Author: Glenn Hauman

Pixar’s Up for New York Comic Con

New York Comic Con and Disney*Pixar have just announced that the first 50 minutes of the forthcoming movie Up will screen for the first time at New York Comic Con.

Up is the story of Carl Fredricksen, a man who spent his entire life dreaming of exploring the globe and experiencing life to its fullest. But at age 78, life seems to have passed Carl by, until a twist of fate (and a persistent 8-year old Wilderness Explorer named Russell) gives him a new lease on life.

The screening will be introduced by director Pete Docter and begin at 6:30 PM on Saturday, February 7 in the IGN Theater inside NYCC. Methinks you should get on line Friday.

Life on Mars, with yet another potential Watchmen tie-in

NASA and Google released a new Mars overlay providing 3D views of the canyons and mountains of the Red Planet, part of the beta launch of the downloadable Google Earth 5.0 client application. Now all we’re waiting for is for them to find this somewhere on the planet’s surface…

‘The Last Airbender’: Dev Patel in, Jesse McCartney out

zuko-8891766They must have been reading our comments thread.

Now it’s Dev Patel, who’s getting all the buzz in Hollywood for starring in Slumdog Millionaire, who will be playing Zuko in writer/director M. Night Shyamalan’s live-action feature film The Last Airbender, according to Variety.  Patel takes on the role of the Fire Nation’s evil Zuko, which was originally to be played by Jesse McCartney until "schedule conflicts arose", which could be code for "cast at least one non-white actor in a film about Asians, please".

Exiled from the Fire Nation by his father, Zuko is sent to capture the Avatar in order to restore his honor and right to the throne.

The Last Airbender, based on Nickelodeon’s Avatar anime, will still be released July 2, 2010.

The golden anniversary of ‘The Day The Music Died’

Fifty years ago, a single-engine plane crashed into a Iowa field, instantly killing three men and officially opening rock ‘n’ roll heaven.

The years haven’t dimmed the fascination with the night of February 3, 1959, when 22-year-old Buddy Holly, 28-year-old J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson and 17-year-old Ritchie Valens performed in Clear Lake the night before and then boarded the plane for a planned 300-mile flight to their next gig. Their deaths would be immortalized in the Don McLean song "American Pie" as The Day The Music Died.

Our friends at FindingDulcinea.com have a great write-up about the performers.

Whatever happened to Bill Jemas?

He’s gone from presenting his take on Spider-Man, the X-Men and the rest of the Marvel Universe to, well, his take on the creation of the universe, according to the New Jersey Star-Ledger:

Each morning before sunrise, for the last three years, the Rutgers and Harvard Law School graduate has labored over the Bible, specifically the Book of Genesis in Hebrew, the language in which it was first written.

His goal is to write an English translation of Genesis that is truer to the Hebrew text than are widely used English translations like the famed King James Version. He already has completed the first chapter, available online and in his book "Genesis Rejuvenated."

By presenting alternative English definitions for Hebrew words to those chosen by KJV translators in 1611, he hopes that his internet-accessible "Freeware Bible," as he calls his translation, will show readers that widely accepted Bible translations are inherently imperfect.

He acknowledges that this would be a gargantuan task even for a team of learned Bible scholars, let alone a man like himself without any formal theological training. And he knows that news of his endeavor will baffle comic-book fans who associate him more with Spider-Man and Wolverine than with Adam and Eve.

You can find the book at freewarebible.com. The illustration of Spider-Man’s Greatest Bible Stories was just too tempting to pass up. Sorry.

Super Bowl XLIII — We watch it for the movie trailers

We understand that there will be a big football game today in Tampa. But if you’re like me, what you’re really looking forward to are the new movie trailers that premiere during the time outs.

We already know there will be an ad for Monsters vs. Aliens, as there’s been a big push to get the 3D glasses into people’s hands. More than 125 million pairs of glasses are being distributed for free at stores nationwide at SoBe displays, they may still be available at your local supermarket. (If you want to know more about the 3D, Wired has a write up.)

Off the top of my head, I expect to see ads for Star Trek, Transformers, G.I. Joe (all licensees of IDW, which should make them happy), Angels and Demons (the sequel to The DaVinci Code), The Year One, Race To Witch Mountain and Pixar’s Up. Budget cutbacks seem to indicate that there will be no ads from Fox or Warner Brothers, so we probably won’t be seeing ads for Watchmen, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Terminator: Salvation, or James Cameron’s Avatar.

What do you think will be appearing? What did you think of what actually aired? Consider this an open thread for discussion.

Oh, and by the way– Steelers by 10, Bud Light by 3.

I for one welcome our new zombie overlords

We’re getting zombie outbreaks all over the place. First, we have this news footage from Austin, Texas:

From Amazon, we have reports of zombie invasions in Netherfield Park:

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance – Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem! 

And just for completism, we have Zombie Tales, Volume 1 from Boom! Studios. Boy, wouldn’t that look nice in the ComicMix reader…?

Star Trek setting licensing phasers on stun

As Yogurt the wise teaches us, "Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made. Spaceballs-the T-shirt, Spaceballs-the Coloring Book, Spaceballs-the Lunch box, Spaceballs-the Breakfast Cereal, Spaceballs-the Flame Thrower." CBS has learned their lessons well, one could even say it’s a paramount lesson.

CBS Consumer Products has cranked its Star Trek licensing up to 11 in preparation of the new Star Trek movie, which will debut on May 8th.  In addition to the IDW comics tying the movie to Next Generation continuity, the Pocket book publishing license, and the previously announced Star Trek Barbie Dolls, Mattel has also acquired the rights to create radio-controlled flying vehicles for its Tyco subsidiary, a Star Trek Scene-It DVD movie/TV game, and a 20Q Star Trek Trivia Game. (Bob Greenberger’s on our team, we take on all challengers.)

 

Other game tie-ins include a Star Trek-branded Monopoly edition from USAopoly, and co-branded games for UNO, Scrabble ("Ferengi" is a 61 point word, "Klingon" is 62– no ruling on whether words from their languages count), Phase Ten, All About Trivia, and a Magic 8 Ball. If only the good Kirk from "The Enemy Within" had one.

Has the world hit ‘Peak Anime’?

anime-shock-8634149Disturbing if true: ICV2 has an article entitled, simply, Worldwide Anime Market Shrinking. In a lecture by TV Tokyo’s Keisuke Iwata, he noted that due to market saturation, illegal downloading, the worldwide recession, and the rising yen, “It is easy to imagine the global marketplace shrinking from 2010 onward." According to Iwata there may be little or no growth potential for anime sales outside of Japan and that the industry “may have to go back to the way it was in the past — back to selling Japanese animation only to the Japanese marketplace."

And with a market already glutted and the massive lead time and resources required to create anime, we should expect to see big crashes. Imagi Studios already had to get bridge financing to complete production of Astro Boy.

Anime News Network has reported that the total revenue of the Japanese anime industry rose rapidly from 2003 when it was estimated at 167.4 billion yen (about $1.9 billion), peaked in 2006 at $258.8 billion yen (about $2.9 billion) and then fell to 236.9 billion yen in 2007.  Figures for 2008 aren’t available yet, but given the financial distress of many anime producers, another decline is a foregone conclusion.

Also note that Iwata’s market factors of market saturation, illegal downloading, and the worldwide recession apply equally to comics.