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A new trailer for The Dark Knight Rises came out recently, and that means someone did a thing with it! In this case, another go-round matching scenes with Batman: The Animated Series. I'll tell you guys something: While I am excited about The Dark Knight Rises and like Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, I'm the one third of the staff at The Mary Sue who is not a die-hard Batfan. So, I was surprised to see that Bane has a side job as a luchador. But this animated trailer is a pretty great edit, and I'd totally watch this movie, too. Especially if it had a luchador in it. To read less infuriating things about Bane, here is Susana's essay at Geekosystem about him. More comic book passion, less Mexican wrestling. (via DC Women Kicking Ass) Previously in Batman..

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/the-dark-knight-rises-third-trailer-animated/

Undomiele of Deviantart, we are duly impressed. You can see a video of how she did this at When Geeks Wed...

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/things-we-saw-today-some-positively-devine-diablo-nail-art/

First, we have great news concerning Mindy Kaling's pilot that she filmed for Fox -- it was picked up for series, and that series also has a title: The Mindy Project! (Exclamation point ours.) The announcement came during this week's TV upfronts, and the newly-minted sitcom showrunner kept a diary at Vulture for the duration. Her journey began in Boston at her childhood home and ends in New York, but not before a layover in the Land of Tears of Joy...

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/mindy-kaling-upfronts-diary/

To what do we owe this unexpected bounty of Carrie Fisher and Stormtrooper goofery? To this August's Star Wars Celebration, a yearly Florida based convention, and Lucasfilm, who released these photos in anticipation of the event. And there's plenty more Leia were that came from, so venture downwards, brave reader...

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/new-star-wars-set-pics/

The Hollywood Reporter was given exclusive shots of Community's season finale -- and they are in the style of 16-bit video games! The show's third season ends tomorrow night with three episodes, with one last foray into glorious geekery. My only question is if this has something to do with the dreamatorium, or have Troy and Abed just officially lost their minds completely. ..

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/community-video-game/

If there's one thing that we've learned from the production of The Avengers, it's that Joss Whedon is a superlatively busy guy. He's got four movies out this year, only two of which have yet to be released, and one of them is a Shakespearean play filmed by Joss and a bunch of actor friends over a weekend at his house. And that's just The Avengers, heyoooo - Anyway, lets move on and not dwell on how that joke didn't actually make any sense. The Los Angeles Times sat down with Whedon before The Avengers even opened to ask him about its themes, and the odds of him coming back for a sequel, and unfortunately for our hopes and dreams, he displayed some pretty classic artistic integrity and said he wasn't sure yet...

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/joss-whedon-is-torn-over-whether-to-take-on-avengers-2/

Today marks 22 years since Jim Henson passed away, and despite his exit from this earthly stage, the Muppets have endured. We posted the video above last year to mark the occasion and we're posting it again, because 1. we love it and it's unbelievably sweet, and 2. we like to clean out our tear ducts once in a while. It's healthy. And after watching this video, clean tear ducts are a promise from us to you. And any day we can talk about the Muppets is a good one, even if the circumstances are less cheerful, but still hopeful. (via YouTube) Previously in Muppets..

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/muppets-celebrate-jim-henson/

Yesterday, after twelve years of waiting, fans of the Diablo series of clicky, bloody, magic-y, hack and slash video games were finally able to get their fingers and eyeballs on the retail release of the latest game in the series: Diablo III. Diablo... well, it's just one of those games. Superlatively popular, addictive and memorable to a generation of players. Our own Becky Chambers has said that while the restrictions of the previous two games on gender (each class had only one accompanying avatar, rather than giving players a choice of gender) were the some of the first times she felt pressured into a mode of gameplay because of her gender, as games the Diablo series was still a huge and treasured milestone in her hobby experience. And while at this point we can't tell you much about the game's plot or themes, what we can say is that 1) for the first time, choosing a class in Diablo and choosing your character's gender aren't the same decision, and 2) the character models for the women of those classes are really pretty great. So great, in fact, that there's already been a ton of cosplay for them in the four years that Diablo III has been in official development. We'd like to pay tribute to some of those cosplayers in this post. And lets face it, even if you managed to get yesterday off to play the game, now you're probably back at work and need that sweet, sweet Diablo III fix...

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/diablo-iiis-kickass-character-models-a-tribute-in-cosplay/

There was a rumor that this was going to happen, and now it is confirmed: screenwriter extraordinaire Aaron Sorkin will be the one adapting Walter Isaacson's biography of late Apple CEO Steve Jobs for the big screen. Sorkin, most famous for his work on The West Wing, has already won an Oscar for his last script about a tech giant (The Social Network), so this will be familiar territory for him. Not that Sorkin couldn't handle unfamiliar territory ... oh, wait, just remembered Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Never mind. We'll take familiar territory...

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/aaron-sorkin-writing-steve-jobs-biopic/

Strange History.net brings us the movie-worthy story of Cornelia Fort, an upperclass girl from Nashville, Tennessee whose father made one critical mistake when he called his three sons into his study and made them swear a solemn oath on the Bible that they would never take to flying aeroplanes. He didn't think it would be necessary to ask Cornelia to swear it too. And in 1940, at the age of twenty-three, Cornelia did begin flying planes, and in a matter of months was employed as a flying instructor in Honolulu, Hawaii. Which is how she found herself in one of the small handful of civilian planes that were the only American aircraft in the skies on the morning of December 7th, when Japanese aircraft and submarines began the Pearl Harbor attacks...

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/cornelia-fort-pearl-harbor/

Everyone has heard about the pervy things that Disney animators have slipped into their movies, like the word "sex" in The Lion King, or the erection in The Little Mermaid. But little inside "jokes" like this go way back to the earliest days of Disney when Walt Disney was producing Mickey Mouse shorts. One such joke got one short, "The Shindig," banned in America in 1930 because an allegedly naked Clarabelle Cow was reading Elinor Glyn's Three Weeks, an erotic novel from 1907. Oh, those saucy Disney animators! ..

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/the-shindig-banned-mickey-mouse-short/

Now that Marvel has earned all of the world's money with The Avengers -- having already passed the billion-dollar mark -- ABC is going to try to hop on this gravy train and continue to develop a TV series for the character with director Guillermo Del Toro. This is not an entirely bad idea, considering The Incredible Hulk enjoyed a four-season run on CBS from 1978 to 1982. So, we know this can work on TV. But after The Avengers, do we really want to see someone besides Mark Ruffalo play Bruce Banner and his rowdy green counterpart? And even if we did, can they even top the latest big-screen version of the Hulk?..

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/abc-hulk-tv-series/

I barely know how to deal with this video. Jane Espenson, prolific writer for shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Gilmore Girls, and ABC's Once Upon a Time (plus her web series Husbands), recently appeared on a new interview series, Cocktails With Stan, that features Jenna Busch and the Generalissino Stan Lee as hosts. I implore you to spend the next few minutes watching Espenson and Lee discuss good villains, mutual admiration for each other, how Lee believes that had Marvel hired Espenson as a writer, they would have become "a bigger company faster," and a tiny bit of Joss Whedon. I'm going to throw the idea of a Whedon-Espenson-Marvel movie out there and hope it somehow materializes. What do I have to do? Clap my hands? Spin around three times? Light a candle? I'll do everything humanly possible to see this in my lifetime. (via World of Heroes on YouTube)..

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/jenna-busch-interviews-stan-lee-and-jane-espenson/

A Game of Thrones/Adventure Time mash-up featuring Jon Snow and Ghost as Finn and Jake? Someone make Daisy Edwards' creation happen for real. (via Ashley Hay)..

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/things-we-saw-today-70/

Nothing makes us happier than writing about good things happening to people we like! Ellen DeGeneres -- comedian, actress, TV host, all-around lovely person -- will be this year's recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. She will join the ranks of other honorees including Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Steve Martin, and Lily Tomlin and will be awarded the prize this October at the Kennedy Center. It's so nice to see that people actually give awards to people for making us laugh for a variety of reasons, and it couldn't have been bestowed upon a more joyfully silly person. Congratulations, Ellen DeGeneres!..

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/ellen-degeneres-mark-twain-prize/

This is a wonderful mash-up relevant to my interests! Harpuahound from the online community Engraver’s Cafe, created a unique science and science fiction-minded ring on request. Hit the jump to check out the side views! ..

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/sci-fi-ring/

In a shocking development in the world of "entertaining while being a female human," television shows that are run and written by women can be just as raunchy as show that are run and written by men behind the scenes! This totally surprising (and when I say "totally surprising," I mean "totally unsurprising") discovery kind of flies in the face of the whole "boys' club" environment we keep hearing about, even though female writers in late night are still pretty scarce. But don't you worry your pretty heads about your primetime shows. Those ladies might be peeing in jars and everything!..

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/raunchy-women-tv-showrunners/

If Facebook's has a reputation for not exactly being discrete with its users information, it's got nobody to blame but itself. Automatic opt-in privacy changes that are difficult to edit and its CEO's public stance that everybody should just wise up, step into the 21st century, and make all their data public and online do not exactly inspire confidence. And as Facebook prepares to go public in a somewhat different way, that is, with its initial public offering just a few days from now, it's no wonder people are focusing on its sometimes contentious relationship with its userbase. The Associated Press and CNBC got together to administer a poll to more than one thousand American Facebook users (who make up the largest national majority of the userbase) and Americans, and found that 59% of the users polled had little or no trust in Facebook to keep their information private...

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/users-dont-trust-facebook/

You remember when the NBC show Community spoofed the BBC's Doctor Who with their show within a show called Inspector Spacetime? First it got popular enough to have a web series (not affiliated with NBC) made. Then the hopeful creators of that webs series got sued by NBC. But, as Community lives on (for the time being), so does Inspector Spacetime and it turns out one Doctor Who star is a big fan. The BBC recently chatted with Karen Gillan just before she filmed her last episode of the long-running sci-fi show, and the actress described how she came to find out about Inspector Spacetime and even hinted at wanting them to hire her. The BBC thinks it's a delightful idea and is trying to start a campaign with the hashtag #AmyMeetsAbed. Now watch Gillan being completely adorable in this video. (via Doctor Who tumblr)..

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/karen-gillan-inspector-spacetime/

Can you see the vulva in this picture? Well, it's there, and it's ancient! A recent discovery was made of 37,000-year-old wall art -- possibly the first-ever wall art -- at Abri Castanet in southern France. And upon closer inspection, it seems like these primitive humans had a great appreciation for female sex organs, so much so that they drew it all over the walls of caves. And it was the first thing they ever wanted to draw on the walls of caves! (Plus some animals and things, but most notably, vulvas.) So, what are we to make of this? Were primitive humans pervs? A lot less inhibited than people are today? Celebrating the female form? Or just simply practicing still-life?..

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/ancient-engravings-of-vulvas/

You'll be able to see Idris Elba very soon in Ridley Scott's Prometheus, but the British actor recently dropped some hints on Marvel Studios' Thor 2. Namely that he'll be back to take up Heimdall's mantle in the film. But as much as we love Elba, what we'd like to know is, will there be more Sif?..

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/idris-elba-thor-2/

When Tao Porchon-Lynch was a younger woman, she won contests for her shapely legs. Now, at age 93, she's been using those legs -- and arms, and back, and abs -- to bend herself into yoga poses that make people decades younger than her gasp in admiration. Her yoga journey began 45 years ago, later in life than most people who pursue it, but after finding herself loving the poses and the culture, she suck with it and share it with others. Her dedication has now earned her the title of the world's oldest yoga teacher by Guinness World Records...

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/tao-porchon-lynch-worlds-oldest-yoga-teacher/

R2, we asked you to shut down all the trash compactors on the detention level...

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/star-wars-weekends/

As many gamers will be able to tell you, today marks the release of Diablo III, the long awaited next installment of Blizzard's Diablo series. We've talked about the game before, and fully understand the hold it has over gamers of a certain age. It wouldn't be launch day without server overcrowding and the discovery of some easily avoidable but still game breaking bugs, but, odds are, if you're into the game and you're reading this, you'd love to be playing right now and the only reason you're not is probably because you have some sort of real life responsibility... Isn't being a grown up fun? In the meantime, enjoy this animated short produced by Blizzard with Titmouse studios, the people behind Metalocalypse, Guitar Hero's cinematics, the opening titles of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and the ping pong anime sequence on Community...

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/happy-diablo-iii-day/

Here's the short version of what happens in this video: 1.) Woman draws dragon. 2.) Dragon comes to life. 3.) You cry tears of joy. Personally, I just love it when something so simple, with no words, can pull out so much emotion from me. Here's the longer version - The animation, titled Crayon Dragon, was a second-year art project by California Institute of the Arts student Toniko Pantoja. Of course his work wouldn't be complete without the magical music composed by Denny Schneidemesser, violin by Taryn J. Harbridge, low and tin whistle by Kristin Naigus and sound design by Glenn Harfagre. Pantoja achieved the entire effect by using, "Flash for the character animation, and the coloring for the character animation. Photoshop was used to speed paint the backgrounds, and After Effects to put everything together. Final Cut Pro was used for the final outcome for the video." You can check out more on Pantoja's blog. Sit back (perhaps grab a tissue) and enjoy! (via io9)..

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/crayon-dragon-animation/

No, but seriously: we watch Sherlock, too. (Doctor Who on Tumblr)..

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/things-we-saw-today-where-our-knowledge-of-british-culture-comes-from/

Here's a funny story for your late afternoon enjoyment: Zookeepers in Pakistan regularly purchase alcohol for the zoo's elephants for when the animals get a little keyed up during mating season. Or so they claimed. For twenty years. If that isn't funny enough for you to begin with, try this one: Someone thought it was strange that elephants were basically being "prescribed" booze, so they asked a veterinarian, "Hey, can elephants drink booze?" And the vet said, "No, elephants cannot drink booze. God, I hope they haven't been drinking booze." Don't worry! The elephants never drank any of the booze. It was for the zookeepers, who bogarted all that elephant-relegated booze for all those years. ..

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/booze-for-elephants/

Do you ever think to yourself, "Man, you know what I'd love to make the time for one of these days? A marathon of Hayao Miyazaki movies." Well, let this collection of minimalist posters from The Art of Animation provide you a little more motivation for such a thing. More after the jump...

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/hayao-miyazaki-minimalist-posters/

Editors Note: Long time readers will remember that last year, because of the way the Game of Thrones fanbase is divided, we actually had two recaps: one written by someone who had read the books, and the other by someone completely new to the story, but already in love with George R. R. Martin's world. Well, this time around it's a little harder to find someone who hasn't read the books, but our very own office manager Sarah Devlin stepped up to the plate. (You might remember her from our Walking Dead recaps) There was just one problem: she didn't have HBO yet. But this week, she does, and she joins our tradition of twin recaps from those who have and haven't read the original source material. I'll be recapping the remainder of this season of Game of Thrones, which will certainly be eye-opening for me since I am totally new to the show. I haven't seen the first season, or read the books, and last night's episode, "A Man Without Honor," was my first introduction to the series. It's a steep learning curve, but I hope I'm up to the challenge. This week's episode certainly confirmed for me that the show is exactly as violent as I've always heard. Theon, who was holding Bran and Rickon hostage, went berserk once they escaped and maybe killed them. That is, he definitely killed two children, but it's not totally clear whether or not they were the right ones. Better to kill too many kids than too little in the Game of Thrones universe, I suppose...

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/game-of-thrones-s2-ep7-newbie/

Editor’s Note: Last week we started down the path of the second half of HBO’s Game of Thrones Season 2. This week Amy Ratcliffe continues with her delightful recaps although we have a bit of a change-up. Amy's post will include information from the George R.R. Martin novels throughout, but in just a few minutes we'll have another recap up from Sarah Devlin, someone who hasn't read the books. So read on if you'd like to know where the television show strayed from the source material and see what Amy thought about last night's episode,  A Man Without Honor. ..

Details: http://www.themarysue.com/game-of-thrones-s2-ep7/