All Things:Science Fiction/Fantasy



Clockwork Orange star rips Trek, calls Avengers 'mindless crap' | Blastr

Marvel's The Avengers is still in theaters around the world, getting record-breaking box-office love from millions of adoring moviegoers. But McDowell isn't one of them. For him, Joss Whedon's adventure with Earth's Mightiest Heroes was "mindless crap."

Clearly, McDowell had no part in The Avengers, but he's not afraid to go after actors he's worked with, too. Consider Sir Patrick Stewart, the distinguished British thespian who gave us the legendary Jean-Luc Picard. We're all fans here, but McDowell's definitely not. According to him, if you want a more exciting experience than watching Stewart in a Star Trek flick, you can go "watch paint dry."

William Shatner's not exempt from McDowell's blasts, either. As Tolian Soran in Generations, McDowell had the distinction of killing Adm. James T. Kirk, something he takes great pride in not because it's an important moment in Trek history, but because he got to be the guy who shut Shatner up.

"I did them a favor," he said.
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Love a good rant. And he will always have a special place in my heart because of Clockwork Orange.
 
I will also always love McDowell for stuff he's done, but apparently he's forgotten about the mountains of crap movies he's been in.
 
hey...a man's got to make a living. I weighed that factor in but look, it's not like McDowell is going to get parts that Gene Hackman turned down. He seems to have a healthy attitude about his 'body of work' and even in the biggest crapfest I find him worth watching.
 
Uhhh...I'm intrigued.

SKYWINGS MOVIE

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Disney Gets Creepy With ‘Stuff of Legend’ Adaptation | Geeks of Doom

Disney will be tapping into a child’s inner most fear about closets and the dark. The studio has just signed a deal to adapt Stuff Of Legend, a graphic novel written by Mike Raicht and Brian Smith and illustrated by Charles Paul Wilson III. Stuff of Legend has a few themes that are similar to that of Toy Story and The Chronicles of Narnia.

According to Deadline, Disney is looking to make the film a live-action CGI hybrid, much like the work on Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. TV director Pete Candeland will direct using a script penned by Abduction’s Shawn Christensen. According to the report, the two have been working on the pitch and visual presentation for close to a year.


Here is a synopsis of the story:

A young boy in 1944 is abducted by the Boogeyman, dragged by the ankles into the closet realm known as The Dark. The boy’s puppy rallies his toys to follow his master in a rescue mission. Once in the closet, each of those toys become menacingly large and agile creatures who engage in a war with the Boogeyman’s forces. Those armies are comprised of the other toys stored in the closet, a mix of medieval knights, cowboys and toy soldiers.
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Easy, Tiger! First Online Footage From Life Of Pi Goes For A Killer Swipe | Bleeding Cool Comic Book, Movies and TV News and Rumors

Don't know how many of you who saw Prometheus got there early for this footage...but it certainly looks like an interesting movie. Advanced word is that it's beautiful and the unexplained footage was attached because the studio thinks they have something really special. I wanted to dig up a bit of info on the book it was based on...

Life of Pi is divided into three sections. In the first, the main character, Pi, an adult, reminisces about his childhood. He was named Piscine Molitor Patel after a swimming pool in France. He changes his name to "Pi" when he begins secondary school, because he is tired of being taunted with the nickname "Pissing Patel." His father owns a zoo in Pondicherry, providing Pi with a relatively affluent lifestyle and some understanding of animal psychology.[8]

Pi was born a Hindu, but as a fourteen-year-old he is introduced to Christianity and Islam, and starts to follow all three religions as he "just wants to love god."[9][10] He tries to understand God through the lens of each religion and comes to recognize benefits in each one.

Eventually, his family decides to sell their animals and move to Canada due to political concerns in India. In the second part of the novel, Pi's family embark on a small Japanese freighter to Canada carrying some of the animals from their zoo, but a few days out of port the boat suddenly sinks. Pi ends up in a small lifeboat with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, a spotted hyena, an injured zebra, and an orangutan. The other humans and animals on the boat all drown.

The hungry hyena tears off the zebra's leg, and spends the next several days eating the zebra bit by bit. The hyena also kills the orangutan. Richard Parker then kills and eats the hyena. Pi is left as the only other survivor. Pi finds food and water supplies on the boat, but as they grow scarce, Pi begins fishing. Pi feeds Richard Parker so that the tiger will not eat him; he also wants to keep the tiger alive to avoid total solitude on the ocean. Pi ensures that the tiger considers Pi the alpha animal and will therefore refrain from attacking him.

Pi recounts that after an indeterminate time at sea, the pair encountered a mysterious island, seemingly constructed of edible algae supporting a forest and a large population of meerkats. Following a period of recuperation, Pi becomes afraid of the island after discovering that the algae is carnivorous, and leaves with the tiger. In all, Pi survives 227 days in the lifeboat, often half delusional with thirst and hunger. The lifeboat reaches the coast of Mexico and Richard Parker escapes into the nearby jungle, so that rescuers find only Pi.

The third part of the novel is a conversation between two officials from the Japanese maritime department. They seek to ascertain why the ship sank, so they interview Pi, but they do not believe his story. Pi then tells a similar story, but this time without animals. Instead, he recounts a story of human brutality, being adrift on a lifeboat with his mother, a sailor with a broken leg, and the ship's cook, who killed the sailor and Pi's mother and cut them up to use as bait and food. Parallels to Pi's first story lead the Japanese officials to believe that the orangutan represents his mother, the zebra represents the sailor, the hyena represents the cook, and Richard Parker is Pi himself. Pi asks if this new story is acceptable, or if he should change any parts that are still too unbelievable; the officials change the subject back to the sinking of the ship. After giving all the relevant information, Pi asks which of the two stories they prefer. Since the officials cannot prove which story is true and neither is relevant to the reasons behind the shipwreck, they choose the story with the animals. Pi thanks them and says, "and so it goes with God".
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sounds really unique and different...they are facing a ridiculously tough sell.
 
FIrst Synopsis for ELYSIUM

Here’s the synopsis, followed by an image of the preview screening ticket:


In the year 2159 two classes of people exist: the very wealthy who live on a pristine man-made space station called Elysium, and the rest, who live on an overpopulated, ruined Earth. Secretary Rhodes (Jodie Foster), a hard the government official, will stop at nothing to enforce anti-immigration laws and preserve the luxurious lifestyle of the citizens of Elysium. That doesn’t stop the people of Earth from trying to get in, by any means they can. When unlucky Max (Matt Damon) is backed into a corner, he agrees to take on a daunting mission that if successful will not only save his life, but could bring equality to these polarized worlds.
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How do you feel about Cornish getting the gig Adgy(as if I didn't know). Tell these folks that their beloved property is in good hands. Although, from the sound of it, I could see Blomkamp or Duncan Jones taking a run at it too.
 
Author Lev Grossman's hilarious to-do list for fantasy characters | Blastr

As Grossman put in the introduction for this piece: "F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that the rich are different from you and me. That may or may not be true. But fantasy characters are definitely different from you and me. They don't seem to have quite the same ... travails as we do. This has always bothered me—I've always thought they should act more like people in real life. With that in mind, I've made a list of things they should do more often."

So here's his writerly advice:
•Forget things, for no reason. ["Jesus, I told you we were gonna need the Netherhelm of Binding to seal the Fellgate." "I know, that's what's so weird! I put it on this morning. I could swear it. Or did I? Now I don't even know." "Well I guess we'll just have to seal the Fellgate tomorrow." "Well I guess so."]
•Meet a non-white person and not subsequently discover they're from the Burning Lands Far to the South or something like that.
•Suffer chafing issues.
•Meet an orphan whose parents just turn out to be just as random and ordinary as his or her adoptive parents.
•Drink non-alcoholic beverages.
•Meet an orc who actually isn't an *******.
•Hear ominous noises that then turn out to be nothing. ["That totally sounded like the howling of a lost soul trapped for all eternity inside a massive cursed ruby. Turned out it was just Dan's lost-soul-in-ruby ringtone! We gotta make him change that."]
•Make accurate change at a bar rather than just fling down a handful of gold coins and walk away.
•Have guard duty and not bicker with the other person who has guard duty.
•Discover a magic portal to a world that is pretty much the same deal as the world they came from.
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