The X-Men visit a no-touch strip club.

I was as shocked as anyone when X-Men: First Class actually turned out kinda good. But the inevitable sequel is moving forward without original director Matthew Vaughn (original director of the prequel, that is…) , and with an awful title, “Days of Future Past.” But Bryan Singer is on to direct, and though he hasn’t directed anything good since 2003, he at least has it in him, and from the sounds of it, he’s got the cast of X-Men: First Class returning, with the added bonus of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan. Singer himself broke the news this morning on Twitter.

Thrilled to announce @ianmckellen118 & @sirpatstew are joining the cast of #XMEN #DaysOfFuturePast #magneto #professorX More to come…

— Bryan Singer (@BryanSinger) November 27, 2012

I’d like to officially welcome back James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender, & Nicholas Hoult to #XMEN for #DaysOfFuturePast

— Bryan Singer (@BryanSinger) November 27, 2012

We already sort of assumed the plot would involve time travel from the title; the casting of young and old Professor X and Magneto all but confirms it. At the least, you imagine it will involve a heavy flashback element. Which is a good thing, because at its core, X-Men is really a story about a bromance between a psychic cripple and a tattooed holocaust survivor with a huge dong. Polish up the awards, this thing’s as Oscar baity as The Reader.

After the jump, burly MMA sex symbol (probably the only time I’ll ever mean that as a compliment) Gina Carano does her best Jason Statham impression in Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire, in the role of ass-kicking rogue government operative that would normally go to someone like The Stath (frickin’ Title IX). I don’t know about you, but to me it feels like Steven Soderbergh, somewhere along the line, between no one wanting to watch his two-part, four-hour movie about Ché Guevara, The Informant! being a disappointment at the box office (full disclosure: I thought it was great), and Sony pulling the plug on Moneyball a few days before filming (so that they could make the mind-numbingly conventional version they eventually made), Soderbergh decided, “You know what? Screw it. You don’t want me to try to do something unconventional? Fine. I’m gonna make the glorified B-movies everyone else makes and do a remake of Outbreak where Gwyneth Paltrow gets a graphic autopsy. Then I’m gonna shoot one of those dumb, chick-on-the-run movies, just so I can blow stuff up and watch Gina Carano’s boobs bounce while she triangles people. And you know what? It’s still gonna be better than Salt.”

(at this point I imagine him doing that “suck it” thing with his forearms over his crotch)

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Hubba hubba. As if Michael F. Assbender’s perfectly-parted hair, tight-but-compact frame, and steely gaze weren’t already enough to moisten your panties and/or manties, X-Men: First Class just released this deleted scene from the DVD (out September 9th) in which he dresses like a sexy lady. Actually, it’s the scene in the film where Xavier and Magneto go to the go-go club where Lenny Kravitz’ mutant daughter with dragonfly wings (Angel Salvadore) works and try to recruit her, but this time with a slightly different ending. Inside the private room, Magneto reveals his mutant powers by levitating the metal champagne bucket, while Xavier reveals his by entering Angel’s mind and changing Magneto into a lady (that’s Angel’s point of view we’re seeing above). So when you think about it, it’s just a future cripple putting a wig on a holocaust survivor to make a stripper feel comfortable enough to take her top off. Man, they really knew how to party in the sixties.

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After the jump, you can watch the first trailer for A Dangerous Method, David Cronenberg’s latest (and first since Eastern Promises in 2007), starring Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud, Michael F. Assbender as Carl Jung, and Keira Knightley as some crazy slut Jung’s banging. It has far less Freud snorting tons of coke and screaming about his penis than I hoped for (HISTORICALLY ACCURATE!), but… well, there’s no happy ending for that sentence. I was disappointed.

Starring Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley, Vincent Cassel and Sarah Gadon and based on the play by Christopher Hampton, the film centers on the conflict between Sigmund Freud (Mortensen) and his pupil Dr. Jung (Fassbender). Seduced by the challenge of an impossible case, the driven Dr. Jung takes the unbalanced yet beautiful Sabina Spielrein (Knightley) as his patient. Jung’s weapon is the method of his master and both men fall under Sabina’s spell.

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Michael F. Assbender, assbending like a boss

X-Men: Born This Way

X-Men: First Class is about one obnoxious subplot away from being the movie Watchmen always wanted to be, the huge-budget, over-the-top superhero epic that has as much insight into the human condition as it does spandex and… grunting. Kick-Ass director Matthew Vaughn manages to turn a Muppet Babies concept with a disastrous marketing campaign (HURRR, DIAGONAL ORIGIN STORY!) into something a lot more ambitious than your basic retread of the superhero story. And that’s good, because X has as its source material a layered allegory for the Civil Rights movement, whereas, say, Thor was mostly an excuse to watch a buff guy hit sh*t with the hammer (though Brett Ratner still can’t tell the difference). Look, I was as surprised as you are.  DON’T FIGHT IT! YOU’VE BEEN ASSBENT!

X opens in flashback, telling two parallel backstories. One starring over-enunciating James McAvoy as smarmypants overichiever Charles Xavier; the other, ass-bending Michael F. Assbender (Michael Fassbender, to other people) as hard-knocks Polish concentration camp orphan Erik Lehnsherr. One part of this supposed origin story that’s never explained is Xavier’s British accent, which he already has at the age of 10 when we catch up with him at his palatial estate in, uh… Westchester, New York.  Did rich kids speak in British accents in the 40s?  Because JFK was a rich kid in the 40s and I’m pretty sure I heard him call a country “Cuber.”  In any case, rich Xavier is already a powerful psychic, while penniless Lehnsherr possesses mutant genes that make him far less Jewy than his parents.  Later he learns he can control metal when Kevin Bacon shoots his mother.  (That’s Kevin Bacon, Nazi Scientist, by the way, before he morphs into Kevin Bacon, international playboy — but I’m getting ahead of myself).  As Erik discovers during a mother-murdered-in-front-of-him induced rage, his ability to attract metal is directly related to the intensity of his emotions.  Why, if only he had one person on whom to pin all his most intense hatreds! And another who could literally enter his mind and help him sort out his feelings! Why, all that’d be left is some giant metal sh*t to control.

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