Lex Luthor. Dude. Get over it.

Look in that little window down there:

Is that guy ever doing any real work?  How that company manages to stay afloat, I'll never know.

(image via Comics.org)

Hancock, Chalk Circle, and T. Rex

The number of movies coming out this year that I want to see is kind of ridiculous. Counting comic book movies alone, there's Iron Man, Hulk, Punisher: War Zone, The Dark Knight, Wanted, Hellboy 2, and Speed Racer (which is comic booky). On top of that, there's a new Indiana Jones and a new James Bond movie this year. Shockingly, they all look like movies I want to watch; I'm not getting the sinking feeling I got when I saw the trailers for Spider-Man 3 or X-Men 3.

It's all too much. Clearly, I'm in a coma and my brain is constructing a universe to keep me happy. I don't care; don't revive me.

One movie that fits into the group above, but hasn't been getting a lot of coverage is Will Smith's Hancock. The lack of marketing for this movie is surprising, considering it's a Will Smith, July long weekend movie. It's at the top of my list because I really like the trailer:

I like the humour, and I like the effects. It looks even better in a higher resolution. The music that's playing we first see Hancock hooked my attention, too. The song starts off as a kind of tinny guitar, before launching into a meatier riff. I went looking for it and found out that it's the one song, "20th Century Boy," but we're hearing versions by two bands. The tinny one is a cover by Chalk Circle, and the heavier one is the original, by T. Rex.

I found both versions on YouTube (because every video ever is on YouTube), and I've posted them below in the order you hear them in the trailer, with the cover version first and the original second. You don't need to listen to all of both songs, just hearing the contrast between the opening ten or twenty seconds of each is interesting.

See if you can guess the respective eras for each. Here's Chalk Circle:

And here's T. Rex:

Art Spiegelman on the CBC

Here's a nice little interview with Art Spiegelman that CBC aired last night. It touches on Spiegelman's major projects and ideas, so if you pay attention to what he's doing there won't be much here that's new, but it's good to have it all in one place.

One part to note is when Spiegelman discusses the decision by the Canadian book chain, Indigo, to not carry the issue of Harper’s containing his article on the Danish cartoon controversy. Disappointingly, as Spiegelman criticizes Indigo for shying away from selling a magazine because it contained the offending images, CBC blurs those same images.

I’m no fan of the Danish cartoons, but I’m even less in favour of censorship. Peter David addressed the issue of censorship succinctly, saying that the answer to speech you don’t like is more free speech, not less. At the end of the clip, the hosts of the program acknowledge that their network is engaging in the very actions that Spiegelman is objecting to, but their admission seems more of a way to blunt criticism than anything else.

(link via Quintin)