If you’re a fan of British author Neil Gaiman’s former monthly comics series Sandman and have always wanted to see a live-action version, then The Hollywood Reporter has news for you.
Over at their Heat Vision blog, reporters Borys Kit and James Hibberd broke the exclusive news that Warner Bros. TV is “in the midst of acquiring television rights from sister company DC Entertainment and in talks with several writer-producers about adapting the 1990s comic. At the top of the list is Eric Kripke, creator of the CW’s horror-tinged ‘Supernatural.'”
That howl you heard around 6 pm Pacific, by the way? Was the wailing and gnashing of teeth of many a mature female comics fan who knows and loves both Sandman and “Supernatural” and knows exactly how Kripke could possibly fuck it all up.
The bit of good news from the blog that all fans are holding onto lies in these two sentences from Kit and Hibberd:
[Neil Gaiman] is not involved in the new developments, though since it is early in the process, that may change. In fact, securing Gaiman will prove key for the project to go forward.
Gaiman, who is currently in the U.K. taking care of business related to his upcoming “Doctor Who” episode, didn’t comment on his Twitter account when the news broke here in the U.S. because he was on a Skype call to the Melbourne Writer Fest in Australia as one of their events. (Damn, don’t you love technology, these days?)
According to ANN, Japanese anime director Satoshi Kon passed away yesterday at the age of 46 following complications due to pancreatic cancer.
Kon was a part of the Madhouse studio and was responsible for directing some of its more psychologically challenging films and series such as Perfect Blue and Paranoia Agent. I personally interviewed him during the North American premiere of his Tokyo Godfathers in 2003 and remember him as being very passionate about his work.
I wish to die in my home. This might be my last great inconvenience to the people around me but, I have been able to be granted that escape home. Thanks to the tireless efforts of my wife, and the “Has he given up?” attitude of the hospital, it has in fact and indeed been helpfully cooperative, along with the enormous support from outside clinics, and many frequent coincidences that I can only think of as blessings from heaven. I can’t believe there are just so many coincidences and inevitabilities in this real life. This isn’t Tokyo Godfathers after all
Considering what happened last Friday on Questionable Content by Jeph Jacques, I thought this a rather appropriate video to view heading into this week’s strips:
Perpetuum Jazzile is a Slovenian jazz choir which was founded in 1983. You can download some of their music at their site, and I strongly urge you to check out their online store as well.
Police detain a protestor in the wake of the 2009 Iranian Election * Image courtesy of a Creative Commons license
When you think of the tools in a modern-day spy or investigative journalist’s toolbox, you picture tiny lipstick cameras or gigantic rooms housing servers dedicated to encryption and decryption. Now, thanks to a team at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, you can now add Yahoo!-owned photo hosting site Flickr and a home PC to that box.
According to Jim Giles at New Scientist.com, grad student Sam Burnett, assistant professor Nick Feamster, and professor Santosh Vempala have created a system that will allow a user to encrypt several news stories into digital images which can be uploaded to Flickr or perhaps any other widely used Internet .jpg hosting site.
Dubbed Collage, this program will be available for wide use in “a few weeks,” though the New Scientist.com article says it was available four days ago.
Though Mike Spector and Lauren A.E. Schuker at the Wall Street Journal say we’re about a month away from the rescue of the James Bond franchise (and other films and franchises) from ailing movie studio MGM by Spyglass Entertainment, I can’t stop thinking about what new and interesting gadgets, tools, and techniques will crop up in that film.
And considering that “Leverage” creator and writer John Rogers has said many times that he and his researchers find that what’s going on in reality is far more stranger than what they concoct for their idealized Crime World, I wouldn’t be surprised if Hardison hasn’t already downloaded this program into his hacker arsenal… just to be on top of things, you know?
When you’re gaming late at night at your favorite Internet cafe, you don’t expect to become fodder for your local news channel; however, that’s exactly what happened to some PC gamers in Hawaii last week:
Just like the reporters at local channel KHON, I don’t think that everyone in this sort of situation should fight back; however, given that the staff eventually knew who the alleged assailants were, I’m sure that Dylan Hays knew he’d be okay when he started fighting back.
Kudos to the midnight crew at PC Gamerz for defending their home.
When it comes to being a writer or actor, we currently live in interesting times—and by “interesting” I’m using the “Chinese curse” definition of the word.
Computers and the Internet have not only opened up a new distribution method for people to see their work and give them money for it, but also a way for people to view their work and keep from giving them money for it. The main point of contention during the Writers Guild Strike of 2007-2008 and the threatened Screen Actors Guild Strike of 2008 was over residuals from “new media,” and how much a production studio would pay them for re-broadcasts of the material over time beyond its initial broadcast.
To briefly summarize, rather than use the old mathematical formula created in the 1980s when home video became a concern or wait a few years to see exactly how profitable distribution on “new media” is and create a new formula, the WGA wanted the producers’ guild (the AMPTP) to create a new formula right now which would potentially address any and all concerns about how writers would get paid for work that has the potential to be seen and consumed in innumerable ways that aren’t easily tabulated thanks to things like click rates and online piracy.
Because that formula hasn’t been perfected yet and online piracy is still a problem, anyone who wants to start releasing their content on the ‘net is trying to figure out who their loyal paying audience (aka their True Fans) is and how to best get a hold of that person’s entertainment dollar.
About a month ago, Indie Wire.com blogger Cameron Carlson went to the “Producing Web Entertainment” seminar at the American Cinematheque in California, and came away with eight things he learned about how to best reach an Internet-based audience. However, the people on that panel and the series they were talking about were people I’d never heard of personally, which made me wonder: Exactly who are these guys and why would I want to believe their words on this topic?
After doing lots of clicking and a bit of research, I present to you my own list of five things I think these particular content creators are doing correctly and incorrectly when it comes to reaching out to a ‘net-savvy audience:
1. The folks at Babelgum.com allow for embedding, viewing fullscreen, and sharing via social networks on their video content hosting site and that’s great. However, they don’t have multiple options for embedding a la YouTube, and that’s bad. If I want to share your video with my friends on my blog, then I want to show you off in the best manner possible and a small inset ain’t gonna cut it. This kids’ re-enactment of the Bravo reality show “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” is pretty funny, but if the sample I’m showing you presents poorly, you’re not going to want to go to the source to see more, are you?
That’s a shame, as there’s some pretty good content over at Babelgum, including a BBC channel that has clips of shows like “The Young Ones” and “Red Dwarf” and many of the Improv Everywhere skits.
Overall grade: C+
2. I was fully prepared to give the gang at FearNet.com an awesome grade because they have an interesting selection of free R-rated movies that only require an age-checker to view, the female eye-candy host of their “Jobs of the Damned” original series seems pretty genre-savvy, and they already know their audience is going to be a bunch of horror buffs, so they don’t condescend when they conduct interviews, as seen above.
However, when I pasted the embed code for the video above into the text side of my WordPress Dashboard, a whole lot of clunky code came along with it, including a link to their ad network. Ugh.
Overall grade: B-
3. Sometimes, size really does matter and in this case, the lack of an adjustable embed code means that showing you this episode of “Easy to Assemble” is going to break some blogger templates and even some LiveJournal pages, so good luck sharing it with your friends. By far, this is the slickest of the productions we’ve seen in this review, but there’s just one major problem I have: Why does the About page only contain a press release for the second season?
Part of what turns a casual viewer into a True Fan these days is the level of access to the creators of that content and the amount of information those creators are willing to provide. If you’re not even willing to have a FAQ section available on your site to explain exactly why actual Hollywood stars like Illeana Douglas, Justine Bateman and Ed Begely, Jr. are schilling for IKEA in a quirky web series, then I’m not going to want to watch it, no matter how many Streamys it has won.
Overall grade: C
4. See what I mean about breaking templates? I really, really like “Imaginary Bitches,” even if I’m not their target demographic of women who do “lunch with the girls” and make plans to go shopping. The conceit of main character Eden (played by Eden Riegel, best-known as Bianca from “All My Children”) creating bitchy imaginary friends because her real-life friends are all in relationships and have abandoned her is so freaking interesting to me because it’s an unusual take on a very common situation.
The embed issue aside, the other problem I have with IB is the lack of consistency on the Cast page. Props go to male cast members Michael Traynor and Billy Aaron Brown for following Eden’s example and deciding to relish in the playful spirit of Internet TV and having such playful bios for their cast pages.
With the exception of Brooke Nevin, the rest of the female cast didn’t follow suit at all, which makes them all look like, well, bitches.
Overall grade: B-
5. And as long as I’m at it, I’m also gonna give some props to Strike TV, because just in the same way that Joss Whedon was bored, wanted something to do during the Writers’ Strike, and came up with “Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog,” every single series in this long list was created because some writer had an idea, was able to go out and realize it, and someone gave it a home.
I am now about to take those props away because not only is the management team nothing but guys, but it doesn’t seem like any of the blogs or any of the other series have been updated since 2009. If a bunch of Canadians living on an island off the coast of Washington state can produce at least one video a week for over six years while trying to maintain a day job or school, you’d think a bunch of Hollywood screenwriters could do the same, yes?
Overall grade: F
Ultimately, as Carlson concluded, just as the plate engravers looked askance at Johannes Gutenberg or silent film stars cursed Al Jolson’s name under their breaths, the successes or failures of the Hollywood players in this article are probably being well-scrutinized by the bean counters at the AMPTP. I don’t agree, however, that it’s these particular creators who will be the “shovel sellers.”
In fact, I’m going to make a bold prediction right now and say that it’s going to be some unknown creator who’s going to come up with a product, video format, level of popularity and transparency, and price security that will propel Internet-original entertainment beyond the comparatively niche circle it currently enjoys.
Until a miracle happens and I’m able to justify spending gobs of money to go, it’s highly unlikely that I’m going to be able to provide the kind of coverage of Comic Con (aka “Nerd Prom”) or any other major geekfest that you deserve. However, what I can do now and going forward is to highlight the stuff that really turned my crank:
“The Gray Lady” may have been able to make the con relatable to its older readers and audiences, but Michael Buckner’s photograph of Dame Helen Mirren—star of the upcoming Red, based on the graphic novel by Warren Ellis—stole that panel’s show and put things in perspective by showing up in a T-shirt memorializing recently deceased American Splendor creator Harvey Pekar. I’d like to think he would have gotten a kick out of that. (Source: The New York Times)
Did you realize that there was an Iron Man anime series? No, not “animated” as in the 1994 TV series starring the voice of Airplane‘s Robert Hays as Tony Stark, but a new series created by Studio Madhouse (Ninja Scroll, Black Lagoon) in conjunction with Marvel Studios. At the SDCC panel, new executive vice president and head of television Jeph Loeb (“Heroes”) and Madhouse COO Masao Maruyama confirmed that the series will launch in the U.S. and Canada in 2011, after its debut in Japan on October 1 on the G4 network. Other Marvel anime series which will also appear on the network in the U.S. are Wolverine, X-Men and Blade, and it sounded like negotiations were forthcoming on whether or not all four would also appear on G4 in Canada. (Source: ANN)
If anyone took director Guillermo del Toro up on his offer to show him their work, I’d love to hear the story. No, seriously; this is what he told fans at his Q&A panel:
“I cannot read screenplays, but if you have a portfolio, or you have a short you want me to see, fuck it, give it to me. If you see me on the floor, accost me,” he challenged the crowd. And he also gave his public email address for them to contact him.
It was sing-a-long time at the “Big Bang Theory” panel, moderated by TV’s Wil Wheaton, where the Barenaked Ladies performed the entire theme song and not just the TV edit to a room full of fans. (Source: The Hollywood Reporter Live Feed blog)
Mao’s Last Dancer
Directed by Bruce Berensford
Starring Chi Cao, Bruce Greenwood, Amanda Schull, Joan Chen and more
Rated PG for a brief violent image, some sensuality, language and incidental smoking
There’s an art involved in adapting a book into a movie. Stray too much from the source material and you run the risk of alienating the audience who already knows the story. At the same time, if you stick too closely to the book’s conventions you may not attract enough of an audience who wouldn’t normally be interested in the original work.
And if the book is based on true events, and is an autobiography to boot? All bets are off.
The plot of Mao’s Last Dancer is based on the autobiography by Chinese-born ballet dancer Li Cunxin, who following in the footsteps of such artists as Rudolph Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov, defected to the U.S. in 1981. However, the story of the movie begins in medias res, with a 20-year old Li stepping foot onto American soil at the beginning of a student exchange program which places him deep in the heart of Texas, with the Houston Ballet.
I was a little confused by the first few opening scenes because it felt to me that perhaps there was a bit too much medias-ing going on as out of the entire entourage who met Li (played by Chi Cao as an adult) at the airport, the only person whose role I was certain of was Bruce Greenwood as Houston Ballet director Ben Stevenson; the other characters felt like random white people to me because I wasn’t certain of their names or connection to Li. Thankfully, names and relationships began solidifying as the story then flashed back to Li’s youth and his introduction to the Beijing Dance Academy (where Li is played first as a child by Wen Bin Huang and then Birmingham Royal Ballet dancer Chengwu Guo as a teen) to help to fill in the pieces we’re missing. These flashbacks are intercut with the action in the present as Li becomes more acclimated to American culture and as his romance with fellow dancer Elizabeth Mackey (played by Amanda Schull, whom you may remember as Jody from Center Stage) deepens, so does his renown with the company and resolve to stay in the U.S.
These true events of which contemporary Houstonians recall with pride took place when I was 4, and it’s something I don’t remember my parents ever speaking about with their adult friends. As a result, I was fascinated with the story of the political drama but found myself most drawn to Li’s transformation from village peasant to into dedicated dancer. It doesn’t hurt that he is inspired by two of his teachers, one of whom inspires by exposing him to contraband film of Baryshnikov’s work and the other who inspires by sparking his sense of pride and duty. You can’t have a biographical dance movie without some sort of training montage, and I hope that I’m not exposing a bias when I say that I’m glad that it looked as serious as the kind of training montage you’d see in a kung fu movie.
Australian director Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy) and screenwriter Jan Sardi (The Notebook) are to be commended for their adaptation of Cunxin’s book, treating all the major and minor players in this drama with an even hand. Even the Communist Party members who are only toeing the line are depicted fairly and it’s a testament to the strength of the story and the movie that even without clear villains it’s still a story that’s as riveting now as it was back then. Othercritics have complained that there’s not enough political drama, but I really don’t think that was the point of the movie, and especially of a story like this. It’s all about the dancing, and I’m so glad that they spent so much time on that part of Cunxin’s story.
Ultimately, though, the movie does suffer from the same problem that all book adaptations do; even with a 117 minute running time, the movie only skims the surface of what is such an engaging story and narrative that the book was named the “Book of the Year” when it was released in 2003. Still, it’s worth seeing for the great performances and an education in what life was like before you were likely born.
Available in U.S. theaters on August 20, Mao’s Last Dancer is proof-positive that white chicks love a man who can dance. And wear tight tights.
The Masquerade at this weekend’s San Diego Comic Con will undoubtedly feature some awesome feats of costumery and stagecraft; however, I think these guys have got them beat:
Part of the Calgaray Zoo’s summer exhibition called “Dinosaurs Alive!”, the costumes and this skit alone are enough to make anyone want to plan a trip to Alberta, Canada this summer. Now open till October 31.
Good Lord, we’re behind on our movie trailers, aren’t we? Let’s get down to it, then!
I had to watch this at the office with the sound turned off, which means that I had to completely imagine the overblown narration that probably accompanied this latest Machete trailer. Given that Grindhouse was not a box office success—$25 million total gross versus a $67 million budget—I can understand that the official studio trailer isn’t gonna have that awesome grindhouse feel which got the entire film greenlit to begin with.
Doesn’t mean it’s not a stupid trailer, though. So while the official trailer gets a fumble, me and my friends are still going to see this movie in U.S. theaters this fall on September 3.
For a movie that’s your typical “Young guys stumble into brilliant invention, but money comes between their friendship”-flick like The Social Network seems to be flogging, I can’t help but think about other movies like Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988) or even Pirates of Silicon Valley and wonder exactly what is going to make this film stand-out from the pack.
If the only thing it has going for it is Aaron Sorkin putting words into Mark Zuckerberg’s mouth, then I think I’m going to give this one a pass. Directed by David Fincher, The Social Network is out in U.S. theaters on October 1.
Finally, props and kudos to Rick Marshall at MTV’s Splash Page blog for posting this exclusive 30 second teaser from the animated adaptation of comics creator Eric Powell’s The Goon, part of a longer section of film that will be shown this coming Friday—which will also be exclusively shown at the MTV blog directly after the panel ends at 7:00 pm EST.
Featuring the voice of Paul Giamatti as Frankie and directed by David Fincher, hopefully we’ll learn if and when the movie will get a release date at the panel.
The latest news out of the House of Mouse has me pretty bewildered.
According to Marc Graser at Variety, the next live-action film in the Walt Disney Studios pipeline will be something about gargoyles, with Zoe Green in final negotiations to write it and Lauren Shuler Donner producing.
I can hear many of you thinking, “Wait, ‘Gargoyles’? As in the awesome 1994 animated cartoon about a bunch of creatures who by day are lifeless statues but at night come alive and protect a modern day New York City metropolis from the schemings of a businessman named Xanatos?”
And this is where I have to dash your hopes and say that no, Graser’s sources say that it’s not tied to it, but will be something entirely different:
[The project] centers around a world and mythology of the menacing stone statues that the studio was keen to explore, sources said. Both Disney and Shuler Donner were circling separate gargoyle projects and ultimately paired up and hired Green to tackle an idea hatched with Disney exec LouAnne Brickhouse, who is shepherding the project at the studio. Shuler Donner will produce through the Donners’ Co., which she runs with husband Richard Donner.
Here’s the part I don’t understand. “Gargoyles” was, and still is, a property that has legs (or wings, if you want to be technical about it). It has a rich history and mythology of its own that’s already been established, and in the right hands, could be adapted in a way that would make it interesting to a modern audience but keep the people who grew up with the show and love the franchise happy.
It also features David Xanatos who is such an awesome villain that he has not just one but four tropes and an index named after him.
Why wouldn’t the execs at Disney want to take a property they already own, shell out some minor payments to the original creators to keep them around as “consultants” and then go whole hog on that?
The answer may lie in the fact that according to Graser, they’ve already tried to adapt the animated series in the 1990s to no avail; my response to that is that with what we’ve seen effects studios capable of in Avatar, it wouldn’t hurt to give adapting the original animated series one more try.
When news broke on Monday that American Splendorcreator Harvey Pekar was found dead in his Cleveland Heights, Ohio home, I wrote via Twitter: “I didn’t have the pleasure of meeting him in person, but [Pekar] is and will always be an inspiration to struggling creators.”
Pekar is best-known for the pioneering comics series American Splendor which told the story of Pekar’s own life and the lives of the people around him in his home in Cleveland. It was this series which lead to several guest appearances on “Late Night with David Letterman,” the last of which in 1987 got him banned from the show:
Afterwards, Pekar continued to write his comics and collaborate with several artists, one of whom introduced him to the filmmakers who would create a film about his life in 2003 starring Paul Giamatti, in which he also appeared, and subsequently wrote about in a series of Splendor stories.
What I find inspirational about Pekar is that as a writer, he had a story to tell that he believed in, and not only did he get to tell that story every day of his life, he was able to draw people into sharing his belief that stories about everyday people were important. It didn’t hurt that he was in the right place and the right time to befriend legendary underground artist R. Crumb and make use of him as a personal artist with the release of his first Splendor story in 1976, but that doesn’t explain why so many artists after Crumb not only signed up to work with him, but consider having done so one of the highlights of their careers.
Dean Haspiel, one of the later Splendor artists and also the artist for Pekar’s autobiographical graphic novel The Quitter—as well as the inspiration for the Ray Hueston character in the HBO series “Bored to Death,” but we’ll get into that some other time—was interviewed all over the place and one of the quotes I like the best is from this piece on his personal blog:
Harvey Pekar was a pioneer of the autobiographical comic book and it was working with him on The Quitter that put me on the map in our beloved industry. Harvey lived life and every last detail was written and drawn and published. He couldn’t have done half of it without his wife, Joyce Brabner. The best way to honor Pekar now is to read his life, just like he would have wanted you to.
So go. Read this. And everything on this page. And watch this.
And remember that no single person’s life is unimportant.
Once again, Google informed me that the latest and final part of the Black Star Warrior documentary is online, and this one has an appeal for help at the end:
As the YouTube comments have so far stated, this is really tripping my “This is fake” buttons, but I also agree that it’s so well-done that I don’t care. The glimpses at the end of the documentary of what looks like “actual” footage is pretty interesting, and if indeed they will be releasing a trailer to go along with this, you know I’ll be all over it. Also, isn’t Comic Con coming up soon?
Anyway, if you think you can help, go visit LandoIstheMan.com for more information.
I enjoy doing outdoorsy-type activities in addition to playing games, and I have a big, yellow off-road vehicle that I like to drive into the mountains when I go camping and hiking, etc. I was recently looking for tires for this vehicle and so spent some time on web forums for off-roading geeks. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that, among off-road geeks, tire brands are debated with the same ferocity as game geeks argue their positions in the console wars.
If you’re a fan of British author Neil Gaiman’s former monthly comics series Sandman and have always wanted to see a live-action version, then The Hollywood Reporter has news for you.
According to 
Mao’s Last Dancer
page. And watch 
.