Author: Robert Greenberger

‘Doctor Who’ Director Named

‘Doctor Who’ Director Named

  • News
  • October 19, 2008

Two tidbits for Doctor Who fans.  First up, James Strong has been announced as director for the Easter Doctor Who Special for 2009. He will be working from a script by Gareth Roberts ("The Unicorn and the Wasp").

"We’re so happy that he’s returning to the fold," Russell T. Davies told Doctor Who Magazine. "James has handled Daleks in sewers, hordes of Adipose and Satan himself, as well as a Titanic with Kylie on board. But believe me, none of that will have prepared him for what we’re about to unleash in this next script!"

The soundtrack CD to the fourth season of the current Doctor Who will be released by Silva Screen Records on November 17. The disc will carry 27 tracks taken from throughout the season, which completed airing during the first half of 2008.

Those interested in downloading the album from the company can obtain it sooner.

The track listing is as follows:

1. Doctor Who Season Four Opening Credits (0:46)
2. A Noble Girl About Town (2:14)
3. Life Among the Distant Stars (2:30)
4. Corridors and Fire Escapes (1:12)
5. The Sybilline Sisterhood (1:53)
6. Songs of Captivity and Freedom (4:03)
7. UNIT Rocks (1:11)
8. The Doctor’s Daughter (1:38)
9. The Source (3:21)
10. The Unicorn and the Wasp (3:11)
11. The Doctor’s Theme Season Four (2:47)
12. Voyage of the Damned Suite (10:21)
13. The Girl With No Name (2:45)
14. The Song of Song (2:14)
15. All in the Mind (1:18)
16. Silence In The Library (2:57)
17. The Greatest Story Never Told (6:17)
18. Midnight (3:07)
19. Turn Left (2:20)
20. A Dazzling End (2:22)
21. The Rueful Fate of Donna Noble (2:44)
22. Davros (2:07)
23. The Dark and Endless Dalek Night (3:44)
24. A Pressing Need to Save the World (4:55)
25. Hanging On The Tablaphone (1:07)
26. Song of Freedom (2:51)
27. Doctor Who Season Four Closing Credits (1:07)

GoComics Adds iGoogle Gadget

GoComics Adds iGoogle Gadget

  • News
  • October 18, 2008

People who enjoy customization, will be delighted to know that Uclick has launched a gadget for iGoogle.  Over 350 comic strips can be selected to appear on your homepage.  According to a release, the gadget, which was launched Thursday, will also contain comments, tagds, and posts from people who visit the GoComics.com site.

"Our new GoComics gadget for iGoogle is part of our strategy to expand the cartooning medium to readers old and new through digital media," said Uclick CEO Douglas Edwards in a statement. "We deliver daily entertainment features wherever our readers want their comics."
 

Iris Wildthyme Back for Second Season in February

  • News
  • October 18, 2008

Big Finish, the British audio producer, announced this week that four new Doctor Who pastiches will be released featuring their own character, Iris Wildthyme.  She was created by writer Paul Magrs and she’s described as “Bracing the temporal winds in her trusty bus and accompanied by the ever-loyal Panda (a ten inch tall stuffed bear), Iris travels from the depths of space to the gates of Wonderland and beyond. Iris and Panda will bamboozle and befuddle a host of new friends and enemies while always having time to mix a sharp Gin and Tonic.”

Katy Manning, a former companion of The Doctor, will reprise her role as the voice of Iris in this second season of adventures. David Benson also returns as the voice of Panda.

The new season kicks off in February with The Sound of Fear, written by Mark Michalowski. “Iris and Panda encounter the deadly Naxians aboard space station Radio Yesterday, along with Iris’s ex-husband, Sam.”

The second installment, Land of Wonder, from Magrs, features “Iris exiled to Earth and working with top-secret organization MIAOW to investigate dark happenings in the Underground.”

Simon Guerrier writes The Two Irises and “Panda has not only the return of the Naxians to deal with, but there’s a new Iris aboard the bus – an Iris who is decidedly male…”

The concluding escapade will be Mark Margs’ The Panda Invasion. “As San Francisco celebrates the millennium, Iris must save the world from destruction, while Panda faces his evil twin, and all because somebody spilt their gin and tonic…”

Big Finish intends to release the four dramas as single CDs, available monthly beginning in February, or a single box set.

Interview: Bryan Talbot on 30 Years of ‘Luther Arkwright’, Part One

Interview: Bryan Talbot on 30 Years of ‘Luther Arkwright’, Part One

  • News
  • October 18, 2008








Bryan Talbot emerged from Britain’s underground comix to become one of the most innovative creators in the UK.  He’s the creator of the critically acclaimed graphic novels The Adventures of Luther Arkwright and A Tale of One Bad Rat.  He remains a creative force, most recently producing Alice in Sunderland, a graphic novel released last year form Dark Horse and Cherubs!, with Mark Stafford, which Desperado released this summer.

Warren Ellis said, “Luther Arkwright is probably the single most influential graphic novel to have come out of Britain to date.” This month, Bryan Talbot’s seminal work is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary.  It was first serialized in Near Myths, a British title, before being collected as a miniseries and graphic novel through the years.  A new edition, using digitally remastered pages from the Czech edition, is being released by Dark Horse.

Talbot graciously agreed to chat with us about the work and its influence on graphic novels. Part one will focus on Luther Arkwright and tomorrow’s second part will explore Talbot’s career.

CMix: Bryan, thanks for taking the time to sit with us.

Bryan Talbot: Thanks for inviting me.

CMix: Do you agree with Warren’s assessment?

BT: Er…yes, it probably is the most influential UK graphic novel as I can’t think of another that’s comparable in that respect. Most of the "Brit pack", including Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, were fans of it years before they started writing comics professionally. Writers such as Warren, Garth Ennis, Grant Morrison and Rick Veitch have acknowledged its influence. According to Steve Bissette and Michael Zulli, it inspired them to want to draw comics.

CMix: He went on to say, "He took from everywhere – the films of Nick Roeg, head shop culture, 19th Century magazine illustrated, medieval woodcuts, classical portraiture, Sixties collage, Mal Dean and the New Worlds illustrators, anything and bloody everything, and adapted it all to work in the special environment of comics." Was there one element that started the process?

BT: Two years before starting on the graphic novel I wrote and drew a one-off eight page strip called "The Papist Affair" in my Brainstorm Comix series of underground comics. It was an excuse to do a Richard Corben-style line and wash strip and I invented the character of Arkwright for that, inspired by Michael Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius novels. Mike created Cornelius and offered him as a template hero. So that was the starting point. After finishing the strip I started to think about fulfilling a long-standing desire I had to produce what we now call a graphic novel and started to develop it based around Arkwright.

 

(more…)

Kevin Smith to Make Sci-Fi Comedy

Kevin Smith to Make Sci-Fi Comedy

  • News
  • October 17, 2008

During the promotion for his new film, Zack & Miri Make a Porno, Kevin Smith began talking up a science fiction comedy he had in mind.  In fact, he was riffing for reporters about how it was going to be dark and different for him as a filmmaker.

This morning The Hollywood Reporter runs the story that Smith will do this as his next project after Red State, which he will shoot next spring. He anticipates the film to run in the $45-50 million budget range. The trade says the new feature “will reference other sci-fi movies and revolves around a father-son relationship.”

Smith will produce with View Askew partner Scott Mosier and The Weinstein Company is the most likely studio to handle the project. The trade reports Harvey and Bob Weinstein have already read a draft of the film’s script.

"The moment someone steps out of the spaceship, it’s going to cost a little more," Smith said of the budget, his largest ever.

"All the relationships in the flicks I’ve done have been done before, have been either a guy falling for a girl or two dudes hanging out in a ‘bromantic’ comedy," he said. "I wanted to explore a father and son."
 

TV Tidbits

TV Tidbits

  • News
  • October 17, 2008

Michael Ausiello writes at Entertainment Weekly, "Good news: A Sci Fi source confirms to me exclusively that the last half of season 4 premieres on Friday, January 16, at 10 p.m. Which, by my calculations, puts the series finale (boo-hoo!) at Friday, March 20." This means the network will not skip the three-day weekend i nFebruary as they normally have in the past, which is good news for one and all.

CBS has given a full season order to The Mentalist starring Simon Baker. The freshman series has garnered good ratings and positive reviews encouraging the Eye Network.

NBC has ordered three additional scripts for its midseason drama Medium. The peacock network may be forced to add the series to its schedule before the end of the year given some weaker than expected ratings for its lineup.

AMC has ordered a third season of the wonderful Mad Men.  Creator Matthew Weiner and Lionsgate, though, are still talking contracts with the studio hoping to sign the creator/producer to a two year deal which would encourage AMC to green-light a fourth season sooner than later.  Regardless, the second season of the award-winning drama will reach its conclusion October 26.

Brian Cox has been cast opposite Katee Sackhoff in the NBC pilot Lost and Found. He will play her character’s fractious partner Burt Macey, described by The Hollywood Reporter as "a foul-mouthed, racist dinosaur of a cop who does things the old-fashioned way: with blunt force and bigoted rants." The two are assigned to the worst possible cases after Sackhoff’s Tessa pisses off her Los Angeles Police Department superiors. Cox has also been cast for a multiple-episode story arc for the network’s midseason replacement, Kings.

Anime ‘Witchblade’ Episode Available for Free

Anime ‘Witchblade’ Episode Available for Free

  • News
  • October 17, 2008

Fans of FUNmation’s anime Witchblade series can download the first episodes from Apple’s iTunes store for free through October 26.  The other episodes retail for $1.99 each or $38.99 for the entire season.

Witchblade, of course, is the star character from Top Cow and headed for a feature film after also having been seen as a live-action television character. In Japan, Gonzo Digitmation introduced an anime version complete with new host for the mystical artifact. The young girl, Masane, starred in a 24-episode run in 2006. Animation writer Yasuko Kobayashi crafted an entirely different story and host for a series of Manga, also from Gonzo.

Witchblade: Takeru began its run in March 2006 in Champion Red from publisher Akita Shoten with art by Kazyuasa Sumita.

Witchblade AnimeTokuma Shoten and Uno Majoto, Witchblade anime veterans, also produced Witchblade Lost Generation: Midori no Shōjo, beginning in August 2006. The host, Yuri Miyazono, has inherited the artifact from Takeru Ibaraki.
 

‘Baldo’ Invites ‘El Muerto’ to Day of the Dead Festivities

‘Baldo’ Invites ‘El Muerto’ to Day of the Dead Festivities

  • News
  • October 17, 2008

Starting October 27, Baldo will crossover with Javier Hernandez’s El Muerto for a week long event celebrating the Day of the Dead.

Baldo, a strip from Hector Cantu and Carlos Castellanos, features a Latin American middle class family living in America. The title character is a teenager who goes to school and works part-time at an auto parts store. He’s tormented by his brilliant activist younger sister and counseled by his loving father and grandmother.

Hernandez created El Muerto in 1998 and it features Diego de la Muerte, “who, while on his way to a Dia de los Muertos festival, is abducted by Aztec gods only to return to Earth a year later with supernatural powers.” Hernandez published the comic book erratically through the last decade only to suspend print in 2003 and has promised a digital incarnation. It ahs a devoted following and was featured in an award winning independent film starring Wilmer Valderrama.

According to Editor & Publisher, this is the third time Baldo, distributed to 225 papers across America, has featured a Latin American comic book character.  In 2005, the strip was visited by Richard Dominguez’s El Gato Negro, another independent comic book. Lela Lee’s Angry Little Girls! paid a visit the following year.

"The Day of the Dead is a special holiday for lots of Latinos and we thought this was a unique way for Baldo and his family to pray for and remember a special loved one in their lives," Cantu said.
 

‘New Moon’ Rises at Summit

‘New Moon’ Rises at Summit

  • News
  • October 17, 2008

The always entertaining Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood reports the unsurprising news that Summit Entertainment is already readying the sequel to Twilight.  New Moon is the second book in the quartet of Stephenie Meyer novels and introduces Jacob Black the werewolf heartthrob to complicate Bella Swan’s life.

Finke goes on to note that the unreleased soundtrack album is among the Top 5 Best-Selling Albums on Amazon and Borders’ exclusive 2009 calendar sold out its first printing in days. None of this is a surprise given the book series’ sales alone plus the reaction among the teenyboppers and their moms at Comic-Con International this summer.  Clearly, this is one hot property, the kind of phenomenon usually reserved for Elvis or boy wizards (and Twilight opens November 21, taking the spot vacated by that same boy).

She goes on to report that the film may have cost a bargain at $37 million and even if they spend an additional $30 million on promotion, it’s all at bargain prices compared with other Hollywood productions such as the $180 million spent on The Dark Knight’s production alone.  Clearly, the film will bring in oodles of cash to Summit, allowing them to fund the second film (and third and fourth) in addition to new productions.
 

Rossio, Spotnitz Blog Their Reactions

Rossio, Spotnitz Blog Their Reactions

  • News
  • October 17, 2008

Blogs can be revealing as creators tend to sound off when executives to tell the press one thing or another.  Take for example; Pirates of the Caribbean co-scribe Terry Rossio.  After all the hubbub at Disney’s recent press announcement about a fourth installment, he posted the other day:

“For the record, none of the recent Pirates 4 rumors have any truth, including the so-called record 50 million dollar payday for Depp.

“Some pretty funny stuff, though. Sacha Cohen? Tim Burton? Studios are way too protective of their franchises for that sort of thing.”

And now that Tom Rothman, head of 20th-Century Fox, has said he’s actually open to a third X-Files feature, despite the poor reaction to this summer’s movie, producer Frank Spotnitz was inundated with links from fans, wanting a reaction.

His response to the fans: “I was encouraged to read Tom Rothman’s remarks as well. I anticipated the studio would wait until after the release of the DVD to make any decision regarding a third movie, but I will let you know if we end up having any news before then.”
 

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