We’ll be talking Spring and Summer movies on this week’s podcast and to get it going we went and saw Kick Ass this weekend. I have to confess I haven’t read the comics but after seeing the movie I may have to. Kick Ass is the first movie we’ve seen in a while that Shannon and I agreed on. We both really enjoyed it on its own, though after having spoken to a couple of friends who are fans of the comic it sounds like it may not have quite lived up to its potential. At the very least it is a far better example of what a movie based on a Mark Millar comic could be than Wanted was.

One of the big stories surrounding the movie has been the character of Hit Girl, the over-the-top violent 11 year old sidekick to Nickolas Cage’s Big Daddy. To anyone afraid that this character will encourage violence and bad language in our young girls, allow me to refer you to the words of 13 year old actress Chloë Grace Moretz who played Hit Girl.

Younger children shouldn’t see the movie. It’s R rated for a reason. R rated is 18 and over, and if you are 18 and over, then you can take someone younger, but I wouldn’t advise it. I don’t advise it even if you’re 90 years old. I don’t think a 90-year-old, [or anyone] young or old, should say what I say, or do what I do in the movie. It’s a movie for a reason. It’s not meant to be taken as real life. I wouldn’t advise anyone to do what they see in the film — or what happens to [wannabe superhero] Kick-Ass in the film — where he gets stabbed and run over — will happen to you.
- via i09

Sounds to me like she has a pretty good handle on the situation. If you are worried that exposure to this material will harm your child, make sure your child is not exposed to it. This is not Spy Kids. This is not a cute happy movie about kids dressing up as super heroes and living out adventures. It is, though, a well made and well directed R-rated action movie with a good dose of over-the-top violence.

Your Monday news is under the fold.

Books

• Dayton Ward announced a new anthology in the Start Trek: Vanguard series on his blog. The anthology will be a collection of four novellas by Ward, Kevin Dilmore, David Mack and Marco Palmieri. Each of the novellas will focus on “one or more of the series’ rather large cast, with tales spanning the length of Operation Vanguard from inception right up to and perhaps even past the events of the fifth book, Precipice”. The book, which has a working title of Star Trek: Vanguard – Declassified is set for release next year.

Comics

• Jeff Smith’s classic fantasy adventure comic Bone has run afoul of a parent-led effort to have it removed from school libraries in one suburban Minneapolis-St. Paul district. Local news is reporting that the objection stems from depictions of smoking, drinking and gambling in the book. Smith responded to the controversy during his spotlight panel at this weekend’s C2E2 convention;
  

  [One child's mother] objected to the gambling, smoking and drinking and the sexiness. I feel sorry for her son. He’s going to be really embarrassed, but you know, not everybody has to like my stuff. That’s fine. But I really can’t go along with this un-American concept of banning books. Let the Nazis do that.

  

• Sci-Fi Wire has news of a new X-Files comic coming from WildStorm. The new series will put Mulder and Scully in the world of the 30 Days of Night vampire series. The six-issue series will be co-written by Adam Jones and 30 Days of Night creator Steve Niles with art by Tom Mandrake. There is no official release date for the series yet.

Movies

• It seems that the April Fools joke that we all hoped wasn’t just a joke is, in fact, true! Multple sources, including Entertainment Weekly are reporting that Joss Whedon has been hired by Marvel to direct The Avengers. Additionally, rumors have been flying that Whedon will not only be doing a rewrite on The Avengers script, but that he may be doing work on the Captain America script as well.
  
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