Category: News

With 3-D all the rage, MGM announced over the weekend that Joss Whedon’s original thriller, The Cabin in the Woods, will be delayed from February 5 2010 to January 14 2011 to allow it to be upgraded to a three-dimensional chiller.

According to Shock Til You Drop, the film, co-written and directed by Drew Goddard (Cloverfield), will require six months for the conversion. The movie stars Bradley Whitford (The West Wing), Richard Jennings (Burn After Reading), Chris Hemsworth (Star Trek), and Whedon regulars Amy Acker (Angel, Dollhouse) and Tom Lenk (Buffy)

Two of Britain’s most popular actors have been cast in director John Landis’ Burke and Hare. According to Bloody Disgusting, Landis’ return to filmmaking will have him working with David Tennant, fresh off Doctor Who, and Simon Pegg, who gained acclaim in Star Trek.

The title characters are based on the famed 19th Century graverobbers who made a nice live providing corpses to an Edinburgh medical school. Piers Ashworth and Nick Moorcroft (St. Trinian’s) have written the script based on the real life incidents involving the hapless Burke (Pegg) and Hare (Tennant). Given demand, the pair would try and hasten along the end for borders at the lodging house run by Hare’s wife.

Landis last directed Susan’s Plan in 1998 while Tennant just completed shooting the sequel to St. Trinian’s, also written by Ashworth and Moorcroft. Pegg guest starred on Doctor Who, but played opposite Christopher Eccleston’s version of the Time Lord.

Why hasn’t Marge Simpson done a Playboy fold-out? Easy: from the tip of her toes to the top of her head, she’s just too tall.

But at least the fabled “Magazine For Men” is doing a pictorial on the teevee queen. And it’s a cover story, to boot. She’s legal, having had three children and a show that’s run for two decades.

Hopefully, this will lead to a continuing presence for the blue haired actress in the struggling magazine. It’s been quite a while since Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder’s Little Annie Fanny had any real exposure; perhaps Marge can fill the gap.

Although, personally, I’m holding out for Turanga Leela. There’s something about that eye…

A little Sunday morning blasphemy for y’all:

First, we have this painting by Jon McNaughton featuring Jesus Christ, creator of the heavens and earth and bearer of the US Constitution, flanked by, among others, Thomas Jefferson (a deist who actually rewrote his own version of the Bible to take out all the miracles and mysticism and just leave the philosophy), Ronald Reagan, and Christa McAuliffe. At his feet on his right you have the good guys– the farmer, the
Christian minister, the US Marine, the handicapped child, the mother, the black
college student, the schoolteacher who vaguely resembles Sarah Palin.

On the other side– Jesus’ left side, wink wink– is a professor holding a copy of Darwin’s Origin of the Species, a politician, a lawyer counting his money, a liberal news reporter, Mr. Hollywood, and a Supreme Court Justice weeping over Roe v. Wade, and of course, SATAN!

And yes, there’s a full listing explaining exactly what each person and position is supposed to represent. Click through to see what they all are (and order your own print, of course). You gotta admire the dedication to detail– it immediately reminded me of the political cartoon Dave Gibbons parodied in the back of Watchmen #8, with the same amount of over detail and overenthusiasm.

This desperately needed to be parodied, and David Willis at Shortpacked beat us to it.

As we brace ourselves for the new Doctor Who specials, the return of Sarah Jane Adventures, and Matt Smith’s first season, here’s a little gasoline to pour on the fan-fire – my take on the six top moments on Doctor Who.

6.
Quiet Time

There’s a great moment in the Doctor Who teevee movie, one
that we had rarely seen (if ever) in the original series: the Doctor, in this
case Doctor Seven, quietly sitting in the TARDIS in his comphy chair, reading a
book. Of course, drama being what it is he quickly gets, well, killed. Fatally.
And then begins a difficult regeneration into Doctor Eight. That wasn’t the
worst thing that confronted him: he had to face Eric Roberts as the Master. He,
and his series of proposed telemovies, was doomed.

5.
The Ears Have It

There’s this great moment in Rose, the first of Doctor
Nine’s shows where Christopher Eccleston stops the action when he crosses a
mirror in the TARDIS. He peers into the mirror, thinks he’s kind of good
looking, but he’s not too sure about those ears. In one stroke, Russell T.
Davies established the Doctor had just reincarnated and, therefore, the fight
that destroyed the other Time Lords had “just” happened (however one defines
“just” in time travel) while, at the same time, revealing quite a lot about this
new Doctor’s personality. Nice moment.

4.
The One and Phony Master

Stephen Moffat is the current Doctor Who showrunner and,
along with Davies, the most significant writer of the new series. But between
this series and the original, the BBC aired a wonderful “Doctor Who” episode
called The Curse of Fatal Death. It was a charity fundraiser ten years ago, a
brilliant parody, and the Who debut of writer Moffat. It featured no less than
five new Doctors – played, sequentially, by Rowan Atkinson, Richard E. Grant,
Jim Broadbent, Hugh Grant and Joanna Lumley – and one stellar Master: the
gifted stage and film performer, Jonathan Pryce. Had one of those movie
projects ever gotten off the ground, he would have been perfect in the role and
might have given Delgado a run for his money. It isn’t easy being menacing in
such a broad parody, and it is to the credit of both Pryce and Moffat that it
comes off. (more…)

Christie’s auction house in London will be auctioning the 22-inch, well, action figure of King Kong used in the filming of the movie of the same name. In specific, the little guy was used in the Empire State Building scene at the end of the movie.

“Oh, no, it wasn’t the airplanes.”

Only the metal part (see right) survives; the cotton/rubber/latex/rabbit’s fur “clothing” rotted off years ago. The auction will happen around Thanksgiving; I’ll bet lots of well-heeled Hollywood moguls have aliases bidding on the trophy.

Congratulations, Mister President.

(No, before you ask, this is a mock up cover. Marvel is not going back to press with another variant cover. Yet.)