Lightning Round: 7/22

It’s been a very slow news week, with nothing really worthy of a full post. So, I’m unveiling a new feature – lightning round film news! Lots of bullet points, nothing in-depth. Hey, this is the Internet. Get your well-thought-out analysis elsewhere.

• The biggest event of the week is Comic-Con in San Diego, giving you updates on all your superhero and other nerd-type films. First up: a “reliable inside source” revealed that a studio casting grid officially has The Riddler listed for Christopher Nolan’s Batman 3. This all but confirms that E. Nygma will be the villain for the final film in the trilogy. Supposedly Joseph Gordon-Levitt is listed as “interested” next to the role, but it is veeeeery early to make that call, and interest at this point is no guarantee. Seems like a good fit, although I personally LOVE Kris Tapley’s suggestion of Michael C. Hall.
• Robert Rodriguez and the cast of Machete (sans Lindsay Lohan, of course) handed out tacos at Comic-Con yesterday. I just thought this was kind of hilarious and awesome.
• Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan was confirmed as the opening film for the Venice Film Festival in September, and will play in Competition. Meanwhile, Focus Features announced that Anton Corbijn’s The American will NOT debut at the festival, as expected. Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere and Julian Schnabel’s Miral should get their first looks at Venice, while Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech and Ben Affleck’s The Town are question marks.
• Guillermo del Toro announced his next project in the wake of leaving the director job on The Hobbit: a remake of the Disney property The Haunted Mansion. Yeah, last seen incarnated as that terrible Eddie Murphy family flick. But, Del Toro insists that this time around The Haunted Mansion will be an honest-to-God chillfest. OK, if you say so.
• The big Comic-Con reveal today was a new trailer for TRON: Legacy. The geek within me is salivating over this movie; as I believe I posted on a Facebook status, but what’s not to love about Bruce Boxleitner and Jeff Bridges back in their original roles, a high probability of unintentionally hilarious techno-babble, Olivia Wilde just…being Olivia Wilde, and a thumping score by Daft Punk? Not to mention the incredibly impressive motion capture technology that is allowing Bridges to play both his normally-aged self and a 35-year old version of himself (which seriously looks EXACTLY like he did back in the 80’s). From a “art of the trailer” standpoint, this one isn’t as good as the one that debuted a couple months ago, but it’s worth it to get our first real look at digitally-enhanced Jeff Bridges:

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/tron-legacy.html?showVideo=1#movTitle