Joss Whedon has signed to write and direct “The Avengers 2,” Disney Chairman Bob Iger said Tuesday.

Not that I really had any doubt, but definitely awesome to get confirmation.

Whedon wrote and slid behind the camera on “The Avengers,” which Iger called a “phenomenal success” during the call. The adaptation of the Marvel Comics series has grossed nearly $1.5 billion worldwide.

Whedon’s script and direction were praised by critics and fans for their light and often humorous touch.

I loved The Avengers and can’t wait for the second installment.

This Total Recall does away with the wonderfully queasy ambiguity of the 1990 film, in which we’re never sure if Quaid is a badass involved in a rebel conspiracy to decide the fate of the world or if he’s just a regular schmuck who’s become too fond of and given himself over to the illusion he purchased for himself as a bit of escapism. We never really doubt that Farrell’s Quaid/double-agent Hauser is experiencing a legit reality even when another character tries to convince him otherwise — there’s no sense, even when the trouble begins, that what happened at Rekall was anything but what…

“Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora – and even this weekend the shootings at the Sikh Temple in Milwaukee in which seven people were killed – the list of gun massacres in the USA grows ever longer. America is mainly split on the issue of gun controls – this film concentrates on what young people there think should happen now,” said Executive Producer Steve Anderson in a release on the BBC website.

(emphasis mine)

Of course the focus is going to subtly shift to gun control. Not to get too political on Moviebyte, but I’m going to let my conservative side come out for a minute here. Let us…

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was shot at 48 frames per second, rather than the film industry standard 24fps. The first public presentation of footage, at CinemaCon this past spring, didn’t go so well, with audiences finding that the increased detail seen in the HFR footage made the film look cheap, rather than more impressive.

Huh. Who would have guessed there was a reason films have been shot at 24fps all these years?

WB will do a very limited release, “perhaps n[o]t even into all major cities,” to start getting audiences used to seeing HFR. There may be a wider rollout after…

Get ready for non-stop action, edge-of-your-seat suspense and spectacular chase sequences with everyone’s favorite assassin in The Bourne Trilogy! Matt Damon is Jason Bourne, an elite government agent determined to outwit and outmaneuver anyone who stands in the way of his finding out the secrets of his mysterious past. Follow his explosive, action-packed adventures in three blockbuster films from one of the most popular series of all time: The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum. Loaded with hours of bonus features, The Bourne Trilogy is the complete Bourne…

TJ and Joseph before and after Episode 3 of The MovieByte Podcast. They discuss iMessage, Minority Report original movie poster, how to talk about Total Recall, Mountain Lion Notification Center, iOS sliding switches, the original Total Recall, how bad of an actor Arnold Schwarzenegger is, MovieByte backend problems, Varnish and load balancing and more.

This week Joseph and TJ discuss the idea of a Brady Bunch reboot, the canceled TV Show Alcatraz, Vertigo and the best movies of all time, Hulu Plus on the Apple TV, content providers and the digital age, ‘The Hobbit’ reworked trailer, and the main discussion on the new film Total Recall. TJ and Joseph disagree on how good the movie was, what parts they liked and disliked, what could have been better, and the totally deplorable state of the first incarnation of Total recall in 1990 with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

From the moment I saw the trailer for this film, I knew I wanted to go see it. I’m a pretty big fan of Minority Report, as well as The Matrix, and this film appeared as though it would have similar thematic elements from both of those films. Additionally, I’ve only seen Colin Farrell a couple times, but he’s been good in what I have seen. I particularly enjoyed The Recruit.

When I first saw the trailer however, I was not aware that it was a remake of an Arnold Schwarzenegger film. But if I had been aware, I think I would have wanted to see it all the more, not being a big Schwarzenegger…

No matter, even, that star Matt Damon walked away in 2009. The studio just figured out that they could shift focus to a different character in the same universe, and Jeremy Renner was brought in to play the Bourne-esque non-Bourne figure Aaron Cross. We’ll find out next weekend how he does as the new face of the franchise, but in the meantime Funny or Die has something to say about the studio’s decision.

We have yet to see if the movie is any good or not, but this was just too funny.