Bay Didn't Like Transformers Growing Up
Blog, posted June 20, 2007
By Frederik

Transformers director Michael Bay wasn't a fan of the Hasbro franchise before he was hired to helm the blockbuster production.

"I was not a Transformers fan before I signed on for this movie. I think I was 2 years old when the toys came out, so I just discovered girls then ... instead of Optimus Prime."

Things changed though after he paid a visit to Hasbro's Transformers School...

"I really thought, 'What the f--k am I going to Hasbro for Transformers School?' I thought I was going to learn how to fold up robots. But I met with the CEO, and I went through the whole Transformers lore, and I was [hooked]."

Bay said the key for him to deliver a good film was to make it real, new, and different.

"It just hit me that if I make this really real, it could be something very new and different. And so I quickly became probably one of the bigger Transformers fans in the world. And I tried to make this movie for non-Transformers fans, OK? And I wanted it to be a little bit more, if you could say, adult."

Persepolis Banned from Bangkok Film Fest
Blog, posted June 27, 2007
By Frederik

Cannes didn’t budge, but Bangkok has. The capital of Thailand was pressured by the Iranian government to remove Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis from competition at next month's Bangkok International Film Festival.

"I was invited by the Iranian embassy to discuss the matter and we both came to mutual agreement that it would be beneficial to both countries if the film was not shown," festival director Chattan Kunjara na Ayudhya said on Wednesday. "It's a good film, but there are other considerations."

Sigh.

Source

Basket Full of Goodies at Anime Expo 2007
Blog, posted June 27, 2007
By Frederik

The Long Beach Press Telegram today features an article on the Anime Expo 2007, coming to the Long Beach Convention and Entertainment Center this weekend. The article discusses the success of manga in the states, particularly that of Fruits Basket, the current top-selling manga in America and is released by Tokyopop.

It also includes an explanatory index of the most common genres in manga, ranging from the popular Shonen and Shojo to Seinen, Josei, and Jidaigeki. On the index as well is Hentai, the genre everyone now knows through Marvel’s Heroes For Hire #13 cover. Anime News Network editor Zac Bertschy must’ve had that iconic image in mind when he compared the success of Fruit Basket to that of traditional US comics: 

"In comics, women are drawn in a certain fashion to appeal to men," Bertschy says. "But that's not the case in `Fruits Basket.' The characters have emotional depth. That appeals to females and doesn't exist in (other) comics."

Here’s your basic Anime Expo 2007 facts:

When: 8 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday; 8 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday; 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday; 8 a.m.-noon Monday.
Tickets: $20-$60, depending on type of pass; registration is mandatory
Information: www.anime-expo.org

Palmiotti Returns from Monte Carlo & Wizard World Philly
Blog, posted June 27, 2007
By Frederik

Now that Jimmy Palmiotti has returned from the Monte Carlo TV fest—and making a brief trip to Philadelphia immediately afterwards for Wizard World—he’s got a lengthy post up on his Painkiller Jane blog on the Sci Fi Channel website.

While in sunny Monaco, Palmiotti and spouse Amanda Connor (of whom Jimmy told me “She would kill me!” if he didn’t take her with him) went out for a boat trip, saw the premiere of Live Free or Die Hard, and went to the after party where they ran into Kevin Smith. To sum it all up, the happy couple was treated like rock stars…

Kevin and I go way back to when Joe Quesada and I used to help him with his Indy films supplying artwork and even setting up our old comic booth to help him shoot scenes from Chasing Amy. Kevin and I talked about his role in the film and caught up on a few things. We also ran into another fellow comic creator, Frank Miller. We talked about his latest film he is working on called The Spirit and mostly how the weather is in Vancouver. Frank is shooting his film there…which is where Painkiller Jane is shot, if you didn't know. The after party was first class all the way filled with cast, crew and local NYC celebrities…and us for some unknown reason.

On his time Saturday at Wizard World Philly:

It was a weekend long event but I could only make it for a day. Did a big signing at the DC comics booth, was one of 6 guests on a DC panel talking about my books and then did a Wizard school panel where I spoke for an hour about how to break into the business, create your own character and the perils of dealing with Hollywood taking the character and doing it " their way". was fun and as always, and I actually learn a lot from the questions thrown at me by the participants in the room.

A funny bit about Hugh Hefner…

After all this, Amanda and went for a walk to the big casino in town and had a bit to eat. While seated outside, we saw a fuss going on a few tables away and realized it was Hugh Hefner and his girls next door eating a meal and getting themselves filmed for the show. I don't watch the show at all because I really have no interest in these plastic fame obsessed women or Hugh Hefner. I guess he has to pay for that mansion some way, but it would seem to me when you are that age, you might be a little done with the whole " I need attention " thing. Who knows.

And a recap of Jimmy and Amanda’s number one experience: bonding with Kristanna Loken:

The second event was not a planned one and I'm going to rant a bit about the star of Painkiller Jane a bit here, so please excuse me if I gush. This woman deserves every inch of it. We had a day off and Kristanna and Ken invited Amanda and I to her friend’s yacht which was docked a half hour away in Nice. We couldn't say no and off we went that morning to spend the day together. For me, it was a great opportunity to bond with Kristanna since we have only been on set together. We got to the boat and it was insane. It had a captain and a cook and a bunch of Kristanna's friends were onboard and they mad us feel like family.

We took off, opened a bottle of champagne and headed to Saint Tropez for lunch. A few hours later we hit the shore and docked a quarter mile out from the beach which couldn't have been more stunning and a guy from the restaurant came out and met us on a small boat and took us to shore for lunch. We laughed, drank, told jokes, bonded and really…we were in such brilliant company with people from all over the world. Great stories, good laughs and good times had to come to an end and we had to leave to make the closing ceremony of the festival.

That’s not all though, but there's no room here to reproduce all of Palmiotti's latest. There’s much, much more in the source link below…

Source

Channeling Some Speed Racer Bites
Blog, posted June 27, 2007
By Frederik

Channel 4 News spoke to Speed Racer producer Joel Silver and several of the film’s actors in a report on the Wachowski Bros.-directed live-action production.

Silver: "There will be very few actual cars running in the movie. The things that these cars are going to do could not happen in the real world." With the film to be shot on High Definition video, rather than plain old 35mm, the four-month shoot - or to use the current Hollywood terminology, the 'initial capture' - is just another lap in the film's arduous race to the finishing line.

Emile Hirsch on working with the Wachowski’s: "They're so smart - they finish each other's sentences. They're almost like the agents in The Matrix. They know what each other are thinking."

Matthew Fox: "I did immediately run out and get the DVD set of all the episodes of 'Speed Racer', and I'm working my way through it. Although after spending some time with Larry and Andy, and starting to see what they're doing with this movie, I'm not sure watching the original series is going to be all that helpful - other than in a nostalgic way and understanding their love for the series."

Discovering the King's Fourth World
Blog, posted June 27, 2007
By Frederik

The Washington Post Express was baffled when it found out Jack Kirby did other things in this medium than the Hulk, the Avengers or the FF. And they’re probably right, as most people remember the King of Comics for his Marvel Comics creations, not for the period after he parted ways with The House of Ideas in the early Seventies.

No wonder that the WPE was delighted to discover Kirby’s Fourth World stories, collected by DC in the order they were published in for the four-part Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus.

It is a testament to Kirby's creative genius that although the artist himself died in 1994, The Fourth World is still alive and well, and still captivating audiences enough to justify a four-volume hardcover collection of this work. When you read the book, it's not difficult to understand why The Fourth World is so appealing. In a world where there are so few new ideas, The Fourth World is unique. It was unique at the time — and to this day has yet to be repeated.

DC Comics President Paul Levitz offered a few comments on the saga.

“[It’s] arguably the first attempt of a creator in our field to reach a sophisticated audience with a complex form of storytelling, if you will, to break the walls of the periodical format.

"It's the first deliberately constructed universe of fiction in comics that was not confined to a single character or a single title at birth. All of that became models for ways that you could develop comics and ways in which comics influenced other media to develop."

"The characters Jack introduced in the Fourth World added a new level of cosmic mythology to the DC Universe. Although the DC characters were in many cases born very deeply out of science fiction, the Fourth World took this up a larger scale of battle. You could always hear the Wagnarian music playing in the background as you read his stories."

The Gayness of Mr. Midnighter
Blog, posted June 27, 2007
By Frederik

Gay website AfterElton.com examines the origins and evolution of Midnighter, now that The Authority member has become the first gay superhero to star in his own ongoing series.

The article starts at the beginning: the first appearance of Apollo and Midnighter in 1997’s StormWatch #4.

The interesting thing is that the word "gay" wasn't used at the time. Instead, readers came to understand what was going on through scenes showing Apollo and Midnighter caring for each other, as in issue No. 7 when Apollo is wounded and Midnighter holds him in his arms. It was subtle (which was definitely the goal of the writer, who at first hadn't even told the artist the characters were gay), but very clear. Gay superhero fans finally had an enduring gay couple in their comics.

The article also notes how de-gayed departing writer Garth Ennis has seemingly made the character:

Was not showing him with Apollo a way to make the series more palatable to a larger audience? Was it an editorial mandate or simply Ennis' preference? It's a curious issue, especially since even the sixth issue — which presents a tragic love story between two Japanese samurais who look very much like Apollo and Midnighter — doesn't contain any instance of same-sex affection. They lie besides each other at night but don't touch or kiss. Moreover, there's the problem of feudal Japanese samurais using words such as "sodomites" and generally behaving like homophobic Middle Ages knights, which is absolutely out-of-character for people of that time and place.

At least, things weren't as bad as during Millar's run back in 2000, when DC editorial censored a kiss between Midnighter and his lover.
And then there’s a look towards the future, with new regular writer Keith Giffen about to step in as of August’s Midnighter #10:

It would be nice if Giffen decided to show Midnighter being happy with his partner, or at least interacting as a couple beyond a kiss here and there (and it would be consistent with the way those characters have been portrayed). And Giffen also needs to find other ways to empower the villains than by simply having them insult Midnighter with anti-gay rhetoric. Even if it's always done as an excuse for the antihero to kick their asses (which, after all, is what most readers want to see in a Midnighter comic), it's a selective acknowledgment of the hero's sexuality that reduces what could be a complex, vibrant gay character to a conflicted, inconsistent curiosity.

Keith Giffen: if you’re reading this, how do you plan on tackling Midnighter’s sexuality?

Expand Your Vocabulary with Manga
Blog, posted June 27, 2007
By Frederik

The best way to expand teenagers’ vocabulary? Make then read manga… educational manga, that is.

That’s what Kaplan must have thought, as the educational publisher will release three Van Von Hunter GNs with hundreds of words tested in U.S. college admission exams worked into the stories and replacing traditional comic words. The releases came about through a partnership with Tokyopop.

Kaplan spokeswoman Kristen Campbell said:

"School librarians kept telling us how popular these graphic novels were becoming and that they were being used more and more by students. These are modern comic books and it is genre that is fun to read, interesting and graphically appealing. Why not incorporate something fun and adventurous into learning to reinforce vocabulary?

"The stories stay the same and still maintain the essence of the genre but with some of the most commonly tested words added instead.”

A Paranormal Bonus
Blog, posted June 27, 2007
By Frederik

Interactive family entertainment site Bonus.com has launched a new webcomic intended for kids on its beta website. Titled The Paranormals, the comic tells the story of Rose Thornton, a young girl who turns into a werewolf, and her friends, who also boast weird abilities. Together, they discover the dark secrets of their small Southern Cali town, Cayce.

Read the webcomic here.

Buffy Singing in LA
Blog, posted June 27, 2007
By Frederik

The Buffy Musical Big Screen Extravaganza is headed to the LA Film Fest today, and to build some buzz, the LA Times has run an article on the screening of the special episode, Once more… with feeling. Don’t bother getting tickets for the event, it’s already sold out.

The screenings grew in popularity, prompting the creation of a MySpace page. Whedonites (fans of show creator Joss Whedon) flocked to the page wondering if/when the show would ever play in their town, and the seeds were planted for a touring Buffypalooza.
"I am hoping the tour will prove successful enough in certain cities that the show can come back on a regular basis and people can form their own casts," said theatre maker Clinton McClung.

None of the TV series' real cast has officially come by to view the screenings, according to McClung, but they're aware of it. MTV captured a screening and some of the cast's reactions to the phenomena earlier this year. Whedon's trademark sarcasm could not hide his pride.

Millar Visits Wanted Film Set
Blog, posted June 27, 2007
By Frederik

On his message boards, Mark Millar comments on his recent trip to the Wanted film set in Prague. He loved the trip, thought the movie was brilliant, fell in love with the “white hot PR chick”, but couldn’t stand the food—instead, he went for a few good ol’ Big Macs.

Here’s a copy of the highlights. Full report in the source link below…

It was brilliant. Despite a five hour delay in Amsterdam, I had a great time and there I nothing-- I mean NOTHING-- more surreal than wandering around enormous, high school-sized sets of something that lived only in your head just a few years before. I wandered around wesley's apartment, touched the bedframe you saw on the splash page of issue two, sat on the chair where he was being toughened up just a few pages later and watched, in awe, the final edit of the scene from the end of the first issue. I promised Universal's white hot PR chick I wouldn't get more specific, but trust me when I say I'm still grinning from how good this looks. In a country where you can get a Big Mac for the equivalent of 50 cents you can imagine what 100 million dollars looks like on-screen. I saw the first 25 minutes of the movie itself and it's jaw-dropping. as we all know, the super-villains are different kind of villains now, but this first act is almost scene for scene the first two issues of the comic, right down to the dialogue and the captions. I couldn't be more happy with it. Timur is amazing. The west doesn't know what they're getting next March or how great he is yet. I instantly clicked with him as a guy and we're talking about another project together. I think he's the next big thing, perhaps the best action director around at the moment.

McAvoy in particular is just brilliant. He's a nice wee guy and grew up just a few miles from me, having gone to all the same pubs and football matches I did as well as the big water complex (The Time Capsule) just a few hundred yards where I lived through the nineties. He brings Wesley to life like nobody else I could imagine, that weird combo of cool and geeky, terrified and remorseless as he makes the jump from a guy who can't break up with his bird to a guy blowing hundreds of people away without even blinking. He's a TRIUMPH, darlings, as is Angelina and Morgan Freeman. Angelina was shooting the main day I was on the set and could not have been more friendly. It was weird meeting here after seeing her face on the cover of almost every magazine in the airport, but she's very easy-going, super-smart and pretty hot too. She can engage about everything from Henry Kissinger to British comedies and has a huge DVD collection, her impression of Little Britain's chav teenager being a jaw-dropper as it's the last thing I expected to come out of her mouth. Got on very well with her and she seemed into the material so all looking good.

Home with a ton of photos, but sadly can't share them until Summer's out the way and PR campaign begins. Spidey and his amazing friends are still dominating the box office here so they asked me to hold off on posting these pics until they give the green light (everyone else's cameras having been banned during the shooting). But these pics are so friggin' cool I can barely contain myself. I sent a pic of me and Angelina to an old school friend I hadn't been in touch with for a few years under the headline "Have you met my new bird?" and his reply was a near-instant "You lucky c*nt!" so it's worth its weight in gold already. It's true, though, I AM a lucky c*nt.

Raimi Mulling Spider-Man 4, Sinister Six?
Blog, posted June 27, 2007
By Frederik

MTV interviewed Sam Raimi to find out if there’s any more webslinging in the director’s future.

"Sony Pictures is going to be making many more 'Spider-Man' pictures. I just don't know what [my] future holds yet. If I can't find the right story that would work for me and that I could tell really well, I would like someone else to tell that story. But if it's a great story and Sony will bring me back to the screen, I would love to. I would still hope that Sony would offer it to me first. But that is not my place to say; it would be more about if Sony decided not to go with me.”

One thing’s for sure: Raimi’s future involvement hinges on that of the main cast players.

"It would be really hard for me to make a movie without Tobey and Kirsten playing the two leads. I would seriously think about James [Franco] too, but he bit the dust in this last one."

As for what story he’d like to tell, Raimi said he’d love to see Electro and/or the Vulture show up as the primary villains. "I would love to see Electro, Vulture, maybe the Sinister Six as a team.”

Boy, if you thought having two villains (two and a half, actually, if you count Harry’s first-half rampage against Parker) was too much, imagine six. Pas…

Grace Kwon Makes Way to The Comics Page
Blog, posted June 27, 2007
By Frederik

Featured on NY Magazine’s The Comics Page this week is Good As Lily, the DC/Minx graphic novel by Derek Kirk Kim and Jesse Hamm.

The solicitation for the book, which will find its way to stores in August, reads:

Grace Kwon is about to meet three of her closest friends — the only problem is that they're her past and future selves.

What if your biggest competition was…yourself? Following a strange mishap on her 18th birthday, Grace Kwon is confronted with herself at three different periods in her life. The timing couldn't be worse as Grace and her friends desperately try to save a crumbling school play. Will her other selves wreak havoc on her present life or illuminate her uncertain future?

Writer Derek Kirk Kim scored the “triple crown” with his debut graphic novel, Same Difference and Other Stories, winning all three major industry awards: the Eisner, Harvey, and Ignatz. It was also selected as one of the best books of 2003 by Publishers Weekly.

Jesse Hamm's cartooning has appeared in various mini-comics, anthologies and on the web.

Principal Photography on Iron Man Wraps; Swank Cameo?
Blog, posted June 26, 2007
By Frederik

Over on the Iron Man MySpace group, Jon Favreau has posted an update following the completion of principal photography, which wrapped in Vegas at Caesar’s Palace. The last sentence is especially interesting, because it hints at a possible Hilary Swank cameo appearance.

Principal photography ended with a huge bang as we filmed the final scenes of Iron Man in Caesar's Palace. As many of you already know, gambling is a casino's top priority. A production can not interfere with their cash cow. As a result, movies must shoot during the dead hours, no matter if it's Swingers or Rain Man. We were given a window of midnight to one the next afternoon to do all of our work. Part of our strategy to prepare for these ungodly hours was to stay up as late as possible the night before and sleep as late as possible. I did half the plan. The wrong half. I stayed out until 7AM and then woke up four hours later. After motoring through the delerium of a sleepless shooting marathon, I am proud to report that we have handily completed our movie on time and on budget. What a great way to end.

I would also like to thank Ceasars for their hospitality, generosity, and Swank accomodations.

Han Joins The Dark Knight
Blog, posted June 26, 2007
By Frederik

Ng Chin Han, a prime Singapore actor whose body of work ranges from theatre to film and TV, has joined the cast of The Dark Knight. Han’s already excited as hell to be working with Bale, Nolan, Freeman, and everyone else:

“That’s the great part about working with these guys. And they obviously come with a great body of work and that’s very exciting for me.”

And here’s an interesting comment on how secure the scripts were he got to read when he came in for an audition:

“The scripts that they let you read for the auditions are not the scripts for the exact film movie because everything’s so top secret. You get scripts that are printed on special paper that cannot be photocopied, there are invisible watermarks, all kinds of things. You feel like a spy in a James Bond movie when you are looking at these scripts.”