Toy Story 3: New Character Revealed

The latest addition to the Toy Story 3 cast is called Sparks. You can meet him right here.
You know the drill by now. Disney is drip-feeding images to the world of the cast of new characters in its upcoming Toy Story 3, and the latest has made its appearance. So meet Sparks, the latest addition to the cast. As with all of the other toys in the film, he comes with an official description, too. And here it is:

Sparks will fly - literally - during electrifying playtimes with your new robot friend Sparks! This retro-inspired toy has flashing red LED eyes and a blaster cavity that actually spits out real sparks when he’s rolled along on his sturdy rubber wheels. Sparks also sports telescoping arms with working pincers, and an elevator action that raises his entire body to new heights. Sparking action completely child-safe. Requires two AA batteries (not included).

No doubt another character will turn up in a week or so. And if you want to read the early reactions to the cut of the film that was screened at ShoWest yesterday, then click here…

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Who Will Direct ‘Twilight: Breaking Dawn’?

Who’s going to be calling the shots for Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart on the final Twilight movies?
Whether you’re a fan of the Harry Potter franchise or not, you’d still have to concede that the films really improved once Warner Bros started taking a few gambles with its directors. After the first two workmanlike movies at the hands of Chris Columbus, the appointment of Alfonso Cuaron for Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban can surely be classed as something of a masterstroke.

Is Summit Entertainment now having similar thoughts with its Twilight franchise, though, we wonder? To be fair, the Twilight movies have attracted directors who, in some cases, you wouldn’t necessarily have placed immediately with the material. Catherine Hardwicke, Chris Weitz and David Slade have been the names calling the shots on the films to date, but it looks as if Summit Entertainment may have its sights set - with no disrespect intended to those concerned (not least because we loved Hardwicke’s Thirteen) -  a little higher in terms of the Hollywood grapevine.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Summit has been trying to attract three particular directors to helm the final two films that Twilight: Breaking Dawn is being broken down into. And those names? Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, Milk, lots of other cool stuff), Bill Condon (Dreamgirls, and the wonderful Gods And Monsters) and Sofia Coppola (Lost In Translation).

It’s early days, granted, and Entertainment Weekly notes that scriptwriter Melissa Rosenberg will be delivering an outline to potential directors in the next week or two. Our gut feeling, if they want to reach out to a new audience, is to let someone like Tarantino do it. But perhaps that’s why we don’t run Summit Entertainment.

We’ll keep you posted, but in the meantime, here’s the Entertainment Weekly piece.

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The Hobbit Begins Shooting In June

The Peter Jackson-produced, Guillermo del Toro-directed two-film adaptation of The Hobbit will begin shooting in June.

 

This according to actor Ian McKellen, who is returning as Gandalf. He wrote the following on his official website:

THE HOBBIT’s, two films, start shooting in New Zealand in June. Filming will take over a year. Casting in Los Angeles, New York City and London has started. The script too proceeds. The first draft is crammed with old and new friends, again on a quest in Middle Earth. The director Guillermo del Toro is now living in Wellington, close to the Jacksons’ and the studio in Miramar.

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Temuera Morrison Recruited For Role In ‘The Green Lantern’

New Zealand seems to be the place to recruit men and women for your fantasy or sci-fi epics. Martin Campbell visited Kiwi country to round out The Green Lantern, according to THR’s Heat Vision, and Temuera Morrison and Taika Waititi have joined the cast in minor roles.

Morrison, probably best known to American audiences as Jango "Father of Boba" Fett, will be playing Abin Sur. Abin Sur is a member of the Lantern Corps, and crashlands on Earth. In his dying moments, he searches for a worthy soul to be his replacement and wield the ring. The Ring chooses the young and cocky Hal Jordan as the successor. Obviously it’s not a huge role this time around, but there’s a possibility Abin Sur could return for sequels as the comics have him popping back to assist Jordan in various ghostly ways. It should also be interesting to see how they choose to portray the bald and red-skinned Abin Sur. Heat Vision is silent as to whether it will be motion capture or the old-fashioned technique known as "make-up."

Waititi’s part is a lot less mythological, as he’s merely playing "the best friend" of Jordan. I’m going to make a semi-educated guess and declare that he’s playing Tom Kalmaku. Tom was an Alaskan Inuit, and given a rather racist nickname by Jordan’s fellow pilots. Other than that wince-worthy moment, he’s a pretty neat character as he’s one of the only people in Jordan’s life who knows of his Green Lantern gig. He’s a good wingman. And who knows? Maybe we will see Waititi become one of the New Guardians in this age of crossover movies. Filming begins this week, so begin the countdown to costume photos!

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Marvel Digital Comics - Free Mondays (3/15/2010)

Welcome to FREE Mondays! Each week we focus on all of the newly digitized books you can read for FREE inside the greatest collection of Marvel comics available online: Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited! Plus, we’ll let you know what’s coming up next week for FREE, too! With each book, not only are you getting a free peek inside Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited, but each free Digital Comic either gives you a look at a book featured in a recent collection or a comic that’s in stores now.

How would you like to have five free digital comics to help get you through the school and work week? Here ya go!

SPIDER-MAN: LEGEND OF THE SPIDER CLAN #1
SPIDER-MAN: LEGEND OF THE SPIDER CLAN #2
SPIDER-MAN: LEGEND OF THE SPIDER CLAN #3
SPIDER-MAN: LEGEND OF THE SPIDER CLAN #4
SPIDER-MAN: LEGEND OF THE SPIDER CLAN #5

Find out what next week’s five free digital comics will be below!

ULTIMATE X-MEN #63
ULTIMATE X-MEN #67
ULTIMATE X-MEN #68
ULTIMATE X-MEN #69
ULTIMATE X-MEN #70

Will Battlestar Galactica Online Work As A Browser-Based MMO?

Hey, look, a Battlestar Galactica MMO!

Leading [MMO publisher Bigpoint's] product slate for 2010 will be Battlestar Galactica Online, a tactical space combat and adventure MMOG based upon Syfy’s Battlestar Galactica series. The game, inspired by one of the most popular science fiction series in television history, will launch worldwide exclusively this fall on Syfy.com for a 30 day period. The Unity co-developed MMOG will offer state of the art graphics that can be played directly in an Internet browser.

I’m allergic to the word “browser” appearing anywhere in the same paragraph as “MMO” or even “game”, but that’s usually because it indicates some cutesy free-to-play thing that’s big in Korea, or else a social gaming pyramid scheme.

Fortunately, this doesn’t seem to be case with Battlestar Galactica Online. The game is being developed by a Norwegian studio called Artplant that, as near as I can tell, isn’t yet guilty of any particularly bad online games. In fact, checking their website, they don’t seem to be guilty of many games at all. But they seem to have the right idea. Read more

Comics As ‘Top-Level’ Category For New iPad

The new bookstore for the iPad (see “Is iPad a Gamechanger?”) will include comics and graphic novels as one of 20 “top-level” categories, according to the blog on AppSlice, a new tool for browsing and finding apps. Manga will be included as a sub-category within the comics and graphic novel category, along with others. The 20 top-level categories will include around 150 sub-categories over-all.

This represents a significant improvement in the merchandising of digital comics as compared to the current sales through Apple’s app store, which will make comics easier to find for readers using the new device.

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2-Minute Sneak Peek At New ‘Predators’ Movie

Robert Rodriguez premiered footage from Nimród Antal’s Predators at SXSW on Friday, and Fox has put the put the 2-minute sneak preview online. Watch it now on the official Predators movie website, or embedded after the jump. Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.

 

Official Plot Synopsis: Royce, a mercenary who reluctantly leads a group of elite warriors who come to realize they’ve been brought together on an alien planet… as prey. With the exception of a disgraced physician, they are all cold-blooded killers mercenaries, Yakuza, convicts, death squad members human “predators” that are now being systemically hunted and eliminated by a new breed of alien Predators.

Coming to theaters on July 7th, 2010

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Ed Norton Says ‘Hulk’ Sequel Not Happening

We interviewed Edward Norton at SXSW for the Tim Blake Nelson directed Leaves of Grass, in which he plays straight-laced philosophy professor Bill, and then his redneck, pot growing twin brother Brady. It’s a great movie, and Brady deserve to stand alongside lovable stoners like Jeff Lebowski and Spiccoli. Look for a review later.

Anyhow, you can read the full interview with Norton and Tim Blake Nelson soon, but in the meantime, he did give us a nugget of info on The Incredible Hulk sequel, which he and Tim Blake Nelson were both attached to. As in, is it happening?

"I don’t think so. I think it has got more to do with what Marvel is doing. I get the sense they have this grand vision of unspooling a lot of their characters and then starting to put them together. I think they can only do so many at a time. Obviously, they are doing Iron Man 2 and then getting some of the new ones out."

Which isn’t great news, considering how much I enjoyed The Incredible Hulk. How are they going to make an Avengers movie without the Hulk? Me smash.

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Kindle For iPhone Now Available In 60+ Countries

You’re probably wondering what took Amazon so long. After all, the Kindle PC Reader and the international Kindle both came out in October. But it’s not Amazon’s fault. The problem is with Apple, and how Apple allows apps to be made and distributed for the iPhone. With most any other OS (Windows, Linux, Maemo, Symbian, Android, Windows Mobile, DOS*), the reader software would be available everywhere you could download the day it’s released. Not so with Apple.

The funny part about this announcement is that the app has been accessible since forever. All you needed to do to get it was set up an App Store account with a US address.

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