by A.J. Focht

The first official teaser posters for The Dark Knight Rises have been released. The posters feature Batman’s shattered helmet and Bane walking away. This would be a good time to remember that Bane is known as ‘the man who broke the bat,’ however, Bane supposedly isn’t the only villain at play in the film…

The first teaser poster for The Amazing Spider-Man has also been released. The film will be released on July 3, 2012, and the poster more than hints that it will tell ‘the untold story.’ With Gwen Stacy cast in the film, I really hope that this film sets up for the famous “Death of the Stacy’s” storyline.

Upping the movie posters ante, the producers of Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance released several posters to promote their film which will hit screens in February 2012. Designs vary from the artistic to the simplistic, with one notable one being based on the classic cult movie poster.

At the rate Hollywood is producing superhero movies, it’s very likely there could be a Black Widow movie on the way. Especially in light of the fact that Scarlett Johansson has come out saying she would be interested in signing on for a movie primarily featuring the heroine. There is nothing in the works at the moment, but Johansson has made it clear she’s up for a return to the roll.

“I love playing the Widow. I think she’s got a very interesting past, a lot of storylines to explore, and certainly Kevin [Feige, Marvel Studios’ president] loves that character … I think that Marvel has a very personal relationship with their fans, and I think if the fans want it, and the audience wants it, nothing’s impossible. I would love to explore that option as well. Like I said, I love the character and it would be nice to see something nice and gritty.”

Plans to move forward with Thor 2 are progressing swiftly. The Hollywood Reporter has released the names of two potential directors looking to fill the void left by Patty Jenkins. Alan Taylor and Daniel Minahan are both being considered for the position. Marvel has also shortened the list of potential script writers; the new list includes Robert Rodat and Roger Avary.

If you thought the Transformers series was over, you thought wrong. For better or worse, Michael Bay is back at it and in final negotiations to direct a fourth film in the series. Bay has been assembling a cast for the project and it looks like formal details will be announced shortly.

Following the Men in Black 3 teaser poster which was released last week, a trailer has also hit the YouTubes. Seems, in order to fight the alien menace this time, Agent J is going to have to go to back to the past and enlist K’s help.

Despite all of the talk about Khan appearing in Star Trek 2, Simon Pegg has gone on record as saying he has heard no talk of Khan in the film. As far as Scotty is concerned, there is no Khan in the movie, and he even thinks it might be a little tacky for them to do Khan as he has been done in previous films.

Spike TV held the 2011 Video Game Awards (VGA) this last week. Amongst a flurry of trailers for upcoming games and comic award presenters, twenty-five awards were given for to the best games of 2011. Batman: Arkham City took four of the awards including Best Xbox 360 Game and Character of the Year for the Joker. The big winner of Game of the Year was The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. Their studio, Bethesda Games, also took Studio of the Year. Blizzard also used the VGAs to premiere the opening cinematic for the much anticipated Diablo 3.

Finally, George Takei, better known as Sulu, has a message for everyone re. the current Star Trek vs. Star Wars war. To recap, the recent battle was started by William Shatner, who proclaimed that Star Trek was superior to Star Wars in a video that did the rounds on YouTube. Carry Fisher then posted a few rebuttals in response. Now Takei is calling for an alliance. Instead of focusing our frustrations at our other ‘star-brothers,’ he asks that we work together to defeat the evil that is Twilight.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

It seems that it is hard to be an extremely popular musician but still be a revolutionary at the same time. Certainly Wyclef Jean disproves that. After The Fugees became a monstrous music phenomenon they stopped making music and they all went on to solo projects with Wyclef being the most successful. Now he’’s breaking into movies as the drug dealer in the cop film Dirty and reuniting with The Fugees in Dave Chappelle’’s Block Party.

Read our exclusive interview with Wyclef Jean on SuicideGirls.com.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

It’’s a good time to be Clive Owen. In the past year he’’s received an Oscar nomination for Closer, had a big role in the groundbreaking Sin City and made out with Jennifer Aniston in Derailed. Now he’’s starring in the Spike Lee directed bank heist film Inside Man alongside Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster.

Read our exclusive interview with Clive Owen on SuicideGirls.com.

by A.J. Focht

The first official character bios for the Avengers movie have been released. No big surprises here, just most of what is already known about the movie’s all-star superhero cast. Regardless, it’s a great way to familiarize yourself with any characters you might not be completely sure about, like Hawkeye.

Continuing the trend of rebooting superhero movies, David Slade has given an update on his upcoming Daredevil flick. Slade announced that Brad Caleb Kane has finished the first draft of the script and that more news would come in the new year. The original Daredevil film was better than some superhero movies, but it was by no means up to standards that superhero movies try to uphold these days. Hopefully the reboot will fix that.

While DC comics are still successfully pushing their New 52, Marvel has plans to move forward with another one of their giant world events. Raising the stakes — which is difficult since comic book events normally are quite apocalyptic — Marvel is waging an all-out war between the Avengers and the X-Men. After Phoenix Force return to Earth to seek a new host, Hope Summer (Cyclops and Jean Grey’s daughter), the Avengers want to quarantine her, and the X-Men refuse to let them without a fight – gripping stuff!

While there is no word on the upcoming Metropolis project, it looks like there will be more Smallville, kind of. Bryan Q Miller is writing a new novel that tells the story of what happens to the cast afterwards. While there is no official word on this, it seems an awful lot like this novel could be the means of transitioning into the upcoming Metropolis project.

Lots of news coming from the starship Enterprise. First off, rumors of Benicio Del Toro playing Khan have been put to rest. But in light of this news, it’s been revealed that Peter Weller (RoboCop) has officially joined the cast of Star Trek 2. His role is currently unknown, but this sci-fi legend is a welcome addition to the cast. That’s not it either. Alice Eve (She’s Out of My League & Entourage) has also joined the cast, and will play a new character in the canon. Despite all the news about Star Trek 2, producers are apparently going to great lengths to keep details of the production secret, with prominent cast members such as Chekov and Sulu, being denied access to the script.

On to the Ender’s Game movie. Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) is in negotiations for the female lead. This is the second major cast announcement in as many weeks. It’s fair to assume there will be plenty more where those came from as Ender’s Game is set to release on March 15, 2013.

Iron Man screenwriters Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby have completed the script for the next Tomb Raider film. The original portrayal of Lara Croft by Angelina Jolie is being tossed aside. “For me it’s re-inventing the wheel a bit, it’s a reboot. We’re going back before she was Lara Croft,” said producer Graham King, talking to Digital Spy about the nature of the origins-style screenplay.

Anyone else getting sick of the reboots yet? ‘Cause another prominent sci-fi classic, Starship Troopers is also getting a reboot – just 15 years out from the original!

The iconic Jaws ride at Universal Studios is being removed and replaced with the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. The attraction will be build along the same lines as the original in Orlando, which has proved to be so successful that Universal Studios and Warner Bros. have decided that it will be augmented with a large expansion.

Finally, 2012 looks like it’ll be a big year for Joss Whedon. With the release of the Avengers already on the books, Whedon recently revealed he has completed another project, Much Ado About Nothing. Now there’s a third movie in the lineup. A poster for a Whedon project called Cabin in the Woods has just surfaced, and was followed up by the release of an official trailer. The film is looking like it could be a fantastic sci-fi/horror movie, and will premiere on April 13, 2012.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

Matthew McConaughey is very much like the characters he’’s played in a few of his movies. He’’s easy going, laid back, charming and very easy to talk to. He plays another one of those guys in the romantic comedy Failure to Launch. His character Trip is a wealthy boat broker who still lives with his parents at age 35! So his parents hire Sarah Jessica Parker to fall in love with him so he will have the confidence to move out.

Read our exclusive interview with Matthew McConaughey on SuicideGirls.com.

by Tarion Suicide

A column which highlights Suicide Girls and their fave groups.

This week, in preparation for the coming apocalypse, Tarion Suicide gives us the 411 on SG’s Zombie Hunters Group.

Members: 2,824 / Comments: 20,073

• WHY DO YOU LOVE IT?: This group has threads covering everything you need to know about zombies and the impending apocalypse. It ensures that every member has a “zombie plan” and the best possible chance of survival. Members discuss everything from the best choice of weapons to the most effective safe house. If you’re into zombies you will find info on the best books, games, movies, and TV shows right here!
• DISCUSSION TIP: This is a fun group, so don’t be too serious.
• BEST RANDOM QUOTE: “Do not set zombies on fire! They will run around and catch everything else on fire!”
• MOST HEATED DISCUSSION THREAD: The Walking Dead! Official TV Thread – everyone has an opinion on this show!
• WHO’S WELCOME TO JOIN?: All those who want to survive the zombie apocalypse.

[..]

by Brad Warner

Crazy Wisdom Trailer from Kate Trumbull on Vimeo.

Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche was a lot of things. When he was just 18 months old he was recognized as the reincarnation of a high Tibetan lama. He escaped Tibet’s Chinese rulers when he was 20 years old, fleeing through the icy mountains on foot with a group of 300, only 13 of whom made it across the border to India. He went to England and started the first Tibetan Buddhist center in the Western world. A short while later he came to America where he set up the Shambhala foundation. Then he proceeded to fuck dozens of his students before drinking himself to death at age 48.

Now someone’s made a movie about Trungpa, called Crazy Wisdom. It’s pretty good.

I never met Trungpa myself. But my first Zen teacher worked for him for a while as an instructor at Naropa Institute, the Buddhist university Trungpa founded in Boulder, Colorado. It was the first Buddhist university in the West. He used to tell me wild stories about Trungpa’s excesses. One time Trungpa threatened my teacher saying that demons would fly through his window at night and tear him to bits. One guy I talked to watched Trungpa down two 40 ouncers of beer during a public dharma talk. Then there’s the story I’ve heard from about half a dozen people about the time Trungpa forced a couple to participate in an orgy by ordering his uniformed guards to strip them naked against their will.

And yet for all his scandalous activities, Chogyam Trungpa is still revered 24 years after his death as one of the great Buddhist masters. Johanna Demetrakas’ new film Crazy Wisdom seeks to understand this contradictory figure. Was he merely a madman who conned thousands into thinking he was a guru? Or was his crazy wisdom really more wise than crazy after all?

I’ve never been quite sure just what to make of Trungpa. His book Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism is still one of my favorites on the subject of pursuing the dharma authentically. And yet he was a drunk and a sex fiend. Even his closest students admit that. He never hid any of this, though. And that’s what made him different. While poor old Richard Baker Roshi, head of the San Francsico Zen Center was getting flayed alive for having a brief affair with one student, Trungpa was out there screwing his followers like there was no tomorrow. And nobody seemed too fussed about it.

It turns out that perhaps sex isn’t the real problem. The real problem may be spiritual teachers who present themselves as one thing and then act completely contrary to that image. This is something Chogyam Trungpa never did.

Crazy Wisdom is a wonderfully entertaining film about this amazing contradictory man. Although the filmmakers are followers of Trungpa and naturally seek to present him in a positive light, they don’t gloss over his faults either. Trungpa never attempted to define himself according to the categories others created. Neither do the filmmakers attempt to do so. It’s left to the viewer to decide if Trungpa was insane or saintly.

Documentaries about spiritual masters aren’t usually my thing. They tend to be dry, boring and exceedingly reverent. But Crazy Wisdom isn’t your run of the mill fluff piece put together by people who want to show you why their guru is better than yours. It’s a serious film, but it has some truly laugh out loud moments. The cast is a who’s who of luminaries associated with Eastern spirituality in the West including Allan Ginsberg, Ram Dass, Stephen Batchelor, and Trungpa’s student Pema Chodron.

My only complaint is that the filmmakers chose to ignore the darker side of Trungpa’s legacy, his followers who understood their teacher’s crazy wisdom as a license to do anything at all regardless of the potential consequences. In particular I’m thinking of the story of Osel Tendzin. Tendzin was Trungpa’s successor who liked to suck and fuck just as much as his teacher. The problem was that when Tendzin was diagnosed with HIV he continued having unprotected sex without informing his partners of his condition. Stephen Butterfield, a former student, said (though this is not in the film), “In response to close questioning by students, he first swore us to secrecy and then said that Trungpa had requested him to be tested for HIV in the early 1980s and told him to keep quiet about the positive result. Tendzin had asked Trungpa what he should do if students wanted to have sex with him, and Trungpa’s reply was that as long as he did his Vajrayana purification practices, it did not matter, because they would not get the disease. Tendzin’s answer, in short, was that he had obeyed the guru.” Trungpa was wrong.

I’ll grant you that even addressing this subject at all may have pulled the film in a whole different direction. It’s a movie about Trungpa, not Tendzin. Still, to completely ignore this very significant effect of Trungpa’s teaching style seems a little like keeping something hidden. And Trungpa never hid anything.

In spite of this shortcoming I still highly recommend the film. It isn’t the kind of snore fest these sorts of documentaries usually are. In fact it’s highly engaging and entertaining as well as informative. It presents a (mostly) honest portrait of a Buddhist master who doesn’t fit the stereotypical mold.

Brad is on tour right now and may be in your area. To see where Brad will be speaking next take a look here.

Brad Warner is the author of Sex, Sin and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything in Between as well as Hardcore Zen, Sit Down and Shut Up! and Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate. He maintains a blog about Buddhist stuff that you can click here to see.

You can also buy T-shirts and hoodies based on his books, and the new CD by his band Zero Defex now!

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