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The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll: THE LAW IS A ASS #332: SHE-HULK’S SCIENTIFIC METHOD IS TRIALIN’ ERROR

she-hulk_vol_1_8_textless-9502291Sorry, but if your bucket list included “Read a comic book that has an explanation of the dying declaration exception to the hearsay rule on Page One,” you can’t cross it off your list yet. Because, despite what you read in She-Hulk v 3 # 9, you still haven’t read a comic book which has an explanation of the dying declaration on Page One.

She-Hulk v 3 # 9 is the middle chapter of a three-part story about Steve (Captain America) Rogers being sued for wrongful death in Los Angeles over an incident that happened on the L.A. docks in the year 1940. Cap was represented by Jennifer (She-Hulk) Walters and the Foglers, the family suing Cap, were represented by Matt (Daredevil) Murdock. Chapter One in issue 8 was the set-up. In issue 9, the middle chapter, the trial is about to begin.

So there on Page One Matt was giving his opening statement to the jury and defined the dying declaration exception to the hearsay rule for them. He told the jury that ordinarily a person may not testify about “what they heard someone say,” because it’s hearsay. Which isn’t accurate. I mean, come on, Matt used a simple sentence composed of only one- or two-syllable words. When has the law ever expressed anything with a simple sentence using only one- or two-syllable words?

The California Evidence Code defines hearsay in Section 1200 and it’s more complex than Matt let on. California defines hearsay as “a statement that was made other than by the witness while testifying at the hearing and that is offered to prove the truth of the matter stated.” In order for a statement to be hearsay, it must 1) have been made by someone other than the witness, 2) must have been uttered outside of the courtroom, and 3) must be offered into evidence in order to prove the truth of the fact contained in the hearsay.

Let’s see if I can’t translate that into some simple sentences that use words of only one or two syllables for you. First, the statement must be an out-of-court statement. That’s easy, if a witness says something in court than it isn’t hearsay, it’s testimony.

(Damn! “Testimony.” Four syllables. Okay, I can’t use words of only one or two syllables. Some polysyllabic words will sneak into my explanation. But I promise they’ll be simpler polysyllabic words than polysyllabic.)

Second the statement must have been made by someone other than the witness who’s testifying. If Linus is a witness, he can testify as to what he told Lucy even if he said it when he wasn’t in the courtroom, because he’s the witness. But Linus can’t testify as to what Lucy told him.

The reason for this second prong of the hearsay definition is because if the person who actually made the statement isn’t testifying, that person’s demeanor can’t be seen and evaluated by the jury and the person can’t be cross-examined. (By the way, we call the person who made the statement the declarant in the law game and consider ourselves as having been pretty straightforward for using only a three-syllable word.) So, if the witness, Linus, testifies as to what the declarant, Lucy, told him, Lucy, isn’t subject to cross-examination and the statement is excluded as hearsay. But if Linus is testifying as to what he told Lucy, then Linus – the declarant – is available to be cross-examined and the statement isn’t hearsay.

The third and final prong of the hearsay definition is that the statement is being offered for the truth of the matter asserted in the statement. If Lucy and Linus were in a car accident then, later, Charlie was talking to Linus and said he saw the accident and that Lucy ran the red light, Linus could not testify as to what Charlie said in order to prove that Lucy ran the red light. That would be using the statement to prove of the matter asserted; that Lucy ran the red light.

Matt may have given the jury an over-simplified version of hearsay, but that wasn’t the worst of his sins. Matt next told the jury that he was about to offer testimony about a dying declaration, which is admissible because dying declarations are an exception to the hearsay rule.

Okay, that much is true. The hearsay has lots of exceptions. California wrote something like 18 exceptions to the hearsay rule into its evidence code. One of those exceptions, found in Evidence Code § 1242, was the dying declaration exception. Matt was correct when he said that dying declaration is an admissible exception to the hearsay rule. Had he stopped there, all would have been fine. Matt didn’t stop there.

Matt went on to explain that a dying declaration is, “when a person makes a statement believing they are about to die … that testimony is admissible, because of a long-held belief that people cleave to the truth on their deathbeds.” Wrong!

In the aforementioned California Evidence Code § 1242 – Aforementioned is a simpler polysyllable than polysyllabic, isn’t it? – a dying declaration is defined as a statement made by a person who believes he is about to die, “respecting the cause and circumstances of his death.” So not every statement a person makes on his or her death bed is a dying declaration. To be a dying declaration, it must be a statement made about the cause and circumstances of the person’s impending death.

For example, if Linus comes upon Charlie, who’s lying on the ground near death, and Charlie tells him, “I”m dying because Lucy pulled the football out from under me and I broke my neck,” that would be a statement made about the cause and circumstances of Charlie’s impending death. It would be a dying declaration and would be admissible as a hearsay exception.

If, on the other hand, Charlie were to say, “I’m dying, and Lucy’s stupid psychiatric advice wasn’t worth five cents,” it would not be a statement about the cause and circumstances of his impending death and would not be admissible as an exception to the hearsay rule.

This becomes important in our story. In the middle of Matt’s opening statement – after he gave the jury legally incorrect definitions of both hearsay and dying declarations but before he explained to the jury that the case was a wrongful death case – Matt called his first witness.

And I move into a brief aside, before I can move on to what’s “important to our story.” I know of no court which allows a plaintiff’s attorney to call a witness in the middle of his opening statement. The attorneys give their opening statements covering what their case is about and what they expect the evidence will prove and then they present the evidence. I don’t think even the allegedly uber-liberal of Los Angeles County disrupt normal courtroom proceedings by letting witnesses testify in the middle of the opening statements. But that, as I said, was an aside. Let us hie ourselves back to what’s important to our story.

What’s important to our story is that in order to introduce his dying declaration, Matt called police officer McKinley, who was in the hospital at Harold Fogler’s bedside as Harold lay dying. McKinley testified as to what Harold Fogler said from his death bed.

He shouldn’t have been allowed to, but he did. As we saw in She-Hulk v 3 # 8, Harold died sometime in 2014, three weeks before the trial in this story started. She-Hulk v 3 # 8 also informed us that Harold died of old age and natural causes while he was in his nineties. Harold’s deathbed statement was about how his brother Sam died on the docks of Los Angeles sometime in 1940 and how Steve Rogers was responsible for Sam’s death.

Harold’s deathbed statement wasn’t a statement about the cause and circumstances of his impending death, it was a statement about the cause and circumstances of his brother’s death some 74 years earlier. It was not a dying declaration as defined in the California Evidence code, so would not have been admissible as an exception to the hearsay rule.

You’re probably wondering exactly what Officer McKinley did say about Harold Fogler’s statement, how Cap caused the death of Sam Fogler, and why Harold’s grandchildren are suing Cap for the wrongful death of their great-granduncle. I’m afraid you’ll have to wonder a little longer. This column is already long and I’ve only covered what happened on Page One. I’m going to need another column to cover the other 19 pages of the story. But before I leave you in the To-Be-Continued limbo, I did have one more thought.

One more thought: as I explained the last time I wrote about this story, Cap has repeatedly told She-Hulk that he doesn’t want to win on a technicality, so he probably wouldn’t have let She-Hulk object to the not-really-a-dying-declaration-so-not-actually-an-exception-to-the-hearsay-rule on the grounds that Harold’s statement wasn’t a really dying declaration so wasn’t actually an exception to the hearsay rule. Personally, I don’t think that’s a technicality, I think it’s a lawyer doing her job. But what do I know? I’m not the lawyer who wrote the story, I’m just the lawyer who’s trying to make sense of it.

I’ve got the harder job.

Martha Thomases: Funny, You Don’t Look Booish

Boo!

It’s Halloween today, when we laugh at death and taunt ghosts, witches and demons. Traditionally, we dress up in costume as something that scares us, exorcising our fears through make-up and disguise. If this was still a barometer of what we are afraid of, most women (and girls) are terrified of sex. And of nurses, police officers. And of sexy nurses and sexy police officers.

Which brings us to comics. Of course.

There have been a lot of scary comic books over the decades. Some were so scary that Congress felt the need to step in. Some scared me and didn’t scare you, and some scared you and didn’t scare me. That’s why there is room in the comments.

Alan Moore has written the most comics that scared me the most. From all the bugs to vampires that figure out how to be out in the daytime (stay underwater where the sun can’t reach you) to menopausal werewolves in his Swamp Thing, to super-powered conspiracies in Watchmen and assorted creepy Lovecraftian monsters in various one-offs, Moore’s work regularly freaks me out.

Most of us don’t believe in Lovecraftian monsters, werewolves, vampires or other tropes of the horror genre. I’m not even really afraid of bugs or conspiracies – although please keep both out of my kitchen and bathrooms and, actually, my entire apartment, thanks.

Most literary critics consider that classic monsters of horror to be metaphors for the things that are really able to hurt us. Frankenstein is about men who want to create life without a womb. Dracula is about the dangers of desire. Zombies reflect our fear of infectious diseases.

You know what’s scary right now? Sugar and the people who sell it.

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These are things that can’t be fixed with a stake through the heart or a healing crystal. These are things that can still kill you when the masks are off, and the candy is all gone.

They are also not things that will inspire a single noble hero, or a small group on a quest. Instead, to fight them we will need an educated and engaged citizenry acting together to do the right thing. It means putting down the remote. It means getting off the couch.

That’s the thought that scares me the most. Not the ghouls on the street tonight, but the ones elected next Tuesday.

 

Tweeks: Comics Squad Recess!

61h2omnqd0l-_sx258_bo1204203200_-2058737Hey Middle Grade Readers!  When you unload some of your trick or treat candy to the local orthodontist this weekend for cash, you might be looking for something to spend it on.  Well, since this time of year reminds us of the Scholastic Book Fair and rainy day recesses spent inside reading, we suggest: Comic Squad: Recess! It’s an anthology featuring some of the best in kids’ comics writing and drawing about the best part of school: recess!  There’s a super-secret Ninja club, a magic acorn, kickball, cupcakes and more!

Dennis O’Neil: Trick Or What?

65846-6545032We haven’t gotten visits from trick-or-treaters for quite a few years now. We live at the top of a pretty steep hill on a block that has only two houses facing the street, no businesses, not much light. Not a lot here to attract apprentice ghosts and goblins. If any do show up, we’ll give them comic books.

None of what a friend of mine calls “sugary treats” – and when she uses the term, she isn’t being complimentary. Time was when we did hit the drugstore and stock up on slimy and gooey stuff, your chocolate bars and your jelly beans and gummy bears and gum drops and all the rest of the Willy Wonka wet dream. Our consciences may have a protesting yip or two, but the yips weren’t loud and we could pretty much ignore them. Oh, okay… we knew that what we were putting into the kids’ bags wasn’t good for them, or anyone else, but, well, surely a little toxin wouldn’t do any harm, or at least not much harm, and if the young’uns parents didn’t mind, why should we be old grumpy-heads and anyhow, passing confections to the young and innocent is a tradition.

You gonna argue with tradition, grumpy-head?

Probably not. We’re pretty big on tradition ‘round these parts, and so is every other civilized society that I know of. We won’t even guess at the reasons here. We’ll only note that we humans seem to take comfort and maybe a sense of security from repeating rituals at prescribed times and places and anything that bestows comfort and security will get a smile from me. Hey,, it’s a tough life!

But… can traditions outlive their usefulness? Have some of them already done so? Can they be replaced with something more appropriate?

About this sugar/candy problem: Let us begin by making the painful admission that all but the most diehard smokers had to make a decade or two back – tobacco is very bad for the human body. (The guy in the corner, the one who’s gasping and wheezing and turning red, is shaking his head and trying to say no! I’ll assume that the rest of you are giving me permission to continue.)

Tobacco is bad for you and so, alas, is sugar. A quick rundown of some of your components that can be hurt by it:

  • Teeth: consumption of processed food containing sugar cost Americans 54 billion dollars in dental bills every year.
  • Heart: sugar raises levels of triglicerides and cholesterol, both of which are enemies of your heart.
  • Liver: sugar stresses this important organ.
  • Obesity: sugar is full of empty calories and encourages users to eat more.
  • Addiction: the stuff creates abusers.

It won’t be hard for you to find other information on this topic. Go get some.

So, Halloween night: Do you really want to give some neighbor kid a substance that is harmful in so many ways and might be the beginning of a life-long and possibly lethal addiction?

Maybe we should begin shopping around for another tradition.

 

Michael Davis: The Great New York Con

I’m from New York.

I’m a New Yorker who has lived the last 20 years in Los Angeles or LA, as it’s commonly called. LA is where my life is now; driven here quite literally by an offer I couldn’t refuse.

Despite the often-racist policies of City Hall and its Choke-An-Unarmed-Black-Man-to-Death police force, NYC will always be my home. Every New Yorker will tell you that the city becomes part of you. There’s something about growing up in New York that taints your view of any other city. When New Yorkers leave New York, they may move, but they don’t relocate.

My body may live in LA, but my heart and soul still reside in New York.

When the towers fell, I spent the entire day on the phone with Denys Cowan. We were both in LA less than 10 minutes from each other, yet we were so shocked and heartbroken about our city that neither one of us could muster the brainpower to think to go to the other’s home.

The offer I couldn’t refuse was made by Motown, who left Detroit in 1970 and has operated from Los Angeles ever since. I made a case to keep my main offices on the east coast and Motown agreed. I so loved my city, I endured a weekly flight to LA, and I absolutely hate to fly. After a year I was told to move the business to Los Angeles.

I did, but kept my NYC residence and have that still. I was not happy leaving my cherished city and made no secret of my dislike of all things Los Angeles when I arrived.

My New York egotism is seldom, if ever, modified. Undoubtedly a wise thing to do in many situations, but I can’t seem to make that leap no matter what the setting. I once proudly wore a New York Knick hat during a game between the Knicks and the Lakers played in Los Angeles. Not a big deal – any die-hard New York fan would do that. However, I wore my Knick hat to a Laker game while in Magic’s Johnson’s suite.

But wait, there’s more: I did this during the time I ran a division of Magic Johnson Entertainment.

I worked for the most famous Los Angeles Laker of all time, yet there I sat wearing my Knick hat.

You can’t get much more New York or more stupid than that.

20 years after LA made me leave NY, my answer is the same now as it was then when I’m asked to compare New York and Los Angeles. New York is the greatest city in the world and LA stands for Lower Alabama.

New York is also home to the New York Comic Con (NYCC), billed as the largest pop culture event on the east coast. I’m sure that’s true. It’s a huge and impressive show to be sure. Held at New York’s Javits Center, the convention sold out this year doing “San Diego Comic Con numbers” according to Business Insider.

That’s extraordinary.

What’s even more extraordinary is that NYCC has been around just nine years, and SDCC more than forty. It’s no wonder-people are comparing NYCC to SDCC. When you throw up those kinds of numbers in that short amount of time, you’re a major playa, no doubt about it.

Before, during, and especially after this year’s show, the word coming out of the Big Apple was that SDCC is done.

The king is dead, long live the king!

My dear friend Lucy Valerio, who knows full well of my doings at SDCC, told me a good friend of hers said, “San Diego Comic Con has jumped the shark.”

I wondered two things: had this expert on all things pop culture ever been to Comic Con? Secondly, was Lucy high? I bet her friend was, or he was drinking the Jim Jones Kool-Aid hype social media is selling.

Most don’t know I also have history with NYCC, and believe it or not, I had a small hand in helping them established themselves when they started. Long story short, they reached out to me and I put them in business with two major companies they were unable get to.

After doing so, I was asked to bring The Black Panel to NYCC and I did. So imagine my surprise when the next year, I’m told The Black Panel did not fit the criteria, although I had an open invitation to bring it back anytime I wanted.

The Black Panel has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The New York Times, and Entertainment Weekly, to name but a few. The panel been invited to major universities, film festivals, and just recently Japan.

Damn, that must be some fucking criteria.

The woman from ReedPop, the NYCC promoter, who informed me could not have cared less about my open invitation to bring the panel back, nor did she care about what I had done for NYCC.

Fast-forward seven or eight years and the NYCC has put up some extraordinary numbers, but were not really SDCC numbers. They count ticket sales as people. In other words one person buys two tickets that counts as two people. Nevertheless, their numbers were damn impressive and they did sell out.

That sell out and those ticket sales are going to be the first thing ReedPop, the company behind the NYCC, will show future strategic partners, investors, advertisers, exhibitors, and attendees, and they should – those numbers are an incredible achievement, and as any CEO in corporate America will tell you, numbers don’t lie.

Those numbers are reason enough people are listening to the loud voices proclaiming NYCC as the new king of pop culture events.

Numbers don’t lie, but those voices are. Those voices are lying like any husband when asked, “Does this dress make me look fat?”

“No honey bunny.” That’s the lie hubby will tell his spouse.

“No Porky, you’d look fat in any dress.” That’s the truth he’s smart enough to keep from his wife.

The NYCC is a well attended comics and pop culture convention. SDCC is a world-famous pop culture event on a whole other level. Put another way, it’s akin to comparing Jay Z and your cousin Sal who likes to rap.

The numbers NYCC put up this year are undeniably great numbers for attendance to their show. However, the selling out SDCC is assured, not to take anything away from New York, but those are easy numbers to put up for San Diego. The show has sold out completely for over a decade and is still growing in ticket requests.

But, being the new king of pop culture is about a lot more than ticket sells.

More than attendance revenue, SDCC is a pop culture mecca, a place fans from all over the world must visit at least once in their life. Like any Super Bowl city hundreds of thousands of people come to San Diego without tickets. Some hope to somehow attain tickets once there, but for most, just being in the city where Comic Con International is being held is the goal.

The City Of San Diego is number 11 on the 20 most visited cities by international visitors and number 10 on the Forbes list of America’s most visited city. Clearly New York is on both those lists, but I’m damn sure the City of New York will not build new hotels and new convention centers (plural) to keep the NYCC show there.

Undoubtedly, because of Comic Con’s financial impact, San Diego would want to keep them happy by any means necessary. By comparison New York is much bigger and has much more to offer than just one event, True, but just as true, long before SDCC became the monster it is now, San Diego was already one of America’s top tourist destinations.

The economic significance of the SDCC on the city is not measured just in yearly revenue boost but in future investments and growth in the city. The worldwide importance of SDCC is not just a boon to San Diego, but to America as well. SDCC more than any other event in the 21st Century has cemented America’s place as the pop culture capital of the world.

That kind of clout is not what puts SDCC at another level. I was just pointing out the difference between Jay and cousin Sal.

NYCC is a for-profit business. Nothing at all wrong with that… except, in my opinion, in the world of geeks. To look at geeks simply as paying customers at a geek convention is no way to build a pop culture dynasty the likes of SDCC. A recurring issue to many fans and pros is the less than pleasant way convention personnel deal with fans.

To be fair, ReedPop is not running the Javits Center and has little or no control over how Javits security talks to and otherwise deals with fans. But Reed picked the venue, and year after year this seems to be a recurring topic.

SDCC is a not-for-profit educational organization run by a bunch of geeks, and in the world of comic book conventions, geeks rule. The people at SDCC are in the business of conventions, but they are not a convention business.

SDCC Mission Statement:

Comic-Con International: San Diego is a nonprofit educational corporation dedicated to creating awareness of, and appreciation for, comics and related popular art forms, primarily through the presentation of conventions and events that celebrate the historic and ongoing contribution of comics to art and culture.

Regardless of my past dealings with the convention, I want NYCC to succeed. It’s in my city and they are good for the industry. They and every other pop culture event have a ways to go before they can claim to be on a par with SDCC. For my money, Stan Lee’s Comikaze is the convention with any hope of ever doing what SDCC has.

The SDCC show is a pop culture worldwide happening generating much more than revenue and at its core are the fans, geeks, nerds and growing the industry.

This above all else is why Comic Con International: San Diego is on a different level.

A level that the New York Comic Con is, as of yet, nowhere near.

 

The Quest is Ended: Tom Baker joins Doctor Who Legacy

  • News
  • October 29, 2014

Collectors love completing a set.  So imagine the joy of players of Doctor Who: Legacy when it was announced that Tom Baker, a.k.a. “Four,” had been approved for addition to the game, thus giving a full set of Doctors. The download code for Tom Baker was released earlier today via Kotaku.

img_0026-300x400-6832809The free-to-play game has gained a steady stream of additional content since its release last December– dozens of new  Companions, costumes for both friends and Doctors alike, new levels based on past episodes and seasons of the show, and a plethora of enemies new and old.

With the new season, new content has kicked into high gear. Levels and characters based on each new episode have been added every week shortly after their broadcast.

By keeping in touch via the game’s Facebook page or their newsletter, players can receive free download codes for the new content, as well as being able to receive alternate versions of the characters by playing special expert levels, or via the fan area. The fan area opens up once a player buys five time crystals, the game’s premium currency, and is well worth the minor expense.

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Special black and white editions of The Brigadier and the First and Second Doctors give a clue as the depth and detail the game offers.

Doctor Who has been steadily increasing his footprint in the videogame world.  Official Minecraft skins were released recently for the Xbox version of the game, and the BBC has just unveiled a new game for the CBBC website, The Doctor and the Dalek, an educational game that teaches programming skills by allowing the player to take control of a malfunctioning Dalek.

Doctor Who: Legacy is free for Apple, Android and Kindle devices, as well as playable online via Facebook.

Mike Gold: More Movies, More Movies, More Movies

Now that both Marvel Studios and Warner Bros. have released their slates of movies-to-come, I offer a question of deep concern.

How much … is too much?

Over the next six years or so, we are supposed to get (take a deep breath) Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant-Man, Fantastic Four, Deadpool, Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Captain America: Civil War, X-Men: Apocalypse, Suicide Squad, Doctor Strange, Sinister Six, Venom, Spider-Verse, Wolverine 2, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Wonder Woman, Fantastic Four 2, Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, Justice League, Amazing Spider-Man 3, The Flash, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1, Captain Marvel, Aquaman, The Inhumans, Shazam, Avengers: Infinity War Part 2, Justice League 2, Cyborg, and Green Lantern-certainly-not-2. There’s another Superman solo movie floating around, and Fox might interject one or more Fantastic Four and/or X-Men universe movies into the above schedule.

Of course, hard as it may be to believe, there are superhero properties published by other outfits as well. Will we see another Hellboy movie? How about The Mask? IDW has their own movie division now.

Seriously. I’d love to see each and every one of these movies be amazing as well as amazingly successful, but I know the odds are overwhelmingly against it. How many flops within this relatively short period will it take for Disney (Marvel) and Warners (DC) to think of their stockholders’ wrath and then think about protecting, as Mel Brooks put it, their phony baloney jobs?

And I’m not even beginning to count all the superhero television shows – broadcast, cable, and streaming.

Again I ask: how many turkeys will it take to tank the ship? How many superhero movies in such a relatively short period of time do we get before the vast movie-going public decides enough is enough?

I don’t know, but I do know this: many billions of dollars in production budgets are at stake. Many careers are at stake.

And, since Disney makes movies and owns Marvel Comics, and Warner Bros. makes movies and owns DC Entertainment, how many cinematic failures will it take before either or both companies see their comic book divisions as sink holes?

I’ll take them one at a time. I’m looking forward to Age of Ultron.

Marvel Reveals Movie Slate: It’s… Amazing!

  • News
  • October 28, 2014

At a special event in Hollywood today, Marvel Studios officially announced its film schedule for the next four years.  Confirming rumors, the Doctor Strange film was announced, as well as pleasant surprise announcements for Captain Marvel and Black Panther

MarvelMoviesAfter an initial tease that it would be “Serpent Society”, the real subtitle for the next Captain America film was confirmed: Civil War.  The plot would be the cinematic version of the story, following up from the events of Winter Soldier and Age of Ultron.

Guardians of the Galaxy 2, written and directed again by James Gunn, has been moved up for a release date of May 5, 2017.  As soon as Gunn returns from Japan (he appeared via video) they’ll begin asking the hard questions, like the status of Cosmo, not to mention that odd looking fellow who looked, walked and sounded like a duck.

GotG2 was moved up to make room for Thor: Ragnarok. Featuring a return of both Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston, the film will follow the events of Avengers 2: Age of Ultron, and will serve to revitalize the character”.

Casting for the role of Doctor Strange with Buttercream Crinklebort had not been finalized “Otherwise we would have announced it today”, but assured it will be announced “some time before the release of the movie”, which has been scheduled for November 4, 2016.  the film will open the door not only to the world of the supernatural, but to the world or parallel dimensions, a statement which will certain raise interest and eyebrows.

Black Panther is scheduled for November 17, 2017.  Producer Kevin Feige announced that T’challa would appear, in costume in Captain America: Civil War, which meant that casting had already been decided.  This was verified by the introduction of the actor, Chadwick Boseman, who came onto to stage amid thunderous applause.

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Not bad, eh?

Captain Marvel was another unexpected surprise, scheduled for June 6, 2018. No casting was announced for Captain Marvel, though is was confirmed it would indeed be the adventures of Carol Danvers, an adventure that would span Earth and space.  Announcements for the writer and director for the film would preced any casting announcements, with no timeframe set.

Marvel’s twentieth film will be Inhumans, scheduled for Nov. 2, 2018. The Kirby/Lee creation has long been theorized to be a potential replacement for Marvel’s mutant populace, unavailable for the studio’s use as the X-Men rights remain in the hands of 20th Century Fox.  It was teased we might find out more about the Inhumans’ place in the MCU “sooner than you think”, suggesting teases in more imminent films.

And confirming the suspicions that started with the cameo of Thanos in the first Avengers film, Marvel announced that the plots in the films have been leading to the assembly of the Infinity Gauntlet, culminating in a two-part film, Avengers 2: Infinity War.

Noted omissions included no Hulk solo film, nor on for Black Widow. Marvel confirmed that both characters will appear in several of the Phase Three films, and while there’s a desire for more there are no specific plans.  However, Feige did point out that there were plans where black Widow would play a “key, key role”, opening the door for more hopeful hoping by fans.

Making a passing mention of the upcoming Netflix series, Feige verified that unlike DC/Warner Brothers’ choice to keep the TV and film world separate, all of Marvel Studios’ productions take place in the same world, however on the outskirts some may be.  We’ve already see connections between Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Cinematic Universe, so the door appears open for the web series as well.

To summarize Marvel’s Phase 3 release schedule:

  • Captain America 3: Civil War – May 6, 2016
  • Doctor Strange – Nov. 6, 2016
  • Guardians of the Galaxy 2 – May 5, 2017
  • Thor: Ragnarok – July 28, 2018
  • Black Panther – Nov. 3, 2017
  • The Avengers 3 – Infinity War: Part 1 – May 4, 2018
  • Captain Marvel – July 6, 2018
  • Inhumans – Nov. 2, 2018
  • The Avengers 3 – Infinity War: Part 2 – 2019

The Point Radio: DOONESBURY’s Secret Origin

Award winning cartoonist, writer and producer, Garry Trudeau talks about his hit Amazon series ALPHA HOUSE and how DOONESBURY was born. Plus we begin our visit with the cast of the FXX Comedy THE LEAGUE, including talking to Jon LaJoie about how his character has become more grounded this season, Mark Duplass on making sensitive films and Nick Kroll on why the show gets hotter every year.

THE POINT covers it 24/7! Take us ANYWHERE on ANY mobile device (Apple or Android). Just  get the free app, iNet Radio in The  iTunes App store – and it’s FREE!  The Point Radio  – 24 hours a day of pop culture fun. GO HERE and LISTEN FREE  – and follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.

Box Office Democracy: Avengers trailer, Constantine (TV)

Hi everyone,

I’m moving this weekend and didn’t have a lot of spare time to spend doing activities that weren’t packing so we have something a little different for you this week.  Here’s a review of a much shorter cinematic experience and a TV show based on a comic that once had a movie based on it.  It all comes back to movies, it all still counts.

Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer

 

Making a trailer for a movie like Avengers: Age of Ultron is a tricky proposition but one with absolutely no stakes. Everyone is going to see the film practically no matter what. This trailer would have had to be crudely drawn stick figures instead of CGI effects to have a negative impact on the gross and that’s probably underrating the drawing power of Robert Downey Jr.

Unfortunately, none of the stuff in this trailer is going to be what makes this movie special. Any major superhero franchise could produce a trailer with most of these shots. Massive destruction, iconic symbols shattered, big explosions. None of that is what makes The Avengers franchise special. What separates The Avengers is the wonderful character work and the exceptional dialogue. None of that makes for a particularly compelling trailer. If they are going to give me nothing but snippets of action shots and brief shots of people looking anguished or menacing I would have appreciated much more Hulk.

Everything they gave us looked great. I want to see more Ultron, I want to hear more James Spader doing Ultron, and I’m especially enthusiastic to hear Ultron dialogue that doesn’t feel like Marvel is using these movies as a backdoor plug for their old animation catalogue. I’m excited to see more from the characters that get the short end of the stick in the Marvel movies that have come since the first Avengers flick. It’ll be refreshing to see more from Hawkeye and Nick Fury. Black Widow got the closest thing to a punch line in this trailer and as long as Marvel stubbornly refuses to give Johansson her own movie I’ll have to take what I can get.

The characters I was surprised to see get so much screen time, probably as much as any Avenger not named Stark, were Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. I guess you need to energize the geek base without showing too much of your big Ultron effect but is this connecting with anyone else? Those are fringe characters at best and they eat up a ton of this preview. It almost felt like they were putting as much footage out as possible as leverage is Fox decides those are X-Men after all and want to sue closer to the film’s release. It was a fine trailer but those parts felt a little more like notes from a future deposition.

 

Constantine

 

I’m so glad that DC/Warner Bros. finally decided to make a TV show starring John Constantine. Sure it was easier to just keep collecting those payments that Grimm, Once Upon a Time and Hemlock Grove kept forking over for taking the basic concept from the Hellblazer books but it’s so noble of them to give that money up and compete on their own. What’s that? No one was paying Warner any money for those? They just let one of their established franchises sit on the shelf while other people ate their lunch using a strikingly similar idea? How very latter-day Warner of them.

Constantine is a good pilot with a big problem: they do a ton of work establishing a character they wrote out of the series. Liv Aberdeen is the focal point of the entire episode, the lens through which we view the fantastic world of John Constantine, and she seems to be riding the beginning of a long narrative arc. Somewhere between pilot and series they decided they had no use for the character and hastily wrote her out in the last two scenes. I’m still very much interested in watching the show, they’ve hooked me that much, but unless every week they plan to introduce and overdevelop another temporary character they’ve given me no clear perspective on what I’ll be watching every week. I appreciate that it’s very expensive to reshoot an entire pilot but it feels weird.

I do like the bits of the show they plan to keep. Matt Ryan makes for an excellent John Constantine and I liked the way they did Chas although I’m sure they plan to take a lot of liberties with the source material there. The score seems a bit like they’re aping the sound of BBC’s Sherlock and while it stood out like a sore thumb the first time they used on of those cues by the end I rather liked it like that. Both shows benefit from that bit of musical whimsy. The show feels a smidge too Catholic for my tastes but that might just be the way shows about angels, demons, and magic have to feel and I should just get over it.

I don’t watch a lot of network dramas but I am a dyed-in-the-wool Hannibal partisan so know that it means something when I say this show impressed me with both its disturbing imagery and its slickness.  The cockroach scene at the asylum kicks things off especially well being unsettling without going too far.  Constantine is painting with a brush of the grotesque and rather than coat the walls the way a CSI or a Criminal Minds does it instead uses it just around the edges and that’s so much more compelling to me.  I’m not entirely sure this is going to make for an exceptional TV show over a 22 episode season because I find those too long in general but I’m excited to give this one a shot and am thankful I was forced to sample it for this review.

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