Let's start with John Carter of Mars. My disappointment that the film would not be a Pixar animated effort (I was quite excited at the prospect of a 'toon that wasn't for little children and for Pixar to spread their current excellence into other genres) has been somewhat tempered knowing that Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo) will be trying his hand at live action (interesting). I like Taylor Kitsch who'll be playing the titular role. Anybody who watches Friday Night Lights knows that there's a nice unforced depth to his acting that you couldn't really see in his cameo in Wolverine. Lynn Collins (also from Wolverine) will play his eventual betrothed Dejah Thoris. Coming Soon reports that Thomas Haden Church may be appearing in the film as well. Since the role is supposed to be very dramatic and Church is a "name" I'm assuming we're talking about a substantial role. Maybe it's Tars Tarkas, the four armed martian warrior who begins the narrative as John's enemy only to become his ally. We're early in pre-production still.
In most depictions of this famous pulp series both John Carter and Dejah are nude or wearing itty bitty teeny weeny strips of cloth. Now, I'm no master swordsman but I feel very safe in stating that it's probably not a good idea to sword fight naked. Only try that if you're a quasi immortal like John Carter. In the book when John Carter first arrives in Mars (transported mysteriously from the Civil War era south) he's completely starkers. One expects that the movie will find a way to cover the hero up throughout, Hollywood cameras being so frightened of nudity, even when the bodies they're looking at are as perfectly sculpted as Kitsch's.
Speaking of perfectly sculpted gratuitous nudity...As you may have heard elsewhere on the net this weekend, a certain famous "hated" blog posted explicit pictures of Oscar winner Dustin Lance Black (Milk) that were taken in 2006. As one might expect a round of hypocritical judgments and holier than thou proclamations could be heard 'round the net. You see this reaction all the time: bad workplace decisions, bad parenting decisions, bad financial decisions, you name it... any mistake that is or becomes public is followed by faux horror and "what was he/she thinking?!?" as if the chorus of naysayers had never themselves and would never themselves experience a similar lapse in judgment or (in this case) experience a betrayal from a former friend.
I was disheartened to read the judgments... People were even putting Black's activist heroics in the past tense! Do people really think that gay marriage advocacy can't be performed by a person who has sex (GASP! and: um...who doesn't?). So I was happy to read on Pink is the New Blog that Dustin was honored this weekend in California for something else entirely and seems to be handling this invasion of privacy like a pro i.e. apologizing for the right detail and ignoring the rest. Well done. Move on.
P.S. First Diablo Cody and now Dustin Lance Black... since when do Oscar winning screenwriters become celebrities in their own right? And now it's happened in back to back years. Weird, that.
