So much potential and so much promise… and yet so much blandness. I had been trying to stay as hopeful as one could when it came to Green Lantern. Even after Neil – who I usually think is spot on when it comes to his criticisms – posted his review, I still held on to what little optimism I could maintain. “Perhaps Green Lantern would be this summer’s G.I. Joe, a film that is so cartoonish that you just can’t help but to laugh with it,” I thought. But, boy, was I wrong. Green Lantern is no laughing matter. Green Lantern + The guy who reinvented Bond twice + Reynolds’ mojo + Great Sarsgaard + Potential for Space Battles + Mark Strong as Sinestro = what should’ve been a real event film. Wha happened?

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s the movie blogosphere’s diversity action plan. Because too many movie blogs just regurgitate press releases, post POV videos of street luge or bring you the same 25 stories that everyone else already has. We take those 25 stories, smash them together, wipe away the blood and mix ‘em with the best links we can find in a nightly tradition known to its friends as Movie News After Dark… For those Hobbit fans who aren’t completely sold on Peter Jackson doing the thing in 3D, see the above picture. If Gandalf approves, how can the world disagree?

One of the more important secondary characters in the upcoming Warner Bros. comic book adaptation Green Lantern is that of Senator Hammond, the father of the film’s main Earthly villain, Dr. Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard). Senator Hammond is connected to just about everyone — and now he’s been cast.

Now that everyone has had time to calm down over the casting of Sylvester Stallone as The Riddler in Batman 3, it’s time to move on to some fresh rumors for other superhero films. Namely, an important and plausible casting rumor for Iron Man 2.

A family friendly look at a post-apocalyptic city buried miles beneath the crumbling ashes of civilization. What about that doesn’t sound like a ton of fun?

While my own review of the upcoming Fox Walden release City of Ember is coming later this evening, I will say this: in addition to some odd human characters, there are also some very interesting creatures within the film.

Moviehole is reporting on a story in the Durham Herald-Sun that claims a sequel to Bull Durham has been green-lit and will begin shooting next spring.

Henry Bean’s latest film, Noise, about a man who tries to silence New York City by breaking into cars and disconnecting the alarms is based on a true story. It’s partly his own. I don’t just mean he wrote the script. I mean it’s based on his own life.

Al Gore has global warming. Rev. Jim Phelps has homosexuality. Uwe Boll has film critics. Everyone needs something to fight whether it matters to the rest of the world or not and director Henry Bean takes noise pollution to task in his sarcastic, clever, witty David and Goliath comedy Noise.