The week has flown by, and I’ve had a blast sharing links, videos, and images with you all. I still have one more day behind the wheel of this ship, and I intend to bring you all kinds of goodies. While today is another one of those slow news days as everyone winds down at Fantastic Fest, and prepares for the New York Film Festival, I managed to find some pretty neat things in my feed reader.
Over on The Hobbit Facebook Page, we’ve been treated to a new dwarf-centric poster for the upcoming film. (via The One Ring and Bleeding Cool)
Toys will be the undoing of film secrets, I swear. Well, toys, trailers, and obsessive fans. In the latest trailer for The Hobbit, we got a look at a big ugly goblin falling on top of the dwarves. Now, at the time i thought, “oh, that’s probably some big dumb goblin that will provide some comic relief.” But not so fast! According to some pictures of upcoming Hobbit related toys, that big dumb goblin is the king that Bilbo and the dwarves are brought to inside the mountain. Now, there are a few things that are very troubling about this. First the design. This goblin is way too silly looking to be the king. Unless he has a terrifying lieutenant who will take over to chase down the dwarves with the wolves / wargs, they’ve really missed the chance to create an iconic scary bad guy for this first film. Maybe they’ll give him a threatening voice. Now, the second part of this news that is troubling is the fact that we see his demise in the trailer! I know it’s silly to think of something like this as a spoiler, but it kind of is, and takes some of the tension out of the sequence.
This past week, Flicker Alley released two new Blu-rays: This Is Cinerama and Windjammer. Both are presented in a “smilebox” curved screen to simulate the experience of seeing these wide screen releases. I had the chance to watch This Is Cinerama last night and found it absolutely wonderful. It’s a non-narrative, series of shots from around the country, showing off the Cinerama technology. While it’s very different from Baraka and the Qatsi films, I think if you’re a fan of those, you’ll want to run out and buy this Blu-ray. Check out a video discussing how Cinerama was edited.
The Short Of The Week has posted a pretty rad video entitled Tears Of Steel. Here’s the description:
“In a dystopian Amsterdam of the future, a team of warriors and scientists employ the powers of love and technology in an attempt to save the world from the clutches of an embittered humanoid robot.”
Netflix has updated their iOS app to fit the new iPhone 5 screen size.
To commemorate their recent release of Quadrophenia, the Criterion Collection has posted a recipe for “Beef Pie and Mash with Parsley Liquor”
Something that I’ve been anticipating since it was announced is the new 47 Ronin comic adaptation that Dark Horse will be releasing this November. It’s being illustrated by Stan Sakai (Usagi Yojimbo), with Kazuo Koike (Lone Wolf And Cub) as a consulting editor! The first issue hits stores on November 7th. Dark Horse sent out some sample pages today, and here are a couple (you can find more on the CriterionCast blog)
If you’re a fan of Koike’s work on the Lone Wolf And Cub books, you might get a kick out of this illustration by Kyle McQueen. (via Super Punch)
Criterion has sent out their September 2012 E-mail newsletter, and as usual they included a “wacky” drawing from Jason Polan. This time around, it appears that they’re teasing at Terrance Malick’s Badlands (Get it? Bad lambs?), a title that folks have been asking for for years. It was a Warner Home Video title, which has kept it away from Criterion for a while, but it appears that all of that has been resolved.
Another film which will likely find its way into the Criterion Collection is Michael Mann’s Thief. Film On Paper found this UK one-sheet for the film, under the name Violent Streets.
That about covers most of the fun things I found online today. There are a few other random links from this past week that didn’t find their way into a post so far that I’ll save for tomorrow. Thanks everyone for reading, and for sharing these posts with others.