Wednesday, March 7, 2007

A Long Overdue Sick Day AKA Tons of Cool News

Due to maybe a fever and mostly horrible sinus pain, I decided to have a day of rest. And it has been most appreciated so far.

I woke up feeling horrible and sneezing my head off, but still got dressed and headed to work. After getting my coffee and still not feeling better, I decided that I would be doing myself a favor by taking the day off, and I've made it quite an enjoyable day off.

First things first, I went and finally got my passport. I've been needing to do that for awhile, so I finally got my butt to the post office and payed an arm and a leg for a passport that should be here in 6-8 weeks.

Came home for a little while, layed in bed and read some of Stardust, which is wonderful so far. Gaiman never fails.

While laying in bed, I saw on CNN that Marvel is killing Captain America in the latest issues that hit the stands today, so I decided to stop on by the local comic shop and check it out. I haven't been to the comic books store in probably two years now, and it was great to go back, but I don't think I have the finances to support that habit again.

While I was there, I picked up the Captain America issue in which he does in fact die. However, I recommend that you also get Civil War: The Initiative #1. Not saying anything, just get that as well. All the marvel books are kind of combined into one right now with this whole "civil war" series. I also picked up old favorites Ultimate Spiderman and Ultimate X-Men which are still as great as when they first appeared on the shelves as well as the first 2 Dark Tower books, a 7 issue run of the Stephen King series that Marvel is putting out. The artwork for the Dark Tower books is done by Jae Lee and is really beautiful. While at the shop I also found Stardust fully illustrated by Charles Vess (the older version) but did not buy it because I didn't have the extra 20 bucks. A new version is being published soon though with all new illustrations by Vess.

I picked up a special movie issue of Wizard which has plenty of cool stuff in it, one of which is a feature story on the Stardust movie with quotes from Gaiman and Vess. Wizard published a list of 100 upcoming cool movies in the back. Many were surprises and many were movies that I have been looking forward to for awhile. Here are my favorites:

28 Weeks Later (sequel to 28 Days Later, May 11, 2007 (my b-day))
Batman: The Dark Knight (2008)
Books of Magic (Based on a comic written by Neil Gaiman)
Castlevania
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (May 16, 2008)
Coraline (Neil Gaiman)
Fraggle Rock: The Movie (Ahmet Zappa writing screenplay for Jim Henson Productions)
Halloween (directed by Rob Zombie, Oct 17, 2007)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (July 13, 2007)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Nov 21, 2008)
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army (June 2008)
Indiana Jones 4
Jurassic Park IV
Magneto (yes, the Magneto)
Pirates of the Carribean: At Worlds's End (May 25, 2007)
Power of the Dark Crystal (Sequel to the Dark Crystal, in production at Jim Henson Productions, May 2008)
Resident Evil: Extinction (Sept 2007)
Shrek the Third (May 18, 2007)
The Simpsons Movie (July 27, 2007)
Spiderman 3 (May 4, 2007)
Star Trek XI (about the early days of Kirk and Spock, 2008)
STAR WARS TV!!!! (will run at least 100 episodes, set between eps III and IV, early years of Luke)
Wolverine (yes, the Wolverine, starring Hugh Jackman)
Wonder Woman (written and directed by Joss Whedon)

edit: also just saw from Reel Fanatic's blog that M. Night Shyamalan has a new movie entitled The Green Effect due out in 2008! His description is that "his new flick will be part-"War of the Worlds" sans aliens and part-"Soylent Green" madness."

One more piece of news...according to Locus Magazine's incredible online list of upcoming books, Orson Scott Card will release 2 more books in edition to SubPress' Space Boy. The first comes out in September. It's written by Card and Aaron Johnson, is published by TOR and is called Invasive Procedures....based on one of his short stories. The other one comes out in November and I've been looking forward to this one for 3 years. It's called War of Gifts, is published by TOR, and is basically "christmas in battle school"...an Ender's Game book.

That's all I've got....that's enough.

11 comments:

Reel Fanatic said...

I'm not sure I trust Ahmet Zappa, but I'm definitely looking forward to a Fraggle Rock movie ... Actually, what I could really use is a new dose of the muppets!

chrisa511 said...

Hey Reel, thanks for visiting! I don't know if I trust Zappa either, but it should be interesting nonetheless ;). Looking forward to the Dark Crystal sequel too. I could definitely use some muppets!

Literacy-chic said...

New fraggles? BLASPHEMY!!!! And all Jim Henson characters should have been retired when he died! Admittedly, I'm a purist. Seriously, though. . . that's gotta be a spoof. It can't be done. It shouldn't be done. I'm very upset now.

On a more positive note:

This post reminds me of a blog that you might like by Amy Reads, a fellow New Orleanean who, like me, is in exile here. She is also a comic book nut. So here is a link to her blog, . Enjoy!

Literacy-chic said...

And all Jim Henson characters should have been retired when he died! By which I mean, the ones he personally performed.

Carl V. Anderson said...

As big a Jim Henson fan as I am...and I am a HUGE Jim Hensen fan, I have really enjoyed many of the Muppet movies that have been released since his death and don't know that I could give up on not having Kermit around, even if he's not quite the same Kermit.

Didn't realize you hadn't read Stardust. Wonderful book. I've read it several times and recently bought the unabridged audio versio with Gaiman reading it. If you haven't heard Gaiman read any of his own stories you really should pick some of his audio work up. He does such a fantastic job.

Great list of movies, many that I'm looking forward to. By the way, Whedon pulled himself out of the Wonder Woman project, so that won't be happening.

Not sure how I feel about the Captain America death thing. It isn't a comic I read, but I often feel that these kind of comic book deaths are pointless marketing ploys and little else.

Hope you're feeling better and glad you enjoyed your day off.

chrisa511 said...

Nicole, I share your sentiments on Jim Henson characters, though I have to say that Jim Henson Productions does still do some amazing stuff (such as Mirrormask), so I'll probably still give it a shot. Thanks for the blog link! very cool.

Carl, I didn't realize that I hadn't read Stardust either ;p It suddenly dawned on me a few days ago. I've become so familiar with it from his blog. But it's wonderful so far (almost done actually). I've been dying to hear one of his audio books. I'll definitely pick one up soon. He has one of those voices that lends itself perfectly to that medium.

Not too upset about the Wonder Woman project not happening...I like Whedon (I loved Firefly) and that would be the only reason I saw it.

Honestly, I've never read Captain America before this. Talk about jumping on the bandwagon. It really was a big marketing ploy. You can see Marvel's been kind of desperate for customers when you look at the shelves. All this Civil War madness makes you have to buy 1000 books if you want to follow the stories. And the Capt. America storyline was really a joke. Big hype over something that wasn't EXACTLY true.

Amy Reads said...

Hi Chris,
I *still* haven't read Captain America this week, although I'm rather upset at the Internets and at The Media At Large for ruining the surprise for me (Fox News AND CNN, for goodness sake!).
And somewhere at my mother's house is still a letter in reply to the letter *I* sent to the Fraggles. They took the time to write me back, at least!
Ciao,
Amy

chrisa511 said...

Captain America was a fairly good read, but the story overall (aka, the millions of other books you need to buy to understand everything) was a little disappointing. What I'm looking forward to next is how Marvel gets all of these books back to their own story lines. That should be an interesting process.

Amy Reads said...

Hi Chris,
Captain America was a fairly good read, but the story overall (aka, the millions of other books you need to buy to understand everything) was a little disappointing. What I'm looking forward to next is how Marvel gets all of these books back to their own story lines. That should be an interesting process.

I actually *liked* Civil War, and I seem to be in the 2% minority on that (Mr. Reads and I against the world, it seems!). I found the whole Civil War storyling particularly interesting. Not as solid as, say, DC's Infinite Crisis, but solid nonetheless.
But then, some of the conversations I've had around the blogosphere suggest that as I'm not as attached to Marvel as I am to DC, I was able to enjoy it more without getting angry or upset.
Maybe!
I, too, am curious to see how they're going to start fixing things.
Ciao,
Amy

Amy Reads said...

Hi Chris,
PS for you, and Literacy Chic, who said: This post reminds me of a blog that you might like by Amy Reads, a fellow New Orleanean who, like me, is in exile here. She is also a comic book nut. So here is a link to her blog, . Enjoy!

Huzzah! Thanks for the linkage, Literacy Chic! Hope you're enjoying, Chris :)
Ciao,
Amy

chrisa511 said...

I'm very much enjoying your blog ;)

It's not so much that I found civil war disappointing, it was more the marketing scheme that aggravated me. Too much money for a poor grad student! It was a pretty good story line though and I'm looking forward to initiative. Where we seem to part ways is that I'm a MUCH bigger Marvel fan than DC. Though I've been enjoying DC a little more over the past couple of years.