Hey, you kids remember your old buddy Thor? I liked the first Thor alright. Chris Hemsworth was well cast (other than his shaved chest, which was weird), and I liked that Marvel got Kenneth Branagh to direct, who’s well off the beaten path of the usual directors they hire for these kinds of movies. It turned out passable, except for Jaimie Alexander and her gang of pointless characters, or whatever they were called. Now there’s a sequel, Thor: The Dark World, with direction by some no-named called Alan Taylor. I did a lot of research on this, and it turns out the bad guy is a big black thing, and Natalie Portman is sad because all the other girls hate her in Viking heaven. Something like that. I dunno, man, it looks really boring.

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“Listen to me, Thor, racecars are meant for go fast.”

Watching Senna was probably the first time and only time a lot of us cared about car racing, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Ron Howard saw the same film and was inspired to make this one. Here’s the trailer for Rush, directed by Howard and written by Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon), which follows the 1970s Formula One rivalry between Englishman James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and Austria’s Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl), not to be confused with the Senna-depicted rivalry between handsome Brazilian Ayrton Senna and slug-nosed Frenchman Alain Prost in the eighties. Hard to say if Rush will be as entertaining as Senna, but at the very least it will be easy to follow, if we’re to judge by exchanges like this:

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We only have time for one take … and THIS is that take!

There was a time, about eighteen months ago, when you couldn’t swing a cat without running into someone name-checking Malcolm Gladwell’s “Tipping Point” theory (believe me, I tried, the cat was not pleased). People loved that Gladwell riff, they loved it so much they actually sort of lurved it. Why? Well, it was an easy way for folks to discuss change, and why we rarely saw it coming. Which is why I’d posit that the current “normal” of Hollywood, releasing fantastically awful reboots and hyping terrifically terrible retreads, is all about to change. Red Dawn is that “tipping point,” heralding a bright new era of innovation, even as 2012′s version of Red Dawn is over there in the darkened corner, finger blasting various farm animals.

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Late yesterday, The Hollywood Reporter wrote an exclusive story about how Universal had dropped Kristen Stewart from its Snow White & the Huntsman sequel plans, writing that it was being “reconceived” as a spinoff movie about Chris Hemsworth’s character, the Huntsman. It got sent to me no less than five times this morning and covered on every movie site on up to the NY Daily News, because people like hearing that Kristen Stewart got fired. No one really likes her outside of Twilight fans. The only problem is, it’s not really true. Universal was always planning for a sequel that focuses on Chris Hemsworth. This according to the Hollywood Reporter’s own reporting.

Universal chief Ron Meyer said that while the upcoming Snow White and the Huntsman doesn’t appear to lend itself to a sequel, Universal thinks it can do more movies based on the character of the Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) if it is successful.

That was in April. This morning, they wrote:

Sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that the sequel to June’s Snow White, which starred Stewart, Hemsworth and Charlize Theron, is being reconceived as a spinoff movie. It’s unclear whether director Rupert Sanders will return, though one source with ties to the production says he will. However, screenwriter David Koepp, who had been hired to pen the continuation of the original film, is being settled out of his rich contract, according to sources, as the project is being transformed into something other than the movie that Koepp had been hired to write.

The move comes in the wake of Stewart, 22, and the married Sanders, 41, apologizing publicly for a romantic affair after compromising photos of the duo were published in July. (Stewart was dating her Twilight co-star Robert Pattinson.) While it might have been awkward for Stewart and Sanders to reunite for a sequel, it is not clear why the decision to move forward without Stewart was made.

Ah, now we see the motive, a nice excuse to write “Kristen Stewart Rupert Sanders Affair Robert Pattinson Awkward” in an article. You know, just to catch people up! Huh, I wonder what KATE UPTON’S BARE BREASTS HOLDING A KITTEN think about this. *cough* LESBIANS!

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At long last, we have the trailer for MGM’s remake of Red Dawn (directed by Bourne stunt coordinator Dan Bradley and actually shot in 2009), in which we reinvent a tiny hermit nation of starving Stalinists with a persecution complex as a massive invading force to avoid offending the Chinese (who, ironically for a Communist superpower, have too much money to risk alienating). The whole thing is in such wildly poor taste that I don’t know whether to be nauseated or impressed. All I know is that if they make it through the entire movie without calling anyone “gook” they’re full of sh*t. What’s he saying in the banner pic? “Piece of a sh*t?” Haha, okay, sure, buddy, whatever you say.

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