Some may consider it cruelty to animal companions, some the ultimate tribute. As Hallowe’en approaches once more, Good Housekeeping, of all places, considers pets dressed as Star Wars characters. Sundance here is probably my favorite:
"I find your lack of cheezburger disturbing…"
This is why we’re sometimes reticent to pass along casting call news. Everyone beleived Variety when they said that Jessica Biel’s talks to play Wonder Woman in the upcoming Justice League movie were solid and the real thing and so on. We even found you a photo of Biel in a WW t-shirt to seal the deal.
But noooo. According to Entertainment Weekly‘s Hollywood Insider — and who better to know from things inside Hollywood? I mean, it’s right there in the name — Biel has given the role a pass.
So you know, we state all Obiwan-like, when we reported that she was in talks, it was the truth, from a certain point of view. It’s like the old joke about prayers being heard: sometimes the answer is no.
But you know, it gives us an excuse to post another photo of Ms. Biel. This was one of the tamer ones from our Google Image search. We liked the outfit, reasoning that, if she isn’t interested in Wonder Woman, maybe someone can talk her into Isis?
With all the talk about the Canadian dollar reaching par with its American counterpart, now would seem the perfect time for a US animation studio to branch northward. Starz Animation Toronto officially opened this past Tuesday and is already billing itself as "ne of Canada’s largest 3D animation, effects and compositing facilities, and Toronto’s leading studio for breakthrough digital production."
The studio’s first major project will be fantasy epic 9, based on an Oscar®-nominated short, co-produced by Tim Burton, directed by Shane Acker, and featuring voice work from Elijah Wood, Jennifer Connelly, Crispin Glover, Martin Landau, Christopher Plummer and John C. Reilly. As one might expect from Burton, it’s a happy tale "about rag dolls battling for civilization’s survival in a post-apocalyptic parallel world." It’s slated to be released late next year.
The studio will also generate income through producing content for TV, commercials and live-action visual effects.
Variety reports that New Regency has acquired the film rights to the illustrated novel Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire, drawn by Mike Mignola and written by Christopher Golden.
David Goyer, himself no stranger to the world of graphic storytelling, is slated to direct, and Golden and Mignola will be writing the screenplay.
The graphic novel published by Bantam "tells the story of the awakening of supreme evil on Earth. Lord Henry Baltimore is bitten by a demonic vampire bat on a WWI battlefield. The plague destroys his family, and Baltimore creates a team to hunt and fight the Red King, the embodiment of all evil."
Great to see that movies based on comic book properties are continuing to get greenlit, especially those properties not necessarily oriented towards tights and flights.
The thing about superhero costumes is, you can get away with a lot of cheating. Costumes appear to stay attached by magic (particularly to areas featuring naughty bits), usually contain no wrinkles or folds, pretty much be painted on what would otherwise be nude bodies, because the characters wearing them aren’t real people who actually move and have bodies which feature internal organs and such.
It’s much trickier designing a streamlined, stylish superhero outfit to be worn by a living, breathing human being in motion.
But the folks at the superhero fashion site Project Rooftop have announced their second annual costume contest, entitled Fights, Flights and Tights. All you have to do, say editors Dean Trippe and Chris Arrant, "is wow us with a cool, original costume that redesigns a classic superhero or villain. Take some photos and send them to us along with your name, age, and website (if any) by October 21st, 2007." Winning entries will, as always, be featured on the site, with the grand priize being an original sketch of the winning design drawn by Trippe.
Presumably, Trippe and Arrant are counting on entrants not violating the spirit of the contest via photo manipulation programs.
This is the weekend! The fourth annual Stumptown Comics Fest will be held tomorrow and Sunday at the Lloyd Center Doubletree Hotel in absolutely gorgeous Portland, Oregon! Portland is a virtual hotbed of cartooning creativity, and the convention attracts lots of out-of-town luminaries as well, most of whom will receive spotlights during the show’s events. This also marks the first year Stumptown will be holding an awards ceremony, which will recognize achievements in art, writing, design, DIY, small press and debut work. It looks to be very much the Northwest’s version of SPX or MoCCA or APE, some great workshops and even parties lined up. We’re totally jealous of you folks in Portland!
A videogame has set the all-time record for most revenue earned in a single day by any entertainment property. Any property. Ever.
That game, for anyone hiding under a rock, is Halo 3 by Bungie, a subsidiary of Microsoft. Who knew there were so many Xboxes out there?
CNet notes that the game "netted $170 million in sales in the U.S. in its first day. If true, that would top previous records set by the motion pictures Spider Man 3 and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." Although you really have to divide the $170 million by $60 per, rather than by the cost of a movie ticket which, I’m informed, is considerably less.
Also, over a million players have logged on to Xbox Live to play the multiplayer version, Your news editor is not one of them.
A little mini-browsing around the internets the last few days has come up with the following:
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not exactly what you would call an early adopter. I’ve tended to view many modern trappings more like modern traps. I readily admit to being one of those mean people who applauded when Apple lowered the price on its iPhone, a product I anticipate never needing nor owning, nodding at the observation that the $200 extra for the debut version (sold to people who actually queued up to buy an expensive status symbol readily available in plentiful quantity in stores and online) should be considered a sucker tax. I believe our affluent society is way too dependent on and obsessive over technological conveniences which will either soon achieve sentience at which point we’ll happily welcome our electronic overlords, or will utterly break down at the next super-solar flareup and leave us with the self-reliance level of children.
That said, I have way too many of these evil machines in my own home.
I remember a time when I didn’t. During my first marriage to somebody as wary of tech as I was, we had a VCR with a wired remote, and a TV with rabbit ears where you had to actually get up to change the channel. (We lived in The Land That Cable Forgot to Wire until about four years after everyone else in NYC was hooked up.) Our computer and printer were hand-me-downs that my office was going to throw away. Usenet and email were nice, but the behemoths were still things on which I worked more than played. Even our kitchen, which of course wasn’t ours but the landlord’s, didn’t have high-tech things like a dishwasher or garbage disposal unit or broiler the size of an oven, and still doesn’t. (I still get annoyed at TV chefs who talk about adjusting racks in the broiler; to me the broiler is found all the way at the bottom of the oven and is about two feet high with the door that opens downward and one temperature setting — turning the oven dial all the way up — and you’re lucky if it works at all without causing the pan to burst into flames. Which still beats Robin’s experience, as he tells me they don’t have broilers at all in England.)
But now, a lot of things are different. My current husband, who can reverse-engineer gadgets as easily as he takes apart and analyzes comic book panels, was born to be a tech geek. If he weren’t such a terrific artist as well, some sort of tech geekery would be how he made his living. He’s the kind of person who was able to FTP pages to DC and Marvel before those companies were even set up to receive them! When Robin emigrated to marry me, he had to leave behind tons of electronics, as British outlets are different and it just didn’t make financial sense to bring over lots of things that required American adapters and doubtless would be obsolete by the time he got settled in. Yes, Robin’s one of those early adopter types whose first reaction to new tech is "Oooh, shiny and pretty!"
Comic fans love to play imaginary casting games. Now that comic book movies have become big business, the folks with real money have the means to make those games come true. Here’s the latest casting news, both rumored and factual (at least for now):
As with any casting news, this could all change tomorrow, so stay tuned!
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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