Iron Man II filmed this week at LA landmark Randy’s Donuts in Inglewood. It was the first scene between Nick Fury and Tony Stark, though by reading almost all the reports on the subject, Samuel L Jackson (Fury) and Robert Downy Jr (Stark) weren’t really on location at the same time.

That being said, they sat Downey in his Iron Man costume in the donut hole, then flipped the setup and had black-trenchcoat-clad Nick Fury get out of a car and yell up at him.

Vic at Screenrant made these here observations:

“The gauntlets are much beefier on top of his hands, there are some gold highlights in the rib cage area and the chest piece looks redesigned as well. Looks like the tricep area is beefed up along with the shoulders, too, giving the impression (to me, anyway) of a more powerful armor.”

I’ve been trying to compare this suit to the blurry ones in the background of the previous Iron Man II photo, but I’m still undecided as to if we’re seeing the original Iron Man armor here or the new, sleeker version. Like Vic says, this suit looks a little more bulk, where the two red and gold suits in the background of photo one seem to be getting progressively smaller.

And what’s up with that shit on his hands? Boo-urns.

Not that this has any bearing on the movie whatsoever, nor really tells us anything about the red lycra parts of Downey’s costume with black and white references for CG later.

It’s too early to tell, but I’m guessing - if photos like this are already making the rounds - that we’ll see an official look at the Iron Man costume soon.

Something about online film journalists has everyone doing one of three things: 1) Taking wild guesses as to who will land the Green Lantern part, 2) sending passive aggressive tweets about how possible Green Lantern casting is non-news, 3) ignoring it entirely and laughing.

I’m 2 parts 3 with a single part 1 in the sense that less than a handful of posts down is the rumor that Bradley Cooper will be dawning the green tights. And I also posted that story that Latino Review was totally wrong about placing Chris Pine at the top of the list for the Hal Jordan/Green Lantern role. Now, I’m going to link you LIKE THIS to another Latino Review report. This time they are making another semi-educated guess in favor of a muscular 25-year old named Shawn Roberts who worked on Latern-director Martin Campbell on something called “Edge of Darkness.”

I’m also laughing, because whomever ends up getting the part will make all these back and forth blog posts obsolete.

Also on the Green Lantern front, it got pushed back to 2011. The original date had it coming out on December 17th 2010, but now Warners is listing it as June 17th, 2011. The Christmas-to-summer transition sounds like a mix of two things. One, the crew now gets some time to actually film the movie instead of rushing it through. Two, Warners is pushing it to go against Pixar and Cars 2. That’s some confidence to show in a superhero film.

Then again, Warners has always been weird about it’s big films, lest we forget how The Dark Knight doing so well pushed Harry Potter to this July for no other reason than this year needed more Warner-friendly reciepts.

You like noir, you say? Sin City tickle you? Did you want to chain smoke cigarettes and go after those who wronged your dame? After Brick, were you wondering why your high school experience was soft boiled in comparison.

I dig noir almost as much as I dig sci-fi. They both have their tropes, but these days with actioneers bleeding into sci-fi/fantasy territory because it allows people to make pretty CGI, the hard boiled detective noir stories look like a series of cliches.

I’m not sure if it’s bad that director Russell Mulcahy (Resident Evil: Exitinction) and writer Mark Hosack have the dame in red, the detective behind his desk and stoic reaction shots of Thomas Jane as he unravels the deal gone wrong.

This is how familiarity works for non-franchise films. If you’re into noir and violence and caper films, the second trailer for Give ‘Em Hell Malone (the first was just violence) actually does what it’s supposed to: shows you what to expect.

The above production still from District 9 a film produced by Peter Jackson and written and directed by 3D special effects artist Neill Blomkamp went up on Coming Soon without me paying much attention. Talk about the ShoWest trailer had me intrigued, but I’m not gonna lie; the way ti was described I thought it was going to be some sort of “aliens used to live here” mocumentary. Sort of if Cloverfield met 60 minutes.

That being said, I wasn’t far off in the plot/style department, but WAYYYY off in the coolness department. The more this movie’s advertising evolves, the more interesting it gets and the more I move District 9 up my list of badass sci-fi to take in this summer.

The first teaser graced the webs last week and piqued my interest by coming on like a documentary about immigration…until they showed me a huge spaceship and an alien I couldn’t understand with a pixelated face.

If that wasn’t cool enough, and it was, IMDB released and then pulled an “uncensored” and subtitled version of the trailer, which actually added pathos to the alien by showing his face and letting us know that the humans are keeping the aliens on Earth, in District 9, seemingly against their will.

I’m interested in this movie and the preview hasn’t even breached the Kafka-esque plotline. The movie takes place in South Africa, where a man is sent to do an investigation within the alien district. He’s infected by some kind of alien bio agent, and learns enough about the condition of the aliens’ lives to start fighting against humans on their behalf, possibly by slowly turning into one.

Nifty huh?

I think so.

Nothing like sci-fi with awesome effects, sympatheti aliens and a timely immigration theme.

The dead serious face above is Bradley Cooper, whom you might have caught in the previews for this summer’s comedy The Hangover (preview HERE). Why he is the banner image in a post about your favorite superhero properties is a different matter, because Bradley Cooper is on the short list for a Green Lantern audition:

I’ve just spent the last hour or so on the phones, tracking down a rumor I heard, and HitFix can exclusively report that Bradley Cooper is now one of the guys most likely to don the suit and slip on the power ring as The Green Lantern for director Martin Campbell.

That isn’t the only superhero property to slowly move forward this week, though it is the only piece of news repping for DC Comics (unless you count Quentin Tarantino’s pending and lengthy essay on Superman Returns).

Marvel has the bulk of the news, this via Coming Soon:

Iron Man 2 is, of course, already filming for a May 7, 2010 release, but Marvel said this morning that the Kenneth Branagh-directed Thor is scheduled to start filming in the First Quarter of 2010. No formal offers have been made to actors, though they said that casting announcements are likely the next few months. Thor is targeted for a May 20, 2011 release.

Marvel added that The First Avenger: Captain America, to be directed by Joe Johnston, is scheduled to start filming in the summer of 2010 for a July 22, 2011 release.

And just because the concept of a unified Marvel Universe makes me sequel, here’s another tidbit from Empire about the Avengers film:

“Zak Penn is already on board The Avengers [as writer] and he’s spending a lot of his time looking into what we’re doing with Iron Man, Thor and Captain America, seeing how we’re tying it all together. And he’s beginning to outline the script now – he’ll be doing that over the summer.”

Both of the “secret” endings to X-Men Origins: Wolverine will get their own films, so SPOILERS abound, let’s look at ‘em:

This scene shows Wolverine drinking shots at a bar in Japan, claiming he’s “drinking to remember” but he probably won’t be drining for long, as he’ll most likely get the shit kicked out of him by some samurai who will hopefully teach him not to be such a plot-less crazy soldier. That’s right, I want the new Wolverine film to be about Wolverine. Jackman, help me out:

Fox and Seed are in development on a sequel to “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” which topped the domestic box office over the weekend.

The Seed partners have begun planning the sequel, which they are squarely focusing on the samurai storyline originated in the comic series, and whose Japanese locale was teased after the film’s final credits. A writer has yet to be hired. Seed will produce.

Yay, Wolverine. I guess. I’m still kind of mad at film one, but I can’t bitch forever.

I’m sort of surprised that we haven’t heard more buzz about other X-Men franchise spin-offs before Star Trek comes along and steals all Fox’s Wolverine profits. We know that X-Men Origins: Magneto is in the pipeline, as well as X-Men: First Class, but now one of two “fan-favorite” character introductions in Wolverine is getting his own spin off. And it’s not Taylor Kitsch, yet…

Jason Reitman is really stepping out of his father’s shadow. Of course, when I write it like that, it sounds like I just re-watched Juno, Reitman’s most recent film. But, I’m talking about his newest, called Up In The Air. It features George Clooney as a corporate downsizer who is obsessed with collecting frequent flier miles.

Reitman’s pre-Juno film, Thank You For Smoking starring a single-faced Aaron Eeckhart was a humorous musing on PR lackeys for Big Tobacco. Juno was about teen pregnancy, and Clooney’s involvement in a film about a corporate lackey shot in the middle of the worst financial crisis since the great depression has me psyched for more quirky looks at socially relevant topics.

Yeah, these pictures are of George Clooney in a suit. So, if no one else, my Mom will click ‘em.