dimfuture.net

From Cinemablend:

Sad news from the world of fantasy literature. Robert Jordan, known best as the author of the “Wheel of Time” series of books, died on the afternoon of Sunday September 16th after more than a year battling cardiac amyloidosis. The news comes from a message left on the author’s blog.

The site says, “It is with great sadness that I tell you that the Dragon is gone. RJ left us today at 2:45 PM. He fought a valiant fight against this most horrid disease. In the end, he left peacefully and in no pain.” Funeral arrangements will be posted later on the blog, and for fans interesting in sending his family their best wishes, the comments section on Jordan’s there seems to be the place to do it.

While I never got past the first chapter of the first Wheel of Time book, I know he was beloved by many, and having such a lengthy series left unfinished has to be quite a blow to his many fans. No doubt another author or a family member will step up to round off the series, but it’s still a sad day for fantasy literature. RIP.

I found my curiosity piqued this morning by a story on Bureau 42 describing the trailer for the new Aliens vs. Predator sequel as “amazing” and “adult.” I’ve made no secret of the fact that I consider the first AvP to be an unwatchable piece of garbage — bad enough to make Alien: Resurrection look like a masterpiece of restraint and nuance. “Amazing” is a pretty strong word, and I’ve always been fond of Bureau 42, so I hopped over to IGN and checked out the R-rated trailer. I thought to myself: “Could Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem actually be good?”

(continue reading…)

Following the apparent success of Torchwood (which I’ve yet to see, despite it just having premiered on BBC America), the Doctor Who franchise ventures into more spin-off territory with The Sarah Jane Adventures — a series not about a plucky girl detective tracking down jewel thieves in her cozy little hometown, despite how the title makes it sound.

From scifinews.net:

The new series The Sarah Jane Adventures sees the return of some familiar alien enemies from Doctor Who as the Slitheen are back and out for revenge.

Coming to CBBC on BBC One and CBBC at the end of September 2007, The Sarah Jane Adventures stars one of Doctor Who’s most famous former companions — investigative journalist Sarah Jane Smith.

The series is from the same people behind Doctor Who including multi-award winning writer Russell T Davies.

Russell T. Davies’s stint on the first season of Doctor Who was by far my favorite of the new series (he wrote Dalek, my new number one Doctor Who episode ever), so I’m excited to see this… or will be when The Sarah Jane Adventures comes to BBC America, probably sometime in 2010. Sigh.

Well, it’s official. According to Sci-Fi Wire, Dark Horizons, and the official site itself, the title of the fourth Indy movie is Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Internet fans the world over are already expressing their carefully pre-loaded outrage, perhaps disappointed that the title wasn’t Indiana Jones and the Wildly Overused Old-Age Joke like they’d secretly been hoping all along.

Despite my personal misgivings about Indy IV — or, indeed, any movie with Shia LeBoeuf in it — I’m not bothered at all by the title. I definitely heard worse in terms of speculation, and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull evokes the kind of classic, purple, pulp-adventure feel that made Indy famous in the first place. A cool title, Marion Ravenwood coming back — I may get really excited about this if I’m not careful.

The American Version

What ink we got left, yellow? Red? Yeah, that’ll hold ‘em.

American International Pictures passed on this film, for reasons now lost to the mists of history. And so Walter Reade-Sterling and Continental released it in the U.S., in September of 1965. It was marketed on the cheap, with two-color posters and the usual newspaper spots; one memorable bit of marketing, though, was the three-faced, child-sized, paper ‘Ghidrah’ mask distributed as a promotion. Modern Godzilla-merch collectors would gladly slaughter orphans to get their hands on a surviving one of these. And rightly so. Ghidorah – or Ghidrah, as it was called at the time, in America – was frequently put on the lower part of a double bill with Elvis Presley’s Harum Scarum. Of course it was! Ads for the double bill had a line that went, “The beat and the beast make a holiday feast.” Okay, sure. But nothing about the King of Monsters and the King of Rock n’ Roll? Oh, never mind.

(continue reading…)