Thursday News Roundup: Babylon 5, Galactica, Elric, LeBoeuf, etc.
Daniel Swensen
Here we go with another Thursday news roundup, bringing you yesterday’s news tomorrow! It’s like Early Edition, except Gary’s always too late to save the little girl from getting hit by that freight train, or what have you. I don’t know, I never watched it.
First of all, if you have even the slightest enthusiasm for Babylon 5, feast your eyes on the trailer for the new Babylon 5 Lost Tales DVD. It features an ominous voice-over, some spectacular space battle footage, techno-mage Galen looking mysterious (and, as usual, slightly smug), and Tracy Scoggins bearing a more than passing resemblance to Brian Dennehy. Hopefully the writers have chosen to refrain from cramming her into neon pink Frederick’s of Hollywood lingerie (as they did in the deeply unfortunate River of Souls), lest our very souls be blasted into oblivion and forfeit to Yibb-Tstll. Well, anyway. The DVD comes out July 31.
As most all of sci-fi fandom now knows, the fourth season of Battlestar Galactica will be its last. Rather than spend another season on hilarious door-slamming farces and endlessly drawn-out legal farragoes, Moore and company have decided to go for the throat … after a half a year’s hiatus or so.
Moore said that he’s proud that the show has been unafraid to take risks. “And it’s been unafraid to move strongly forward instead of trying to sort of tread water,” he said. “And it just feels like the momentum of the series is moving towards a conclusion.”
Well, speaking as a humble fan, it sure hasn’t felt that way to me, but I’ll take their word for it. Frankly, I think this is good news. I’ve really enjoyed Battlestar, but I think it’s the kind of story that needs a strong dramatic thrust and a definite end. The third season was far too aimless and pokey, as I’ve whinged about before — I’m choosing to have faith that Moore and co. know what they’re doing, or at least have come close to figuring out what they’re doing.
Neil Gaiman is apparently going to direct his first feature film, based on his graphic novel Death: The High Cost of Living. Now,I enjoy Gaiman’s work in the comics medium tremendously, but his novels often leave me cold, and I’m the only person I know who found Mirrormask to be a pretty, but incomprehensible, bore. I’d be dubious enough without the presence of Shia LeBoeuf, of whom I’ve already had way more than enough. I don’t know how it’s possible, but between the critical fawning over Rear Window Disturbia and his upcoming appearances in Indy IV and Transformers, I’m somehow thoroughly sick of LeBeouf without having seen him in anything. But yeah, Death and stuff. With any luck, it should be the most volatile Goth masturbation fodder since The Crow: City of Angels. Speaking of wearing lots of pancake makeup and sitting at the back of the bus cutting yourself for attention…
Hey, here’s a sentence I never thought I’d write… from the makers of American Pie… Elric of Melnibone! According to Empire, Paul and Chris Weitz are planning to take on what may be be one of the most unfilmable fantasy series of all time.
“Of the great classic fantasy series it’s the one that hasn’t been done yet,” Weitz tells Empire online. “My brother Paul and I liked those books growing up and we’ve met Michael Moorcock and he trusts us to take those books forward.” The Weitz’s Depth Of Field production company will be behind the adaptation, although no director is yet attached. Weitz does have one in mind, though: “I’d really like it if my brother directed them,” he says.
Well, I don’t know about you, but I think the fantasy movie market has really been crying out for a fantasy movie starring a sickly Gothic albino! I kid, of course. I’m a big fan of Moorcock’s books, but I have serious doubts about their adaptability. It seems to me their choices are either to make a straight-up adaptation and end up with a movie that’s only moderately watchable, or just do what most adaptations do and flush everything about Elric down the toilet, thus pissing off up to dozens of hardcore Moorcock fans. But committing Elric to film is an idea so crazy it just might work — we can then look forward to John Malkovich as Von Bek and Hawkmoon starring Shia LeBeouf.
Meanwhile, hot on the heels of Celebration IV (yeah, I know, it was weeks ago, shut up), Lucasfilm has unveiled the trailer for the new Clone Wars animated series. Stylistically, it looks all but indistinguishable from the live-action prequels, which speaks volumes for the gorgeous state of modern animation, the massive budget of the series, and the relative cartooniness of the prequels themselves.
There was a time when I would have been giddy as a schoolgirl at the very thought of a weekly animated series based on the Clone Wars — but when I was a kid, all we had was that dreadful Ewoks and Droids garbage. That’s the way it was, and we didn’t like it! Judging by the trailer alone, though, this doesn’t look like anything Genndy Tartakovsky hasn’t already done before (and better), so I’m not exactly creaming my jeans just yet. Still, it looks like maybe we’ll finally get some decent space battles, hopefully sans goofy droids that ruthlessly steal aboard your ship and ruin all your bodywork.
Penultimately, here’s a neat little tidbit from Superhero Hype: the full cast list of Hellboy 2: The Golden Army:
John Hurt is back for a cameo.
Myers is not back (see Rupie in KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN in the London stage!!).
Universal has NOT authorized a brief Kroenen cameo/ epilogue- yet.
Johann will be played by John Alexander (body) and Thomas Kretschmann (voice).
Dougie [Doug Jones] will play 4 characters.
Brian Steele will play 4 characters.
Anna Walton is the actress playing Princess Nuala.
Luke Goss plays Prince Nuada. Silverlance.
Roy Dotrice plays King BalorThey join Ron Perlman and Selma Blair in the sequel which starts filming this Friday, June 8 in Budapest.
I’ll admit it, not immediately seeing Selma Blair on this list made me panic for a moment. And, once again, I have to hyperventilate in keen anticipation for seeing Luke Goss in another Del Toro feature. That should be awesome.
Well, that about wraps it up for Thursday. One final thing — last but also least, you might say — they’re remaking Westworld! Why would anyone do this?
June 7th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
ELRIC!!!!!
*didn’t read anything else other than that*
I still have my AD&D Dieties and Demigods with the Melnibone peeps and the RPG manual for playing in the Elric world. Forget the name of it.
June 7th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
I think that’s worth some money, yo.
June 7th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
i’ve never seen a full episode of babylon 5, but the trailer for this looks extremely cheesy. did no one tell the creators that everyone and their mother can do that level of green screen comping? it seriously doesn’t look any better than half the lame star wars fan films posted to youtube, and worse than some. maybe this looked good when it first came out in the 1990s, but not now.
and ya, mirrormask bored me to tears. ended up trying to fast-forward through it and then even gave up on that. people always forget that you need a constantly moving story!
June 7th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
Thanks for commenting, Christopher. You must have good eyes. I don’t even know how you can be picky about the green screen at the dismal resolution of that trailer. I could see that there were some spaceships involved in battle, but I wouldn’t even consider trying to critique the quality of the effects!
Babylon 5 has never had cutting-edge effects, though — they simply never had the budget for it.
Tell your mother I wish her the best of luck with her upcoming sci-fi epic, though!
June 7th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
lol! awesome. i’ll pass on your best wishes. im sure she’ll appreciate them!
June 7th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
Being a recently born-again Hellboy fan, I’m pleased as punch to see the last little tidbit. Here’s to hoping that Jeffrey Tambor also shows up.
I’m neither happy nor upset to see Myers gone. He was a fairly lifeless character and did little beyond acting as the audience being introduced to all the characters.
June 8th, 2007 at 1:03 am
Man, you know how much I hate stirring a shitpot for Star Wars, but were we watching the same trailer? Maybe it’s more about what I was hoping to see, but this looks more Reboot than Starship Troopers. And those were both nearly ten years ago. Applying Tartakovsky’s character designs to 3D is not much of a success in my book. I’ll still probably watch some of it, but I say that knowing full well that I’ve never watched any of the Clone Wars cartoon. So maybe I won’t.
June 8th, 2007 at 9:23 am
Carpy, am I imagining things, or did you just compare this trailer unfavorably to something you admit you haven’t seen?
I will admit I haven’t even thought about Reboot in a very long time — I’m not nuts about the character designs, but quite honestly, my eyes were glazing over during most of that, and opening wide during the space battles. I’m like that.
June 8th, 2007 at 10:57 am
I wonder how the hiatus will work for BSG, and what’s this about a new two-hour episode in November? I was just reading that the strategy to take long breaks followed by long runs of new episodes (which I like, in theory) backfired on almost every show this year, including popular shows like The Sopranos and Heroes. Next year, Heroes is apparently going to run a mini-show during the break called Heroes: Origins. With BSG taking more than a year off, I’m betting they lose a lot of viewers.
June 8th, 2007 at 11:15 am
Yeah, the long break is a bad idea, I agree. And yeah, there’s a miniseries of sorts coming in November that will take us back to the opening of the second season. Because that’s VERY relevant, seeing as how the Pegasus was blown up.
June 8th, 2007 at 11:30 am
Wow, yeah, what needs to be resolved from that period? Colonel Tigh’s continued drunken adventures? The exploits of pilots we’ve never seen before who are now dead? A day in the life of Admiral Ensign Ro?
How about a couple of episodes on the early days of the Cylon’s achieving sentience, a flashback to the week before the colonies were destroyed, or something like that that might actually be interesting?
June 8th, 2007 at 11:56 am
I was really hoping for that Caprica spinoff to happen, but it got canned. I couldn’t be less interested in another story from the Pegasus era. I really don’t know where they’re going with that.
How about a movie where they fill in what happened during that YEAR that we lost during the last thirty seconds of Season Two’s finale?
June 8th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
This BSG movie isn’t just going to be a compilation of all the webisodes from that time, is it?
I actually prefer 2 shorter half-seasons with a long break between to the scatter-shot of re-runs randomly interspersed around holiday time. LOST did it well, though I hear their ratings dropped, too. Doesn’t matter to me, I liked it.
June 8th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
You weren’t imagining things, but I was only comparing the visual styles and character designs. I have seen advertisements for Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars. I know what his designs look like.
But yes I suppose I don’t have a right to complain until I sit through everything, eyes pried open, Beethoven blaring.
(this is where the smiley goes)
June 8th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
I am acquainted with my place!
Well, you should check out the first Clone Wars, it’s pretty good.