Movie-List.com has a look at the latest trailer of Terry Gilliam’s forthcoming film The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus.

Click here to read all our Comic-Con coverage of Dr. Parnassus.

The wait is over. Yesterday, Superman/Batman: Public Enemies hit DVD stands everywhere! The latest animated film from DC features Kevin Conroy returning as the definitive voice of Bruce Wayne/Batman. Most fans agree, Kevin Conroy is the voice of Batman; Conroy voiced the character all through Batman: The Animated Series to Justice League: Unlimited and on various video games and animated films along the way. For almost 20 years now, Conroy has defined the role of the animated Batman -a role no other actor can seem to fill quite as well- and I’m sure this won’t be the last time.

In light of the recent release of Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, Warner Bros. has been kind enough to provide the transcript from a Q&A session with Kevin Conroy during Comic Con weekend. And of course, if you haven’t picked up a copy of this great latest DC Animated film, it is available now from Amazon. I definitely recommend it, and so does Swank.

Conroy’s acting career has covered a lengthy gamut of performances on stage and screen, including soap operas and television series like Dynasty and Tour of Duty. His first audition for an animated voiceover role was in 1991 when he arrived at Warner Bros. hoping to land some of the character roles on an upcoming series, and walked out as the title character of Batman: The Animated Series. As they say, the rest is a grand and glorious history for Batman fans across the nation.

So pleased with his return to the role is Conroy that he made his first appearance in six years at Comic-Con International this past summer to promote Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, and the crowd greeted their beloved Batman voice with multiple standing ovations. For those fans that couldn’t hear Conroy’s words in person, here’s the recap of a chat with the actor during that weekend …
QUESTION:
You’ve been doing this role for nearly 19 years. Are there still challenges to doing the voice of Batman?

KEVIN CONROY
I guess the biggest challenge to doing any kind of animation voice work is that you only have your voice to tell the story. And you want to keep it real and you don’t want to get cartoony, especially now because the audiences are much more sophisticated. Anything over the top is going to read over the top. So it’s a very fine line that people walk. For Batman, I think the biggest challenge is the timber of the voice that I established early on. I just kind of improvised it and it stuck. It’s very deep in my register – very throaty – and whenever it gets emotional, it’s a difficult sound to create with a lot of volume technically without blowing your chords out. So there’s all kinds of tricks you learn along the way of how to produce a sound, how to produce it without injuring yourself, and how to juice it enough. It’s a delicate, funny balancing act.

Recording Superman/Batman: Public Enemies was actually easy because of the cast that Andrea (Romano) put together. Tim (Daly) and Clancy (Brown) – all of us have worked together a lot over the years, and there’s a real shorthand when you’re dealing with people who have done a lot of it and know what they’re doing. Which is really a pleasure. Andrea doesn’t have to say very much for me to know what she wants.
QUESTION:
What do Tim Daly and Clancy Brown bring to their respective roles?

KEVIN CONROY:
Tim brings to Superman that strong voice, but there’s also a real humanity to Tim as an actor and that really comes through. So there’s strength but there’s a great sensitivity, and that’s unique about his take on Superman. Clancy is great at being crazy. He’s a very talented actor. He’s got that great sound, that resonate voice. And yet when you’ve got that kind of power under you, you can afford to be very casual with it. It makes his sinister quality so much more frightening when this guy with this voice is just being very debonair.
QUESTION:
What can people expect to find different about Superman/Batman: Public Enemies than most crossover stories?

KEVIN CONROY
There’s definitely more humor in this because of the relationship they’ve created between Superman and Batman. It was really fun doing it with Tim because it almost became like a buddy cop kind of thing. There are not a lot of people that Batman can fool around with like that – that can take it and can dish it back. So I really enjoyed that aspect of the script.
QUESTION:
Batman and Superman have all these amazing foes. And yet Lex Luthor has no super powers. What makes Lex a great villain, and how does Clancy make him greater?

KEVIN CONROY:
Actors always want to play the villain – they’re a lot more fun. Think about it. The hero is just about being a good guy and, in life, we all want to be good guys. But when you’re playing at something other than yourself, it’s fun to do what is taboo. I played Edgar in a production of King Lear that John Houseman directed for Lincoln Center. Edgar is the good son in Lear and it’s probably the hardest role in the play. I thought I did a pretty good job at it – although one critic was particularly unkind. Years later, I did a production at the San Diego Shakespeare Festival of Lear and I played Edmond, who is the force of evil throughout the play. The plot really revolves around Edmond’s machinations. It was so much more fun to play Edmond because of the joy he took out of being evil. This guy is planning the downfall of
his family, and laughing about it, and delighting in it. And it was a real blast to me. A couple years earlier I was busting my back for Houseman, doing Edgar every night, working so hard on a role that the audience doesn’t care about. They want to cheer Edmond and how evil he is because it’s so much fun. Clancy brings that joy to Luthor and the more ease he does it with, the more frightening it becomes. And he’s really good at that.
QUESTION:
So what does Kevin Conroy bring to Batman?

KEVIN CONROY
I guess I am basically most comfortable when I’m alone. As a kid, I was very much a loner. I love long distance running and long distance biking. A director once pointed out that those are all very isolated exercises you do for hours at a time. I think Batman taps into that quality of me, because my initial take on the character was that Batman wasn’t the performance. Bruce Wayne was the performance. Batman is where he’s most comfortable. The cave is where he’s most comfortable. And he puts on this persona of incredible sophistication to be able to deal with the world just like I think everybody puts on a mask to deal with the world. Everyone has a private self and a public self. With him, it’s taken to a real extreme. And I think I related to that aspect of him. I am basically a pretty shy person – I think a lot of actors are. That’s why they get into acting – because it’s easier to be free emotionally when you’re pretending to be someone else than to be free emotionally when you have to be yourself. And I think Bruce has the same problem.
QUESTION:
Is there still a cool factor for you to be the voice of Batman?

KEVIN CONROY
Oh, yeah. It’s something that I’m reminded of a lot from people who enjoy the show. That’s a very cool thing. I don’t ever take for granted how cool a job it is and how lucky I am to have landed in it. It was the first animation job I ever auditioned for – and it just happened to all come together so well. But it was just pure chance.

QUESTION:
Were you a comics reader as a kid?

KEVIN CONROY
I had an interesting childhood in that my parents were older. I was a late child, and they were children of immigrants. So the connection of the family to Ireland was very close. I have an Irish passport – I went to school there a bit when I was younger. So my parents were very old world, and they grew up during the Depression. They were kind of like my friends’ grandparents – my family kind of skipped a generation that way. I was put in very conservative Catholic schools – the nuns had habits to the ground, and the boys and the girls were separated. It was very old school. And comic books just weren’t allowed. It just wasn’t part of my world. I didn’t read them because I didn’t like them – I didn’t even know about them. (he laughs). Comic books weren’t part of the planet that I was raised on. Of course, once I heard about them, I liked them a lot. (he laughs)
QUESTION:
Do you have a collection of Batman paraphernalia?

KEVIN CONROY:
I’m no dumb actor (he laughs). Do you remember the Warner Brother stores? One of the most lucrative parts of those stores was the galleries – they ran them like real art galleries. They’d have people who did the voices come in and do so signings, and when they asked me, I said, “Do I get some kind of compensation?” They were trying to get us on the cheap, but I thought there had to be something to make it worth my while. I said “Why don’t you give me a cell?” And they said “Oh, that’s a great idea.” So I said, “Why don’t we make it two?” (he laughs) And so I started doing appearances at the stores and my compensation was two cells – and now I’ve got about 60 or 70 cells. It’s very cool. I have a great apartment in New York and they’re all on this wall. Everyone who walks into that apartment turns into a 12-year-old boy. They all walk in and say, “Oh. Wow. Cool.” And it is. (he laughs)
QUESTION:
What makes Batman the greatest super hero?

KEVIN CONROY
Oh, that’s easy. The thing that makes Batman unique as a super hero is that he has no super powers, and the darkness of his personal story. Everyone relates to having a personal dark story – his is just much more dramatic than most people’s. Everyone is handed adversity in life. No one’s journey is easy. It’s how they handle it that makes people unique. Batman took adversity and turned it into something enormously powerful and positive without any superpowers.
For more information, images and updates, please visit the film’s official website at www.SupermanBatmanDVD.com.

The latest in DC’s animated films isSuperman/Batman: Public Enemies which comes out on nationwide September 29. (You can preorder it on Amazon).

The film is loosely based on the Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness story arc that took place in proper DCU continuity. ( You can pick up it up here) Both it and the film sees President Lex Luthor using the pretense of a giant Kryptonite asteroid hurtling toward Earth to place a $1,000,000,000 bounty on the heads of Batman and Superman, bringing every villain in the DCU as well as the JSA and other heroes after them.

All the while the asteroid is still on a collision course with the planet and billions of lives are at stake. Will Batman and Superman thwart Lex Luthor and save the world? Of course, but will it be rad on the way? Generally.

The film version of this story was very fun to watch and looked crystal clear in the Blu-ray format in a way that I’m happy about. In fact, the animation and picture quality looked pretty close to flawless. It packed quite a bit of fun and adventure into its paltry 67 minute running time, but had moments that made my spine tingle in all the right ways.

Let’s get this straight: I very much enjoyed this movie, but I don’t think it was the best DCU movie that’s been made. Pretty far from it. I think New Frontier, Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, Mask of the Phantasm and maybe a few others belong on a list far above this entry into the mythos, but that doesn’t mean it’s without merit.

The things it did right, the action, adventure, and animation, were all turned up to 11. The problem was with the screenplay. They excised too much story for brevity and the film didn’t have as much of an emotional impact as it should have. I don’t know if this happened in post, or before the film started, but it just didn’t have an emotional climax as good as any of the DCU films I mentioned above. There were a few standout moments, but you were just rushed from one encounter to another to serve the plot without much time to breathe in between. Perhaps this comes from comparing books to movies in adaptations a little too much, but there were moments in the book that were tailor made for film adaptation that were left out for no apparent reason. (Like all of the suspense during and after Batman and Superman’s fight with Hawkman and Captain Marvel, for example.)

There were more examples of that. And it seems like a few things were done for express purpose of getting a PG-13 rating, even though I wouldn’t hesitate to show this to a 7 year old. At one point, Lex Luthor shouts “Bitch!” even though he could have easily said a thousand things that would have made more sense to the story.

At the end of the day, though, the movie had a lot of great fighting. Bats and Supes against Metallo was great, them fighting with what felt like every B list villain in the DCU was fantastic, and the fight with Captain Marvel and Hawkman was amazing. But in the suspense department, the movie didn’t hold me.

My only other real problem with the movie was all of the over-hyping involvement of people. We ran an interview with LeVar Burton about his role as Black Lightning in the film and he literally has one line. And the line (“I think I could create a force field”) probably could have been chopped out of an episode of The Next Generation. Did they need him out promoting the movie? I simply don’t know. I suppose if it gets more people to watch it, then the answer is yes.

Aside from that, the Blu-ray also has 6 episodes of Justice League Unlimited that make the disc a must buy.

Like I said, to get it on Amazon click here. You probably won’t regret it.

Tim Peacock, who portrayed young Cyclops in X-Men Origins: Wolverine said this on his Twitter:

“Currently shooting Australian TV series till February 2010…then X-men first class”

This isn’t that unreliable considering that there have been lots of talk and hints about FOX making an X-Men: First Class movie, even Wolverine Producer Lauren Shuler Donner has hinted at this possibility and a 2010 shooting start.

It will be interesting to see if perhaps we start getting confirmations and/or some more details…

Baltimore Magazine had the opportunity to ask Dan Aykroyd a few questions while he was on a promotional tour for the Crystal Head Vodka:

What makes this particular vodka unique?
Well it has no additives commonly associated with a lot of vodka manufacturing. A lot of vodkas today try to achieve a smoothness, a satiny, velvety feel by adding fusel oils, like raw sugar. What we did was go to the government distillery in New Foundland and said we wanted to go back to an old style country or moonshine. What you have here is the cleanest vodka in the world. We really have something to talk about here. We wanted to make a pure spirit, started out with a bottle, started out with a fading celebrity endorsement, and now I have a real thing to talk about because we really do have taste in the bottle.

Any particular cocktails you recommend for your vodka?
I like it with freshly squeezed orange juice for a Crystal Driver. I like it with 7-Up for a Heads Up. I like a Cranium, with cranberry and soda. But you know what, it’s great just in a shot glass with a little squeeze of lime. Or just in a shot glass cold. When you freeze the heads and pour it, it comes out as if it was liquid platinum, it comes out in dollops. I’m just so pleased with the result.

Your two major passions in life seem to be blues and comedy. They seem like opposites, but to you, they’re probably not so different.
Well there’s a lot of humor in blues. Willie Dixon wrote that song “Dead Presidents” and it was about money. Johnny Taylor, “Who’s making love to your old lady, while you‘re out making love?” The blues is full of humor, all the lyrics, they’re double entendres.

Will Slimer be making a cameo in the upcoming Ghostbusters movie?
I’m going to see the script in the next few hours, I’m about to read the third script, I’ve been submitted it and we’ll see what happens.

As you can see, not a lot was said about the script, but he has it. And that’s a big step in the right direction. Hopefully we’ll here soon what he thought of it.

Jennifer’s Body is the much anticipated follow up from writer Diablo Cody, whom everyone seemed to think was something special after Juno. Starring Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried who play BFF’s until one of them is accidentally transformed into a succubus. It was directed by the lady that directed Aeon Flux, whose name isn’t worth my time to look up.

I don’t know what I was most annoyed with by this movie, was it the hip style of talking that every character possessed that is supposed to be funny but seldom is?  Was it the lack of a compelling story? Or was it the lack of horror in this horror film? The answer is all of these things and much more.

Everyone knows that Diablo Cody used to be a stripper, but not only were there no boobs in this movie, there also weren’t any skanky asses, or even that much cleavage. That’s right! You are expected to pay the full price of admission for a lack of horror, and comedy that drags on for a little over an hour and a half.

On the plus side, this movie managed to feel three hours long in a little over half that much time. I don’t know how they were able to accomplish this, but it seems to me if you could package this and sell it as a time decelerator, there might be some money to be made. Just throwing that out there.

Personally the worst thing for me was the fact that it wasn’t so bad that I was laughing at it, nor was it good enough to enjoy. It was bad, and in the most boring way. Sure there were a few needless flashbacks that felt as if they were so poorly written you could laugh, but it wasn’t nearly consistent enough.

It seemed to me that for the most part, this movie was about a creature. But this element was about the weakest point in the whole thing. I could properly sum up the whole succubus mythology introduced in just a few short sentences, which they do several times throughout the movie. And god were the people that turned Megan Fox into the creature annoying. But watching them get killed wasn’t rewarding at all……Oh yeah spoiler alert for the last sentence.

Anyway, my next point. Megan Fox is exactly as annoying as she is hot, and those things cancel each other out. Unless she was naked, and then her hotness might overtake the annoying for a second. Cutting to the center of the problem, I think she is a horrible actress.

To sum it all up, I was just kidding. This is a great movie, take your kids to see it, and your grandma. Bring the wife at your own risk, because you will be so turned on by how hot this movie is, she might get jello. If you know what I mean.

I rate this movie 9 out of a mysterious number called a googolplex. Look it up.

The Salt Lake Tribune (of all places) has the lowdown on the Harry Potter rides and area set for construction at Universal Studios in Orlando.

From their article:

The “Forbidden Journey” ride was named by author J.K. Rowling and described Tuesday by Universal officials in a Web cast revealing details of what the Potter park will look like.

The ride will take guests through scenes and rooms from the blockbuster movies inside a richly detailed remake of Hogwarts Castle made to look 700 feet tall. Hogwarts is where Harry attends a boarding school for witches and wizards.

Guests will enter the “Wizarding World” through a station archway named for Hogsmeade, the magical village near Hogwarts. A plume of steam and a train whistle will sound the arrival of the Hogwarts Express. The goal is to make the experience immersive, so nothing outside is visible after guests pass the Hogsmeade station archway.

Other rides in the area include:

Other rides include the “Dragon Challenge,” a twin high-speed roller coaster themed after the “Triwizard Tournament” and the family roller coaster “Flight of the Hippogriff,” named for a creature with an eagle’s head and a horse’sbody.

The article goes on to talk about how all of the shops and restaurants will be Harry Potter themed.  You’ll be able to buy wands at Ollivanders, drink Butterbeer, buy sneakoscopes at a Joke Shop, and even send letters at the post office with a real Hogsmeade postmark.

It sounds like any Harry Potter fan’s dream and I’m sure Universal Studios will be making a mint off of this endeavor.

In fact, the article in the Tribune was so convincing, it actually made me want to go.

Adventureland is a comedy starring Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale), Kristen Stewart (Twilight?) some no names, and Ryan Reynolds. With the director of Superbad, whom is also a no name, but a no name with a title.

It tells the tale of James Brennan (Eisenberg) who is forced to take a summer job at Adventureland where he meets the girl of his dreams, Em (Stewart). Ryan Reynolds plays the amusement parks repair man, who is cheating on his wife with Em. And it all ends out to be a big cliche. As you watch it turn out like you know its gonna, there are a few jokes along the way, some of them are funny.

The performances don’t stand out, especially not the performance of Ryan Reynolds. I don’t even know why Scarlett Johansson married him. Except I heard that they had a huge fight right before comic-con, and their marriage is on the ropes. Although all of the claims of this actually being true are only coming from tabloid like sources, and even though most of the tabloids  are even reporting it was a hoax, I still prefer to believe it. Scarlett shouldn’t have to put up with that trash, you go girl!

I digress, there are some funny moments in this movie, and it is completely adequate, but everything that I could say about it doesn’t go beyond “Okay” which still means  that its better than most movies that come out, but far from must see.

As far as the Blu-ray features go, the cover preaches “Unrated Bonus Features” but guess how many boobs I found watching them? Yeah. Apparently the reason they weren’t rated was because they were reasonable enough not to rate them. I find this to be deceptive at best, a law should be passed that states you can’t say “unrated version” or “unrated full uncut chickfest” unless what is unrated is boobs.

So should you buy the Blu-ray version? Its not like its in 3-d or anything, so unless you’re loaded and for some reason your Blu-ray player doesn’t play DVD’s then I might not spend the extra money.

To sum it all up I would just like to say just because I didn’t think it was great, doesn’t mean you won’t, there’s nothing actually wrong with it, so if you were interested in watching this before you read this review, you should still give it a try. You can buy it at amazon, on Blu-ray and DVD for a very reasonable price.

According to EW.com Pixar may bee eying Ant-Man as a potential project once Marvel comes under the Disney banner:

“Pixar is said to already be eyeballing an Ant-Man movie.”

See? Told you.

Anyway, Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) has previously been attached to developing this project for Marvel -even going so far as to talk about it at Comic Con way back in 2006- but nothing further has been announced. So at this point, nothing but speculation and rampant fan rumors on the forums and message boards are to be had.

On a final note, keep in mind that just because Pixar is maybe looking at Ant-Man as a potential future project, it doesn’t necessarily mean they would go the computer-animated route. Pixar is currently developing their first live-action movie, John Carter of Mars…

There were a lot of strong feelings on both ends of this Disney buying Marvel argument, so what are your thoughts on this teeny bit of news?

I came across this article today during my usual scanning of the interwebz. Its a tad long but it gives a real glimpse into who Spike Jonze is and why there is no better person to have taken something that many of us loved and still love and change it and turn it into a film. If you’re like me and got misty seeing that first trailer set to the sounds of The Arcade Fire read this article and know that we won’t be disappointed. Here’s a small excerpt about just the marketing aspect of how Jonze has a completely different view

“Where the Wild Things Are” seems sure to appeal to the sensibilities of a certain cohort of urban young adults — the type who read comic-book novels and wear skateboard sneakers; who might concur with a note I saw one day scrawled on a legal pad in Jonze’s office: “There is no difference between childhood and adulthood.” Finding an audience beyond that demographic, though, may well pose a challenge to Warner’s marketing department, which is trying to position the movie as a family-friendly film for kids of all ages. They have adopted a broad-based strategy to lure children into the theater, buying advertising on Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network. They’ll also be making a special effort to reach what one executive described to me as “hip, tastemaker” kids: Ugg will be selling a special “Where the Wild Things Are” kids’ boot, and Urban Outfitters has a collection of “Where the Wild Things Are” T-shirts and shadow puppets.

Jonze’s team, meanwhile, has been pursuing its own marketing strategy, one not particularly oriented toward children. Jonze directed a short documentary about Maurice Sendak that will be shown on HBO. Eggers wrote a novelization of the movie and is publishing it (with a fur cover) through his own publishing company, McSweeney’s. There’s a line of “Wild Things” skateboards, a soundtrack album by Karen O of the art-rock group Yeah Yeah Yeahs and branded “Wild Things” jewelry for sale at a boutique near Jonze’s Lower East Side apartment.