Tag: marvel comics
This Week In Crazy: How To Zap God Out Of Your Head

This Week In Crazy: How To Zap God Out Of Your Head

Captain America is anti-American, scientists can nuke the religion right out of your brain, and the End Times are in sight.

Welcome to “This Week In Crazy,” The National Memo’s weekly update on the loony, bigoted, and hateful behavior of the increasingly unhinged right wing. Starting with number five:

5. Rush Limbaugh

In case you were not aware, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified before the House Benghazi Committee Thursday. To give his listeners a taste of what to expect, Rush Limbaugh looked into the tea leaves on his Monday show and predicted the whole thing was “going to be a giant nothing burger.”

Fair enough. The legitimacy of the committee has been thoroughly gutted — thanks in no small part to Republicans cheerfully parading the fact that this has all been one badly botched political hit job.

So yes, it was safe to predict that committee chair Trey Gowdy and his investigation theater show were pretty much D.O.A. — undone by sloppy hubris and a nakedly political agenda. A “giant nothing burger,” indeed.

Oh wait. Rush wasn’t finished.

It is going to be a giant nothing burger. The Democrats will waste as must time as possible praising Hillary for her cervix. Yes I meant that. You think I meant to say service, right? No, they’re going to praise her for being a woman. It’s a big deal now. She’s a victim. It’s the reason she’s running. To be the first woman. So they’re going to praise her cervix. What else is there? When you’re talking about that to praise. They can’t mention the wig. So they’ll praise her — okay, okay, I’ll say service. Just to smooth it over.

Yes. Very “smooth.”

ViaMedia Matters

Next: Fox & Friends

4. Fox & Friends

The folks over at the morning chatterdome Fox & Friends are continuing their project to espy culture warfare in every last nook and cranny. On their Sunday show, they cast their indignation spotlight upon the latest issue of Marvel’s Captain America, which introduces the classic character’s new identity — Sam Wilson, a Black superhero also known as the Falcon (portrayed in the Marvel films by actor Anthony Mackie).

Co-host Clayton Morris described the move as a “publicity stunt” to drive sales and to poison the all-American ideology of traditional superhero comics. Specifically at issue is the fact that Wilson’s foes in this latest storyline are the Sons of the Serpent, which The Comics Book Database describes as a “racist and anti-immigrant extremist group, espousing a white-power ideology, and often seeking to destabilize the U.S. government through terrorist and hate-crime activities.” They claim to defend the laws of God, nature, and the U.S. Constitution. Topical, no?

Captain America is “going up against conservatives! They’re the new enemy!” Morris exclaims.

The Serpent, co-host Tucker Carlson says, is not a jingoist homegrown terrorist. He “is an American who has misgivings about unlimited illegal immigration and the costs associated with it. That, according to the comic, is ‘evil.'”

Morris describes the Serpent as an “odd new enemy,” but far from being an Obama-era weapon of liberal cultural propaganda freshly cooked up to tee off conservatives, the Sons of the Serpent have been wreaking havoc in the pages of Marvel Comics since 1966.

Per Vulture:

Tucker Carlson voices his displeasure that Captain America isn’t fighting ISIS instead of “ordinary Americans, probably some of you watching at home.” Morris chimes back in that he misses the days when “Captain America used to be punching Hitler in the face.” Captain America has not fought Hitler since 1945, you know, the year Hitler died. At the time, Morris was negative-31 years old.

Video below courtesy of Raw Story:

Co-host Anna Koiman concludes: “Keep politics out of comic books.”

(All of this recalls the outrage of Evangelist Franklin Graham, who got indignant when Marvel introduced a gay superhero in its flagship title, X-Men, which has been an allegory for discrimination since its 1963 inception, so it kind of made sense that the story would include an LGBT character.)

I don’t regularly read superhero comics, but National Memo comics expert Eric Kleefeld informs me that Captain America’s latest move is part of a long and proud tradition of wedding politics to comic books: “The essence of Marvel Comics, going back to its glory days in the 1960s, has been morality tales with clearly liberal values,” he says.

ViaVulture

Next: Ben Carson

3. Ben Carson

The GOP presidential candidate and Twizzler-headed historical revisionist Dr. Ben Carson is second only to fellow political gatecrasher Donald Trump in the polls.

Luckily for him, he has secured the endorsement of God Almighty. This, according to Carson himself, speaking Tuesday on Marcus and Joni, which airs on evangelical Christian network Daystar.

As Carson tells it, he once thought the notion of a presidential run was ridiculous, but the clamoring for him to enter the ring kept building until at last he couldn’t ignore it, turned to God for guidance, and has been operating under His aegis and benefitting from His considerable influence ever since.

The political class and the pundits who said he couldn’t do it — “They don’t understand the power of God,” Carson said.

Carson has spoken of the primacy of his Christian faith to his campaign before. (His tax plan is based on the Bible, after all.) But his remarks that God is basically securing his campaign’s success sounds a tad myopic, considering he has stated that any presidential candidate would need to “swear to place our Constitution above their religion.”

Then again, that was in reference to remarks he had made that a Muslim shouldn’t be president. According to Carson anyone can sit in the Oval Office as long as their beliefs and practices fit within his narrowly circumscribed interpretation of what is “consistent with American culture.”

Would President Carson “place our Constitution above [his] religion,” or would he run his administration in deference to his Biggest Backer?

ViaRight Wing Watch

Next: Rick Wiles

2. Rick Wiles

Rick Wiles snags a spot in TWIC for the second week in a row — for his claims that Bernie Sanders’ popularity is a herald of the End Times. His latest ravings weave a tapestry of far-right-wing anti-government paranoia and conservative Christian apocalyptic claptrap — and it all makes makes for some seriously unsettled verbal gumbo.

Per Right Wing Watch:

Wiles warned that leaders like Pope Francis, Al Gore and Bernie Sanders are part of a plan to “use global warming to impose global socialism” during which they will “take control of property, eliminate private property rights take control of natural resources.” Wiles said the purpose of this plan is to impose “a centralized global government controlling the activities of every human being on the planet. That’s what Al Gore and all those socialists are after, and they’re using the climate as the justification.”

Wiles also proposed that this is a sign of the second coming of Christ, “this is evidence of Jesus Christ coming back.” Harris offered that mass support for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign is also
evidence that the second coming is imminent.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/229460513″ params=”color=ff5500″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Wiles has been on a roll lately, claiming that Russia is some sort of newfound city on a hill and could be a refuge for conservative Americans once Obama’s mass slaughter begins.

Next: Joe Miller

1. Joe Miller

Joe Miller, the Tea Party darling who five short years ago was a Republican nominee for U.S. Senator from Alaska, spent a recent segment of his weekday radio show explicating a theory that transgender advocates were going to use magnets to alter the brain chemistry of Christians.

Along with his guest William Briggs (“Statistician to the stars!”), Miller was responding to a recent UCLA study, which, according to a release from the University of York, was designed to see if stimulating parts of the brain with transcranial magnets could influence participants’ ideologies — particularly their attitudes regarding religion and nationalism.

Per the release, investigators found that “both belief in God and prejudice towards immigrants can be reduced by directing magnetic energy into the brain.”

This of course led Briggs to worry aloud if eugenics was coming back into favor, even though, as Raw Story helpfully notes, genetics did not factor into the study at all: “It focused on an area of the brain and the effects of shutting it down temporarily.”

But Miller saw a more imminent threat posed by these findings: Transgender advocates could one day use magnets to zap the faith in God right out of Christians’ brains! Per Raw Story:

“The whole transgender crowd, they see their main opponent as being those of faith and so obviously they’re going to use any aggressive tactics they can to move forward that agenda,” Miller said

Some grist for Miller’s paranoia mill: The original design for the ARM processors present in all of our smartphones was developed by Sophie Wilson, an eminent computer scientist who happens to be transgender, and a luminary in the realm of mobile computing technology (which we put near our brains every day!). Maybe the best thing to do, Joe, is cancel your show and take what’s left of your un-magnetized brain off the grid before it’s too late.

ViaRaw Story

Illustration: A Health Blog via Flickr

Check out previous editions of This Week In Crazy here. Think we missed something? Let us know in the comments!

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Box Office: ‘Ant-Man’ Tops With $58 Million, ‘Trainwreck’ Impresses With $30.2 Million

Box Office: ‘Ant-Man’ Tops With $58 Million, ‘Trainwreck’ Impresses With $30.2 Million

By Brent Lang

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Marvel’s Ant-Man landed with a solid $58 million at the weekend box office, while Trainwreck‘s Amy Schumer put her own raunchy spin on romantic comedies to the tune of a $30.2 million debut.

It marks Marvel’s 12th consecutive first place opening, although Ant-Man isn’t at the level of other, bigger-name costumed heroes like Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man, all of whom performed better out of the gate with their solo adventures. Going into the weekend, some analysts expected Ant-Man to top $60 million, but its opening is similar to The Incredible Hulk, which earned an initial $55 million on its way to a $134 million U.S. haul.

Disney distribution chief Dave Hollis admitted that he wished the movie had done a little better, but still praised Marvel as a model of consistency.

“No one else could take what is really an obscure character and launch it in such a big way,” said Hollis. “It’s a sign that they’re doing so much right and that it’s a brand that has overwhelming momentum.”

Universal’s Trainwreck bested initial projections which had it debuting to roughly $20 million. The story of a commitment-phobic woman who falls for a sports doctor got a boost from strong reviews and a long and winding promotional tour that saw Schumer doing everything from posing provocatively with C3PO to sexting Katie Couric’s husband.

“Amy Schumer is absolutely a star,” said Nick Carpou, Universal’s domestic distribution chief. “Based on exit polling, after the humor, she’s the second biggest reason people went out to see the film.”

Trainwreck kicks off Schumer’s film career on a high note and marks the second biggest opening for director Judd Apatow, behind only Knocked Up‘s $30.7 million debut. Crowds were primarily comprised of women, as females represented 66% of ticket buyers. Universal produced the comedy for a modest $35 million, so it should make a healthy return on its investment.

That’s a fraction of the $130 million that Marvel spent on the story of a thief (Paul Rudd) who becomes a hero after donning a suit that gives him the powers of an arthropod. The superhero film will lean heavily on foreign crowds as it looks for profits. Internationally, Ant-Man opened in 37 markets, including Mexico, the U.K., France, and Russia, pulling in $56 million.

Ant-Man, which employs a more tongue-in-cheek, lighter tone than most superhero movies had hoped to pull in younger crowds. To that end, the domestic audience for Ant-Man was 28% comprised of families. Fifty eight percent of ticket buyers were male, 59% were adult, and 13% were teens.

In its second weekend, Universal and Illumination Entertainment’s Minions captured runner-up status, pulling in $50.2 million. The Despicable Me spin-off has racked up $216.7 million stateside since it debuted, while selling boatloads of merchandise.

In milestone news, Jurassic World became just the fourth film in history to top $600 million domestically. The dinosaur thriller added $11.4 million to take fifth place on the box office chart and propel its North American total to $611.1 million.

Meanwhile, Inside Out pushed past $300 million domestically, joining Toy Story 3 and Finding Nemo as the third Pixar film to reach that mark. Domestically, Inside Out racked up $11.6 million for a fourth place finish, bringing its North American gross to $306.4 million.

Among art house releases, Woody Allen’s Irrational Man pulled in $188,115 on five screens during its first weekend, for a per screen average of $37,623. Also opening, Mr. Holmes with Ian McKellen as an aging super sleuth, grossed an estimated $2.5 million on 363 screens, for a per screen average of $6,856.

Overall box office numbers are still being tallied, but it looks like ticket sales will be up more than 30% over the same period last year. It marks the sixth consecutive weekend of gains, a sign that business is booming at the multiplexes. That cuts both ways, as Disney and Marvel discovered.

“It’s great for the business, but what it means is that it’s more competitive,” said Hollis.

Photo: Cast members Michael Douglas poses at the premiere of Marvel’s “Ant-Man” in Hollywood, California June 29, 2015. (REUTERS/Kevork Djansezian)

Supreme Court Cites ‘Spider-Man’ Comics — Really!

Supreme Court Cites ‘Spider-Man’ Comics — Really!

In a ruling handed down Monday morning, the Supreme Court cited one of the great sources of moral authority in America: The original Spider-Man comics, created in the early 1960s by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.

The case, Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, involved a dispute over patent royalties, in which Marvel Entertainment had invoked a 1964 case to declare that it no longer had an obligation to pay royalties to Stephen Kimble, the inventor of a toy imitating Spider-Man’s web shooters, once the patent itself had legally expired. (Marvel had previously bought the patent from Kimble, as part of a settlement from an infringement lawsuit he had filed in 1997.)

Thus, Kimble needed the Supreme Court to overturn that 1964 decision, which they declined to do for him — saying instead that Congress is the proper venue to change the patent law in this manner.

Justice Elena Kagan wrote the majority opinion, in which she was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor. The decision was based on the principle of stare decisis — which states that the court should respect past decisions in the absence of deeply serious and compelling reasons to overturn them:

What we can decide, we can undecide. But stare decisis teaches that we should exercise that authority sparingly. Cf. S. Lee and S. Ditko, Amazing Fantasy No. 15: “SpiderMan,” p. 13 (1962) (“[I]n this world, with great power there must also come—great responsibility”). Finding many reasons for staying the stare decisis course and no “special justification” for departing from it, we decline Kimble’s invitation to overrule Brulotte.

For the reasons stated, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.

It is so ordered.

Kagan also wrote earlier in the opinion, on the key issue of patent law itself: “Patents endow their holders with certain superpowers, but only for a limited time.”

Movies That Deserved Best Picture Nominations

Oscars academy awards

By Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

When it comes to the Oscar endgame — winning, losing, or just being in the running — it’s all about the numbers: the votes cast, promotion dollars spent, red carpets walked, interviews granted, pounds lost.

The most confusing count this year — and every year since 2011 — might be the number of movies nominated for best picture. In 2009, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences doubled the number of nominees from five to 10. Two years later, the rules were adjusted to allow more flexibility, and the academy has been increasingly flexible ever since. Nine films were nominated in each of the three years that followed, but this year only eight movies will contend for the academy’s most coveted award.

Why didn’t the academy use all 10 best picture spots?

Oscar experts like my colleague Glenn Whipp can go on about the ins and outs of the academy’s preferential voting and how a best picture nominee must get at least 5 percent of the early votes. Others say it just wasn’t a great year at the movies.

I disagree. Those blank spaces represent missed opportunities. Two chances for the academy, oft-criticized for conventional thinking, to be bold and surprising, to broaden the “best picture” umbrella and reconsider the category for a new age.

There are many years I would not only commend the members’ restraint, I would send along my sympathies, knowing how creatively bleak some years can be — how barren of interesting films, how boring.

But 2014? Hardly the case. It was a very good year, with wonderful surprises. From massive to mini, mainstream to indie, the movies were a delicious stew to be savored — for challenging topics, flights of fancy, sheer entertainment value.

Yes, the year brought its share of duds. Even more fell into that terrible mid-range we call mediocre. Of the eight that made the A-list — American Sniper, Birdman, Boyhood, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Imitation Game, Selma, The Theory of Everything, and Whiplash — most deserve their place without question, and they represent a refreshing range of styles.

A couple, however, are enough on the bubble — American Sniper carried in on the back of Bradley Cooper’s performance, The Theory of Everything pushed over the biopic pro-forma line by Eddie Redmayne’s remarkable renderings — to make the two unfilled spots even more glaring.

Since the academy didn’t choose to choose, I will.

Here are the 2014 films that I feel should have been contenders at Sunday’s ceremony for Oscar’s top prize. They are the best movies that didn’t get a best picture nomination.

Image: Davidlohr beso, Flickr

most-violent-year

A Most Violent Year

This is a film with the kind of pedigree the academy usually embraces — and for good reasons. J.C. Chandor’s penetrating story is set in the crime-ridden New York City of 1981. A mob-defying Abel Morales is the good guy played with quiet calculation and exceeding care by Oscar Isaac. His wife, Anna, is a mob baby grown good, given an edgy gum-smacking verve by Jessica Chastain. The film didn’t hit theaters until the very end of the year. Screenings for awards-season glitterati came late as well. Perhaps that sealed this fast-forgotten film’s fate; for the most part, the movie has barely registered.

Ida

Ida

Border-crossing should happen more often. This foreign language nominee is so exceptional it deserved consideration alongside Hollywood’s best. Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski’s stirring story of religion, identity, and faith is one of the more idiosyncratic cuts at the Nazi legacy to emerge. A Catholic novitiate named Ida, orphaned as a baby and raised by nuns, is asked to visit with her only surviving relative before she takes her vows. Her journey, depicted with stunning cinematography, is a soul-wrenching one. The performances by Agata Trzebuchowska as the title character and Agata Kulesza as her estranged aunt are searing. As the young woman discovers she is Jewish by birth, orphaned by the Catholic family who killed hers for their farm and the Nazi mentality that gave them the license, the very idea of the god one prays to is contemplated.

Nightcrawler

Nightcrawler

The inclusion of this provocative outsider would have moved the academy beyond its comfort zone. But deserving? Yes. Rarely has Los Angeles seemed seedier than the crime scenes caught by the lens of a serial shooter. Conjured up by writer-director Dan Gilroy, it gave us one of those memorable characters who crawls under the skin so deeply he is impossible to shake. Jake Gyllenhaal’s Lou Bloom, a freelance videographer trolling for shots of blood and guts that can be sold to the local TV news, is hungry in every sense of the word. Though the 30 pounds the actor lost added to the eerie look, it is his portrayal of an insatiable appetite for success that unnerves. The effect of Lou’s unblinking ambition is riveting. Between Gyllenhaal’s stirring acting and Gilroy’s scary telling, the film is psychologically chilling in just the way a well-crafted, Hitchcockian thriller should be.

Guardians of the Galaxy

Guardians of the Galaxy

Very risky business for the academy to go so light, you may be saying. Au contraire. Though Guardians — part science fiction, part spoof — puts it about as far outside the academy’s best picture box as one could imagine, qualitatively director James Gunn’s aim was true. I realize it is not one of those quote-unquote prestige pictures, but the movie was extremely smart, well-constructed, well-acted, and absolutely entertaining, due in large measure to the engaging Chris Pratt as its charming space jockey and a wise-cracking animatronic raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper). Rarely do films we love enough to see again and again make it in. Guardians was a real chance go with a rule-breaker and show that the academy is open to taking the not-so-serious films more seriously.

The Interview Seth Rogen James Franco

The Interview

Even riskier business would be the bizarre case for considering The Interview. With its farcical faux plot against North Korea’s parody-perfect leader Kim Jong Un, the silly Seth Rogen and James Franco slapstick became the most significant movie of the year. Not on the quality scale, mind you. No high IQ scores either. But thanks, or no thanks, to a very touchy foreign tyrant, The Interview became a symbol of free speech in America and the current poster child for squashing cyber-bullying rather than being merely a bad movie. I’d slip it in as No. 5 on my list, but I figure I’m already pressing my luck.

(c) 2015 Los Angeles Times, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC