I have never warmed up to Sacha Baron Cohen’s style of satire. The concepts are great while I find the execution in Bruno, Borat and now The Dictator, to be crude and unfunny. In both cases, I found the clever marketing more interesting and enjoyable than the actual films. The Combo Pack (Blu-ray, DVD, Digital Copy) from Paramount Home Video came with a nice letter from Admiral General Shabazz Aladeen with bribe bucks from Wadiya. If only the film itself was as funny.
Cohen does a fine job submerging himself into his character, in this case, Admiral General Aladeen, but he then does rude, crude, and preposterous things in the name of satire. Cohen should be made to study the Mel Brooke oeuvre to see how it should be done: character-based and smart humor.
Aladeen hails from the northern African country of Wadiya, a combination if Idi Amin and Muammar Gaddafi and the timing is such that in the wake of the Arab Spring, these sort of larger than life world leaders are a vanishing breed., There’s nothing funny to their antics and they are such caricatures that they are hard to top, making the challenge for the filmmakers all the more difficult.
Those personality and cultural differences are put on display when the dictator comes to New York to address the United Nations, denying once more his nuclear program is for weaponry designed to annihilate Israel (so much for satire). His absence prompts a coup back home, propelling the plot. Now a leader without a country, he has to fend for himself in the world’s biggest melting pot. To retain power, he comes to count on Zoey (Anna Faris) and a fellow Wadiyan, Nadal (Jason Mantzoukas), the leader thought dead. We go to a voyage of self-discovery of the pleasures in life, from masturbation to falling in love, which makes little sense when Aladeen is the most powerful figure in his country. Why is he so out of touch in this global world? Cohen doesn’t pause to explain any of this preferring to make his character simply clueless. The film goes from satire to screwball romantic comedy to biting denouncement of our country and therefore doesn’t feel like much of anything but a few sketches without a strong point of view.
We have some fun cameos from Chris Parnell, Jessica St. Clair, Fred Armisen, Nasim Pedrad, John C. Reilly, Chris Elliot, Gary Shandling, Edward Norton and Horatio Sanz.
The disc comes with the theatrical release and the “Banned and Unrated” version, fifteen more minutes of this nonsense, mostly extended bits between Cohen and Mantzoukas. The hype is unwarranted because it makes the film more boring and unwatchable. We get more scatological and sexual jokes which really aren’t that funny.
Despite the extra material in the new cut, the extras include an additional 34 minutes of deleted or extended scenes which makes me admire the editor for showing some discretion. Lots of these bits are found in the longer version. Additional material includes “Your Money is On The Dresser” (1:35), a music video with the leader; and an unnecessary extended version of the Larry King interview (2:49).
I suppose if you love this sort of sophomoric humor, the movie and disc are perfect for you. On the other hand, given the film’s poor critical reception and lackluster box office performance, it could be that we’ve all grown tired of Cohen’s brand of humor and his time as a polarizing comedic figure has finally come to an end. We can hope for this right up there with our desire for world peace.
First, check out John Ostranderâs column, found somewhere near the stuff youâre reading, and then imagine me shouting Amen into the Grand Canyon and listen to the seemingly endless echoes and finally consider this a small gloss on Johnâs work.
John cites the old how-to-write chestnut: Write what you know. Okay, first a slightly snarky hypothesis thatâs not intended to insult, or even question, my pedagogical colleagues, just raise the tiniest bump in the dialogue: Maybe those who teach the aforementioned chestnut write what they know because thatâs all they, themselves, can write. Thatâs not a knock: weâre all wired a bit differently and whoâs to say that a talent for writing, if talent it be, doesnât manifest in as many different ways as, say, a talent for music? No good or bad, just different. (Whoâs your fave, Mozart or Bob Dylan? Oh â lucky you! â can you dig âem both?)
Second, a confession that, with any luck at all, will segue into an observation: Despite my having written 200 or so Batman stories, I have never waited on a shadowy rooftop for a heavily armed psychopath to arrive so I can give him such! a smack. Iâve never bent steel in my bare hands or changed the course of mighty rivers either, but Iâve written Superman stories. The Batman stories were easier and more fun.
Here we circle back to the chestnut. I think the reason I was more comfortable with Batman than with the undoubtedly estimable Superman has to do with writing… not what I know, but what I fantasize. Batman lives near my dreams: Superman, not so much. Iâve never daydreamed about having godlike powers â and letâs face it, Superman is a demigod, at least â but I could imagine, oh…running a marathon in 2:10? Punching out that bosunâs mate who clocked me solid at that bus stop in Cuba? Weâre talking about feats that are difficult and even extraordinary â he was one tough bosunâs mate â but that are within human capabilities. Did you watch the Olympics this year?
Letâs revisit the chestnut one last time…No â letâs toss it out altogether and substitute a few words from Henry David Thoreau: Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.
Finally, the comic book store owner on TV that comic fans can respect (as compared to that guy on The Simpsons) gets some respect of his own as Kevin Sussman gets a regular gig on The Big Bang Theory. Deadline Hollywood has the details:
Leonard, Sheldon & Co. may be haning out at the comic book store more often next season. Kevin Sussman, who plays the comic book store manager Stuart, has been promoted to a regular for the upcoming sixth season of the hit CBS comedy. He has been recurring on the show since Season 2, appearing in 15 episodes so far. I hear Sussman’s deal is of the “7/13″ kind, meaning that he likely won’t be in every episode like Big Bang‘s core cast. This is the fourth promotion for a Big Bang recurring player, following similar upgrades for Melissa Rauch and Mayim Bialik, who now appear in virtually every episode, and Sara Gilbert, who left the series.
Stuart played a key part in the relationship between Sheldon (Jim Parsons) and Amy (Bialik) as it was Stuart’s date with Amy that prompted Sheldon to make her his girlfriend. His character also was behind a bet that produced one of the most popular images from the show with the main gang dressed as Catwoman, Wonder Woman, Batgirl, and Supergirl.
When we saw the first image of Daniel Day-Lewis in his Abraham Lincoln makeup, we thought it was pretty impressive. Considering this is a two-time Academy Award winner in Lincoln, a film from director Steven Spielberg, we know this is one to see. That it is based in part on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s wondferul book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln is all the more reason we’re more excited about this than we were with Abe the Vampire Slayer.
According to DreamWorks, which releases the film on November 9, the movie is a “revealing drama that focuses on the 16th President’s tumultuous final months in office. In a nation divided by war and the strong winds of change, Lincoln pursues a course of action designed to end the war, unite the country and abolish slavery. With the moral courage and fierce determination to succeed, his choices during this critical moment will change the fate of generations to come.”
The cast includes Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln along with David Strathairn, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, James Spader, Hal Holbrook and Tommy Lee Jones. Lincoln is produced by Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy, with a screenplay by Tony Kushner. The film is a coproduction between DreamWorks Pictures/Twentieth Century Fox film, in association with Participant Media.
Doctor Who fans don’t have to hold it anymore. The Great Question has been answered. No, not the one about Life, The Universe and Everything, or even the one that will be asked on the Fields of Trenzilor at the Fall Of The Eleventh. The BIG question – “When will Doctor Who premiere?”
And the answer is, September 1st. And it’s the SAME answer whether you live in America or the UK, with only a slight variance in detail. In the UK, the premiere episode Asylum of the Daleks will broadcast at 7:20 PM, and in the states at 9 PM, EDT.
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The episode has already seen its premiere in the UK via a gala celebration, and will see its US premiere at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York City on August 25th. Tickets for the NYC event sold out in under half an hour, the rush of hopeful fans crashing the Movietickets.com website.
Over and above the welcome news of the premiere, the big surprise was that the premiere will be preceded by a five-part webisode mini series. The story, entitled “Pond Life”, will feature Amy and Rory PondWilliams attempting to live a normal life, outside the TARDIS. The synopsis of Asylum suggests that said normal life may not be going too smoothly. Series stars Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill discuss the mini-adventure on the BBC Website.
The episodes, written by Chris Chibnall, will be released one day, starting Monday, August 27th on the BBC website. They’ll also be made available in the UK, via BBC’s interactive “Red Button” service. Plans are proceeding on how the episodes will be released by BBC America— look for an update soon.
These webisodes are a continuation of the episode prequels from the previous season, each of which featured a brief extra scene from several episodes of the series. These prequels were included on the later video releases, it’s presumed this mini-series will also appear in this season’s set.
In honor of this surprise, Your Humble Reporter has crafted a suggested logo for the mini-series, inspired by a popular Britcom which starred a number of actors who later appeared on Doctor Who:
(Update: yes, 9/1, not 8/1 as we originally had in the headline. We’re dumb.)
Inspector Spacetime is a self-paradoxical anomaly, which makes perfect sense. Itâs only existed for a few months, but has also apparently been on television for nearly fifty years. Actor Travis Richey has played him for all of that time, for a grand total of less than two minutes of footage, and yet 11 actors have played the role, including Stephen Fry and Christopher Lee. As Travis explains it, âThe best part is, NOTHING is canon, and EVERYTHING is canonâ.
After the character made its debut as a brief Doctor Who parody on NBCâs Community, the Internet got right to work fleshing out his history and adventures. A Tumblr feed was quickly created to serve as the main repository of the work, and photos from past episodes were quickly âdiscoveredâ and shared.
Travis Richey had a very good time at Gallifrey One, the countryâs biggest Doctor Who convention. At <a href=”
panel dedicated to Inspector Spacetime, he announced plans to produce an independent web series dedicated to the Infinity Knight and his continuing adventures.
âTony Lee (writer for IDWâs Doctor Who comic) reached out to me to do a video for Chicago Tardis (the Midwest DW convention) back in Novemberâ Travis explains. âI did that, and the greeting went over so well that Tony put me in touch with Shaun (Lyon) who does Gallifrey One.â
The panel was filled with fans and the panel âreminiscingâ about their favorite moments of the show, including past Inspectors, and of course, the death of Jeffrey. “There were jokes people were making that I hadn’t heard, like ‘Horse-Bot 3000’, and I was ‘ Huh? What’s that?’ But I do improv all the time, so I just accepted it, gave it a ‘Yes, and…’ and went with.” He shouldn’t have been surprised; as is traditional the people starring in the sci-fi show don’t know NEARLY as much about the show as the fans.
What was amazing is that everything they discussed in the panel was all created from whole cloth on sites like the Tumblr blog, in a world wide improv session. Fans across the world agreed which jokes were funnier, went with the stronger material, and the mythos became cohesive amazingly quickly. “One example of that was the word DARSIT, for the the Inspector’s vehicle,” Travis recalls. “I have to admit, I never really liked it; I thought it was too simple of a joke, from TARDIS. But someone on the ProBoards came up with BOOTH, and everybody liked it, and not only did the change get made in the “canon”, but they have, I hear, retconned things so that “Darsit” is now an Infinity Knight curse word. And they’ve already started folding Boyish the Extraordinary, our bad guy, into the canon, so by the time we see him, it’ll be his return.”
The ability for fans to so easily collaborate on such a mad undertaking, couldn’t have existed only a few years back. “It’s really extraordinary. I admit that I saw the potential, but my vision was so far from what actually happened, and how much it means to the fans. And I think part of it is for fans to be able to actually have a hand in creating something new. A lot of people don’t have the opportunity to create something new, so to be able to write something on the Internet, or submit a photo to the tumblr blog…it’s an easy way for the fans to be engaged, and I think that’s something that has been lacking. So in that respect, this is something totally new.
Travis saw the potential in the character while he was still filming that first episode. âI wrote the script [for the web series] with my writing partner after I shot the first episode, but before it even aired. We knew it was gonna be pretty bigâ Travis recalls. âIâm a pretty forward thinker; Iâm never happy just waiting for things to happen. So my thought was, Hey, Iâll write this, and if thereâs a second episode, Iâll tell them you should do this for the DVD or for web content. Especially after the first weekend, when it just EXPLODED, so I knew that it was going to be something the audience wanted.â
âSo I wrote this, and I brought it with me when I did my second episode, and the word on set was ‘We can’t just look at it’. So I went back to my agent and said to submit this, because this is really huge, and we understand the character and the meme, and the world that the fans created’. And he sent it in, but never got any response, one way or the other. I certainly didn’t get a ‘no, don’t do this cause we’re doing it’, nor did I get a ‘yes’, or even a ‘Hey, this is good, but no thanks’.”
“But like I said, I’m not a person to wait for things to happen. I did wait, actually – I wasn’t going to anything while they were still working with the character. As long as they had things to do with Inspector Spacetime, I was just, ‘Let that happen’. But after the Christmas episode, I knew they were shooting the rest of the season, and they weren’t using me. And then the status of the show coming back at all was in question, and I thought, ‘At the very least, this’ll get some buzz, for Community, at least. Plus, it was a case of me being prepared to take advantage of opportunities presented to me.”
Considering the reaction that 15 seconds of footage got, it’d seem somewhat surprising they didn’t want to do something more with the character, but Travis has a theory. “I think it’s more just how Hollywood works. It’s very difficult to get a piece of writing into someone’s hand. And I’m not sure why that it is, because Star Trek did it. Some of the best names we know in Sci-Fi today, from Jane Espenson, to Ron Moore to Rene Echevarria , they all got their start because they sent in spec scripts to Star Trek: The Next Generation. I don’t understand it.”
Like air rushing in to fill a vacuum, fans stepped up and created a full 50 years of history for this character, and hasn’t stopped. “It was less than two or three weeks to form the basis of it, but over the last few months, it’s just continually been adding and adding and adding. It’s astounding the amount of creativity that exploded over the Internet, base on all of this three-line joke. And it was wonderful to see. And that’s exactly the kind of person I am – I was a fan, at one point. I wrote Star Trek scripts in my bedroom, I wrote Doctor Who stuff.”
With all that creativity already in place, one has to wonder how much material did Travis plan to cull from the communal pool, and how much would be brand new? “When we started to write the first episode, it was before the fans even knew it existed. Eric [Loya, Travis’ writing partner on his other video work, including Robot, Ninja and Gay Guy] and I spent hours going through the mythos and creating a rudimentary character bible. We had to understand how it spoofed Doctor Who. Cause the Community people didn’t really do anything. They showed that Blorgons were Daleks, and they showed the red phonebooth. So we had to invent everything else. And then the fans came along and started doing their thing, I was actually involved in some of the fandom – I was on the ProBoards, talking to people about what was what. “Infinity Knight” was mine and Eric’s invention [compared to the “Space master” term the fans have been using], the name of the home planet is fan-created, like that. What we have in the web-series is, I believe, 100% original. We invented a new Associate; we’re not going to use Constable Reggie, and we have a new arch-nemesis we invented, Boyish The Extraordinary. We’re making a quick reference to the Circuit-Chaps [the fan-created Cybermen-spoof]. We took out the Blorgon reference in respect to the Community team.”
Science-Fiction shows are well aware of the fannish community, and know when to turn a blind eye to fan-made fiction, and even merchandise. Travis thinks Community is aware of that as well. “There are people posting mash-ups that use clips from the show; people are posting actual clips of the show,” Travis notes. “The merchandise that people produce – not only for Community, but for Inspector Spacetime. And nobody has told the t-shirt companies that they can’t produce the shirts. And I want to be clear, we’re not selling [the series]. We’re going to make it, and it’s going to exist for free. We’re not going to make DVDs, we’re not going to do ads on it on YouTube, nothing like that.”
Sony and NBC did decide that an outside entity producing an Inspector Spacetime series was a bit offsides, and sent Travis a request to shut down. Luckily Travis had a backup plan just in case someone in the legal field got uppity. “Except for the name ‘Inspector Spacetime’, everything we have in the script is invented by us. So there’s no reason this can’t get made. And you can’t copyright a title…and they haven’t trademarked the name; I did a trademark search. Cause I want to be careful. So hopefully they’ll let this happen. And more hopefully it’ll create some buzz for Community. Cause even though it’s coming back for the rest of the third season, there’s no guarantee it’ll be renewed for a fourth.” The series will be titled “The Untitled Webseries About A Space Traveler Who Can Also Travel In Time”. So we’ve got an unofficial adaptation of a parody show that only exists in the mind of its fandom…that sound you hear is reality folding in on itself.
The Kickstarter campaign, which made its $20,000 goal and them some, will cover the cost of the production. “Frankly, I don’t have the capability to make it look and sound as good as it deserves to,” says Travis. “If you look at the stuff I’ve produced so far, it looks…okay, but you can tell that it was made with no budget. But here the writing and the acting is so strong, it really deserves to be be complemented by good equipment; a decent camera, lights and stuff.” Travis schedule is pretty accelerated. He’d already posted a better-quality animatic of the first episode through the folks at io9, the same episode he did a live read-through of at Gallifrey One. Principal photography is complete, and Travis is looking for a sound designer now.
NBC has also seen the potential in the character. It was announced at San Diego that an episode of the new season Community would center around an Inspector Spacetime convention. And the show (both Community and IS) has one other big fan – Karen Gillan, AKA Amy Pond on Doctor Who. She’s already gone on record as saying that she’d LOVE to appear on an episode.  The irony is that in the continuity of the show, it’s her on-screen husband that would be a more logical fit. According to the history, the character Rory Williams (played by Arthur Darvill) is the only one to appear on BOTH shows, moving from Inspector Spacetime to Doctor Who.
It seems that The Inspector’s possibilities are, rightfully, infinite. It’s not WHERE he’ll pop up next…but WHEN.
The greatest pitfall television series featuring high school cast members has is that the cast is already older when the series begins and they age out rapidly. Smallville stopped setting stories in the high school because the cast looked ridiculous on the sets. Confronting the inevitable graduation challenges the producers to find tortured ways to keep the cast intact after the caps and gowns are put away. Even Buffy the Vampire Slayer suffered from this challenge so it is refreshing to see Glee take graduation head on in the third season of the Fox series.
Glee the Complete Third Season came out on DVD last week and seeing it without the weeks-long breaks between cycles, allows you to see how they handled the coming graduation and choices the teens are being asked to make. While the series has never really focused on the kids’ academics, there was almost zero interest in ACTs or college visits, so it was always in the ether but never the focal point of the stories. Instead, it was all about getting to Nationals in New York and succeeding. The season opened with the need for fresh members thanks to a rival Glee Club set up by Shelby Corcoran (Idina Menzel) while Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) ran for Congress on an anti-arts platform.
Clearly, the producers had no real idea of where to take the characters as motivations and the status quo changed, twisting them beyond recognizabilty. The most ill-served may have been Quinn (Dianna Agron) who started off trying to steal back her baby, given to Shelby for adoption, then embracing the final year of high school until her driving accident (don’t text and drive) and recovery. Somewhere along the line, this sympathetic character, who in season two recognized she was a small town girl stuck in Ohio, gained 50 IQ points and got into Yale and was Ivy League bound. Huh? The best teen villain has become a hero. All the edges to characters are gone, from Puck (Mark Salling) to the divas Mercedes (Amber Riley), robbing the students of interesting character variety. Santana (Naya Rivera) was also softened although her coming out as a lesbian and rising as a performer were among the season’s highlights.
Finn Hudson (Cory Monteith) and Rachel Berry (Lea Michele), the romantic couple at the center of the storm, decided to get married and their arc dealt with that reality and the choices each need make for themselves and each other. This rang far more true than the disastrous marriage between Coach Beiste (Dot-Marie Jones) and Cooter Menkins (Eric Bruskotter), which formed a mini-arc in the final third of the season.
While each of the 22 episodes is entertaining and often heartfelt, as a season-long arc for the faculty and students it’s a mess and by now Ryan Murphy should have a very clear idea of who they are and where these characters are going. Instead, he seems to have lost any sense of edge in Sylvester, giving her instead a rival in Roz Washington (NeNe Leakes). Even the show’s most intriguing character, Burt Hummel (Mike O’Malley), somehow found himself running for Congress and winning, stealing him from Kurt (Chris Colfer), just as his son’s dreams of going to NYADA are crushed.
Musically, the show remains strong, aided by the welcome addition of Darren Criss’ Blaine to the New Directions. Sam Evans (Chord Overstreet) is also back after a brief contract issue. Some of the winners of the reality series, The Glee Project, wind up added to the cast but are little more than hangers-on with little learned about them and rarely given a showcase. The quest for a championship takes a backseat to the fall musical, West Side Story, which featured some terrific reimaginings of the classic numbers.
In the finale, eight of the cast graduate and turnover in the New Directions will fuel the fourth season as it begins in a few weeks. Most of the graduates will continue to appear so the ensemble swells which is not always a good idea.
The four disc set looks amazing and of course sounds terrific but we’ve come to expect that from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. A neat feature to the set is that the menus will help you keep track as you work your way through the season, remembering where you are.
As usual, the extras are heavy on the music, the show’s hallmark. We get more from the Glee Music Jukebox, although you get clips and not the full songs that were edited to air. Some of the non-musical bits include “Glee Under the Stars” (7:45), a kickoff event at Santa Monica High School. “Glee Give a Note” (7:46) shows stars Jayma Mays and Jones present Culver City Middle School a check for $10,000 for arts education.
You can enjoy some extended and deleted scenes throughout the discs. The highlight here is a Sue Sylvester flashback that should have found its way on air. “Glee Swap: Behind the Scenes of ‘Props'” (5:41) is a nice look at the fun body-swapping episode. “Meet the Newbies” (13:20) spends more time with the new cast members than the series seemed to. “Saying Goodbye” (15:19) is a good look at the emotional toll the finale took on one and all. Lynch’s acerbic Sylvester is found on “Ask Sue: World Domination Blog” (6:07) and “Return of Sue’s Quips” (2:58).
One can hope that the freshened cast will ignite some greater dramatic consistency to match its musical excellence. For now, we have this set which is maddeningly enjoyable while being frustratingly inconsistent.
If you get off on anticipation and you also happen to be a Doctor Who fan, these are amazing times. We-all have so much to get excited about. To wit:
1) The beginning of the next half-season, which will start in England any day now. The BBC likes to wait until the last minute to make their announcements; the show debuts in the United States, Canada and much of the rest of the world shortly thereafter. As of this writing, the season premiere is not on this Saturday’s schedule, so the August 25th rumor is likely untrue… unless the Pirates of the Caribbean movie presently in the Doctor Who slot is bunkum.
2) The exiting of the two current companions at the end of the half-season, which may or may not involve killing one or both off.
3) The Doctor Who Christmas Special, which is likely to be aired on or about December 25th and will feature the introduction of the Doctor’s new companion. The show will also feature the “return” of Richard E. Grant – he voiced the Doctor in the animated “Scream of the Shalka” and joined Rowan Atkinson, Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent, and Joanna Lumley in Steven Moffat’s debut Who, the satirical “Curseof Fatal Death.”
4) The 50th anniversary of the show’s debut, which happened mere moments after the BBC announced the death of President John F. Kennedy. Talk about your dramatic lead-ins.
As hyped-up as we may be about the first three items on the above list, I’m far more amused by all the folderol around the 50th Anniversary. Writer/producer/showrunner Steven Moffat has been having enormous fun jerking the fans and media around, teasing the hell out of the event and roughly expanding our enthusiasm to apocalyptic proportions. Previous Doctors Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Sylvester McCoy and David Tennent have all publically committed to return “if asked,” and Christopher Eccleston has actually stopped saying he wouldn’t return under any circumstances, although his work on the next Thor movie might interfere with scheduling. Similarly, John Barrowman’s work on Arrow might mitigate his availability. Colin Baker noted he might have grown, ahem, a bit too big for the part. To me, that sounds like something Moffat can have fun with.
If Moffat is to be believed, there likely will be several or many 50th Anniversary events next year. My question is “will there actually be a regular 50th Anniversary season?” There will be a dramatic made-for-teevee-movie about the creation of the original television show, being produced by Moffat and written by his Sherlock partner Mark Gatiss. There’s quite a feminist hook in this tale, as the show’s original producer, the person who actually got the show on television, was Verity Lambert, one of the very, very few women in such a position at the BBC back in 1963.
Of course, we’ll see all sorts of Doctor Who comics from IDW – we already see all sorts of Doctor Who comics from IDW, including reprints of Dave Gibbons’ beautiful work on the feature – and there will be tons and tons of merchandising and convention thrills. I suspect Community and The Inspector will have something to say about it all as well.
So the rumors will continue to grow in mass, time and space, and the resultant brouhaha will keep the rabble at fever-pitch. Perhaps there will be TARDIS-themed Depends being marketed to those who can’t hold it in.
That’s right, guys. It’s bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil waiting on shadowy rooftops.
Thx and appreciation to Jeremy Brown (author of the dynamite MMA themed Suckerpunch, the upcoming sequel Hook and Shoot, and one of the first Fight Card MMA novels for publication next year) who volunteered his skills and patience to make the site a reality. As always there are still a few tweaks to be made as we add more Fight Card authors, books, links, and other content to the site, but please take a look and tell us what your initial thoughts are … Suggestions and ideas are always welcome — This is a team effort.
In other Fight Card news, our next title (September 1st) is Bluff City Brawler from Heath Lowrance, followed by The Knockout from Robert Randisi, Irish Dukes from Mike Faricy, and Rock-Face Bred from Robert Evans.
David Foster is busy working on the next issue of Fight Fictioneers, which will also premiere in September. Be sure to check out David’s new fight fiction short story, Bushwhacked (written as James Hopwood http://tinyurl.com/8obzybx) and his retro-spy novel, The Libro Deception (also written as James Hopwood http://tinyurl.com/8cyso2u).
We have a number of big things planned for Fight Card in 2013, including the premiere of Fight Card MMA and other Fight Card brands.
Thanks to all of you who have helped support the Fight Card novels on your blogs and with reviews. And thanks to the Fight Card Jack Tunneys who continue to astound me with the quality of their prose and the high standard of storytelling. Great work!
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I have never warmed up to Sacha Baron Cohen’s style of satire. The concepts are great while I find the execution in Bruno, Borat and now The Dictator, to be crude and unfunny. In both cases, I found the clever marketing more interesting and enjoyable than the actual films. The Combo Pack (Blu-ray, DVD, Digital Copy) from Paramount Home Video came with a nice letter from Admiral General Shabazz Aladeen with bribe bucks from Wadiya. If only the film itself was as funny.
