In this week's episode, Ben and Tyler are joined by guest James Willems of Funhaus to rank their Top 5 James Bond movies of all time. Agree? Disagree? Sound off in the comments and let us know what you think and what your own list is!
For more episodes of The 5Cast Podcast on GeekTyrant, click here, and click here for our entire back catalog of episodes. Be sure to e-mail us at 5castpodcast@gmail.com with your suggestions for future Top 5 lists we should discuss.
After establishing characters like Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor by giving them their own origin stories, we've heard rumors that Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios have decided to avoid telling traditional origin stories moving forward. (Doctor Strange, for example, is said to begin in media res and flash back to the character's origins.) The executives at DC have clearly been paying close attention to the Marvel model, but perhaps in another effort to distinguish themselves from their cross-town rivals, we now know that the company isn't opposed to including origin stories even after their planned two-part Justice League team up film.
Collider spoke with Charles Roven, the producer of Wonder Woman and Suicide Squad, and Roven had this to say about the future plans of the DCEU:
"The Flash movie or the Aquaman film is gonna come out after Justice League 1, it’s not gonna be a completely different character; that character will have evolved from Justice League 1. Wonder Woman, when we see her in Justice League 1, will have evolved from Batman v Superman. Unless we decide that in one of these stories we’re gonna do something that happened in the past and have it be more of an origination story, in which case you’ll realize how that character became what they were in the movie that they were first introduced."
That sounds an awful lot like confirmation of the relatively recent rumor that Wonder Woman will be a prequel to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which is definitely an interesting way to separate themselves from the competition. Marvel spent a lot of time building the characters before unleashing a team movie; DC's apparently confident enough in the name recognition of their characters to unleash a team movie right out of the gate and then take its time to go back and build them up afterwards.
Roven also spoke about bringing in various filmmakers and allowing them to play in what he calls "the sandbox" of DC properties, and the unique changes that they can bring to the table:
"So that’s really challenging and interesting, and you lay out a road map but then when you bring somebody else in they kinda go, ‘Well you’re going to San Francisco by Route 5, what if you took the 101?’ [And you go] ‘Well that’s interesting, maybe we should go Route 101. What if we did?’ And so that changes the whole thing and all of a sudden you realize you can actually get to where you need to get to by a whole different methodology than what you originally planned. Or you might decide to blend the routes. And by doing that it’s very fresh. You’ve got very fresh ideas, very interesting ideas. It’s just really a lot of fun if you’ve got really great collaborative minds working together to try to make things better, more interesting, more fun, more provocative."
Marvel Studios movies are all very much the products of Kevin Feige's influence, and that's clearly worked wonders for them so far. Warner Bros. and DC are trying to establish more of a filmmaker-driven environment, but we'll have to wait and see how a few of these movies turn out before we can tell how effective (or even truthful) that approach ends up being. If Wonder Woman, directed by Patty Jenkins, feels a lot like Batman v Superman, for example, it's probably a good sign that Zack Snyder is the real guiding hand behind the scenes. We'll just have to wait it out for the real results. In the meantime, it'll be interesting to see if we hear anything about The Flash and Aquaman solo movies being origin stories for those characters.
What do you think about DC's approach to storytelling?
George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road set the geek world on fire earlier this year, and for good reason: it's an insane, balls-out, practical effects-heavy masterclass of action filmmaking from a 70-year-old man. One of the biggest reasons it feels like a throwback to old-school filmmaking is because it literally is old-school filmmaking, proven by Pablo Fernández Eyre's excellent video essay that compares the new movie with Miller's original Mad Max trilogy. Watching dozens of nearly identical shots play out on top of each other is kind of insane, and it shows how Fury Road really is the culmination of the entire trilogy that came before it. Check it out and let us know what you think below:
Via: LaughingSquid
Hans Zimmer is one of Hollywood's premiere composers, responsible for the scores of The Rock, Gladiator, Inception, Rango, Man of Steel, and 165 other films over his career thus far. He's been so busy working on movies that he's never had time to go on tour before, but all of that changes next year when he and a massive orchestra will be hitting the road for the first time ever. Here's a brief statement from the man himself:
“Performing a tour like this is something that I have always wanted to do, and I am thrilled that the time has finally come. I am very excited to get some of my very talented friends together and give our audiences an experience unlike any concert they have ever been to before.”
The Playlist brings us a pulse-pounding trailer for the tour (which looks really freakin' cool) and all of the dates, so if you happen to live overseas, this seems like an awesome opportunity to see one of the world's greatest composers at the top of his game. Hopefully this will go so well that he'll decide to keep it going and add some cities in the U.S. as well.
04/06 – London, UK @ The SSE Arena, Wembley
04/12 – Birmingham, UK @ Barclaycard Arena
04/14 – Brussels, BE @ Palais 12
04/16 – Mannheim, DE @ SAP Arena
04/18 – Hamburg, DE @ Barclaycard Arena
04/20 – Berlin, DE @ Mercedes-Benz Arena
04/22 – Oberhausen, DE @ König Pilsener Arena
04/23 – Paris, FR @ Palais Des Congres
04/24 – Paris, FR @ Palais Des Congres
04/26 – Munich, DE @ Olympiahalle
04/30 – Gdansk, PL @ Ergo Arena
05/01 – Lodz, PL @ Atlas Arena
05/03 – Krakow, PL @ Tauron Arena
05/05 – Bratislava, SK @ Slovnaft Arena
05/07 – Prague, CZ @ O2 Arena
05/09 – Zurich, CH @ Hallenstadion
05/11 – Budapest, HU @ Papp Laszio Budapest Sportarena
05/13 – Vienna, AT @ Stadthalle
05/16 – Sofia, BG @ Stadthalle
On this episode of The Dungeon Crawlers Radio podcast, the team discusses geek news, Star Wars, TV, and movie reviews with special guest, author Julie Frost. The DCR also talks with her about her new book Pack Dynamics, published by WordFire Press. Frost has written every shade of speculative fiction. Her short fiction has appeared in Cosmos, Unlikely Story, Plasma Frequency, Stupefying Stories, and she's been a Finalist at Writers of the Future.
You can listen in and join live on Thursdays at 7pm MT on Blog Talk Radio.
Sony hasn't always had the best track record when it comes to trying something new to market for PlayStation. From the creepy-ass robot baby ad, to the annoying animated squirrels "playing nut" the SCEA marketing team has always been a bit off... View Full Post on GameTyrant
Emily Blunt is starring in a film adaptation of the mega-hit novel The Girl on the Train, and she's bringing Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation star Rebecca Ferguson, Haley Bennett, Edgar Ramirez, and Allison Janney along with her. Director Tate Taylor (The Help) was eyeing Chris Evans and Jared Leto for major supporting roles, but unfortunately scheduling issues prevented both of them from officially coming on board. Now Taylor has found his replacements: THR reports that Luke Evans and Justin Theroux have officially signed on.
Here's a quick refresher for those who aren't familiar with the story:
Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. “Jess and Jason,” she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.
And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel offers what she knows to the police, and becomes inextricably entwined in what happens next, as well as in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?
Compulsively readable, The Girl on the Train is an emotionally immersive, Hitchcockian thriller and an electrifying debut.
Theroux will play Ferguson's husband and Evans (that's Luke, not Chris) will play Bennett's. THR's plot summary gets a bit more spoilery than I'd have liked, so feel free to click over there if you're dying for any more slivers of details about the plot. I can't help but feel like Luke Evans and Justin Theroux are downgrades from Chris Evans and Jared Leto, but once these kinds of things happen all of the time and when the final movie comes out, it's hard to imagine the characters being played by anyone other than the person who actually embodied them on screen, so hopefully Taylor can bring this best-seller to life in a memorable and exciting way.
Production is already underway, and The Girl on the Train pulls into theaters on October 7th, 2016.
With the "publish first, ask questions later" mentality of today's internet and the underfunding of newspaper staffs around the country, movies about real journalism are practically all period pieces now. Spotlight is no exception. The film, set in 2001, tracks the year-long investigation of the Boston Globe's Spotlight unit — a small, close-knit group of reporters devoted to deep investigative journalism — into the Catholic church's cover-up of sexually abusive priests, and it's one of the best journalism films ever made.
Co-writer/director Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent, The Visitor) played a lying reporter in the fifth season of The Wire, but behind the camera with Spotlight, he's only concerned with the truth. This is a film that — more than any other in recent memory — revels in the methodical acquisition of information. When a new editor (Liev Schrieber) from outside Boston takes control at the Globe, he looks to question the status quo by assigning the Spotlight team a follow-up story about a priest accused of molesting children. Piece by piece, the reporters (Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, and Brian d'Arcy James, overseen by Michael Keaton) slowly build their case, and McCarthy eschews any attempts to make reporting look sexy or cool, keeping a deliberate pace as one revelation cascades into another.
This isn't a traditionally exciting movie, and thanks to its subject matter, it's also not exactly what I'd call "fun" to watch these people discover the scale of a massive sex abuse scandal. But though it may be slightly uncomfortable for some audiences to see, that's exactly why it's essential viewing. Through dialogue and character, McCarthy slowly pulls back the curtain and allows us to live through the reporters as they get deeper into the horrific details by way of interviews with the victims and the kind of investigative work that doesn't often happen anymore. Spotlight doesn't actually show any of the sexual acts at all, and McCarthy knows that seeing the pain on the victims' faces as they recount their stories to the team is all the emotion we need to get the full impact.
The movie touches on the idea of faith through its journalists, almost all of whom were raised Catholic, as a few struggle with their beliefs in the face of newly-discovered evil. It's also hinted that their own past relationships with the church may be partially responsible for why it took so long for these crimes to be uncovered in the first place; the church's influence over the city is pervasive, and growing up there may have caused Keaton and his team to not take the prior allegations seriously enough to warrant an earlier follow-up. Another conflict centers on when to publish the information they have: do they go after the local priests when they enough to print, or do they keep going and try to take down the entire system? The movie makes a case for both options, especially in a scene in which Ruffalo's character blows up in the newsroom in the hopes of convincing his editors to run the story as soon as possible.
Ruffalo has the movie's showiest performance, but he's very good here, transforming and disappearing into a twisted, hunched posture and speaking with a voice that sounds like he has cheeks full of cotton balls. Otherwise, this is a movie in which the actors, like the reporters they play, just put their heads down and concentrate on the job, resulting in familiar but capable work from an understated Keaton and terrific supporting actors like Stanley Tucci, Billy Crudup, and John Slattery. McAdams, in particular, spends the film doing the type of quality work she'd be doing all the time if Hollywood could consistently find worthwhile roles for her.
Steely, straightforward, and sobering, Spotlight is sensational without ever dipping into sensationalism.
Today at BlizzCon 2015, Legendary Pictures and Duncan Jones dropped the first trailer for Warcraft, and holy crap was it amazing! The animation of the orcs and the extreme saturation of the colors give it such a uniquely stylized look that stands out and hearkens back to the games. This is shaping up to be the movie that fans of the Warcraft series deserve.
The question still remains, however: will it be able to bridge the gap between gamers and the average moviegoer? While the hyper-stylized nature of the film appeals to people who have been playing Warcraft since the first game on MS-DOS, it might not be what folks who are expecting a more Lord of the Rings-style of fantasy film want. Case in point, I showed the trailer to my mom who has listened to me and my brother play Warcraft II and WoW growing up and she didn't totally dig the animation of the orcs. It will be tough to please both crowds, but I think Duncan Jones can pull it off. I know I'm going to have a hard time waiting for next summer!
Artist Travis Durden has created a series of Star Wars prints that combine indentifiable characters from George Lucas' saga with the classical sculpting style of ancient Greece. I learned a long time ago to stop questioning the capacity of Star Wars fans for being interested in weird, off-beat merchandise relating to the franchise. Today, I was sent a book called Star Wars: The Original Topps Trading Card Series that is literally a bunch of pictures of Star Wars cards from the '70s. My first thought was, "who would ever want this book?" but I'd bet there are a handful of you reading this right now that might be willing to fork over a few bucks to add it to your collections. The point is, there's almost nothing that will surprise me when it comes to Star Wars-related merchandise anymore, and that's only going to become more intense in the coming years and the onslaught of new stuff in that universe.
In any case, you can purchase prints right here if you're interested.
Via: Nerd Approved
Story: Travis Beacham | Writer: Joshua Fialkov
Artist: Marcos Marz | Colorist: Marcelo Maiolo
It might be awhile before we get a true sequel to Pacific Rim, but Tales From The Drift seems to be a worthwhile investment for fans of the universe. The storytelling team of Travis Beacham and Joshua Fialkov are doing something a bit more intimate with this series, and pulling us into the world of a married couple, Duc and Kaori, who are also the pilots of the Jaeger Tacit Ronin.
There are Kaiju aplenty in this book, and big battles of monster vs. mechs, but the real spotlight is on the relationship between Duc and Kaori. The book transitions from the present day to back when the couple first met, and then ping-pongs back and forth for the remainder of the book. While the film had its share of pilot teams and characters, none of them are as out and out likable as Duc and Kaori. Being married myself, those little nuances and cues that couples pick up over time are so evident here in the back and forth between the two. For example, on page 5, Kaori is communicating with command, and Duc “translates” for her. The exchange here is one we have had many a time, though not necessarily about the same subject, but the feel of the conversation was perfectly on point. Fialkov delivers dialogue between the two that evokes a closeness and intimacy with one another. They were hands down the best part of the book, and I’m hopeful that this continues.
Not to be outdone, because we are dealing with giant robots and monsters, the art team of Marcos Marz and Marcelo Maiolo deliver on the visuals. The biggest takeaway from issue one is just how menacing and enormous the Kaiju appear to be on the page. The book succeeds multiple times in demonstrating the sheer scope and size of these things, and always reminds you that we are but a small nuisance to these things without the Jaegers.
I greatly enjoyed issue #1, and while you might come for the big monster fights, you should stay to get to know Duc and Kaori, the real stars of the show.
From the very beginning, Better Call Saul set out to tell a drastically different story than Breaking Bad, and its first season succeeded in giving fans a look at how "Slippin' Jimmy" slowly started to become Saul Goodman. Bob Odenkirk's performance was one of the best aspects of the series, which I think is still finding its legs after a bit of a shaky start.
Take a look at the first season's blooper reel below (via EW), and then check out the first two brief teasers for Season 2. Better Call Saul doesn't have an official premiere date yet, but we're guessing it'll be sometime early in 2016.
The first Warcraft trailer isn't the only big news out of BlizzCon today. We just received a press release announcing the launching of Activision Blizzard Studios, a studio "devoted to creating original content based on the company's extensive library of iconic and globally-recognized intellectual properties." And as you might have guessed, that means a Call of Duty cinematic universe is in the works.
First up, though, is a TV show called Skylanders Academy based on the popular Skylanders game. Justin Long, Jonathan Banks (Breaking Bad), Ashley Tisdale, and Norm Macdonald will provide voices for the animated series.
There aren't any details about the plans of the Call of Duty cinematic universe (other than referring to it as "robust"), but it sounds like Activision Blizzard Studios is taking a page from Ubisoft's playbook here, making sure they retain creative control over their mega-popular games and bringing them to the big screen themselves instead of just licensing out the properties to other studios and watching them get flushed down the toilet. It remains to be seen if Activision Blizzard Studios will be able to make a good movie adaptation from its properties (which also include Diablo, Hearthstone, and StarCraft), but we may be on the brink of a video game movie revolution that could turn the tables on the notion of all video game movies being terrible.
Here's the full press release:
SANTA MONICA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Activision Blizzard (Nasdaq: ATVI) today announced the launch of Activision Blizzard Studios, a new film and television studio devoted to creating original content based on the company's extensive library of iconic and globally-recognized intellectual properties. Activision Blizzard's owned content includes some of the most popular entertainment franchises in the world, including Call of Duty®,Skylanders®, Diablo®, Hearthstone® and StarCraft®. Former Disney executive Nick van Dyk has been tapped to co-head the division, along with a senior creative executive who will be announced soon.
Activision Blizzard Studios' first production will be "Skylanders™ Academy," an animated TV series based on the award-winning Skylanders® game. Currently in production under the supervision of showrunner Eric Rogers("Futurama"), "Skylanders™ Academy" will feature the voices of Justin Long ("Alvin and the Chipmunks," "Ask Me Anything") as Spyro, Ashley Tisdale ("Phineas and Ferb," "High School Musical") as Stealth Elf, Jonathan Banks ("Breaking Bad," "Better Call Saul") as Eruptor and Norm Macdonald ("Saturday Night Live") as Glumshanks. Additional voice talent includes Harland Williams and Richard Horvitz. The award-winning, $3 billion Skylanders® franchise has sold through more than 250 million toys since pioneering the toys-to-life category in 2011i.
Another near-term initiative for Activision Blizzard Studios will be the development of a robust cinematic universe based on the Call of Duty franchise. Call of Duty®: Advanced Warfare remains the number one-selling title on next-generation consolesii and today marks the launch of the highly-anticipated new Call of Duty®: Black Ops III. Activision Blizzard Studios envisions a series of Call of Duty feature films as well as the possibility of television adaptations.
"Activision Blizzard is home to some of the most successful entertainment franchises in history, across any medium. With the launch of Activision Blizzard Studios, our engaged fans can now watch the games they love come to life across film and television," said Bobby Kotick, Chief Executive Officer of Activision Blizzard. "Activision Blizzard Studios is yet another way we're celebrating our players and fans, and we expect that our film and television productions will entertain and delight whole new audiences, as well. I'm excited that Nick and his team will be leading this important new growth opportunity for Activision Blizzard."
Kotick added, "We intend to approach film and television development with the same unwavering commitment to excellence we are known for in game development."
Nick van Dyk, formerly a long-time Walt Disney Company senior executive, will serve as Activision Blizzard Studios' Co-President, alongside a top creative executive who will be announced soon. Van Dyk will have responsibility for distribution, physical production, strategy, finance and operations and will co-manage all aspects of the studio. Before joining Activision Blizzard last year, van Dyk spent nine years at Disney where, as Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy, he helped drive Disney's focus on franchise intellectual property and played a significant role in the acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm. Prior to that, van Dyk was part of Artisan Entertainment's senior management team.
"Activision Blizzard Studios has the unique advantage of starting with a library of world-class intellectual property that includes some of the largest franchises which have not yet been developed in film and television," said van Dyk. "Our library spans more than 30 years of global entertainment culture and, in the last 12 months alone, fans of Activision Blizzard properties have played and watched our games online for more than 13 billion hours. This gives us a huge, passionate and deeply-engaged audience that is hungry for more great content built from the universes they already know and love—and which are extremely broad in their appeal."
Van Dyk added, "Activision Blizzard Studios is not just an exciting new business for our company, it is a synergistic complement to our core business. Our movies and shows will benefit from the remarkable IP created in our games and will further increase the awareness of, engagement with and passion for our franchises."
Activision Blizzard Studios is another important step in the company's strategy of expanding the platforms through which it offers its compelling intellectual property to existing fans and new audiences around the world.
The founding of Activision Blizzard Studios follows the company's announcement on Oct. 22 of a new esports division headed by former ESPN CEO Steve Bornstein and Major League Gaming co-founder and president Mike Sepso. The esports division will build on the company's competitive gaming leadership by creating all-new ways to deliver the best-in-class fan experience across games, platforms and geographies, furthering the development of its world-leading esports ecosystem. Activision Blizzard's other divisions are Activision Publishing and Blizzard Entertainment. On Nov. 2, the company announced its plans to acquire King Digital Entertainment, the creators of the Candy Crush®, Farm Heroes®, Pet Rescue® and Bubble Witch® franchises, which will make it a new global leader in mobile gaming.
While there are several board games that let the player take on the Empire or Rebellion, the newest game from Fantasy Flight attempts to paint you a more accurate picture of just what all that actually entails. Games like Armada, X-Wing, and Imperial Assault focus more on the minute to minute reactions of the player throughout a battle or scenario... View Full Post on GameTyrant
Anchored by a tremendous lead performance from Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn is an intimate, sincere drama that manages to dodge the cliches of many immigrant stories and completely avoid cynicism. It's a very simple story of a woman torn between two worlds, but with lush cinematography, terrific production design, and impeccable acting, Brooklyn transports you to a time and place in which, for a couple of hours, nothing matters more than the happiness of its main character.
The young Eilis Lacey (Ronan) has no prospects in 1950s Ireland, so her mother and sister arrange for her to emigrate to New York through a stateside priest who once lived in their small town (Jim Broadbent). Eilis leaves behind everything she knows and starts fresh in Brooklyn, where a job as a cashier at a department store, enrollment in night classes, and a room at a boarding house are waiting for her. She's homesick and miserable until she meets Tony (Emory Cohen), a sweet Italian-American goofball plumber who slowly starts to make her feel like she has her own life in the States. But when she heads back to Ireland to visit her family, she finds her circumstances have drastically changed: she's easily able to find temporary work doing what she loves (accounting) during her month-long stay, which would result in full-time position if she decides to take it. More notably, though, her best friend — unaware of her relationship with Tony — sets her up with the eligible Jim Farrell (Domhnall Gleeson), creating the central conflict of the film. Does Eilis return to her new life in America, or does she embrace her past and stay in Ireland?
Gleeson, who's always great, keeps his hot streak alive here playing a nice guy with a hint of sadness behind his eyes, a man with the rest of his life all laid out in front of him. Cohen is great as the easygoing and charmingly nerdy Italian-American, representing to Eilis an unknown, exciting future. On paper, it sounds like a standard love triangle full of stereotypes, but the film does an excellent job showing how both of Eilis's possible paths could be great for her, taking care to make Gleeson's higher class suitor feel like just as valid an option as her New York romance. The supporting cast is strong as well, with Julie Walters delivering some of the movie's best lines as a stern but lovable landlady holding court over her gossipy tenants and Tony's outspoken little brother getting tons of laughs in my screening.
Ronan is magnificent as Eilis, bringing a wonderful combination of tenderness and bravery to her character. Her expressive eyes convey an entire world of emotions happening behind them, and the film excels at putting us in her shoes and making us truly feel for her at all times. When she makes her final decision, it results in the sort of cathartic rush you don't often see in modern movies. While most films would have thrown in a B plot to complicate the narrative, this one thankfully knows that the only thing that matters here the heart of its lead, and by the end you get the sense she's fully completed the transition from a teenager into a woman. A story about growing up, moving on, and choosing your path in life, Brooklyn is a warm, relatable, emotional tale that explores the true meaning of home.
Deadpool (D Piddy) and Harley Quinn (Yirico) showed up at Stan Lee’s Comikaze Expo last weekend to cause a little chaos. And guess what!? They filmed it all! Check out the two comic characters as they have a little fun with some of the cosplayers that attended the event.
Legendary Pictures has released a new poster for Michael Dougherty’s upcoming Christmas horror film Krampus. Dougherty is the writer and director who brought us Trick ‘r’ Treat, so you know you’re in for a good time. Everything that I’ve seen from Krampus has looked awesomely terrifying.
The movie is based on a figure from German folklore who has become popular again in recent years. I’ve always felt Krampus would be a great subject for a horror movie, and it’s great that it’s actually been made. Here’s the synopsis:
When his dysfunctional family clashes over the holidays, young Max (Emjay Anthony) is disillusioned and turns his back on Christmas. Little does he know, this lack of festive spirit has unleashed the wrath of Krampus: a demonic force of ancient evil intent on punishing non-believers. All hell breaks loose as beloved holiday icons take on a monstrous life of their own, laying siege to the fractured family’s home and forcing them to fight for each other if they hope to survive.
Krampus and his mischievous underlings have been created by the combined efforts of Weta Workshop and Weta Digital, both renowned for their epic work on The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies and King Kong, among many others.
The movie also stars Adam Scott, Toni Collette, David Koechner, Allison Tolman, Conchata Ferrell, Stefania Lavie Owen, and Krista Stadler.
The film will be released by Universal Pictures on December 4th.
This stunning Death Star II blueprint poster was created by artist Carlos Pardo, and the amount of work he put into creating it is incredible. This print is the product of two years and 400 hours of labor! The artist talked about the how the print came about:
Two years ago I released a design side project that was the cartography of the roads network of France with a subway map stylization, it was the first part of an ongoing series. It was a long, complex and a very instructive challenge that fueled my taste for maps. During the process of documentation for that project, I stumbled across a lot of interesting schemes, conventions, blueprints, and started wondering about maps of iconic places or objects that influenced and defined me, as a creative. At one point I was looking back for Star Wars, specially the Death Star that always impressed me by it’s monolithic complexity… and I found almost nothing that could go on my workshop walls, only small 3D schemes and a few screen captures…
The idea grew and as soon as I completed my France roads cartography, I started documenting and designing my own interpretation of the Death Star, model II.
If you want to get yourself one of these bad boys, click here.
One of my favorite books as a kid was Jack London’s White Fang. I just absolutely love that story, and I also really enjoy Disney’s 1991 live-action adaptation that starred a young Ethan Hawke.
I’ve now learned from Deadline that there’s an animated adaptation of the novel coming bring Big Beach, who teamed up with the French animation company Superprod and Luxembourg-bassed Bidibul Productions. Big Beach is the production company that brought us Little Miss Sunshine.
The movie is set to be directed by Alexandre Espirages, who won an Academy Award for an animated short film that he made called "Mr. Hublot." The script comes from Dominique Monfery (Tarzan, Hercules), Philippe Lioret, and Serge Frydman.
I have no idea what to expect from this animated film, but I hope that they do the story justice. If for some reason you’ve never read the book or seen the movie, here a book description:
In the desolate, frozen wilds of northwest Canada, White Fang, a part-dog, part-wolf cub soon finds himself the sole survivor of a litter of five. In his lonely world, he soon learned to follow the harsh law of the North—kill or be killed.
But nothing in his young life prepared him for the cruelty of the bully Beauty Smith, who buys White Fang from his Indian master and turns him into a vicious killer—a pit dog forced to fight for money.
Will White Fang ever know the kindness of a gentle master or will he die a fierce deadly killer?
A classic adventure novel detailing the savagery of life in the northern wilds. Its central character is a ferocious and magnificent creature, through whose experiences we feel the harsh rhythms and patterns of wilderness life among animals and men.
Artist Kerry Callen has created a great set to comic art that shows us whether Superman or Batman is a better superhero. This is what the artist had to say about her series:
For decades, fans have argued who is the better superhero, Superman or Batman. It recently occurred to me that the best way to determine this is to see how they’d fare if one replaced the other on their comic covers. Will one fare better than the other? This should decide once and for all who's superior! I selected six covers and then created six alternative images.
You can check all of those comic cover and alternate covers below. They are sure to give you a laugh, and I can’t argue with who the winner end up being.
First up, Superman #32. Superman is being hit by multiple lightning bolts--
--while Batman is screaming multiple obscenities. Winner, Superman.
Next, Action Comics #357, featuring kids with kryptonite. Looks like Superman is in loads of trouble--
--Batman, not so much. Punk kids. Winner, Batman.
Let's look at a fairly famous cover, Batman #497, where Bane broke Batman's back--
I always thought this Batman cover should have had a sound effect on it. Otherwise, it merely looks like a visit to the chiropractor. Regardless-- Winner, Superman.
Next, Detective Comics #583. Batman is cooler when he's surrounded by bats!
Superman is not cooler when surrounded by supers. Winner, Batman.
Two wins for Superman. Two wins for Batman. It's a close race! Let's take a look at a cover that has both heroes on it, World's Finest #54--
It appears they are both equally as awesome! Suck it, Robin. Tie!
Lastly, Detective Comics Vol. 2 #37, the deciding image! Batman lives in a mansion and has a butler--
Winner - Batman!
