J.J. Abrams is directing STAR WARS Ep. VII

And the wait for 2015 becomes even more unbearable.

The Wrap's Lucas Shaw just dropped this bit of nuclear knowledge on the internet, and along with Latino Review's scoop about the line-up for WB's Justice League movie, that makes for a heck of a news day. So it's official - J.J. Abrams (Mission Impossible III, Star Trek, Super 8) will journey from where no man has gone before to a galaxy far, far away.

You know, this could seriously work.

Meet Summer 2015's Justice League

Probably.

Pretty much THE big question about this project - after the answer to "Is WB actually going to make a Justice League movie?!" was finally given - has been what the line-up would be. The Justice League has hundreds of members comprising the pool for what has been a pretty regular (but nonetheless malleable) "main" roster. And since WB didn't take the Marvel approach and give every hero their own solo movie beforehand, just who exactly would show up was pretty murky.

Until now.

Latino Review, which has been just gob-smackingly accurate in their rumor excavation - especially about DC/WB projects - has revealed the Final Five Members of the Justice League...

Why I Stopped Reading Comics

So the title is slightly misleading - I read a few books semi-regularly, but I've stepped well back from the "main" superhero comics from the two major publishers in the game. And. . . well, it's like this.

By now there's been more than a little hullabaloo about the events that lead to the end of The Amazing Spider-man comic with issue #700, and the launch of the new Superior Spider-man book that ostensibly takes its place. Plenty of widely-read and intelligent culture commentators (like The Escapist's Bob Chipman and BADASS Digest's Devin Faraci) have already weighed in on how this isn't really as bad as some fans are making it out to be. And they're not wrong per say, but it's still an example of why I just can't give a single solitary damn about these comics anymore.

Oh, I'm sorry - for those who don't keep up with this stuff to the same obsessive extent that I do, The Amazing Spider-man ends with Peter Parker switching bodies with Doctor Otto Octavius (a.k.a. Doctor Octopus) and then dying.

No, really.

The Top 10 Films of 2012 (and them some...)

This ended up being a great year for movies. 2012 started unusually strong, and - while it seemed to falter a bit during summer - it ended with a string of amazing movies from early fall through December. And since this is the first post of the new year for this blog, I figure I'll do a Top 10 list.

As a caveat, I still have not seen Life of Pi, Zero Dark Thirty, or Argo, but you know what, I don't feel like waiting. I'll amend things in a couple weeks if needed, but here's what won me over the most in cinemas.