Welcome dear readers!
Sorry for being a bit late this week – the heat has once again conspired against me. Not much has happened of interest, outside of booking for the Soundwave Festival! I’ve resisted festivals in the past, but there’s too many bands at this one I really want to see who, as a bonus, are touring here for the first time, primarily the mighty Testament and ragga metallers Skindred.
It’ s been a week for new trailers, with a gorgeous spot for Amazing Spider-Man 2 stuffed full of Easter Eggs for fans, the new Muppets Most Wanted cheerfully mocking studios use of Twitter quotes for press and a pair of jaw dropping new trailers for Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which drops more hints about what’s going on without actually spiling anything. Compare and contrast that with the first teaser for Transformers: Age of Extinction, which is 30 seconds of slow motion CGI, explosions and Mark Wahlberg looking dramatic. Well, that and the AWE INSPIRING -sight of Optimus Prime riding Grimlock into battle like GIANT ROBOT DINOSAUR CALVALRY. (You have no idea just how much fun that was to type)
Grimlock love you, but only have 14 hours to save Cybertron!
Some interesting casting news happened, with the news that Jesse Eisenberg is Lex Luthor and Jeremy Irons is Alfred in Batman vs Superman. Eisenberg’s an interesting choice for a younger Luthor, while Irons is British, so, yeah. We also have another possible title for the film, Man of Steel: Fight or Flight. That’s terrible, but it’s the least terrible option so far – yay for the lesser evil! In more British casting news, Paul Bettany (The voice of JARVIS in the Iron Man movies) will be playing The Vision in Avengers: Age of Ultron. This – this I’m a fan of.
It’s now time to play the unverified casting rumour game! First up, Evangeline Lilly is said to be in talks for the female lead in Ant-Man (We don’t know if it’s Janet Van Dyne yet either) and Dwayne Johnson tweeted #LanternCanWhupSuperman and thus set the speculation train moving again. So we’re ignoring the Ryan Reynolds version? If it means we get him playing Deadpool, I’m OK with that.
Moving back to Captain America 2, there’s a gallery of new pictures, a preview clip (Taken from the Thor: The Dark World Blu-Ray) that has a pretty massive spoiler in it and there’s a competition running over what TV show Cap will be watching during the film. Sadly it’s only for the UK release, but I still voted for Doctor Who, which is coming second behind Sherlock, with Father Ted a distant third. It’s also set to have a knock on effect for Age of Ultron and Agents of SHIELD, which, if you aren’t watching, means Clark Gregg doesn’t like you.
How can you say no to a face like that?
Plans are apparently in the works for a sequel to Guardians of the Galaxy by 2016, Drew Pearce (Who wrote the Marvel one-shot All Hail the King) has been talking about Runaways (About a group of children who discover their parents are supervillains) and the gag reel for Thor: The Dark World as is awesome as you’d expect. We have what could be the first look at Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch of X-Men: Days of Future Past and director Marc Webb has announced actor BJ Novak’s role in Amazing Spider-Man 2. We’d just tell you, but there’s possible spoilers, so yeah. Consider yourselves warned!
We’ve had some movement on the Fantastic Four reboot – several blogs were threatened with legal action after reporting a strange synopsis. Said synopsis was, well, different, so the threats were initially taken as evidence that it was genuine. Thankfully, director Josh Trank has debunked it, saying the only similarities are ‘there are characters named Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben,’which is nice and reassuring. Meanwhile, casting has indicated they’re open to a female Doctor Doom. I’m not totally against that, but can’t they just use Lucia Von Bardas instead?
A sequel to The Lego Movie is already being planned and while I really want to see the movie, it’s more than a bit depressing that it’s Wonder Woman’s cinema debut. That’s right DC Comics and Warner Brothers – LEGO BEAT YOU. In more uplifting Lego news, a Lego version of the X-Men’s mansion has been proposed and it is downright amazing. Seriously, it’s even got a Danger Room in there. A new clip and details of the soundtrack for Knights of Badassdom have been released (It’s Bear McCreary – I’m buying it) and staying with gaming, we recently had the 40th anniversary of Dungeons and Dragons! By the way, did you know that Ice-T recently narrated a D&D audiobook?
Yes, that’s Ice-T playing a mutant kangaroo. In his defence, it was the 90’s…
Painkiller Jane (Previously a TV movie and series on the SyFy channel) may be headed for the big screen and the adaption of JG Ballard’s novel High Rise will star Tom Hiddleston. In mixed news, Snowpiercer will be uncut upon its released in the US, but it’ll be getting a limited arthouse cinema release. So equal amounts of yay and booo!
Turning to the idiot box, alternate history comic The Red Star is coming to television, as is a series based on John Scalzi’s book Redshirts, about the more expendable members of a starship crew, and it’s been confirmed that Preacher will be airing on AMC. SyFy US are developing a series based on the DC Comics series DMZ, Studio Ghibli are working on a new anime series and the CW’s The Flash series has cast Iris West.
There’s some new propaganda posters for Star Wars: Rebels and if you’re (Quite rightly) concerned about the Constantine series, he’ll be from London and will have the accent. Neil Gaiman has given an update on the TV versions of his books American Gods and Anansi Boys and read Dr Suess’s Green Eggs and Ham. It’s glorious, trust me. The only thing that could out cute that this week has been Benedict Cumberbatch’s appearance on Sesame Street and that was magnificent.
Ia! Ia! Gaiman fhtagn!
The adaption of video game Uncharted has a director, Zachary Quinto will be co-starring in the reboot of Hitman, but we won’t be seeing a 6th Resident Evil film this year, for which we must be thankful for small mercies. In things we should be thankful for without sarcasm, a CG Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers film is being planned. My inner child would like to argue about how it’ll be butchered like all the other movies based on 80’s cartoons, but it’s too busy singing the theme tune to care.
We end this week discussing, as I frequently do, the glory of the lightsaber, which is still my favourite sword of all. Yes, the longsword is a beautiful and elegant weapon, as are the katana and rapier and I have a lot of love for the simplicity of the gladius, but none of them have the same effect on me as the hum of a lightsaber. Anyhow, there’s an example of a lightsaber fight in the dark and a series of lightsaber combat academies have opened in Italy. Sure, it’s a geekier version of sport fencing, but if that get’s more people into swordsmanship, than I’m OK with that.
Quote of the Week:
“Hey,” said Shadow. “Huginn or Muninn, or whoever you are.”
The bird turned, head tipped, suspiciously, on one side, and it stared at him with bright eyes.
“Say ‘Nevermore,'” said Shadow.
“Fuck you,” said the raven.”
Cheers,
shoutybeardything 