One of my favorite movies from childhood was Return to Witch Mountain, about two orphans (brother and sister) who seek to discover the source of their magical powers. Hmm. Guess I was into mahou shoujo early on, it seems. At any rate, Disney is doing a remake, which usually elicits a yawn (if not horror). What caught my attention though was that the girl is being played by AnnaSophia Robb, and the Bad Guy by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. I was utterly enchanted with Robb’s performance in Terabithia and Johnson is just a genius of screen presence. Even if they butcher the basic plot, it’s still going to be worth watching.
Category: Movies and Television
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live-action Bebop
Just saw this at AICN:
IF Magazine has learned that producer Erwin Stoff is developing an adaptation of one of America’s favorite anime series…. Cowboy Bebop.
“I’m developing COWBOY BEBOP for Fox, but doing it as a live-action film, so I’m working on that at the moment,†Stoff tells iF. “I’m really excited to be working on it, and it’s in the really early stages. We just signed it the other day.â€
“I have such an enormous admiration for its creators, that our first and foremost concern is going to be a real degree of faithfulness to the tone of the movie, to the mix of genres, and so on and so forth,†he says. “When I met with them in Japan, one of the first things that I brought up was the experience that we had on A SCANNER DARKLY, and how hard we worked to remain faithful to Philip K. Dick, and that was our big concern here.â€
America’s favorite anime series? I thought that was DragonBall Z… which also is getting the live action treatment, as I noted before. Of course there’s also that live-action Robotech coming up, too.
I’ll get really excited when they start casting for live-action Haibane Renmei. Others may be waiting for live-action Najica Blitz Tactics. To each his own…
Just curious, though. Suppose they were to do a live-action Haibane. Who’d you want to see playing Reki and Rakka?
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New Internet Addictions
just discovered this via about a dozen separate internet vectors. Now I feel like watching Firefly – all of it – again.
What I really wish is that Joss Whedon would make another show. And that Nathan Fillion would be in it. And I wish it would be about something cool. Like superheroes. No! Supervillains! Like, a comedy. A musical comedy maybe. With Neil Patrick Harris. And since I don’t have cable TV, it would be cool if they made the show and then just put it up online. Wouldn’t that be awesome?
Yes. It would be fully and unwaveringly awesome.
It should also be noted that the lovely, talented Felicia Day, whom I’d never heard of before today, is not just the love interest for the mighty NPH in Dr. Horrible but also the writer for The Guild, which will appeal to you if you appreciate gamer humor, or even if you don’t:
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to tide us over until 2009
I’ve got a lot to say about the Galactica mid-seson finale, but that requires time which a day prior to moving house) i don’t have at present. In teh absence of original content I will however point to some very good speculative (and highly spoilery) blogs that purport to analyze the Final Supper image and divine the identity of the Final Cylon:
Space Westerns applies a highly geometric analysis to the Last Supper photo.
BSG Last Supper is an entire blog devoted to analyzing the picture.
Cellounge is a blog ostensibly devoted to Japanese cars, however they have a lengthy analysis of the Last Supper using Leonardo Da Vinci’s original as a guide.
I’m pleased to see my earlier speculation is not invalidated by any of these analyses.
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video conversion bleg
I would like to take DVDs, rip them to my hard drive, and create video files that can be played back on my standalone DVD player (which supports DivX). I also would like to be able to convert video files I get off torrents to a format that the DVD player supports (note that there’s a usb connection on the front, i can attach a jumpdrive and browse the file directly). Can anyone suggest some resources to handle these tasks? I am a windows guy, it must be noted.
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movie madness
Mark is someone who would be a lot of fun to play Cineplexity with.
Massawyrm at AICN just reviewed the game and it sounds like the ideal way to spend an evening – and part of the appeal is the sheer simplicity of the game’s design. He wrote,
What works most for this game is the free, easy going format and just how it leads to great conversations. Someone will mention a movie no one else has thought of in years. Or someone will call forth a movie so bad the whole table winces at the idea of even thinking about. Someone will share their love or hate for a pick or argue the merits of whether or not the movie stated actually fits the bill – whether by technicality or just being wrong. The end result is a bunch of friends sitting around talking about movies for hours while jumping through mental hoops that really get your juices flowing.
There is an online demo version, too.
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hair match
Photos from the upcoming live-action Dragonball Z movie have been leaked. A hairspray shortage is surely imminent.
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the song of Gaeta
I was struck by some of the lyrics to Gaeta’s song in the last episode of Galactica, thinking that they were likely to be significant in the same way that All Along the WatchTower became. I’ve yet to try and put the lyrics of the latter into context of my plot speculation, but I think that Gaeta’s song is far more likely to contain clues (though they will probably be more obvious in hindsight rather than have predictive utility).
Now, it seems that Galactica composer Bear McCreary has spilled some beans on his galactica blog and confirmed that Gaeta’s song does indeed have direct relevance to the storyline. There are plenty of spoilers for the episode, but also a fascinating discussion of how the song took shape and how they used it to narrate the plot forward – and emphasize the ending.
All in all, Gaeta is getting a lot of attention all of a sudden. That seems to support my theory.
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Cylons, meet your creator
The casting for Caprica, the prequel series to Galactica, is ongoing, and they’ve just cast the inventor of the metalhead Cylons.
I have no idea how seriously they are going to take continuity with this new series. Let’s assume they will take it seriously. If so, then… (spoiler alert)
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BSG: there and back again
Major spoiler about finding Earth, if it can be believed:
