The Star has learned exclusively that the voice cast of Futurama has just signed a new contract with Fox after weeks of intense salary negotiations.
As late as last week, the network was threatening to replace the original voices of Matt Groening's cult-hit cartoon, to the point of actually announcing a casting call for voice actors to replace them.
The compromise agreement, with the studio paying more and the actors accepting less, comes after the announcement of a 26-episode pick-up here by Comedy Central. Futurama also airs internationally in syndication, has produced four bestselling straight-to-DVD movies (later cut into episodes) and an upcoming feature film.
Wait... Upcoming feature film? That's the first I've heard of any such thing. I did a little Googling and can't find any film talk beyond the DVDs that were already released. I'm guessing the film reference is an error, but I'll keep my eyes peeled for more news just in case.
A few months back Scott's brother (and producing partner) Tony Scott told Collider.com that an Alien prequel was going ahead with commercial director(and first-time feature director) Carl Rinsch at the helm and original Alien director Ridley Scott producing. That led to a rather awkward and very public stalemate between Ridley Scott and Fox, with reports that Fox wasn't interested in greenlighting the film unless Scott himself directed it. It looks like the studio finally won out.
My feelings are mixed about this one. On the one hand, Scott's one of the most talented and influential directors the sci-fi genre has ever had, and while he's enjoyed success since leaving the genre I tend to doubt that 30 years from now anybody will be studying American Gangster in college the way they study Alien and Blade Runner today. I think the original Alien was superb, and it's been all downhill from there. These days Alien's Xenomorphs have slipped into has-been hell, co-starring with Predators in a series of action pictures that nobody gives much of a damn about. If anybody can rescue the Alien franchise, Scott's the man. An Alien prequel could be great for the Aliens, and great for Scott as well.
All that being said, it sounds like Scott is returning to the franchise with some reluctance. He wanted somebody else to direct the film, and he's been pressured into doing it himself. That doesn't sound like he's gonna be on his A-game. So, we're getting Scott arguably a few decades past his prime, returning to the Alien franchise for less than ideal reasons.
Still, anything Scott does is gonna beat the hell out of Alien vs. Predator 4.
You '80s babies will never forget Haysi Fantayzee, the bizarre UK duo who gave us such catchy new wave hits as John Wayne is Big Leggy and Shiny Shiny. If you've somehow missed out on the singular experience that is Shiny Shiny, it's time to correct that oversight:
You're welcome.
Kate Garner and Jeremiah Healy had one of the weirdest looks in pop music history. They were like a Donnie and Marie from some other planet, with both sporting giant, floppy top hats, pounds of knotty dreadlocks and extreme makeup designed to make them look alike. Garner was a former model and sometime artist, and she was largely responsible for the pair's outrageous style: she turned Healy into a hillbilly drag queen scarecrow, while her own sexy clown outfits were usually designed to show off exactly as much skin as she could get away with. (As you saw in the Shiny Shiny video, she shared more butt with the world than you'd normally expect to see on Reagan-era, pre-Madonna TV.)
After the band broke up they both tried to make a go at solo music careers. Neither went very far, and Healy eventually became a successful club DJ in England while Garner moved to the US and became an in-demand celebrity photographer for clients including Vogue and People. But she's also developed an interesting artistic sideline, making collages featuring horrifying yet glamorous little creatures, mutant club kids fresh from a long night of partying in Hell's hot spots. If Shiny Shiny was too weird for you, a visit to Kategarner.org could prove deadly.
The first trailer is now online for The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson's stop-motion adaptation of the Roald Dahl story. The photos that were previously released made the characters look like stiff, creepy taxidermy exhibits, but they're actually surprisingly appealing in motion. The actual animation looks like it has a slightly crude quality, which I don't object to at all; the super-smooth movements of movies like Coraline are amazing, but the more stiff, jerky quality of older animation - as seen in the Ranking & Bass TV specials, for instance - can have a really charming quality, like watching a toy shop come to life.
(Given that George Clooney's little whistle-click deal is kind of annoying just in the trailer, I'm gonna predict it gets old real fast in the actual film.)
John Chambers was a masterful special effects makeup artist, best known for creating the ears of Mr. Spock on the original Star Trek series and for his groundbreaking work on the Planet of the Apes movies. But Chambers found other, stranger uses for his unique talents, far from Hollywood...
Chambers is probably the only person to have won an Academy Award and commendation for his work with the CIA. For years he secretly worked for the US government, creating Mission Impossible-style makeup jobs to transform agents so they could venture into hostile territory undetected. (He played a crucial role in the CIA plan that managed to sneak six hostages out of Iran in 1979.) He also designed lifelike prosthetics for soldiers who had been disfigured in combat, an accomplishment he reportedly regarded as the proudest of his entire career.
In 2001, Chambers died at the Motion Picture and Television Fund retirement home in Woodland Hills. He went to his grave denying he'd made the Bigfoot seen in the film, although two of his friends and proteges - makeup wizard Rick Baker and director John Landis - have said that Chambers created the suit. Baker later recanted, saying he no longer believed the rumor was true, but many other effects artists have gone on record saying they believe the suit was Chambers' work.
We don't know for sure that Chambers created Bigfoot. But we do know that Chambers had piles of monster suits in storage, and often quickly threw together furry monsters out of spare gorilla parts for TV shows like The Outer Limits and Lost in Space. He was also, by many accounts, quite a prankster.
And it's not like this would have been the first Bigfoot hoax he'd been a part of...
Got a tip for Monsters and Rockets? Want to contribute to the site?Send us an email.
Jericho is a show that simply won't die. After getting canceled once, returning to the air following massive fan efforts, and then finally ending after a shortened second season, it now looks the cult favorite post-apocalyptic series will come back one more time as a TV movie.
Speaking with SCI FI Wire, Jericho star Lennie James said that he learned about the TV movie last week at Comic-Con.
"While we were there, Karim [Zreik], one of the producers, said that the idea of a movie is still on the cards," James said. "They're just trying to come up with the two-hour story that's worth telling. So that's where they are at the moment. But it's still on the cards, and people are still interested."
James said he'd be thrilled to return for the movie. Originally from the UK, Jericho was James' breakout role in the US.
"Listen, I loved doing Jericho," he said. "I had a lot of fun on Jericho. I've made friends for life on Jericho. It was my introduction to not just American television, but to America. Jericho did me nothing but favors, so if they come up with a story that's strong and that justifies doing it, and they get it done in the way that I would hope it should be done, then, yeah, I'll be the first name on the list. If not, the second."
As a follow-up to our recent post about 3D projections on buildings, here's a video showing the 3D projection technology that was used to bring the lion statues of London's famous Trafalgar Square to life last December. Apparently there was a local legend that the stone lions would come to life if Big Ben ever chimed 13 times, so the Visit London campaign came up with the idea of bringing the lions to life for an evening and having them tell tourists about London's history.
I've never seen anything quit like this. It's a lengthy and thoughtful analysis of Kubrick's 2001, presented in the form of simple yet very effective flash animation. I don't agree with all of its conclusions - but then half the fun of 2001 is disagreeing about what it all means.
Here's a clip of John, Paul, George and Ringo back in their early mop-top days, starring in a TV performance of the Pyramus and Thisbe scene from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. It's from the 1964 TV show Around the Beatles, and it's absolutely unprofessional, raucous and juvenile, almost at the level of a summer camp production. But that probably would've been fine with Shakespeare, given that the scene is from a play-within-the-play and the actors are supposed to be inept amateurs. (Are my ears playing tricks on me, or could that really be the voice of a young Peter Cook heckling them from the audience?)
NEW BUCK ROGERS WEB SERIES: In Hayden Black's Comic-Con wrap-up, he dropped some interesting news... Apparently Erin Gray's daughter Sam is set to star as Wilma Deering in an upcoming Buck Rogers web series. (Erin Gray played Deering in the camp classic '70s TV series.) This is the first I'd heard of the web series, which is apparently being put together by the Star Trek: Phase II guys and is already slated to feature a regular role for Buck himself, Gil Gerard. (The gent they've got to play the young Buck Rogers actually has more of a Flash Gordon/young David Hyde Pierce thing goin' on.)
Black has also now posted this video of relentlessly charming Torchwood star John Barrowman talking about his own childhood sci-fi faves, and commiting to appear in a Cabonauts episode as his schedule permits. Here's hoping. Black's stuff is consistently funny, and the whole premise of a musical sci-fi comedy about space cabs is pretty irresistible. Throw Captain Jack into that mix, and this thing will be almost too much fun.
WILL THE TOLKIEN FAMILY HALT THE HOBBIT?: An interesting article by Andrew O'Hehir on Salon today, in which he ponders whether the Tolkien family's lawsuit will actually put a halt to Guillermo del Toro's upcoming films based on The Hobbit. His conclusion: probably not, but this could be an ugly fight.
BAMBER VISITS THE DOLLHOUSE: Jamie Bamber, fresh from his role as Lee Adama on Battlestar Galatica, will appear in the second season opener of Joss Whedon's troubled Dollhouse series. Dollhouse already features Bamber's Battlestar co-stars Tahmoh Penikett as a regular and Mark Sheppard in a recurring role.
JACKSON AT WORK ON KONG RIDE FOR UNIVERSAL: Speaking at Comic-Con last week, Peter Jackson revealed that he's at work on a new King Kong ride at Universal Studios to replace the one that was destroyed in the fire that overtook the theme park/studio a few years ago.
"This is going to be eight cameras," Jackson says, "eight images that project four on each side so that every person on this tourist tram can see this wraparound view of Skull Island. Each images is going to be 4K [resolution], it's going to be 3-D, everyone gets those glasses, it's going to be 60 frames per second [...] It's going to be tied into this simulator base where Kong fights these T-rexes, with you being in your Universal tram in the middle of this fight. You're getting buffeted around and you're sliding down towards a chasm, and Kong is thumping the hell out of the Tyrannosauruses as they're trying to grab tourists out of the trams."
HARRY POTTER BUILDING PROGRESS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD: Yesterland.com has a gallery of photos up showing the progress on the Hogwarts Castle that's being built at Walt Disney World for a 2010 opening. Mostly it's just signs, and a very, very big box.
Jim Hill has broken the news that a stunning exhibit of props from Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland re-imagining will soon be touring around the globe. The exhibit made its debut during Comic-Con, and Hill's site now has a gallery of truly stunning photos. Here, for instance, is a giant Alice in the show. That room's not a tiny diorama with an Alice figure in it; it's a full-size room, with a giant Alice.
Hill also offers up a few plot spoilers from the film, revealing some changes to the original story that are guaranteed to piss-off Alice purists in a big way.
It seems that in this version, the story builds to the grown Alice and the Mad Hatter taking up swords against the Jabberwock in what Disney is calling "the final battle for Wonderland." I'm not a total purist (I love Disney's 1951 Alice cartoon, for instance) and I'm willing to wait and see how Burton handles it, but I do suspect that ending the film with an epic battle is probably a mistake. It's hard enough to imagine Alice strapping on armor, a big battle simply doesn't suit her whimsical, dreamy nature... But it's dead wrong for the Mad Hatter, a totally nonsensical character who has always been more of an obstacle for Alice than an ally. The Cheshire Cat, the White Knight, even Humpty freakin' Dumpty I could maybe see fighting beside Alice. But the Mad Hatter would just smear jam on his shield or do something totally crazy like that, and then he'd wander off the field of battle and leave Alice all alone to face the Jaws That Bite and the Claws That Catch.
(Burton better get used to crabbing like this. If he thought he caught hell from the Planet of the Apes nerds, just wait until the Lewis Carroll geeks get get done with his ass.)
Dr. Seuss' 1971 environmentalist fable The Lorax is one of this beloved author's most deeply-felt works, and also one of his most controversial. (Yes, there are actually people out there who take issue with the book's message that chopping down all the trees and filling the seas with sludge is bad.)
Now the book is coming to the big screen as a CGI cartoon, with Horton Hears a Who veterans Chris Renaud, Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio co-directing and Paul and Daurio co-writing.
Like most of Seuss' work, The Lorax is a very short, clearly defined story. There's simply not enough plot there to support a two-hour movie, so the script will probably require the same kind of padding they used for Horton, with new plot threads and lots of shtick. But Horton at least had characters and situations that lent themselves to a little expansion. The Lorax features the narrator - an industrialist who remains unseen throughout the story - destroying the forest despite the repeated warnings of the Lorax, and that's really all the characters and plot you've got.
Seuss' work has suffered through some truly horrid adaptations in recent years. I thought The Grinch was just about as crappy as a movie could get, but then I saw a few minutes of the Mike Meyers version of The Cat In the Hat playing on the monitor in a Blockbuster, and it traumatized me so much that sometimes I still wake up in a cold sweat, muttering about Meyer's terrifying kitty-face.
Horton Hears a Who scored comparatively well on the suckometer, in the sense that it didn't make you want to run screaming at the movie screen with a big ax and keep hacking and chopping until you broke through to the parking lot. I'm going to cross my fingers and hope for the best for The Lorax. (Of course, given that Daurio and Paul's previous screenplay credits include something called Walter the Farting Dog, there is a very real risk that their Lorax script will actually be worse than Meyers' Cat In the Hat.)
The book was previously adapted into a faithful if no-frills TV special in 1972. You can watch it below.
The gorehounds at Bloody Disgusting caught up with Darren Lynn Bousman, director of the love-it-or-hate-it cult sensation Repo! The Genetic Opera, who said he's hopeful there will be a sequel.
"Terrance [Zdunich] and I are working on something, that if we are able to pull off, would be amazing," he said. "Let's just say that there is no way Repo is going away anytime soon. We have a lot in store, including new content. New music. And the hope is still there for a prequel. I can say that a bunch of new merchandise is now online - as well as action figures in the works!"
I can maybe see action figures. After all, the film's small but passionate cult following would snap up any merchandise in a hurry, and the film's grotesque characters would be naturals for toys. But my understanding is that Repo was a box-office disappointment even by indie movie standards, so a sequel is kind of hard to imagine at this point.
Got a tip for Monsters and Rockets? Want to contribute to the site?Send us an email.
We already knew there would be some familiar sci-fi faces appearing in The Cabonauts, the upcoming sci-fi comedy musical web series from Abigail's Teen Diary creator Hayden Black. Nichelle Nichols, Star Trek's original Uhura is a lock in the role of CJ, the ill-tempered CEO of the space taxi company, while other stars from Buffy and various Star Trek series will also appear.
But in a Comic-Con wrap-up post on The Cabonauts website, Black revealed a few more sci-fi stars who may be appearing. Later this week Black will post a clip of Torchwood star John Barrowman expressing his interest in the series (and wow, would he ever be perfect for this thing,) while Heroes' fantastically creepy puppetmaster David H Lawrence is already slated to appear as a gay space pirate. Black also mentioned a Lost star who could well be appearing. So, who could it be? My instincts say Hurley or Charlie, those guys are always down for some goofy fun. But who knows, maybe we'll see Ben Linus singing in the backseat of Black's space cab.
In the clip below, you can see Nichols introducing the show's trailer at the con.
Looking at really awesome action figures, I get the same feeling that I get, as a hetero dude, looking at very handsome men: I can appreciate why other people get so silly over them, and that's all fine and good, but I just have no desire to take one home for myself.
All that being said, this Michael Jackson Thriller toy has got me more than a little action figure-curious. (Click photos to enlargenize.) Not only do you get non-zombie Michael Jackson in that crazy '80s jacket (complete with creepy little smile,) but you also get a zombie Michael Jackson head, a torn and tattered crazy '80s jacket, and a whole bunch of tiny Michael Jackson hands. I can't imagine many circumstances where you would need a bunch of tiny Michael Jackson hands, but it's nice to know they're available in case of emergencies.
But, as zen teaches us, desire is never truly satisfied. Even when presented with such bounty, all I want is more! Where is the Jackson from the '50s monster movie in the Thriller video (you know, "I'm not like other guys...") with replaceable were-cat head? Where's the button on Jackson's back that makes his eyes light up yellow and activates a recording of Vincent Price's scary laugh?
See? This is how action figure collecting gets you. They seduce you with their sculpted, plastic bodies and hot boxes bursting with accessories, and the next thing you know you're spending all your money on these painted, 12-inch tramps who will never return your love.
This is far and away the silliest post I have ever written, and for that I do apologize. But now it's written and posted, and I'm afraid that's just something we're all going to have to accept.
Too broke to hire new models and fed up with the criticism that a man photographing female nudes was inherently degrading to women, photographer Terry Donovan decided to strip down and photograph himself duplicating the poses of his models. (When the resulting series was criticized on the grounds that Donovan had control over his own nude photos in a way that his models hadn't, he responded by letting one of his former models pose and photograph him.) Middle-aged, bald and a bit pudgy, Donovan makes for an unlikely glamor girl. His photos are funny, creepy, thought provoking, and - perhaps needless to say - very, very not safe for work.
Got a tip for Monsters and Rockets? Want to contribute to the site?Send us an email.
In my recent post about Debbie Harry and H.R. Giger's hilarious and peculiar music video collaborations Now I Know You Know and Backfired, I mistakenly posted Now I Know You Know twice and didn't post Backfired at all. You have my sincerest apologies. I've corrected the old post, and here's Backfired again below.
Got a tip for Monsters and Rockets? Want to contribute to the site?Send us an email.
In a new interview with Salon.com, The Mighty Boosh stars Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding are curiously iffy on the prospect of the previously announced film based on the series. Asked what the film would be about, the pair respond with what the site calls "vague, blank faces."
"I'm just trying to imagine what it could be," Barratt then told the site. "We always wanted to do a big epic, a Sinbad-type adventure. But then we went ahead and did it on the TV show. A big epic journey in a half-hour -- that's quite a stupid thing to try to pull off."
Hollywood just can't stop flogging King Kong's giant monkey corpse. The original film was so popular that it spawned a host of lesser sequels and remakes, including Son of Kong, King Kong Versus Godzilla, the painfully '70s Dino De Laurentiis version, a '60s animated TV series, and even a 1985 German oddity called King Kong's Faust - the title of which so intrigues me that I can scarcely force myself to finish writing this before I rush off to Netflix myself a copy. One of the Kong rip-offs, 1949's Mighty Joe Young, was so popular in its own right it merited a high-tech, high-concept '90s remake of its own. There have been movies about various overgrown critters on killing sprees, movies about giant bugs, giant lizards and even giant rabbits (Night of the Lepus, featuring an embarrassed-looking DeForest Kelley), but they all stand in the vast shadow cast by Kong.
But in all of the Kong remakes and sequels and parodies and rip-offs, I don't think that anybody has made a prequel - which is kind of amazing, really. Well, now Spirit Pictures is correcting that oversight, with an upcoming motion-capture picture based on the book Kong: King of Skull Island. Joe DeVito and Brad Strickland's novel looks at the early days of Skull Island, a time when young Kong had to battle for supremacy with other giant apes and more dinosaurs. Stop-motion master Ray Harryhausen previously tried to make a film based on the book, but the project bogged down.
But I'm really hooting and ooking in excitement over the news that Spirit is planning a film based on War Eagles, a legendary stillborn project dreamed up by King Kong creator Willis O'Brien. The story is a crazy mess that has vikings riding giant eagles and battling biplanes over 1930s New York, and with a premise like that there's pretty much no way for the film to not be awesome. I'd actually been planning a Neverwas post on the film, and it's an unexpected treat to watch this Neverwas become a Will-be.
During the filming of the classic 1984 rock documentary This is Spinal Tap, the band split up in the middle of a legendarily disastrous tour that at one point saw them being second-billed to a puppet show at a state fair. Asked if this was really the end for Spinal Tap, lead singer David St. Hubbins was characteristically philosophical.
"Well, I don't really think that the end can be assessed," he said, "as of itself as being the end because what does the end feel like? It's like saying when you try to extrapolate the end of the universe, you say, if the universe is indeed infinite, then how - what does that mean? How far is all the way, and then if it stops, what's stopping it, and what's behind what's stopping it? So, what's the end, you know, is my question to you."
Fortunately the band reunited soon after, and we never had to endure an infinite universe without Spinal Tap in it. In the 25 years since This is Spinal Tap was released, the band has earned their place in the rock pantheon. Now Long Beach's Phone Booth Gallery is honoring Spinal Tap with a fine art show. Is it clever, or stupid? Is it sexist, or sexy? One thing's for sure: this show goes to 11.
This clip, which was apparently part of the Where the Wild Things Are panel at Comic-Con, features Maurice Sendak talking at some length about Spike Jonze's upcoming film adaptation. It's clear that Sendak is not just satisfied with the movie, he's absolutely thrilled. (And Sendak is certainly no pushover in these matters.)
I suspect this is going to be a very special film.
HEROES SPOILERS APLENTY: Apparently the Heroes panel featured a whole pile of spoilers for the coming season. I say "apparently" because I'm hoping to remain unspoiled, and thus I didn't finish reading this story... Although I did get as far as the part about Claire-bear kissing her female college roommate.
LOST SPOILERS, TOO: I'm also trying to remain un-spoiled for Lost, but I couldn't resist reading this article. It seems the upcoming season will feature the return of many long-dead characters and will be set in an alternate reality where Hurley has his own friend chicken chain and Kate's attempt to kill her step-father accidentally led to the death of somebody else. The Lost panel also featured a lot of playful hijinks, with various cast members from the show making surprise appearances and taking part in little skits. (At one point Josh Holloway apparently showed up and tasered one of the producers... Something a lot of fans would probably like to do after some of the sadistic cliff-hangers those guys have put us through.)
DR. HORRIBLE SEQUEL SOUNDS INCREASINGLY INEVITABLE: As I've saidmany times here, I loved the original Dr. Horrible but really don't see a lot of potential in a sequel. Unfortunately it sounds like Joss Whedon is very close to moving ahead with the idea: ""I can't give you a date or any information at all because I'm me, but it's very much on our minds. We love it far too much to let it go."
WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE: According to Topless Robot the new season will show us more of the post-apocalyptic, 2019 wasteland from the straight-to-DVD episode Epitaph One, and regular Joss Whedon players Alexis Denisof, Summer Glau and Felicia Day will all have recurring roles.
NO DOCTOR WHO MOVIE... BUT SPOILERS GALORE: The folks at I09 spoke to David Tennant, who confirmed once again that a Doctor Who movie is absolutely not in development. He also confirmed that his final episodes will featured Timothy Dalton as a Time Lord, Donna Noble's grandfather Wilf, and John Simms as the Master. (They'll have to get tricky to explain that last one. Simms' version of the Master died, and while we've seen Time Lords regenerate into new incarnations many times, I don't think they've ever come back from the dead in the same body.)
Recently Fox announced that when Futurama returns with new episodes on Comedy Central, it will have an all-new voice cast. Many observers assumed this was just a PR stunt, or a sleazy move that Fox was pulling to try and scare the Futurama cast into accepting less money. Then there were some press announcements stating that the show's fate was going to be decided in front of a live audience during a Futurama panel at Comic-Con, and the whole thing started to sound like it had to be a joke.
Well, now the Futurama panel at Comic-Con has come and gone, and nobody's laughing. The Onion AV Club has the gory details:
The panel opened with a clip of Hypnotoad, speaking in an unfamiliar voice, telling the audience, “All is going well at Futurama. You will not notice that the voice cast is not here today.” Anyone hoping it was set up for a revelation that all actually was well with Futurama set themselves up for disappointment. (Matt) Groening issued an inspirational affirmation and made some vague remarks about FOX before a segue into a fake making-of-Futurama documentary. The central gag, that actress Lauren Tom is secretly being behind all aspects of the show’s production from script to ADR work landed with a thud.
Actually, that bit with Lauren Tom was a so-so extra on one of the Futurama movie DVDs. No wonder the audience was quiet; the bit itself wasn't great, a lot of people had probably seen it already, and it seems like kind of poor taste to show it when Tom could well be the only original cast member who didn't just get axed from the show.
Before the panel wrapped up, there were a few spoilers for upcoming episodes.
The topic of the voice cast was verboten during the fan Q&A session that followed, which featured some spoilers about upcoming episodes, including one involving an Amy/Bender marriage that sparks an anti-robosexual marriage movement and a push for something called Proposition Infinity. Cohen closed by asking the crowd, “Keep your fingers crossed. What’s going right now is business.” Clearly they wanted their actors back and put the blame for their absence elsewhere.
I really, really want to see some new Futurama. But the original cast is such an important part of the show, I think it could really suffer without them. Maybe you could get by without Katey Sagal. Maybe you could get by without John DiMaggio. But Billy West is the voice of Fry, Farnsworth, Zoidberg and Zapp Brannigan. The guy is half the cast!
Once in a great while, usually when it’s very late at night and you’ve been restlessly flipping around the more disreputable end of the TV dial, you come across a show of perfect, transcendent strangeness. It could be Dr. Gene Scott’s mix of fierce televangelism and dancing bimbos. Or Dr. Franklin Ruehl at his desk in outer space, discoursing on the Phantom Army of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Or some forgotten Spanish-language B-picture where fat guys in wrestling masks battle vampire babes. Or even (you lucky dog) your first Ed Wood movie. When you wake up the next morning, you wonder if you really saw it, or if you just dreamed the whole thing.
Gilbert Hernandez’s 2005, straight-to-DVD TV series The Naked Cosmosis like all of those shows mixed together into one mind-frying package. This is concentrated public access weirdness, and it should not be taken without first consulting a physician. Hernandez, the justly acclaimed cartoonist who co-creates the Love and Rockets comic book series with his brother Jaime, made his name crafting bittersweet stories of life in the fictional South American town of Palomar, stories that are often compared to the works of such writers as Carson Mccullers and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. But with The Naked Cosmos, Hernandez lets a different side of himself out to play, cutting loose with a wild parody of/homage to all the kitschy TV he grew up loving as a dorky Oxnard kid.
The Naked Cosmos is a kind of surreal kiddie show hosted by Quintas (Hernandez), a mop-topped, pop-eyed, psychic, albino dandy who takes us on an unforgettable journey through inner and outer space accompanied by the lovely Mistress Velda (Hernandez’s wife, Carol Kovinick) and Ego (Hernandez again), a mellow hippie boozer with the power of teleportation. Quintas faces opposition at every turn from his masked clone, the seethingly envious Kalisto (Hernandez yet again), and both are rivals for the affections of the cheerfully oblivious Velda. All of them report to the Chief (Kovinick), a lady who wears a bondage cat hood and issues her orders over the phone in Spanish.
Every now and again the action stops cold for a short film presented by Zansky, a jolly expatriate from another dimension. Hernandez portrays Zansky via the old slumber party trick of drawing a face on your chin and standing on your head, a perfect example of the show’s nutty, low-budget ingenuity. The budget for this thing is so low, in fact, that Hernandez doesn’t even use split screen effects when he holds conversations with himself: the camera just cuts back and forth between Hernandez in different costumes, emoting with hammy gusto and clearly having the time of his life. The trailer below should give you a pretty good idea of the creepy, dorky wonderfulness that is the Quintas experience.
Issued in a limited edition of 2000, The Naked Cosmos quickly sold out. Used copies are still available on Amazon and elsewhere, but the prices are slowly rising and I suspect that a few years from now this thing will a major collector's item. (In other words, click on that Amazon link above and snap up a copy while you still can!) The full package features four 22-minute episodes, bloopers, portraits of the characters by Hernandez and other artists, and an original, 20-page comic book. The next time you’re restlessly flipping the TV dial in the dead of night, fire up this thing and you’ll go to sleep a few hours later confused but happy.
(This post originally appeared, in a very altered form, in OC Weekly.)
Got a tip for Monsters and Rockets? Want to contribute to the site?Send us an email.
I love the photos in this gallery, and strongly disagree with the blogger who posted them that these are "failed" cosplayers. Seriously, look at Death Star Guy, here. How can anybody say that's a fail? No fail here! Death Star Guy is a fantastic success at being Death Star Guy. Anybody this creative, who is having this much fun, is the exact opposite of a failure.
(And yeah, that blog uses the same template as this one. But at least mine has a Rocket Monster.)
Got a tip for Monsters and Rockets? Want to contribute to the site?Send us an email.
When most folks experiment with a new graphics program, they just post pictures of their cats wearing funny little hats or something. But artist Eric Epstein experimented with a program called Trapcode, and he came up with this little mind-blower.
The news is still erupting out of Comic-Con, covering the international geekosphere with a thick layer of headlines.
JACKSON TALKS HOBBIT, LOVELY BONES AND MORE: The Io9 folks cornered Peter Jackson, and got him to cough up new info about the Hobbit pictures, his adaptation of The Lovely Bones, and even his yearning to do the kind of gross-out monster movie he specialized in early in his career.
BATMAN SEQUEL SHOOTING IN 2010: That's what Gary Oldman says, anyhow.
FLYNN'S ARCADE OPENS IN SAN DIEGO: In a truly epic press event, Disney led reporters on a scavenger hunt that led to a full-size recreation of Flynn's Arcade from Tron, complete with working Space Paranoids games and a full-size lightcycle on display. Damn it... A decade as a pro journalist, and I never saw anything that cool. Here, watch the video, so we can stew in our envy together:
MORE GALATICA MOVIES COMING, OLMOS INSISTS: Even though the Battlestar Galactica sets were torn down and Ron Moore hasn't hinted at any plans to continue the series beyond the upcoming TV movie The Plan, Edward James Olmos says he can "guarantee" there will be more movies if this one sells well on DVD. Then he goes off into this whole weird story idea he has about how the cylons on Earth eventually evolved into the replicants in Blade Runner, and that's when you realize the poor guy is basically hoping he can convince the suits at SyFy to buy his fanfic. Here's hoping they do, because a BSG/Blade Runner crossover movie is so wacky it's awesome.
KEATON IN TOY STORY 3:Michael Keaton will voice a Ken doll in Toy Story 3, as part of a storyline that apparently has a much bigger role for Barbie. Pixar honch John Lasseter said that "It's a totally different emotional core that this movie has. We're really excited for it." Honestly, this makes me a little nervous. More Barbie stuff and "a totally different emotional core" makes this sound like it might not focus enough on Woody, Buzz and the rest of the gang from the first two films. On the other hand: Michael Keaton!
I got a little swoony, seeing this trailer. I like how they seem to be really trying to keep the look consistent with the original film, while evolving it as if 25 years have really passed in the Tron world. These Tron lightcycles look like the originals the way a 2009 car looks like a 1982 car.
I just hope they don't go too dark with the story. The original film has some surprising grit to it, but it was ultimately kind of a big, pretty, family picture, and I don't relish the prospect of seeing some totally grim, cyberpunk version with a big "porno" district full of cyber-hookers and all that stuff.
Well, obviously it's a bit soon to be second guessing. Let's just bask in the neon glow of this trailer.
Got a tip for Monsters and Rockets? Want to contribute to the site?Send us an email.
At the rate that sci-fi and horror news is erupting out of Comic-Con, I can't hope to cover it all here. But here's a smattering of some of the more interesting developments.
HALO ANIME: Microsoft has hired five anime studios to create seven Halo shorts for an upcoming DVD.
CAMERON SCREENS AVATAR FOOTAGE:Folks are just gushing about the 15 minutes of Avatar that James Cameron showed at the con. If you're itching to see the footage yourself, Cameron has an interesting PR gimmick planned: he's going to show the 15 minutes for free in theaters on August 21st. That could be cool, but I can imagine it sort of backfiring. If you've ever seen a few minutes of a movie and then had to quit for some reason and start over again later, you know that those minutes you already saw are a lot less interesting the second time around.
GILLIAM SCREENS "BORING" PARNASSUS FOOTAGE: Terry Gilliam, meanwhile, took an approach very different from all the hype surrounding Avatar, announcing that he was screening all of the "boring" parts from The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus so that people would still have to go and pay to see the good stuff in theaters. (Let's hope we get the chance. Last I heard, the film still didn't have an American distributor.)
PANDORUM CLIP ONLINE: Courtesy of the fine folks at Shock 'Till You Drop, here's a nasty clip from the upcoming sci-fi horror picture:
BURTON, DEPP CONFIRMED FOR DARK SHADOWS: While Tim Burton was promoting his Alice remake, he was cornered by the press about the rumors he's working on an update of the late-'60s vampire TV soap opera, Dark Shadows. Burton confirmed that he is indeed planning to take on Dark Shadows next. Given that Johnny Depp's production company owns the rights to the soap and Depp is in almost every film that Burton makes, it's safe to assume that Depp will star as Barnanus Collins, the tortured vampire played so memorably by Johnathan Frid in the original. (Given that Depp has looked about 30 for the last 15 years or so, I'm starting to wonder if he is a vampire.)
CABIN IN THE WOODS TEASER POSTERS: Shock Till You Drop has also posted a few teaser images for the upcoming horror movie from Joss Whedon and frequent collaborator Drew Goddard. The copy is pretty funny, although I'm getting an awfully strong whiff of the Scream series in those horror movie "rules."
After days of turning up various places online only to then promptly vanish away, the trailer for Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland is finally online for real.
I'll admit that the visuals are awesome, and I'm actually starting to feel just a tingle of excitement about the film... But after truly agonizing Burton remakes like Planet of the Apes and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I refuse to set my hopes too high for this one. As our former commander-in-chief famously said, "Fool me twice, won't get fooled again." (Still, the film's art direction is mouth-watering, isn't it?)
Something tells me this will be one Johnny Depp character who doesn't end up as a poster on the bedroom walls of legions of teenage girls. Wow, did they ever ugly him up. He looks like a muppet.
Got a tip for Monsters and Rockets? Want to contribute to the site?Send us an email.
In 1981, Debbie Harry - the staggeringly sultry singer for the classic new wave band Blondie - released Koo Koo, her debut solo album. The controversial cover was illustrated by H.R. Giger, the superbly creepy surrealist artist best known for designing the Xenomorph monsters in the Alien movies. Giger also directed music videos for two of the album's songs, Backfired and Now I Know You Know. Both clips included plenty of original Giger artwork, and for Now I Know You Know he even used special effects makeup to transform Harry into one of his sexy cyborg monsters.
The videos are rarely seen today, but with that kind of talent involved, they had to be amazing. Right? Well, yes. Unfortunately, they're not amazing in a good way. Here, have a look at Now I Know You Know:
The video begins quite promisingly, with Harry as a brunette, slinky Borg Queen freeing herself from a mecha-sarcophagus and dancing around in a Giger nightmarescape. But the rather listless, jazzy tune is a terrible match for the visuals, Harry's dancing isn't great, and Giger's camera just aimlessly follows her around forever until this starts to seem like some public access show in Hell.
Now I Know You Know isn't truly horrible, it's just tedious and amateurish. Backfired is the real howling dog of the two. Harry is some sort of disembodied disco diva - nothing but a head, arms and cleavage - doing some proto-Voguing in front of Giger's artwork. So far, so silly... But then Giger himself shows up as a rapping robot with a brass Giger face, and you can't even hear the last two minutes of the clip because you're laughing too hard. (Although it is a testament to the indomitable hotness of the young Harry that even with about 80 percent of her body missing, she's still sexier than a big pile of Pussycat Dolls.)
(Via Conscious Object. Fair warning: that blog is full of naughty words and NSFW ideas.)
Got a tip for Monsters and Rockets? Want to contribute to the site?Send us an email.
Fresh and still dripping from Comic-Con comes this shaky, blurry Youtube video of the new Tron sequel teaser. (I'm happy to report that Disney has now settled on calling the film Tron Legacy. Nice to know that my constant bitching about them just calling it Tron paid off!)
It's not unlikely that Disney will pull this clip off Youtube very soon, so see it while you can. The video quality is very crappy indeed, but it gets a little better around 40 seconds in. If you couldn't tell, the character who says "not anymore" at the end is the young Jeff Bridges, as seen in the original film.
Got a tip for Monsters and Rockets? Want to contribute to the site?Send us an email.
My girlfriend once described a new issue of Chris Ware's ongoing comics series The Acme Novelty Library as a poison apple, because each issue is so stunningly beautiful that you can't resist picking it up... But then it's so utterly depressing that reading it can pretty much ruin your whole weekend.
Acme Novelty Library is a unique combination of crushing despair and flashy graphic design, with stories about friendless, middle-aged men presented alongside elaborate paper toys you can cut out and assemble to display on your desktop. (Warning: the paper toys are amazing, but they are also utterly depressing.) I've never actually assembled any of Ware's toys - partly because I don't want to cut up my comics, but also because I'm not sure I could make it through the process without using the scissors to slit my wrists.
Fortunately an artist called Niem is made of sterner stuff than I. He has risked terminal melancholy to assemble Ware's clever cardstock gizmos, and he's posted a gallery of them here. There are paper theaters of cruelty, cardboard models of broken homes, even little wind-up movie shows you can watch until you've cried your eyeballs out. A tragic time is guaranteed for all!
"Science fiction plucks from within us our deepest fears and hopes, then shows them to us in rough disguise: the monster and the rocket." - W.H. Auden
Who is he, this one who is called "Greg Stacy"?
Greg Stacy began the MONSTERS AND ROCKETS blog in April of 2009. Prior to that, he was editor of the popular sci-fi/horror news website DARKWOLDS.COM. He has also written for LA WEEKLY, OC WEEKLY, UTNE READER and LOS ANGELES CITYBEAT. He always feels weird writing about himself in the third person.
