And you can read it all right here!

I'll write more about this when I'm calm enough to type again.

This news is excellent and huge.

(Via Batman on Film.)

Here are my reviews for the three Batman-related titles I write about for Batman on Film …

Review: Detective Comics #862

Review: Gotham City Sirens #9

Review: Streets of Gotham #9

… and an extra one to help out the site's owner and editor, Bill "Jett" Ramey, the hardest working Batman fan on the planet, who couldn't get to his comic shop due to snow and ice:

Review: Batman and Robin #9

Detective #862 is one of the best single issues of a title I've read in a long time!

Universal Pictures is back in the Vin Diesel business, and business is sounding awfully good.

Here's the news:

Variety: Vin Diesel signs up for another 'Riddick'

Variety: Universal revs up another 'Fast and Furious'

In summary, Diesel is returning to the two franchises that made him famous. We'll likely see the next Fast and Furious first, as filming is set to begin later this year for a 2011 release.

Even though I still haven't forgiven Universal for not using my title — 4ever Fast, 4ever Furious — for last year's fourth installment, I absolutely loved the movie. In fact, I'd go as far as saying it was one of the best movies of 2009 in terms of knowing exactly what it was, knowing exactly what it needed to be, and delivering on those promises with confidence and a whole lot of fun.

Writer Chris Morgan, who's thankfully returning for the next one (already tentatively titled Fast Five) is truly a scholar of the franchise, and I'm sure he'll come up with something fun and exciting. Chris, if by any chance you ever read this, please don't forget the things you did that made number four such a knockout. (And please figure out a way to bring back Jack Conley as Penning; that guy was hilarious.)

Director Justin Lin and producer Neal Moritz are also back on board; Diesel will get a producing credit of his own, and I wouldn't be surprised if returning co-star Paul Walker gets one, too. I absolutely love these movies, and I'm not ashamed to say that I can't wait for the next one.

The new Riddick, on the other hand, won't be as easy a success.

I remember rolling my eyes back in February 2000 when my Impact editor, John Mosby, asked me to review a low-budget sci-fi movie called Pitch Black.

Five minutes into the movie, I was so close to the edge of my seat that I'm still surprised I didn't fall off it.

The film introduced me to the lovely Radha Mitchell, whom I sincerely thought was Juliana Hatfield for a few minutes, and also to Diesel, whose name made me wonder if he was a wrestler I'd never heard of.

(Actually, I take that back — I'd seen Diesel in Saving Private Ryan but didn't realize it was the same guy.)

Diesel man-handled the film like a guy who steps off the bus a fully formed movie star, and director David Twohy (who took his own pass at the screenplay by Ken and Jim Wheat) never faltered in making sure that all the scares and thrills were driven by how much his audience cared about the characters and the connections and themes that defined them.

Diesel wanted to turn his role as intergalactic anti-hero Richard B. Riddick into his very own "Conan in Space" kind of franchise, and he got his wish. Kind of.

The sequel, 2004's The Chronicles of Riddick, built such a huge new universe of mythology around Riddick that certain things seemed to get lost in the shuffle; concepts became more important than characters, and the movie suffered for it. I still love watching it — it looks absolutely amazing, the action is massive and intense, and Diesel certainly gives it everything he's got and then some.

But again, it's the character issues that ultimately killed it, and nearly all of them involve the character of Jack.

In Pitch Black, Jack (played by Australian actress Rhiana Griffith) was a young girl who disguised herself as a boy to suffer less harassment on the dangerous space-lanes. Riddick became her unlikely hero, and she idolized him so much that she shaved her head to look like him. Riddick, Jack, and holy man Imam (Keith David) were the only survivors of the film's pterodactyl-like predators, and they seemed likely candidates for inclusion in the sequel.

David returned as Imam, but only briefly. Griffith didn't return at all … but Jack did.

Here's where things get confusing — Griffith joined Diesel and David in the recording studio to voice their characters for the Riddick animated short, Dark Fury. Griffith was 19 years old (and staggeringly beautiful) when the sequel came out, and even underwent physical training to reprise her role.

But something happened on the way to the Underverse, because a reported squabble between Diesel and Universal resulted in Griffith being replaced by Alexa Davalos. Diesel fought for Griffith, while the studio wanted someone they considered prettier.

Unfortunately, the film's story was just as cruel to Jack as the studio was cruel to Griffith. Her age was seemingly rearranged to accommodate Davalos, and the character's journey was just as cruel as her fate. Why change both actress and age when they were only going to kill her anyway? Davalos certainly doesn't deserve any blame. She's very tough in the film, and the documentaries on the Blu-Ray show an actress who's deeply committed to the difficult physical challenges that come with such a role. But everything about how Jack was handled in the sequel came as a slap in the face not only to Jack and her original portrayer, but also to the fans who agreed that Jack was one of the coolest characters in Pitch Black and wanted something better for her in the sequel.

Anyway, the story in Variety suggests that the next Riddick movie will be closer in size and scope to Pitch Black, which would also suggest that it will jettison much of the mythology introduced in The Chronicles of Riddick. That seems easier said than done, especially since the film's finale turned Space Conan into King Conan, complete with a troubled brow.

My solution? Write Rhiana Griffith a check, and bring Jack back.

It's easy. Just say that the Jack — who was calling herself "Kyra" anyway — in The Chronicles of Riddick was an impostor or something like that, planted in the prison to be used against Riddick. Begin the new movie with Riddick in a jam, and have Jack rescue him. That would immediately throw him off center and create opportunities for some really interesting story and character directions. They could even have fun with it. Maybe the real Jack sent Kyra to find Riddick. Riddick says, "I thought you were dead." Jack replies, "Who, Kyra? How dense are you? She didn't even look like me!" See how easy it is?

I'm sure they'll leave Jack dishonored and dead, but it would certainly be an interesting idea to explore. Either way, I hope they can at least create a new female character as strong as Mitchell's Captain Carolyn Fry from Pitch Black.

And that's the Vin Diesel Report. More on these projects as they happen.

The year is 1891.

American actor Lawrence Talbott (Benicio Del Toro) receives a letter from his brother Ben's fiancée, Gwen Conliffe (Emily Blunt), informing him that Ben has met a terrible death at the hands of … something. And terrible was Ben's death indeed — the film begins with his slaughter, and it isn't for the faint of heart.

And so Lawrence returns to his ancestral home of Talbott Hall in England, where the crestfallen Lady Conliffe is staying with Lawrence's father, John (Sir Anthony Hopkins). Even in grief, John exhibits what seems to be a barely restrained balance of danger and glee.

As commanding as he is on stage, Lawrence seems to retreat inside himself in the dark, dank, cobwebbed halls of his old home. Whispers of old secrets hide beneath the dust, and memories best left forgotten are told anew with every creaking floorboard and door. He remembers the night he found his father holding the bloody body of his mother, a raven-haired goddess not unlike the very same gypsies John suspects of Ben's murder, who had taken her own life with a straight-razor. Less clear are the intervening years, lost in the foggy confines and shadowy corners of the insane asylum John committed Lawrence to in the aftermath of his beloved mother's death.

When Lawrence visits the gypsy camp on a night when the moon rises full and high, he's not the only one who arrives seeking answers. The townspeople who fear another slaughter are there to take away the mangy old bear the gypsies travel with, confident that it must be the culprit. But something else waits in the mist, and when it strikes, there will be neither peace nor safety for gypsy, commoner, or nobleman alike.

Lawrence shows great bravery during the savage monster's onslaught, saving a mother and child and chasing after the creature with a rifle. The gypsies only barely rescue him from having his throat torn out by the wolf-like assailant, but the bloody chunk the beast ripped away from his neck is the least of his worries.

For when the next full moon rises, Lawrence undergoes a violent change that leads him to do great and terrible things. He fears Gwen will be his next victim, while Gwen desperately aches to save Lawrence since she couldn't save his brother. While Scotland Yard's Inspector Abberline (Hugo Weaving) brings his Jack the Ripper experience directly into Lawrence's seemingly doomed path, Old John Talbott watches the proceedings from afar with wise, wild eyes, pushing all involved toward a bloody conclusion that will require a miracle of love just as powerful as the ancient evil that blurs the lines between where man ends and beast begins.

Anyone who's ever seen a movie will figure out The Wolfman immediately, but its obvious secrets don't make it any less fun. It's difficult to judge the screenplay by Andrew Kevin Walker (Seven, Sleepy Hollow) and David Self (The Haunting, Thirteen Days, Road to Perdition) because it's impossible to know how much of it actually made it to the screen; the film went through a difficult post-production period of re-shoots, re-edits, and re-structures involving everything from the special effects to the musical score. (For example, composer Danny Elfman was in, then out, then in again.) Director Joe Johnston (The Rocketeer, October Sky, Jurassic Park 3) is no stranger to special-effects movies, and his last minute replacing of original director Mark Romanek (Weezer's "El Scorcho," One Hour Photo) doesn't seem to have affected his confident delivery of the final product.

Its checkered pedigree aside, the end result is lean and mean, though some odd bits of dialogue seem to suggest scenes cobbled together from portions of entirely different shoots. (Examples: Abberline twice tells Lawrence in the same scene that he'd like to have him examined by experts at his convenience, and Old John uses the "prodigal son" line on Lawrence twice when it seems more likely that different script drafts only called for one or the other.) Also frustrating are the special effects, which range from some of the absolute best makeup and practical effects I've ever seen (thanks to the legendary Rick Baker) to some of the most awful computer effects ever rendered, sometimes together in the same sequence. You go from marveling at the technical prowess on display to groaning inwardly at how cheaply some things appear.

For example, when Lawrence visits the gypsies, the grizzly bear on display is entirely computer-generated … and it looks that way. How difficult would it have been to get a real bear? Similarly, another scene involving what's supposed to be a magnificent stag looks ridiculous because the stag is obviously a very poor digital creation. Get a real deer! That's got to be cheaper than paying someone to spend months making one on a computer. Some of the subtler digital enhancements, such as the clouds over Talbott Hall that are black even in daytime, work well. Others, like the digital streetlights and night skies of old England, reduce iconic visual cues to something that looks downright (and disappointingly) fake.

All these post-production complaints aside, the movie still worked for me. Intrusive editing tricks still couldn't take the creepiness out of the flashbacks and dream sequences, and the asylum scenes in particular are effectively terrifying. Without spoiling anything, there's a mad science element in the film that really ratchets up the terror factor.

As for the Wolfman's rampages, all the gore-hounds out there won't be disappointed. Stomachs, heads, and long, wet ropes of sloppy entrails are sent flying through the air and splattering across the cobblestones each time the monster's claws and fangs flash. Many of the scares are brilliantly set up, too, such as the muzzle flash in a dark forest that reveals the Wolfman looming over and behind a doomed shooter who fired in the wrong direction.

Despite some very tight editing, there's still a lot of good stuff that wasn't lost to post-production jiggles and chops. Gwen wonders, for example, that if the magic exists to create a creature so brutal and wicked, then certainly something else just as magical exists that could save it. Nothing can bring Lawrence's brother back, but maybe the curse can be ended once and for all. And to this end, the cast is fantastic. Those who criticize Del Toro for seeming a bit too restrained in early scenes with Hopkins and Blunt should also remember that Old John had Lawrence committed to an insane asylum when he was just a boy, leaving a shell of a man who can only open up on a theater stage. (And even then, as Abberline points out in his masterfully written first scene with Lawrence, he's opening up as someone else, leaving Abberline to wonder who — or what — else might be lurking around inside him.) Del Toro was one of the film's producers who fought to get it made in the first place, and his passion for the character and for the material is always on display.

Blunt is breathtakingly beautiful and goes above and beyond what she's given to create a complete character. (She's welcome to battle for my soul any time she'd like to, and my soul and I won't even fight back.)

The performances of Hopkins and Weaving, on the other hand, are appropriately big and certainly lots of fun.

I got the feeling that lots of character stuff is missing from the final edit, and the sloppy computer effects, especially in a film that boasts so many incredible makeup creations, are simply unforgivable. If you've got a stunt-man who can do it and makeup that can withstand it, leave the computers at home and capture that power on camera! Oh, well. Furthermore, the film hinted at many subplots that never go anywhere. Was Lawrence's mother a gypsy? I think so, and the more I think about it, the more I'm glad the film left me wondering.

I'll give it a very generous B+, and I suspect that the impending directors cut on Blu-Ray and DVD will restore some things that make the movie even better.

The first two Mission: Impossible movies were a little too pretentious for my tastes.

But along came the trailer for Mission: Impossible III , which felt … different. In a good way.

And when the movie arrived in May 2006, it immediately became one of my favorite action movies of all time.

(My original review is here.)

Just as he'd later do with Star Trek, director (and co-writer) J.J. Abrams stripped down the M:I concept to its best and most basic elements, jacked up the action, gave it a lot of heart, and made me care about its characters as actual human beings. The team felt like a family. And the Chesapeake Bay Bridge assault remains one of the most bad-ass action scenes I've ever seen.

That's why it's good news to me that Tom Cruise has signed a deal with Paramount for Mission: Impossible IV. Cruise will also co-produce the film with Abrams, who won't be in the director's chair this time. I just hope that whomever they choose as the new director will bring the same levels of energy that Abrams did.

Cruise and Abrams broke the story, with the script to be written by André Nemec and Josh Appelbaum.

No word yet on whether Ving Rhames, Laurence Fishburne, my fantasy girlfriend Michelle Monaghan, or any of the other previous M:I cast members will be joining Ethan Hunt's latest mission. More to come as it happens!

I told you the storm was coming.

I'd offer you my umbrella, but I don't have one. Don't want one. I prefer to soak in all of this amazing news as it happens.

Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale

Okay.

So.

Nikki Finke and Mike Fleming have dropped another HUGE scoop:

Deadline Hollywood: It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's Chris Nolan! He'll mentor Superman 3.0 and Prep 3rd Batman

WHAT!

This news is HUGE! I said that already. It wasn't enough.

Do you think it's too good to be true? How about some expert follow-up and confirmation from our good friend Bill "Jett" Ramey:

Batman on Film: This Looks Like a Job for … CHRIS NOLAN!

I'm so excited I can barely type.

What all of this basically means is that Nolan will be stepping in to help develop a new Superman movie while he works on this third Batman (and, of course, finishes up Inception, which we talked about in the previous article).

That doesn't mean that Nolan will direct or even write the new Superman. He'll just be there to help shepherd it along. And, as Nikke Finke says at the end of her article, "A more comic-accurate Superman seems like the way to go. No need to worry: Chris Nolan knows what he's doing."

Indeed.

I liked Tim Burton's Batman movies, but I don't like them as Batman movies. Instead, I enjoy them as grim, loopy Tim Burton fairy tales featuring Michael Keaton as that world's version of Batman. The two Joel Schumacher movies are exactly what they are; I don't hate them, but it's not my Batman.

My Batman isn't a revenge-driven lunatic. My Batman might scare the living hell out of a criminal, but he's not cruel. My Batman is a HERO. My Batman doesn't just care about turning fear back upon the bad guys. My Batman puts greater value on inspiring the innocent. And that's why I love the Christopher Nolan interpretation of the character, who comes alive via the incredible talents of Christian Bale. They found a way to make Batman a hero again. They found a way to get to the heart of Bruce Wayne without compromising the power of Batman. I wrote a big essay about this a couple of years ago; you can read it right here.

(Sorry about the broken picture links; I'm still moving things around on the new site and still trying to fix the guts.)

And quite frankly, Superman needs some serious saving. Although I've defended and applauded Brandon Routh from day one, Bryan Singer's Superman Returns isn't just the worst Superman movie I've ever seen. It's one of the worst movies I've ever seen of any kind. Period. My original review is here, and it doesn't even begin to do justice to how much I dislike the movie. Superman isn't a hero. He's a selfish, short-sighted, sad husk of a man who mopes around and can't be bothered with little things like accountability or responsibility. And that's not Brandon Routh's fault. He didn't write the story. He didn't direct it. He did the best he could with what he had to work with. It just wasn't enough.

I really hope the new Superman movie jumps right into the heat — and heart — of things. Remember how Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely did the entire origin on one page in their epic comic series All Star Superman before launching right into the story? "Doomed planet. Desperate scientists. Last hope. Kindly couple." That's all you need to know, and we all already know it! You can do that in the new movie's opening credits and move right along from there.

I'd love to see the movie begin with Superman already established, and Clark and Lois already married. If I want to see a young Superman learning about his powers, I'll watch Smallville. If I want to see a young Clark Kent struggling with romantic angst, I'll watch Smallville. Don't waste precious time on things we already know. "Go Forward," in the words of the Christopher Reeve Foundation, and knock us out with lots of action, lots of charm, and lots of heart.

Personally, I think there's only actor out there right now who could really play Superman, and that's Mad Men's Jon Hamm.

He could definitely play a man's man Superman. He's dramatic and manly on Mad Men, but his guest appearances on 30 Rock and Saturday Night Live proved him to be a very funny and charming performer. He'd have the charisma to be what I truly believe could be the best Superman yet.

Because there's the thing — I don't want to relate to Superman. I don't want to feel sorry for Superman. I want to be inspired by Superman. I want to see two hours of Superman doing awesome Superman things with charm and wit and power and courage. Superman Returns had none of those things. The new movie needs to have all of them, and it needs to present them in ways that nerds like me haven't even dreamed of yet.

That's why I'm glad Nolan is going to be mentoring this new Superman movie. He understands heart, and he understands courage. This is amazing news. And I'll certainly be staying on top of it as it develops. Superman and Batman are the world's first-and-still-finest heroes, and they need to continue to be presented as such. What a day. What a day.

(And in the meantime, Warner Bros., please contact me. My writing partner Kevin Rice and I already have one movie in the oven, and we know how to make a Superman movie that will remind kids of all ages why Superman is THE greatest hero of them all. We don't cost much, and we'll do everything Christopher Nolan says. We promise.)

I began this site for two reasons — to share bloggings with a girl who urged me to join Wordpess, and to post news about Christopher Nolan's Batman movies starring Christian Bale as Batman.

The girl is now who-knows-where and can stay there, but Nolan and Bale haven't let me down yet.

And yet …

Despite the gargantuan success of The Dark Knight, news about another Nolan/Bale Bat-outing has been as elusive as Bruce Wayne in the pages of DC Comics these days. (But that's an essay for another time.)

That's slowly beginning to change.

Deadline Hollywood reported yesterday that the television series Flash Forward is losing its showrunner, David Goyer, who crafted the stories for Batman Begins and The Dark Knight with director Nolan.

(Christopher's brother, Jonathan, joined them on The Dark Knight.)

And amid all the other reporting came this innocent little sentence:

Of course, Goyer's feature career is really heating up, since he co-wrote Batman Begins, and penned the story for The Dark Knight, and is now writing the third Batman installment with Chris Nolan's brother Jonah.

Author Nikki Finke tends to stay way in the know, and she wouldn't toss out something like that if she didn't know what she was talking about.

And don't forget that my friend Bill "Jett" Ramey let us in on that secret a full year ago.

Jett will tell you himself that he knows more about the progress of the next Batman movie than he can say, but he's keeping it close to the chest because of his very same senses of honor and integrity that keep me checking out Batman on Film every day. Being a contributor (of comic book reviews) to B.O.F. has been a massive honor, and when the time comes for the official announcement, you can bet that Jett will be reporting it with more vigor than any other news source around.

So what's been taking so long?

Nolan is now putting the finishing touches on his science fiction epic, Inception, which opens July 16. For more information about the movie, I urge you to read this excellent interview he did with Hero Complex. And once you've done that, check out the amazing trailer on Yahoo.

We probably won't get official word about the Batman movie until Inception arrives this summer.

Until then, let's keep our eyes on Batman on Film. Just in case.

Fourteen years in the past of an alternate future's present, scientist Lionel Canter (James Cromwell) invented a new technology that would eventually allow people with disabilities to "project" themselves into society via artificial "Surrogates" — perfect android creations that could be controlled by their operators from their homes and function in the world at large just as a healthy human being could. (Not surprisingly, military applications followed quickly.)

But seven years later, Canter's original idea had become something else entirely. A whopping 98% of the world's citizens were now conducting their daily lives via Surrogates, causing massive reductions in crime, disease, and discrimination.

It is really that difficult to imagine? Think about how many hours a week we spend behind our computer screens, typing to friends on Facebook rather than chatting on the telephone (or better yet, in person). Think about all the video games and online communities that allow people to hide behind avatars from the comforts of their own homes. Think, too, of our reliance on technology. Even with all the strains on economies worldwide, people still find ways to pay for all the expensive bells and whistles on their cell phones every month. Imagine what we'd do if we were told the technology existed to allow us to do whatever we wanted while looking however we wanted to look.

Back to this future's present, not everyone believes in the utility of Surrogates. Some, such as those who lock themselves away in reservations that are little more than glorified slums devoid of any technology, are more radical in their hatred of what they see as inhuman monstrosities than others. Their champion is "The Prophet" (Ving Rhames), whose fingers reach deeply into the issues concerning society's literal new workings.

Boston-based FBI agents Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) and Jennifer Peters (Radha Mitchell of Pitch Black and Silent Hill) uncover something dark and troubling when they investigate the destruction of Canter's son's Surrogate outside of a night club. Under normal circumstances, the Surrogate's termination wouldn't affect its at-home operator in the least. But the mysterious weapon used to fry this Surrogate also liquefied its operator's brain in his skull, a fact that Tom's superiors don't want going public for fear of causing a panic.

More troubling is the fact that Canter's son was using one of Canter's Surrogates, suggesting that the original target had been Canter after all. But there's more. Who stands to gain the most from making people afraid of using their Surrogates? And is Canter, fired from and publicly humiliated by the very company he helped create, a suspect himself?

As Tom and Peters will soon discover the hard way, time is running out in more ways than one — and the weapon's masters have even bigger ideas. Matters are complicated further when Tom's Surrogate is destroyed, and he has to continue the investigation in his own skin. He's not been out of his house in years, and neither has his wife, Maggie (Rosamund Pike, from Die Another Day and An Education). Since the death of their only son in a car accident, they can only bear to look at each other via their Surrogates — something that Tom has been fighting desperately to change.

Surrogates was directed by Jonathan Mostow, whose genre credits include Breakdown, U-571, and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Its screenplay comes courtesy of Michael Ferris and John Brancato, who've previously dealt with technology gone amok by writing both post-Cameron Terminator sequels. The inspiration was a Top Shelf comic book series of the same name by writer Robert Venditti and artist Brett Weldele.

The makeup department does a fabulous job of making the actors look just plastic enough to make us believe we're looking at androids. Radha Mitchell in particular is fabulous in this regard, giving her Surrogate a distinctive style of physical movement and facial expression that's just slightly askew from what it should be. (In fact, if the makeup department has one failing, it's their inability to keep Mitchell's radiant natural beauty from shining through her character's "real" self's homely exterior.)

While Mitchell steals scenes as her Surrogate, Willis rises to the occasion when Tom re-enters society without the help of his own, which looks like a 50-going-on-30 version of himself with a hilariously bad blonde haircut. Willis is one of those guys who will look like an action star no matter how old he gets, and it's refreshing to see him as a more recognizable version of himself in the film's second half. Tom soon rediscovers the frailties of human skin, but Willis especially excels in playing the overwhelming sensory overload Tom deals with during his first steps outside in far too long a time.

Even the cities look unusually clean, which makes sense. After all, why would Surrogates need to litter or make messes? Coupled with the film's impressive, deceptively subtle makeup effects, these intentionally sterile backgrounds go a long way toward making the world of the film feel appropriately unreal. Cinematographer Oliver Wood (U-571 and the Bourne films, among many others) and Production Designer Jeff Mann (T3, Transformers) do an excellent job of proving how effective a movie's appearance can be with just a few inspired (and intelligently applied) visual choices.

The film boasts a surprisingly high degree of action, particularly in two big sequences in which Mostow demonstrates just how frighteningly capable a Surrogate can be in the hands of a capable operator. Some of the chases and brawls in T3 were compromised by subpar digital effects, but that's not a problem here. The smash-ups in a third-act car chase are brutally and effectively staged, and the parts played by Surrogates in these scenes mix digital elements with old-fashioned techniques that create an impact you can actually feel. But the best sequence is still probably the mid-film chase during which Tom's Surrogate is destroyed during the pursuit of a suspect through an all-too-hostile pro-human reservation.

A few of the twists in Surrogates are predictable, but their execution is anything but. The ending itself arrives with unexpected narrative and philosophical weight and is all the more effective for it. Clocking in at just 89 minutes (with only 84 minutes of actual movie, the film's pace is generally solid and moves well thanks to a good deal of mystery and social commentary that's interesting without being preachy.

Definitely one of my (most unexpectedly) favorite films of 2009.

(The quotes in this article were taken from the film's official press notes.)

Once upon a time, a giant flying saucer with all the texture and grace of a primitive steel factory came to Earth. Just as surprising as its arrival was its location — it didn't stop above any of the usual suspects like Manhattan, or Washington, D.C., or Chicago. It came to rest in the skies directly over Johannesburg in South Africa — and it just sat there.

No heat rays. No invading alien armies. No agenda. The whole world waited with baited breath for a first contact that never came, so we flew up there and cut our way inside to find a dying hive of insect-like creatures whose appearance earned them the derogatory nickname "Prawns."

Not content to let them live (or die) on their ship, we dragged them down and gave them a home called District 9 while all the world's nations tried to figure out what to do for them — or with them.

As those first few months became 20 years, the fenced-in District 9 devolved into a dirty, dangerous, militarized slum. Multi-Nation United (MNU) was formed to manage the Prawns, though their interests were focused far more sharply on harnessing the Prawns' alien weaponry for human use than on anything remotely resembling maintenance of the creatures' well-being. But even those attempts hit dead ends when we figured out that their biological firing mechanisms could only be triggered by their specific alien DNA.

So what now? Do we kill them, or just keep moving all 1.8 million of them around? The film begins as a documentary about the Prawns' arrival and history as it chronicles MNU's plan to move the Prawns "happily and safely" to an "Alien Relocation Camp" 200 kilometers outside of Johannesburg. The brochure makes it look quite inviting. The real thing looks like a concentration camp.

Complicating matters are the Nigerian gangsters who've flocked to District 9 under the guise of "trading" with the Prawns. They hoard the Prawns' prized commodity — cat food — while stockpiling weapons both human and alien. But their true intentions run deeper and darker than commerce — their leader follows a superstitious and ritualistic belief that if he eats enough aliens, he'll absorb enough of their DNA to be able to use their guns.

Good-hearted but inexperienced MNU official Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is placed in charge of evicting the Prawns from their current shacks in District 9 while convincing them that their new "homes" will be equivalent to a deeee-luxe apartment in the sky. Wikus must also cope with the cruelty of Koobus (David James), MNU's chief of military operations.

"Wikus is Afrikaaner, which is perceived by some in South Africa as a kind of a redneck," James explains. "I decided that I would play Koobus as English, a man who has spent his military service out of country. Even at the outset, in every way, he sees himself as being superior to Wikus."

As you can imagine, it all goes very badly. "A small amount of power goes a long way with Wikus," says Copley, a filmmaker himself who's a lifelong friend and collaborator of District 9 director Neill Blomkamp. "He's an ordinary guy who likes to wield power in a bureaucratic way. That's why MNU promotes him — they want a guy who will do things in an orderly, proper way."

Copley's work in such scenes is masterful, with both humor and tension rising from Wikus's sincere but constantly foiled attempts to get the Prawns to listen to (and obey) the rules and regulations of the human world. Its even more impressive when you consider that Copley wasn't a professional actor. His performance, therefore, comes across as entirely instinctual rather than in anyway way rehearsed or informed, and the movie is so, so much better because of that.

"Neill has found a very soulful way of approaching science fiction," Copley continues. "The genre can be clinical, even cold and unemotional. But in Neill's hands, it resonates quite deeply. There's no particular message or big moral of the story — it's just a melting pot of emotions that comes out."

Other things come out quite literally, but the less you know about this film going in into it, the better. To its credit and benefit, District 9 isn't quite the film its trailer makes it out to be. There's something deeper going on here that asks bigger questions. What happens to a man who's not seeking a holy grail but unwittingly becomes it himself?  How much humanity can you lose and still be considered human? Such morality certainly comes into question, but never at the expense of gripping character drama and gritty action sequences that gain momentum and brutality from the realism with which they're staged and shot.

What could have been a jarring mix of visual and narrative formats plays seamlessly. "Essentially, the film bounces from our story, which is obviously fictional, to a sort of ultra‐real mode," Blomkamp says. "It's all part of the same story; the movie fluctuates between something that feels like a film and something that feels bizarrely real."

Adding to that feeling is the astonishing near-perfection of the visual effects, which rarely look anything less than utterly photo-realistic. Actor Jason Cope talks about helping bring the Prawns — including the elder member of a pivotal father-son Prawn duo — to life: "I play about ten different characters. It was quite a thing to wake up and say, 'Which creature will I be today?' My mom was very excited when I got the part. She asked, 'What are you doing?' I said, 'I'm playing a community of intergalactic beings in the townships.' She couldn’t quite get her head around it."

Luckily, she didn't have to. "Neill had a very clear idea about what he wanted from the non-humans," Cope continues. "During the rehearsal process, we got a feel for what he liked, but he also gave me a lot of freedom, within certain boundaries. I wouldn't act too much like an animal or an insect, but I'm definitely not acting human, either."

Copely certainly approved of his co-star's methods. "Jason is a terrific actor to play off of. Those were some of the best scenes in the film for me."

On-Set Effects Supervisor Joe Dunckley describes the Prawns as having "an insect exo-skeleton crossed with that of a crustacean. They have sinewy, delicate joints between the hard shell areas, similar to a crab or crawfish. They're meant to be entirely disgusting. They secrete some sort of resin, so we used various forms of goo to give them that high shine and life‐like appearance."

WETA Workshop provided the drawing boards, and where there's a WETA, there's a Peter Jackson. The man who successfully brought The Lord of the Rings trilogy to the big screen is both a friend and a mentor to Blomkamp and serves as a producer on the film — which wasn't always what it turned out to be. "We were considering a production of HALO, based on the video game," Jackson says. "That movie never happened, but we loved working with Neill so much that when he pitched us District 9, we decided it would be fun to turn his idea into a feature film."

For a fraction of the cost, District 9 looks better and most certainly plays better than its last-summer rivals like Transformers 2 and G.I. Joe. Its story and its presentation are as wholly original as its scares and thrills are exciting and unpredictable. This is an audience-pleasing thrill-ride you'll still be discussing and debating with your friends for hours after it's finished.

The woods behind my parents' house in Elizabeth, Indiana, were home to some of the most ridiculous superhero movies that never happened, all of them starring me, and all of them made up by me as I went along.

I spent lots of time zipping between trees in my Captain America Underoos, slinging around a garbage can lid as my shield. So I'm pretty excited about the prospects for Marvel's Captain America movie, even though I think The First Avenger: Captain America is one of the worst movie titles I've ever heard. Just call it Captain America, for crying out loud.

Anyway, director Joe Johnston has been talking a lot about the movie lately, and here are some of the things he's saying:

He told HitFix that the villain will indeed be the Red Skull, and that filming would take place in the United Kingdom since most of the movie occurs during World War II.

Hero Complex reports some more of Johnston's musings, including the evolution of Cap's costume throughout the film. It sounds like he'll be relegated to the USO circuit by commanders too terrified to waste their only super soldier in combat, but that after he goes off on his own, he'll come around to seeing the uniform as a rallying symbol of unity and leadership. One particularly interesting quote:

In the first USO sequences, the frustrated patriot will be wearing a version that is closer to the classic Jack Kirby-designed costume, but then later as the super-soldier hits the war zone he will be wearing a sturdier, more muted version that he makes himself that is more like battle togs. The stripes across his mid-section, for instance, will be straps, not colored fabric.

Sounds like they're going for a more realistic approach (as Nolan did with Batman), but the film's "USO then AWOL" approach should allow for both the classic "comic booky" costume and a battlefield version a little more suitable for film.

Regarding casting:

And who will wear the costume and carry the shield? "Well, we're testing five or six guys," Johnston said. "The youngest is 23, the oldest is 32. Most of the guys in the war are just kids, 18 or 19, but we want to go a little bit older. We have to have somebody locked in before I leave March 1 for London."

I hope they go older, or at least get someone who can play older. We shall see. And soon, from the sound of it.

Meanwhile, if you can't wait until the film's July 22, 2011 release date for some Captain America action, check out Hulu for the once-rare 1990 version.

(I won't be satisfied until they find the old Captain America TV movies from the late 1970s starring Reb Brown as Cap. You know, the ones with the giant helmet and the shield that was red, white, and … clear?)

UPDATE: Devin Faraci wrote a big article on CHUD that pulls together all the pieces known so far.