton singing a song about the male genitalia, which is a spoof of the Frankie Avalon song, “Venus.”

The song was not in the movie but it was a huge hit with the cast and crew while filming occurred. Further it was cut from the DVD because Avalon insisted he would sue if it was included. So yeah, he wasn’t too happy with the parody.

But now the song is yours.

We’ve been following Edward Norton’s new version of The Incredible Hulk for some time now and are sort of disconcerted that the film opens June 13, but there’s been absolutely zero in the way of marketing the film.  No trailer, no teaser trailer, scant images, no official set reports, zilch.

If this movie doesn’t screen for critics then you can be certain that Universal Studios doesn’t have high hopes for it.  Recently, Nikki Finke has learned that star Ed Norton, director Louis Letterier and producers from Marvel have been holed up fighting over the direction of the final cut.

Again, if these rumors are true, not good.

I’m told that’s because Norton and Marvel are clashing over how to cut the pic. Insiders say Norton was “promised tremendous involvement and access” after Marvel invited him into the core team to rewrite Zak Penn’s script. Says one insider, “There’s a lot of posturing going on between Edward’s camp and Marvel over how you edit the final version.” Sources also tell me that, starting last night and continuing at least throughout today, the actor will be holed up with Marvel Studios chairman David Maisel, Marvel Studios president of production Kevin Feige, and director Louis Leterrier to try to “reach an amicable resolution” to this $150+ million film feud.

Some insiders blame Marvel for not accepting Norton’s POV about the movie. ”There’s a problem. Marvel won’t listen to Norton about the cut,” one source claims. Some blame Norton, known to be prickly. (Remember his problems with Paramount over The Italian Job and with director Tony Kaye over American History X?) “Never let an actor write a script,” one insider commented. “Marvel made a mistake letting the wolf into the hen house.”

Marvel is about 4-5 weeks away from locking the picture in for the June 13 release.  But this doesn’t bode well.  If Norton decides not to publicize a movie that isn’t being publicized from the studio this thing could come and go with a mere whisper.  But it certainly isn’t Norton’s fault, who yes, is supposed to be a prickly bitch sometimes.  If you are Universal Studios and you invest $150 million dollars into a movie then you have to have a game plan.

Even if that game plan is laying low for the big summer movies to shine brightly and then throw the kitchen sink at consumers a month or two before release.  That strategy could work.

Incredibly (sarcastic pun intended) so far this is the only thing we’ve seen from the film.  A teaser advertising the premiere of the trailer on MTV.

The leakage has been coming pretty fast from the set of X-Men Origins: Wolverine (still hate that title, very cumbersome) even though they are still just in the early phases of shooting. 

And despite the bloated cast of mutants running rampant throughout, we’re pretty sure if director Gavin Hood handles them deftly, then all will be okay.  Plus, Hugh Jackman owns as the character. 

You can’t tell much from the photo, but Jackman looks menacing as Wolvie. 

As for The Incredible Hulk, the picture below does little to change our minds that Universal is completely mishandling this movie.  It comes out in June and aside from a few production photos, like the one below, we don’t know anything about the flick.  We don’t even have a trailer yet!  It’s now coming up on March, three months shy of the movie’s release, and they’ve done absolutely zip on marketing.  What gives? 

Director Louis Letterier does drop one decent nugget:

“We didn’t want to make a cerebral movie,” he says of comparisons to Ang Lee’s earlier film. “We wanted full action, Hulk smashing stuff up. But Ed Norton’s script has given Bruce’s story real gravitas – Marvel has always made their superhero movies with great actors to make it tangible and Ed has nailed it here. Admittedly, I’m not the most adult director, but just because we’re making a superhero movie, it doesn’t just have to appeal to 13-year-old boys. Ed and I both see superheroes as the new Greek gods, so there’s a classical undercurrent to Bruce’s psycho-drama. It’s Prometheus, Pandora’s Box, Hercules…but with explosions!” That’s what we always felt was missing in the Greek myths.

Ever have the feeling a rug was pulled out from beneath your feet? After the early promise that Brad Pitt and Ed Norton would reteam in director Kevin MacDonald’s political thriller A State of Play, first Pitt backed out and was replaced by Russell Crowe and now Ed Norton is leaving the project.

There was a lot of animosity when Pitt left the production, but this time around Norton’s departure is amicable. Because of the pushed back start date of production, Norton had a conflict with Leave of Grass – the movie where he will play twins. So Norton is out and now Ben Affleck will step in to replace him as a fast-rising politician.

Call me crazy, but I actually think Affleck will be good for this role.  He’s best when he’s not asked to carry a movie and he certainly can play smug and cocky like few young actors around.  And in real life he loves politics, so I feel as though this may be the role that reestablishes his as a Hollywood player.  Not that Ed Norton would have been bad in the role, because let’s face he’s never been bad in any role in his career, it’s just that this particular part plays up to Affleck’s strengths.

Usually the departure of two high-profile actors would cause a production to be derailed but that clearly hasn’t been the case and A State of Play has recovered quite well.

Eddie Norton is down in Rio shooting scenes for his upcoming reboot of The Incredible Hulk. I’m not sure anyone really knows what to make of this project since it’s not really a sequel but it sorta is to Ang Lee’s Hulk. The cast is phenomenal (William Hurt, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth) and it seems the studio is going for a more action-oriented flick, i.e. more box-office.

A few Brazilian websites have snapped some pics of the actors on set doing their thing. Head over here, here and here to see all the photos.

Consequently, a script has leaked over at CinCity2000, which was written by Ed Norton himself and those guys seem to think it’s not ver good. They liken the script to this summer’s huge blockbuster Transformers, essentially saying that all the intelligence of the first film has been stripped for what amounts to “Me Hulk. Me Smash Cars!”

The Hulk isn’t the first comic book character to get a feature film adaptation, and this isn’t the first time studios have called a mulligan and started with a fresh slate. It happened most notably and successfully with Batman and Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins.

But, take this as you will, TIH is no Begins. As I said at the start of this article, TIH is much more in the vein of Transformers. Or to stay in the realm of comic books, it has much more in common with Spider-Man 3 and X-Men: The Last Stand, than it does with the vastly superior X2: X-Men United or Begins (IMHO the best comic book adaptation to date). TIH knows what it wants to be: a big, flashy summer blockbuster, but it’s as if Norton wrote this script in a paint-by-numbers fashion.

Sounds sad, but I think with some solid acting, FX shots and good directing from Louis Leterrier this could be a fun summer romp. I wasn’t initially sold on Ed Norton as Bruce Banner, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Norton is, or at least he pretends to be, an intellect. His gifts as an actor are purely mental and not so much physical. Just look at the differences between his and Brad Pitt’s performances in Fight Club.

Ed Norton is taking another stab at the mainstream. He’s been away for a few years, popping up in bit parts in Kingdom of Heaven, almost single handedly turning The Illusionist into a bonafide hit, playing a retarded cowboy in Down in the Valley (and believe us when we tell you Norton is the only actor alive today who keeps a movie like that from becoming a joke), and other small movies. And in a way, after he bust onto the scene and starred in a slew of fairly mainstream roles from Fight Club, The Score, The Italian Job and Red Dragon, we’re just happy he’s filled his artistic cup and he can get back to making smart mainstream entertainment.

Which is why, we’re curious about the story Variety is reporting. Ed Norton is about to star in the sequel, remake, reimagining of The Hulk, tentatively titled The Incredible Hulk. Yup, Edward Norton is going to be playing Bruce Banner, the scientist who turns into the giant green monster. Though we’d rather see Steve Buscemi step into the role of the good doctor, and though we feel slightly like Ed Norton is selling out big time, I guess we’re just happy that Marvel Entertainment found the very best actor they could to replace Eric Bana as the green giant.

Norton takes over a role played in the Ang Lee-directed “Hulk” by Eric Bana. Though that film opened strongly, it didn’t fare as well as other Marvel efforts, including “Spider-Man,” “X-Men,” “Fantastic Four” and, most recently, “Ghost Rider.”

Marvel Studios, which has a $525 million credit facility obtained through Merrill Lynch, made “The Incredible Hulk” its second film under that arrangement, and seeks to make a sequel that is less self-serious and more in line with the comic series and TV show. Leterrier directed the action-filled “Transporter 2,” and “Unleashed.”

The new pic begins with Banner on the run, trying to avoid capture long enough to cure the condition that turns him into a misunderstood green menace.

Leterrier impressed us enough with his Jet Li flick Unleashed. We’re hoping this is just a fun, intelligent pop corn flick, with none of the pretension and artsy-fartsy tricks Ang Lee threw in for no good reason.

Although some would argue that Ang Lee’s flick is the closest aproximation to a comic book on film, with it’s split panels and all that. We say hogwash, movies are different that comic books and have a language all their own.

Me Hulk like to smash things!