Sequel? A sequel you say?

Yes, we’re late again. We’ve been working on a Deadlands freeform, played our first game of Nuclear War (Which was, if you’ll pardon the pun, a blast) and doing the gardening. Yep, it’s been another action packed week in my life…

It’s been a week filled with sequels and reboots, which we shall now take you through. MGM is continuing in it’s impossible quest to remake War Games, there’s the first pictures from the updated series Danger Mouse and Thunderbirds are Go along with a teaser poster for GI Joe 3, a film that’s nowhere near production. (If you ask me they should just call it GI JOE: NINJAS NINJAS NINJAS and be done with it) Dean Devlin has confirmed the new Stargate film will be a reboot, Shane Black is writing the new Predator film, though he’s busily insisting it’s a sequel not remake and according to sources the next Terminator film will be called just that. Meanwhile, in a piece of very unexpected but very, very good news, Guillermo Del Toro has announced that Pacific Rim 2 is coming! If you aren’t excited by the prospect of more kaiju vs mecha action, then you might not have a soul. (I’m still holding out for Hellboy 3 though)

At least it wasn’t called ‘Strewth’ or ‘Crikey!’

The first teaser for the new series of Doctor Who is out and I’m kind of surprised – it’s about 2 months till the show airs and we’ve gotten a 16 second teaser and a few leaked photos. Shouldn’t the publicity machine have kicked off by now? Rumour has it the first episode will be feature length, whatever that means, which is something to look forward to, but as to what’s happening we have no clue. This is good, because it means I’m not spoilt about what monsters are showing up, but it’s bad, because I’m not spoilt about what monsters are showing up and thus aren’t squealing with joy about seeing [INSERT CLASSIC MONSTER] for the first time in many years. In other Who news, actress Siobhan Redmond will be playing The Rani in an upcoming Big Finish story, taking over the role from the late Kate O’Mara.

It’s been confirmed that Hulu won’t be bringing Community back, there’s some casting news for the Wachowski’s new series sense8 and Elden Henson will be playing Foggy Nelson in Daredevil. Rosario Dawson has also been cast, though we’ve no idea who she’s playing. The first look at SyFy’s new series 12 Monkeys has escaped, as has a look at the new series of Danger 5, the utterly and gloriously bonkers series that takes World War 2, filters it through badly dubbed 60’s action movies, adds giant robots, mind controlled dinosaurs and all manner of craziness and then turns it up to 11.THOUSAND.

“And for the love of God, DAMN WELL KILL HITLER!”

We’ve a Japanese language version of the trailer for Lupin III, a live action version of the popular manga series that’s had several animated films based on it. If you don’t know who I’m talking about, then go rent/buy/borrow a film called The Castle of Cagliostro NOW. What do you mean the shops aren’t open? GET GOING. I’ll wait. *taps foot* Back now? See, glorious isn’t it? I haven’t seen anything about an English language release, but hopefully there’ll be one at some point. Because I am NOT learning Japanese.

The promo for the BBC America series Intruders (Starring John ‘Life on Mars’ Simm) is mighty creepy, the teenage girl becomes a zombie film Life after Beth looks promising, as does the teaser for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay. The new trailer for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the other hand… Ninjitsu is based on stealth, blending into the environment and not letting people know you’re there. So, how the hell are you supposed to do that when you’re 7 feet tall and built like a brick shithouse? Mind you, I did like the Batman voice joke, so it’s not Revenge of the Fallen bad, but I’m still keeping my expectations low.

Ben Kingsley will voice Bagheera in the live action version of The Jungle Book, Ridley Scott’s next film will be The Martian and is set to star Matt Damon, while the cutest thing we’ve seen this week is the picture of the Episode 7 table read done in Lego. Seriously, there’s not much Lego can’t make better. There’s some things it doesn’t need to make better (Like Big Trouble in Little China or Flash Gordon for example), but I’m sure it could still improve them.

See – told you it was awesome!

Bob Orci has said that Star Trek 3 will return to deep space (Hoo-freakin-ray!), actor Scott McNairy has been cast in an unspecified role in Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Thingamajig and the fifth Pirates film is set to film next year. (Presumably it’ll take that long to transport all the dump trucks filled with money to unload on the front lawn of Johnny Depp’s private island) A movie based on the Monstrumologist book series is on the way and a Blu-Ray set of Star Trek Into Darkness with all the extras collected together (Rather than being spread over multiple store exclusive releases) is finally coming. The only catch is you’ll have to buy the first film again as part of the set, though there’s talk of a refund program being set up. I swear, there’s a special hell waiting for people who release sets like that. A special hell…

Daniel Radcliffe has said he wants to play Robin to Ben Affleck’s Batman, the first pictures from Mad Max: Fury Road are out, as are the first pictures from Suburban Gothic, which has been described as a ‘suburban Scooby Doo.’ It’s a terrible description, but the film does have Kat Dennings and Jeffery Combs, so it (hopefully) will be better than that. The new Fantastic Four movie will apparently have a ‘found footage’ feel to it, Marvel head honcho Kevin Feige has given an update on Ant-Man and Doctor Strange and it’s been confirmed that Nathan Fillion has a tiny cameo in Guardians of the Galaxy. Shiny!

Just when I think I couldn’t have any more of a man crush…

We leave this week with a look at the 60’s Fantastic Four series that never existed (Burgess Meredith as the Mole Man – who do I have to kill the visit the alternate universe where that exists?) and the news that a scientist was ejected from a recent concert of classical music for trying to crowd surf to Handel’s Messiah.

Quote of the Week:

Gottlieb: This is all wrong! There should be three Kaijus coming through, not two!

Dr. Newton Geiszler: There should be three and there’s two? I’m sorry, it hurts to be wrong, don’t it, Hermann?

Gottlieb: I am not wrong, but there is something here we don’t understand.

Dr. Newton Geiszler: Okay. Hermann, we can hopefully argue about any mistakes you made in your your predictive model in the future. But in the meantime, the neural interfaces are way off the charts! If you want to help, help with that.

Gottlieb: Newton, I am not wrong. There is only one way to make sure… and that is to do this… together. I’ll go with you. That’s what the Jaeger pilots do, share the neural load.

Dr. Newton Geiszler: You’re serious? You – You would do that for me? Or would do that with me?

Gottlieb: Well, with worldwide destruction a certain alternative… Do I really have a choice?

Dr. Newton Geiszler: Then say it with me, my man: “We’re gonna own this bad boy!”

Gottlieb: By Jove, we are going to own this thing for sure!

Pacific Rim

Cheers,

Gavin

He’s the ace! He’s amazing!

There’s no time for intros this week, no news from what I’ve been doing and no bad jokes. It’s STRAIGHT TO THE NEWS this week. Because something amazing was announced, something that can restore my faith in humanity, or, quite possibly destroy it. What has happened? The return of the world’s greatest secret agent, that’s what! Why is this mysterious figure? James Bond? Nope. Ethan Hunt? Oh please. Jason Bourne? Pish-tosh pa-shaw!

He’s fantastic, he’s amazing and wherever there is danger he’ll be there. That’s right, the one and only Danger Mouse is returning!

The legendary crime fighter and his sidekick Penfold are returning to the screen, with the announcement of 52 11 minute episodes to air next year. There’s no word on the voice cast, but Stephen Fry is the bookies favourite. (You know, David Jason is still around and working.) Wait a second, people can bet on this? ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE? Right, back on topic… As happy as this news has made me, and that is incredibly happy, the news that the show will be updated, with the post office box headquarters and even DM’s eye-patch (Which the Guardian called an i-patch) kitted out with all sorts of new technology makes me very nervous. So long as they keep a minimum amount of awful puns and fourth wall breaking in the show, I’ll be happy. It’s more Danger Mouse and that cannot be a bad thing.

Take this, add the Goodies and the Young Ones and you’ve got my sense of humour.

We’ve a UK trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy, what is apparently the final one for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and a fresh teaser for Gotham which looks at the villains of the show. There’s also a trailer for the documentary Video Games: The Movie, which, surprise surprise, looks at the history of video games. Yes, Zach Braff is the executive producer, but don’t hold that against them – Wil Wheaton is involved and Sean Astin is narrating.

Early details about the villains of Ant-Man have emerged, Mark Ruffalo has said that a Hulk movie might be back on and Scott Derrickson (Who’s writing Doctor Strange), will be writing the Outer Limits film. Paul WS Anderson has said the next Resident Evil film will be the last (Hands up if you believe that? No. Didn’t think so) and a reboot of Scooby Doo is in the works. THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS.

I’ve not been able to find confirmation for the rumour that Jason Momoa will be playing Aquaman in Batman vs Superman (And Momoa has denied it when asked), but it sure sounds good. Sources say it’ll be a small appearance leading into a larger role in Justice League, which sounds oddly plausible. I think it’s a pretty good choice, but my favourite version of the character is still the one from The Brave and the Bold. Mind you, if they cast Momoa to play it in that direction, that would be amazing. Reports also state that a Batman solo film is set for 2019, but given DC’s scheduling and ability (Or lack of…) to make films that aren’t about Batman or Superman, who the hell knows what’ll happen?

Go on, call him useless. I dare you.

Seth Green is joining the voice cast of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, replacing Jason Biggs as the voice of Leonardo, rumours are spreading about a returning villain in the next series of Doctor Who and wonderfully, there’s to be a sequel to Peter Davison’s anniversary celebration The Five Doctors… ish. It was confirmed by Eighth Doctor Paul McGann, who cryptically said as it involved multiple Time Lords, it could be filming next week, the distant future of 1822 for all we know!

Turning to gaming news now, a new edition of horror RPG Chill has been announced, the X-Wing miniatures game will soon have Dash Rendar’s Outrider and the VT-49 Decimator gunship available and there’s pictures of an Aliens board game based on a never released cartoon series. If you’ve ever wondered what the monsters in Dungeons and Dragons games do for recreation, then the web-series Cubicles and Careers should answer that.

Looking at sequels, we have the first tiny tease of the dinosaurs of Jurassic World, Ron Perlman still wants to make Hellboy 3 and no, Max Landis isn’t involved in Ghostbusters 3, but he had a cracking idea for it. Also, release dates for the next Transformers, Star Trek and GI-Joe films have been announced. There’s no word if Michael Bay will be directing Transformers 5, as he previously said he was finished after directing Dark of the Moon, but wound up directed Age of Extinction, which it’s been confirmed will be an arse numbing and bladder expanding 166 minutes long.

Kittens make everything better. Though you’d need a lot to fix Transformers 2.

We haven’t had any Star Wars news, outside of reports about how injured Harrison Ford was on set, and the announcement of the documentary The People vs George Lucas 2. It’ll look at the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney and is set to be released around the time of Episode 7. There’s a picture of Gendy Tartakovsky’s Popeye, Will Smith’s loss is Jared Leto’s gain, with Leto taking the lead in Brilliance after Smith dropped out and the Shredder’s armour from the live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film looks suitably Michael Bay. By which we ,mean utterly impractical and incredibly over the top. I have an immense amount of sympathy for the poor stunt people who had to fear and fight in that get-up.

Heroes Reborn has signed up it’s first original cast member, with Jack Coleman reprising the role of the guy in the glasses. Yes, I’m sure he had an actual name, but that would have meant paying attention to the show, so yeah…. Moving on, the last episode of Game of Thrones series 4 has broken it’s own record for most pirated show, there’s casting news for the SyFy series Z-Nation and the next season of Ultimate Spider-Man will have ALL THE SPIDER-MEN. Yes, including Miles Morales and Spider-Ham.

There’s a beautiful Viking-esque rendition of Toothless from How to Train your Dragon, a movie adaption of video game Dead Rising is being planned, as is a movie of James Wan’s comic series Malignant Man. There’s apparently trouble on the film adaption of Into the Woods with songs being cut, Alan Ball is working on a True Blood musical and Quentin Tarantino is working on a comic series where Django meets Zorro.

WARNING: CUTENESS OVERLOAD.

We leave you this week with news that the Tomb of Dracula may have been found, fencer Guy Windsor has been analysing the fencing references in The Princess Bride and a man wearing a suit covered with Mentos falling into a tub of Diet Coke. Science is wonderful isn’t it?

Quote of the Week:

Danger Mouse: [Looking at sign on door that reads C.H.M.F.F.G.] Look, Penfold… look what it says on that door.

Penfold: Oh, yes…”Chi-muff-guh”.

DM: “Chi-mu–” No, Penfold, it stands for ‘Car Holding Magnetic Force Field Generator’.

Penfold: ‘Cor…how’d you figure that?

DM: Mm. [confidentially] I read the script.

Penfold: Ooh, naughty Danger Mouse!

Danger Mouse – Journey to the Earth’s Cor!

Cheers,

Gavin

DC, are you serious?

Yes, yes again we’re late. Well, there’s been a lot on OK?

I spent the long weekend gaming at Phenomenon in Canberra, continue to lose games of Lords of Waterdeep and recently spent some time teaching a 4 year old girl to throw knives. In my defence, they were LARP safe foam knives and her parents have already taught her the proper to kill a zombie. (Double Tap of course!) Moving on…

The most glorious thing I’ve seen recently is a tough choice between the Aurora Borealis seen over Minnesota, an Uruk Hai doing the grocery shopping or Mark Hamill having a conversation between Luke Skywalker and The Joker. It’s short, but oh so sweet. For those in even more need of distractions from the real world (So you’ve been following Australian politics as well?), there’s a jazz version of the Game of Thrones theme, which is as amazing as the Duck Tales theme done by Saturday Morning Slow Jams. Takes me back to first seeing The Moods do the Cantina Band song it does…

Good news everyone! Disney have reversed course and will be rolling out Princess Leia merchandise. Now, if said merchandise can not focus on the metal bikini, that’d be great. Leia’s one of the leading figures of the Rebellion, a take’s no shit from Darth Vader, self rescuing figure of awesome, and I for one would be very happy if those aspects of her character were recognised more. In more news from the ’About Fucking Time’ department, Episode 7 recently announced a pair of new female roles, adding Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave) and Gwendoline Christie (Game of Thrones) to the film, but frustratingly we still have no idea who’ll they’ll be playing. I don’t care about on-set pictures, I just want to know who’s playing who! There’s also talk that Simon Pegg will be appearing, but that seems to be a standard rumour for every geek project these days.

It’s been confirmed that Josh Trank is directing a second Star Wars spin off movie. It’ll be Trank’s second film in that universe, with a short he made in college in 2007, called Stabbing at Leia’s. A few early details for the now cancelled series Star Wars: Underworld have surfaced, including when Han and Chewie first met and when Lando lost the Falcon to Han, Lawrence Kasdan is reportedly writing a Boba Fett movie, while JJ Abrams’s response to a recent glut of leaked photos was kinda cute.

A boy and his Wookiee

Following on from the news that Peyton Reed will be directing Ant-Man, with Marvel releasing a synopsis for the film, Vincent D’Onofrio has been cast as the Kingpin in Daredevil and while in more surprising news, Scott Derrickson (Sinister) will be directing Doctor Strange. Unsurprisingly, Tom Hardy and Benedict Cumberbatch have been linked to the title role. What is said to be the DC movie schedule from here to 2018 has leaked and if true, it’s pretty bizarre. Shazam and Sandman movies before Wonder Woman? I’m not saying they aren’t worthy of a movie, but surely the chance to one-up Marvel by delivering a female led movie first is something worth doing?

Jupiter Ascending has been pushed back to early 2015, some spiffy new posters for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have emerged and Guillermo Del Toro has had to pass on directing a live action Beauty and the Beast film, owing to the several million other projects he’s working on. Dan Harmon still has hope we’ll see more Community, HBO has explained why they aren’t making American Gods, while one of the writers of Game of Thrones is working on the Magic: The Gathering script.

There’s a collection of video game trailers from the E3 convention, including gameplay footage from Batman: Arkham Knight and looks at Dragon Age 3, Assassin’s Creed: Unity and Star Wars: Battlefront. There’s been some controversy about Assassin’s, mainly it’s lack of female characters and the outrageously shitty excuses concerning the lack of said characters in the game. Ubisoft have tried to explain, but those comments (As well as those talking about Far Cry 4) have only dug deeper into the hole. I’m no programmer, but I don’t buy the excuse that adding female characters would have doubled the workload. There’s 10 studios working on this thing and you can’t add something representing half of the world’s population and thus increasing the chances of selling more copies of your game? On the bright side, they’re said to be fixing the eavesdropping missions, which are my least favourite thing about the games.

As usual, John Kovalic say’s it better than I can.

The first trailer for the documentary Turtle Power, looking at the history of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and is set to be released several days after the new movie and may prove to be an antidote for it. I don’t hold a huge attachment to the franchise, but it was a large part of my life for a couple of years, so I’m curious to see how the new film holds up. We also have another trailer for Sin City: A Dame to Kill For and the first looks at the spin off Penguins of Madagascar, which is really all I wanted from the Madagascar films themselves and Birdman, starring Michael Keaton as a washed up actor who used to play a superhero. Strange isn’t the word, but it certainly looks interesting.

Turning to the idiot box, there’s teasers for Constantine, the first good look at Dominion (Which looks terrible, but has Anthony Stewart Head) and Sharknado 2: The Second One manages to look even dumber than the first. On the bright side, the film is sponsoring shark conservation research, so some good will come of it. There’s also the first look at the Star Trek fan project Axanar, documenting the Four Year war between the Klingon Empire and the Federation. Now, this is no mere fan project – they’ve managed to enlist the likes of Tony Todd, JG Hertzler, Kate Vernon and Richard Hatch in the cast. It’s weird hearing Tony Todd’s voice and not seeing him in Klingon makeup though…

We leave this week with a celebration of glorious pastime of my youth, with the first Fighting Fantasy Convention set to take place in London in September. If you’re like me, you’ll have many happy memories of flipping back and forth through the books, then finding you died, cursing in frustration and hoping you didn’t lose your place so you could try the other options!

Quote of the Week:

Joker: Dear friends, today is the day the clown cried. And he cries not for the passing of one man, but for the death of a dream: the dream that he would someday taste the ultimate victory over his hated enemy. For it was the Batman who made me the happy soul I am today. How I agonized over the perfect way to thank him for that! Perhaps with a cyanide pie in the face, or an exploding whoopee cushion playfully planted in the Batmobile. But those dreams were dashed (starts getting angry) by the weaselly little gunsel sitting there in our midst. The cowardly, insignificant goniff who probably got lucky when Batman slipped on the slime trail this loser left behind him! This mound of diseased hyena filth who’s not fit to lick the dirt from my spats! (suddenly cheerful again) But I digress. The time for sorrow has passed. It’s time to look ahead, to a future filled with smiles. And I’ll be smiling again, just as soon as we take that man there and slap him in that box there, and roll it into that vat of acid there! (the hoodlums place Sid into the coffin, and Harley Quinn plays “Amazing Grace” on the kazoo as the coffin starts moving into the acid vat)

Sid: (as his coffin rolls off) No! No! I never meant to do it! Help! This isn’t funny anymore! Would it help if I said I’m sorry? I’m really, really, really, really, really sorry!

Joker: (After Harley finishes her kazoo solo) Well, that was fun! Who’s for Chinese?

Batman The Animated Series: The Day the Clown Cried

Cheers,

Gavin