• In Marvel casting news, Alice Eve has been tapped to play Emma Frost in X-Men: First Class, which would imply they’re going to follow the continuity laid down by X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I say if you’re going to reboot, then just reboot. According to the comics, the first class of X-Men was Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Ice Man, Beast, and Angel. How great would it be to see just those guys on screen, working as a team?

• In further Marvel casting news, the reliably grizzled Tommy Lee Jones has been cast in Captain America: The First Avenger as Colonel Phillips, who in the comics recruited Steve Rogers into the program that turned him into the star-spangled Cap.

• By now we’ve all seen the trailer for the upcoming Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but here’s a funny take on it.

• A few years ago, I first heard the term “cinematic Marvel universe” and swooned with delight. Well, now the gods of Marvel are conquering the medium of television as well. How awesome would a few live-action series, a la Smallville, be? The possibilities are limitless.

• If your brain doesn’t explode with information (mine did), here’s a fascinating look at whether or not we live in a multiverse. And I’ll own it: I’m only interested in finding a double of myself so we can make out.

• Do to circumstances beyond our control … er, I mean from beyond the grave! Woooooooo … we don’t have one of our “goth recaps” of True Blood this week. But as a consolation prize, I can give you io9’s hilarious (and NSFW) review. And for those who saw the episode … some ending, huh? I’m going to need some serious therapy to erase that image from my mind.

• And while we’re on a NSFW kick, here’s a funny video from the folks at Cracked, which follows Toy Story’s Andy when he goes to college.

Five Torches (Out of Five)

Well, I’ll be damned: Pixar did it again!

Some eleven years after the release of Toy Story 2 –  a delay that came about due to a conflict between Disney and Pixar that was resolved when Disney bought the animation company outright in 2006 — we finally get the sequel.

Boy, was it worth the wait.

I’ll say it outright: I wasn’t looking forward to this movie. I am sort of anti-sequel in general, and with the first two Toy Story movies becoming classics of sorts, I just didn’t see the point of the third. I hate Hollywood’s attitude that you have to keep doing something over and over again until you completely ruin it.

But Toy Story 3 keeps the cleverness and heart of the first two movies while adding a richness and sophistication that makes the movie seem surprisingly fresh, even if the movie itself is also shockingly dark.

Andy, the boy who owned the collection of misfit toys from the first two movies, is grown up now and moving to college. Despite the toys’ best efforts, he’s no longer interested in playing with the playthings of his past. When they overhear him call them a bunch of junk and mistakenly think that he wants to throw them all away, the toys rebel, heading off to a nearby daycare center where they’re told they’ll be played with by kids all day long.

All except for Woody, of course, who remains ever-loyal to Andy.

But the daycare center is definitely not what it appears to be (to say more would be to spoil some satisfying plot-twists!). At this point, the movie becomes an outright satire of previous movies and cultural cliches, and the result — because these cliches are enacted by toys — is downright hilarious.

But it’d be a big mistake to call this movie a comedy. Toy Story 3 is about growing up, about the inevitability of change — and about how that change is simply a fact of life, neither good nor bad. Incredibly, in a scene that is as chilling as anything in Shindler’s List, the movie even touches upon the acceptance of death — and how it’s made better, maybe even bearable, by the company of loved ones.

Some will say that this movie and its themes are too dark and disturbing for kids — but I say that these people are idiots. Long before Disney started sanitizing everything for our kids’ protection, children’s literature, from Mother Goose to the Brothers Grimm, had long tradition of being a way for adults to communicate to children the uncomfortable truths about life.

There is absolutely nothing exploitative here, nothing put here to deliberately shock or offend or draw attention to itself. On the contrary, this is thoughtful, loving, and very enjoyable meditation on exactly what it means to be human — even if, in this case, the “humans” are all plastic toys.

Writing movie and TV reviews for a living, I sometimes get discouraged: why is there so much crap in the world of entertainment? Why do filmmakers even bother making pointless crap like Clash of the Titans or G-Force — and why do audiences even bother to go? Is there any inspiration at all other than money?

Then I see a movie like Toy Story 3, and I’m reminded of what it feels like when a movie makes me laugh and cry and think deeply about things — that contemporary entertainment doesn’t have to be all crap.

Is this too heavy a burden to place on a mere movie, to say that it’s restored my faith in humanity a little? Maybe so, but who cares? Just like a plastic toy, a movie is meaningful exactly to the extent that a person feels that it is.

• Apparently Disney has created a first-of-its-kind application for Facebook with which you can buy tickets to the upcoming Toy Story 3 without leaving the Facebook site, and you can encourage your Facebook buddies to come along. Sing it with me now: “I can show you the world … buying tickets on Faaaacebook. Tell me, Princess, now when did you last let your friends deciiiiide ….”

• I’m not sure if I outed myself about this on The Torch yet, but I am a HUGE fan of True Blood. Oh, the trashy deliciousness of it all! So be still my geeky heart when I read this article, which contains some wonderful, not-too-spoilery previews.

• You can thank my fellow Palantir-seer Ed Kennedy for this one. I laughed for a good long while after he posted this picture on AfterElton.com. Why are you always funnier than me, Kennedy?!

• This seems really cool and really strange: Dustin Lance Black, who penned the Oscar-winning Milk, is writing and directing 3 Story: The Secret History of the Giant Man, an adaptation of a graphic novel about a man who grows to be three stories tall, told from the perspectives of his mother, wife, and daughter (their takes on it being the titular three stories).

• Wanna see a sneak preview of what Captain America’s costume might look like? Oh, please. Like I had to ask.

• Ready for some more pictures of the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows old-age epilogue? Here’s what concerns me: they went too far. The characters should be in their 30’s, yet the men look like they’re in their 50’s.

• Is anyone out there a big-time Alias fan? As a superfan of kick-ass women, I was thrilled to discover that ABC is considering reviving the Alias franchise — a franchise rife with mysticism, prophecies, and other fantastical plotlines — but bummed that it seems to be without Jennifer Garner, who was really responsible for making the show so great the first time around. Still, after the untimely demise of Legend of the Seeker, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and Dollhouse, we are starved for a female action hero to go postal on the small screen in the style of Buffy and Xena, and in that spirit, I offer you one of the best fight scenes ever to appear on television, from the Season 2 finale of Alias:

When you were a kid, did you ever go digging around in your backyard looking for dinosaur fossils? And even if you didn’t, haven’t you kind of always dreamed of owning dinosaur fossils anyway? Well, good news! Bonhams Auction House in NYC is selling artifacts from the Ice Age. Listen to the descriptions of some of these prehistoric pieces:

Exceptional, Very Large T. rex Tooth – An Unsurpassed Marvel

Superb Whip Scorpion in Dominican Amber

Giant Squid Beak, with Four Sucker Rings

Tyrannosaurus rex Vertebra

Don’t you feel like every one of those descriptions should be punctuated with six exclamation marks? (T. Rex Tooth!!!!!!) (Four Sucker Rings!!!!!!)

I got so hopped up planning to buy one of these fossils and recover some DNA and build my own theme park on a deserted island — because what could go wrong with that plan? — that I made a list of the best fictional dinosaurs.

Dino, The Flintstones — You might be tempted to call Dino a “brontosaurus,” but first of all, brontosaurues (brontosairi?) aren’t even reals dinosaurs. Apparently there was some mix-up when two paleontologists were racing each other to put bones together back in the day. And second of all, Dino is a Snorkasaurus. He’s better behaved than any pet you’ve ever had, and for a time, he even served as Fred and Wilma’s butler!

Littlefoot, The Land Before Time — You think it’s sad when Bambi’s mom gets shot? How about when Sharptooth sneaks up on Littlefoot and the gang and forces him to flee and leave his treestar behind? It was the last gift his mother gave him! But Littlefoot presses on and leads his friends to their new home. “Oh, you can’t quit now. What if the Great Valley’s just over the top of these rocks?” Oh, Littlefoot! You are our hope for the future!

Rex, Toy Story — Wallace Shawn’s Tyrannosaurus Rex with an inferiority complex is one of the greatest dinosaur ironies ever committed to film. “What if Andy gets another dinosaur? A mean one? I just don’t think I can take that kind of rejection!” And the poor guy is so pathetic that he actually yarfs when he sees Buzz Lightyear’s dismembered arm. Oh, and don’t forget: He’s not from Matel, he’s from a smaller company that was purchased by Mattel in a leveraged buyout.

Tyrannosaurus Rex, Meet the Robinsons — I like to think of Meet the Robinsons as Disney’s promise to stop sucking. After the Golden Age, the Mouse made some seriously mediocre movies (Home on the Range? Really?), but Robinsons was a fine return to Disney form. Besides Bowler Hat Guy, the best part of the film is the 15 seconds  T-Rex is on-screen with my favorite dino dialogue ever. “Why aren’t you seizing the boy?” Bowler Hat Guy demands. ” I have a big head and little arms!” T-Rex answers.

Velociraptor, Jurassic Park — “Try to imagine yourself in the Cretaceous Period. You get your first look at this ’six foot turkey’ as you enter a clearing. He moves like a bird, lightly bobbing his head. And you keep still because you think that maybe his visual acuity is based on movement like T-Rex — he’ll lose you if you don’t move. But no, not Velociraptor. You stare at him, and he just stares right back. And that’s when the attack comes. Not from the front, but from the side.” Yeah. That sounds like a lot of fun. Let’s go to that theme park, Dad!

Godzilla — At the end of 1954’s Godzilla (Gojira), Kyohei Yamane-hakase says, “I can’t believe that Godzilla was the only surviving member of its species. But if we continue conducting nuclear tests, it’s possible that another Godzilla might appear somewhere in the world again.” He was right! In fact, Godzilla has appeared in 30 films since then! Plus he’s got his comic book line, his video games, his full-length novels. At this rate, the only thing that can break Godzilla’s stride is another freak Ice Age.

The dinosaurs from Dinosaurs — Conceived by Jim Henson, Dinosaurs was the best thing to happen to ABC in the early ’90s (besides Lois and Clark, of course). The sitcom is ludicrously camp, with a little bit of subversive humor on the side. Earl pushes down trees for Wesayso Corp, and since the show is set in 60,000,003 BC, Robbie always wants to know what they’re counting down to. You’re counting down the to the birth of a religion that will one day oppose the idea that 60,000,003 BC (or you) even existed, little dinosaur.

Dopey, Land of the Lost (the TV series) — I’m pretty sure all of the dinos on Land of the Lost were named after the dwarves from Snow White. The T-Rex, who is constantly trying to eat The Marshalls, is called “Grumpy.” And the young brontosaurus, who became their family pet and cart puller, is called “Dopey.” I think the lesson here is: always trust the vegetarian.

Yoshi, Mario Bros. — After playing Super Mario World on Super Nintendo, it’s hard to remember a time when Mario or Luigi got along without Yoshi. He is a shield against Koopa Troopas. He makes the cape easier to use. He can throw turtles and flames, and fly like a superhero when eats a purple shell! Every Mario game is made better by him, and Yoshi on the mach bike on Mario Kart is just absolutely unbeatable.

Barney and Friends — He loves you. You love me. We’re a happy family. Despite the ardent protests of my six-year-old pseudo-nephew, Barney is a dinosaur. And he’s so mesmerizing with his clomping around and dancing and really weird voice that you can pop in a DVD and sit your kids in front of him and get an entire hour of peace — as long as you can stomach his singing voice.

What dinosaurs did I miss?

Have a question about something fantasy-related? Please send an email to thetorchonlineoracle@gmail.com and be sure and include your city and state and/or country.

Q: Does the relative failure of The Wolfman mean the whole “werewolves are the next vampire” meme has been shot with a silver bullet? — MAGPIE, Toronto, Canada

A: Would that it were so.

It’s possible that it could jeopardize some of the werewolf films currently in preproduction: Benighted, First Howl, The Lost Girl, The Howling: Reborn, Wolves, a remake of An American Werewolf in London, and Full Moon Fever, but we’ll definitely still see the next Twilight movie, a movie called Cross, and the Fox TV show Howl — and we might possibly see an animated show, The Guardians of Luna.

Needless to say, Hollywood has a “herd” mentality — or should I say “pack” mentality? — and it’s going to take a lot a more silver bullets than The Wolfman bombing to put this particular genre down.

Q: Do you think that if Legend of the Seeker is canceled before it gets all of the books used as plots elements for the show that there is a possibility of movie adaptions to finish the series? — Grant, Proctorville, OH

A: Very unlikely — at least if the show gets no more popular than it is right now.

The show has never been the break-out success of its syndicated predecessors Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, getting about half the viewers of those shows in their prime (a lot of this has to do with changes in the television landscape since then).

But if Rob Tapert, the producer of those shows and Seeker, was unable to put together a movie-deal for the break-out hit that was Xena, a movie for Seeker seems virtually impossible.

Hollywood tried giving a “failed” TV series new life as a feature film when they greenlit Serenity based on the Joss Whedon series Firefly. The movie was a critical hit and eventually earned back its production costs, and has also done well on DVD, but (unfair or not) it also created a general consensus in Hollywood that a passionate TV fan-base doesn’t necessarily translate to movie success.

Q: Why the long delay between Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3? — Elliott, Newark, NJ

A: The only way Pixar was able to finance the first Toy Story in 1995 was with a three-picture deal with Disney, but this also gave Disney the rights to any sequels. Later, relations between the animation studio and Disney turned sour (in part, because of a dispute over whether the 1999 movie Toy Story 2, originally intended to be direct-to-DVD, counted as one of the “three” pictures in their deal).

Things got so bad that in 2004, Disney started production on a version of Toy Story 3 without Pixar. In 2006, of course, Disney ended up buying Pixar, which resulted in their shutting down their own production of the movie and transferring the project back to Pixar. In 2007, a new director and screenwriter were hired, but since animated projects take longer than live action, it’s only now, in 2010, that we’re seeing the finished product.

Q: Still no word on the sequel to The Dark Crystal? — Amy, Saltpring Island, Canada

Actually, Brian Froud, who helped design the original puppets and sets for The Dark Crystal, was asked this at a booksigning just last week, and he reported that there actually is some forward momentum:

How many years have they been trying to do that? [My wife and I] are involved, I have done some designs for it. I’ve been talking to the director, and we’ve been involved with the script. We don’t know when it’s going to go, but it’s inching its way forward.

The Oracle had pretty much assumed this project was dead (or would, at best, turn out to be a cable TV project), so this is the most encouraging news in quite some time.

Q: Having worked on Buffy, Caprica, Battlestar Galactica, Dollhouse, and Warehouse 13, is Jane Espenson God? –Tom, Seattle WA

A: Pretty much.

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Q: As I understand it, the real-life Spartacus only lived a short time after leading his famous Roman slave rebellion. Assuming Spartacus leads the rebellion next season, doesn’t that mean the show can only be three seasons long, at most? — Mark, Milwaukee, WI

A: Not surprisingly, not much is known about Spartacus in his pre-gladiator days, but the rebellion he led took place in 73 B.C., and Spartacus died in 71 B.C.

Robert Tapert (left) and Steven DeKnight

Or did he? Contrary to the famous ending of the Stanley Kubrick movie, Spartacus’ body was never found — an historical truth that the producers of the new Starz TV show Spartacus: Blood and Sand could certainly exploit.

In any event, there’s no reason why a “season” of the show has to correspond to a year of real time.

What do the producers themselves say?

“Anyone who knows the history of Spartacus obviously knows where this has to go,” Spartacus creator Steven DeKnight tells the Oracle. “There’s been a lot of talk based on [co-creator] Rob [Tapert's] work with Xena and Hercules — everybody says, ‘Well, Rob doesn’t care about history.’ But that’s absolutely not true. Rob does care about history, and we are following the broad strokes of the Spartacus story. We can’t be slaves to every detail — we bend history, we try never to break it.”

So how long will the show go?

“I have a five-to-seven year plan,” DeKnight says. “Definitely enough for five — it could go longer, depending on Starz and the viewership. Definitely at least five planned out. There’s so many great moments in Spartacus’ story, in history, that I’ve never fully seen explored.”

Q: I know we’re supposed to be in an “animation renaissance,” but I think I’m done with animated movies for a while. I tried to sit through the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs recently, but found absolutely unwatchable — a hyper-frenetic mess on one hand (for kids, I guess) with a bunch of stupid, but ironic quips (for the adults, supposedly). And it got good reviews! Obviously, Up was night-and-day better, but even that struck me as muddled in the middle and just generally over-rated. What do you think? — Madge, Baton Rouge, LA

A: We’ve written before about the animated movie renaissance, but the Oracle has come to reluctantly agree with you.

Disney started the renaissance with The Little Mermaid in 1989, but soon their films started to blur together: a story about a plucky, but ostracized outsider must learn to “own” his or her difference into order to end up saving the kingdom, village, or savanna — all set to truly memorable showtunes.

Two studios inherited Disney’s artistic mantle, furthering the renaissance: Pixar, which had a break-out hit with Toy Story, and Dreamworks, which had its first big success with Shrek.

But just like Disney’s films became derivative of themselves, most animated movies currently seem to follow either the Pixar/Toy StoryShrek formula or the Dreamworks/Shrek one.

The vast majority (like Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs) take the now-insufferable Shrek route: a gimmicky central story with hyper, ironic pop-culture-spouting hipster main characters, usually voiced by celebrities — a shtick modeled after Robin Williams‘ hammy, but memorable turn as the genie in Disney’s Aladdin.

This formula got old three Ice Age sequels ago. Sitting through Jim Carrey in Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who, the Oracle contemplated killing himself.

By contrast, Pixar (which is now owned by Disney) tells much more timeless stories: usually complicated morality tales involving sad or ethically compromised main characters. Examples include Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, WALL-E, and Ratatouille.

In the Oracle’s opinion, the Pixar model is a thousand times better than the Dreamworks’ one.

But I agree with you that Up, while beautifully drawn and acted, was ultimately muddled and overrated.

Q: There was this TV show around ten years ago about this guy who had the newspaper delivered to him (by a cat) a day early. He’d spend the episode trying to prevent the bad things in the newspaper from happening. Do you know the name of that show? — ScreamingMonkez, Birmingham,

A: You’re thinking of Early Edition, about a Chicago man who received a copy of the Chicago Sun-Times a day early. The show, which stared Friday Night Lights‘ Kyle Chandler and Fisher Stevens, originally ran on CBS from September 1996 to May 2000. ABC Family later ran reruns.

Incidentally, Stevens won an Oscar last night for a documentary he produced, The Cove. Yes, that’s why that guy looked so familiar!

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