Posted 6/16/11 12:21 pm EST by Charles Webb in Animation, Anime, Announcements, TV
North American anime publisher Nozomi has announced that they're releasing both seasons of the anime adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma in a limited edition set this September. The series, Emma: A Victorian Romance is of course based on the source novel which was turned into a 10-volume manga by Kaoru Mori, which was published here in the U.S. through the defunct CMX. The 24-episode ran in two halves, with its first season in the Spring of 2005 followed by the second season in the Spring of 2007.
Posted 6/15/11 2:49 pm EST by Charles Webb in Announcements, Cartoon Network, Movies
On the heels of the recent announcement that the popular Cartoon Network series Ben 10 would be the unlikely recipient of an international game show spin-off, CN is now dropping news that a feature film will be coming from producer Joel Silver's (The Matrix, Assassins) Dark Castle Entertainment.
Dark Castle is an interesting choice for the movie. They make sense given that they work directly with Warner Brothers on the regular. At the same time, it's a little off-course for the kind of productions they're responsible for, namely the kind of "experience" horror films popularized by their namesake, the legendary William Castle. Dark Castle is the company that brought you Gothika, Thirteen Ghosts, The House on Haunted Hill (it was fun, dangit!), and more recently, the criminally overlooked Splice. However, a quick look at their IMDB page reminds me that recently they've mixed it up with Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla and the Losers big screen adaptation. Read More...
Posted 6/15/11 12:34 pm EST by Charles Webb in Animation, Anime, Announcements
FUNimation has announced that they've acquired the rights to distribute the sci-fi romantic anime, We Without Wings - Under the Innocent Sky. The press release explains that the show is about "a group of young people whose seemingly unconnected lives may be linked in an alternate world," giving off a distinct Lain vibe without all of the oppressive pre-millennial tension that series involved. The series, which began airing in April in Japan, will begin streaming through the FUNimation video page beginning at 12:00 PM CDT on June 24th and will be released on DVD and Blu Ray sometime next year. The series comes from Animation Studio Nomad, who have been responsible in the past for Rozen Maiden, Chocotto Sitter, and Sola. Read More...
Posted 6/14/11 5:35 pm EST by Charles Webb in Announcements, Movies
FUNimation Entertainment has picked up the sequel to director Takashi Miike's (Yatterman, The Great Yokai War) Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City. If you didn't guess, this is a sequel to Zebraman, the 2004 film starring frequent Miike collaborator Shô Aikawa (Dead or Alive, Gozu). That film involved a failed teacher and family man who adopts the unlikely titular alter ego based on a failed TV series.
When noting other titles in the director's filmography, the bright, colorful, and family-friendly Yatterman and The Great Yokai War were deliberate choices. Like those films, in a lot of ways, Zebraman is a departure from the usual style with with Miike is typically associated, actually feeling more like a family film. Zebraman in particular, is about finding your confidence (and your own way in the world) in spite of all of the obstacles in front of you--it's the director at his most sentimental, but in the case of the first film, it worked.
Posted 6/14/11 12:38 pm EST by Charles Webb in Announcements, TV
Man, when you Google "American Gods" you get all kinds of fan-casting for Neil Gaiman's novel, which actually celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. Adventures in Google aside, The Hollywood Reporter had a chat with Tom Hanks' producing partner (under his Playtone Company banner), Gary Goetzman, who dropped some intriguing tidbits about the upcoming American Gods series which will be landing on HBO sometime in 2013 or beyond. Read More...
Posted 6/13/11 5:51 pm EST by Charles Webb in Announcements, Comic Books, DC Comics
Over the weekend, DC updated the slate of new titles launching in the wake of the big September reboot, this time focusing on the Super-Family of titles. Besides the Bat-family books, this was the lineup in which I was most interested in, given how much weight these two characters carry in the DCU.
So what does DC have in store for arguably its most well-known character?
Posted 6/13/11 3:52 pm EST by Charles Webb in Announcements, Comic Books, Marvel
This November, Marvel will be putting a second Spider-Man ongoing on the shelves with the launch of Avenging Spider-Man #1, with art by former Spider-Man braintrust writer Zeb Wells and former X-Men artist Joe Madureira. The series will attempt to be a bridge between Spidey's Avengers adventures as well as his day-to-day life. According to editor Stephen Wacker, it won't be tied directly into the ongoing plots occurring in Brian Michael Bendis' Avengers titles, but will instead be a chance to tells stories of Spider-Man the Avenger, teaming up with members of his team.
Posted 6/10/11 4:01 pm EST by Charles Webb in Announcements, Comic Books, DC Comics
Or as it should be otherwise referred to: "DC's totes serious about giving Wildstorm characters a go in the DCU."
I actually have a lot of love for some of the Wildstorm properties under all-star creators like Morrison, Millar (I enjoyed his work there), Brubaker, Ellis, Ennis, Simone, and on and on. But after a series of relaunches and reboots over the past 5 years, readers made it pretty clear they weren't interested in the Wildstorm universe any longer, or at least books under those titles. I can't help but respect the guts in going back to the well like this, but I just don't think the names or concepts behind Stormwatch carry the cachet they used to, especially when they were essentially responses to the JLA, a team which now inhabits the same universe. I think Stormwatch is essentially a good core concept, but giving them their own title feels like a bit of unintentional oversaturation. Read More...
Posted 6/10/11 1:00 pm EST by Charles Webb in Announcements, Comic Books, Marvel
It looks like the biggest casualty to come out of Marvel's upcoming Jason Aaron-penned event "Schism" will be Uncanny X-Men, which will be cancelled with October's issue #544, written by Kieron Gillen with art by Greg Land. It looks like the beef between Cyclops and Wolverine will be terrible enough to rip apart the very structure of Marvel's publication schedule.
Or maybe it's yet another frightening unintended consequence of Flashpoint.
Posted 6/10/11 9:45 am EST by Charles Webb in Animation, Announcements, Movies
After 17 years, 10 games (including spin-offs), a DTV animated movie, a live-action movie that's not really worth thinking about, is it possible venerable fighting game franchise Tekken might get a big-screen adaptation worth being a little excited about? Well, you can find out for yourself on July 26th, when the CG movie Tekken: Blood Vengeance is screened in theaters throughout the U.S.--in 3D, no less--in a one-night only engagement. After that, the movie will be available as part of a special PS3-Exclusive bundle which will include a Blu Ray of the movie as well as a copy of Tekken Tag Tournament HD.
The Tekken fiction is... complicated and a little weird. The title itself refers to the "Iron Fist Tournament" thrown every few years by wealthy businessman Heiachi Mishima, a bald industrialist with deadly fists and a penchant for throwing family members into volcanoes. In their broadest strokes, the story is an inter-generational struggle between Heihachi, his son Kazuya (dead via volcano, resurrected via super science), and his son, Jin, who is the inheritor of the "Devil Gene," a power which Heihachi covets. The stories of the other fighters crisscross the main plot, dragging in cybernetic ninja bandits, Hong Kong cops, zombie mercenaries, kung fu fighting chefs with big debts, and luchadores out for vengeance. Read More...
Posted 6/9/11 2:13 pm EST by Charles Webb in Animation, Anime, Announcements, Marvel, TV
A little secret about me: I love Blade as a character, but am almost exclusively only familiar with him from the three feature films (two great, one terrible), and his brief appearance in Paul Cornell's Captain Britain and MI:6. So my curiosity is piqued a bit when I remember that there's a Blade anime coming from Madhouse Studios, the company behind TV and feature productions as diverse as Ninja Scroll and Paprika. It's joining Wolverine, Iron Man, and X-Men in the quartet of Marvel anime properties produced for and airing on Japan's Aniplex network, and getting a stateside release on G4TV.
I had a chance to see some footage of Wolverine and Iron Man at WonderCon and I can say that the animation of each--done in the fluid, long-limbed style of many of Madhouse's works--looks pretty good but I didn't see enough to have any sort of opinion of the story.
You can check out the teaser-ish trailer for Blade below.
Blade will air July 1st on Animax and will be coming to G4 later this year.
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Posted 6/9/11 11:40 am EST by Charles Webb in Animation, Anime, Announcements, TV
This one's a little scant on details, but here goes: according to Newtype magazine, anime director Tetsur? Araki (Death Note, Black Lagoon, Highschool of the Dead) is working on a new series for studio Production I.G. (Library War, Eden of the East) with character designs by the artist simply known as Redjuice, who provides illustrations for the Japanese band Supercell with that band's frontman, Ryo, providing music for the series.
Posted 6/9/11 10:38 am EST by Charles Webb in Announcements, Comic Books, DC Comics
A day couldn't pass by with a new round of post-Flashpoint announcements from DC. This time, the teen characters of the DCU get their time in the spotlight, with revamps of Teen Titans, Hawk & Dove, Legion (it wouldn't be a relaunch without a new Legion), and Static Shock.
An overall note based on a thought that's still kind of taking shape in my head about the direction of some of the titles in the relaunch: along with the character redesigns -- making their threads more uniform-like and less like costumes -- and the tone of the some of the announcements (the Titans facing off against teen-kidnapping/killing organizations, John Constantine joining a sort of A-Team of magic) there's a sort of militarist vibe from the whole thing. It's not consistent, and I could very easily be tugging at an imaginary thread here. But if that is the case, it really reshapes the character of the DCU into something a little more hard-edged, for good or bad.
Anyway, on to the new books! Read More...
Posted 6/8/11 11:05 am EST by Charles Webb in Announcements, Comic Books, DC Comics
Over on the Source Blog, DC keeps pumping out the announcements of new titles. The latest concerns the supernatural corner of the DCU, which is getting a major push, something that hasn't been done since 2005 during Infinite Crisis and the couple of titles that spun out of Day of Vengeance.
A lot of the announcements seem like Vertigo-lite, pulling characters like John Constantine, Swamp Thing, and Animal Man away from their familiar, mature readers milieu. The big question will be what kind of tone/rating will DC be going for here (in fact, I'm wondering that about the line as a whole with regards to finally reaching the long-promised move towards "fun" that Dan Didio promised in advance of Brightest Day).
The award for the most "what the what" announcement goes to Voodoo, which brings Jim Lee's WildC.A.T.s/Wildstorm character into the DCU. Could it follow that the likes of Stormwatch, the Authority, and other titles/characters that were mothballed in the shuttering of Wildstorm could be getting another go?
Here are the newly-announced titles and their creative teams.
DC Comics embraces its dark side. On the 40th anniversary of the character’s creation, the New York Times bestselling writer of AMERICAN VAMPIRE, Scott Snyder, teams up with Yannick Paquette (BATMAN, INCORPORATED) to bring horror back to the DC Universe in SWAMP THING #1. For years, one man served against his will as the avatar of nature. And while he may have been freed of the monster, he’s about to learn the monster will never truly let go of him.
It's a strong-start so far, with Snyder--who's a proven horror commodity with his American Vampire--taking the helm on a more monster movie-version of Swamp Thing. I've always associated the character with the more mystical horror under Alan Moore, but this would effectively be a return to the character's roots, so to speak. And I really like Yanick Paquette's work, but I wonder how his style--which I associate with bright, lively action--will fit with what's sure to be the moodiness of a Swamp Thing title. Read More...
Posted 6/7/11 5:23 pm EST by Charles Webb in Announcements, Comic Books, Marvel
Over on the official site, Marvel has announced one of the big, strange changes tied into Fear Itself: "the Unstoppable Colossus" in Uncanny X-Men #543, written by Kieron Gillen with art by Greg Land.
Wait, "Unstoppable Colussus?"
Apparently, to stop a the rampaging Juggernaut, who recently picked up one of The Serpent's hammers in Fear Itself #2, longtime X-Man, Colossus takes on the Cain Marko's former mantle as the bearer of the Cyttorak gem. According to writer Kieron Gillen, big-time nice guy Piotr Rasputin will be making a deal with the demon Cyttorak in order to gain the power necessary to save the his fellow X-Men and the rest of San Francisco from a rampaging Cain Marko, now called The Breaker of Stone. Read More...
