Welcome back to another edition of Insert Caption -- the game that moves itself to Thursday when the next day happens to be a holiday! Last week we finished our back-to-back Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen caption contests asking you to give us your best piece of funny for a photo of Megan Fox from the box office blockbuster. Our three winners all took home a copy of the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen video game, with each winner representing a different gaming system. Congrats to you all!

1. "I think you're overreacting Megan, second place on Maxim's Hot 100 really isn't THAT bad." -- Michael S. (PS3)

2. "The Ultimate Weapon of Mass Distraction..." -- Jeremy E. (Wii)

3. "Oh, there's Bin Laden." -- Tommy L. (XBox360)

See full image and all captions

This week we're finally exiting the world of giant robots and taking a closer look at a film that's so buzzed-about it might just enter the Oscar equation as a wild card real soon. I'm talking about Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker, which some are calling one of the best films of the year and the decade (I'm serious -- folks are loving this flick!). And we have something real cool for you Bigelow fans this week; one grand prize winner will take home one Kathryn Bigelow DVD prize pack containing one Point Break DVD, one Near Dark DVD, one Strange Days DVD and one K-19 DVD. Um, sweet! You know what to do next ....

Read the official rules for this contest

Set the bar low enough, and it can only be exceeded. That's how I feel about the upcoming big-screen version of The A-Team, a 80s television series entirely beholden to the staid formula of the day and ripe for reinvention. I didn't hate the series so much as I found it routinely mediocre. My colleague Monika Bartyzel loved the series as a kid, yet still questioned the casting choices that were being entertained: Liam Neeson as Hannibal? Bradley Cooper as Face? Adding fuel to the fire, rapper The Game is being considered to play the role of B.A. Baracus, according to blackfilm.com, which quotes "a very highly reliable source in the entertainment industry."

For me, the only thing that made The A-Team watchable was the bantering between the characters, and the choices so far all indicate that director Joe Carnahan is aiming for a more straightforward action picture, based on a script by Wanted's Michael Brandt and Derek Haas. Which is crazy, like moving Miami Vice to Seattle or transforming the lead character in Get Smart into a fairly bland, somewhat competent secret agent. (Even though the latter still made money.)

The mistake would be in confusing brand recognition with brand loyalty. If you're promising fans of the TV show that you're going to deliver the same thing, only bigger and better, then you damn well better deliver something in the same spirit. I haven't seen The Game's work as an actor (Waist Deep, Street Kings) yet; is he any good? If this rumor is true, could he wear the mohawk of the immortal Mr. T?

Above: Is this our first good look at The Runaways?

Though neither girl was alive during the 1970s or 1980s (both were born in the '90s), that's not stopping Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning from losing themselves in the time period and doing some serious rocking out for their upcoming flick The Runaways, which is a biopic about the women who breezed in and out of the famous band -- including Joan Jett (Stewart), Cherie Currie (Fanning), Lita Ford (Scout Taylor-Compton) and Sandy West (Stella Maeve), among others.

Just Jared nabbed a few photos from the set that show both Stewart and Fanning clowning around all retro'd out, sporting some pretty spectacular gear. It must've been fun to be in charge of wardrobe for this film because these ladies totally lit it up with style. I'm not entirely sure which girls are featured in the image above; I know Stewart and Fanning are in the back, and I think that's Scout Taylor-Compton in the blue and Stella Maeve up front, though I'm not positive so feel free to correct me. Check out a larger version of the image above down below along with a couple others, and more over at Just Jared.



The Runaways is due in theaters next year.

Hopefully some of you are old enough to remember the classic Atari video game Asteroids, where the object of the game was to navigate this space ship through an asteroid field and shoot down whatever crazy flying object got in the way. That was it -- no storyline, no insane graphics -- just a bunch of glowing dots on a screen. Obviously the cinematic possibilities are endless (ahem, sarcasm), and so that's why there was a four-studio bidding war (!) for the film rights. Yup, four studios fought to win the film rights for Asteroids. That's where it's at right now in Hollywood ...

Read the rest at SciFi Squad

When a show that struggled to make three seasons, with two complete reboots, gets tapped for a feature film, you don't hold your breath in anticipation. Last August, we learned that Rob Thomas and Kristen Bell were meeting to discuss turning Veronica Mars into a feature film. That news was confirmed by Thomas in January, and it sounded like things would work out and actually head into production.

But the tide is finally turning to the expected demise. EW's Ausiello talked with Bell at the Saturn Awards, and she said: "I don't think it will ever happen, and here's why: [Series creator] Rob Thomas and I had a powwow, and we were both 100 percent on board. We took our proposal to Warner Bros. and Joel Silver told us that there is no enthusiasm [there] to make a Veronica Mars movie, and that is unfortunately a roadblock we cannot compete with."

Can't say that's a surprise. When I spoke with Silver at TIFF last year, he said he was open to discussion about the idea, but didn't sound exactly keen. And speaking as a big fan who loves Bell's Mars, I can't say I blame him. If the audience wasn't there for the show, they're not going to be there for a feature film, no matter how much we'd wish it so.

It's not really a spoiler to say that in the upcoming cute and quirky 500 Days of Summer, the film begins with the following disclaimer: " Any resemblance to people living or dead is purely accidental ... Especially Jenny Beckman ... Bitch." Having seen this film play at festivals with Q&As afterward, the first or second question asked is always about whether or not Jenny Beckman is a real girl and perhaps the inspiration for the character Summer (played by Zooey Deschanel). The filmmakers have said that she is real, and at a recent screening of the film in Chicago, director Marc Webb added this to the end of his answer: "... yeah, she's real, look her up on Facebook."

So we looked her up on Facebook, and, yup, there's the Facebook page for a girl named Jenny Beckman who kinda sorta resembles Zooey Deschanel. She's a fan of 500 Days of Summer, her favorite music lists bands on the film's soundtrack (The Smiths are listed first) and she's friends with director Webb, as well as the writers of the movie. All that being said, I've walked away with a few questions:

1. Is this really the Facebook page for a girl named Jenny Beckman, and is this same Jenny Beckman the inspiration for Zooey Deschanel's character in 500 Days of Summer?
2. Is this just a piece of viral marketing on behalf of Fox Searchlight and/or the filmmakers to get people interested and keep them interested in the film?
3. If this is a hoax, then who is that girl in the picture? Is that really a girl named Jenny Beckman? Is the name Jenny Beckman fictitious, but is that still a picture of the girl who inspired the character?

We want answers! What do you think?

[By: Erik Davis, reprinted from 11/3/2007]

Part of my job involves watching every single movie trailer that comes down the pipeline, and, in most cases, writing about it. Thus, it pains me to keep hearing the same old voice-over lines from the guy with the deep voice. A comedian friend of mine named Jeff Sussman once did a bit on the movie trailer voice-over guy. In it, he speculated what it would be like to live with the movie trailer voice-over guy. Do all of his dinner conversations begin with "In a world ... where chicken cutlets and mashed potatoes come together ..."? It was a pretty funny routine, and Jeff had the voice down good. Unfortunately we lost Don LaFontaine (the legendary voice-over guy) recently, but there are still a host of guys with deep voices there to tease us at every turn with the same overly used lines again and again.

Well I'd like to take a stand today! No more of this! The following lines have been used in countless movie trailers, and I feel it's about time we officially retire them. From this day forward, I urge all of you to take a stand and help us ban the following lines of dialogue from showing up in future trailers. Think about the children, people! This one is for them ...

While G.I. Joe certainly isn't the first movie to use Slurpee straws as a marketing tool, when you take into consideration all the bad buzz that's been following the flick around for the past several months, it's almost as if Paramount handed this joke to us all on a silver platter. Yes, those of you lucky enough to suck down your slurpee through one of these special straws will get the chance to own a limited edition G.I. Joe straw figure, complete with its own easy-to-make-fun-of awkward pose. There's four all together, and fans will get to choose from Snake Eyes, Duke, Storm Shadow and the Baroness. I actually think the Snake Eyes one is pretty cool (though Snake Eyes is always cool), but I honestly have no idea what's going on with the other characters. I mean, Duke looks like he's either praying or attempting to squeeze one out. You tell me ...

One imagines you'll be able to find these straws at your local 7-Eleven once we inch closer to the film's August 7 release date. Check out larger images of all four characters below.



[via Topless Robot]