Category: News

‘Oliver’, ‘Pinocchio’ the Next 2 Out of the Disney Vault

  • News
  • October 20, 2008

Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment is reaching into its vault for more anniversary editions.  Coming February 9, Oliver & Company will be available in a two-disc special edition. Overlooked by the snash success of The Little Mermaid, this was really the beginning of a new cycle of animation when things dramatically improved for the studio.  Based on Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, the vocal cast of Billy Joel and Bette Midler signaled new times for the studio.

Oliver will come with a behind-the-scenes featurette on the making of the movie, as well as the classic Disney short “Lend a Paw,” a look back at other animal characters in Disney films, and more. Suggested retail price for the DVD is $29.99.

BONUS FEATURES

Games & Activities
• All-New Game

Backstage Disney
• The Making of Oliver & Company
• Puss Café – A delightful animated short starring Disney favorite Pluto and friends
• The History of Animals in Disney Films – A Disney animated featurette
• Return of a Classic – A look at the 1996 theatrical re-release of Oliver & Company

Bonus Short
• Lend a Paw— Pluto rescues a kitten and saves the day in an Academy Award® (1941 Short Subject -Cartoon) winning animated short. 

share_save_171_16-7310303 (more…)

Respect, by Mike Gold

  • News
  • October 20, 2008

R-E-S-P-E-C-T / Find out what it means to me / R-E-S-P-E-C-T / Take care, TCB

When Otis Redding wrote that song back in 1965, I doubt he could foresee its impact on our culture. Everybody related to its sentiments, and today it’s common do see the word used as a major bone of contention in virtually all types of disputes, from labor negotiations to street gang antics. It makes sense. We all want to be respected for who we are and what we do.

Over the past couple years the comic book medium has started to receive its proper respect – but comic book fans have not. Matt Groening’s Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons is breathtakingly clever, but we forget that the guy is also a member of Mensa. I only know a few comic book fans that actually look like CBG, myself included, but a good many of those were Mensa members. One even dated Marilu Henner; sadly, that wasn’t me.

Mensa members deserve respect as well. They’re nerds; they don’t get respect. The only nerds that get respect are rich computer wizards, with the emphasis on rich. Wealth gets respect, and therefore I assume there’s a lot less respect going around this month than there was last month.

That shrine to our popular culture, the San Diego Comic-Con, is astonishingly successful. It pumps millions and millions of dollars into the local economy – a sum further enhanced by the several successful comic book publishers in the area – yet San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders felt it save to piss all over the comic fans last year. “We’ve put up with the superheroes and now we’re on to the people with actual talent,” Mayor Ungrateful Jerk said. What an ass. I guess he knew the Comic-Con was locked into a contract for several more years. (more…)

Terence Howards Claims Ignorance Over Firing

  • News
  • October 20, 2008

Terence Howard was interviewed on NPR recently and he addressed, for the first time, his removal from Iron Man 2.

"It was the surprise of a lifetime," he said. "There was no explanation. [The contract] just…up and vanished. I read something in the trades implicating that it was about money or something, but apparently the contracts that we write and sign aren’t worth the paper that they’re printed on, sometimes. Promises aren’t kept, and good faith negotiations aren’t always held up."

Maybe it’s something personal.  Maybe it’s something professional.  Or maybe we’ll never know but it sounds pretty darn final to us.
 

Is Barack Obama Kryptonian?

  • News
  • October 20, 2008

This week at the annual Alfred E. Smith Charity Dinner, Barack Obama made a couple of comic book references, one to Superman and one to Alfred E. Neuman. Check the video at about :46 and again at 5:46…

So if Barack is Superman, does that makes McCain the Dark Knight?

Saturday was 24-Hour Comic Day! Did you celebrate?

  • News
  • October 19, 2008

02-553290224 Hour Comics Day is an annual challenge for cartoonists to produce a 24-page comic book written, drawn, and completed in 24 consecutive hours. The event was founded in 2004 by Nat Gertler, prolific author and publisher of the About Comics company. Currently, the event is organized each year by the comic book specialty retailer trade organization ComicsPRO, and hosted by independent comic stores around the country.

The idea of the 24-hour comic comes from Scott McCloud, who originally came up with it as a creative exercise for himself and Steve Bissette. McCloud’s rules for the challenge were thus: The comic must be begun and completed within 24 consecutive hours. Only one person may be directly involved in its creation, and it must span 24 pages, or (if an infinite canvas format webcomic is being made) 100 panels. The creator may gather research materials and drawing tools beforehand, but cannot plan the comic’s plot ahead of time or put anything on paper (such as designs and character sketches) until he is ready for the 24 hours to begin. Any breaks (for food, sleep, or any other purpose) are counted as part of the 24 hours.

Numerous notable comic creators have attempted the challenge over the years.  Dave Sim published his 24-hour comics in the back of his popular book Cerebus the Aardvark. Neil Gaiman and Kevin Eastman tried and failed, and became the namesakes for the two varieties of “noble failures”: Gaiman stopped his comic at the 24-hour mark; Eastman continued to the full 24 pages. McCloud maintains a site for the challenge and also keeps an official list of recognized 24-hour comics. ComicsPRO reports that over 1,000 people have completed the challenge. Compilation books are available of the completed challenges for the past few years, and McCloud has a book on the subject as well.

While most participants are amateurs, many pro cartoonists take part as well. In addition to the most common black-ink-on-white-paper drawings, participants have done full color painted comics, computer-drawn comics, photo comics, comics made of pictures of posed action figures, a series of painted stones with captions, and a Daredevil superhero comic made by cutting pictures of Ben Affleck’s head out of magazines and pasting them onto stick figure bodies. The biggest single event was in Austin Books in Austin, Texas in 2005, with 70 cartoonists. 2006 saw event sites in 17 countries, and the reports for 2008 are still coming in.

My favorite 24-hour comic? Scott Kurtz’s take on Batman.
 

‘W.’ Feels “Payne’

  • News
  • October 19, 2008

Max Payne is the first video game-inspired movie in a while and it did something its predecessors failed to do, capture the number one spot in its first weekend and get reasonable reviews.

The film opened with $18 million in tickets sold, according to Box Office Mojo. It was clearly the number one film for the weekend, with Disney’s Beverly Hills Chihuahua clawing onto second place with $11.2 million in its third week of release.

Oliver Stone’s much-talked about W., starring Josh Brolin and a well chosen cast, opened in fourth place, collecting just $10.55 million Washingtons. "For me, an Oliver Stone film about George Bush doesn’t necessarily scream big box office," Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Media By Numbers told the Associated Press. "A film like this is very tough to gauge, but this is exactly what I thought it would do."

In third place was the debut of the civil rights-era film, The Secret Life of Bees, taking in a respectable $11,050,000. Rounding out the top five was Eagle Eye, adding an additional $7,343,000 in its fourth week, bringing its total to $81,335,000.

The other newcomer was Sex Drive, which took in just $3,566,000. Films in their second weekend slid by about half with Body of Lies taking in $6,880,000 and Fox’s Quarantine    scaring up just    $6,300,000. City of Ember, which looks great, seems to be turning away audiences and took in just $1,725,000.

As fall settles across the country, clearly diversionary films are in order.  Payne could have easily played over the summer but is the dose of fresh air people want as they tire of the economic nightmares and political mud slinging.  Clearly, high minded efforts such W. and Bees may be Oscar bait but they may be too serious today.

Movies that have okay word of mouth and marquee names seem to be hanging on but none are doing spectacularly well or poorly. The freshest of the bunch, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, has garnered a nice buzz, is diversionary and was produced on the cheap so its haul of  $26,707,000 after three weeks means its almost at the breakeven point which is good news for Sony.

The Dark Knight is just about out of gas and its worldwide total stands at $990,869,000  so breaking the billion mark will be tough as it sheds screens in favor of holiday fare.

‘Sarah Connor’ gets Full Season Order

  • News
  • October 19, 2008

After all the hubbub in recent weeks, it’s somewhat of a surprise to see Fox quietly announcing the full-season pickup for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Just last week, the show was given a sign of hope when additional scripts were ordered but now the full complement of nine episodes have been ordered bringing the full season total to 22.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Monday night series has seen only modest ratings in a tough time slot. Just 5.7 million viewers saw the most recent episode which sounds like a lot but in television terms is not.

Details will be formally announced Monday.  Speaking of tomorrow, the show’s blog has a post from Denise Thé, who wrote the episode and says, “’The Tower’ is the first of our episodes to be directed by a woman – the very talented Tawnia McKiernan. In the episode, Cameron fights a female Terminator – our first female-on-female Terminator fight. It’s a knock down, blow-your-hair back, jab-your-eye out (literally) fight scene. Be sure to watch closely – the arm and leg twists are not special effects! It’s also the first peek at The Turk since Samson and Delilah. The first insight into Weaver’s relationship with her daughter, Savannah. And at long last… the first time we address the mystery of who killed Sarkissian.”
 

The Theory of Webcomics: The Daily Grind

  • News
  • October 19, 2008

The Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge is a competition between online comic artists to see who can maintain the longest Monday to Friday update schedule, following a strict set of rules. Each artist lays $20 USD on the line. The last man left standing takes the entire pot. The competition started on Monday, February 28, 2005, and is still going with ten contestants remaining.

Webcomics giants like Scott Kurtz, Chris Crosby, Steve Troop, and Jennie Breeden have all missed updates and been beaten out for the top spot. Conversely, none of the remaining contenders feature on Wikipedia’s list of Self-Sufficient Webcomics. Does this seem counter-intuitive?

Any successful webcomic creator will tell you that regular updates are important — in order to build an audience, you need to provide regular content to keep people coming back to the site. And very few comics have come into success with only one comic a week — you could pretty much count them on one hand — so you’d need at least two or three updates each week. If you can stretch it, five is optimal, because it gets the working world checking your site as part of their daily routine.

If your readers have the right sort of personalities, an irregular update schedule could work in your site traffic’s favor. Studies of gamblers has shown that irregular rewards — that is, receiving a reward only sometimes, and seemingly at random, for the same action — play all sorts of fun games with human brain chemistry. This is pointed to as the cause of the Las Vegas zombies who sit at slot machines for days. Is that any different from checking Order of the Stickevery day hoping that one of the three weekly updates will be there?

(Well, how different it is depends on how much of a reward you consider a new OotS comic to be. Money is a pretty universal reward. The comic needs to be good enough to trigger a “reward” response, because a sporadic, unfunny comic quickly gets dropped, rather than obsessively watched.) (more…)

Warner Bros. Releases Complete Flintstones Box Set

flintstonesThose of you who are like me and impatient when it comes to the World of DVD’s knows what it’s like to buy each season of a TV show on DVD and then miss out on a glorious looking box set with better extras and a shinier box for your collection. Well, out next week is definitely one box set you won’t want to miss, as Warner Home Video is realasing The Complete Flintstones Series on DVD. The set will include all 166 episodes from six seasons (1960-66) on a whopping 24 DVD set in a cool looking "stone age" style box. No word on whether the box will include any of the films such as A Man Called Flintstone, but you can still hold your inner child over with hours of bonus footage never before seen on DVD.

Here you can check out a clip from one of the extras where the original writers and animators of the beloved series discuss how The youngest Rubble, Bam-Bam came to be and how the voice talent created the characters we know and love to this day. 

 

You can finally get your Yabba-Dabba-Doo on with the box set on October 28.

‘Doctor Who’ Director Named

  • News
  • October 19, 2008

Two tidbits for Doctor Who fans.  First up, James Strong has been announced as director for the Easter Doctor Who Special for 2009. He will be working from a script by Gareth Roberts ("The Unicorn and the Wasp").

"We’re so happy that he’s returning to the fold," Russell T. Davies told Doctor Who Magazine. "James has handled Daleks in sewers, hordes of Adipose and Satan himself, as well as a Titanic with Kylie on board. But believe me, none of that will have prepared him for what we’re about to unleash in this next script!"

The soundtrack CD to the fourth season of the current Doctor Who will be released by Silva Screen Records on November 17. The disc will carry 27 tracks taken from throughout the season, which completed airing during the first half of 2008.

Those interested in downloading the album from the company can obtain it sooner.

The track listing is as follows:

1. Doctor Who Season Four Opening Credits (0:46)
2. A Noble Girl About Town (2:14)
3. Life Among the Distant Stars (2:30)
4. Corridors and Fire Escapes (1:12)
5. The Sybilline Sisterhood (1:53)
6. Songs of Captivity and Freedom (4:03)
7. UNIT Rocks (1:11)
8. The Doctor’s Daughter (1:38)
9. The Source (3:21)
10. The Unicorn and the Wasp (3:11)
11. The Doctor’s Theme Season Four (2:47)
12. Voyage of the Damned Suite (10:21)
13. The Girl With No Name (2:45)
14. The Song of Song (2:14)
15. All in the Mind (1:18)
16. Silence In The Library (2:57)
17. The Greatest Story Never Told (6:17)
18. Midnight (3:07)
19. Turn Left (2:20)
20. A Dazzling End (2:22)
21. The Rueful Fate of Donna Noble (2:44)
22. Davros (2:07)
23. The Dark and Endless Dalek Night (3:44)
24. A Pressing Need to Save the World (4:55)
25. Hanging On The Tablaphone (1:07)
26. Song of Freedom (2:51)
27. Doctor Who Season Four Closing Credits (1:07)

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