May 22, 2013
Super Bass
Is Gian’s love for the Summer King stronger than his hate?
May 15, 2013
The Button Man and the Murder Tree
An all-new Wild Cards story
May 14, 2013
Shall We Gather
When one world brushes another, asking the right question can be magic…
May 8, 2013
Fire Above, Fire Below
The dragon below our city has died. What is to be done?
Part of what makes Good Omens such a fantastic read is the plethora of referential material that the book offers up in categories ranging from history to art to literature. Here’s a list (though it’s a titan’s feat trying to be comprehensive in this case) of shout-outs this book manages to pack into every crevice, be they sneaky or hammer-worthy on the Obvious Scale.
Warner Bros. has released a new (possibly final) trailer for Man of Steel that essentially serves as a message from Zod to Kal-El and the people of the Earth. If we don’t surrender our greatest hero, he will destroy us. It’s... a little intense.
Watch the new trailer below! And check out our rundown of the new prequel comic, which reveals some of the backstory behind Krypton and how Clark discovers the legacy of his people.
DC Comics recently debuted a prequel comic for the new Superman movie Man of Steel, in theaters on June 14, which focuses on Krpytonian society and its efforts to explore the galaxy and better itself as a species. It also offers some overt and thematic hints about what we might ultimately see in Man of Steel.
Good news! The new trailer for The Wolverine, which hits theaters on July 26, is all about being driven insane by your own life while having to fight huge samurai robots and snake women anyway. In fact, we hear that the working title for this movie was Wolverine: Goin’ Crackers.
Seriously, the premise is that X-Men: The Last Stand was so bad that it drove him crazy, which actually sounds like a pretty solid premise. Check out the trailer below.
Before we start I want to say this about Star Trek Into Darkness: I’ve seen it in both 3D and 2D, and I urge you not to waste your money on a 3D ticket. Seriously, there is nothing in this movie that requires 3D, and it does bupkuss to enhance the experience.
Mind you, this movie is a visual feast, but 3D doesn’t really add anything to the feast except for maybe that piece of parsley that is used as a garnish that you throw away and never eat.
Enough of the tortured food metaphor. I went into STID with very low expectations. As I’ve said in the past, Star Trek is not at its best in movie format, especially in our post-Star Wars world where science fiction movie must equal BIG-ASS ’SPLOSIONS! in order make its box office requirements. At its best, Trek is about the exploration of the human condition, something not remotely on display in either of J.J. Abrams’s films. I figured we’d get what we got four years ago: a visual feast (as long as you don’t mind lens flares), excellent acting, and a script that doesn’t hold together upon scrutiny. My expectations were, sadly, met.
If you want a spoiler-free review, Tor.com’s own Chris Lough wrote an excellent one here. For this review THERE BE SPOILERS HERE!!!! LOTS OF ’EM!
Regardless of whether you’re a casual summer blockbuster moviegoer or a long-time Star Trek fan, you’ll find that Star Trek Into Darkness pitches straight down the middle. You can jump into it not knowing anything about Trek and still fully enjoy the characters, environments, and story, although there are elements within that story that will resonate deeply with Trek fans.
But just because the gang’s all here doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s Star Trek.
Look, we have a thing that you want! At least, we sure wanted it, and were pretty pleased when it cropped up. It's the first two clips from Only Lovers Left Alive, starring Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton as rock-savvy vampires. Basically, it's The Hunger for all us kids who wonder why more vampire movies today aren't exactly like The Hunger.
What would you do if you found out that the men in your family could time travel? Well, in About Time, the young man in question does the practical thing—he gets himself a girlfriend (Rachel McAdams) by going back and re-wooing her correctly. But the Butterfly Effect is still a possibility here and it looks like he might lose her forever by abusing the privilege. His dad is Bill Nighy, though, so he'll probably be all right. We're excited for this movie! It looks absolutely adorable, and will be out in the U.K. on September 6, so hopefully the U.S. will get it around about the same time.
The character of Superman, first created in comics by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in 1933, has a longer history of screen adaptations than most people realize.
Though many know the most recent movies were preceded by the 1978 movie Superman, which starred Christopher Reeve and was followed by three sequels in the 1980’s; and some are aware that pop culture has a friendly niche for the 1950’s Superman television show featuring George Reeves, two episodes of which were mashed into a theatrical release titled Superman and the Mole Men in 1951; fewer know of the serials Superman and Atom Man vs. Superman, that ran before feature films in theaters in the late 1940’s, and in which Kirk Alyn was the first actor to play the role in a screen adaptation.
“...trying to forget something very sad that had happened to me long ago.”—Jay Gatsby
I’m sorry, but I think we have to discuss the elephant in the room here. While Baz Luhrmann’s movie adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel The Great Gatsby looks gorgeous, and probably brings the novel to life in a wonderfully larger-than-life manner, at no point have I seen anyone discussing how Leonardo DiCaprio’s Gatsby is obviously Jack from Titanic. And how the movie is obviously an alternate timeline where he survived the sinking of the ship and went on to build a life for himself in America in an attempt to reunite with Rose.
Not only that, but no one is discussing how this is the sixth Leonardo DiCaprio movie depicting an alternate timeline where Jack survived.
What is the curse of the Dungeons and Dragons movie? Why is it that when the words “Dungeons and Dragons movie” are spoken aloud, cringing and boredom follow? Is it like the cinematic equivalent of Macbeth? Should we be saying “the elvish film” instead of “the Scottish play?” And why would Warner Bros. be taking a shot at it? Either way, it is a bit too late—did you watch that trailer for Dungeons and Dragons 3: The Book of Vile Darkness? I’m as much of a fan of Vecna’s favorite book as anybody, but that doesn’t appear to be… very good. “I’ve traveled to the floor of the pit of my own free will!” and all that jazz. Even power word kill can’t save it. Not even Thora Birch and Jeremy Irons—or cameos from Richard O’Brien and Tom Baker—could save the first Dungeons and Dragons movie. At least Dungeons and Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God had the good graces to be a low budget made for television movie….
But what if there was a good Dungeons and Dragons movie?
At this point in time we’re all stuck wondering about the new Star Wars trilogy Disney has promised, what the storyline for these upcoming films could possibly be. We’re hoping for something new, something that won’t be a rehash of old themes, but keep Star Wars cool and fun and relevant to a generation of moviegoers who have never grown up without Star Wars.
Is it likely that all tie-in media of the past couple decades will be ignored in creating these films, but that doesn’t mean that they should ignore it. Here’s a brief wishlist of what from the Expanded Universe we might want to see on the big screen.
Now that Iron Man 3 is in theaters a lot of rumors and news are flying around about Robert Downey, Jr.’s involvement in future Iron Man movies and the Avengers franchise as a whole. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has already stated that the Iron Man actor can be as ever-changing as James Bond has proven. But Marvel will forgive fans if we can’t imagine anyone but RDJ in the role. To my mind when Tony Stark says “I am Iron Man” I believe that of the actor and the fictional character he portrays.
Aside from the issue of who would play Iron Man in further movies is the question of just where Tony Stark’s story can go following the events of Iron Man 3. I think there’s a way to tackle both of these issues, though, while staying true to the character and utilizing elements from one of the character’s best storylines.
Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Martin Freeman and director Edgar Wright are back with their latest jam: The World’s End! We can’t wait for this one, and the first hilarious trailer is here! Watch it below.
The reveal of the first trailer to the Ender’s Game movie came bundled with a Google+ Hangout and live chat with the movie’s director and screenwriter Gavin Hood, sci-fi screenwriter Roberto Orci, and Ender himself Asa Butterfield. During the half hour the trio revealed a few things about the making of the movie, including what we have all long suspected, that NASA Space Camp prepares you for anything.
The very first trailer for the Lion’s Gate movie adaptation of Ender’s Game has debuted and... it leaves me uneasy. And that’s perfect.
Spider-Man looks pretty sad there. Probably because recent set photos reveal that an event will come to pass that fans have been wondering about since a certain character first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man. (No, not a remake of Raimi’s third Spider-Man film.)
Spoilers below for the film and comics, of course.
At the end of The Avengers, we watched Tony Stark prove Captain America wrong—after getting torn down for being unwilling to make sacrifices for others, Iron Man sped through a black hole to save the Earth from certain destruction. Unfortunately, what Stark told Captain Rogers during the course of the film was true, at least from his perspective; he’s not a soldier.
So how does someone who is not a soldier recover from having a soldier’s experience, which is essentially what Tony has been doing since he got hit by wayward shrapnel in Afghanistan? That is what Iron Man 3 attempts to answer—and what it finds is what precisely separates Tony Stark from all other superheroes of his ilk.
Secrecy about the upcoming film, Star Trek Into Darkness, is at a crazy level. With the film now released in some parts of the world, a few spoilers about major plot developments are already out there in the blogosphere, but only a few months ago you’d have had to forcefully mind-meld with Orci, Kurtzman, Lindelof, or J.J. Abrams to get ANYTHING out of them.
Other than boldly going where no people/aliens/plot points have gone before, Star Trek does like to surprise us. Here are seven times when the final frontier pulled the space rug out from under us.
The first full trailer for the Ender’s Game movie hits the internet next Tuesday, May 7th. (We’ve seen it. WE HAVE OPINIONS.) But you can get a glimpse of it now, courtesy of Asa Butterfield and Harrison Ford.
