dimfuture.net

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.

(more…)

A few choice bits from around the Internets.

The DVD Babylon 5: Lost Tales is now available for pre-order at Amazon, which fills me with a mixture of anticipation and dread so heady it can barely be described. On one hand, more Babylon 5! On the other hand, the last thing we saw from Babylon 5 was Legend of the Rangers, an incredibly unfortunate outing that nearly made me hate the franchise retroactively. Despite the alarming presence of Tracy Scoggins, I remain stalwartly optimistic about this. The plot, according to questionable Internet palimpsest Wikipedia, goes thus:

Voices in the Dark will be set in 2272. It will feature two linked plotlines viewed separately one after the other but covering the same 72-hour timespan: the first follows ISA President John Sheridan on his way to B5 for a celebration of the 10th Anniversary of the formation of the Interstellar Alliance. During the journey he unexpectedly picks up the Centauri Prince Regent Vintari (third in line to the Centauri Imperial throne) on the edge of Centauri space, and receives a warning from Galen the techno-mage about coming events. The second will feature Colonel (formerly Captain during the series’ run) Lochley on B5 awaiting Sheridan’s arrival, who summons a priest from Earth space to help deal with a mysterious, seemingly supernatural problem.

Yeah, okay. Still encouraged. At least the movie isn’t about Tracy Scoggins… I mean, Captain… I mean Colonel Lochley. Man, it’s not even out yet and I already can’t keep up. If successful, Lost Tales will continue with a second installment, which will feature Michael Garibaldi… now that, I really can’t wait for. Anyway, the DVD comes out on July 31.

Also in the news: Luke Goss, best known as swaggering villain Nomak in the marvelous Blade II, will be appearing in another Del Toro offering, namely Hellboy II:

Luke Goss is rejoining director Guillermo del Toro for Universal Pictures’ Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The movie reunites the first movie’s principals—Ron Perlman as Hellboy, Selma Blair as Liz Sherman and both David Hyde Pierce and Doug Jones as Abe Sapien—for a supernatural action-adventure that sees the world of myth rebelling against humanity, the trade paper reported.

Goss will play Prince Nuada, a ruthless leader who treads the world above and the one below, defying his bloodline to awaken an unstoppable army of creatures. Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) and Hellboy creator Mike Mignola wrote the script. Filming is scheduled to begin in June in Budapest for an Aug. 1, 2008, release.

Goss previously worked with del Toro on Blade II, in which he played the villainous vampire Nomak.

I can only hope that Goss will play some sort of swaggering badass. He swaggers so very, very well. It would be a shame to waste his swaggery talent.

Finally, also according to Sci Fi Wire, Frank Miller’s sci-fi epic Ronin may be coming to the big screen. I’m not exaggerating when I say I’ve literally been waiting twenty years to see this. I read Ronin just out of high school, and waited breathlessly for the day when it would be made into a movie. I even had a very histrionic false start when someone had told me that there was a movie coming out named Ronin, and that it starred Robert De Niro. Imagine my surprise and disappointment when I found out it was just a John Frankenheimer movie about gunning down ice skaters.

Also, look for a new Twelve Days of Dimfuture later today if all goes well!

My relationship with summer movies has, regrettably, been reduced to something of a siege mentality. For every genre flick out there that I genuinely want to see, there seem to be about three or four whose presence must simply be endured. A recent post about summer movies on the newly-revamped Usual Suspects forums left me aghast at how little I genuinely get excited about anymore when it comes to genre entertainment. The third Pirates movie? Take it or leave it. Transformers? Jesus Christ, no. Fantastic Four? I guess I’d better not get started on that, lest I offend the legions of fans who felt that rewriting Doctor Doom as a doctor-murdering yuppie was a good idea.

I am genuinely excited to see Spider-Man 3, however (especially after seeing the making-of on Starz a few days ago, which literally left me slavering in anticipation), which is why I was pleased to learn that it’s bringing home the bacon in Asia, and hope that it will do very well Stateside as well.

(more…)

I couldn’t find it in my heart to post this the same day as Vincent Macropod, as I feared it would break Reverend Matt’s will. Hollywood North reports that there may be a remake of the 1951 Robert Wise masterpiece on the way.

According to our sources, Scott Derrickson - last here in 2005 to direct The Exorcism of Emily Rose - will helm Fox’s remake of their classic 1951 science fiction film, The Day the Earth Stood Still, currently prepping for production here in Vancouver.

The original was directed by legendary filmmaker Robert Wise, who passed away in 2005, and tells the story of an alien (Klaatu) and his mighty robot (Gort) who land their spacecraft on Cold War-era Earth just after the end of World War II. The travelers bring an important message for humanity that Klaatu wishes all the representatives of Earth to hear, but that proves more difficult to disseminate fairly than he had anticipated, prompting him to take a more bold approach.

The time frame of the remake will likely be updated, though no specifics are available yet.

Derrickson’s outgoing project is Paradise Lost, a live-action film version of John Milton’s epic 1667 poem, produced by Legendary Pictures, which tells the story of Lucifer’s failed rebellion in heaven and subsequent role in Adam and Eve’s fall from grace.

The Day the Earth Stood Still is scheduled to shoot until next November, making it one of the longest theatrical shoots ever to film in this region.

Now, although all my instincts scream to the contrary, I want to believe that there is a possibility for this to be good. The original film’s message — that we, as a race, must overcome our own stupidity and selfishness or be exterminated — is a powerful and immortal one. I might even say it deserves to be said again, even if it means a remake. But if this remake reduces Wise’s lessons on mass stupidity to irony, I’m going to start building a Gort of my own.

To follow up briefly on the notes attached to my review of Casino Royale, it appears that Sony has fixed the copy-protection problem with their DVDs, and (apparently) will be issuing replacement disks to customers.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that I’ll be rushing out to purchase Casino Royale, as the DVD copy protection still amounts to introducing deliberate defects in the DVD in order to punish legitimate consumers for the actions of pirates. But it’s a step in the right direction, at least. Well, not really, but close to it, I suppose.