Mickey Rourke’s performance as Randy “the Ram” Robinson in “The Wrestler” is the kind of thing you can’t wait to tell everybody you know about. You may have heard the first whispers about it already. Since debuting at the Venice Film Festival last week and premiering in North America at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this week, the buzz has started to build. And I’m here to tell you it’s for real. If this isn’t an Oscar-caliber performance, I don’t know what is.
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In over 70 years of shared comic history they’ve existed mostly as reluctant friends, memorably coming to blows on several occasions. The bottom line is that Superman doesn’t really like Batman at all, so it’s worth wondering how he’d feel now that he’s been saved by him.

Flush with the success of “The Dark Knight,” Warner Bros. has announced an ambitious slate of upcoming movies based on its DC Comics properties to be released within the next three years — notably a third Batman movie and a Superman reboot, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Announcement of the reboot — a complete reimagining along the lines of this year’s “The Incredible Hulk” — comes two years after director Bryan Singer failed to capture public imagination with a conflicted take on the Big Blue Boy Scout, and nearly two months after the gritty, nihilistic “The Dark Knight” opened to record-breaking numbers.

So how will Warner Bros. turn Superman around? By making him even darker, Warner Bros. Pictures Group President Jeff Robinov told the newspaper.
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It’s already the second-highest-grossing movie of all time, a gigantic cultural juggernaut that will soon break $500 million domestically. If you haven’t seen “The Dark Knight” at least twice, well, you haven’t really seen it at all. And, yet, for some people, the ending of the latest Batman film is still a complete and utter mystery, especially regarding the fate of Harvey “Two-Face” Dent, the villain played with such delicious glee by Aaron Eckhart.

(Massive spoilers ahead if you’re one of the two cave-dwelling people in America who has yet to see “The Dark Knight.”)
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Friends and family of late comedian Bernie Mac, who died on August 9 from complications due to pneumonia, came out to celebrate his life at a memorial service held at Chicago’s House of Hope on Saturday. Along with his family, his fellow “Kings of Comedy” — Cedric the Entertainer, Steve Harvey and D.L. Hughley — shared their favorite memories of the 50-year-old.

Although it was a sad occasion, the Chicago Tribune reported that Cedric the Entertainer made sure the event was also as funny as the man himself. “This dude is a very, very popular guy,” he told the mourners. “You know y’all were like, ‘Let me get four tickets to the funeral!’ He’s still the hottest ticket in town!”
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Don’t expect any boy wizards to make box-office magic this year. Though a teaser trailer for it just came out a few weeks ago, the sixth film in the series, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” will not be coming out in November after all. Warner Bros. announced Thursday (August 14) that it’s pushing back the release date of the film to July 17, 2009.

The studio said that it had reconsidered the timing based on the overall market as well as the recent writers’ strike.

“Our reasons for shifting ‘Half-Blood Prince’ to summer are twofold,” Warner Bros. President and Chief Operating Officer Alan Horn said in a statement. “We know the summer season is an ideal window for a family tent-pole release, as proven by the success of our last Harry Potter film [released July 11, 2007], which is the second-highest-grossing film in the franchise, behind only the first installment.”
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