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Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Counting the Days Backwards

The nerd news has been piling up here at home, so it's time to unload it!

First, the news of Wednesday. On the left, you see the movie poster for Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which hits theatres on August 15.

For those who haven't heard, Star Wars: The Clone Wars is George Lucas's latest attempt to keep the Star Wars universe going. Set between Episode II and Episode III, it's going to show us the epic Clone Wars that we all hoped would wind up becoming an actual film in the prequel trilogy. It's fully CGI, it's the first TV show from Lucasfilm's animation division, it premieres on the Cartoon Network this fall.

And George Lucas decided to edit the first three episodes together into a film and put it into theatres.

The trailer is going to be unveiled tomorrow night on various Time-Warner cable stations. Rumor has it it'll be shown theatrically in front of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

That's one of the weird things. This is going to be put into theatres by Warner Brothers, meaning it'll be the first Star Wars film that doesn't open with the 20th Century Fox fanfare.


The news of Tuesday that I forgot to share.

Spaced: The Complete Series is finally coming to North American DVD!

Spaced is one of those TV shows that I've been dying to check out. I have friends who are bigger geeks than me who have seen it, and have told me, quite simply, "It's a TV show made by geeks for geeks."

According to Wikipedia, the show is about Tim and Daisy, two 20-somethings who have to pretend to be married in order to get an apartment. Sounds nice and sitcomy, right? Well, what makes this so geek-tastic is that ALL the characters are geeks, so the pop culture references come fast and furious.

Plus, the creative team went on to make the very funny films Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

Besides getting all 14 episodes (I love how British comedies are short and to the point), you get these for bonus materials:

- Skip to the End: A feature length documentary about the making of the show.
- a 2007 reunion of the cast and crew
- bloopers
- deleted scenes
- the "Homage-o-meter," a pop-up counter that keeps track of all the pop culture references.

But that's not all! They got a whole pantheon of supergeeks to do running commentaries. Ladies and gentlemen, your supergeeks:

- Quentin Tarintino (no introduction needed)
- Kevin Smith (no introduction needed)
- Matt Stone (Trey Parker's significant other and co-genius behind South Park)
- Patton Oswalt (stand-up comic and the voice of Remy in Ratatouille. Ever hear his stand-up act? Half of it is about Star Wars)
- Bill Hader (Saturday Night Live cast member and star of Superbad)
- Diablo Cody (writer of Juno)

Oh, and of course, running commentaries from the original creators: Simon Pegg, Jessica Hynes, and Edgar Wright.

July 22 is when this hits stores, and it might become the second time I ever bought a TV show on DVD without having ever seen an episode. (The first time was Robot Chicken: Season 1 and that worked out pretty good.)




The news of Monday I forgot to share.

So, Iron Man made a buttload of money, so that means more Marvel Comics movies! On Monday, Marvel announced what they have planned for more movies based on their characters.

May 2010 - Iron Man 2.

July 2010 - Thor.
Thor is currently being headed up by Matthew Vaughn, the man who brought Neil Gaiman's Stardust to the big screen. Vaughn has already said that his take on Thor will be an epic fantasy film.

May 2011 - The First Avenger: Captain America
This was considered a longshot for Marvel characters. People are afraid that such an overtly patriotic hero would be a "tough sell" overseas, given the current global political climate. I don't care, I'm a canuck, and I think the Cap would kick-ass on screen.

July 2011 - The Avengers
Marvel's supergroup gets a movie! Zak Penn, who wrote X-Men 2 & 3, is hammering out a script. No director yet.

Let's rock!

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