Trailers.

So,a bunch of trailers got released at Comic Con over the weekend. My thoughts are as follows:

Doctor Strange – So, the second trailer finally show’s us some magic.It has helped cement my issue with the film (Outside of the piss poor attempt at defending the whitewashing), namely that Benedict Cumberbatch is playing Strange and not Chiwitel Eigofor. It’s not that I think Cumberbatch will do a bad job, far from it, and he sure looks the part, but it’s by far the obvious choice. At the time of casting I tweeted that the MCU could use less white guys (and got called racist more than once), and I stand by that. That mght be why the announcement that Brie Larson is playing Captain Marvel and who’s playing who in Black Panther has me nervous. Well, not nervous, but hopeful. The further the MCU goes along, the higher the chance is they’ll screw something up (And I mean a Green Lantern-esque level of screw up, as opposed to the Iron Man 2 and Thor: The Dark World) and I don’t want that to happen to those two films. It’s not that I’m a huge fan of either character, but I really don’t want the first female led and mainly black cast movies to be shit.

benedict-cumberbatch-films-doctor-strange-in-nyc-first-pics-42

Justice League – In short, Bruce Wayne interviews people. Seems to have added more jokes (Perhaps all the ones that were missing from BvS…) and a lot lighter tone. Cast look good, though more Cyborg would have been nice. Badass Aquaman is cool. Still not Brave and the Bold Aquaman, but that’s what YouTube is for.

Aquaman's Outrageous Adventure Screenshot 005

Wonder Woman – Please DC, don’t screw this up. The actons looks great, though I’m hoping the slow-mo is for the trailer, Chris Pine seems to be playing Steve Trevor like Kirk and Diana’s line “What I do is not up to you” is fantastic. Plus the evening gown and sword combo works surprisingly well. 🙂

wonder-woman-2017-gal-gadot1

King:Skull Island – They appear to have learnt from the Tripod song and got to the fucking monkey. Smart.

Suicide Squad – How many trailers, clips and sneak peeks can they release before it’s possible to assemble the entire movie? Still, the more they show that isn’t Harley, the more interested I get. Also, the more I see of Viola Davis as Amanda Waller the better – she’s not CCH Pounder, but I think she’ll do well.

13522925_1739912686289365_5681588421322816909_o

Star Trek: Discovery – It’s really not much, just the ship (Which we now know is clled Discovery) leaving spacedock. Reminds me of sketches I saw from the abandoned Phase 2 series. It’s Star Trek, so I’ll watch, but I’m still waiting for casting news to get really keen.

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword – A Guy Ritchie film, which is both good and bad. At first glance looks Excalibur crossed with Lock Stock. Points for trying something different, but adding some LOTR to the mix enthuses me even less. Sword looks nice though.

American Gods – Ian McShane as Mr Wednesday. Do I need to say more? Well, how about Gillian Anderson?

vqszmh4vcds7ecof1wr8

The Lego Batman Movie – If you say something, anything, bad about this (At least that isn’t a variant on ‘We have to wait how long?’), we can no longer be friends.

I’m sure there’s more I’ve missed, but that’ll do for the moment. Also this:
n2tpynhjedh9pd7un6ai

Many Bothans died, to bring us this trailer.

So, the Rogue One trailer. Leaving aside my burning hatred for teasers for trailers, or two minute trailers with 25 seconds of that taken up by rating info and stuff for other videos on the channel, it looks pretty damn good.

HELL YES MON MOTHMA – SUCK IT MRA’S AND SUCK IT HARD.

A female lead with a good amount of non-white people in the main cast, nice to see.

It’ll be slightly odd to have a definitive story of how the Death Star plans were stolen, given how many different stories and versions of it in the old EU.

Very little spoilery material, even better. One of the things I enjoyed the most about The Force Awakens was how little I knew going into it, a refreshing feeling in this day and age of leaks and endless teaser clips.
Seeing Yavin Base and T-65B X-Wings again – *swoon*

I’m sure the 501st are already going nuts over Ben Mendlheson’s outfit, whic is fair as that’s a rocking cape. That cape rocks so much I’m pretty sure Lando is jealous.

No Bothans though. Boooo. Also, would a nod to Kyle Katarn kill you? (Yes, I know the Bothans helped steal the plans to the second Death Star, but still. Seeing one on screen would be nice, at some point. Damn human-centric movies.)

Could have done without the nostalgia piano at the end, but I understand that’s the hip thing at the moment. Damn kids.
Part of me does think it’s going a bit dark, or at least Star Wars dark, but we’ve had that and it worked out OK, so yeah. Besides, I’m cool with them experimenting

Roll on December.

All wings, report in.

I never knew just how much I needed a Rogue Squadron movie in my life until today.

You Rebel scum…

So yeah, it’s been a while… *cough*

It’s been an amazing week for nostalgia, with the re-release of classic space combat games X-Wing and TIE Fighter. My response to this has ranged from an initial scream of HOLY ZARQUON SINGING FISH to having to restrain myself from squealing with joy (Hey, I was at work) to walking round with a grin on my face so wide that it threatened to snap my face in half. And this is in the same week that Captain Marvel and Black Panther movies got announced, so it’s not like I’m short of geekgasm.

That’s basically how I looked when I first saw the press release.

Those games are a massive part of my adolesence, since it’s not like I was doing things like partying, drinking or spending time with the fairer sex. Ahem… X-Wing let me live out a childhood dream of taking part in the attack of the first Death Star, which I then never managed to complete owing to it being ludicrously difficult. TIE Fighter, on the other hand, was where I took my first steps on the dark path and found that playing the bad guys can be incredibly fun. (See the TV show Leverage for more of that) It also had several features that X-Wing lacked, such as backing up your scores if you got killed, being able to match speed with your target and the TIE Defender, the most broken Starfighter EVER. You also got a second campaign, where if you talked a with a mysterious Cloaked Figure, and completed a bunch of hidden objectives, you got an awesome tattoo slowly branded on your arm by FORCE LIGHTNING, a tattoo that I’m unashamed to admit I wanted badly when I was 14, and still do a little at 34.

See – told you it was awesome.

Just flying a TIE Fighter itself was amazing – the sound of the things is practically engraved on my eardrums. Hell, the only reason I’m writing this and not playing the games is my lack of a joystick, something I intend to rectify over the weekend. Then I’ll be 14 again, it’ll be back to my youth, or at least the bits of it I actually like remembering. Now, if they can also re-release X-Wing vs TIE Fighter and X-Wing Alliance, then I may be so happy the universe will shatter.

PS: I still want one of the Imperial Officer uniform caps, despite the fact I’m sure I’d look ludicrous in it. But I did once buy a pair of WW2 flying goggles solely to wear to a Crimson Skies Clix tourney, so I have some history in that department.

WHO’S USELESS NOW?

We’re a bit short this week, as I’ve been busy being gainfully employed. Naturally, this has curtailed the amount of time I can spend writing for you, but A: they pay me and B: I have an ID photo that’s not too bad, which is a nice change for me, given that my driver’s license makes me look like I’m about to commit an act of jihad. (ASIO, I’m joking. Please don’t break down my door)

Anyhow, we’re here to talk about one particular item of news. You might say there’s been a deluge on this subject, possibly a flood or maybe a drenching. Certainly a shower, or maybe an oversaturation. Calling it a tsumani is more than a bit tacky, but it’s certainly more than a drizzle.

What could have produced such an ocean of watery attempts at humour? Well, it’s finally been confirmed that Jason Momoa is playing Aquaman in Batman vs Superman. As you remember, it was rumoured a few months back, but no-one had the decency to actually confirm anything until now. As far as I’m concerned, this is a really good thing – Momoa’s a fine actor who has the physicality to pull it off. That and given his early stint on Baywatch Hawaii, he’s used to wandering around wearing little, which I’m confident will be part of the marketing. (Look at what Marvel did with Thor for starters…)

My biggest worry is that Snyder will GRIMDARK it up, also my biggest complaint about Man of Steel – Superman walking the Earth to find himself was an interesting interpretation, but the orgy of destruction that was the end of the film just didn’t seem right to me. That’s not what I go to see a Superman film for – he’s the guy you look at and think ‘If only more people were like him’, rather than the guy who broke Metropolis. I guess I like seeing heroes who are enjoying themselves, like Chris Evan’s Johnny Storm in the otherwise forgettable Fantastic Four films. That might be my love of Batman: The Brave and the Bold talking, but that show’s Aquaman was amazing. If it’s wrong to want a hero who thinks everything is OUTRAGEOUS, who calls people ‘old chum’ and bursts into song from time to time then I DON’T WANT TO BE RIGHT.

How can you not love that?

That wasn’t the first piece of news though – earlier in the week Zack Snyder was on his way to work and heard two radio DJ’s making fun of Aquaman, so he proceeded to call in to defend him. (It’s worth noting this is pre-announcement, give the ‘Not to say he’s in my movie’ denial) So, Zack Snyder, you had my curiosity, now you have my attention. By way of apology, I take back two of the horrible things I said about Man of Steel!

To top it all off, there’s word that Warners is working on not one but two scripts for an Aquaman solo feature. Apparently, this is to ensure the best quality script while ensuring it meets deadlines, but to me it’s a shitty thing to do to a writer. I get you want to get a movie into production, but making writers compete in some sort of script writing Thunderdome doesn’t guarantee you a better film, just more stress and one guy pissed off his script wasn’t chosen.

Look, I’ve made my fair sure of jokes in the past, when I probably shouldn’t have. As my wife pointed out, Namor doesn’t get jokes made about him, but who outside of comic’s fans has heard of Namor? I guess all I can hope for is the movie takes a character best known for being a joke and make him awesome again, the way he should be. And failing that, I’d be happy with footage of Jason Momoa singing the ‘Rousing Song of Heroism,’ if that’s not too much to ask?

I’ll be singing that for the next week. Pity my housemates.

Conventions, consent, chaos and cosplay

Welcome again dear readers!

My Sydcon blurb has been submitted, now all that remains is to write the game, prepare the soundtrack, gather any props and costume, then work myself into a MAXIMUM ROCK AND ROLL FRENZY before running it. Oh, and to settle any fistfights over who get’s to playtest – people seem really keen to play this thing. Who knew there’d be so much demand to play an Orc in a rock and roll band?

Last weekend saw San Diego Comic Con, the time of year when studios save their new releases for and more news that you can poke a giant stick at is released. It’s also the time of year when my determination to be as completist as I can about the week’s news comes back to bite me in the ass, given the previously mentioned giant amount of news. So, if I’ve missed anything, or repeat myself, I apologise in advance.

Before we start, test footage for a Deadpool movie emerged during the week and if you were lucky enough to see it before it vanished, you were very lucky. It was animated in 2012 and while it looked like it was captured on a cheap mobile phone camera, the footage itself was fantastic. I can only hope the alternate universe where the movie got made is enjoying it, the lucky gits.

Mmmmm pancakes .Now I’m hungry…

As for the con itself, there’s a roundup of good and bad advertising (As usual, PETA meant well but missed the point, while the team promoting Outlander had a bunch of men in kilts walking round) and we can’t not mention the guy who took magic mushrooms before entering and texted his girlfriend his thoughts on the experience. We don’t endorse that sort of behaviour, but it makes for amazing reading. Peter Jackson wandered around dressed as an evil jester, while Adam Savage went out dressed as Kane from Alien. The cosplay, as usual, was fantastic to see with the highlights being a Baby Rufio and a lone person protesting Edgar Wright’s removal from Ant Man. (BTW, Wright’s next film is an adaption of the novel Grasshopper Judge) Oh, and the cryptic announcement about Young Justice from a couple of weeks back? Turns out it’s just a repackaging of the DVD’s, along with the first season being released on Blu-Ray. Talk about an anti-climax…

Too soon dude, too soon…

Sadly, as always there was a bunch of douchenozzles who think it’s OK to be jerks to women but the push against that sort of behaviour is getting louder, which is a good thing, with the most high profile effort being from the group Geeks for CONsent, who made signs and flyers detailing what was appropriate behaviour. It’d be lovely if this sort of behaviour was eliminated, so I hereby support the shaming and exclusion of these fuckknuckles until they learn better.

Pal, you’ll be apologizing for that till you’re blue in the face…

We got the first look at Wonder Woman from Batman vs Superman and the costume looks surprisingly good. Yes, I’m sure Snyder will screw it up somehow, but at least it’s not Michael Bay. And just in case you’re tempted, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS. Well, unless you need to refresh a burning hatred for humanity and haven’t see a Daily Telegraph front page recently.

Despite many people hoping for more, the only big announcement Marvel had was a sequel to Guardians of the Galaxy, while an animated series is also on the way. We still don’t have a confirmation on who’s playing Doctor Strange, but Joaquin Phoenix is, according to rumours, the frontrunner. Better him than Johnny Depp… (I don’t hate Depp, but I’m heartily sick of him being linked to EVERYFUCKINGTHING. Besides, I’m pretty sure Marvel will only give dump trucks of money to one person at a time and that’s currently Robert Downey Jr)

Marvel also had a collection of props on show from Avengers: Age of Ultron and the footage that was screened from the film sounded amazing. The concept art poster we previewed last week is now complete, it’s been revealed that Agent Carter will feature Edwin Jarvis (The flesh and blood version, not Tony Stark’s AI) and Evangeline Lilly is playing Hope Van Dyne (Daughter of Janet Van Dyne and Hank Pym) in Ant Man, which has lost 3 other members of it’s cast. They’ve also trademarked Squirrel Girl, which could mean we could be seeing her on screen soon, Agents of SHIELD is getting it’s own comic series and we know how who the new cast members are playing, along with the rumoured appearance of Bobbi Morse, AKA Mockingbird.

Yeah, that’s Squirrel Girl.

We got the first trailers for Mad Max: Fury Road, which can be summed up as sweaty people driving through explosions and The Hobbit: Battle of Five Armies, which is Billy Boyd singing and people brooding. Christopher Nolan showed off a new trailer for Interstellar, the first trailer for Hunger Games: Mockingjay Pt 1 arrived and the first look at The Death of Superman Lives shows just how strange a Tim Burton directed, Nicholas Cage starring Superman film could have been.

We have the complete Women who Kick Ass panel, which featured, among others, Katey Sagal, Maisie Williams and Tatiana Maslany, as well as a liveblog of the Women of Marvel panel. You can watch the Marvel and DC panels here, with a collection of the other big panels (Including Interstallar, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For and Community) here. The Goosebumps panel had Jack Black having puppet trouble, Stephen Colbert was in costume for his job moderating The Hobbit panel while Craig Ferguson moderated the Game of Thrones panel. And the press conference for the Blu-Ray release of Batman ’66 (Featuring Adam West, Burt Ward and Julie Newmar) was amazing with it being wonderful that something that was mocked and derided for so long was finally getting the recognition it deserves.

DC Comics television department have been busy, with new trailers for The Flash (Which announced 2 new cast this week), Constantine, Gotham and Arrow, with an upcoming episode of Arrow investigating Felicity’s past titled Oracle. In other TV news, the people behind The Legend of Korra have spoken about how the show’s not exactly cancelled, just moving on-line and Sam Raimi announced he’s working on an Evil Dead TV series, with Bruce Campbell set to star. That’s no guarantee it’ll actually get made mind you, but there’s hope.

That’s basically how I look first thing in the morning.

The new cast of Game of Thrones have been announced and there’s still no Damphair. Harrumph. We also have the season 4 gag reel – seeing Tywin Lannister smiling is a lot scarier than I was expecting…. There’s a fresh preview of Assassin’s Creed: Unity and shock rocker Rob Zombie made an animated prelude video for the game that’s as gory as you’d expect. We’ve the first trailers for Kevin Smith’s new film Tusk and Daniel Radliffe’s Horns, another teaser for Sin City: A Dame to Kill For and the next season of The Walking Dead.

Alex Kurtzman is set to direct the reboot of The Mummy, Guillermo Del Toro has been talking about his plans for Justice League Dark and there’s the first look at The Thing from the Fantastic Four reboot. The comic series Locke and Key is being adapted into a movie series. The series was set to be a TV series at Fox, but never made it past the pilot stage. Continuing that thread, a movie of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series is in pre-production, which means no signings for Neil for the time being.

Quentin Tarantino is working on a sci fi movie, as well as his previously cancelled western The Hateful Eight, a Japanese Dragon Ball Z film is due in 2015 and Maisie Willaims is said to be in talks to star in the movie version of video game The Last of Us. We have a glimpse of the title sequence to Warcraft and Legendary Pictures have announced a pair of monster films, those being a sequel to the Godzilla reboot and a King Kong origin film, which rumour has it Joe Cornish is set to direct.

Disagree and he crushes your city.

Now, there was news that wasn’t released at the con, and here it is!

There’s trailers for post apocalypse drama The Maze Runner and the documentaries Atari: Game Over, which looks at the legends behind the Atari 2600 ET game and Mudbloods, which looks at the Quidditch clubs popping up over the world. From the ‘We need a new ‘Lord of the Rings series’ department comes word the movie rights to the Dragonriders of Pern series have been bought by Warners. It’s one of the series I keep hearing good things about, but every time I hear the name Anne McCaffrey the words tent peg pop into my brain. I can’t throw stones, given my favourite author was pretty damn far from a paragon of tolerance and modern thinking, but as first impressions go, it’s a pretty hard one to ignore.

The 21 minute teaser to the Star Trek fan feature Prelude to Axanar has been released, we’ve a longer trailer for Michael Keaton’s new film Birdman, production on the new season of The Big Bang Theory has been delayed with several of the main cast negotiating new contracts and there’s some new pictures and a brief teaser for the new season of Doctor Who. Not long to go now…

No context, I just really wanted to use this picture.

We leave this week with a selection of some of the stranger news from recent time, starting with the comics crossover you’ve been waiting for! That’s right, it’s time for a Star Trek/Planet of the Apes series, with William Shatner’s Kirk trying to stop the Klingons from aiding a renegade Gorilla general! No, I’m not joking. You can’t saw you don’t at least want to read this, even if only for the car crash appeal of the idea. In saner news, a study was done recently showing that kids you read the Harry Potter books are more tolerant of others and there’s a documentary about a Danish school that teaches through LARPing. Why didn’t this stuff exist when I was in school? You can read Tom Hiddleston’s adorable thank you letter to Joss Whedon after he first read the script for The Avengers and we end with a glorious piece of Pinky and the Brain.

Quote of the Week:

Deadpool: The day my father Odin banished me from Asgard, I was bitten by a vampire and had radioactive waste dumped into my eyes. To make matters worse, my mutant ability to control weather activated just as I was hit by a blast of gamma radiation. Nah, actually, I got this way by volunteering for the Weapon X program. They promised to cure my cancer. And they cured it all right, by giving me an outrageous healing factor. Then they labeled me psychotic and tossed me into a prison lab. So I escaped and became what some people might call a ‘mercenary’. I prefer the title ‘cleaner of the gene pool’. And I’ve made a lot of good friends along the way: like Arcade. He’s always sending me to his amusement park.

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance

Cheers,

Gavin

I’m Thor, but not complaining…

Welcome once again dear readers!

Once again, this week has seen me working on a gaming project. The blurb’s not quite done, but if I had to describe it, I’d say it’s V for Vendetta meets This is Spinal Tap. It’s planned for Sydcon 2014, so keep your eyes peeled, air guitars warmed up and earplugs handy!

The big news this week comes from Marvel Comics, with the announcement (On daytime talk show The View no less) that the new Thor is female. No, it’s not a gender change (Like the time he got turned into a frog), but a female character (As yet known) who’ll be deemed worthy to lift Mjolnir, Thor’s hammer and thus gain his power. It’s a worthy move, but not without some confusing aspects – Thor is a name, not a title that can be passed down. Still, it’s not the first time a female character has been able to lift the hammer, with even Jane Foster doing so in the past. Now, if they can transfer this idea to the Marvel Cinematic Universe when Chris Hemsworth decides to leave, that’d be kind of awesome. (I still want a Black Widow movie though) And, if you’ve got a problem with that, well…

You think you can take the Q-Unit? BRING IT!

Following on from that, Joe Quesada was on The Colbert Report this week to announce that the new Captain America is Sam Wilson, also known as hero The Falcon, with Colbert putting his hand up for the role, something that Marvel’s artists beat him to. Colbert has also recently been involved with Star Wars Force for Change, a group raising money for Unicef (And with the chance to win a role in Episode 7) by engaging in a nerd fight with Jon Stewart that has to be seen to be believed. In another piece of glorious super hero news, Adam West will be voicing himself in Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham.

The week’s strangest news is the former dictator of Panama, Manuel Noriega, is suing Activision over his appearance in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, claiming that Activision used his likeness without permission. He joins a long list of people who’ve claimed their likeness was used without permission in games, with the likes of Gwen Stefani, Lindsay Lohan and even former US Army General David Petraeus. It must be something in the water – the North Korea government recent complained to the United Nations over the film The Interview, which stars James Franco and Seth Rogen as would be assassin’s tasked by the CIA with eliminating Kim Jong-Un. If you can’t take a bit of harmless fun about the leader of you country being assassinated, you’ve got a pretty thin skin – Cuba was laughing at the CIA’s attempts to bump off Castro for years!

In further bad news for the BBC, prints of the first 6 episodes of the new season of Doctor Who have leaked. As we’re busy trying to avoid spoilers, we aren’t linking to any news articles, so if you want it, you can find it yourselves – I’m not helping. It’s also been reported that BBC Worldwide have apologised to Steven Moffat and the production team, saying that those responsible for the leak have been ‘disciplined’. (Couldn’t they have just said Exterminated?) In better news, the first proper trailer for the next season has been released and is suitably awesome.

What she said.

Turning to the Avengers, we have the first look at Ultron and wow, he looks mighty good. There’s also some new pictures from filming, which leads me to ask the obvious question: why do they keep putting Scarlett Johansson in those weird back arching poses? None of the guys are in them, so why should they keep doing it to her? (It’s things like that that keep the Hawkeye Initiative in business.) Andy Serkis has denied he’s playing Thanos in the film, while we also have a confirmed date for both the release of Agents of SHIELD S1 on DVD and the start date of S2.

There’s been big changes to Constantine, with word that both Lucy Griffith’s character has been dropped, to be replaced by Angelia Celaya and that Constantine’s bisexuality won’t be an element. I’m not a huge reader of the comic so I can’t comment on how it will affect things, but this strikes me as something that will annoy people. Another piece of casting for Powers has been announced and there’s been more casting news for Daredevil, with Deborah Ann Woll (True Blood) to play Karen Page, Daredevil’s secretary and Peter Shinkoda (Falling Skies) in an unknown role.

We have some new teasers for Gotham and some very interesting news: there was some excitement when the pilot for the show featured a failing stand-up comedian, one of the possible origins of the Joker, as stated in The Killing Joke. The show’s producers came up with a novel way to thwart any speculation – there’ll be a candidate in every episode of the show. That’s a wonderful way to both increase the anticipation and screw with people’s heads to an epic degree, something I’m sure the Joker would support.

Decisions, decisions…

We finally have the first trailer for Big Hero 6, as well as the voice cast for the film, which looks like a hell of a lot of fun. I haven’t been that interested in an animated film since The Incredibles, which should say something. We also have the first trailers for the films Suburban Gothic, about suburban ghost hunters and Reconstruction of William Zero, about a man trying to reconstruct his memories after an accident. There’s also looks at the horror films Ouija and Annabelle, which is a spin off from The Conjuring.

There’s a clip from the animated film Batman: Assault on Arkham, which is set within the timeline of the Arkham video games and stars Kevin Conroy as Batman (Yay!) and there’s a short preview of a new Green Arrow short that’ll appear on DC Nation. It took us a while to find a version of the trailer for 12 Monkeys that wasn’t region locked, but it was worth the hunt. On the other hand, all the trailers for American Horror Story: Freakshow that I’ve found are either region locked or marked as private. Harrumph.

Christopher Walken will be playing Captain Hook in a live adaption of Peter Pan, Thomas Jane has been cast in SyFy’s new space opera The Expanse and the trend for reboots of 80’s cartoons has continued, with word that Super-Ted and Rainbow Brite will be returning. Jason Isaacs will be voicing The Inquisitor in Star Wars: Rebels and if anyone is surprised by this casting, please raise your hand. I mean, the man’s got a British accent, he’s in a Star Wars production and isn’t playing Obi-Wan Kenobi. Therefore, bad guy. That’s up there with George Lucas intending Count Dooku being evil to be a surprise –HE’S PLAYED BY CHRISTOPHER LEE FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. *Ahem* Sorry about that. Furthermore, Marvel will be releasing all their vintage Star Wars comics to boot, while Seth Rogen has previewed the first song from Preacher.

Let’s face it, it doesn’t get much more awesome than that.

In a piece of rather odd news, MTV, the channel most known for bizarrely tanned drunken idiots, teenage mothers and NOT PLAYING MUSIC ANYMORE, has given the green light for a Shannara series, based on the book series by Terry Brooks. The first series will be 10 episodes long and adapt the second book in the series, The Elfstones of Shannara. Hey, best of luck to them.

The film Nothing Lasts Forever, starring Bill Murray and Dan Akroyd, has resurfaced. The film was shelved by MGM and never released on video, but has emerged on YouTube. There’s also the first teaser poster for the film Horns, staring Daniel Radcliffe as a man who grow’s a pair of horns from his head, a brochure from Jurassic World has leaked, two of the writers of X:Men: First Class and producer Roberto Orci have joined the Power Rangers movie and Universal are said to be trying to establish a series based around the classic monsters.

With Justice League: Throne of Atlantis confirmed as the next DC animated movie, we’ve a look at the action figure designs and the voice cast, which is a pretty impressive cast – Sam Witwer, Sean Astin and Nathan Fillion appear, among others. Guillermo Del Toro has said that Hellboy 3 isn’t likely to happen due to a lack of funding, some odd rumours have been emerging from the Fantastic Four reboot, namely that it might not have anything to do with the comics, or possibly not be based on any one story from the comics history. Before you start screaming though, it’s translated from the original Spanish using Google Translate, so it could be anything from the lyrics to Paranoid to the Gettysburg Address.

Well, there goes my heterosexuality… *swoons*

Joss Whedon has been drawing new Firefly and Buffy on his Twitter feed and Bioware have announced a poll about Mass Effect 4, so if you want your voice to be heard get to the website and fill the poll in! We leave you this week, with news that a new Dungeons and Dragons comics series has been announced, starring everyone’s favourite Ranger and Hamster combination, Minsc and Boo! To make the news even sweeter, it’ll be written by Jim Zub, the writer of Skullkickers, a comic you really should be reading.

Quote of the Week:

Protagonist: Ah, I see you still have that… rodent. Dare I ask how you have kept it hidden from our captors?

Minsc: Don’t ask questions better left to aged sages. Boo is so quick and evasive and there is ever so much of Minsc to search, there is no hope of getting us apart!

Imoen: Eww, I… really don’t want to think about that too much.

Baldur’s Gate 2: Shadows of Amn

Cheers,

Gavin

Lasers to left of them, lasers to right of them, lasers infront of them…

A few thoughts before we begin…

Laser Tag is a lot of fun, though that can depend upon your attitude to small children. Organising a Zerg rush of small children is a useful thing, as others I was playing with demonstrated, whereas I tend to have the knack for attracting people who are just below my sightline and while not the most accurate shots, spray enough laser fire around that I’ll get shot just as I’ve seen them. It’s a bizarre mix of scary precision and the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy and it’s my hope it can be harnessed for Good instead of Evil. Anyhow, let’s begin…

Are you one of those people who constantly worry about George RR Martin dying before he finishes A Song of Ice and Fire? Do you feel the need to mention that in the comments of every article you read about the series, or every time people mention it? If you are, then George RR Martin has two words for you, those being simply ‘Fuck You.’ Martin feels justifiably offended by the questioning and really, who can blame him? Wanting more Ice and Fire is fine, but there’s a way to express that without coming across as a jerk.

And please remember, George RR Martin is NOT YOUR BITCH.

There’s been big drama at the BBC this week, with the leaking of 5 Doctor Who scripts from the Miami office. We aren’t going to give this any more publicity or give away any details, unlike the (so-called) newspaper The Scottish Sun*cough*scum*cough*. We also have the first image from the premiere episode, which doesn’t give away a lot, mercifully.

SyFy have announced a pilot for The Magicians, based on the novel series by Lev Grossman, Warners schedule for San Diego Comic Con would seem to hint at something related to the Young Justice animated series and Bernard Cornwell’s series The Last Kingdom is getting a television adaption. Frozen has continued is conquest of ALL THE THINGS, with Once Upon a Time casting Queen Elsa while both Firestorm and The Atom will be appearing in Arrow, the third season of which has started shooting. Orphan Black has been renewed for a third season, the Guardians of the Galaxy are set to appear on Ultimate Spider-Man and both a 7^th season of Community and a movie are possible. #SevenSeasonsandaMovie doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, but I’ll take what I can get.

Big news about the game Alien: Isolation – 2 DLC missions have been announced where you’ll be able to play as the crew of the Nostromo from the original film. Several of the original cast will also be voicing their characters, including Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerrit and Yaphet Kotto. The two missions were originally planned to be pre-order only, but will now be released available for all, thanks to the public reaction to the announcement.

Family reunions can be awkward at the best of times…

Kevin Smith has denied the rumour he wrote a fake Batman vs Superman script and talked about his visit to the set of Episode 7, while his plans to make Clerks 3 have hit a wall, with the Weinstein company not wanting to fund it. In better news, there’s a poster for his next film, Tusk. Speaking of Episode 7, it’s shut down for two weeks, apparently because of Harrison Ford’s recent injury and added two new cast members, while there’s a look at Agent Kallus, the latest Imperial agent in Star Wars Rebels, who if nothing else, has an amazing set of sideburns.

We managed to find a trailer for Sharknado 2: The Second One and it’s either A: the perfect B-movie or B: the sign to drop the bomb and start over. The new trailer for The Zero Theorem is exactly what you’d expect from a Terry Gilliam film, while the first one for Exodus: Gods and Kings all but screams Ridley Scott. (Which is useful, as it’s a Ridley Scott film.) There’s another teaser for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, an extended trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy, which managed to make me even more excited about it and the first look at season 2 of Sleepy Hollow. A trailer’s been released for the 30^th anniversary re-release of Ghostbusters, though we’re only heard of screenings in the US and UK and a trailer has emerged for the straight to DVD film based the PS3 game Heavenly Sword, starring most of the game’s cast (Alfred Molina replaces Andy Serkis).

Mike Mignola is writing the series Hellboy: The Lost Years and JK Rowling has released a new Harry Potter story, starring Harry as an adult. Two more writers have been hired on for Ant-Man, Mark Ruffalo has been promising more ‘science bros scenes’ in Avengers: Age of Ultron while Gal Gadot hasn’t shot any scenes as Wonder Woman for Dawn of Justice yet.

Quote possibly the two greatest comics pages ever

Rumour has it Mark `Wahlberg in in line to play Steve Austin in the Six Million Dollar Man, Guillermo Del Toro reckons he can make At the Mountains of Madness as a PG-13 (The rough equivalent to our M rating) and he’s also mentioned he wants to make a small black and white film before Pacific Rim 2. And that’s without mentioning the animated series he has planned. There is a guy who does not like free time…

Stan Lee put his angry old man pants on the day he was ranting about movie credits being too long (If I know there’s something at the end it means I have more time to run to the toilet and back), The Conjuring is getting a spin off, Chris Columbous has joined the Gremlins reboot and Gus Van Sant could be directing the live action Death Note movie. Bryan Singer’s developing a movie adaption of the book series Age of Heroes, Roberto Orci suddenly isn’t confirmed to be directing Star Trek 3 anymore and we have what would appear to be the first look at the dinosaurs of Jurassic World.

The week’s collection of random stuff includes a Star Wars fan film made by American football players at Georgia University, McFarlane Toys are making Walking Dead Lego sets (Well, not quite Lego but close), scientists have created a tractor beam using water and there’s a gallery of artwork from Ralph McQuarrie and Syd Mead for a remake of Forbidden Planet that Irvin Kirshner was trying to get off the ground in the 90’s.

Badumtssh!

We leave you with the strangest thing I’ve seen this week – what’s said to be a Japanese Doctor Who parody from the 70’s found on an old VHS. (Yes, I know it was actually made by a British film student – CAN’T YOU LEAVE ME WITH MY DELUSIONS?)

Quote of the Week:

(Hellboy has caught Abe listening to a CD of love songs)

Hellboy: You’re in love. Have a beer.

Abe Sapien: Oh, my body’s a temple.

Hellboy: Well, now it’s an amusement park.

Abe Sapien: No, no, no. The glandular balance of–

Hellboy: Just shut up and drink it, would you?

Abe Sapien: [sighs and takes the beer]

Hellboy: What track?

Abe Sapien: Eight.

Hellboy: “Can’t… Smile… Without You.”

Abe Sapien: I know.

Hellboy: Yep, I’m gonna need a beer, too.

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army

Cheers,

Gavin

coughhackwheezesnort

We’re down sick this week, so if this instalment is confused and incoherent, if we repeat ourselves, fly off on bizarre tangents, or sound like we’ve ingested a dozen bottles of cough syrup (OR MORE SO THAN NORMAL) then we can only apologize. Right, on with things!

First off, there’s a fantastic stop motion short of Optimus Prime battling Devastator, the Basic Rules for the new edition of Dungeons and Dragons have been released as a free PDF and a collection of five hundred fairy tales that had been locked away in an archive in Germany had been unearthed. Last for this bit, there’s some fan art. A young Muslim girl drew herself as various comic characters but with a twist – they’re all wearing hijabs. It’s a lovely concept, especially the Captain America and Hulk which are fantastic.

And may all your hits be Crits!

In what has to be a record for them, Fox have cancelled the ancient Egyptian intrigue show Hieroglyph before it even aired. The show had been given an order straight to series and had completed the first episode before the axe fell. Apparently the show “wasn’t creatively coming together the way executives had hoped,” which is an impressive bit of Buzzword Bullshit Bingo if you ask me. You ordered 13 episodes before making the pilot, shouldn’t you have worked out stuff like that beforehand?

Another teaser trailer for the next season of Doctor Who has appeared, with a familiar sounding voice in it. Another returning monster has been confirmed for the next season, along with word that Michelle Gomez will be playing a character called the Gatekeeper. We’re still waiting for who’s playing the Keymaster though. (Yes, we know we’re far from the only person to make that joke, but it had to be done.) Good news! Yahoo Screen has picked up Community for a sixth season! Dan Harmon is involved, and presumably the rest of the cast, though we don’t know if Donald Glover will return. We have six seasons, now we just need a movie! There’s talk that some male characters in the new Danger Mouse will now be female, Harmony Gold are Kickstarting a pilot for a new Robotech series and Seth Rogen has been teasing the adaption of Preacher he’s producing.

Bryan Fuller is developing American Gods for the Starz network, John Constantine won’t be smoking on TV, which has upset a few people. Hey, at least they didn’t make him an American, have Shia LeBouf as his sidekick and give him a magic shotgun eh? We also have details of a few other changes and Easter Eggs that have been seen in the show’s promotional material. Clive Barker’s Nightbreed is becoming a TV series, Devon Aoki and Peter Stormare are joining the cast of Arrow and Carol Kane will be playing Oswald Cobblepot’s mother in Gotham. Is it wrong I’ll be watching her hoping she sneaks the line “Have fun storming the castle” into the script? Adam West, Burt Ward and Julie Newmar will be appearing at Comic Con to preview the Batman 66 DVD set and the BBC has confirmed four new episodes of Sherlock.

TELL ME YOU WOULDN’T WATCH THAT FILM. YOU CAN’T, CAN YOU?

The first proper promotional picture from Batman V Superman has emerged and well… It’s a bit shit. I’ve read very little Superman over the years, but I’ve never seen him as Broody McBroodyPants, even in the 90’s when he wore a mullet. In order to distract from that, you can read Zack Snyder’s justification for just why there’s a V instead of Vs in the title. (If you want to hit yourself in the head with a brick after reading that, you aren’t alone) Furthermore, there’s talk that the studio hired Kevin Smith to write a fake script solely to leak, which would mean that all the rumours we’ve seen for the past few months are FALSE AND LIES. Why go to that extent? Or, if you’re going to do that, why not leak a version of the script that was going to be used for the Nicholas Cage film to really mess with people’s heads?

The viral marketing for Guardians of the Galaxy has produced this wonderful galactic travel site, Mark Ruffalo has denied a Planet Hulk movie and Colin Treverrow has given us another sneaky look at Jurassic World. A sequel to Enchanted is back on (Hey, better late than never) and Andy Serkis is working on both Avengers: Age of Ultron (Working with Mark Ruffalo) and Star Wars: Episode 7, which has added Billie Lourd, Carrie Fisher’s daughter, to it’s cast. Word is GI Joe 3 will be focused on Dwayne Johnson’s character Roadblock (Which is different from it’s ‘All Ninjas, all the time’ teaser poster), Bryan Singer has teased the opening of X:Men-Apocalypse and a movie version of video game series Thief is in development.

We would bring you another clip from Sharknado 2: The Second One but I haven’t been able to find a version of it that’s available in Australia, which means we’re both cursing region locked videos and very thankful for region locked videos. We do, however, have the first look at Sharktopus vs Pteracuda, which is, well, I’ll let a picture show my thousand words.

Enough said.

The trailer for Dracula Untold has Luke Evans brooding, a whole lot of CG stuff getting chucked about and Charles Dance sounding eerily like Benedict Cumberbatch, there’s men in kilts in the trailer for time travel drama Outlander and the look at To be Takei is well, fabulous. There’s a series of 3 short films bridging the gap between the recent Planet of the Apes films and we won’t be seeing a full trailer for The Hobbit: Battle of Five Armies until October, but you can expect a teaser in a few weeks. No doubt they’re busy cramming even more Elf related bullshit into it, between all the pointless side quests, party splitting and other stuff that WASN’T IN THE BOOK OR LOTR APPENDICES. No I don’t like Elves, the pointy eared arrogant prats and no, n-case you hadn’t guessed and no, my identifying with the Dwarves isn’t cause I look more like one, it’s cause it’s A: meant to be the Dwarves movie and B: shit storytelling. I know you want to link to the Rings films, but there’s ways to do it that aren’t quite so well, shit. And don’t get me started on that dragged out, pointless drawn out 20 minutes of running around Erebor – I haven’t been so angry at an action scene since the factory chase in Attack of the Clones.

We leave you this week with a look at several short films made by Toby Froud, son of Wendy and Brian Froud who were part responsible for Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal. Nightmare fuel in foam and felt.

Quote of the Week:

[After surviving a gladiatorial fight, at which point they would have been free]

Miek: No hmpfing! The Red *kik* King to pardoning us now.

Hulk: Red King?

Miek: The Emperor. His planet. We just living here.

Hulk: He runs this stupid world?

Miek: As much as he grabbing anyway.

[The Hulk leaps at the Red King’s seat]

Hulk: Finally. Hulk knows who to smash.

Planet Hulk – Issue #92

Cheers,

Gavin

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

shoutybeardything

Category News

Trailers.

Many Bothans died, to bring us this trailer.

All wings, report in.

You Rebel scum…

WHO’S USELESS NOW?

Conventions, consent, chaos and cosplay

I’m Thor, but not complaining…

Lasers to left of them, lasers to right of them, lasers infront of them…

coughhackwheezesnort

Sequel? A sequel you say?