Suffice it to say, I'm going to have a lot to say about this movie.
Harry: "Did you know, sir ... then?"Dumbledore: "Did I know I'd just met the most dangerous dark wizard of all time? No."
Our first look at the child Tom Riddle. And Dumbledore fights the Inferi.
This one is gonna hurt when it comes to theaters this fall. Can't wait!
Dawn has a role in - and even appears in the trailer for - the new Warner Brothers movie Nights in Rodanthe, starring Richard Gere, Diane Lane, Christopher Meloni, James Franco and Viola Davis. It's based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks. I was going to go see this anyway 'cuz of the setting (Rodanthe is a small community on North Carolina's Outer Banks) and the cinematography looks beautiful, and Lisa is a big fan of Sparks's books and movies too. Now we've another great reason to check it out!
Here's a page with some links to various formats of the Nights in Rodanthe trailer. And if you're just plain lazy, here it is on YouTube, too (Dawn appears about 12 seconds in)...
Congrats to Dawn! Who is not only a wonderful actress and KWerky Productions family member, but also a very sweet person and a dear friend :-)
The Dallas Morning News has the story of Lenny Watson's new career.
No, not gonna add any commentary here about the war, and that's not why I'm posting this here either. I do think this guy has the right attitude though: that being happy is ultimately your own choice to make, regardless of whatever nonsense life throws into your path. It's a great story, and one worth sharing with others.
Rather than post a link or embed the video (which would make no sense since Disney is sending out DMCA claims all over the place tonight) I'll just say that if you really have to see the teaser for TR2N - the sequel to 1982's Tron - that ran at Comic Con a few days ago, just search for "tr2n" on whatever video hosting service that you happen to like, and you should come up lucky.The screenshot above is the official logo of the movie, taken from one of the better versions that I've seen floating around.
From what I've heard, Jeff Bridges shot his stuff for the teaser in a single afternoon, under the tightest secrecy so that it could be a complete surprise at Comic Con this weekend.
I'd love to see this thing in full, beautiful Quicktime. How about it Disney? I mean, people are watching it already anyway. This thing is too gosh-darned beautiful to have it secretly traded around among the dark corners of the Intertubes. If y'all wait 'til next week after Comic Con, we'll understand. But please, get an official release of this teaser out there soon! :-)
But it's true: Darth Vader tried to take part in a procession of Icelandic Lutherans in that island country's capital of Reykjavík. Here's the video...
It's been awhile since I picked up an issue of an ongoing comic book, apart from the odd Star Wars-related one-shot every now and then. But yesterday Lisa and I were in the Borders in Greensboro and the cover of Wolverine #66 intrigued me enough to purchase a copy. Written by Mark Millar (recently known for the Civil War arc that raged across most of the Marvel line), it's the first chapter of the "Old Man Logan" saga.And based on what I enjoyed reading last night, "Old Man Logan" might become the best story involving Marvel's most popular mutant since the groundbreaking Origin over six years ago.
The "Old Man Logan" arc takes place fifty years after "the night the heroes fell" and the bad guys finally conquered America. The land is now carved-up into a series of territories and whatever it was that happened, it completely broke Wolverine's spirit. He wandered off into the wasteland, completely renounced violence, dropped his heroic moniker and became simply Logan. When the series begins we find that he's got a wife and two children, eking out an existence as a tenant farmer in California and trying to pay off his landlords.
In Logan's case, this turns out to be the inbred progeny of Bruce Banner. Imagine the degenerate hillbillies of Deliverance as a gang of Hulks. If that alone will not hook you into "Old Man Logan", I don't know what will.
The Hulk Gang beats Logan to a pulp and threatens to kill his family if he can't pony up the rent. Hawkeye - now a blind man - tells Logan that he's got a delivery to make on the East Coast and if Logan can help him get there, his family will get all the rent money they need to pay off the Hulks. By the end of the issue, Hawkeye is in the driver's seat of the rebuilt Spider-mobile with Logan navigating, as the satellite system shows them the three thousand miles they must maneuver through the dominions of Kingpin, Doom, and the threat of much worse in order to reach a place called New Babylon.
Mark Millar is saying that "Old Man Logan" is shooting for the same kind of vibe as The Dark Knight Returns. I can see that here. And in addition to Deliverance there's also a sense of The Grapes of Wrath and maybe even Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas at work in the story, with Part 1's final shot of Wolverine and Hawkeye driving off into the East toward whatever adventure awaits.
I'll definitely be picking up Part 2, and probably the rest of this eight-issue series as well. Well worth looking into, whether you're a die-hard Marvel geek or a more casual fan.
Military.com is reporting that ex-rebels in Iraq are demanding more money, or else they will go back to the ranks of Al-Qaeda and begin attacking American forces again. The money that's been paying the former rebels to begin with has originated with the United States government.
So all this time we've either been funding an army of mercenaries that used to be shooting at American personnel, or we've been outright bribing them, depending on what your take on the situation is. I don't know if all of the diminished violence in Iraq can be attributed to this chicanery, but it's a safe bet that a big chunk of it will be.
I'm reminded again of the last phase of the Roman Empire, when that government was reduced to hiring barbarians to fill the ranks of its army and even paying off foreign tribes not to overrun the empire. Look at where that got 'em...
Last week, around the time that we were in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, I started hearing about something called Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly creator Joss Whedon wrote, directed and even composed the music for this three-act comic opera about Dr. Horrible (Neil Patrick Harris), a down-on-his-luck mad scientist trying to gain both respect as a supervillain and the girl of his dreams (played by Felicia Day). I couldn't get to its website in time to catch the streaming video of the three chapters as they were being released, but based on the good buzz and the positive word of several friends (including Phillip Arthur) I went to iTunes two nights ago and checked it out.People, if you haven't already, you owe it to yourself to watch Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: it's one of the funniest, most clever and even thought-provoking things that I've watched all year. And the songs are catchy! I've had "My Freeze Ray" playing in my head almost constantly since Wednesday night, and I even found myself singing it this afternoon while driving around with my wife.
Click here to purchase Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog from iTunes. You can either get each act individually for $1.99, or all three for $3.99 (which is what I did). And let us hope that this is not the last that we have heard from the nefarious Dr. Horrible!
If you've never had the opportunity to watch the lecture, here it is courtesy of Google Video. It's easily one of the most uplifting things that I've ever seen.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to his wife and three children.
In the meantime though, I cast your attention to Andrew Klavan, writing for The Wall Street Journal, and he asserts that The Dark Knight proves that Batman and George W. Bush are practically one and the same. In short...
"The Dark Knight," then, is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year's "300," "The Dark Knight" is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans.
Bush is like Batman?! 'Tis writing so mad, Klavan should be locked up in Arkham. If anything, Bush is The Joker: everything this man has done has sown and reaped chaos and destruction... but on a global scale.But let's look at the comparison to Batman again and why Klavan is so wrong. First, Batman is putting himself on the front line in the war against crime in Gotham City. When Bruce Wayne takes the armor off and we see those cuts and scars, he acquired... nay, he earned... those on his own. President Bush has never been in a real fight. He's a spoiled brat king who sends henchmen (not talking about U.S. military personnel at all, folks) to do his dirty work. Just like The Joker.
Second, from the very beginning of his term of office, and throughout most of his life, Bush has been obsessed with creating a "legacy" that he'll be remembered for. It's a kind of narcissism that fuels the greatest of supervillains. This is not what motivates Bruce Wayne. Wayne is not out for fame or glory, and he can live with the fact that history must never know that he is Batman because that simply does not matter at all to him. What does matter is that he will do whatever is in his power to make sure that no one will ever die... not even those who might most deserve it.
This brings me to another point: Batman's compassion even toward his enemies. We see this in The Dark Knight: Batman doesn't kill The Joker. Heck, if you read the comics at all, you already know that for all his understanding of how twisted and dangerous The Joker is, Batman has never given up hope that the man might be reformed and redeemed. Incarcerated forever for his crimes, yes... but at least with a conscience. Batman does not kill his enemies. He will stop them, and at times punish them when the law fails... but he does not take it upon himself to judge them as unworthy of life. Go read Alan Moore's The Killing Joke if you've never done so, if you want to see what I mean. Does anyone believe that George W. Bush has just as much strength of soul that would keep him from killing his worst enemies and getting away with it, if he could?
Batman wants the people of Gotham to stand up and fight the darkness on their own. Bush wants the people of America to be a superstitious, cowardly lot. 'Nuff said.
I'm going to write more about it in my review, but The Dark Knight is a movie about morality under duress and sometimes having to compromise that. Klavan argues that Batman in The Dark Knight vindicates the neo-conservative belief that Bush must do away with personal rights in order to win the "war on terror" (by the way, nobody who seriously believes in the "war on terror" is worth respecting, in my opinion). He totally missed the point of The Dark Knight here: that though good people are not infallible and do fail at times, good people do at least harbor remorse and regret for not possessing complete wisdom to deal with the world around them. I think this is one of the greatest attributes of conscience... and it's one that Bush and the vast majority of his supporters have never demonstrated.
Which leads to my final point: the possession and abuse of power. In The Dark Knight we see Batman use a technological ability to locate The Joker, though Lucius Fox believes that it is too much power to be given to one man. Batman agrees, and after the need for the power has gone, he gives Lucius the ability to destroy the technology. That could never be George W. Bush. He would keep that power to himself... hell, he darn nearly has that same power already... and tell everyone that he needs it because "the Jokerists are still out there".
Therein lies the greatest reason why Batman and George W. Bush have nothing in common with each other: Batman can say no to power, while Bush cannot get enough of it.
Klavan's essay is the most damned silly thing about The Dark Knight that I've read to date, and is proof of the desperation that Bush's die-hard supporters have been driven to in the final months of their idol's bid to achieve lasting fame. Which made it all the more fun to shoot holes in :-)
In a move that surprised everyone 'cuz nobody really saw it coming, Disney premiered the trailer for Tron 2 at Comic Con today in San Diego.
You heard that right: a sequel to the 1982 film Tron, which was about a programmer who gets zapped into a world that exists within the realm of the computer.
Click on the above link for more details.
So yeah, it takes a lot for me to frown on someone enough to more than merely distrust them. And I hadn't had a reason to do that with Obama. Until today.
Speaking at a rally of more than 200,000 people in Berlin, Germany, Obama promised that he would "remake the world", and made what can only be considered blatant appeals for "global citizenship".
So much here that's popping big red flags. For starters, why is Obama apparently campaigning in Germany, when it's United States citizens who are the only ones who are supposed to be voting for him?
And then, "global citizenship"? When I was a Boy Scout I earned the Citizenship in the World merit badge. It was about recognizing your role at the local and national level and how it extends to the rest of humankind. It was not about yielding sovereignty to some nebulous greater good.
But what really is starting to scare me about this guy is that he's openly boasting that he wants to "remake the world".
Mr. Obama, the world is being remade every day, by ordinary men and women. Like the final song from a musical that I was recently in goes: "It's in our hands." God has given each of us the free will of how we choose to make not just our lives, but the world around us.
Mr. Obama, if you ever read this: Who the hell are you to proclaim that you should be given absolute power to "remake the world"?
And that almost a quarter-million people would rally to his cause, chanting his name like a mantra... I thought the whole thing about a "messiah complex" with this guy was a joke before. Now, it's starting to remind me too much about another man in Germany, about seventy years ago. He promised to remake the world too.
Until today I thought that Obama was at most a curiosity. Now, I'm finding myself genuinely worried about what this man's intentions are.
No, I'm not voting for John McCain, either. The wiser, more righteous choice in this farce of an election is not to choose at all, considering that we're being expected to pick between a man hellbent on igniting World War III and a man now seemingly worshiped as divine.
We, the American people, could have remade our world already. We could have chosen to be vigilant and wise. We should have thought for ourselves! Now look at us: a once-proud people reduced to a slave race. If the past sixteen years of executive administrations did not prove that enough, then the next four years at least certainly will.
We had our chance. And we blew it.
And no, I'm not laughing, because there's not a damned thing funny about any of this.
Apparently, a horror film expert has located a pristine copy of London After Midnight, the 1927 silent movie starring Lon Chaney and widely considered to be the most lost film of all time...
The print is said to currently be residing in the vaults of Time-Warner under the alias The Hypnotist. Until now, it's been thought that London After Midnight had been lost for all time, because the only known copy was destroyed in an electrical fire at MGM in 1967.
This month has already witnessed the discovery of the full print of Metropolis (and I joked then that maybe London After Midnight could be next). Dare we hope that, after so very long, we might finally behold what is thought to be the last great thriller of the silent era... and what many have said was the finest performance of Chaney's career?
Heck, this actually makes me feel like I can go to bed happy after hearing about The Rocky Horror Picture Show remake :-P
Seriously though: if this is true - and I pray that it is - let us hope and pray that London After Midnight is given a full-bore restoration effort. 'Twould be great on my DVD shelf along with Metropolis (whenever it comes out).
Variety is reporting that MTV is going to remake The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
What I find particularly funny about this is that The Rocky Horror Picture Show was released in the summer of 1975... and it's still playing in theaters! It's the longest running theatrical release in movie history. I know of a few cinemas within driving distance of here that are still showing it. So this would be the first remake of a movie that is still selling tickets at the box office.
This does not need to happen. Ever. The Rocky Horror Picture Show was one of those things that happens so rarely, it's the acme of vanity to try to recreate or recapture that kind of lightning. There was a showing at Elon my first year there. Everyone who came to watch it got into the whole "audience participation" thing, including toilet paper and water pistols. I heard there were butter stains on the walls from where people were throwing toast all over the place. And although I never saw it there, I've heard it plenty said that when the theater at the old Carolina Circle Mall ran The Rocky Horror Picture Show every Saturday at midnight, the place was packed and with lots of regulars coming in costume. How does something like that get "remade"? It would be like trying to remake The Beatles.
The only way this could possibly work is to get Joss Whedon to do it (based on what I've heard of his Dr. Horrible, which I still haven't seen 'cuz I was out of the country for the most part, he could probably pull it off). Maybe I would feel a smidgeon of curiosity about it. But otherwise, leave it alone. 'Cuz it's gonna be impossible to improve on something like this...
A lot of us have been wanting it, and the BBC has delivered: the revived Doctor Who series is now available on iTunes! The first three seasons can now be purchased and downloaded, and hopefully the incredible fourth will be coming soon as well. Strangely, none of the Christmas specials are included, an oversight which I hope will be remedied soon, since "The Runaway Bride" introduced Donna Noble. The BBC has also put all the episodes of Torchwood up on iTunes as well, if you're aiming to be a completist on the modern Doctor Who saga.I wonder if this means the Beeb would be up to putting the original Doctor Who series on iTunes also. They stand to make a fortune from "The Deadly Assassin" and "Genesis of the Daleks" alone.
And thanks to Geoff Gentry for passing along the news!
