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