The Sly Oyster | culture & entertainment on the sly

I find these superhero toy parodies of the PC/Mac commercials fairly odd yet engrossing. It started as a Marvel vs. DC Comics thing. It’s a tiny internet meme, but one who’s appeal seems tapped into a very dry geeky humor. We’re talkin’ champagne dry here.

So Hellboy’s been added to the mix, except he’s with Dark Horse Comics (Milwaukie, OR!). It would have been nice if they made a Hancock toy and he could have shown up all drunk and then it would have featured every superhero from this summer, excluding Wall-E of course. Maybe the creators of this could work on that.

Pretty much everyone I know has three movies they are dying to see this summer: The Dark Knight, Wall-E and Iron Man. Most everything we’ve seen from Jon Favreau’s Iron Man has been outstanding. It looks as if he’s nailed the character.

I will posit that after seeing this trailer, Iron Man has just become my most anticipated movie of the summer. This trailer just straight nails it.

Iron Man blasts its way into theaters May 2.

Another day, another Iron Man sloppy kiss. This time we’ve got the international trailer, which features a whole lot more Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts. It clocks in around a minute and has a few new shots we haven’t seen before. Via: SHH

Iron Man blasts its way into theaters on May 2.

So this past weekend was the Comic Con in San Diego and one day we keep promising ourselves we’ll make it down their for all the glorious geekitude.  For now, check out the Iron Man presentation by Jon Favreau.  And we know you were already excited, but still seeing some actual footage gets us totally geeked out.

AICN has an interesting tid-bit up this morning about Jon Favreau’s Iron Man. By know you know we’re just about geeked out about that flick like no other. We were huge Tony Stark fans as kids. And in one sense he’s sort of the Bruce Wayne of the Marvel Universe.

The cast is pretty awesome, but like we said, the interesting tidbit is that this flick will introduce another Marvel character. S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Nick Fury will play a small role in the Fav’s movie. And who’s going to play him? Well, I guess we gave that away in the title of the article. Jackson is shooting his scenes this week.

Maybe the scene will look something like this:

Not to get all geeky, but we think it’s so cool that Marvel redisgned the look of Nick Fury for their Ultimates line to resemble Sam Jackson and now they’ve cast Sam Jackson to portray Nick Fury in a feature film. Also it should be noted that in the Iron Man continuity, Tony Stark recruited Nick Fury to be the second commander of S.H.I.E.L.D., and it was under Fury that S.H.I.E.L.D. blossomed into one of the most powerful covert organizations in the world.

End of geekery. This no doubt will have spin-off implications, meaning that Nick Fury and Sam Jackson, will undoubtably will get their own movie in the near future. Possibly could be “The Avengers” flick that rumors have been swirling about. Either way, it’ll certainly be better than the David Hasselhoff version.

Also, we think this is just cool that for the first time, the world of Marvel’s superheroes are bleeding into one another. One thing that made Marvel so freaking cool is that all their superheroes existing in the same universe. It wasn’t unheard of for Spider-man to show up and help out Daredevil and so for!

We’re guessing that Iron Man could be the champ of 2008.

M4p: Ghostface Killah - “The Champ”

And yes, we acknowledge that, in music slut terms we should have dropped a cut off of Ghostface’s Ironman LP, but we didn’t currently have it at our exposure.

We’re starting to feel like Iron Man sluts, just lapping up ever tidbit we can.  MTV recently sent one of their news correspondents to the set of the Jon Favreau flick.  It’s a little awkard of an interview, seeing how Favs and Robert Downey Jr. are cracking jokes that the MTV guy just doesn’t get.

Anyway you can read their entire set report over here.

Or you can watch the three clips they have, which show off the Iron Man mask glowing, one of Terrence Howard in action as Dusty Rhodes in what one could assume would be Afghanistan, and the final scene of Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark at some sort of party.

The best thing about the interviews/videos is when Favs drop hints of a dogfight between Iron Man and a slew of F-22 Raptors.  That just sounds bad ass.

Well, when it rains it pours and as with the case of The Fav’s Iron Man, well the folks over at IESB have a spy report from the set and though the video is about three minutes long, with most of it crap and annoying Mission Impossible Theme song overlaid on the video, the spy manages to get a crystal clear view of Iron Man in the Mark III suit.

Yes, I know I’m a dork.  Whatevs.  This is the kind of thing that gets me excited.  Anyway from the looks of the video, the suit is very fluid and should play nicely in the movie.  The only concern being, how it plays in CGI, when Iron Man has to fly around and what not.

Scroll over to about 55 seconds into the video for your first look at Iron Man!

Entertainment Weekly got the scoop on Stan Winston’s FX design for Iron Man’s Mark III suit.  It feels right, feels faithful to the comic book.  Each little nuggest gets us just a little bit more excited for a film that could have easily been screwed up.

Well you got that early look at what is quickly becoming, next to The Dark Knight, the Oysters most anticipated summer 2008 movie. Iron Man, directed by Jon Favreau and starring among others: Robert Downey Jr., Gwenyth Paltrow, Terrance Howard and Jeff Bridges.

Now, USA Today, has a first look at Robert Downey Jr. portraying industrial billionaire Tony Stark.

What’s always been very cool about the Tony Stark character, besides his alcoholism (which makes Downey Jr. a perfect actor to play the role) and playboy ways, was that his suit of armor wasn’t just some Batman costume used to fight crime. The suit was the one thing keeping Tony Stark alive. Even when he wasn’t wearing the suit, he still needed the chest plate plugged into his heart to keep it pumping. From the looks of this picture, it seems that The Favs has decided to keep this crucial element of the comic book into the movie.

It’s great to see Robert Downey Jr. get his life and career back on track. He’s been on quite a roll recently, with supporting parts. It looks like this time he might have found the perfect mainstream entertainment for his talents.

The good folks over at AICN have the first look at the Grey Suit for the Favs production of Iron Man. So for those not in the know, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is a POW. In the comics he’s a Vietnam POW, but I think the Favs has changed that to be a Gulf War POW. Anyway Stark’s a genius and his captives force him to build bombs and whatnot. Using pieces of scrap metal, Stark builds a suit of armor for two purposes. The first is to keep him alive, afterall he has a piece of shrapnel lodged into his heart. And the other is to escape and make it back to the US.

The design of the suit has got this sort of 1930’s or 1940’s robot sci-fi thing going on. It’s almost very Art Deco in a way, reminiscent of the giant design from the criminally underseen Brad Bird animation classic “The Iron Giant.” Which actually, when you come to think of it could have been modelled after early Iron Man designs. Regardless of the chicken and egg, we love it! It’s so very cool!!! And with all that’s coming out about the film, from the cast, this picture, The Favs interaction with the fans. We’re hoping Iron Man ends up being more Spider-man, X-Men and Hulk and less Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Elektra, well just about all the other Marvel movies. Blade franchise notwithstanding. We still don’t know how we feel about it overall.

MP3: Black Sabbath - “Iron Man”

How’s everyone’s morning going? It was tough waking up we stayed up late to catch 24 on the Tivo after watching Heroes live. Gotta say it seems like 24 might be hitting a wall. Oh my gosh! Jack defied orders again? No way! He broke into a consul? C’mon writers of the show think up something original. It’s starting to feel like all five seasons are rolling into one, and there isn’t any ‘Kim Bauer trapped by cougars’ plotlines to keep the comedy rolling.

As for Heroes, well it was a good episode not a great one. Lots of nice reveals at the end with the Petrelli matriarch bossing around Mr. Haitian. The set up for a Sylar versus Peter showdown next week. And Hiro finally getting ahold of his samarai sword.

But what really let us down was the supposed Spiderman 3 trailer with exclusive footage. There wasn’t anything there that was particularly new. But you can head over to NBC today to watch seven minutes of footage. But hurry the footage expires by 9 p.m. This installment of Spidey may also be the last one for star Tobey Maguire, according to Chud. They also have a nice little interview with Marvel uber-geek Avi Arad.

The L.A. Daily News (via Superero Hype) has a great interview with actor Ron Perlman. He dishes that filming will begin in May for Hellboy 2: The Golden Army. No plot details yet, but count us excited. Guillermo del Torro was a household name for geeks when he filmed the first Hellboy, but after the magnificence of Pan’s Labrynth the director is finally getting his due from all sorts of people.

And if that wasn’t enough for you the Favs has a nice update on the production of Ironman over at the Myspace Group he set up. Gotta say Ironman, at least by the cast and the Favs’s passion for the material could shape up to to join X-Men and Spider-man atop the Marvel film mountain.

First off, the sets are all being built, the locations are locked and the cast is, for the most part, set. As you all know, RDJ, Gwyneth, T Howard, and Jeff Bridges are all on board. We’ve had a week of rehearsals and I’m currently working with the writers to tailor the material accordingly. Mr. Bridges has a haircut that will no doubt be of interest to any of you fans of the books. Speaking of the the books, Joe Quesada, Adi Granov and myself have been collaborating on a very cool project that you will soon be hearing about. You want to know more, pester Marvel publishing.

Second, I am going up to visit ILM and the Ranch. I’ve never been and am as stoked as any of you can imagine. I love my job.

Thirdly, Stan Winston Studios has been unveiling suits for us. Once again, they have exceeded our expectations. Those of you who follow my career know that I am very skeptical about the overuse of CGI. I am happy to report that the film will be a healthy mix of both computer generated and practical effects. My goal is to make the two integrate in a way that they usually do not.

Lastly, this thing is huge. I’ve never been involved with a film this size. I’ve been prepping for almost a year and feel extremely confident in the enormously qualified team we’ve assembled. I would be lying, however, if I didn’t admit that the scale of this project was daunting. I’m pretty confident that I’ve done and will continue to do my homework and that I’m ready, but so much is unknown. I feel like a ship’s captain about to sail for the New World. Who can truly predict weather fortune or disaster awaits in the great unknown? Regardless, I thank God every day for his blessings.

Anyway hope that was enough Superhero news for you this morning. We’ll be back today with some stuff on Zak Snyder’s 300, as we’re totally stoked for that little bit of film goodness this week. Besides Watchmen, he’s got an interesting little project set up in the pipes.