Category: News

Actor/producer Tom Cruise confirmed for Empire Magazine that the talented Brad Bird will make his feature film debut with Mission: Impossible 4. Cruise will return to lead the IM Force’s field leader, Ethan Hunt, for the big budget Paramount Pictures release.

The studio initially announced a May 2011 release date but either the production schedule or competition caused them to alter the release to December 16, 2011.

J.J. Abrams, who stepped in to salvage the floundering film franchise by directing the third installment, returns as a producer. The screenplay will be by Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec from a story by Abrams and Cruise.

Cruise told the English magazine, “The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille – Brad is enormously talented and JJ and I are having a blast, cranking away. We’re having a lot of fun. I like working with people I just love hanging out with. You get to hang out and laugh and talk stories and movies and technology: what are we going to do?”

Apparently Bird was in contention with Edgar Wright for the assignment but his work on August’s  Scott Pilgrim versus the World kept him from being signed. “I dig Edgar. Very nice guy, very smart, very talented, I’d really like to do something with him,” said Cruise. “I met Edgar on the set of Mission 3. Simon Pegg and those guys are hilarious. I love Shaun of the Dead. It’s amazing. But we’re working with Brad right now. I don’t know if I’m allowed to talk about it but everything’s signed… Brad is doing it.”

The film will open against some genre competition during the holidays with Paramount’s The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn and Disney’s The Bear and the Bow also coming out in December.

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Frank Frazetta ushered in a new era of cover painting with heavily muscled heroes and lush, voluptuous women, evolving the pulp magazine style for more contemporary audiences. His work proved influential to writers, artists, and musicians for decades.

Best known for his series of covers featuring Conan the Barbarian on the Lancer paperbacks of the 1960s, he went on to create moody and evocative paintings for the Warren Magazines.

A child of Brooklyn, his artistic talents were evident early and by age eight, he was sent to the Brooklyn Academy of Fine Arts. He was mentored by Italian painter Michael Falanga who died before he could send young Frazetta to perfect his craft in Europe.

As the school closed in 1944, Frazetta sought ways to earn a living and drifted into illustrating comic books with several memorable Buck Rogers covers for Famous Funnies. He also drew several Shining Knight stories for DC Comics and displayed range with numerous funny animal stories as well.

By the 1950s, Frazetta was lending his talents to EC Comics, where he, Al Williamson and Roy Krenkel formed a powerful triumvirate, capable of masterful science fiction or fantasy stories.

Frazetta was hired by Al Capp to assist him on the popular Li’l Abner comic strip and he went on to also work with Dan Barry on Flash Gordon. The artist harbored his desire for a feature of his own and sold the short-lived Johnny Comet to the syndicates. (more…)

According to biographer / publisher Russ Cochran, legendary illustrator and comics artist Frank Frazetta passed away this morning.

Perhaps best known for his illustrations on the covers of the 1970s Conan paperbacks for Lancer Books and the 1960s Warren Magazines (Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella, Blazing Combat), Frazetta worked closely with EC artists Al Williamson and Angelo Torres as well as on various solo efforts for that and other publishers. He worked on The Shining Knight for DC Comics and the oft-reprinted jungle feature Thun’da created by Gardner Fox.

Frazetta spent years as Al Capp’s assistant – often, ghost – on the newspaper strip Lil Abner at the height of its popularity, where he first visualized the astonishingly sexy character Moonbeam McSwine. He went on to draw his own short-lived newspaper comic strip, Johnny Comet, and served as an assistant to Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder on Playboy’s Little Annie Fanny. Kurtzman once referred to Frank as “drawing sexy muscles in places where women don’t ordinarily have muscles.”

Generally regarded as one of the premiere illustrators of the latter half of the 20th Century, Frank Frazetta’s work has been gathered in numerous collections and calendars. His work continues to be licensed for poster reproduction and for adaptation into comic books.

Apparently, Warner Bros. has achieved success with their program of allowing people to upgrade from standard DVD to Blu-ray and has announced an expansion of the DVD2Blu program. The studio called our attention to the growing number of genre titles that ComicMix fans were most likely to be interested in exploring.

This program is a nice idea as is their Archive programming, effectively producing Disc on Demand offerings from their library. Now, if only they would offer some of those lost and forgotten films also in Blu-ray. Maybe in the future. In the meantime, here’s the press release:

Burbank, Calif., May 6, 2010 – Responding to the extraordinary growth of Blu-ray set-top hardware, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group has expanded its “DVD2Blu” upgrade program. Starting today, consumers can select from 90 of Warner Home Video’s most popular titles to upgrade that include the action-packed “Under Siege” and “Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut” as well as classics from the 1980s including “Risky Business” and “The Lost Boys.”   

According to recently published figures by the Digital Entertainment Group, sales of Blu-ray hardware for the first quarter of 2010 increased by 125 percent over the same period in 2009.  The DVD2Blu program will serve as a great way for new Blu-ray owners to jump start their Blu-ray Disc collections.

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group is proud to be an environmentally friendly company and will recycle all DVDs mailed for upgrade.  The discs will be processed and used for future plastic packaging. 
     

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