The Point – February 2nd, 2009
It may be Groundhog Day but we won’t be repeating anything here. There’s a new Guest Of Honor headed to NY ComicCon, Five Cool Things waiting in the comic shop this week and just enough time for the director of FANBOYS to tell you more reasons why you have to see this film. 
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Transcript
Hello, it's Mike Raub, happy Groundhog Day and welcome to the point where all parts of pop culture come together. We don't have to tell you twice about the fact New York Comic Con is just days away and there are new names on that list. There's five cool things in the comic stores you only have to buy once to enjoy and you
gotta go see fanboys if we're gonna tell you more about why. It's Monday, February 2nd, 2009 and we get to the point right now. This is the point, the point radio, get the point radio. It's up to you, New York, New York. Four days and counting and things are changing at New York Comic Con.
Boy, there's a lot going on this week. Trust me on this one, including the word that J. Michael Zrzyński will not be attending the show. Of course, you may remember we announced him as the very first of the guests upon or on the list, but due to some things involving the motion picture changeling and the fact
that there's some big awards possibly coming his way, he will not be able to be in New York this week. But there's a number of other folks that have been added to the list. You know we've talked about him here over the past few weeks. The very latest is Terry Moore from Echo and Strangers in Paradise.
Terry, now a guest of honor at this year's New York Comic Con. And if you are searching through that guest list, you may see the fact that there's been a number of hints about a special mystery person to be involved in the Sony Online Entertainment presentation of DC Universe Online. You know that there's been a number of folks involved in that particular panel, but they
keep talking about somebody new coming along. Well, it's already been revealed that person will be Marv Wolfman. Marv involved with DC Comics for a number of decades, and the guy who did the original Crisis on Infinite Earths is now going to be part of DC's plans for DC Universe Online. There will be a lot more revealed on that and a very special presentation at New York
Comic Con. There will more likely be a few more changes this week. You can get the very latest at NewYorkComicCon.com or check out the personal blog of our buddy show manager Lance Finsterman. Find that at medium at large.net.
Ah, but what about us? Well, the point will be in the media area. Also known as Podcast Alley. We'll be there all weekend long. So if you have the show, take a break.
Come on by. We'd love to talk to you about what you think of the broadcast. We'll have our special first day of the show broadcast on The Point coming up on Friday at all the usual places. And then a big recap and all sorts of information for you when we're back here again next Monday
on The Point. The Point Radio. It's Monday, February 2nd, 2009. Here's what we're talking about in pop culture this week. Top Cow has announced this is the month that their Let Us Win You Over campaign is going
to begin. And it begins with Darkness, number 75. Now the Let Us Win You Over deal is a year long campaign by Top Cow, which means they can bring out free copies of regular comics to fans all around the country, including Canada as well.
But it has to be through a participating comic book store. Every month there's a different set of stores, every month a different free comic. So you need to talk to your retailer to make sure they're signed up to be part of the Let Us Win You Over campaign. They decided to launch the program with this very big anniversary issue of One of the Flags.
That is Darkness, number 75. It's an oversized 48 page comic. It features artwork by Dale Keown, Joe Benitez, Ryan Suk and so many others. And it will be in stores on February 11th. It will retail for $4.99 unless your store is one of the Let Us Win You Over campaign
stops. To get more information, you can go to Top Cow.com and again talk to your retailer to make sure they're going to be involved in Top Cow's Let Us Win You Over campaign. With this on your Watchmen to-do list, the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco has an in-depth look at the film and the graphic novel that inspired it.
With an exhibit that features dozens of concept illustrations, some of the early sketches and original comic pages, although illustrated of course by Dave Givens, you'll be able to follow the creation of the Watchmen universe from Givens' original concept sketches all the way to the props that are used in the film as well. Now the museum's exhibit opens February 27th and there'll be more information about it
as well, including dates, times, and even a special preview night. So if you're in the San Francisco area, keep this in mind. It is more information that you need and that you can get at cartoonart.org. Biggest Internet story of the weekend involves cartoon legend Mike Allard and the fact that he managed to talk Neil Gaiman into writing a new metamorphose story with him.
Now the story, and again not a series, just a story, will be in some upcoming DC comic. No announcement yet on what that'll be or when we can expect to see the story. In a rather unique move, Disney is releasing Bold on DVD on Sunday, March 22nd. Now it's a little different than what you might think. The Sunday release is the new combined Blu-ray DVD and digital file package.
Then on the usual release date, two days later, Tuesday, March 24th, the regular DVD version of Bold will hit the stores. Bonus content includes a lot of stuff including an entire disc that has an exclusive short featuring Super Rhino, which you are familiar with if you saw the movie, as barely the beginning of all the extra content as well in the Blu-ray version.
But again, if you want just the regular bare bones, you can pick that up in DVD stores on Tuesday, March 24th. All right, Tin Tin fans, this might finally be real. Paramount Pictures and Sony Entertainment have begun principal production on the 3D motion capture feature film, The Adventures of Tin Tin, Secret of the Unicorn, directed
of course by Steven Spielberg and starring Jamie Bell and Daniel Craig. Tin Tin will be filmed in a number of places around the world for the next year or so, and it's set to hit screens in 2011. It may have been done before, but we know we never really get tired of seeing Dracula in the comics.
Now there's a brand new five issue miniseries, adapted by Leah Moore for Dynamic Forces, called The Complete Dracula. This one takes the original story, plus it also includes that short story Dracula's guest that was removed from the original novel. John Cassidy provides covers for the five issue series, which begins in April, again
from Dynamic Forces. Good morning, radio. This is what's cool. All right, off the bat, let me tell you there's no truth to the rumor that if Dan De Dio comes outside today in CZ Shadow, there'll be another six part Final Crisis miniseries.
But it's still going on, at least for a couple of more stops in the comic stores. One of the five cool things this week include Final Crisis Legion of Three Worlds, number three by Geoff Johns. Two more issues to go in that five issue run. Dark Rain this week has a number of tie-ins, but the one cool one we like is Secret Warriors,
number one. Farscape from Boom Studios, if you passed on the very first one, well, you did yourself a disservice. Really a great adaptation of the TV series. Grab the first one if you can.
There's probably a second or maybe even a third printing on the way of that one, and number two is out this week. And again, always on our list of the boys, this time is issue number 27 from Dynamic Forces. Finally on the list this week, it is DC's Origins and Omens miniseries within the regular
series, just like last month with Faces of Evil. This time it kicks off in Secret Six, number six, and Adventure Comics, number zero. How about your Dark Rain tie-ins beyond Secret Warriors? Well, there's Invincible Iron Man, number 10, and Deadpool, number seven. And the hard stuff with the variant issues and the various covers that you'll be searching
for in the stores include this week Mighty Number One, a variant edition on that one from DC. There's also a variant for Sandman Dream Hunters, number four. I Am Legion from Devil's Dew has a whole bunch of different variant covers on this one. There's also one for Jersey Girls, number one from Image Comics.
Eureka number one from Boom and Farscape, number two again, also has a special variant cover. And of course there's two different covers, hopefully in equal amounts for this week's release of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, number 22 from Dark Horse. Not so long ago in a place really not that far away, a little concept was on its way
to becoming a big movie. A big movie about a quest for some folks to get together, find some friendships, and head out to find the fourth Star Wars movie. The project is fanboys. Now, we talked to you a little bit about this a couple of weeks ago, but since then we've
had a chance to sit down with director Kyle Newman to talk a little bit about what it took to go from concept to the big screen. And even unlike some of the bigger movies, this was a lot longer process for a lot of different reasons. Well, it was, it was a slow process to say the least.
We finished the film and I cut it. And at one point we stopped a little bit, almost prematurely of me being done with my edit. And we discussed, okay, we're going to do some minor reshoots because we shot it, you know, 53 in 27 days.
So we didn't have a lot of road footage because we just, you know, it seemed like something we could get later without all the actors. So it was put on the back burner. So we knew we needed to go back and get, you know, that footage kind of authenticate the road trip.
We also had to shoot the film half a day at Lucasfilm, like after we finished wrapped in the main part of production. That was necessary to authenticate the whole movie. I had to be scheduled as well. And you know, I think in the time when we were trying to organize this and I also wanted
to reshoot the opening scene, which we never ultimately did. So we all wanted to do. Ideas with how else we could enhance the film and, you know, take it to another level and make it an even bigger, broader movie. So that's where it opened up almost a can of worms, you know, discussion about, you
know, what, you know, what studio wants to do and what we were open to doing, etc. So, and then, you know, different movies came along and did well. That became, all right, not to throw out that plan. Now the studio wants to make it more like something else. So it was, it was a little frustrating because on one hand, it was like they knew they had
something that had a huge audience, but they also wanted to occasionally turn it into, you know, into something that it was. So from beginning to end in this process, did a lot of things change? Yes, it's changed a little bit. You know, things like the opening crawl.
I'll be honest with you, you're not my favorite. The joke at the end of it, don't like it. Open crawl, you only have three paragraphs. So imagine if it ended up in the third one. There's a great scene with the Indian chief in the film.
Danny Trejo and Chris Marquette, who plays Linus was dying, have a great scene. And right in the middle of that scene, I wanted to joke with a Star Wars crawl about being high. You know, those aren't things that I want in the film, but ultimately, you know, you'd make trades so I could go back and put at least put the cancer storyline back in, you
know. So that's kind of the scenarios up again. But do I still feel like this is the best version of the film? Yes. But there are definitely things in it that I don't like.
And I, and two or three moments I personally cringe at it. And there's also things I wish I had more time, you know, after I go back and do the fine, go back to the cancer storyline, you know, they call Kevin Spacey and organize the whole thing. But I had to go back and work from their version to turn it back into my version.
So obviously, I didn't have the time in two days or day and a half to do, recut an entire film and nuance it in detail. So I know there's still even a better version of this movie somewhere, but this is still the best version we've had. We'll talk to Kyle again toward the weekend a little bit about not only the big time guest
stars he got to appear in the movie. And believe me, there's a ton. But also about some of the actors themselves, including Kristen Bell and just how he got her in that Princess Leia slave outfit. Fanboys opens across the country this weekend.
Hopefully the theater near you, if you can break away from some of the other big films, it's well worth it. The Time Machine. It's February 2nd, 2009, but our first step back is all the way to the last century. 1996.
Winter was at its worst this week. The East Coast got another 10 inches of snow on top of 33 inches. It fell just a few days earlier. And to make it even more fun, the Groundhog saw his shadow. Mattel offered Hasbro $5 million for the rights to G.I.
Joe and then mysteriously rescinded that offer. And the jobless rate rose to 5.8 percent, which was the highest in the U.S. in almost a year. The theme of the movies this week was just a little dark and dramatic with Black Sheep, Mr. Holland's Opus, Bed of Roses, Dead Man Walking, and Nicholas Cage and Elizabeth Shoe
in leaving Las Vegas with a great soundtrack, including Michael McDonald. My heart is crying, crying, Lord, do I die? Maybe tonight had Urkel in Family Matters, Robert Stack in Unsolved History, CBS had to do South. Over on Fox, there was Unhappily Ever After, and in a lot of markets, we got treated to
it. In a time of ancient gods, warlords, and kings, a man in turmoil cried out for a hero. While the radio was an English duo who was absolutely no stranger to making hit records, the fact is, though, they really hadn't made one in the U.S. yet. They were at the top of the charts a number of times over the past few years in England
with songs like a remake of Cyndi Lauper's Time After Time and Elvis Costello's Allison. The name of the group was Everything But the Girl, big U.S. hit for missing. All right, let's take another step back, but this time before we do, I suggest you fill up your tank. 1974.
Highways were in turmoil as national guardsmen were called out to stop violence spreading from an independent truck or slowdown. While most Americans couldn't even get to the highways, gas shortages were at their lowest point yet in the country, and President Nixon advised the Watergate investigators to wind up their studies very quickly.
This week's movie ticket could get you in to see Brother of the Wind, Disney's animated Robin Hood. There was the godfather of Magdom Force, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Woody Allen and Sleeper, but at the top of the list Diana Ross in Ladies Sings the Blues. On TV we were in the prime of MASH, we also got episodes of Emergency, all in the family.
It was not the prime for the Partridge family, just about at the end of their run. Over on ABC there was Owen Marshall and across the way on CBS the Carol Burnett Show. On the radio a lady who started out of Motown but seemed to always be considered a second string there even though she won a Grammy and had a number of hits. A new label and a new lease on life brought her right back to the top.
Here's Gladys Knight and I gotta use my imagination. That puts a wrap on today, New York Comic Con of course coming up and if you're coming by do look us up. Love to meet you in person but in the meantime we got a free pass for you right here. Big info coming from the convention on Friday and we'll do a big wrap up on Monday for you
as well. The Point is produced by Malcontent Media and heard on great websites like ComicMix.com, MichaelDavisWorld.com, Ravenwolf Studios.com and ZZ Comics.com. Catch our past shows or subscribe to us easily on iTunes under The Point Radio and drop me a line let me know what you think at Mike at GetThePointRadio.com.
See you on Friday from New York.
