Author: Robert Greenberger

‘Opus’ Comes to an End in November

‘Opus’ Comes to an End in November

  • News
  • October 7, 2008

Opus will end its run as Sunday-only comic strip on November 2, according to a release from the Washington Post Writers Group.Berkeley Breathed in a press release, indicated, “With the crisis in Wall Street and Washington, I’m suspending my comic strip to assist the nation. The best way I can help is to leave politics permanently and write funny stories for America’s kids. I call on John McCain to join me.”

He told The Los Angeles Times, “30 years of cartooning to end. I’m destroying the village to save it. Opus would inevitably become a ranting mouthpiece in the coming wicked days, and I respect the other parts of him too much to see that happen. The Michael Moore part of me would kill the part of him that was important to his fans.”

“His ability to weave those emotions together is what makes Breathed such a great cartoonist, and it’s why he will leave a bigger hole on the comics pages. Both figuratively and literally,” Amy Logo, the Post’s Comics Editor joked to the Daily Cartoonist.

Readers will be asked in the final strip to guess the pudgy penguin’s ultimate fate. Logo indicated the winning choice and the resulting final strip will be available only online. The contest begins October 12 and details can be found in that day’s strip as well as Breathed’s website.

Opus is, of course, a spin-off from his immensely popular Bloom County, which ran from December 1980 through 1989.  Opus debuted in 2003.

Snyder & Gibbons Show off ‘Watchmen’

Snyder & Gibbons Show off ‘Watchmen’

  • News
  • October 7, 2008

Warner Bros. is doing a tremendous amount of early publicity for March 6’s Watchmen release.  They have dispatcheddirector Zack Snyder on tour, showing clips to the press and other parties first in London then last week in Los Angeles and last night in Manhattan.  He and the clips will continue their tour to Europe and Asia in the coming weeks.

DC Comics President and Publisher Paul Levitz kicked off the festivities by reminiscing about the days when pages for the comic would arrive from England.  “It was an amazing book. We’d be waiting expectantly for the next batch of pages.”

He noted it was the first time in the company history a film option had been sold before the final issue had seen print. The series has continued to perform miraculous feats with Levitz going on to say that the company has sold more copies of the trade paperback since the trailer was unveiled on July 18 than in the last seven years even though it has topped the graphic novel sales lists for each of those years.

He then introduced Snyder who, dressed in sweater and jeans, chatted up the rapt audience before screening the first 12 minutes of the film, complete with titles. “I’ve always been a fan,” he admitted.  “But I came from the Heavy Metal side.  My Mom, I had a strange Mom, who bought me a subscription.  She thought it was a cool looking magazine.”  When he looked at comic books of the time in comparison, he was disinterested because no one was “fucking or dying, why am I looking at this?”

The Watchmen, which he admitted had a little of each, changed that for him as a reader.  He never thought of it was a film until he was nearing the end of work on 300 and it was offered to him. Snyder then recounted his evolution with Warner Bros., which inherited the project from Paramount Pictures.  They saw it as a modern day take on terrorism and while he considered it, the more he looked at the David Hayter script and the original graphic novel, the more he thought it needed to remain faithful.  Slowly, he brought the studio around to his way of thinking while acknowledging the smash success of 300 by the time did not hurt his credibility.

After the opening sequence, he introduced the origin of Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup).  After the applause died down, he showed the final sequence which was Nite-Owl and Silk Spectre breaking Rorschach out of prison followed by some more quick clips, largely taken from the trailer.

(more…)

Patrick Stewart May Make it So

Patrick Stewart May Make it So

  • News
  • October 7, 2008

What was first discounted as a rumor has gained heft and may actually be a reality.  Actor Patrick Stewart may well be beaming aboard the TARDIS for the next season of Doctor Who.

According to a report in the UK’s Daily Star, Stewart has reportedly been offered the role of the Meddling Monk, a Time Lord once featured on the series. Apparently the BBC has offered him the role and are willing to wait for Stewart’s schedule to clear so it may happen for one of the 2009 specials or the new season beginning in 2010.

British fans have been treated to David Tennant, the current Doctor, and Stewart, formerly known as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, performing Hamlet together.  The two have become fast friends and Stewart is an avowed fan of the series.
   
The Monk was introduced as someone who encountered the first Doctor, back in the early 1960s.  As portrayed by Peter Butterworth, he was a comical fellow and appeared in two stories, “The Time Meddler” and “The Daleks’ Master”.  The character disappeared from screen but has been used in other media through the years.
 

Woody Harrelson Defends us Against Zombies

Woody Harrelson Defends us Against Zombies

  • News
  • October 7, 2008

So, Woody Harrelson has discovered genre filmmaking.  In addition to his super-hero film, Defendor, he is now making Zombieland, described as a horror/comedy by Columbia Pictures.  

Actor Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale) is said to be negotiating to appear opposite the actor. According to The Hollywood Reporter,they would play “a mismatched pair of survivors who find friendship and redemption in a world overrun by zombies.”

 

Eisneberg’s character would be Flagstaff, described as “a terrified shut-in whose cowardice makes him an expert at surviving the zombies but who is forced out of his shell to join the band of survivors.

The movie is scheduled to be directed by Ruben Fleischer (Gumball 3000: Six Days in May) from a script by the Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (The Joe Schmo Show)

Harrelson will first appear in Defendor, where he will be a normal guy who thinks he’s a super-hero complete with secret identity.  Kat Dennings (Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist) just joined the cast last week, playing a street kid Harrelson’s Arthur befriends.  Sandra Oh (Grey’s Anatomy) plays Arthur’s psychiatrist. The movie is written and helmed by Peter Stebbings (Across the River to Motor City) in his directorial debut.

Marvin Media Adapts Paul Kanter

Marvin Media Adapts Paul Kanter

  • News
  • October 7, 2008

Another animation company has been formed as Marvin Gleicher, co-founder and former CEO of Worldwide Operations for Manga Entertainment, has opened Marvin Media. His first effort will be adapting Paul Kanter’s Floating Moon as a feature-length animated film.  It will be directed by Keiichi Sato (Wolf’s Rain) from Manabu Ishikawa’s screen adaptation. The movie can be expected in 2010. Kanter, founder of the Jefferson Airplane, wrote the ecological tale.

Marvin Media is also producing High Def, a comedy from Island Def Jam Music Group, which will be 26 half-hour episodes expected in late 2009.

Gleicher co-founded Manga Entertainment in 1994 and is behind the domestic success of Ghost in the Shell.
 

James Marsters Reads ‘The Dresden Files’

James Marsters Reads ‘The Dresden Files’

  • News
  • October 7, 2008

James Marsters has quite the fan following as an actor but also an equally loyal following as a reader of audio books.  The latter fans will be delighted to know that he has signed on to read the remaining six Harry Dresden novels by Jim Butcher.  These titles include Death Masks, Blood Rites, Dead Beat, Proven Guilty, White Night, and Turn Coat (to be released simultaneously with the hardcover due out in April 2009).

Death Masks will be released when Roc re-releases the book as a hardcover in November 2009. Blood Rites and Dead Beat can be expected when the hardcover reissue of Blood Rites is released in July 2010.

Butcher’s series about Dresden,  freelance wizrd/private investigator has been running for a decade or so now and was adapted as a one season Sci Fi Channel series.  The Dabel Brothers are also producing Dresden comic books and graphic novels, the firstof which will be reviewed here on Wednesday.

As a performer, he will next be seen in 2009’s Dragonball, the adaptation of the anime Dragonball Z.

Bryan Fuller Plans ‘Pushing Daisies’/’Wonderfalls’ Crossover

Bryan Fuller Plans ‘Pushing Daisies’/’Wonderfalls’ Crossover

  • News
  • October 7, 2008

Bryan Fuller knows well how regarded his quirky Wonderfalls series was.  The short-lived drama failed on Fox but he hasn’t forgotten his characters and told if Magazine that several will be back on ABC’s Pushing Daisies. The two are connected in his mind since the cancellation of the former allowed him to go on to the latter.

“Very bittersweet,” Fuller admitted, “because I loved [Wonderfalls] and the cast. So much so, that I had to do a Wonderfalls crossover in this season of Pushing Daisies. That happens in episode eight of the second season and I’m really excited about it.”

Fuller admitted the truncated first season, caused by the Writer’s Strike, actually allowed him to stop and rethink the series and is trajectory. “In a lot of respects it was a benefit and we were able to tell the stories in the first season and now we have a lot more game changing events than we did in the first season as the show is established and now we can take it to another level. And the second season is about jerking the wheel and taking a different road,” he said.

The charming romance between Ned and Chuck, unable to touch but smitten with one another, will grow during the second season. “Actually it is much more fun to write this romance than another type of romance where they don’t have restrictions,” he admitted. “‘I love you’ is so easy to write. There is no kind of craft there and feels almost cheap. On our show, we try to make the expression of love and the physical parameters much more a challenge and so much more satisfying than just a normal romance.”
 

Bill Murray up for ‘Ghostbusters 3’

Bill Murray up for ‘Ghostbusters 3’

  • News
  • October 6, 2008

Actor Bill Murray spoke at a New York news conference for City of Ember and repeated his interest in appearing in Ghostbusters 3.

The comedian also said that a script is moving forward at the moment. "There’s two fellows from The Office that are writing a script, but I’ve yet to see it. And I’m more involved with, you know, trying to get the dessert we ordered at lunch than I am with the new Ghostbusters sequel. But it’s possible. It’s a great idea that they hired these two guys to do it, because I think it’ll be a … it could be a fresh look at it. And it could be funny."

If true, he would reprise his role of Dr. Peter Venkman and appear alongside Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson, Jr. more than 20 years after Ghostbusters 2.

Of the latter, he admitted, "We did a sequel, and it was sort of rather unsatisfying for me, because the first one to me was the goods. It was the real thing. And the sequel, you know, was … it was a few years later. There was an idea pitched. And it was like, well, they got us all together in a room. We just laughed for a couple of hours. And then they said, ‘What if we did another one? Here’s an idea.’

"So they had this idea, but it didn’t turn out to be the idea when I arrived on the set. They’d written a whole different movie than the one [initially discussed]. And the special-effects guys got it and got their hands on it. And it was just not the same movie. There were a few great scenes in it, but it wasn’t the same movie. So there’s never been an interest in a third Ghostbusters because the second one was kind of disappointing … for me, anyway."

City of Ember opens this month.
 

First Avenger Plot Revealed

First Avenger Plot Revealed

  • News
  • October 6, 2008

The boys over Film School Rejects discovered the plot to The First Avenger: Captain America which was printed in the latest issue of Production Weekly, an industry trade publication.

“Born during the Great Depression, Steve Rogers grew up a frail youth in a poor family. Horrified by the newsreel footage of the Nazis in Europe, Rogers was inspired to enlist in the army. However, because of his frailty and sickness, he was rejected. Overhearing the boy’s earnest plea, General Chester Phillips offered Rogers the opportunity to take part in a special experiment… Operation: Rebirth. After weeks of tests, Rogers was at last administered the ‘Super-Soldier Serum’ and bombarded by ‘vita-rays.’ Steve Rogers emerged from the treatment with a body as perfect as a body can be and still be human. Rogers was then put through an intensive physical and tactical training program. Three months later, he was given his first assignment as Captain America. Armed with his indestructible shield and battle savvy, Captain America has continued his war against evil both as a sentinel of liberty and leader of the Avengers.”

The film is written by Hawk Ostby (Iron Man) and Zak Penn (The Incredible Hulk) clearly inspired by the first Captain America story by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby back in 1940. No director or cast has been announced but Marvel and Paramount Pictures recently reconfirmed that the movie will open May 6th 2011.

 

Harrison Ford says 5th Indy Being Planned

Harrison Ford says 5th Indy Being Planned

  • News
  • October 6, 2008

After the critical drubbing George Lucas has received as a writer and storyteller, the news that he’s conceiving the plot for a fifth Indiana Jones movie must be met with skepticism.  Still, Harrison Ford told The Los Angeles Times that Lucas has a plan. "It’s crazy but great," Ford said. "George is in think mode right now."

While Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull may have grossed $318 million domestically and $770 million worldwide, it was also poorly reviewed noting it lacked the spark and originality that fueled the franchise earlier.

"It’s automatic, really, we did well with the last one and with that having done well and been a positive experience, it’s not surprising that some people want to do it again," the 66-year old actor told Geoff Boucher.

He spoke further about franchising the character in other media and said outright he would never consent to voicing an animated incarnation. "I’m not philosophically against doing animation roles but not for Indiana Jones," Ford noted. "I’d hate to see it reduced in any way from the movies that we have done and the way we have done them."

While the DVD will be released on October 14, it may be the last time to watch Indy for a long while.  Despite talk for years, the fourth film was a stop and start process for over a decade as they ran through numerous writers then had to wait for the stars to align to allow Lucas, Ford and Steven Spielberg to be free at the same time.
 

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