Courtesy of Wondercon, four minutes of new Green Lantern footage. This may be the closest thing we will ever get to seeing Doc E E Smith’s Grey Lensman books done as a movie, which I always thought was the inspiration for the Green Lantern comic book series. The film hits the big screens on June 17th, and I am seriously looking forward to it.
Pick of the week would have to be Source Code, about a soldier who is part of an anti-terrorist task force, and who keeps getting shoved back through time so he can gather intelligence about who planted the bomb, so they can be arrested. But that is not good enough for him; he knows that the true task is to save the victims on the train from the bomb. The problem is doing so would lead to some serious causality loops, possibly as severe as an actual paradox, and that threatens the very existence of the task force, and maybe even the planet. This one is worthy of Philip K. Dick in its twisty recursiveness, and is another win for Duncan Jones.
Also out this week, Super is the story of a man who turns himself into a costumed vigilante after loosing his girlfriend to a drug dealer. The Crimson Bolt may not have any super powers, but he does have attitude and a serious wrench as well as some great actors involved with project. For the younger crowd, the animated Hop shows what happens when the Easter Bunny gets run over by a distracted driver.
Finally, in a bid for the Batshit Crazy award we have Rubber, a film about a telekinetic tire which goes on a killing spree. This one is so outside the box it has a shot at cult status if the quality holds up.
It is time for the SFX 2011 Blog Awards, where the world class Sci-Fi magazine staff have narrowed each category down to four or so nominations. They have six categories, but they have still left us some impossible decisions. Under Best Podcast, as an example, they have both Escape Pod and Doctor Who Podshock, both of which are insanely good, so how do you decide? The Fan Community choice is even harder; Gateworld or Whedonesque gets compounded with Gallifrey Base or The Trek BBS, and I want to vote for all of them! But you only get one vote per category, and trust me when I say the others are just as difficult to choose between.
There are a couple of interesting choices this weekend, starting with The Adjustment Bureau, written by Philip K. Dick and starring Matt Damon with Emily Blunt. There is a way your life is supposed to go, and if you step outside that path the near supernatural members of the Adjustment Bureau will step in and make corrections to reality to sync your life back to their expectations. As with every other P.K.Dick story turned into a movie, I am guaranteed to be in the audience on opening weekend. Note that the official Dick site is not kept up to date as well as it should be, so it is leaving out several other potential film projects.
Ordinarily a week with one of Phill’s stories coming out on the big screen would be enough to keep me happy, but this time around we get more. Apollo 18 was originally scheduled for this week, but has now been pushed back to April 22nd of this year. With the tag line There’s a reason we’ve never gone back to the moon, it looks quite interesting. But the universe keeps things balanced, and Rango has been moved up from the 18th to the 4th of March. This animated western epic stars Johnny Depp and is directed by Gore Verbinski (they worked together on that Pirates of the Caribbean series of films). So it looks like I have two films I need to see this weekend, and I will do my best to make both.
The SFWA has announced this years Nebula Award Nominees, and a bunch of them are online now for your reading pleasure. The Awards themselves will be handed out at the Nebula Weekend event taking place from the 19th to the 22nd of May at the Washington Hilton in Washington, DC.
One of the other awards given out at the event is The Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation, and for me this one is an almost impossible choice. There is one TV episode on the list, Doctor Who’s Vincent and the Doctor, two live action movies, Inception and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and three animated feature length films, Despicable Me where the Minions owned the movie, How to Train Your Dragon from the Dreamworks team, and Toy Story 3 from Pixar. I don’t have a prayer of choosing the best one; I love them all!
They started this project in 2006, when they took Terry Pratchett’s wonderful little Christmas tale Hogfather and turned it into a TV Movie special on Sky Television. Then, in 2008, they got together again and outdid themselves with The Color of Magic, which was actually Pratchett’s first two Discworld novels together in a single story. This one is worth viewing for the luggage alone, let alone the great cast, amazing story, or excellent special effects. For the next one, in May of 2010, they did Going Postal, which from all reports is the best one yet. This week, we have received word they have been signed up to do another one, Unseen Academicals. No word on the expected release date, or even if it is going to be on Sky 1 this time, but just knowing there is more Pratchett silliness coming to the small screen makes me grin in anticipation. If you can’t wait, you can always create a football fan character and hang out in the stadium to get ready.