The Passion of the Geeks

Every year, Ain’t It Cool News webmaster Harry Knowles holds “Butt-Numb-A-Thon” a 230-strong collection of geeks, sits them in Texas’s Alamo Drafthouse, and they watch over 24 consecutive hours of film entertainment. The content has ranged from “Magnolia” to early John Wayne films to old newsreels to 45 minutes of B-movie trailers, to flicks about lesbian vampires.

This year Harry’s selection process for the participants differed– and now we know why. The final film shown was a very rough cut of Mel Gibson’s upcoming powerhouse “The Passion of the Christ” (originally entitled simply “The Passion”, until the fat babies at Miramax whined that they already had a movie named that).

For those not familiar with the film, it is uber-Catholic (who knew?) Gibson’s highly-graphic, highly-visual labor of love about the last twelve hours in the life of Jesus Christ. For reasons of realism, the only languages spoken in the film are Latin and Aramaic (with subtitles, although originally Mel did not want them in at all).

Everyone who has seen the film thus far was left stunned by its power; BNAT attenders are, interestingly, no exception. Barely a day removed from the proceedings, AICN is already reviewing the crap out of the movie.

Keep in mind that they all watched the film at the tail end of 30 straight hours of non-stop movie-watching. And that the first film of the night was “Return of the King”, with Peter Jackson himself in attendance. And that the cut of “The Passion” was extremely rough, with only about 30% of the music done, many of the shots not color-timed yet, and plenty of special effects incomplete.

When hardened, cynical, liberal movie geeks come away from a film the same way as Kathryn Jean Lopez, it is time to pay attention.

Come February 25, Martin Scorsese’s “Jesus” (in “The Last Temptation of Christ”) will be barely a distant memory.

“You have to know. Even if you don’t believe, you have to know.”

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Gail Simone exclusive to DC

The Birds of Prey scribe Gail Simone is now exclusive to DC
, which is a good sign for Gail (who is becoming a fan fave) and Birds of Prey, a book that wasn’t doing so well post-Chuck Dixon until the arrival of Simone.

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Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit”???

I’m surprised there hasn’t been more speculation about this, but at last someone is talking about Peter Jackson doing The Hobbit. Only problem is that there are some issues as to who has the rights to it. New Line would have to get the rights away from United Artists.

UA, of course, won’t want to part with them given the tremendous success of LOTR. Were United Artists to film The Hobbit now, even if it were entirely different from the production of the Lord of the Rings books, it would be a monstrous success. They may also try to lure Peter Jackson, cast and crew to United Artists. Who knows?

Jackson had originally pitched “The Hobbit” but found it would cost in the area of $150 – $200 million to film. Too much, the studios thought. So he countered with the proposal to do three Lord of the Rings movies for $300 million total.

The upfront costs for a “Hobbit” would be much lower, now. He’s developed the size effects, CGI animation for Gollum, MASSIVE army character controls and has giant spiders already programmed. He’s built a Shire and Bilbo’s house, and he’s cast Bilbo, Gollum, Gandalf and Elrond. The movie would be “cheap” to do now, but for having to pay United Artists a pantload of money for the rights to it.

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PvP Horror Cover Blurb Contest

(You know…I should just have a PvP category on Monitor Duty.)

Scott Kurtz has announced a new cover blurb contest for his upcoming issue which will feature the infamous “Jade boob squeeze” storyline that ran on PvP years ago.

For those who contend that the PvP comic book merely reruns old cartoons, I should point out that the old, classic storyline was all about traveling into the far-flung future of 2004 to play Diablo II. Obviously, this will be updated a bit.

By the way, October 1999 seems to be one of the absolutely best months of the PvP archives. I had to hunt to find this one even though I knew it was in October of ’99, and everything surrounding the story is a classic.

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Video Game History

Beware, some of this is offensive in both political stance and language. (The poster’s comments about “a perfectly good fatality” in the Bush vs. Gore video game are also treading dangerously close to a Secret Service visit.) It’s also gosh-durned funny. Photoshopped Video Game History.

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March Is Marvel Month

March is shaping up as Marvel Month. The publisher has 6 projects slated to debut in the month. Those titles are:

Iron Fist – A new on-going written by Jim Mullaney with covers and art by Kevin Lau (Vampi).

She-Hulk – A new on-going written by Dan Slott (Arkham Asylum) with art by Juan Bobillo and covers by Adi Granov.

Captain America and the Falcon – A new on-going written by Priest with an artist to be announced.

Alpha Flight – A new on-going written by Scott Lobdell with art by Clayton Henry

Cable/Deadpool – A new on-going written by Fabian Nicieza with art by Mark Brooks.

Avengers vs. Thunderbolts – A new miniseries written by Fabian Nicieza and Kurt Busiek and illustrated by Barry Kitson.

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