Dance your cares away...from Halo

The Fraggles are coming. hooray! Recently I picked up Fraggle Rock season 1 on dvd, and have been really loving it. The Fraggles we're always my favorite muppets for some reason. Anyways, as I mentioned in an earlier post there have been some rumblings about a Fraggle Rock film in the works. Well, it looks like things are actually progressing well on the Fraggle movie. They've got a writer on it now, and you'll never guess who it is.... Ahamet Zappa. Yup, according to AICN, Frank Zappa's son is writing/developing the film for the Henson company. He's only written one other film which has yet to get made but has a great title, The Monstrous Memoirs of a Mighty McFearless. While I have no clue about Ahmet's writing ability, I do know that the Fraggles are pretty tripped out as a concept, and if the Zappa family is anything its weird, so the combo could be a good match. I'm sure the Henson family knows what they're doing giving it to him too, hopefully this thing comes together, I know I for one would love it if there was a Fraggle resurgence.

In more troubling film news today Variety is reporting that Fox and Universal, who we're set to co-finance the film, has pulled out of the Halo film over financial disputes. While the studios are claiming that they've pulled their support because the budget looks to potentially be ballooning from $135 mil to upwards of $200 mil, the word on the street is that the move has more to do with Microsoft's $5 mil upfront payday, and their 10% cut of the gross. Basically this sucks. I really want this film to get made. Hell, I think everyone wants this film to get made. And with Peter Jackson producing I honestly think it will make bank. So why are the film studios being such idiots?! They need to get over themselves. Even if Halo did as well as King Kong it would still be worthwhile, especially when you factor in the tie in video game MS is developing. Granted I'm not sure why you need that big a budget, but as I don't know all of the particulars of the story having not played the games, I would leave it up to Jackson and co to make that call. Apparently Weta, Jackson, and director Blomkamp are all still involved, and hopefully we'll get some word on another studio stepping up to the plate soon. It would be really sad to see this project die.

In somewhat more immediate film news, the animated Hellboy movie Sword of Storms is going to be airing on Cartoon Network, on their Toonami programming block, on October 28th, so don't forget to set your Tivos; should be great.

gotta fly, later all.

Bloggy McBlogsalot

Am I late with the blog? ummmm... nope.

Is there supposed to be some kind of blog-ligation here? I don't think so. Actually I'm really usually way to busy to blog over the weekends. So really, I'm sorry but you'll just have to deal with it.... that incidentally, is for the one person out there clamoring for more nuggets of internet gold to fall out of my brain and onto your screen.

I don't really have too much to say now, you know... Its Monday. And while there are a bunch of small things I could say, I'll probably forget them all once I try to put it down...

Lets see, I did just sign up for The local Race for the Cure which you are all more than welcome to sponsor me in. That should be fun. Its only 5km, but I enjoy these "official" races. It's always a good adrenaline surge to run with lots of other people. Obviously it's a great cause too.

This past weekend Erica's had an old friend from Montreal in town which has been cool. Erica has extremely cool friends. Jen, that's the friend, is an animator on the tv show The Backyardigans, which I haven't actually watched but looks pretty cool. We also all went out this weekend a bunch. It seemed to be a real combination of drinking and then exercise. We went out for Friday night drinks as usual, first to Naan-n-Curry (yum!) and then to a local Irish pub, and it was all fun and games. I had a Boddington's Ale for I think the first time, and really liked it. I usually can't deal with super creamy beers cause they are so dark and heavy, but this was great. Anyhow, then we went first thing on Saturday morning for a 10km run. It's a pretty good run, that me and Olivia have been doing off and on for a few weeks now, and this time Jen decided to join us, which was great. It's nice to finally have someone who I can run with, even if I still have to hold back a bit to keep with Olivia. On Saturday night we went out to Film Night in the Park, although this time it was actually in the square, and watched Hitchcock's The Birds while drinking cheap wine. It was fun, although I don't really think The Birds is one of Hitchcock's best films. My top 3 would probably run: Strangers on a Train, then The Man Who Knew Too Much, and finally Lifeboat. On Sunday it was back to exercising when Erica, Olivia, Jen and I walked a whopping 8.26 miles (I mapquested it) from the ferry building in downtown over the Golden Gate bridge to Saulsilito. A nice walk but I was pretty tired out. Then we had a really good pot-luk over at our house and played some strange (but fun) French board game that I can't remember the name of.... So as you can see, busy weekend. Oh and I'm a bit lost as to when... maybe it was Saturday during the day, but we drove down to Mountain View and saw our friends Miriam and Florian who just had a baby girl on Tuesday. I honestly don't think I've ever even seen, and I know I've never held a baby that young before. She was only 5 days old, and extremely cute. I have to think that just being alive at that point is pretty challenging. She slept the entire time we were there. :)

I did manage to pick up a cool new dvd this weekend. Since I won the Best Form award at last weeks bowling with my work I had a $25 gift card for Target, and I picked up Fraggle Rock the complete 1st season! I haven't watched it yet but man do I love the fraggles. They we're seriously my favorite incarnation of the muppets. On the back of the box it says that Jim Henson envisioned the show as television that could bring about world peace. I think that's really sweet.

Ok, I know that I don't really have anything of interest to say today... that's why I'm not going to let myself feel obligated to blog all the time. I'll do it often enough, but I definitely couldn't handle the pressure of "having" to blog. Besides, where's the fun in that.

TTYL

Comic Con Roundup pt2

A couple more things I've gleaned from reading about comic con that I thought I should share with you. Although admittedly this post might not be that interesting as I've already shared what I consider to be the most important info. So let's just see what else is there...

Well Daniel Craig confirmed that he's down for another James Bond film. That'll make number 22 in the franchise. I hope the new one's good, but I have some serious reservations...

Bryan Singer is still committed to a 2009 Superman returns sequel, and says the villain will be an alien. My vote goes to Brainiac, and NOT Doomsday. And if the rumblings are right it looks like Brainiac is the more likely candidate.

Guillermo Del Toro is looking for a home for Hellboy 2, apparently the move from Sony to Paramount is not locked down. And although the script is done and has creator Mike Mignola's approval they're still shopping it around.

Steve Sansweet head of Lucasfilm's Fan Relations said that the Star Wars Clone Wars animated series... the new animated series, not the ultra cool one from Gendy Tartakovsky, will hit the airwaves sometime in 2008, and suggested that the long promised live action series should be good to go by 2010... So friggin long with everything Star Wars.

I have to tell you The Henson company is one of the most interesting groups I've ever really heard of. I mean they do sooo much, and a lot of it is super cool, and even more of it you'll never hear of. At their panel at comic con they had Lisa Henson alongside the likes of Gendy Tartakovsky talking about his upcoming Film, The Power of the Dark Crystal (IMDB). Yes that's right, if you haven't heard of it yet, you have now. They're doing a sequel to The Dark Crystal. Check out the teaser poster to the left. Although it follows some of the same characters its really just another story set in the same universe as the first film. They also talked about something that sounds totally hilarious: Pupper Up! Jim Henson's Puppet Improv! - For Adults Only. Because really, adult puppet humor is awesome. Oh and they mentioned in passing that they are a long way off, but still starting to develop a Fraggle Rock movie!


A picture of Topher Grace as Eddie Brock aka Venom from Spider-Man 3 hit the web too I really can stand the pic though so I'm not going to post it here. You can find it at the Official site HERE. Just click on Enter - Desktop - Wallpaper (#2 I think). I'm honestly expecting Venom to look good, but I just feel that specific picture is very ugly and shouldn't be used for promotion.

Have you guys heard about this Hot Fuzz movie yet? It's the same guys who brought us Shaun of the Dead and centers around two fairly inept policemen. I suspect it will be hilarious, as really everything with Simon Pegg should be. I'll have to check out the vidcast they've been doing on it. Try to learn more... read more on Comingsson.net HERE.

Oh here's one more tidbit for you, the X-Men 3 DVD will have a whopping 21 deleted scenes and 3 alternate endings!

Man there's really a lot more but that's all I think I'm going to get into here. Most of the other things I read online were more about people's impressions of panels, etc. There's more and more film news at the cons every year. I guess that's just how it goes. Next year I definitely plan to attend. If you're still interested go check out Ain't it Cool News, or Latino Review, or of course Superhero Hype!. I wasn't very impressed with CHUD. But hey, you can't win 'em all. And while I haven't listened yet, I expect the coverage of especially the comic book side of things to be up to the usual standards of excellence from the Comic Geek Speak podcast guys.

That's definitely all from me for now. I hope everyone else had a good weekend. Later :)