Tagged: television

‘Astro Boy’ Movie Casting Begins

  • News
  • February 28, 2008

feb28astro-8438475When the people of the future are in trouble, they turn to one thing to save them from the forces of evil -a tiny robot that doesn’t own a pair of pants and can deploy guns from his rear.

Astro Boy is being adapted into a big budget CG movie by Warner Bros. and The Weinstein Company and the titular character has already been cast. The voice of Astro Boy will be provided by Freddie Highmore.

Highmore is familiar to most film fans as Charlie Bucket from Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He’s no stranger to voice work either, as he recently provided the voice of Pantalaimon in The Golden Compass.

Astro Boy debuted as a manga in 1952 and became a television series in 1963. The character was created by Osamu Tezuka, considered the "god of manga" by some, and the television series was one of the first cartoons to use the anime asthetic.

The film version is slated for release in 2009 and is being scripted by Timothy Harris, the man responsible for Space Jam – the greatest movie to ever involve Michael Jordan and Bill Murray teaming up with cartoons to fight monsters from space. Astro Boy is in good hands.

(via CHUD)

Dimension Films Locks Up ‘Locke & Key’

  • News
  • February 26, 2008

According to Variety, Dimension Films has just snapped up the rights to Joe Hill’s graphic novel Locke & Key — which, conicidentially, ComicMix’s own Van Jensen recently reviewed right here. Dimension bought film and TV rights to the graphic novel from IDW Publishing and will develop it as a potential franchise under the guidence of producer John Davis.

In case you’re not familiar, Locke & Key’s story concerns three children who move to Keyhouse, a mansion in New England that’s full of magic and secrets. Once they begin to explore the house, the kids soon discover doors that transport them to different places and give them powers. Of course, there’s also danger because behind one door is an evil creature that really wants to be let out.

Dimension chief Harvery Weinstein was particularly happy about his company’s latest acquisition. "I love what Joe wrote," said Weinstein in the Variety article. "There are fun elements that horror fans love, and it feels like a franchise where you can feel satisfied with each film, but there is a door left open for the next one."

IDW released the first issue of Locke & Key last Wednesday, with the second one set to follow on March 5th.

 

Martian Manhunter Cast in ‘Justice League’ Film

  • News
  • February 26, 2008

If Warner Bros. decides to move Justice League out of Australia, a few friends from down under will be tagging along for the ride.

Director George Miller has cast Hugh Keays-Byrne in the role of the Martian Manhunter. Byrne is known primarily for his work in Australian film and television.

Miller first worked with Byrne a scant 29 years ago on the original Mad Max , which was released in 1979.

Byrne played Toecutter, the main villain of the film responsible for murdering Max’s family and turning him into the post-apocalyptic vigilante we all know and love. Now he’s playing a Martian superhero. The two characters actually share a common bond – a fear of exploding cars and fires – making it easy for Byrne to step into J’onn J’onzz’s green skin and blue underwear.

(via Moviehole)

The Super-Hero Car, by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • February 26, 2008

When we last looked in on our intrepid, tv-watching old guy – that’d be me – he was waiting to treat himself to the premiere of Knight Rider, a remake of an old series.

 
Okay, I watched it.
 
I can’t really compare it to the original, which aired at a time in my life when television had a very low priority. The episode I do remember seeing annoyed me, just a bit, I think, because he talking car seemed to be as much a – brace for a pun – deus ex machina as…oh, say, the shafts in Green Arrow’s quiver or the items in Batman’s tiny utility belt compartments; whatever the hero needs, that’s what’s there. But, as noted, I was never a real Knight Rider watcher.
 
Having made that confession: the show I saw last Sunday didn’t seem to be awfully innovative. The one blatant updating was that one of the good guys was a gay, black woman, a character who probably would not have appeared on network television during the original Knight Rider’s heyday.
 
And that talking car? Pretty nifty, I have to admit – similar to the original, but a bit improved. For example, it changed colors at the twiddle of a dashboard thingy, which brings us to the aforementioned Batman.
 

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Batcave Home Theater

  • News
  • February 22, 2008

Valerie D’Orazio points us to this Gizmodo story about a home theater system company that built their very own Bat-theater.

batcave-hts-gi-1898406

While it’s pretty dang cool, it’s not quite as impressive as the comic book professional who converted his basement into his own Batcave, complete with:

  • giant screen TV
  • desk carved in the shape of a bat symbol
  • hidden door to the stairway
  • atomic turbine, and
  • working batpole hidden behind the bookcase that leads from the first floor to the basement office– for when inspiration struck and the stairs were too slow, I guess.

But that’s not the impressive part. It’s that, since he was doing it for his home office, and that he was a comic book professional and it helped him get in the right mindset to create, it was all tax deductible. The only person who could write this off would be Michael Uslan.

 

WGA Strike Cost to Los Angeles: $2.5 Billion

  • News
  • February 20, 2008

Today, the Hollywood Reporter has a story highlighting the economic effects the recently settled WGA strike has had on the local Los Angeles economy. Citing an Economic Forcast Report set to be released today by Jack Kyser, noted LA Economist and head of the LA Economic Development Corp, the article paints a somewhat grim picture of the post-strike LA economic situation.

Among the points made by Keyser in the 71-page report is that the strike, which started November 5 and was settled earlier this month, has already cost LA an estimated $2.5 billion in lost revenue. That figure includes lost wages from TV shows that were canceled and films that were put on hold as well as losses by a vast array of support services from, according to the article, "limo drivers to florists."

Kyser also suggested in the report that the cancellation of the Golden Globes alone resulted in a $60 million loss to the LA economy. In addition, other factors will contribute to the economic situation in LA including, according to the article, that leaders of the Screen Actors Guild are "talking tough," so there is growing concern they will go on strike after the union’s labor contract with the studios expires on June 30.

 

 
 

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TV Back Talk, by Elayne Riggs

  • News
  • February 20, 2008

elayne-riggs-100-9837088Many people in this country are experiencing the age of interactive television for the first time. In other countries such as the UK, they’ve had a version of this for some time, in the form of a curious informational additive known as teletext, a useful imp that lives in the bands of the picture that we don’t normally see, and which can be accessed by Brits wanting to know the local weather, transportation timetables, sports scores, and lots of other stuff that most of us in the US can only get online or through cable systems. Here in the US I’ve just discovered my digital cable system has interactive channels that can personalize my weather, traffic, pretty much whatever I want. And that’s not even counting the on-demand entertainment, a tiny percentage of which is available at no extra charge!

And bully for the 21st century and all, but I’ve been interacting with my TV since I was a kid. And I’m not just talking about Winky-Dink.

Romper Room aside, I think I always suspected the people on TV couldn’t see me or talk to me. I understood the idea of shows being recorded for anyone to tune in to, or not. The shows were still there even when I wasn’t watching them. But none of that prevented me from talking back, from letting what I saw affect me to the point where I had an immediate, visceral reaction. As I recall my Dad couldn’t stand it, he’d be there constantly reminding me "they can’t hear you!" Then again, maybe that’s Mom. Dad was the first person on his feet cheering whenever the Yankees took the lead, and yelling about what a bum the umpires or managers were when the game wasn’t going well. So it’s not like the apple fell very far from the tree there.

One of the great things about being married to Robin is that we have many of the same pet peeves about what we see and respond to on TV. One of my biggest annoyances is the increasing use of subtitles when the person being subtitled is speaking English. Occasionally the speaker will have something of a thick accent, but I’ve seen subtitles used with Scots and Irish and even Americans from southern states. Now come on y’all, a lot of that down-home drawl does get to be a bit much, but it’s not a foreign tongue! The only thing subtitles have in their favor is that they, like news crawls on the 24-hour cable stations, encourage reading. Even when they’re misspelled.

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Last Chance For Free Limited Editions!

  • News
  • February 17, 2008

 It’s Toy Fair 2008 here on the east coast, in New York specifically, and we are hip deep in action figures, licensed projects and movie hype – all of which we’ll be digesting for you here on ComicMix and on ComicMix Radio coming up over the next few days and hours. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t take a minute to toss you a few quick links:

So you are that one person who hasn’t seen the trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull , either on this site or even in movie theaters. Then stop being left out and go here – it really isn’t as bad as your friends said it was!
 
The networks are running amok trying to figure if they want to salvage the TV season and if so how to do it. TV Guide continues to post the most up-to-the-minute changes on retuning shows here. Trust us, in some cases the info is even more up-to-date than what your TiVo is telling you. 
 
If finding out what Big Brother is up to is more your thing (and we aren’t talking about the reality TV show), then going here might be of interest. Basically, the Pentagon has developed live, internet talk shows aimed to inform their internal audiences, the public and the blogger community about Pentagon activities and initiatives. Insert any pop culture spy reference you wish here. 
 
The clock is ticking and time is running out to get us your e-mail answer to the trivia question we tossed out in the last ComicMix Radio broadcast. Getting it into to us at podcast@comicmix.com could get you an exclusive limited edition, variant comic from Graham Crackers Comics – but it has to be to us by 9am EST THIS Tuesday, February 19th! And yes, this is yet another hint shown to the right!!

 

On the Wavelength of ‘The Signal’, by Michael H. Price

  • News
  • February 17, 2008
 
signal-the-4815394The dramatis personae roster for a soon-to-open, three-author film called The Signal lists a multitude of roles identified only as “random bodies,” “struggling people,” “deranged people” and so forth. If the casting, as such, suggests chaos, then such must be precisely the intent. From a premise of frenzied malevolence, writer-directors David Bruckner, Jacob Gentry and Dan Bush have crafted a smart and orderly, if cryptic, chiller that owes many debts of influence but also brings some welcome new twists to an old and over-familiar formula.
 
The menace appears to stem from the electronic gizmos that have dominated civilization since the middle of the last century – television as a murderous influence, compounded by telephones and computers and anything else capable of transmitting a disruptive signal. The Bruckner/Gentry/Bush screenplay might trace its ancestry as far back as a 1935 movie called Murder by Television (back when TV, still a dozen years away from commercial acceptance, was popularly regarded as a science-fictional concept), in which a high-tech breakthrough yields “the interstellar frequency that is the death ray.”
 
The Signal is, of course, creepier and hipper by far than the bland and stodgy Murder by Television. The new film imagines a force that transforms ordinary working-class souls into maniacs – borrowing extensively from hither and yon, although co-director Gentry will hasten to point out that “our killers are not mindless zombies.”

 

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On This Day: Khan and Kirk First Meet

  • News
  • February 16, 2008

Today in 1967, Star Trek‘s James T. Kirk met with his future nemesis, Khan Noonien Singh, a genetically enhanced soldier from the late 20th century.

The episode in which this fateful meeting occurred was titled "Space Seed" and was written by Gene L. Coon and Carey Wilber.

Ricardo Montalbán played Khan in both the original television episode, when he was 46, and in the movie based upon the events of this episode, Star Trek II: The Wraith of Khan, when he was 61.

 

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