Well, not entirely kicked. Real-life superhero Phoenix Jones was involved in a scuffle in Seattle over the weekend and ended up with a broken nose.

From SeattlePI:

Jones told KOMO the altercation that injured him happened Saturday night near Fifth Avenue and James Street. Jones, who said he was breaking up a fight, called 911 and put one of the men in a headlock and waited for police, KOMO reported.

Another man pulled out a gun seconds later and when the superhero let go of the man he was holding, that man kicked him in the face and broke his nose, Jones told KOMO.

Seattle police are still annoyed by the costumed crew, saying they should “trade their capes for cell phones,” and pondering (mockingly), “Does Superman get his ass kicked?” What a bunch of cynical-pants!

Phoenix Jones does admit that calling 911 was “like waving a white flag,” but insists that while he suffered a slight injury, he and his fellow superheroes are still more prepared to handle street thugs than the average citizen. He says, “I endanger my life with a reason and a purpose,” and maintains that “if police aren’t here, criminals feel free to run wild in my city.”

Godspeed, Phoenix Jones. Godspeed.

Previously: Real Life Superheroes in Seattle

(SeattlePI via Movieline)

Have you seen this masked man, Seattle?

First reported in November, a man wearing an exceedingly well-made superhero costume has been stalking the streets of Seattle, looking for crime to fight. Like in Kick-Ass, except real. He calls himself Phoenix Jones, and apparently, he has actually prevented a crime.

NBC is certainly not done with the superhero drama genre, but I’m forced to wonder just how long they can beat this horse. In a post- Dark Knight and Kick-Ass world where men in long underwear and capes can go toe-to-toe with dirty cops and criminals realistically, isn’t it time to bring some of that to the small screen? Enter: The Cape, a drama about a good cop in a bad city who must become the beloved hero of his young son when he’s framed for murder and assumed dead by both those he loved and those who betrayed him.

Because Heroes, obviously, wasn’t grounded in reality enough.

It’s official: Matthew Vaughn, director of Kick-Ass and Stardust, is at the helm of X-Men: First Class, the reboot of the X-Men movie franchise. This new prequel film (a long the same world-exploring lines as Wolverine: Origins) will “chart the epic beginning of the X-Men saga,” which probably means Professor X and Magneto as young rebellious allegory-for-civil-rights-leaders.

This dashes our dreams of watching a movie where the X-Men sit at the front of an airplane for two and a half hours, enjoying complementary drinks.

Read on...

After a significant amount of pre-release backlash and a opening weekend that netted slightly less money than a kids movie that’s been out for a month, it’s still not too late (early?) for the people behind Kick-Ass to start talking about a sequel.

Stars Aaron Johnson and Christopher Mintz-Plasse, in an interview with MTV News, said that there was one in the works. Mintz-Plasse’s character Red Mist would be the villain.

Of course, their info seems to be based on a conversation Mintz-Plasse had with Mark Millar “a few months ago,” and we all know that Mark Millar never makes unfounded claims about movie deals that never actually happened. Ever.

Kick-Ass is not doing so well in its first box office weekend, according to USA Today. The Millar-based flick expected to at least clear its production costs, but estimates put it at earning $19.8 million.

This puts it neck and neck with How To Train Your Dragon, which took in $20 million in the past two days, its fourth box office weekend.

Roger Ebert has mentioned his opinion on video games before, but, as he says “I have declined all opportunities to enlarge upon it or defend it.” That has changed, now that the movie critic has published his response to Kellee Santiago‘s “Games Are Art” TED talk here, on the Chicago Sun-Times website.

I found that Ebert spent most of his time refuting her arguments point by point, and did not build a compelling argument of his own. While I could go through his essay point by point refuting arguments, I was hoping to keep my blood pressure to a manageable level now that the Great Kick-Ass Hype Tsunami of 2010 has finally come to a close, and besides that, I’ve always found that refuting someone in great detail without presenting a better founded argument of your own to be a little bankrupt of purpose.

My major objections after the jump.

Despite — or maybe because of — the almighty publicity blitz that has accompanied the movie since December, Kick-Ass has been garnering surprisingly good reviews, with a 76% “Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 67% score on Metacritic: Not stratospheric numbers, mind you, but a surprise to some who had been following Kick-Ass‘ progression.

But one influential reviewer is dragging down those numbers, and the film’s backers have to be taking notice: Roger Ebert. Ebert himself acknowledges that he tends to give higher-star reviews than most critics — or even himself in his “first 10 or 15 years on the job” — which makes his 1-star takedown of Kick-Ass, which he calls “morally reprehensible,” all the more devastating.

Kick-Ass hits theaters on April 16th, and we say thank goodness — not only because we want to check it out, but also because that will presumably staunch the endless flow of Kick-Ass promotional materials, which seemingly TKTK.

Anyway! Geek blogs being geek blogs, these things tend to come in OMG-OMG-OMG succession, leaving you out of luck if you want to swim against the hypestream and just look at the things. Luckily, Geekosystem is here to play your Maxwell’s Demon and stack ‘em all up in one place. In the process, we think you’ll agree that the Kick-Ass publicity blitzkrieg is no joke:

Kick-Ass‘ premiere in the UK last night presented British media outlets with a grand conundrum: how to make a big studio release about a relatively obscure comic palatable and understandable to the proles?

You could: talk about the source material and the complicated legacy of Mark Millar (boring), focus on the movie’s controversies around violence and swearing (better), or sidestep the film entirely by talking about how celebrities like Brad Pitt are in attendance (much better).

But then: What if the (female!!!) screenwriter behind the movie — one Jane Goldman, wife of British TV personality Jonathan Ross – happens to be wearing a low-cut top? Now we’re getting somewhere: