Linkies

Empire Bryan Singer and his writing team working on X-Men: Apocalypse already. My only objection to this article is the conditional phrase for X2 "one of the best of the franchise" I'm sorry... one of... I think they meant to type "the best by such a significant margin it's actually kind of embarrassing"
Pajiba wonders if movie reviews matter anymore 
The Wire plays goldilocks with Martin Scorsese classics and their running times: "too long, not enough or just right?"
Dorkly imagines George RR Martin (Game of Thrones) as Santa Claus  

In Contention I neglected to share the London Film Critics Circle nominations because I forgot that unlike virtually every other critics organization, they don't announce their winners a few days after the nominations and instead save it for their actual ceremony... (which begs the question: how do they get the recipients to show up? tipped off?) so in case you missed it, read away 
Deadline on the struggle to shift the dialogue on August: Osage County. I have to say that I find this piece both telling and bizarre. Telling because Tracy Letts himself refers to Barbara (Julia Roberts) repeatedly as the "protagonist"  (and yet she's "supporting?" oy!) and even how he beefed up her role to justify the new ending. Bizarre because the piece ends with the implication that Streep is doing more promotional work for this film than she usually does (I see no evidence of this but, okay?) culminating in this absolute untruth: 

...when Streep shows up for a film that has her in Oscar contention, she usually wins.

The great lady has won 3 times out of 17. And it's not like she didn't "show up" for a number of those other 14 Oscar nominated films. She is as good as any big star at promoting her work.

The Gays
People awww, Sharon Needles and Alaska from RuPaul's Drag Race broke up. But very amicably it seems so good on them
David Kawena [NSFW] the popular web artist is at it again with his Disney characters as underwear hunks. This time it's Kristoff from Frozen. What would Jonathan Groff think of this?!
Theater Mania on the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me, 7 Carol Channings 

List-Mania
Buzzfeed 23 most important 'selfies' of the year
Hey U Guys 10 Best Comic Book Movie Moments of 2013
i09 thinks these are the best comic books of the year
The Wire Joe Reid's top ten list and...The Act of Making Them
The Dissolve's top ten list. I like seeing All is Lost and Gravity together with All is Lost slightly higher. They really do make good companion pieces. Neither will make my list so I'm not a champion of either really but I prefer the Redford. As for Her. You know, it's funny. As soon as I knew the subject matter long before we'd seen a frame of it, I just knew it would be a huge deal on critics top ten lists, topping many of them. I should've written a prediction piece on that so you could all marvel at my psychic ways.

Six Notes on the Six Second "X-Men" Tease

I don't want to give too much attention to a six second tease of a teaser -- I waited a whole day in fact hoping the urge to say something would pass -- but in the end my childhood hardwiring triumphed. I haven't loved or even much liked an X-Movie in 10 years but I will always love the X-Men, for better or worse. Usually worse. 

So herewith a few thoughts with screencaps from Bryan Singer's tweeting foreplay.

It's a good thing this is a period piece because Professor Xavier's helmet Cerebro is totally irrelevant today. You don't need a mutant locator anymore. The Homo Superior are impossible to miss all smeared across every movie screen and television set and website. Children of the Atom be so ubiquitous in this age of superheroes.

Unfortunately I'm not done blabbering about this yet!

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Super Dude

JA from MNPP here, popping in for a quick sec to take the opportunity to hurrah the news that Aaron Taylor-Johnson has been officially announced to play the character of Quicksilver in the second Avengers movie from Mr. Whedon & Co. (Also I've posted all the good exploitative pictures of him at my own site before, and so posting this news over here at TFE gives me the chance to look for the fiftieth time at a current favorite picture. Va va va voom.)

Aaron's the second actor who'll be playing the role in the next year - because of rights complications Quicksilver can also show up in the X-Men movies, and so American Horror Story's Evan Peters is playing him in Bryan Singer's X-Men: Days of Future Past. That shouldn't prove too confusing for the world! Maybe eventually instead of one new Spider-Man every five years we'll have four different Spider-Men all at once? (Curse me for giving the suits in Hollywood any new horrible ideas.)

This news regarding Aaron comes a day after Samuel L. Jackson let it slip that Elizabeth Olsen's playing  Scarlet Witch, aka Quicksilver's sister, in Avengers: Age of Ultron - that hasn't been offically confirmed, but I think they make for a killer pair and I hope that's how it susses out, anyway.

Review: The Wolverine

When Marvel Comics first introduced Spider-Man and The Fantastic Four to the world in the 1960s, they sparked a comic book revolution. No longer were superheroes the new gods, indestructible and unfailingly heroic Others from distant planets, lands, times (see: Superman, Wonder Woman, Captain America) or mysterious 1% recluses (Batman) but something closer to heightened neighbors. Your classmate or coworker or mailman might be a mutant. You might stumble into capes or spandex yourself, should you cross paths with gamma rays or a radioactive spider. The Silver Age heroes had to hold down jobs, keep secrets, and navigate angsty romances or complicated family dynamics. If superheroes were real they'd be hounded by the tabloid press and paparazzi.

In other words... "Superheroes - they're just like us!"

But some super powers are far from relatable. This summer indestructibility has raised its dull head again as the chief power of both the Man of Steel and The Wolverine. This power lacks the proxy pizazz that comes with cooler mutations like flying, telekinesis, web-slinging, flaming on, and so on. Indestructibility just isn't inherently interesting, or at least not visually rich, good only for sticking around. And Wolverine, the world's favorite furry angry Canadian sure does, loitering about the cinema and historical signposts of the ages, too. [more...]

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The Brotherhood of Evil Magnetos

The single greatest celebrity photo that could ever be taken at Comic Con. We love them both so much, in or out of protective headgear

Sir Ian McKellen & Michael Fassbender at Comic Con

poll by twiigs.com

They're also co-starring in a teaser poster together.