The 35th annual Saturn Awards will be presented in June, and the nominations are now out. The Dark Knight leads everyone with 11 nominations, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button pulled 9, and Iron Man garnered 8. Some categories this year would be easy to decide, were I an Academy member. Best Horror would be THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR, and the Best International Film would be FORBIDDEN KINGDOM. Other categories… how to decide between THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, THE INCREDIBLE HULK, IRON MAN, and JUMPER? On different days I would vote for different films. And that’s without getting into the TV side of the competition, with Fringe, Heroes, Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles, Battlestar Galactica, and True Blood all in the running. There are a lot more, you can see the full nominations list here.
The first teaser came out in February (shown below), but now the first English language Live Action trailer of Blood, The Last Vampire is out, and SFX has it. It opens in Japan on May 29th, the UK on June 12th, and France on June 17th. I haven’t found the US release date yet, although Star News of Korea claims Universal bought the US rights, and plan to release it this month (Thanks to the Anime News Network for translating that bit for me). The team behind it did a few other movies you might have heard of, including Hero and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; combine them with the excellent story and fully developed characters of the original Anime series, and I am expecting a major movie experience. Rope of Silicon has the Japanese trailer as well as the international version; I have to install the Kanji character set on my computer before I can find the link to it on the official movie home page.
BBC America launches the first episode of Ashes to Ashes tonight, the sequel to the original Brit TV series Life on Mars. As before, traumatic injury results in time travel for a no-nonsense cop, while a killer soundtrack unwinds and an actual killer stalks our protagonist. I am SO ready for this one! Watchmen was every bit as good as I was hoping, true to the original in every detail that mattered. Run, don’t walk, to your nearest theater and see it today! Thanks, Wil W, for the non-spoilers endorsement!
Heroes has been signed up for a 4th season, according to Superhero Hype while they were channeling the Hollywood Reporter. Daft Punk has signed on to do the score for Tron 2.0, which seems like a perfect match to me. Just as much fun was using the Guardian article to find out there is a blog called Upcoming Film Scores to keep track of such things for us. The big film news for today, of course, is that Watchmen starts at midnight, so one more time the obligatory link to Wil’s Review. Finally, for those of us in the US, BBC America starts running Ashes to Ashes, the sequel to the original Brit version of Life on Mars, this Saturday at 9PM Eastern.
Everyone online is pointing to the same place for a sneak-peek of Watchmen, and that is Wil Wheaten’s Review. The conclusion? I must see this movie on opening day! I came across a Blog today I found mighty impressive and worth lots of re-visits; Why Science Is Important! If you have a brain, you will love this site!