The other hand says "QUEEN." (Sadly, I believe this is from The Love Guru)

I’ll be honest, with all this talk about The Avengers, Batman, Superman, etc., I kind of forgot that Shane Black was directing Iron Man 3. Awesome, right? As long as Marvel doesn’t make him start shooting before the script is finished, anyway. Well now it seems Sir Ben Kingsley (“Special K” as we call him here in America) is in talks to play one of the villains. Which is great because everyone knows Special K is the smoothest brother around.

Kingsley, however, will not be the primary villain, according to insiders, and it is not clear what role he will play.
Insiders say there is a chance Kingsley will play the Mandarin, but because the script is still being written, the character might be reconfigured for silver-screen presentation. The Mandarin’s classic traits might be merged with a nanotechnological virus seen in a storyline titled “Extremis,” sources have said.
The update will be necessary. The Mandarin, a Chinese ruler who worked with the communists, was introduced in 1963 — a different era from today when China is one of the world’s most important film markets.
Additionally, his power initially came from 10 alien rings. Since DC hero Green Lantern also had his power from an alien ring, Marvel will no doubt want to distance itself from any similarity. [THR]

It’s hilarious the way news about comic book movies gets grown men arguing about whether Mighty Mouse could beat up Superman, but as long as we’re playing make-believe, a cursory skim of Wikipedia shows that the Mandarin was supposedly the child of “one of the wealthiest men in pre-revolutionary mainland China” and an English noblewoman, while Ben Kingsley (born Krishna Pandit Bhanji) himself is the son of a Gujarati Indian doctor and an English actress. So maybe they’re changing “The Mandarin” to “The Punjab,” or something. That would keep from pissing off China, that friend that everyone secretly hates but can’t say anything bad about because he’ll take back all the stuff he loaned you.

I didn’t post Heidi Montag’s ‘Transformers 3 audition‘ from the other day, because it was kind of boring and the last thing that dough-faced idiot needs is to believe she’s interesting in any way.  We could also discuss the kind of mind it would take to believe shooting a paper target from six feet away is an effective movie audition, but I have neither the time nor the tack hammers.

ANYWAY, here’s Sir Ben Kingsley parodying the aforementioned video for a George Lopez show promo.  I wanted it to be funny, but it’s actually kind of sad.  When Special K shows up, you assume it’s pretty much a slam dunk.  I’d watch Ben Kingsley wash my car (bonus points if he’s wearing a turban and a diaper).  Remember when he re-enacted that Minor Threat video?  That was fantastic.  This, on the other hand, looks like it involved about five seconds of pre-production.

“So… Ben Kingsley is British.  Can we do anything with that?  What do we know about the British?”

“Uh… they’re limp wristed and drink tea?”

“Perfect. Run with that, we’re burning daylight here.”

[via /Film]

RELATED ASYLUM POLL: Do you really want “Speidi” to disappear?

In this press interview for Prince of Persia, the interviewer asks Jake Gyllenhaal about the correct pronunciation of his name, and he says it’s actually pronounced “yillin-HOO-la hey.”  It’s hard to tell if he’s joking (like pretty much everything with Prince of Persia), but if that’s true, then the spelling of his name shows even more blatant disregard for Phonetics than Laveranues Coles.  I was all set to make fun of it for being Dutch and maybe even bring in the “Händenwaschen Ultra Fail” video from the other day, but then I looked it up and he’s actually Swedish.  Well fine.  All I have to say to that is at least he’s not Dutch, Europe’s pot-smoking gibberish clowns.

[Buzzfeed]

Prince of Persia has a new trailer out and you can tell it’s a Jerry Bruckheimer movie because it rarely goes five seconds with out something falling down.  “Oh my God it’s collapsing! Save me from this elaborate set piece!”

Other than that, it’s your basic hero story: Jake Gyllenhaal is born a poor orphan, but he grows up to wield the powerful weapon all the bad guys want, because of destiny.  One day he meets a hot chick who stands around explaining the plot to him, and together they must take the ring to the fires of mordor blah blah mouthfart wank motion.

[available in higher res at IGN]

This is the first trailer for the Disney/Jerry Bruckheimer joint, Prince of Persia.  An early version of it leaked online last night and some movie bloggers were having a big fight over whether it’s morally acceptable to post bootleg trailers before the official release from the studio.  To which I say, hey, get over (y)ourselves.  It’s a commercial for a movie, not the polio vaccine.

As for the movie in question, holy God what the hell is this?  I see they’ve reimagined ancient Persia as a land of spray-tanned white people with English accents. Meanwhile, cameras swoop and spin through spatially ambiguous CGI landscapes while Gemma Arterton whispers expository dialog in your ear like she wants to do you.  At least in the 2012 trailer you could kind of tell what was going on (i.e., CALIFORNIA IS GOING DOWN!).  In this one, Jake Gyllenhaal is running from… uh… something… and he dives… sideways?  Up?  Down?  I don’t even know.  Oh, and he’ll be speaking in that British accent the entire movie.  A movie about a magic dagger that… uh… controls time*.  You’ve done it again, Bruckheimer, you amazingly talented genius, you.

[available in better quality over at IGN but I don't like their embeddable player]

*And that this is also the plot of the video game it’s based on doesn’t make it any less of a stupid idea. It makes it even more of a stupid idea.