Warner Bros. invited a number of bloggists to take a gander at 26 minutes worth of Watchmen footage and, scandalously, our man Leonard Pierce was not among them. They’ll pay for this. Kevin Kelly of Spoutblog was among them, and if you simply can’t wait for a minute-by-minute breakdown, he’s got it. “As the footage opens, the Comedian is sitting back watching Richard Nixon give a speech on television about aggression from the Soviet Union. He’s having a cup of tea and enjoying a cigar, just a quiet evening at home. He starts flipping channels and settles on a commercial for Nostalgia Perfume from Veidt Industries, with music provided by the idyllic velvet tones of Nat King Cole. Just a quiet evening at home for a former costumed vigilante. That is, until a figure dressed in black busts his door down and proceeds to kick his ass all over the place before hurling him out the window. As he hurtles to the ground, his iconic smiley face pin, now with a dollop of blood on it, lands beside him, providing the iconic cover for the graphic novel, and the most identifiable image from the Watchmen universe.” Yeah, that’s how I would have done it, too.
At Scanners, Jim Emerson makes the case that movie critics are the best political pundits.
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