Category: News

Gorgeous Paula Patton caught everyone’s attention in [[[Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol]]], which propelled the actress towards the A List. With the film out this week on Blu-ray she reflected back on the produuction in this interview, courtesy of Paramount Home Entertainment.

Q: Hey Paula. Let’s start with the obvious question. What is it like working with Tom Cruise?

A: Amazing. Honestly, it was a dream come true. I always thought he was an amazing actor from the first time I saw Risky Business. The movie that had a huge impact on me was Born on the Fourth of July. I was blown away how he played the all-American charming guy, goes away to Vietnam, is crippled and what he goes through. It blew me away. I remember very distinctly the moment I was told I would have a screen test with Tom. It was very old Hollywood the way they did it. It was at the Paramount lot, I had my own trailer and hair, make-up and costume. I have never had that before for a screen test. They put me in a golf cart and took me to the sound stage and I said to myself ‘OK, don’t freak out’. It was a great thing. We met each other and I was immediately at ease. We had great chemistry and a connection. It is because he is very human in that way. He is so kind to everyone whether it is a personal assistant, grip or gaffer. He just has great humanity about him and that’s why he’s so special.

Q: Who do you play in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol?

A: I play Jane Carter, an IMF agent. I have had a mission that went awry. Myself and Simon Pegg’s character have to break Ethan Hunt out of jail. There’s a bombing at the Kremlin and it gets pinned on us even know we did not do it. We get disavowed from the IMF and that’s where Ghost Protocol comes into it. We are still working, but the government won’t save us. It is a scary place to be. Also, because we are all thrown together as a team and Jeremy Renner’s character joins us we don’t know the other’s motivations. We don’t know who to trust. Jane is great character to play. She is very strong and lives in a man’s world. She’s vulnerable because she has experienced failure and loss and has to prove herself again. She is in a place of turmoil and also she is living on the edge because she has one chance to make what is wrong, right. (more…)

Motion comics remain a bizarre hybrid of comic book storytelling and the most limited of animation (reminding one of nothing more than the 1960s Marvel Super-Heroes animation, which was reviled for the longest time. Marvel Comics has been good about exploring every new form of technology and motion comics are included. They launched the line with an adaptation of Joss Whedon and John Cassaday’s Astonishing X-Men run beginning with Gifted. Now, capitalizing on Whedon’s direction of The Avengers, the second arc, Dangerous (issues 7-12), has been released on DVD by Shout! Factory.

The stripped down disc contains the complete run without extras or any clue there was a previous volume. However, watching the nine to eleven minute segments, you may be lost by references to the previous story. The story is the one when the Danger Room becomes sentient and considers the mutants “oppressors”, unleashing a damaged Sentinel after them.

The story runs nearly ninety minutes and if you liked the comic, you will enjoy this. For those unfamiliar with the title, it will be confusing. An adaptation should have tinkered with the script to allow context to be added or references beyond the storyline to be deleted. Whedon’s gift for dialogue and character, thankfully, remains intact.

The motion aspect is exceptionally limited, especially compared with other efforts such as The Watchmen. And as usual, I find fault with a great many of the actors cast doing the voices. The foreign accents are comically thick and you can’t always reconcile the character you’re seeing with the voice you’re hearing.

This is for the diehard collector only, but at $14.97, it’s priced to move and might be a worth a look to see Cassady and colorist Laura Martin’s work on the screen.

Brave will be out in June so Disney is cranking up the publicity machine. Here are some concept sketches to give you more of an idea about the filme, featuring Pixar’s first heroine.

MERIDA (Voice of Kelly Macdonald)

Passionate and fiery, Merida is a headstrong teenager of royal upbringing who is struggling to take control of her own destiny. She feels most at home in the outdoors honing her impressive athletic skills as an archer and swordfighter, and racing across the magnificent Highland countryside with her faithful horse, Angus. With a spirit as vibrant as her untamed hair, Merida also has a softness of heart, especially when it comes to her wee triplet brothers. As the daughter of the King and Queen, her life is weighted with responsibilities and expectations, causing her to yearn to preserve her freedom and independence. When Merida blatantly defies an ancient tradition, the consequences of her actions prove disastrous for the kingdom. She must race against time to make right the result of her reckless behavior, her journey compelling her to look inside to discover the meaning of bravery and reveal her true fate.

ANGUS

Black as night with ivory muzzle and fetlocks, Angus is Merida’s powerful Clydesdale and her most trusted confidant. Angus is Merida’s escape from castle life into the deep forest and the highlands beyond. Merida target shoots from her perch on his broad back and is able to coax him into one adventure after another. Angus can be balky, stubborn and faint-hearted at times, but is ultimately a devoted and faithful friend to Merida.

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The Spider ™ Argosy Communications. Artwork © Pablo Marcos.

New Pulp Author Martin Powell shared an excerpt from the upcoming Moonstone release of The Spider in “The City That Couldn’t Sleep.”

Enjoy.

Gunfire erupted, bullets splintering plaster and wooden panels. The Spider was a dark-cloaked blur, springing forward with panther-like prowess. He fired twice, dropping as many hooded thugs, splashing their blood and brains ruby-red across the linoleum. Two more shots punched through another masked skull, and severed a spine into gory splinters.

Only one crook remained. Trembling, he tossed away his weapon, knelt upon the sticky blood-slick floor, and surrendered.

The Master of Men laughed again.

“Smart boy,” he snarled, gliding closer to his prisoner. “You’ve been cleaning up, all over town. Clever jobs.
Well organized. Not like everyone else. Maybe you’re immune to the Sleepless Sickness. Perhaps you’re the cause of it. We’re going to have a long talk…and I promise you’re going to tell me exactly where—”

The thug’s eyes spilled tears, gasping behind his mask. The Spider tore away the cowl, revealing killer’s contorted face already blackening with poison he’d consumed from a hollow molar.

There was nothing the Spider could do, except watch him die. He wanted to curse his own failure.

Instead, he laughed. And laughed some more.

***

The Spider in “The City That Couldn’t Sleep” is written by Martin Powell with interior illustrations by the legendary Pablo Marcos. Coming soon from Moonstone Books. http://www.moonstonebooks.com/

There’s a great interview with Joss Whedon, director of the upcoming The Avengers movie, out May 4^th, in Sunday’s Arts & Leisure section of the New York Times.

Anyone who reads these columns with any regularity already knows that I am a Buffy geek. But you don’t know that I originally ignored it.  Yep, that’s right.  I didn’t find the Buffster until the second half of the second season, about the time Angel went back to being Angelus. I found her thanks to my participation in a message board called The Coffee Nebula, which started as a Voyager fan fest, but spread out into other science fiction — I can’t call it sci-fi — and fantasy shows, especially after Voyager ended. (The Neb, as we “Nebsters” fondly call it, is still active, so you might want to check it out.)  Everyone was raving about Buffy The Vampire Slayer, so I finally gave in checked it out.  And was hooked.

I searched out and found the episodes I had missed.  They weren’t quite as strong as the current episodes, but thinking about it now — and after reading the interview — I’ve figured something out.

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Writing can be fun. Most of the time. Even writing for profit. Or writing for fun like I do here.

And some days, it’s not. You sit down with the best intentions and nothing happens or nothing good. Like this time. I’m in a bad mood, my cats are nagging me, I feel tired and everything I write seems like crap and probably is. However, the column is due and I’d better not go back to Casablanca again. I told Mike I wouldn’t.

So I’m doing what I usually do. Sit down and type stuff and see if there’s anything useful in it.

I’m betting that, on some level, you know what I’m talking about. Doesn’t matter if it’s about writing. You’re trying to get something done and, for whatever reason, it’s just not working. It could be work, it could be a relationship, it could be just trying to fix something around the house – whatever, the fates are not aligned and it just doesn’t work and it’s frustrating as hell, isn’t it? We all know that feeling.

That’s what makes storytelling work, I think. We may not all have the exact same experiences but we know the feelings that come out of those experiences. Do I have to kill someone in order to know how a murderer might feel? Of course not. What I have to find in myself is how the murderer might feel in this given situation. Have you ever killed a fly? How did you feel about it? Most of us would feel nothing or might feel a bit of triumph or glee. It’s a pest that annoys you or it might be a threat that will bring some illness or lay eggs in your hamburger. (One of the reasons My Mary hates flies; that happened.) Different folks, different motivations.

Maybe that’s how the murderer feels about taking a human life. On the other hand, have you ever said or done something that you instantly regretted and knew you couldn’t take back? Hurt someone, perhaps ended a relationship beyond all possibility of revival? Maybe your murderer feels something like that.

As I write, I have to figure out what the character might feel and then find in myself some situation, some memory, some feeling that is similar and extrapolate from that. If I do that correctly, the reader will also – hopefully – find some feeling in themselves with which they can respond to the scene or the story and it will have greater impact.

It’s why so many men have the same reaction to the end of Field of Dreams that I get. It tears me up every time I watch it. (And, yes, I understand many women have the same reactions.) It’s about the complicated relationship between fathers and sons/daughters and what was, what might have been, what maybe could be.

Can you have stories without that? Sure. You can use a formula, you can connect the dots, and have something perfectly serviceable and even entertaining. You can make money doing that. The stories that stay with us, however, are the ones where we connect on some emotional level. I, as a writer, turn to the reader and ask, “Have you ever experienced something like this? Have you ever felt something like this?”

It’s the moments were that happens that a connection is made. It’s like flipping a light switch – the electricity flows, the connection is completed, and the lights come on. We share something together. We need that sharing – that empathy –to live with one another. We do that and we create something special – whether it’s a story or a civilization. One of my rules is that “Nothing that is human is alien to me” and when we deny that we deny our common humanity.

Huh. Look at that. Guess I found something to write about after all.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

Here’s the sort of wackiness you needed this weekend!

A dysfunctional family of superheroes with bizarre powers, the seven members of the Umbrella Academy spent their childhoods fighting evil and honing their extraordinary gifts under the tutelage of their guardian and mentor, Dr. Reginald Hargreeves. In this story from the past, the UA team fights a mysterious murderer and learns a powerful lesson…

Conceived and written by Gerard Way (of My Chemical Romance), [[[The Umbrella Academy]]] features art by Gabriel Bá (Casanova) and Dave Stewart (Hellboy) and was originally published by Dark Horse Comics. It won the 2008 Eisner Award for Best Finite Series/Limited Series, and if you haven’t read it yet, watch this to find out why…

The SyFy mainstay series EUREKA is coming to a close with a hand full of episodes that begin on the network on Monday at 9pm (ET). We begin our look at the show by talking to star Colin Ferguson and EUREKA creator Jamie Paglia on how they are prepared to say goodbye. Plus more with SyFy’s FACT OR FAKED Investigators, including the things they saw that made them believers and Frank Miller finally gets a GO for SIN CITY 2.

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