Other than the comedy stylings of Mark Wahlberg Lite, this trailer gives us a great look at the state of the art weapon Cobra is using to destroy entire countries with. Then by the end we’re given a great look at the state of the art weapon being destroyed. So, yeah, I guess the good guys win. Stay tuned to future trailers to find out about any other major deaths or plot points.

“The Playboy Club” will put on rabbit ears and pretend-flirt with you. Chad Hodge’s series stars Eddie Cibrian and Amber Heard, and will explore the sexy world of 1960s Playboy bunnies. Va-va-voom or va-va-blatant”Mad Men“-rip-off? We’ll soon find out.

Is the Big Bag Wolf bad enough to mess with the police? “Grimm” is a cop drama that takes place in a world where fairy tale characters are real. This sounds an awful lot like the graphic novel series Fables, so if you like that premise, definitely read Fables, so you can complain about how much better Fables is.

Finally, I’ve been lying awake at night for years wondering when somebody would make a police procedural with a “Sliders” twist. Now it’s happening and I can finally sleep. “Awake” stars Jason Isaacs as a detective who has an accident, causing his life to split into two realities: one where his wife dies and his son lives, and the other where his wife lives but his son dies. He should just hop to the universe where the sky rains donuts. “Awake” is showrunner Wonder Woman” series was not picked up. David E. Kelley‘s invisible jet has been shot down. Hopefully, this will leave Adrianne Palicki free to wear sexier, less-outrage provoking outfits in the future. (EW)

NBC more than likely agreed with us and cowered to our influence, because they’ve revised Wonder Woman’s costume. And, um, what the hell? If we ever complain that a girl looks hot but less hot than usual, you don’t remedy this by taking away her leather pants. Well, yes. I guess removing pants altogether would work, but you should never replace leather with lycra. Unless it’s for some kind of tight top. Please print this article for handy reference.

And no offense to Ms. Palicki, whose work we thoroughly enjoy. Adrianne, call me.

P.S.: The second pic is obviously Ms. Palicki’s Teen Wolf-loving stunt double, who should also call me. (Collider)

We don’t always agree on the happenings in the entertainment community, and we like to make our beefs public. Today, NBC released an official still of Adrianne Palicki sporting the new Wonder Woman outfit, causing a nerdruption across the Internet. Does Palicki pull off the tightly-fitted ensemble, or should she add a bag of candy to mask its lameness? Writer B Hunt takes on the counterpoint in this week’s installment. Fight!

Super Heroic

Despite the staggering amount of grown men taking to the Internet to claim otherwise, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the new Wonder Woman costume. Is it stupid? Yes. Is it impractical? Yes. Is it tacky? Yes. Is it sexist? Well, if you want to be a bitch about it, yes. It’s all of those things. In other words, it’s everything a Wonder Woman costume should be!

Don’t kid yourself. Wonder Woman is a stupid character. As such, it’s fitting that she have a stupid costume. She was created in 1941, which wasn’t exactly the age of enlightenment when it comes to women’s lib. You know how women are treated on Mad Men? Well, Wonder Woman was created about 20-years before that. You can almost hear the comic writers thinking her up as an afterthought.

“Hey fellas! Isn’t it cute that women these days think they’re people? Let’s give ‘em a comic character of their own so we can sell more ads for nylons and vacuum cleaners.”

The character is also extremely generic. When it came time to give her super powers, they literally gave her all of them. She can fly like Superman, she can run like the Flash, she can talk to animals like Aquaman, and she can fight like Batman. The only thing she can’t do is piss in a campfire. It’s as if they knew they were only making one female superhero, so they had to go for broke.

Now, given that she’s a generic afterthought of a character created in a highly sexist age, doesn’t the costume make sense? It’s reminiscent of the original, but not a carbon copy. At least in this version, she’s wearing pants. It’s a lot better than what poor Lynda Carter had to work with. Have you ever tried to fight crime with your thighs exposed? Trust me, it’s hard.

And yes, the colors are gaudy, but they’re supposed to be. I’ve seen the new Captain America outfit, which is drab. It works fine for that character, but Wonder Woman is supposed to look like a glorified stripper. If they had come out with a toned down outfit, the same people would be bitching about how the designers turned their back on the character’s history.

In closing, I ask you to look at the picture. What do you see? I see giant breasts being lifted and separated. I see form-fitting pants giving a nice look at Adrianne Palicki’s dumper. I see a bunch of stupid accessories that are supposedly for crim fighting but are pretty much just hooker jewelry. In other words, I see a Wonder Woman outfit. It is what it is.

Super Heinous

Are you kidding me? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Look at that costume. There are amateur cosplay outfits that are better. And not the awesome crazy Japanese ones. I’m talking fat-white-guy-at-Comic-Con-dressed-up-like-Wolverine’s-fat-diabetic-brother-who-has-aluminum-foil-wrapped-around-cardboard-for-claws-type cosplay. This suit is like what you get when you don’t make plans for Halloween and then at the last minute your friends convince you to go to a house party because it’ll be chill and there will be all these single girls there and multiple kegs and Rob’s cousin is DJing and he’s not so bad so you go to Rite Aid at 8 PM and this piece of crap is the only thing left but at least it’s ironic and funny that you would dress up in such a cheap, horrible costume.

I don’t even know where to start. We’ll ignore her whore makeup and rat hair, since technically that’s someone else’s mistake. First, her hot pants are made out of someone’s old exercise ball and will probably only appeal to the latex pervs out there. The color is WAY off. Don’t they know everyone’s going darker these days? X-Men, Spider-man, Singer’s Superman. The light blue reads so, so poorly. Hell, even the new costume in the comic went with dark blue pants. I daresay Lynda Carter’s patriotic spanx look better.

The corset is probably the least offensive (fashion-wise) of the whole get up. At least it looks like someone took the time to tailor it (although if Adrianne so much as looks at a slice of pizza she’ll be busting seams on that thing), though it’s still made of shoddy vinyl or plastic or whatever it is. It’s also designed to give off as much glare as possible so that Wonder Woman won’t have to worry about going unnoticed. Batman is face-palming right now.

Her boots are like leftovers from some Power Rangers spin-off that wasn’t quite quality enough to bother translating to English. Her wrist bands look like trash—literally. Maybe she can take them off and string some twine between the two of them and make a soup can phones. How is she supposed to deflect bullets with a couple empty cans of Steel Reserve? And don’t get me started on the gold crest. Excuse me, did I say “gold?” I meant “cheap plastic.” And then they tacked that junk on liberally.

I understand it’s a TV show, and hence under tighter budget-restraints than the big dogs in the movie world, but you can’t have your super hero rolling around in an outfit that was made for less than a buck in some Shenzhen sweat shop. For anyone wondering how you could make someone as hot as Adrianne Palicki look terrible, well A) why would you wonder something like that and B) I think you have your answer.

However, the Wonder Woman package still makes Adrianne Palicki appear less attractive than she actually is. The cuffs, headband, and action-figure poses that come part and parcel with Wonder Woman always represent a step backwards.

To prove my point, let’s compare the photo of Adrianne Palicki as Wonder Woman with a photo of Adrianne Palicki as Adrianne Palicki.

…and Palicki as a regular hot chick:

Everyone involved with “Wonder Woman” should be thrown in jail. (i09)

Instead, I will raise the suggestion that perhaps this casting will result in a climactic fight scene between Hurley and Adrianne Palicki that takes place in an abandoned bubble bath factory. That could work, right?  (via MovieLine)

From football siren to inviso-jet flyin’, Adrianne Palicki (Friday Night Lights) has been tapped (yeah, she has – *high fives*) to star in NBC’s “Wonder Woman” pilot. In the next paragraph, I’m gonna write about the pilot and how Wonder Woman is portrayed in the new series, but I won’t be offended if you skip to the end and look at that picture of Palicki lounging around topless. The choice is yours.

Written and produced by David E. Kelley (Boston Legal), this version of the Amazonian superheroine with the dumb lie detector lasso will require Palicki to be in phone booths constantly. She’ll play Wonder Woman, her alter ego Diana Themyscira, a billionaire CEO, and for some reason, Diana’s average-girl assistant Diana Prince. Two alter egos? And one of them is the assistant to the other? How would that– eh, you know what? I’m not gonna get into it, and instead I’ll just enjoy the picture below.

Oh man, hopefully they won’t ruin this show by adding a shitty leather jacket to her outfit. (TVLine)

^{They didn’t even get the chance to shoot cool promo materials.}

"Lone Star" is cancelled. The show was considered by many to be the best and brightest of the new season, but after two low-rated airings was put out to pasture by Fox. It’s a shame too. I was one of the four people who caught the first episode, and really dug it. Yes, it set itself up to be a little soapy but showed a pride and production value that you don’t get with many shows nowadays. The network has pulled all future episodes from the schedule and will replace with new episodes of "Lie to Me." And if that doesn’t work, there’s always "House" re-runs. As anyone with the USA Network knows. (EW)

I know “Lone Star” is Fox’s big push for the fall and a lot of critics like it already, but I wasn’t into it. It may just be personal taste, but I just don’t care about con artists and oil companies in Texas. Maybe that’s your thing, but here’s what I didn’t like about it.

First of all, there are so many turns in the first episode that you can’t really get a handle on what you’re watching. Maybe three surprises an episode is exciting, but it doesn’t give you any time to get involved before it pulls the rug out from under you. Not that the twists are unpredictable.

More after the jump…

It starts off with John Allen (David Keith) teaching his little boy to run away from the people he swindled, so that’s messed up. Then it jumps to Bob Allen (James Wolk) all grown up n Midland, TX, packing for a business trip with his loving girlfriend Lindsay (Eloise Mumford.) They do a good job establishing a loving relationship with basic dialogue, enough to convey what they have to in the first minutes of a show.

Then Bob goes around selling shares in his mineral company to innocent townfolk. It’s pretty clear he’s a snake oil salesman. If his business is so complicated that he has to explain it with a carefully worded pitch, that’s not a business you should be involved with. Sound businesses don’t have to sell you on investing in them. I say this as an objective viewer. In real life, I knew the subprime mortgage scams were a bad idea but I still let them talk me into an interest only loan on a house I couldn’t afford. So no big shocker that Bob’s a scam artist.

Then Bob goes to Dallas, to another house, where he greets his wife, Cat Thatcher (Adrianne Palicki). Ooooh, big twist. He’s got two ladies. That’s not a spoiler because it’s all over the marketing. He’s got two lives. They even have similar romantic schticks with each other. It still diverts you in the first act of the show, which is fine but it doesn’t get solid yet.

The married life involves Bob with an oil business run by Cat’s dad, Clint (Jon Voight), for whom he brothers Drew (Bryce Johnson) and Trammell (Mark Deklin) also work. Drew (Bryce Johnson) has his own big plans for a hangover cure too, so everybody’s got an angle! Can you believe how entangled all these characters are? I know they have to set all the characters and plot up in the pilot, but by this point, just after the title screen, it’s asking me to get attached to people who seem like scam artists to begin with. I haven’t gotten attached to anybody and I’m starting to decide not to record a season pass.

Bob’s been learning the family business so he can run away with the money. However, when it all comes crashing down and John tells him to run, Bob decides to stick it out in both lives. Twist number three, he’s going to play both sides. That threatens John because it’s not his plan, and it certainly puts his son at risk for either side to figure him out. It also presupposes both lives are interesting enough that we’ll want to watch Bob balance them. That’s where it loses me.

Bob reveals his master plan at the end of the episode, but I’m not rooting for him to succeed. It’s going to be tough for him to pull it off, but difficulty alone isn’t what makes drama. I guess what’s at stake are the nice people Bob’s involved in both scams, but that’s not enough. Yeah, good people get hurt by bad guys. What else have you got?

As for the con artists, Wolk is a likeable guy but the cons seem so obvious. The dialogue is insincere or maybe I just know too many con movies, but these aren’t Oceans 11 or even Paper Moon level shenanigans. It’s not even as exciting as Sawyer’s long con on “Lost.”

So maybe I need another episode to see what this show’s going to be week in, week out. Maybe all the setup in the pilot spread me too thin. For now, “Lone Star” has an uphill battle to fight with me. It’s going to be one of those shows where Bob almost gets found out but he says something just convincing enough to keep it going another episode. He’s going to have to work a lot harder to persuade me to invest.
 

"Lone Star" is Fox’s biggest push for the new TV season. It’s their hour-long drama about a con artist playing both sides in the Texas oil industry. Relative newcomer James Wolk steps into the lead as Bob, whose father (David Keith) taught him how to run cons. He defies his father though by sticking in his double life after things get complicated. Now he’s got a legitimate position in an oil tycoon’s (Jon Voight‘s) business, a wife in one life, a girlfriend in the other and none of it is real.

Over the summer, I got a moment alone with Wolk as he was gearing up to start the series. Fox threw a party in July to get the buzz going, and now we’re starting to see ads leading up to the Sept. 20 premiere. Wolk couldn’t contain his excitement, beaming with giddiness as caterers passed out drinks and hors d’ouvres, and publicists pulled him from one interview to the next.

Screen Junkies: What are your thoughts stepping into the lead of this new series?

James Wolk: I’m just very excited, honored and excited and eager.

SJ: There are so many twists and turns in the first episode? Do you have a sense what the show is going to be moving forward?

JW: Going forward, to be completely fair, I think we have a genius group of writers who are really creating this thing. The guy who created the show had an idea of where the whole first season’s going to go, but I think it would be unfair to say that it is entirely mapped out. I think any creative force is moved to go certain ways and I think our writers are no different. As the actor, they keep me privy, they keep me on the inside of things so I get to know what’s going on.

SJ: You look very excited about what you’re going to get to do.

JW: Can you tell I am very excited. I am. I’m really excited about it.

SJ: Do you have a little freedom to play with what our expectations of Texas might be like?

JW: That’s something that we play with interestingly in the pilot. You know how there are some accents and some aren’t? It remains in question and there’s a scene where someone asks me where I’m from. That’s still for the audience to determine. As far as my character’s dealings in Texas, I don’t think Bob was necessarily born and raised there, let’s say that. His character is going to be able to jump around. I think he can move around the classes. He can be with the socialites in Houston. He can be with the good country folks in Midland. So I think as a con artist, I’m going to get to play different roles, maybe play a different character, put on a different persona.

SJ: How much time have you spent in Texas so far?

JW: We shot the pilot and I’m driving back down. When we start the series, I’m going to take a road trip to go back down so I’m actually going to get to go and spend time in some of these towns that the series takes place in which I think is pretty important. In order to represent something, you’ve got to be there.

SJ: How are you preparing to set up shop and live in Dallas?

JW: I’m getting an apartment, right downtown. I’m very excited, a little loft, pretty cool. Our creator, Kyle Killen, he resides there and everyone in the crew that was shooting down there with us, they’re all from there and they just go on and on about how amazing it is.

SJ: Do you have family you’re moving with you?

JW: No, I don’t. My family’s all back in Michigan. I’m from the Midwest so my mom and dad, cousin, sister, everyone’s back in Michigan. Going down there, it’s just kind of like with the cast, I’m not bringing down any wife or kids with me.

SJ: Were you looking for a series to do?

JW: Yeah, yeah. I think I’m just open to good writing, to be completely honest. As good as you may or may not think it is, and I hope you do like it, it was there on the page. So the writing when I read it, it really truly was there on the page and so that’s what I look for. For this, I think anyone that has half a brain that’s a young actor would have really loved to have gone out for this role. I don’t know, I’m not behind the scenes, I don’t know exactly who went out for it but I imagine there was some good competition.

SJ: Who’s more dangerous, David Keith or Jon Voight?

JW: I like that question. Let me throw it back at you and then I’ll answer it. Who do you think is more dangerous?

SJ: David Keith because he thinks he’s trying to help.

JW: I think they’re different. I think each of them has an element of danger but from complete different walks of life, right? You have Jon Voight sitting at the head of his company and has power running through his fingers. Then you have David Keith, he’s a man, at least he comes off to me in the pilot as a man capable of a lot. I don’t think there’s much that this guy wouldn’t do to get the con done. So that’s danger, someone that doesn’t necessarily have much to lose.

SJ: Will it be doubly romantic or more tragic with the two ladies you’re stringing along?

JW: I think yet to be determined. I think that’s going to be the thing that keeps people coming back is what is going to happen with both of these things. I think truly that he loves both of them, so where that goes, who knows? But he does have love for both of them.

Looks like China‘s a little bit touchy about that whole being a communist superpower thing. A state-run paper is miffed that producers of Red Dawn have chosen to villify them in the upcoming remake, instead of the Soviet Union as they did in the original. Problem is, there is no Soviet Union anymore. We crushed them after watching the original Red Dawn. Oh hey, I think I see their point.

"Despite the world’s focus on U.S.-China relations in the strategic and economic dialogue and their increasing economic connections, China can still feel U.S. distrust and fear, especially among its people. Americans’ suspicions about China are the best ground for the hawks to disseminate fear and doubt, which is the biggest concern with the movie Red Dawn."

Oh, poor wittle China. Gonna cry? Gonna cry?? China gonna cry? Wh-what are you doing?? No, put that tank back. I was just blogging in a snarky manner. The internet demands it!!! AAAARRRGGGHHHH!!!!! (via Cinematical)

A word from Adrianne: “I’m a huge comic book fan and Aquaman was a huge deal.”

Director: Scott Stewart

Cast: Paul Bettany, Denis Quaid, Kate Walsh, Adrianne Palicki, Willa Holland

Synopsis: The archangel Michael defends humanity from the apocalypse once God loses faith in his creations.  Michael leads strangers who are defending a woman pregnant with the second coming of Jesus.

Release Date: January 22, 2010