[via Monsters and Rockets]

So Mythbusters ended and a surprising number of people left. They let in the next surge of the crowd to fill up the seats. I moved up to a great seat and once some trustworthy people sat next to me, I asked them to watch my bags while I ran to the restroom.

I returned to see a trailer for a Batman video game. Whatever. But when that was over, a moderator started announcing the panel for the video game. Some dude, some dude, Mark Hamill and Paul Dini. Huh? Turns out Mark Hamill’s been playing the Joker on animated Batman shows for the last 17 years. Who knew?

Anyway, it quickly becomes the Mark Hamill show and the moderator and other panel guests have no power to stop him interjecting on every question and rambling on. God bless him.

This goes on for half an hour before they wrap it up and bring out the Watchmen panel.

Zach Snyder, Jackie Earle Haley and Dave Gibbons (!) come out and answer questions for about half an hour. It was super cool.

So then, Jackie and Dave leave and they set up for this crazy interactive screening of the Watchmen Director’s Cut. They’re going to screen it live and Zach will take questions from an audience online and in the room. A moderator reads the questions aloud and Zach answers aloud and two typists transcribe everything.

It was nuts.

Basically, Snyder just got to ramble about whatever he wanted. It was solidly entertaining. At one point someone in the room asked if he preferred chunky or smooth peanut butter. This provoked a somewhat drawn out answer. Minutes later, someone snuck up to the dais with a jar. When Snyder then complained that he needed bread and jelly, those appeared. Along with a plate and a fruit cup and a knife and a bunch of other food gifts.

Snyder gamely made a sandwich and talked about its virtues just as enthusiastically as he talked about Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” It was a really great evening and seriously so casual and fun to watch a movie with its director. I loved every second but I had to bail around midnight since I was exhausted.

Oh and the Director’s Cut looks amazing. I have to get that.

Just got home from seeing Wolverine. Get ready for spoilers.

Just a few things really:

I read something earlier about Wolverine being this year’s Iron Man. I know jack about movie trends but I really doubt this statement. For starters, Wolverine doesn’t move as briskly as Iron Man. The story isn’t as interesting. And the effects are downright laughable. Even Wolvie’s claws look chintzy. And what’s the deal with every scene in a car? It’s like a throwback to a time before CGI. Really, car scenes look more realistic in sitcoms.

But that’s nothing compared to the hack job on the scene where Professor X appears to rescue a group of mutant children. It’s some of the worst green-screening you’ve seen. They literally do that cheap effect where the children approaching the greenscreen background simply get smaller while the background stays the same. That’s not exactly what it looks like when people walk into the distance.

I really detested X-Men 3. And I’ve watched it since seeing it in the theater to see if it would grow on me. It didn’t. So I’m at a loss for how I feel about Wolverine. It isn’t as bad as Spider-Man 3. And maybe it isn’t so bad as X-Men 3 story-wise. But — and this pains me to say — X-Men 3 might be more artfully made than Wolverine. This was the director who was born to direct Wolverine? I’m unimpressed.

Knowing that it came from the creator of Foot Fist Way (which was similarly terrible), I hadn’t set my hopes too high. But after reading this interview with Seth Rogen, I thought it might be fun. Not so.

I bet Paul Blart was more entertaining.

They really fast-tracked that sequel.

Avoid.