This latest cameo in The Dark Knight made be both happy and disappointed. You see, Nicky Katt is so much more than just the Stuka shtick. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, check out the clip above. Basically, it's the dude being super, extra talkative when most other people probably wouldn't. In Sin City, that meant blabbering on after getting an arrow right through your torso. In TDK, that means going on and on about how the high-speed chase just isn't good.

Yes, that super-talkative cop from the chase scene is none other than Nicky Katt, Stuka, the detective in The Brave One, the puss-filled guy in Planet Terror, the Carnoburger Cashier in The Doom Generation, and the marijuana-smoking Clint in Dazed and Confused.

I'm happy to see him wherever he pops up, but please -- Hollywood Powers that Be, don't relegate Katt to just over-talkative guys in the action. He's so much more than light-tongued typecasting!

Frank Miller's The Spirit just took a turn for the bizarre. The full trailer is up at Film School Rejects, at least for now (the teaser is here, permanently), and it makes the movie look downright avant-garde. The accompanying Rejects blog post calls the look and feel of the film "forced," and I have to agree, even as I recognize that it's not fair to make such a judgment from a promotional clip. But then the post also badmouths Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, at which point it lost me.

Anyhow, my fear is that The Spirit will prize style to the exclusion of a story that can be taken seriously -- something both Sin City and Sky Captain avoided doing. There really aren't any words for the costumes Samuel L. Jackson wears in the second half of the trailer, and I can't imagine I'll be able to watch him in the movie without giggling. On the other hand, misguided complaints about 300 not withstanding, I can't imagine Frank Miller ever generating anything to be giggled at.

Can anyone who's familiar with the source material -- a comic book not by Frank Miller, but by Will Eisner -- shed any light on what's going on in that trailer?

The buzzing murmur for Sin City 2 has been going on for eons now, making fans die a slow death in anxious anticipation. And, for most of that time, Angelina Jolie's name has been in the mix. Back in 2006, Rosario Dawson said that Robert Rodriguez was putting the whole thing on hold due to Jolie's pregnancy. Since then, the project has remained in limbo -- a will they or won't they cycle that doesn't look like it will wrap up any time soon.

But now MTV has talked to Jolie about the potential project while discussing her new film, Wanted. Will she take on Ava Lord in A Dame to Kill For? "I don't know. I found the first Sin City impressive, but I don't know what they're going to do with the next one to make [it] as original as the first one." Well, it's more story on the folks of Sin City, so I imagine it will be a bunch of fresh chills and thrills in the same style -- I'm not so sure what originality she's hoping for.

Now, she did go on to say she would be curious if she was offered the role. I can't tell if she's being polite, or really interested. However, aside from her upcoming delivery and family tending, there's not a lot on her plate, so I imagine it would be easy to slip another dose of Sin City in. Is it time for the Dame? And should Jolie be Ava Lord?

Frank Miller is just blogging like crazy these days. Which is great -- I wish everybody I ever wrote about had a blog, because it would make everything ten times easier and more interesting. No conjecture. Straight from the horse's mouth!

Today, Miller addressed the concerns and criticism directed at the first teaser for The Spirit, mainly centered on its resemblance to the eye-popping Sin City. "It only resembles Sin City in that I am its director, and, well, yes, I have my ways and my proclivities .... No, Sin City, that one's my own baby, folks, and it looks the way it does for its own reasons. The Spirit is, and will always be, Eisner's Spirit .... To drive the point home, The Spirit , despite any accidental impression left by that kickass teaser-trailer, is a full-color movie. Sin City - and I hope to make of it a movie trilogy all its own, come Hell and high water - is, visually, a playhouse for black and white."

Frank Miller's place in comic book history is already secure, but these days, he's aiming to leave a sizable IMDB entry too. Miller revealed exclusively to MTV Movies that
not only is there renewed interest in a film adaptation of his comic miniseries Hard Boiled, but that he's hoping to direct it himself. "We're talking about [it]. I've got a really unusual way I want to do it."

After co-directing Sin City, and helming The Spirit himself, he's officially caught the bug. "I'm in love with directing. I've found a way to expand my career. Comics and directing are really two sides of the same coin. That's what Robert Rodriguez taught me ... good drama is good drama."

Hard Boiled was originally published in 1990 by Dark Horse, and is one of the few Miller comics out there that the man himself didn't illustrate. It is about a humble insurance investigator named Carl Seitz, who unexpectedly discovers that he's a cyborg assassin named Nixon. Though psychotic, he's also heralded as the savior of the robot race. It was remarkably violent for its day -- and still is. At one point, it was in development to be directed by David Fincher, and starring Nicolas Cage.

People are really hating on Miller for this swerve in his career, but frankly, I think it's pretty cool. I always admire anyone who can transition from one field to another -- and it is always exciting when an author gets to helm their own work. Alan Moore should have totally gone this route.

The first two posters for The Spirit have debuted online shortly before the trailer (which hits today at 4pm). The image above comes to us via AICN and it appears to be the official teaser poster. Included after the jump is the exclusive Comic Con poster for The Spirit (via Yahoo Movies), featuring Eva Mendes as Sand Saref -- bending down, oozing sexy in some tight black outfit. The gal looks pretty damn good, and I love how her character's name is only a few letters off from the name of a font. Fonts are hot! Right off the bat we can see these first two posters have that Sin City vibe Miller and Robert Rodriguez created a few years ago for the live-action version of Miller's other comic. The cold, newspaper-retro style with a splash of bright red.

Personally, I absolutely loved Sin City and so I'm definitely loving what we've seen so far from The Spirit. I do wonder how much Miller (who's directing The Spirit himself) borrowed from his experience with Rodriguez. Will we see an identical vision, or will Miller emerge with his own style, look and feel? What do you think?

Comic Con poster after the jump, or in the gallery below.

Shoot 'Em Up opens this week, and Clive Owen is making Bugs Bunny look all sorts of tough and cool. He banters. He sexes up the ladies. He handles guns like a pro. Heck, he even tries to buy them with food stamps. All this badness and guns has thrown me into an antihero state of mind. But before I can go a-listing, we've got to decide what an antihero is.

Blending all of the vague definitions together, your antihero is basically the person who doesn't imbue the classic attributes of heroism. This could mean being inept and stupid, but for the means of this list, I'm going for the antiheroes whose methods, manners and intentions can be questioned. Some are good guys who do bad things, some are bad guys who do good things. Some just don't care as much as a good hero should. But they're all so uber cool that whether you've seen the films or not, you know who they are, and you might just be quoting them.

Note: Only one cop is included on this list, and it isn't John McClane -- he's much more of a bitter hero than a questionable antihero.

Harry Callahan -- Dirty Harry (1971)

I know what you're thinking: "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself a question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

While I love most of the guys on this list, the one who has to be there above all others is Dirty Harry Callahan. He might be a cop trying to keep the streets safe, but instead of upholding the law, he enforces morality with his gun, boot, or whatever else he can find. In the first of the action series, Callahan is hunting down Scorpio, a serial killer loosely based on the Zodiac killer. He tortures suspects when he needs to, and does it all in a suit, tie and sweater. Most of all, he's "Dirty," but no one knows the specific reason why.

Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller collaborated on, in my humble opinion, the best-ever adaptation of a Miller work -- Sin City (Although admittedly, I didn't see Elektra, so don't hold me to that!) Sin City did pretty well at the box office, and critics and audiences loved it. You'd think the powers that be would be thrilled to have a sequel in production. Alas, that doesn't seem to be the case. There's been much talk lately that Sin City 2 has been officially delayed, and some are saying it might not even happen. The sequel, an adaptation of Miller's A Dame to Kill For and a prequel to The Big Fat Kill, has been pushed back due to Miller's gig directing The Spirit and Rodriguez's planned remake of Barbarella. Miller is pretty sick of waiting, telling mtv.com "Robert (Rodriguez) and I have a script and we're all raring to go. We're aching to get started. I want to work with that crew again ... that wonderful cast."

Miller says "There was just some problems above us that I don't understand ... that I don't really want to understand." Still, Miller insists Sin City 2 is happening, and that he fully expects a Sin City 3 as well. Rodriguez has said the third film will focus on Miller's Hell and Back, about a hallucinating artist named Wallace -- a role that has repeatedly been linked to everyone's favorite pirate Johnny Depp. "I ain't talking cast until we're actually shooting or close to it!" says Miller, but the article makes it seem like Depp is a definite ace in Miller's sleeve. I sure hope we get a couple more of these flicks, because I thought Sin City was awesome. It took me a second viewing to come to that conclusion, but that is where I now stand, in case you are interested. From a nudity standpoint alone, the movie deserves two ... no, three thumbs up. Carla Gugino, if you're reading this -- wanna go out for a burger or something? Or get married?

Even though Frank Miller's works have been adapted for the screen on several occasions and have met with resounding success - especially in the case of his latest adaptation 300 -- and he's always been a strong proponent of the filmmakers who've brought his work to the screen, I guess there was always something missing. So, what's Frank Miller looking for that he doesn't already have? Well, like many people who work in Hollywood, or wish they did, he wants to direct.

Miller, who was the co-director with Robert Rodriguez on Sin City and will take that role again for the sequel, was being interviewed by London's Daily Telegraph while promoting his newest film 300. In the article he expressed his enthusiasm for 300 and more film adaptations of his work but also said: "This, I hope, will be the last property of mine that isn't directed by me." His statement makes perfect sense to me. Let me explain why.

Like it or not, filmmaking is a director's medium. The writer, while very important to the process, usually ends up taking a back-seat to the director once they come on board a project. As a writer, the best way to make sure the story you want to tell gets told the way you want to tell it is to direct the film yourself. Obviously, Miller knows this and believes it and wants to make sure he gets to do it his way. Now that 300 is a monster hit, I'll bet he has a very easy time convincing studios to let him direct his own projects from now on. After all, money talks and those $70 million dollars have to be talking pretty loudly right now.

This weekend, Zack Snyder's 300 opened strong on Friday with $27.7 million, leading us to wonder if it would come close to the record held by Ice Age: The Meltdown, for the highest March opening -- $68.0 million. Turns out it pole-vaulted right over it, opening with $70 million, the new highest March opening ever. It's also the twenty-first biggest opening of all time, just ahead of The Day After Tomorrow and just behind Finding Nemo -- an incredible box-office haul for a film with no stars, opening well before the summer season gets going. Most significantly perhaps, the film made its production budget back in one weekend, meaning that, as we first mentioned yesterday, Snyder's next project, The Watchmen should be able to get a fast-track at a budget Snyder wants, despite the fact that it will be an R-rated film not geared towards the PG-13 crowd in any way.

The impressive weekend take could also have implications for the other major Frank Miller project in the work, Sin City 2. There were rumblings at this year's WonderCon that Angelina Jolie may have moved closer to signing on the dotted line to play a significant part in the sequel to Sin City, but nothing ever materialized out of those rumors. If it was a money issue holding the studio up, then perhaps they'll have a new incentive to get the deal done and get the film into theaters as soon as possible.