Category: News

‘Watchmen’ battle leads to ‘Foundation’ going to Sony?

  • News
  • January 16, 2009

Okay, this one is complicated. Bear with us.

Variety reports that Columbia won an auction late Thursday for screen rights to Foundation, Isaac Asimov’s science fiction trilogy quad series. The film will be developed as a directing vehicle for Roland Emmerich. This is a surprise development, possibly stemming from bad blood between Warner Bros. and Fox over Watchmen.

The property was originally developed by Fox and producer Vince Gerardis, then found its way to New Line (a division of WB) and went with Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne as the first major project announcement after the former heads of New Line got bounced formed Unique Pictures at WB.

Gerardis, whose "Created By" formerly represented the Asimov estate, was attached as producer. And Fox would have had to be compensated for its development costs. That became a problem for WB (can’t imagine why, after the pleasant experiences with Watchmen) and the studio let its option lapse, expecting to quietly make a new deal with a clear chain of rights that would have left Fox and Gerardis cut out. So it went to auction. WB bid for Unique and director Alex Proyas, Fox bid for Gerardis. Emmerich and Sony were last minute bidders– it seems that Emmerich’s partner Michael Wimer at Centropolis Pictures had been tracking the availability of the rights since he was Emmerich’s agent at CAA, and Columbia Pictures president Matt Tolmach grabbed it.

Just another Hollywood ending.

Foundation was originally published as a series of eight short stories in Astounding Magazine beginning in 1942, "Foundation" is a complex saga about humans who are scattered on planets throughout the galaxy, living under the rule of the Galactic Empire. Hari Selden, a psycho-historian who can scientifically predict the future, sees an imminent empire collapse, and sets in motion a plan to save civilization and the knowledge of mankind.

 

Manga Friday: The Dregs

  • News
  • January 16, 2009

Manga Friday took a little holiday for the last couple of weeks, and it may take more holidays in the weeks to come. Looking back on my recent columns, I’ve said an awful lot of “and here’s the next volume in a series I’ve reviewed four times” and “this week’s books have nothing in common” – and neither of those are quite what I’d hoped. I think I’m reviewing too many of the same manga, too often, so I expect to cut back on Manga Friday substantially in 2009, unless I start seeing more different things.

I expect to keep reviewing stuff here on Fridays, but there may be somewhat less of the specifically Japanese/Korean stuff for a while. (Or possibly not – whenever I try to predict something like this, I’m usually wrong.) But I’ll save the name “Manga Friday” for when I’m looking at books that would be called manga by that legal construct, the “reasonable man.”

So, for this week, I have three books, arranged in ascending order of volume number:

The Manzai Comics
Story by Atsuko Asano; Art by Hizuru Imai
Aurora, January 2009, $10.95

This opens with an odd hint of yaoi, as large, athletic, energetic, popular student Takashi Akimoto begs small, weak, timid (generic manga hero Type 1) Ayumu Seta to “please go out with me” and “do it with me.” Takashi actually wants to form a manzai comedy team with Ayumu, but he’s either too dim or too focused on himself to actually say that for several pages.

(Apparently – I have no personal knowledge of this, but several references agree – the dominant form of comedy in Japan is manzai, two-person acts, rather than sketch comedy or stand-up or improv. Think Abbot & Costello or Crosby & Hope.)

Ayumu is not just an ordinary shy boy – well, he’s a manga hero, so you know there’s got to be some horribly dramatic thing in his past – he considers himself responsible for the car-crash death of his father and older sister because he was clinically depressed (and completely untreated as well). So he has the standard “I just want to be normal” complex of the dweeby manga hero in spades. (more…)

The Point – January 16th, 2009

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  • January 16, 2009

Battlestar Galactica‘s final ten episodes have begun and Baltar stops in to say farewell, Mike Gold tells us what to watch, DC has the best selling thing in the comic stores plus David & Maddie together again? Can it be true?

 

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On fan battles, audience interaction, what’s real, and who’s stronger, the Thing or the Hulk?

  • News
  • January 16, 2009

Patrick Nielsen Hayden makes a comment on Tor.com that really deserves wider dissemination:

"SF fans in general tend to be discursive sorts…"

Which is another way of saying that SF readers tend to get invested in not just the story, but the argument.

And once you care about the argument, you care about the people pursuing it.

There are dozens of ways to make this dynamic seem trivial or pathetic, but really, it’s just people caring about what’s real.

Speaking just as a reader, forget about as a professional, the plain fact is that in a world of limited time and options-that-exclude, given the choice between a new Charles Stross novel and a new Greg Egan novel, I’m going to read the Stross, because I know that if I want to talk about it afterwards, Stross is available for conversation and Egan isn’t.

There are dozens of ways to frame this as evidence of Egan being a hero of artistic independence, but you know something, I don’t care. I’m just a reader trying to have an non-boring life. Stross goes out of his way, via extra levels of interaction and availability, to make the whole business of novels and art non-boring. Egan doesn’t. Life is short.

It’s true. And in a field where the arguments are even more passionate (see above picture) the fan base can be even more intense, and it carries over to the field.

And the Internet makes it even more intense. Think about it: who constantly tops the lists of favorite comics writers? Neil Gaiman, Brain Bendis, Peter David, Mark Evanier, Warren Ellis, JMS… even if they don’t have a series running at the moment, they have a dedicated fan base because they immerse themselves in the arguments, in the culture. And yes, every one of the people listed have a blog. That’s where fans are nowadays. You’re here, aren’t you?

Mark Waid, the pre-eminent fanboy-turned-pro-turned-recent-blogger, has a great example this week where he talks about the six traits that a hero should possess, and then provokes a fight by asking people to try and convince him why Indiana Jones should be considered a hero– which makes a few readers ask him why, by his criteria, Spider-Man should be considered a hero. (And since he wrote what’s going to be the best selling issue of Spider-Man this year, if not this decade, he should probably have an answer.) The argument was compelling enough that I took an hour to formulate an argument and contribute when I should have been finishing this blog post. And that’s the point.

What about you? Do you think there’s such a thing as an anti-social comics fan, even if his social interaction is limited to arguing who’s stronger, Benjy or Bruce? And would you enjoy comics as much if you couldn’t argue them with somebody else, or is the solitary enjoyment of pleasure enough for you?

Oh, and that image reminds me of this neat Hulk vs. Thing art gallery I found. Enjoy.

‘Watchmen’ legal fight settled

  • News
  • January 16, 2009

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros. and Fox have resolved their dispute over Watchmen, with the studios scheduled to present a likely settlement to Judge Gary Feess on Friday morning and request that the case be dismissed:

Terms of the agreement will not be disclosed, but it is said to involve a sizable cash payment to Fox and a percentage of the film’s boxoffice. Fox will not be a co-distributor on the film, nor will it own a piece of the "Watchmen" property going forward. The studios are set to release a joint statement announcing the agreement Friday.

A Warners spokesperson would not comment on the settlement. A Fox spokesman said no final deal had been reached….

While [producer Lawrence] Gordon is not a party to the case, Warners is said to be pursuing the producer and his attorneys to reimburse it for the costs of the settlement. During the course of the litigation, Gordon’s then-attorney admitted that he negotiated Gordon’s 1994 separation from Fox without knowing about a pre-existing 1991 agreement on which Fox has based its lawsuit.

Boy, I wouldn’t like to be Gordon’s insurance company now…

In the meantime, it sounds like I will actually be able to see the film for my birthday. Which almost makes up for my impending decrepitude. And that’s worth a smiley face, blood stained though it may be.

Has anybody figured out how to make a blood stained smiley face emoticon?

(Hat tip: Mmike Wweber.)

PREVIEW: ‘Batman: The Brave and the Bold’ with Green Arrow, Speedy, Deadman and… Kamandi?

  • News
  • January 15, 2009

We’ve obtained preview footage of the Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode, "Dawn of the Dead Man!" airing this Friday, January 16 on Cartoon Network at 8:00 PM, guest starring Smallville‘s Michael Rosenbaum as Deadman. What is it with him and smooth headed characters?

In this week’s episode Batman and Deadman team up as spirits to stop Gentleman Ghost from raising an army of undead criminals. Green Arrow and Speedy join in the battle to save London. And Batman and Kamandi… Kamandi?!?… outrace a horde of monsters from the future. Take a look…

(more…)

Sales on Spider-Man/Obama bring new meaning to ‘brisk’

  • News
  • January 15, 2009

How brisk, you ask? This was the scene at Midtown Comics Times Square yesterday, with a man at the door keeping people waiting online outside in 22 degree weather.

That’s brisk.

At the time in the mid-afternoon, there were about 15 people waiting to get in so they could get upstairs and wait on another line to purchase the rapidly dwindling stock of Amazing Spider-Man #583. Cashiers kept all copies behind the register and were running at full tilt yesterday to handle the crowd.

Midtown wouldn’t give me a number for attribution, but said they’d moved "hundreds" of copies.

Mark Wheatley drawing ‘Lone Justice: Crash!’ video

  • News
  • January 15, 2009

Lone Justice: Crash! is the new graphic novel from the Harvey award nominated team of Robert Tinnell and Mark Wheatley. This two-fisted pulp adventure began Monday on ComicMix, but how does it all come together?

Mark Wheatley has taken the time to set up a video camera and show you exactly how he puts the entire package together. Take a look:

 

Ricardo Montalban, 1920-2009

  • News
  • January 14, 2009

Mexican actor Ricardo Montalban, best known to ComicMixers as Khan Noonien Singh or the enigmatic Mr. Roarke, died today at age 88.

According to the Associated Press, Montalban died this morning at his home in California. No cause of death was provided.

"The Ricardo Montalban Theatre in my Council District – where the next generations of performers participate in plays, musicals, and concerts – stands as a fitting tribute to this consummate performer," city council by president Eric Garcetti said in a written statement.

The flamboyant actor began his acting career in his native land before coming to Hollywood to become a star for MGM.  He made his American debut opposite swimming star Esther Williams in 1946’s Fiesta.

As a working actor in the 1960s, Gene Roddenberry cast him as Khan, the Genetics War exile in the 1966 episode of Star Trek, “Space Seed”. Years later, director Nicholas Meyer was captivated by the performance and wondered what Khan would be like 15 years later, leading to the story behind Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

In between, Montalban also played the heavy in the Cathy Lee Gibson Wonder Woman telefilm before straddling the line between good and evil as the host of Fantasy Island.  In his white suit and twinkling eyes, people’s fears and desires were made manifest from 1978-1984.

He was also a long running automobile pitchman, waxing rhapsodic about the car’s rich Corinthian leather, which was later parodied for years.

A crippling back injury occurred during the filming of 1952’s Across the Wide Missouri. He was thrown by a horse and stepped on a second horse. When it recurred in 1993, he was limited to a wheelchair and surgery only made the situation worse,  limiting his film and television work over the last 15 years although he did manage to appear in including The Naked Gun as well as two films from both the Planet of the Apes and Spy Kids series.
 

Patrick McGoohan, 1928-2009

  • News
  • January 14, 2009

Patrick McGoohan died Tuesday in Los Angeles after a short illness, his son-in-law, film producer Cleve Landsberg, said. He was 80.

Patrick Joseph McGoohan was born March 19, 1928 in Astoria, Queens, NY, raised in Ireland and the UK. He rose to fame in the British film and TV industry by starring in the 1960s television series Danger Man (renamed Secret Agent when exported to the US) playing John Drake, a role which made him the highest paid actor in England at the time.

McGoohan won two Emmys for his work on the Peter Falk detective drama Columbo, and more recently appeared as King Edward Longshanks in the 1995 Mel Gibson film Braveheart. He portrayed the father (and predecessor) of the Phantom in the 1996 movie.

But he was most famous as the character known only as Number Six in The Prisoner, a sci-fi tinged 1960s British series in which a former unnamed spy is held captive in a small enclave known only as The Village, where a mysterious authority named Number One constantly prevents his escape. McGoohan not only starred in the series, he created it, and wrote and directed many episodes. It’s currently being remade as a miniseries for AMC.

At the time of his death, McGoohan was mostly retired, living in Los Angeles, California with his wife of 57 years, Joan Drummond McGoohan. Along with his three daughters, he had five grandchildren (Sarah, Erin, Simon, Nina, and Paddy). On June 11, 2008, he became a great-grandfather to Jack Patrick Lockhart.

To promote its new reinterpretation of the show which just wrapped shooting and scheduled to premiere in November, AMC started streaming the original series in full screen last week. If you’ve never seen them before, go look.

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