Peter Parker’s Web Slingers – The Amazing Spider-Man

In the latest edition of Spider-Man, coming out on Blu-ray™ and DVD November 9, Parker takes the easy way out and builds mechanical web slingers, rather than develop them genetically, like a TRUE superhero. Just kidding. I actually find the mechanical web slingers much more impressive than the evolved ones, if only because this Peter Parker had to work to develop them, rather than just let it happen to him like another Spider-Man portrayer. Let’s just call him “Toby M.” for the sake of anonymity.

Batterang – The Batman Movies and TV Show

What’s remarkable about this homemade gadget is that it simply defies explanation. It explodes, it sometimes returns, sometimes it’s remote controlled, and it can travel incredible distances at ridiculous speeds. Why? Because Batman. That’s why.

The Tim Burton and Chris Nolan installments have done their best to distance themselves from the campy TV show, but no one can resist the subdued charm of the batterang. Not sure if I should capitalize “batterang…”

Ash’s Chainsaw Hand – Evil Dead 2

While it might not be the most ingenious weapon, it is the most hard-core and bad ass. In the series, Ash (played by Bruce Campbell) undergoes a series of unfortunate catastrophes that cause his hand to be possessed, then cause him to cut it off, replacing it with a chainsaw. It’s not exactly rocket science, but, coming from a guy that calls a shotgun his “boom stick,” it’s to be expected.

The Bolt Shooter – The Good Son

Sometimes bad people make great weapons, and nowhere is that more apparent than in The Good Son, a film that stars Macauley Culkin as the bad guy (boy). And oh, is he ever bad. He does lots of terrible things, like causing wrecks on the freeways by throwing dummies off of bridges, but the most heartless thing he can muster up is taking out a ferocious dog with a weird bolt-gun-crossbow hybrid. He’s a horrible, horrible boy, but his fabrication abilities are off the charts.

Charlie Kelly’s Rat-Bashing Stick – It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia

(I am aware this isn’t his actual rat stick, but I figured an action sequence was more profound than gadget accuracy.)
When you kill as many rats as Charlie does, you get that thousand-yard stare in your eyes that comes hand-in-hand with the crushing pain of recognizing your own mortality. Fortunately for Charlie, killing rat families just got a whole lot easier with his rat-bashing stick, a modified baseball bat that features a whole slew of pointy nails and a chain or something. It’s probably the crudest device on this list, but when you see how it warms Charlie’s heart, it might also be the most endearing!

Data’s Telescoping Boxing Glove – The Goonies

I’ll be honest. This is the first device that came to mind, but I’m having a really hard time coming to terms with the efficacy of it. First of all, if you’re going to punch someone to cause them harm, using a padded glove to do it sort of defeats the purpose and mitigates the damage done. Sort of cartoon-y for a film that otherwise offers a sincere and real look at a, um, group of kids that are hunting for treasure and who accidentally stumble upon a pirate armada.

Ok. So the boxing glove is probably in keeping with the premise of the movie.

The Proton Pack – Ghostbusters

Please don’t tell me how a Proton Pack works. Not interested. All I know is that they suck ghosts into a backpack, where they are held until it’s time to more or less incinerate them in a big ghost oven. Or something like that. You know how I know these Proton Packs are homemade? Well, for one, they look like crap. And two, they’re not foolproof. In fact, they’re downright dangerous.

Never ever cross the streams of two Proton Packs. You won’t like the result.

The new Australian trailer for The Amazing Spider-Man gives us a glimpse of more the action that The Land Down Under demands. We’ve got Emma Stone thrown out a window, Spidey and the Lizard tickle-fighting as they fall to their deaths, football skills, and Curt Connors possibly masturbating at his desk. I’d expect that of Dylan Baker, but not you Rhys Ifans.

In addition to the action, we’re also given a glimpse of the mystery. Who is that raspy-voiced, shadowy figure demanding to know if Dr. Curt Connors told Peter the truth about his father. Is it Norman Osborne? Peter’s dad?? Denis Leary after a heavy smoking day??? All will be revealed when The Amazing Spider-Man opens in theaters on June 30th.

Here’s a pic of the Pez dispenser:

Handsome, no?

And here’s the concept art for The Lizard:

Before you curse or praise this image, bear in mind that The Lizard undergoes several metamorphoses during the film, so if this image isn’t your cup of tea, don’t worry, there will be several more iterations of The Lizard for you. You’ll find out for yourself on July 2, 2012, but I doubt you’ll have to wait that long before trailers, posters, psychic images, and general speculation runs rampant.

Until then, that’s a hell of a lizard.

You are tearing me apart, Gwen Stacy!

1. This Peter Parker is still skinny.

Remember how buff Tobey Maguire was? Not Andrew Garfield. “I only got into the Ultimate [series comics] doing research for the film but that was a great resource for how I wanted Spidey’s body to work,” Garfield said. “I liked the outline and how skinny he was because I’m skinny. I love the idea of a skinny teenage kid beating the crap out of huge guys. That’s always been a huge dream of mine, and [to] give other skinny kids that sense of achievement as well.”

2. It’s Gwen Stacey as first love, not homewrecker.

Yeah, we know you didn’t like Spider-Man 3. Tempting Peter away from Mary Jane wasn’t exactly endearing to Bryce Dallas Howard’s Gwen. Emma Stone’s gets to be sweet. “My character, experience is everything with Peter,” Stone said. “It’s her first love. They experience so much together and he teaches her so much. With him it made sense once I read with him and met him.”

3. Web sling from Spider-man’s point of view

The big visual effects hurdle for Sam Raimi was to make Spider-Man sling around New York. Now that artists can achieve that, director Marc Webb wants to make the audience see it firsthand. You’ve seen a taste of that in the teaser trailer, and Webb also built a track in New York to coordinate driving traffic around a stuntman swinging down the street. “Because we’re shooting in 3D, I wanted to conceive of certain things very specifically for 3D,” Webb said. “There’s an experiential component to 3D I think is fantastic. We’re experimenting with generating that point of view so you feel what Peter Parker feels when he’s jumping over buildings and streets.

4. Now with more daddy issues.

Uncle Ben’s mantra was “with great power comes great responsibility.” With a new beginning, Amazing is really emphasizing the father figures, good, bad and absent. “We had a better origin in some ways because we’re dealing with something people care about, no knowing who their parents are,” producer Avi Arad said. “Then we have probably the greatest love story in Marvel, Gwen Stacey, the relationship between Gwen and her father. We have an amazing villain. The only thing that stayed the same and made us go and make the movie in the spirit of Peter Parker, what he’s about but how would he behave in this day and age? How would a kid like him in high school react to things?”

6 photosEmma Stone

Overall, it looks like a somewhat darker look at the webslinger. Here, Andrew Garfield‘s Peter is portrayed as more of a sensitive loner than Tobey Maguire‘s total nuuurd take on the character. It’s a little light on the action but we are privy to a bridge shot where something (most likely the Lizard) is throwing cars into the air with ease as well as a Spidey POV shot as he swings from Manhattan rooftops which looks like a really cool video game intro. Let’s hope those effects aren’t slated to appear in the final film.

30 photosThe Best Of The Spider-Man Meme

In these pics we see him steal food from the elderly, dress like Hollow Man, and dunk on a special needs classmate. Unless Sony chose to adapt the Spider-Man Meme. In which case, I’m in total support. (EW)

They do offer one small layout of “action shots,” that show Garfield‘s Peter Parker crouching on the ceiling of a subway car, getting a sponge bath, and rifling through Martin Sheen‘s briefcase. He’s really living the dream in these stills!

Beyond that, we get a look at Rhys Ifans looking like the scientist who is just waiting to turn evil, and we get a couple stills that have Emma Stone in the mix as well. While there’s not a lot here to differentiate these installment from the earlier ones, the pics do remind us that Spidey is coming, which is probably all we really need to know anyway. Click for more funny pics.

Here are our picks from Friday’s schedule. You can check out the entire schedule HERE.

11:00-12:00 Paramount: The Adventures of Tin-Tin— TBA Hall H

4 photos'Immortals' Is Looking Pretty, Pretty '300'-y

Disney, Warner Bros., Dreamworks, The Weinstein Co., and maybe Marvel won’t be making the trip this year, which means you won’t see any precious footage from The Dark Knight Rises or The Man Of Steel or The Avengers which seems like BULLshit. But don’t worry. You’ll be able to see scenes from The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part I and Shark Night 3D, so that should keep people from stabbing one another with pens, right?

Oh okay. Well, I guess you’ll also have a chance to see promotions for The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn, Cowboys & Aliens, The Amazing Spider-man, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, The Hobbit, and The Immortals. And if all those panels are full, you can check out The Raven or “Terra Nova.” So don’t worry, there will be plenty of stuff to act nerdy toward. (NY Times)

While Comic-Con started as a niche convention for comic book enthusiasts, it’s exploded into a mecca for things both geek-y and blockbuster-y. The fact that the Spidey set is making the trip down there isn’t that surprising. Though it’s a ways out from the release of the film, next year’s Comic-Con comes a few weeks late, and it’s not like the crew could just SKIP Comic-Con. That would be comic-book movie marketing suicide. So this year it is.

4 photosNew Set Photos Reveal Spider-Man’s Powers Are Wire-Based

The gang will sit on a panel and discuss production of the movie and the source material, while artfully dodging myriad questions about plot points. They will also be contractually bound by Marvel to start 25% of their sentences with “It was such a pleasure working with ____.” Ahh, Hollywood.

Martin Sheen is playing the perennially dying uncle in The Amazing Spider-Man. You can see him in the set photos above with Andrew Garfield (they’re shooting in Queens), and soon he will become Peter Parker’s personal guilt ghost. In his last breathes, Uncle Ben is probably reminding Peter that “with great power comes great responsibility,” and also stating, “I totally cheated on your Aunt May… hey… don’t judge me…”

The Amazing Spider-Man webs its way into theaters July 3, 2012. (On Location Vacations)

Zodiac writer Jamie Vanderbilt is web-slinging his way back to crime dramas after penning The Amazing Spider-Man. He’s set to write Ridley Scott‘s Red Riding for Columbia, but don’t worry, it’s not another entry in the endless wave fairy tale adaptations. Based on a British mini-series, which was based on books by David Pearce, which were probably based on something else, Red Riding is about the murders of several kidnapped young girls in a British town from the mid-70s to the mid-80s. Oh, and the local police are also crooked. The whole thing sounds like a light-hearted good time.

Vanderbilt, whose last name makes him sound like the country club villain in an 80s comedy, recently did a polish draft on the Total Recall remake. (Hollywood Reporter)

Let’s start with The Amazing Spider-Man. In the first photo, star Andrew Garfield is told to pose “as though he was appearing in a JC Penney back-to-school ad.” Needless to say, he nailed it. We’ve also got Martin Sheen at his Martin Sheeniest, Sally Field quite simply bringin’ it, and Rhys Ifans needing medical attention for a pretty wicked neck rash. If these photos don’t wanna make you see The Amazing Spider-Man…then…I dunno…maybe some later photos will or something.

6 photosThings Are Looking Quite Jiggy On The 'MIB III' Set

Then we’ve got the large scale arts and crafts project that also doubles as the Wrath of the Titans set. I have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of catapults in my day, and I would say this one falls squarely in the middle. Pretty unremarkable. Much like this film will be.

Finally, we’ve got MIB III set pics featuring Bill Hader as Andy Warhol for reason unknown. We’ve also got a bunch of shirtless men in shiny silver pants. After last weeks gallery (attached) I’m getting the impression that Will Smith’s “rewrite” may have turned the beloved alien franchise into a homoerotic all-male revue. Whatever. We’ll call it a lateral move.

Above are new set photos from The Amazing Spider-Man. They show either Andrew Garfield or his spider-double swinging through the refreshing NYC air with the help of Hollywood wire magic. Unlike many of the past Spider-Man set photos, these actually look pretty cool. With elegant moves like these, who needs Black Swan or the frigid White Swan? By the way Black Swan could totally be a Spider-Man villain. Not a good one, but maybe one your little sister would have bought the action figure of.

The Amazing Spider-Man actually, not computerly, swings into theaters July 3, 2012. (Daily Mail)

Other photos include Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) taking a few casual laps in and around a police car, and about-to-skateboard Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) looking chillaxed. Totes chillaxed. To the miz-ax.

The Amazing Spider-Man webs-up theaters July 3, 2012. (Pink Is The New Blog)

To be fair though, he was also involved in the now-scrapped Spider-Man 4, so he’s got a pretty strong track record of penning Spider-Man movies that no one has seen. It’s not our place to question the studios.

Vanderbilt did write David Fincher‘s Zodiac, which means that he is absolutely qualified to write Spider-Man. Simple movie math says that (Fincher writer)>(Comic book movie writer), and you can’t argue with math. Well, you can, but you’ll fail. The Amazing Spider-Man shoots its gooey web all over audiences July 3, 2012. (THR)

One of the biggest secrets of any upcoming movie is who the villain will be in Marc Webb‘s reboot of the Spider-Man franchise, The Amazing Spider-Man. And now, even though everyone knows that C. Thomas Howell is a big blabbermouth who can’t keep any kind of secret, someone told him who it was going to be. And, not to prolong the suspense or anything, but it’s going to be The Lizard. Here’s Howell during a radio interview:

“There is not a whole lot to talk about. Sony wants us to be hush-hush right now. I play a relatively small role. I play a construction worker who’s son is caught in the middle of a battle between the Lizard and Spider-Man on the Manhattan bridge. Spider-Man helps me get my son back from this perilous situation. There is some payback there at the end of the movie. Spider-Man is kind of hurting. I help him when all of the other people won’t. Part of the story is, the nation thinks he might be a bad guy. They don’t know what to think. Because of my experience on the bridge with my kid, I know he is a good guy. I pitch in and help out at the end. That is the best way.”

So, now you know. I guess we don’t know who’s playing The Lizard yet. I might humorously suggest a popular Hollywood actor who looks like a lizard, but I can’t think of any. Gary Sinise? Conrad Veidt? (via Latino Review)

“You don’t get the unwanted shadowing effects during shots that sometimes appear using other 3D rigs, and the lens changes only take a few minutes. We wanted a rig that would not only deliver the best quality and performance but also one that wouldn’t delay the production, so we have all the benefits of a 3D picture and we’re shooting to a 2D schedule.”

Cool! I’m sure this means that soon they’ll be able to afford to provide 3D glasses to ticket holders at no extra cost, right? Right? Hey, why are you laughing? (via The Hollywood Reporter)

We’ve seen a lot of behind-the-scenes crotch-shots and video from The Amazing Spider-Man, starring Andrew Garfield, which I think is kind of unfortunate. I consider these un-touched, low-impact photos to be excitement killers, like… well, like Spider-Man 3 in general. My Spidey-senses ain’t tingling over these shots.

Still, they do give us an intimate look in the making of a crazy high-budget blockbuster. We also now know Spider-Man wears sweatpants. Or maybe it’s laundry day. Or maybe the Green Goblin stole all his jeans. I can imagine Harry Osborn cackling on his sky stick, struggling to hold an entire drawer’s worth or Levi’s and khakis.

The Amazing Spider-Man swings into 3D theaters July 3, 2012. (Collider, The Daily Blam!)

Sony has tightened up their summer 2012 tentpole release schedule (it’s never too early), and here’s what they’re working with:

(Please remember all release dates subject to change as movie execs get into pissing contests)

• Men in Black 3 – 3D (May 25th) The third installment of the Tommy Lee Jones/Will Smith family-friendly sci-fi series, also starring Josh Brolin.
• I Hate You, Dad (June 22nd) Adam Sandler is Andy Samburg’s dad in this comedy. Expect lots of silly voices, hilarious rage, and maybe some ironic rapping.
• The Amazing Spider-Man – 3D (July 3rd) Andrew Garfield‘s fills the shoes Tobey Maguire vacated in what will certainly be Sony’s most touted summer release.
• Here Comes the Boom (July 27th) Kevin James is a biology teacher that does karate or some crap.
• Total Recall (August 3rd) Colin Farrell plays the protagonist (Quaid) in this remake that shifts a bit from the story of the original. This film isn’t listed as 3D, but don’t rule it out.

While not an inspired slate of offerings from Sony, summer usually exists as a breeding ground for the familiar, so in 13 months, get ready to turn off the thinking cap and get mesmerized by the explosions and the fat guy falling over. (Deadline)

“The role got me some good reviews there and I think the industry there is aware of my work. Marc Webber [sic] had seen me and wanted to work with me and he approached me for this role. I play one of the villains in the movie. It is a pivotal role.”

Oh, well. The actor playing the part says it’s a “pivotal role.” I wouldn’t be surprised if we found out he’s actually playing Spider-Man. (via ComingSoon.net)