Click on through to Empire site to see the Law poster.

Sherlock Holmes comes out December 25, 2009.

[1] I like this trend of posters spotlighting particular characters and actors, but I’ll admit it’s feeling more than a little overdone at this point.

The Hobbit, Part One and The Hobbit, Part Two:  The Hobbiting begin shooting in March, 2010 for a projected 2012 release.

ETA: My friend Amy A. asked if I had any guesses or preferences for who should play Bilbo.  I don’t immediately have either, but I’m opening it up to the floor:  who do you guys think should be Bilbo?  Should they just go with Elijah Wood with a different wig?

I’m both very excited and a little disappointed with this news. I have every confidence that the movie’s going to be amazing: Stanton’s already a two-time Best Original Screenplay Oscar nominee — and that’s not even counting the fact that Michael Chabon (one of my favorite novelists) worked on the screenplay, too. And I’m glad for Stanton in that he’s stretching himself and trying to do something different. It’s not often that animation directors cross over to live action or vice versa (though Mad Max director George Miller did so with impressive results with Happy Feet).

This means that my two favorite animation directors (combined, they were in charge of four of my top five Pixar movies) are working on live-action flicks instead. The Incredibles and The Iron Giant director Brad Bird is readying 1906 (also due in 2012) about the great San Francisco earthquake and subsequent fires which nearly destroyed the city in — you’ll never believe this — 1906. It’s not as if I’m worried about Pixar’s output dropping in quality while those guys work on non-animated features. Up, for instance, was perfectly excellent without any input from either Bird nor Stanton (well, that’s not entirely true; both Bird and Stanton are senior executives at Pixar who surely have input into everything). But it does mean that we won’t see animated features from either of them until probably 2014 at the very earliest. I trust them both and will gladly rush out to go see both of their live-action movies. What little bit I’ve heard about each sounds like they have the potential to be fantastic. And again, kudos to both for trying new things.

But I’m already looking forward to both of them returning to animation someday.

» Brokeback Mountain earns four Screen Actors Guild nominations: Best Cast, the SAG’s highest honor; Heath Ledger, Best Actor; Jake Gyllenhaal, Best Supporting Actor; and Michelle Williams, Best Supporting Actress. With those nods, Brokeback now has to be officially considered the Oscar front-runner. As much as we can appreciate and support that fact–we haven’t seen it yet, but those we know who have seen it have validated its awesomeosity–we’re afraid for the hateful gay-bashing uproar and warnings of the collapse and demoralization of society sure to come from ultra-conservative quarters when the movie starts getting more and more attention as we get closer to Oscar time.

Other SAG nominations that make us gleeful (whether because we like the movies or the actors): Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon for Walk the Line; Philip Seymour Hoffman for Capote; Ziyi Zhang for Memoirs of a Geisha; Felicity Huffman for Transamerica; Don Cheadle for Crash; George Clooney for Syriana; and Paul Giamatti for Cinderella Man. And in the TV category, nominations for the casts of “Lost” and “Arrested Development” made us particularly happy.

» Also today, the Writer’s Guild of America released their 2006 award nominations. Not too many surprised on the list–except for the nomination of Judd Apatow and Steve Carrell for The 40-Year Old Virgin. We’ve heard good things and all, but seeing that still took us aback a little. Hooray for recognizing how hard it is to write good comedy!

» It looks as if we might be subjected to an Ocean’s Thirteen. As much as we loved Ocean’s Eleven, we say “subjected to” another sequel because Ocean’s Twelve made it painfully obvious that replicating the breezy fun of the first one would be very, very, very difficult to do.

I do have some concerns about the new agreement, if the information out there right now turns out to be true. If Disney were to outright purchase Pixar and make them the official Disney animation division, as one rumor has it, Pixar would lose the independence that’s allowed them to craft their movies they want the way they want to make them. If Disney owns them rather than simply distributs their product, Disney would likely want to have more of a white-gloved, three-fingered hand in what Pixar does and how, and we’ve already seen how wretchedly Disney manages their current animation department. I might be less concerned if they installed John Lasseter as Almighty Inscrutable Pixar Overlord and left them alone, but I have trouble imaginging Disney buying a new toy and not wanting to play with it.

Part of the deal might also include allowing Disney’s current 3D animation department to produce Pixar-sanctioned sequels to some of the Pixar catalog. I’m not sure if this one’s true or not, since Disney’s in-house 3D division seems to be nothing more than a poorly-constructed sham (“Circle 7 Studios” taking its name from the logo for the ABC studio across the street from their offices). I had been thinking that Pixar wouldn’t want to be involved with making any direct-to-video sequels of their work…until I remembered that Toy Story 2 was originally intended to be exactly that. So we’ll see; I’m going to leave this development in the “skeptical” column for now.

Those concerns aside, though, I’m very glad this deal’s going to get done. I’m not the biggest fan of The Mouse, but I realize that Pixar’s better off having their name connected to Disney than not. The distribution and promotion they get (like, say, having their creations slapped all over theme parks around the world) from being associated with the Disney Multimedia Conglomerate can’t be beat by anyone else they could have snuggled up with. And they certainly didn’t want to get into distributing their own movies; far better to let a company with that infrastructure in place take care of it so Pixar can stick with what they do best.

It seems that Brett Ratner has been confirmed as the director of X-Men 3, replacing Matthew Vaughn, who realized he’d gotten in over his head with such a big-budget ensemble action piece for his second directorial job ever and jumped ship. Brett Ratner? Oh, jebus. The hack responsible for the Rush Hour movies is going to try to tackle the X-Men–with an already-approved script which supposedly took all of six days to write (2) and a shooting schedule kicking off pretty soon. He’s not that good a director to begin with, and he’s being set up to fail from the start.

I loved the first two X-Men movies. I thought both of them captured the spirit of the comics wonderfully and I think they proved to be very influential on later movies made from comic–it became acceptable to take the source material seriously again instead of treating it as a joke. The makers of the first two X-Men movies appreciated that their audience was made up of far more than just kids looking to buy action figures.

But man…there is nothing I’ve heard yet about the third one that’s giving me hope that it’s going to be anything less than horrifically horrid. Please, please, please let me be wrong about that.

What we can see of the overall look and feel of the movie is fantastic–far more what I’d expect from a Batman movie than the primary-color fetish-fests Joel Schumacher staged. The aesthetic follows the grounded look of Tim Burton’s first Batman but without Burton’s (pardon the pun) gothic sensibilities. (Of particular interest to me was the fact Gotham City looked like a real city, not a city conceived by a production designer strung out on amphetamines.) Most of the actors seemed to fit their roles well (I most enjoyed what little bit we saw of the always-excellent Morgan Freeman), though Katie Holmes didn’t much impress me as the requisite love interest. Still, it’s only a trailer and I’m certainly not going to judge too harshly based on seeing twenty seconds of her performance.

I don’t want to say too much more here because I don’t want to blow my bat-wad, so to speak, when the movie doesn’t come out for six more weeks. But Batman Begins definitely tops my list of most-anticipated films of the summer. “But Allen,” I hear you asking, “what other movies are you looking forward to during this blockbuster summer movie season?” Well, that smells like an upcoming column to me, so keep your eyes peeled!

(Not literally peeled, of course; I’d think that would damage your vision pretty terribly and make it impossible for you to watch the glory of Batman Begins. I wouldn’t wish that on you.)

More dicussion of Firefly and Serenity later, but for now, go watch the trailer.

The costume I like. It’s not necessarily the way I would have gone with it, but I like it. I especially like the fact that they didn’t do what I was most afraid they were going to: give it the the padded, latex sculpted-muscle look. It’s just a set of tights, which is as it should be for Superman. (If you’ve got to go the padded, sculpted route, then you’ve probably cast the wrong guy.) I like the deeper red for the boots and cape and I don’t mind the slight tweaks to the S-shield. The main thing I don’t like, and this is just a minor quibble and a personal preference, is the small size of the shield; I like the logo to be a lot bigger on Supes’ chest, at least in the comics. Maybe it would’ve looked ridiculous in live-action, and anyway, the smaller shield definitely keeps more in line with the obvious influence for the suit, the old Max Fleisher cartoon series.

(I wonder…will the comic books adapt to match the way the suit looks in the movie? Wouldn’t surprise me.)

About Routh…well, he definitely fills out the suit nicely. From the neck down, I can buy him as Superman. I don’t think Superman has to be huge; he’s not super because of the size of his muscles. Christopher Reeve certainly didn’t have the physique of a bodybuilder. But Reeve just plain looked like Superman, and that’s my main complaint with Routh–he doesn’t have the face of Superman to me. Maybe I’ll change my mind when I see some footage–all I’ve had to go on so far is stills, most of which haven’t been related to this production. We’ll see.

My hopes for this movie are getting higher and higher. A movie like this one–a thriller relying so heavily on mathematics and small visual cues–could prove difficult to film, but Howard’s opening to A Beautiful Mind makes me think he can pull it off. And the cast will be top-notch. I only hope that the execrable ripoff National Treasure won’t predispose people to think The DaVinci Code‘s going to suck just as badly.