Movie News & Trailers: the sequel

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Academy bans Will Smith from attending Oscars for 10 years

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Todd

JRCarter wrote:

Academy bans Will Smith from attending Oscars for 10 years

However, that’s kind of a mixed blessing since the Oscars are pretty boring. Will he also be ineligible for nomination?

More importantly, will he be banned from attending post-Oscar parties? ;)

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JRCarter

Anonymous wrote:

JRCarter wrote: Academy bans Will Smith from attending Oscars for 10 years

However, that’s kind of a mixed blessing since the Oscars are pretty boring.

“Academy forces Will Smith to attend Oscars for 10 years”

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DavidM, JRCarter, njerry, Todd

Dave wrote:

“Academy forces Will Smith to attend Oscars for 10 years”

A much harsher punishment!

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Chris D, Bruce, Todd, JRCarter

Hoping the 2023 show descends into a Royal Rumble as everyone else tries to get banned so they don’t have to sit through it either.

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DavidM, Bruce, Todd, JRCarter

njerry wrote:

Dave wrote:

“Academy forces Will Smith to attend Oscars for 10 years”

A much harsher punishment!

Hell, take it a step further. Have him host them for the next 10 years.

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Rocket, JRCarter, Todd

Nicolas Cage is doing an AMA on reddit right now, and it’s a very interesting read.

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Uncle Retrospective, Rocket, lorcan_nagle, Chris D, JRCarter, njerry, Dave, Todd

‘Fantastic Beasts 3’ Gay Dialogue Removed in China

Anonymous wrote:

‘Fantastic Beasts 3’ Gay Dialogue Removed in China

What. A. Shock

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Todd

Chris D wrote:

Hell, take it a step further. Have him host them for the next 10 years.

He’d be crying more than he did during his acceptance speech.

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Todd McFarlane On Spawn Movie: “It’s Now Or Never” (bleedingcool.com)

 I mean they got crazy when the only movies that were making money were superheroes, and then Venom goes and rocks it, and then Spider-Man comes in and obliterates it, so now they’re almost singular in their mindset of what kind of ideas they’ve got. So something has to happen. We’ll never get to the top of the mountain if we can’t do it now, with everybody wanting to do it now. Fingers crossed. I would say it’s now or never.

I have to say that McFarlane himself may be holding back the Spawn movie more than anything, but at the same time the last suggested premise that made the new also seems like something that could be a non-starter. Essentially a Spawn movie in the form of a Blumhouse film where Spawn is primarily the monster of the story.

It’s an exciting or at least interesting idea to focus on supporting characters like Sam and Twitch as they investigate murders and criminal plots that lead them into a supernatural conspiracy with the suspect they’re hunting not only being a superpowered dead avenger but also the “good guy” in this scenario. At the same time it also sounds a bit like the movie BODY CAM. The most interesting and sympathetic character in SPAWN is Spawn/Al Simmons (or was when Spawn was its most popular) and to basically keep him in the shadows does not really sound like a great idea. None of the other characters such as Wanda, Terry, Sam and Twitch are going to be as interesting leads in the movie and the Violator is a waste if he’s not full out the Clown. It can make for a good low budget movie, but I have to agree with McFarlane that Spawn’s potential is really closer to the big-budget “alt-Marvel” movie like Venom, Spider-Man and Morbius.

However, if he insists on co-producing or even directing it or having any significant JK Rowling like creative control, the people that fund the big budget movies are not going to be inclined to risk it.

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Todd

Overall, I’d say “Never” is probably the better of the two choices here.

Although I do like the idea of making it a Sam and Twitch movie. That’d be cool. But that’s not what McFarlane wants, obviously. He’s thinking, hey, Venom was such a huge success and Spawn has everything Venom has (cool anti-hero in a costume that makes him do bad things and talks to him). It’s almost as if Spawn was a rip-off of Venom in the first place… and I don’t think that directly after a successful Venom movie, people want to see a ripoff of that.

Anonymous wrote:

I have to say that McFarlane himself may be holding back the Spawn movie more than anything, but at the same time the last suggested premise that made the new also seems like something that could be a non-starter. Essentially a Spawn movie in the form of a Blumhouse film where Spawn is primarily the monster of the story.

When I read abot that some time ago, I really thought that was a bad idea. Fans go to comic book movies because they want to see the characters featured prominently. People want to see Batman and Spider-Man fron and center. While a Batman story where he is in the shadows for pretty much the whole thing would make for a great half hour of television, it would incur the wrath of moviegoers who would feel cheated for a 2 – 2.5 hour movie.

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Well I also happen to think that the best thing for Spawn would be to do it like the Godzilla movie basically… but yeah, not a lot of people liked the fact that godzilla didn’t feature all that much. Still though, that’s the best way to go, imo. But then, they’d need a really solid movie around that idea too, and I’m not sure Spawn can support that… and that’s not going into the whole problem of budget and all that.

Todd wrote:

When I read abot that some time ago, I really thought that was a bad idea. Fans go to comic book movies because they want to see the characters featured prominently. People want to see Batman and Spider-Man fron and center. While a Batman story where he is in the shadows for pretty much the whole thing would make for a great half hour of television, it would incur the wrath of moviegoers who would feel cheated for a 2 – 2.5 hour movie.

Well, Jonny specified a Blumhouse kind of movie, I’m assuming with the according budget. I think it’d do fine under those circumstances.

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I think the subtext of the proposed Spawn movie with him as a background character in a horror setting is they didn’t have a large budget. In that context is does make sense. Unless you’ve got a minimum of $150m bucks it’s going to be very hard to pull of Spawn in full superhero action.

He now seems to have pivoted because the success of Venom means he is sniffing around that they can get the $150m

Hopefully the failure of Morbius will mean that they’ll go back to the small budget idea.

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garjones

Paramount & eOne’s ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ Movie Gets Title

https://deadline.com/2022/04/dungeons-dragons-movie-from-paramount-eone-gets-title-1235007444/

Tsk. As if we didn’t have a perfectly fine D&D movie already.

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Christian wrote:

Tsk. As if we didn’t have a perfectly fine D&D movie already.

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JRCarter, Rocket, Todd, Christian

People who make D&D movies presumably don’t understand what D&D is. It’s about as useful as movie source material as Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess. It’s not a work of fiction that you can plagiarise for plots, characters and settings. It’s a text book.

 

 

DavidM wrote:

People who make D&D movies presumably don’t understand what D&D is. It’s about as useful as movie source material as Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess. It’s not a work of fiction that you can plagiarise for plots, characters and settings. It’s a text book.

 

 

Well, you can take individual campaigns as a basis for stories. That’s what they did with the recent animated show The Legend of Vox Machina. It’s based on the Critical Role webseries that shows voice actors playing D&D campaigns, and the animated series maybe feels too much like it’s based on a campaign people played, but it does work.

I can see good campaigns being easily turned into a more serious live-action TV show, too. Maybe an anthology format, with each season depicting the story arc of different parties. That could easily be kind of awesome. As a movie though… eh. Doensn’t play to the strengths of the format.

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Todd, DavidM

Christian wrote:

Hopefully the failure of Morbius will mean that they’ll go back to the small budget idea.

However, Morbius wasn’t a flop. It just didn’t make as much as the other movies like Venom and Spider-Man where the characters were much more well known and popular, but it won’t lose money.

Spawn is much more well-known and popular than Morbius and possibly even more popular historically than Venom before the movie. Honestly, I think it has more potential as well, BUT I really think it needs to be updated by a much better creative team.

Essentially, Spawn deals with religious extremism, espionage, political corruption and warfare, racism and has a lot of unhoused characters featured prominently. The comics dealt with all that very stereotypically like comics always do, but it was still dramatic and engaging. I’d say rather than a Blumhouse $10 mm production, if they want to go the low budget route, it would be better to do something like SICARIO or SICARIO 2 ($30-$45 mil) and go more for an action thriller with supernatural elements.

Hell, even Morbius was low-budget ($75 mil) compared to Venom ($110 mil), Spider-Man Homecoming ($175 mil) or the Amazing Spider-Man ($230 mil).

Christian wrote:

I can see good campaigns being easily turned into a more serious live-action TV show

But then you’re still not adapting D&D in any way. You’re adapting a story created by a group of people who happened to use the DM’s Guide as their creative writing textbook.

It just feels dishonest to pretend you’re adapting something that you’re not. Presumably the only reason is to make sure the right people get paid (i.e. the D&D rights holders, rather than an actual writer).

 

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DavidM wrote:

People who make D&D movies presumably don’t understand what D&D is. It’s about as useful as movie source material as Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess. It’s not a work of fiction that you can plagiarise for plots, characters and settings. It’s a text book.

 

 

The best and most popular RPG style stories are in manga/anime these days and most of those are Isekai where rpg players from Japan are thrown into a fantasy world following the RPG rules.

Ironically, that was the premise of the old Saturday morning D&D cartoon. I think that might be a better way to go with a movie. It provides a distinct entry point for the audience as the “players” would have to learn the world the same time as the audience encounters it and the protagonists would be familiar from the outset.

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JRCarter

DavidM wrote:

But then you’re still not adapting D&D in any way. You’re adapting a story created by a group of people who happened to use the DM’s Guide as their creative writing textbook.

Quite so. It’s fair to say that that’s part of what allowed for the creative process, though, and it provided the world-building for the story, so it’s not like it’s not part of the story. In a way, it’s like Marvel being paid for owning the characters/universe and not mainly the individual writers who wrote the stories that the movies draw from. Well, it’s different, because those writers were paid by Marvel in the first place. But there are similiarities.

DavidM wrote:

It just feels dishonest to pretend you’re adapting something that you’re not. Presumably the only reason is to make sure the right people get paid (i.e. the D&D rights holders, rather than an actual writer).

They could call it “a D&D story”, the way they’re doing with the Star Wars Anthology movies.

Anonymous wrote:

However, Morbius wasn’t a flop. It just didn’t make as much as the other movies like Venom and Spider-Man where the characters were much more well known and popular, but it won’t lose money.

Weeeeeell, the budget is given as 75-83 mil and it made 148 mil back at this point, which according to conventional Millarworld wisdom means it very barely made its money back. It’s not losing money, but it certainly wasn’t a good investment – those studios expect profits, not just getting the same back that they put in.

Spawn is much more well-known and popular than Morbius and possibly even more popular historically than Venom before the movie.

It is, but not in any way that is relevant to the audience numbers a mainstream release needs. Spawn is known as a nineties superhero B-movie, and to comic nerds (also mostly from the nineties). That audience gets you nothing, relatively speaking to the numbers you need.

Anonymous wrote:

Christian wrote:

Tsk. As if we didn’t have a perfectly fine D&D movie already.

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Anonymous wrote:

I think that might be a better way to go with a movie.

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Todd, Uncle Retrospective

Yeah I was gonna say, Jumanji is basically what a D&D movie would look like…

Maybe they should just adapt the Dragonlance books… much easier all around 

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Yeah, Jumanji is a good model, but only superficially. D&D’s world is fairly intentionally a generic fantasy setting even more so than many online RPGs like Warcraft. A lot of stories can be told as it is designed to be the arena of a lot of campaigns.

however, the big appeal is that the player gets to enter them and not just vicariously as a character, like reading a novel or watching a movie, but as yourself playing the character. Jumanji isn’t a real game and it makes sense that the aim of the story is to get out of it. I think it would be a bit more similar to Narnia or even the Oz books where after the characters accept their roles, they start to find the world something more rewarding and appealing than the lives they left to the point that when they are sent back, they actually are sad to leave.

Aqua’s ‘Barbie Girl’ song will not be used in Greta Gerwig’s ‘BARBIE’.

(Source: https://t.co/OJ9RSRvvfS) pic.twitter.com/X64aawtlGN

— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) April 29, 2022

They passed on a golden opportunity.

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Todd

I mean, it’s a whole song about Barbie and Ken fucking…So I’m not surprised.

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Bruce, Todd

Top Gun Maverick is getting surprisingly good reviews. I was going to wait for streaming, but will probably go to the pictures instead now.

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Dave

Christopher Walken cast as emperor Shaddam IV in Dune Part Two.

Interesting choice. I am all for it.

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Sean Robinson, Christian

The first teaser trailer for #Pinocchio has been released pic.twitter.com/XaRJR1kh4v

— Geek Vibes Nation (@GeekVibesNation) May 31, 2022

Anonymous wrote:

Christopher Walken cast as emperor Shaddam IV in Dune Part Two.

Interesting choice. I am all for it.

Man, I wish this was coming out this year.

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Sean Robinson

Baz Luhrmann has been one of my favorite filmmakers since Strictly Ballroom and Romeo & Juliet, so I will catch this in a theater.

It’s also a fascinating topic. American Icons of that period are the expression of a complicated myth. Elvis, John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe – these are cultural focal points touching on all the great dramas of that time period – white (and older) culture conflicting with the black (and younger), the cold war and our past of genocide and frontier living, the political, social and sexual struggles.

As far as Luhrmann, I have a strange notion that he would be perfect for a NEUROMANCER movie adaptation. My first thought was that he is generally a period director, BUT what distinguishes him is that he doesn’t treat his periods as the past. The characters that make up his stories are living in the present – they don’t have the benefit of our future knowledge to understand that they are in a defined period, so they are free to behave in unpredictable ways. Second, NEUROMANCER was a “period piece” even when it came out – just that the period was a poetic and somewhat uncannily accurate version of the “near” future. Third, even though I just wrote that it was uncannily accurate, as the decades have passed, NEUROMANCER has finally moved into the “Yesterday’s Tomorrows” mode where it is still very unlikely an actual future as much as BLADE RUNNER has. So, even more than if they had actually made a movie not long after publication, it is a different period. Cyberpunk is older than Steampunk, which is strangely ironic if you think about it.

On top of that, the story is primarily a punk rock ballad. It’s more William Burroughs than William Goldman. A straight adaptation would likely fall flat – it needs to be less monochrome than the Matrix and more like the colorful films Luhrmann can deliver. The characters are cartoons, but the world is dazzling even at its darkest.

#2 on my list of potential NEUROMANCER helmers is still pretty active:

Now that’s a proper Cronenberg movie! Whoooh!

Very much looking forward to it.

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Sean Robinson, Uncle Retrospective

This looks pretty good.

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Sean Robinson

Huh. It really does. Who would have thought?

I mean, I didn’t even know that there was going to be a Predator series, but I certainly wouldn’t have expected to come away from the trailer thinking, hey, I really need to watch the newest Predator-related content.

It’s a film released on Hulu I think, rather than a series.

Yeah that doesn’t look too bad, definitely better than that last mess. Surprised to see it going straight to Disney+ though.

Dave wrote:

It’s a film released on Hulu I think, rather than a series.

Ah, okay, that’s probably all the better.

One thing that I’m wondering is what it’ll be like when you actually see the Predator. They’ve wisely chosen to show him only as invisible or as a silhouette in the trailer, and maybe they’ll keep it that way for the whole thing. Because honestly, I think the design kind of works against it these days; it’s very eighties.

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A new trailer for #PawsofFury has been released pic.twitter.com/XQmoTJkHcj

— Geek Vibes Nation (@GeekVibesNation) June 9, 2022

#Predator released on this date 35 years ago (June 12, 1987) pic.twitter.com/CWZnyZKBO4

— Geek Vibes Nation (@GeekVibesNation) June 12, 2022

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Uncle Retrospective, Todd

Sony Pictures Taps Justin Lin To Direct ‘One Punch Man,’ Adaptation Of Manga Classic; Scott Rosenberg & Jeff Pinkner Scripting – Deadline.com

EXCLUSIVE: After exiting Fast X, it didn’t take Justin Lin very long to rev up another franchise. He’s set to direct One Punch Man for Sony Pictures. Scott Rosenberg & Jeff Pinkner, who teamed on Jumanji: The Next Level, and Venom, are set to write the live-action film adaptation of worldwide hit manga series. Sony Pictures acquired the film rights from Shueisha.

Avi Arad and Ari Arad of Arad Productions (Spider-Man film series, Iron Man, X-Men film series, Venom) are producing the film. Lin will also be a producer and will work with the scribes on a rewrite with the intention to begin production by year’s end.

Hugely popular in both Japan and around the world, One Punch Man follows the story of Saitama, a superhero who can defeat any opponent with a single punch but seeks to find a worthy opponent after growing bored by a lack of challenges in his fight against evil. Think of Mike Tyson as a superhero in feudal Japan. The studio is bullish on the concept as a franchise starter.

Created in 2009 by Japanese artist ONE as a webcomic, One Punch Man quickly went viral. In 2012, it was then published on Shueisha’s Tonari no Young Jump Next with illustrations by Yusuke Murata along with ONE. The series became huge with worldwide sales totaling over 30 million copies. When the English edition published by VIZ Media debuted in the U.S. in 2015, the first and second volumes made the New York Times Manga Bestsellers list and was nominated for an Eisner and a Harvey Award. Since then, the popularity of One Punch Man has led to a critically acclaimed TV anime series, as well as most recently the launch of a video and mobile game.

Lin was planning to wrap up The Fast and Furious series, and had begun production on Fast X when he dropped out of the project over creative differences that had to do with star Vin Diesel’s system of script rewrites. Louis Leterrier stepped in and is helming that film. Lin had started with the franchise on The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, and Fast X would have been his sixth film in the billion dollar series. Now, Lin will be on the ground floor to create a new franchise.

Lin is repped by CAA and attorney Warren Dern. WME and attorney Robert Offer rep Rosenberg and WME reps Pinkner.

Feudal Japan?

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Todd

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Feudal Japan?

Constantly feuding.

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Sean Robinson, Todd, njerry, lorcan_nagle

Reboot of Fletch in the works with Jon Hamm as the titular character

 

Kinda surprised I didn’t know about this until now. I really like the first Fletch movie.

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Todd

Seems like there has been some attempt to bring the character back to film with and eventually without Chase. Jon Hamm is interesting – he’s a really good actor though it would certainly be a different character. Sort of the way each of the Jack Ryan actors have been very different.

Though I expected an Amazon series or something streaming would’ve been more likely than a new movie.

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

Seems like there has been some attempt to bring the character back to film with and eventually without Chase. Jon Hamm is interesting – he’s a really good actor though it would certainly be a different character. Sort of the way each of the Jack Ryan actors have been very different.

Though I expected an Amazon series or something streaming would’ve been more likely than a new movie.

I read about this on reddit and more than one person in the comments section said that Jon Hamm would be a better fit to the original character, who originated in one or more books as I understand it.

It’ll certainly be different either way.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Seems like there has been some attempt to bring the character back to film with and eventually without Chase. Jon Hamm is interesting – he’s a really good actor though it would certainly be a different character. Sort of the way each of the Jack Ryan actors have been very different.

Though I expected an Amazon series or something streaming would’ve been more likely than a new movie.

I read about this on reddit and more than one person in the comments section said that Jon Hamm would be a better fit to the original character, who originated in one or more books as I understand it.

It’ll certainly be different either way.

Fletch (Novel)

It appears there were several novels and spinoff series.

Poster for Nolan’s latest:

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njerry

Spent quite some time trying to get the significance of “7 21 23” in relation to this film. Couldn’t see how it had anything to do with the atomic number of Uranium, didn’t seem to be a Bible verse, or anything like that…

Er… it’s the release date, isn’t it?

 

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Rocket, Uncle Retrospective, Dave

Looks pretty sweet!

DavidM wrote:

Spent quite some time trying to get the significance of “7 21 23” in relation to this film. Couldn’t see how it had anything to do with the atomic number of Uranium, didn’t seem to be a Bible verse, or anything like that…

Er… it’s the release date, isn’t it?

 

Yeah, I don’t think a movie release about the detonation of the first atomic bomb will actually be as world changing as the actual first atom bomb.

Anonymous wrote:

Looks pretty sweet!

Essentially VOX MACHINA in live/CGI action.

Good cast. Will be interesting if they use or riff on elements of the games like the character alignments are actually things people have to choose, and sort of a central philosophy to the world though obviously untrue in the way the theory of humors was absurd but accepted by physicians for centuries.

THIEF: Hey, did I hear right? You’re chaotic evil.

ASSASSIN: That’s right.

THIEF: That’s so rad. I’m chaotic good.

ASSASSIN: You don’t seem so good.

THIEF: And you don’t seem so bad. That’s what I’m saying, brother. We’re chaotic so there’s barely any difference between us. Say, after all this is over, you want to team up and raid a castle?

ASSASSIN: Raiding castles is more of a thief thing. I’m an assassin, so what’s in it for me?

THIEF: I’m sure there will be plenty of people to kill.

ASSASSIN: Any notable people?

THIEF: It’s a castle. You could kill the king if you want.

ASSASSIN: Okay, I’m in.

 

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Rocket, Todd

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Todd, garjones

GLASS + HANCOCK + DEMOLITION MAN = https://youtu.be/9FKnTxSC16E

 

Anonymous wrote:

GLASS + HANCOCK + DEMOLITION MAN = https://youtu.be/9FKnTxSC16E%5B/quote%5D

That’s a very succinct description of that trailer.

Looks kind of entertaining actually. I’ll slot that in after I’m done with the Netflix Marvel stuff. Should be around the same time.

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More Dick is always good: Charlize Theron Set to Star in Alfonso Cuarón’s ‘Jane’ for Amazon | IndieWire

Per an official logline, “Jane” is a “moving, suspenseful and darkly humorous story about a woman’s unique relationship with her brilliant, but troubled twin, who also happens to be the celebrated novelist Philip K. Dick. While attempting to rescue her brother from predicaments both real and imagined, Jane plunges deeper and deeper into a fascinating world of his creation.”

The real Jane died at six months so this is more an alternate reality biopic. It could turn out that Jane in this is simply a hallucination Dick suffers, but considering his work and all the jumbled realities his characters move through as well as the recent success of “Everything All at Once,” I imagine it will more a real rather than imagined alternate reality in the world of the story. Like Dick actually believed possibly existed.

Looks like a lot of Oppenheimer will be black and white: Christopher Nolan Goes Black and White for the First Time in 24 Years in the ‘Oppenheimer’ Teaser | GQ

Or it could just be for the trailer. I don’t imagine this will be a straightforward biopic at all. Probably more condensed and eccentric like Fincher’s MANK – various vignettes of the protagonist’s life orbiting one major event.

The new trailer for BLONDE is fairly… bland. Ana De Armas’ ‘Blonde’ Trailer Unveils NC-17 Marilyn Monroe – Variety

The real life and novel are more interesting. Still, looks like there will be some (probably manufactured) controversy Ana de Armas’ ‘Blonde’ film has movie critics refusing to review it: ‘It’s violent rape porn’ | Marca

 

 

 

 

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Christian

Will Smith Breaks Silence: “Deeply Remorseful” For Oscar Slap

Anonymous wrote:

GLASS + HANCOCK + DEMOLITION MAN = https://youtu.be/9FKnTxSC16E

 

looks good for Amazon Prime. Wish it had a different name. Astro City’s Superman equivalent is Samaritan. Busiek/Anderson should get paid. I know they won’t but they should. Using it for a generic comeback/return of the hero movie seems to me to be a waste.

😴Sleep all day.
🥳Party all night.
🧓Never grow old.
🪦Never die.
🧛It's fun to be a vampire.

This day in 1987: Joel Schumacher's THE LOST BOYS was released. pic.twitter.com/XYmp76NRHX

— FANGORIA (@FANGORIA) July 31, 2022

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Rocket, Todd

Rocket wrote:

looks good for Amazon Prime. Wish it had a different name. Astro City’s Superman equivalent is Samaritan. Busiek/Anderson should get paid. I know they won’t but they should. Using it for a generic comeback/return of the hero movie seems to me to be a waste.

Yeah, I was wondering about that, too. Using an established superhero name is probably something they needed to dish out at least a little money for, I’d guess.

It’s about registering trademark, you can have character with the same name, we see it frequently in various media. They don’t have to pay as I would assume Busiek and Anderson just trademarked Astro City rather than all the characters within it. Similarly to how they can’t have a film called The Avengers in the UK because the trademark there belongs to the 1960s TV show.

However there is a risk of them falling foul of the law if the character is deemed too derivative, it has happened in the past that if things look a little too close they’ll just write out a cheque to avoid that ever being contested. So there’s an outside chance they could get something for it (but would probably be asked never to speak of it if they did).

 

“Sandman” is a good example of two different current characters with the same name. Stan Lee created the Spider-Man villain of that name in the 1960s, whose power was the ability to shape-shift like sand. In 1989 Neil Gaiman created a series based on the folklore character who puts people to sleep by shaking sand into their eyes.

But wait! There’s more!! Way back in the Golden Age, DC Comics’ predecessor had a character called Sandman, aka Wesley Dodd, an ordinary man with a trenchcoat and gas mask, who used a chemical to put criminals to sleep; after the popularity of the Gaiman character, DC brought Dodd back in the Vertigo series Sandman Mystery Theater. And in 1970, when Jack Kirby jumped to DC from Marvel, he was involved with a “new” Sandman character, a spandex-wearing superhero unrelated to the others of the same name.

Yeah there are quite a few that overlap names like that and trademark is why DC can release a Sandman title and Marvel can’t and vice versa why Marvel can release a Captain Marvel title and DC can’t.

 

It’d be difficult to copyright name “Sandman” anyway, I expect, given that it’s a character from folklore.

Christian wrote:

It’d be difficult to copyright name “Sandman” anyway, I expect, given that it’s a character from folklore.

That’s also the reason why Erik Larsen can have characters named Thor and Herakles/Hercules in his SAVAGE DRAGON comic, and Marvel can’t say boo about it (although they could issue a cease-and-desist order if Larsen released a book with the title THOR).

njerry wrote:

Christian wrote:

It’d be difficult to copyright name “Sandman” anyway, I expect, given that it’s a character from folklore.

That’s also the reason why Erik Larsen can have characters named Thor and Herakles/Hercules in his SAVAGE DRAGON comic, and Marvel can’t say boo about it (although they could issue a cease-and-desist order if Larsen released a book with the title THOR).

They’d just come off as Thor losers.

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DavidM, garjones, JRCarter, Christian, Todd, njerry, Uncle Retrospective

Dave wrote:

njerry wrote:

Christian wrote:

It’d be difficult to copyright name “Sandman” anyway, I expect, given that it’s a character from folklore.

That’s also the reason why Erik Larsen can have characters named Thor and Herakles/Hercules in his SAVAGE DRAGON comic, and Marvel can’t say boo about it (although they could issue a cease-and-desist order if Larsen released a book with the title THOR).

They’d just come off as Thor losers.

That’s a pretty brazen joke. I thought your humor was more Loki.

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JRCarter

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Bruce, Uncle Retrospective, garjones, JRCarter, Todd

[garjones]

Christian wrote:

It’d be difficult to copyright name “Sandman” anyway, I expect, given that it’s a character from folklore.

Samaritan kind of is too.

The big thing is trademark rather than copyright. Copyright protects intellectual property, trademark protects branding. In the case of comics or films that’s your title.

Trademark is registered for a particular industry/product. Big companies will tend to to pay to cover many sectors to keep the brand exclusive but can overlook some. In Kuala Lumpur there is a HSBC curry restaurant, which the banking giant just found amusing and featured in their free magazine to customers.

The use of Hercules etc is because those characters are very much long into public domain, as is Dracula so he appears in all brands of comics. However to call your comic Thor – this is the US trademark registration that says only Marvel can do that:

• This reply was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by garjones.

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Christian

Out of curiosity, do Netflix/Disney/Amazon/whoever offer audio commentaries for any of the movies or TV shows they stream?

saga wrote:

Out of curiosity, do Netflix/Disney/Amazon/whoever offer audio commentaries for any of the movies or TV shows they stream?

Disney+ has a few, the others don’t. Netflix had a podcast feed with commentaries you could sync up, but it hasn’t updated in years.

Shame. They are the one thing that I rather miss about the DVD era.

It is interesting, my kids asked the other day to watch Doctor Who from the (2005) start and I had the first series on DVD. They didn’t know how to work the Blu-ray player which has sat redundant for a few years but as kids quickly picked it up.

They loved the way it switched menus and had a lot of extra stuff, proclaiming it to be better than streaming but not as easy to access, which it’s hard to argue with. I think with a lot of format changes we don’t always improve everything, after having a full demo from an audiophile in the late 90s when CDs were booming the vinyl appeal now is not just a hipster thing, it genuinely sounds better and there are technical reason why (digitization cuts sound off for space that analogue didn’t as memory space is irrelevant, MP3 cut made the compression even worse initially until download speeds caught up).

A large degree of progress can be convenience over quality.

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DavidM

Eh, I’ve never met anyone who could actually tell the difference between a vinyl and a digital recording… I mean, you need a bitchin’ analogue system to truly take advantage of vinyl, and most people don’t.

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Todd, DavidM

I’ve got to admit, I can’t tell. Apart from the obvious clues (the “noise” from vinyl), my ears aren’t good enough, even on a good system.

Even with MP3s, I think I could tell the difference if I was listening to them through a proper sound system, but I never do. The only reason I rip to MP3 is to play through earbuds, probably in a noisy environment. Any deficit in the format is masked by the deficit in the listening conditions.

 

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Todd

About damn time:

Academy apologizes to Native American woman who declined Brando’s Oscar

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njerry, Todd

To note I was played a CD and a vinyl of the same album on the same setup in a specialist audio shop, which was incredibly expensive, the turntable alone was £1200 back in the 1990s (a Linn LP12), the whole setup 3 or 4 times that much. I had no money at the time it was a friend of mine that bought it.

The vinyl was very noticeably better, you could hear notes and sounds that you couldn’t hear on the CD.

Without that big audiophile setup and just a basic high street system I agree you can’t really tell the difference.

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DavidM, Todd

garjones wrote:

The vinyl was very noticeably better, you could hear notes and sounds that you couldn’t hear on the CD.

Without that big audiophile setup and just a basic high street system I agree you can’t really tell the difference.

True music aficionados apparently can tell the difference, and prefer vinyl for the higher highs and lower lows that you just don’t get from a basic digital file. My 32-year-old son, who used to deejay in a Brooklyn bar, has spent a fortune on his sound system and an equal amount on vinyl albums and singles for professional and personal use. Considering how much money I continue to spend on my comics “hobby”, I think he’s getting more bang for his bucks than I do.

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DavidM, garjones, Todd

njerry wrote:

True music aficionados apparently can tell the difference

I was genuinely quite cynical about it. Bearing in mind this demo was done around 1990, it was not like today when vinyl is the hipster choice, the vibe then was CDs were the future and miles better (and initially indestructible, the first TV stories of CDs had trucks running over them, those were made of metal, the actual commercial product of plastic and a bit more hardy than vinyl but we all have a scratched and jumping CD).

I think if I hadn’t heard that demo with all the best kit I would argue the vinyl superiority argument was a load of bullshit, my ears said otherwise. For most common listening experience though you probably won’t know.

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Todd

Following the success of Sonic, Sega is following it up with a film adaptation of another classic Mega Drive game: Comix Zone!

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/sega-adapting-space-channel-5-comix-zone-movies-1235202357/

Zone, an adaptation of the cult console game, follows a jaded comic book creator and a young, queer writer of color who, when sucked into the final issue of his popular series, must put aside their differences to stop a dangerous supervillain from sowing complete destruction. In the process, they wittily explore the ever-evolving art of storytelling itself.

Zone will be written by Mae Catt, whose credits include writing on the Emmy-winning animated DC series Young Justice, and the How to Train Your Dragon spinoff series, Dragons: The Nine Realm. She was also a writer on Netflix’s Transformers: War for Cybertron Trilogy.

They’re also doing Space Channel 5, off the Dreamcast.

Would it kill anyone to fucking adapt Treasure Island Dizzy already?

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Uncle Retrospective, Bruce

paul f wrote:

Following the success of Sonic, Sega is following it up with a film adaptation of another classic Mega Drive game: Comix Zone!

That one could actually be fun… there’s a lot of creative shit they could do with it for sure, so let’s hope they don’t end up doing something completely mediocre.

Also, I’d love a new game, with clean modern hand drawn 2D graphics a-la SOR4… that’d be waaaaay more hype than a movie!

Yeah, Comix Zone was a pretty cool concept and I could see how it would make a good movie. I hope they keep some of the stylistic stuff like moving between panels, ripping through the pages etc.

JRCarter wrote:

About damn time: Academy apologizes to Native American woman who declined Brando’s Oscar

This is a little bit sketchy, though.

It wasn’t necessarily the academy that abused Littlefeather, but actual people involved with the institution or at the ceremony. Did any of those people apologize? So, it is a kind of show apology to make the Academy look good, which is the main purpose of the academy – to market the business and provide a respectable veneer to a rotten industry.

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DavidM

No real footage or anything, just a release date of October 7th. I had heard about this a while ago but didn’t realise they had actually filmed it already. Interesting to see if they can get away from the extra low budget shite and closer to the original film.

This is the one Jamie Clayton is in?

Yeah, she’s the new Pinhead.

‘Beverly Hills Cop’ Sequel Adds Joseph Gordon-Levitt & Taylour Paige; Netflix Pic Starring Eddie Murphy Gets New Title