Category: News

That’s it. I’m burned out. I’m frazzled. I’m toast. It’s all getting to me. I close my eyes, but the browser tabs stare at me.

What to do?

Luckily, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, autor of Star Trek, Star Wars, and Roswell novels, as well as many of her own, has started writing The Freelancer’s Survival Guide. I’m going to immerse myself in that for a while, and see what I can see when I get back.

Well, I’m back, he said.

(A shiny dime to the first person to identify that line.)

“Manga Friday” has been on hiatus for a while, but it roars back into the arena, all mixed-metaphorical engines racing, with four new books set in that most hallowed of all Japanese story settings: the all-girls high school. Oh, sure – one of these books is set in a school that just recently let a small number of boys in, and another features a school that probably has some boys – but all of these books know that it’s the girls, with their little sailor outfits and ridiculously short skirts, that draws in the readers. (Apparently both boys and girls, as far as I can tell.) So, without further ado…

Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei: The Power of Negative Thinking, Vol. 1
By Koji Kumeta
Del Rey Manga, February 2009, $10.99

We begin with a parody, to ease ourselves into the goofy insanity of the real thing. Nozomu Itoshiki is an influential teacher at an all-girls school (told you!) – unfortunately, he’s not exactly influential in a good way, since he’s deeply suicidal. The requisite super-positive girl, Kafuka Fura, finds him hanging (the by-a-noose kind of hanging) in a cherry-blossom grove, and breaks his rope by grabbing onto his legs. That leads to the first iteration of Itoshiki’s catchprase – “What if I had died?!” – which is an incredibly awesome thing to say to someone who just saved your life, and which Itoshiki gets to say several times in the course of this book.

But, since he isn’t dead, Itoshiki has to go to school, where he spreads depression and sadness to his students – or he would, if they weren’t all each completely nuts in their own ways. Besides the super-positive girl, there’s one who never wants to leave her room (a Hikikomori – it’s common enough in Japan to have its own name), a stalker, one girl who always comes to school with new bruises and injuries, the requisite super-sexy girl who’s just returned from living overseas, a compulsive trash-texter, and so on. (more…)

Comics creators come from all sorts of places and today you meet a lady who goes from the burlesque stage to the drawing board. Molly Crabapple has a story to tell and she does it in a new graphic novel, plus that GI JOE series you’ve been waiting for hits the web today, and you know you want a “Gleek” action figure. We can tell you the only place you can get one!
 
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Hollywood’s hottest dynamic duo, Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci have named Bobby Cohen as president of Kurtzman/Orci Prods, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The pair have set up their own shop based on their commercial heat after working on The Transformers, Star Trek and related genre offerings.

"Alex and Bob started at DreamWorks as writers and have steadily evolved into a super-talented, multitasking filmmaking duo," DreamWorks principal Steven Spielberg said in a release. "Their taste for unique stories is unparalleled, which is why we’re excited to have them on the DreamWorks team."

On their own, they produced Paramount’s fall hit Eagle Eye and their second offering will be June’s The Proposal, starring Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds.

Among their proposed slate of projects includes the adaptation of Platinum Studios’ Cowboys and Aliens which K/O have written; an adaptation of Platinum’s Atlantis Rising with Len Wiseman (Underworld) set to direct for a summer 2011 release; Deep Sea Cowboys, based on an article from Wired; 28th Amendment, an original thriller written by K/O and to be directed by Florian Henckle von Donnersmarck (The Lives of Others); an adaptation of the espionage novels starring spy Matt Helm; and, The Big One: An Island, an Obsession and the Furious Pursuit of a Great Fish, adapted from Pulitzer Prize winner David Kinney’s non-fiction book.
 

From Amber Benson’s Official Blog: The Macarena Challenge!

Okay, I have a favor to ask. If you have read the book I’m shilling (selling, pimping, whatever the Hell you wanna call it), would you post a review of it up on Amazon ? I don’t care if you loved Death’s Daughter or hated it. Just post your thoughts; any and all. It would be very helpful and if I get 85 reviews going over at Amazon (not all by the same person) then I will post a video of me up on You Tube doing the Macarena.

You don’t believe? Just try me. I do a nasty Macarena.

Well, how can we not promote that?

If we get a hundred reviews, maybe we can get the book’s editor, Ginger Ginjer Buchanan, to do a Macarena too.

Oh yes. We know where to find you, Ginger Ginjer . And ve haff ways of making you dance.

(Look, it’s not like I can guarantee getting any of Amber’s co-stars from Buffy The Vampire Slayer to do it. But I can find Ginger Ginjer.)

UPDATE: But apparently, I can’t spell Ginjer. Dang spellcheckers. I forgot that Ginjer uses her own name as a proofreader test.

Showtime’s The Tudors has been renewed for a fourth and final season according to Variety. The series’ third season launched just two weeks ago and comes in the wake of the premium channels’ decision not to buy four new series. Showtime did not launch a new series in 2008 and the pressure is on to launch successful projects in order to grow and remain competitive with HBO and Starz.

Jonathan Rhys Myers returns as King Henry VIII for the final ten episodes which will shoot in Dublin starting in June and air next spring. Creator/showrunner Michael Hirst will be writing all the scripts as he has for the previous thirty installments.

The third season opened April 5 and the ratings showed a cumulative audience of 1.3 million once all airings were totaled. The first two seasons, which we positively reviewed, are available on DVD.