Late January through President’s Day weekend is generally thought of as the time when studios release their most half-ass, unwatchable shitpiles, but I’m cautiously optimistic for Josh Trank’s Chronicle. Written by youngin’s Trank and John Landis’s son, Max, it’s a found-footagey take on the usual superhero movie starring Wallace from The Wire (and a couple other dudes). The found-footage part doesn’t do much for me (nor does a white guy saying “ba-bling ba-bling” into the camera), but the idea that they’d use their superpowers not to fight crime but to screw with little kids, see girls’ panties, and run rednecks off the road really speaks to me.

That's telekinesis, homes.

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(pic via Fightlinker)

Remember a few weeks ago when I brought you the story of Phoenix Jones (aka amateur MMA fighter Ben Fodor), one of those “real-life superhero” types from Seattle, who’d been arrested for pepper-spraying people and charged with assault? (In his defense, if you watch the accompanying video, it seems pretty clear that those A-holes totally had it coming). Well now, along with suffering the indignity of having his super suit confiscated by the cops, Fodor has been fired from his job teaching autistic kids. And let me be the first to say well done, Seattle, serves those little autistic bastards right.

[Fodor was] told by the state that he is no longer allowed to work with vulnerable children or adults following his arrest last month, PubliCola has learned.
“I had to leave work in the middle of the day,” Jones says. “It was embarrassing.”
Jones explained that he has worked with five developmentally disabled autistic children—who ranged in age from four to 18 years old—for the last five years at their homes and state care facilities, going shopping with them, teaching them to balance checkbooks, and going for walks.
Prosecutors have not filed charges for the incident, and a spokeswoman for the city attorney’s office says the case is still being investigated.

“They all knew I was Phoenix Jones,” he says.

Jones says that because of his arrest, he’s on “a list” that prohibits him from working with children, because he has “a history of interjecting myself into situations that are dangerous.”
Jones, naturally, disputes that characterization.

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Found-footage and superheroes are as popular in Hollywood as sliced bread and vajazzling, so it was probably inevitable that someone would think to combine them. That someone, or someones, appear to be Josh Trank and Max Landis, (son of director John Landis), director and writer (respectively) of the faux-documentary superhero movie Chronicle, which just released a trailer. It’s set to open in February, and it stars Michael B. Jordan (Wallace from The Wire) and a couple of MTV-looking white dudes, as a group of friends who gain superpowers after being exposed to a mysterious substance. Which is exactly what discovering meth feels like, I imagine.

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For Thor, Marvel made the somewhat inspired choice of Kenneth Branagh for director, a guy known mostly for making Shakespeare movies. I thought it mostly paid off, and Branagh ended up making a movie that didn’t blow anyone’s mind, but was well acted and mostly entertaining. It was… cute. Considering the Fantastic Four movies and Schumacher’s Batmen, a movie as watchable as Thor about a second-tier character like Thor is an achievement. With that in mind, Marvel’s choice for the director of Thor 2 is Patty Jenkins. …Wait, who? Is that Leroy’s daughter?

Jenkins is an interesting choice. The director’s 2003 drama “Monster,” which she also wrote, yielded the Academy Award for Best Actress for star Charlize Theron.
Of course, the movie, about serial killer Aileen Wournos, had a budget of $8 million. The first “Thor” picture had a budget about 19 times larger — $150 million.
Jenkins was nominated for an Emmy for directing the pilot of AMC’s “The Killing,” and has directed “Entourage” and “Arrested Development.”
More recently, she directed “Pearl,” one of five vignettes that make up Lifetime’s original film “Five.”
Jenkins’s take on [Thor] is scheduled for a November 13, 2013 release. [Yahoo]

Monster was about a prostitute-turned-serial killer, The Killing was about detectives investigating the murder of a teenage girl, and “Five” was a TV movie about the impact of breast cancer on a series of women (Jennifer Aniston directed one of the vignettes). If I was Natalie Portman’s character, I’d be investing in a rape whistle right about now.

Said Marvel chief Kevin Feige, “We wanted someone that the fans would be completely indifferent to.”

Probably.

One of the most memorable of this summer’s HBO documentary series was Superheroes, which followed a number of different self-appointed, costumed crime fighters (all varying levels of delusional) as they went about their nightly business. One such superhero is “Phoenix Jones,” aka Ben Fodor, who moonlights as an 11-0 amateur MMA fighter. Jones was recently arrested for assault in Seattle after pepper spraying a bunch of people (to break up a street fight, Jones says). He posted video of the incident in question that you can watch below, and… hot damn, is that a fat dude in clown make-up trying to fight off a chick coming at him with her high heel? Jesus, this video really has everything.

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