BAMF

From the pages of E!: Heath Ledger cast as the Joker in The Dark Knight (confirmed title) and Crispin Glover fans everywhere cried out in agony.

“I’m excited to continue the story we started with Batman Begins,” director Christopher Nolan, who has also signed up for the sequel, said in a statement. “Our challenge in casting the Joker was to find an actor who is not just extraordinarily talented but fearless. Watching Heath Ledger’s interpretation of this iconic character taking on Christian Bale’s Batman is going to be incredible.”

Production is set to being on The Dark Knight early next year–the better to make Gotham City look eerily chilly and desolate–making the sixth Caped Crusader film a prime candidate for a summer 2008 release.

…don’t hate me for saying this (there are plenty of other things to hate me for) but… I think it might work. I’m not saying that it will work, but it might. The guy kind of looks like the kinda dude who could go apeshit and start eating people, and he was super talented in Brokeback…

Wait, what? What did I say? RACIST JOKES AND MONKEYS! I make dick jokes because I’m straight, and I’ll fuck your mother to prove it! Twice! In her ass, because fucking… fuckin’ a woman in the ass is a prime way to show ones heterosexuality!

So in summation, um… I like… Batman.

So we all know that Mel Gibson is a little bit… nutty. And by nutty, of course, I mean racist against anyone of Jewish heritage. But up until now, he’d done a fairly good job of skirting that line, and keeping his Aussie yap shut about his blatent hatred. Thankfully for all of us, there was a secret loosening agent for that ironclad maw of his, and that agent is… booze. Sweet, life sustaining booze has done amazing things for us all, like David Hasselhoff videos and celebrity sex tapes. But who thought it would lead to amazingly hilarious and career-ending comments like this?

Gibson’s publicist, Alan Nierob, would not elaborate beyond an apology Gibson issued Saturday in which the star admitted he uttered things to deputies.

A leaked arrest report quoted Gibson as saying “The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world,” and asking an arresting officer, James Mee, “Are you a Jew?”

The fact that this guy is attached to a movie about the Holocaust is amazing. That’s slightly akin to casting Andrea Yates in Vin Diesel’s role in The Pacifier 2.

…which is a fucking brilliant move. I need to get started on a script treatment immediately.

Requests made to 411 operators regarding the home phone number of Mel Gibson were immediately returned with sarcastic remarks.

Extra extra, Metallica is planning to sell their music online after years and years of crying like little bitches. Best of all, they are doing it “for the fans.”

The real news in this, of course, is that Metallica still has fans.

Wow, the next-gen Lucasarts Star Wars game looks… fun. Like really fun.

…

It takes every ounce of will in my body to not take this opportunity to just tear apart the prequels right now. It’s been done to death, and frankly it gives Georgie boy more power, so I’m going to try to never speak of that loathesome trifecta of shit. Instead I’m going to try thinking about something pleasant, like puppies and oral sex.

…not together, sicko.

And now for ninja related news that doesn’t completely blow, here’s the new TMNT flick trailer.

Before you get all uppitty about the animated style of the flick, just try remembering what happened last time they made a live-action Turtles flick. And weep.

So far they haven’t officially cast anyone outside of the voice of Casey Jones, so don’t hold your breath for a Corey Feldman comeback. I certainly won’t, he’s broken my heart so many times, I just can’t imagine trusting him with it again.

If you haven’t heard of Will Eisner… well, you’re probably not a comic book fan. But if you had, then you know that the man was a sagelike father figure to the entire industry. And one of his long standing works, The Spirit, is finally going to be made into a feature-length flick. And it looks like Frank Miller (Sin City, 300) has been tapped to direct, making it his first unassisted job at the helm.

The Spirit, which debuted in 1940, tells the story of a masked detective who is believed to be dead. Using a mausoleum as his home base, Eisner’s character fights crime in the dark shadows of Central City, using cunning and ingenious forms of punishment.

“I intend to be extremely faithful to the heart and soul of the material, but it won’t be nostalgic. It will be much scarier than people expect,” said Miller.

Miller said he’s putting together a treatment that consists in large part of panels from the “Spirit” strip. Shooting is expected to start in late spring.

Now before you go getting all a-tingly in your nether regions, let me point out to you that Frank Miller’s record is not as gleaming as some of you might think. Sure, when it comes to comic books, the guy is a freaking genius. But did you also know that this literary visionary also penned the screenplay for not only the less-than-satisfactory Robocop 2, but the wholly unacceptable Robocop 3? That’s right, this guy may have created Elektra and introduced the world to Ronin, but he also killed off Lewis and made Robocop fight those ridiculous ninja robots. So, as we should have done when George Lucas resurfaced in the late 90’s, don’t get your little fanboy hopes up. That’s a surefire way to get disappointed.

“My friends call me Murphy. You call me… Robocop.”