Haibane.info

Category: Movies and Television

  • Conan

    Here’s the trailer at AICN. I think this one comment in the Trackback thread below summed up my impression perfectly:

    May 04, 2011 7:16:10 PM CDT
    CLASH OF THE 300 PRINCES OF PERSIA!!!
    by goldentribe

    in 3D, to boot. argh indeed.

    Frankly, the most amazing thing about the Arnold era of Conan was his raw size and speed. The man was a mountain that moved like a tornado. Momoa seems to be about 1/2 the bulk, but 1/2 the speed. Jumpinng around in the air or twirling the sword doesn’t mask the fact that he doesn’t (in the trailer, anyway) have the same ferocity and power. Conan needs to be giganticly muscled because he moves a 40-lb hand-and-a-half sword around like it’s a six-shooter.

    Plus, what’s with the rock and roll soundtrack? If they aren’t going to reuse Basil Poledouris’s astonishing score then they better aim at least in the same direction. The trailer gives little confidence that there will be reflective scenes like Theology that establish Conan’s worldview, or whether Conan even has a worldview beyond HULK SMASH. If the score is all rock and roll, we can assume the movie plays in the shallow end of the plot pool.

    Let’s see how he does in the film. But the inheritance of the modern era of comic-book derived action storyboarding, and the 3D baggage, doesn’t look promising.

    Are we in for EMO Conan? Or will we see him punch a camel?

  • May the 4th be with you: 3D Star Wars on blu-ray

    Today is Star Wars Day and I am continuing my ongoing boycott of the movies on any form of digital media. Recall that I declared victory over LucasFilm, but then the Empire struck back.

    Today, May 4th, is Star Wars Day and the Empire again promises revelations, bu I will not be fooled. The likely announcement is that the complete dual-trilogy is coming to Blu Ray, and most likely in 3D. StarWars.com has a big teaser for the URL maythe4th.starwars.com which isn’t live just yet, but I assume that sometime today the site will go live with the announcement that we can see the total suckiness of Greedo shooting first in dark, dim 3D now.

    Just to review, 3D is something I hate, and here’s why you should too. And here’s the case for why 3D will never work, case closed.

    Couple the sheer gimmickry of 3D for its own sake, the long-standing insult of plot revisionism, and the overall disappointment of the Prequel Trilogy, and you have what’s shaping up to be a giant Ball of Suck(TM).

    Count me out until I get what I want. the original trilogy, on regular DVD, no gimmicks, Han shot first. Until then, Star Wars is dead to me.

  • Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome – pilot episode SPOILERS

    Now that Caprica has left television, the BSG universe churns on, with a new series set during the first Colonials-Cylon war. Moviehole.net was sent an advance script and posted a spoileriffic summary of the first part of the two-part pilot episode.

    What interested me the most was the direct connection to Caprica. And of course, the series is has the word Galactica in the title, so you can draw an inference from that. But since it’s a spoiler, specifics are below the fold:

    (more…)

  • Ars on Crunchyroll

    Ars Technica has a great piece on CrunchyRoll’s business model:

    […] making money in anime isn’t hopeless; it turns out that anime lovers will pay for content even in an age of widely available free versions. “In almost all cases, piracy is not an issue of legality,” says Kun Gao, CEO of the anime streaming site Crunchyroll. It’s often a market issue—and Crunchyroll turns a profit by offering anime lovers what they want: legal access to anime shows right after new episodes have aired in Japan.

    Pirates can’t compete with this kind of availability, since even the most dedicated fansub groups need time to do their own translations. Crunchyroll gets its content a week before first air date, giving it time to do a proper subtitling job. Piracy may never go away, but Crunchyroll is out to prove that “competing with free” is possible by treating piracy like a business problem.
    […]
    But for those willing to spend $7 a month, Crunchyroll offers 720p ad-free streams available on devices from laptops to iPhones and Android tablets. And its real innovation is offering most of these streams the moment the original broadcast concludes in Japan. (Sixty percent of its current library of shows can be streamed this way.)

    Under its deal with studios, Crunchyroll receives secured prerelease versions of new anime episodes a week in advance; in-house translators prepare subtitles, and the streams are ready to go one hour after new episodes air. Such immediate access isn’t even available in Japan. “It’s a bit of a shame that our animation for US fans is better than the animation service Japanese fans get,” says Kun. And it’s certainly a rarity when it comes to worldwide distribution of non-anime premium video content.

    Agreed – the only reason I torrent is because I simply don’t have any other choice.

    It would be great if they extended to other silos. For example, I’d happily pay the monthly fee for access to BBC stuff like Dr Who and Sherlock, and SyFy stuff like Stargate Universe. There’s a good business model here that can be expanded to basically any niche genre on television.

  • #DoctorWho Series 6 Episode 1, The Impossible Astronaut”: visual spoiler!

    Don’t click below if you haven’t seen the episode. I’ve found a visual spoiler.

    It’s related to the well-known fact that Craig Owens (played by James Corden) will return in Series 6.

    UIPDATE: must-read review at Tor. No spoilers.

    (more…)

  • Donna for Office!

    Michael Scott is resigning from Dunder Mifflin, who will replace him? Count me on Team Donna!

    Ray Romano, James Spader, and Catherine Tate will join Will Arnett and Ricky Gervais as guest stars on Steve Carell’s last episode of The Office. They’ll appear as candidates to be office manager. So will one of them be Carell’s replacement? You can probably rule out Romano, who is committed to Men of a Certain Age. Arnett also just got an NBC pilot of his own, while Gervais is unlikely to return to the show he created in Britain. TVLine says Spader and Tate are the only two with “ a realistic chance” of taking over.

    Catherine Tate played Donna on the new Dr Who and she was easily the best Companion the Doctor ever had. In fact I’ll make the assertion now that she is the best Companion of all 11 Doctors to date, despite my having not actually seen the older series. She was, to borrow a Britishism, brilliant. Tate is amazing and she could really bring an acerbic take to the manager role.

    If they pick James Spader over her, I’m not sure there’s any point to even watching the post-Michael era.

    The appearance by Gervais should be fun though. I’m hoping he will be in character from UK Office. Maybe he immigrated?

    UPDATE: Will Ferrell will play a temp manager while they find Michael’s replacement. I’m not sure if he can pull off ironic humor though. He’s more of a unsubtle freight train.

    UPDATE 2: OMG OMG OMG!!!

  • Dirk Gently series on BBC?!

    How the heck did I miss this?

    Following a successful one-off special that made its debut on BBC Four last year, the Beeb has confirmed that Dirk Gently, the world’s only holistic detective, will be returning for more adventures next year.

    Stephen Mangan starred as the titular detective who may or may not be an utter charlatan, and while the adaptation didn’t please all fans of Douglas Adams’ original novel, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, the special was widely seen as a decent jumping off point for further stories in the future.

    Raking in a more than respectable 1.1 million viewers when it screened last December, the show’s success has led the BBC to commission three 60-minute episodes, which will be again written by Howard Overman.

    There was a Dirk Gently one-off on BBC 4 last year???? TORRENT TIME

    If it’s half as good as Sherlock it will be brilliant. If it’s twice as good as the Hitchhiker’s Guide movie, it will be wretched.

  • Kirk versus Picard: the die is cast

    Focus your rage upon Shamus for the provocation.

  • Conan the Immortal – pure awesomeness

    I agree with @headgeek666 – this is the coolest picture I’ve seen today, and probably in a long while.

    (click to enlarge)

  • Stargate: Universe returns tonight

    Tonight, the first of the final ten episodes of SGU will air on SyFy. I’m looking forward to and dreading it simultaneously. The door is closed on SGU continuing somewhere other than SyFy, though there is the possibility of a movie or two like the original Stargate series managed to pull off.

    Minor spoilers over at Gateworld, including teaser images.