New Sorcerer’s Apprentice trailer with cooler action, F/X

In the new movie—based on the animated segment of Fantasia—Jay Baruchel plays the apprentice to a sorcerer (Nicolas Cage) in present-day New York.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which was directed by Jon Turteltaub and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, opens July 16.

See the trailer here.

Stan Lee’s smashing Thor movie cameo revealed

According to an insider on the set of Kenneth Branagh’s movie, Stan Lee is going to get hammered:

Thor’s hammer ( Mjolnir ) is found lying inside a crater in the middle of the road by the U.S. Army. The army tries to move it but can’t because it’s too heavy. They decide to bring in a truck for assistance. The soldiers tie Thor’s hammer to the back of the truck with chains. The truck driver accelerates to pull Mjohnir. The back half of the truck falls apart as the front keeps moving. Finally, the camera cuts to the driver who happens to be comic legend Stan Lee.

See the compilation of his appearances here.

James Cameron: The ‘Avatar’ sequel will dive into the oceans of Pandora

On Thursday, which is Earth Day, Fox will release “Avatar” on DVD and Blu-ray, but James Cameron says a longer version of the film will be back in theaters in August — and that the franchise will return with a seagoing sequel. Hero Complex contributor Patrick Kevin Day recently spoke with the filmmaker.

PD: When you embark on your next film project, do you know what the challenge will be? Something on par with filming underwater for “The Abyss” or perfecting the performance capture technology in “Avatar”?

JC: Well you’ve already defined what the challenge will be on the next “Avatar” picture, which is to do what we did before at half the price and in half the time. Again, that’s an impossible goal, we won’t accomplish that, but if we can reduce by 25% in both categories, we’ll have really accomplished something. We know our methodology works. We also know it took two years to come up with. It didn’t even become efficient until the last two months of the production. So we were four years into a project before we had this machine running smoothly. So we take a snapshot of that moment in our production and say that’s what we look like on Day 1, we’re going to do better. Now, none of that has anything to do with coming up with a great story or great characters or great new settings and so on. That all is a given. That’s not to say that it’s done yet, it’s a given that we have to do that. But for me, the technical challenge is in improving the process having proved that it works.

We created a broad canvas for the environment of film. That’s not just on Pandora, but throughout the Alpha Centauri AB system. And we expand out across that system and incorporate more into the story – not necessarily in the second film, but more toward a third film. I’ve already announced this, so I might as well say it: Part of my focus in the second film is in creating a different environment – a different setting within Pandora. And I’m going to be focusing on the ocean on Pandora, which will be equally rich and diverse and crazy and imaginative, but it just won’t be a rain forest. I’m not saying we won’t see what we’ve already seen; we’ll see more of that as well.

Read the complete interview here.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is looking good. Are you looking forward to seeing that movie?

LOL@Stan Lee. He’s everywhere.

What do you think of an Avatar sequel?

Vampire Novels You Should Be Reading

teenfiction.suite101.com: Though Twilight‘s popularity has pushed vampires into the spotlight (or sunlight) once again, vampire tales have had a place on shelves for years. In 1819, John William Polidori wrote what some call the first vampire tale: “The Vampyre.” Since, vampires have captured readers and movie-goers’ attention in various genres and contextual settings. Here are some modern novels that should be read for their diverse content, genre and literary style. More work can be found at The Vampire Library.

Fledgling — Octavia Butler

(Seven Stories Press)

This novel reveals the story of a young African-American girl who isn’t who she appears to be. While she appears to be a prepubescent girl, she’s actually a 50-something woman from the “Ina” race. The Ina, it turns out, is a race that is based in vampirism (nocturnal behavior and blood drinking). The novel shows Shori, the protagonist, as she awakens without an understanding of her surroundings or what has happened to her. She’s been hurt, burned and and is in critical condition. She later meets a man who she feeds from, although — and this mutual relation is the key here — he allows her. He likes it. This isn’t to be confused with the sort of symbiotic relationship we see in True Blood (fangbangers, for example). The Ina aren’t evil, and they don’t use humans in an unkind way the way many vampires do in the Southern Vampire Mysteries. This is a novel for readers seeking not only excellent writing but multicultural commentary. This tale works well for young adult and adult readers.

More here

Rereading Christopher Moore’s Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story

www.tor.com: The week of Valentine’s Day is an ideal time for a love story.  Christopher Moore’s third vampire novel, Bite Me: A Love Story, isn’t due out for another month, so this seemed an ideal time to reread Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story, the first book in the series.

Twenty-six-year-old Jody Stroud has just gotten off work at her menial job in an insurance company in San Francisco.  She is dragged into an alley, bitten in the throat and forced to drink from her attacker’s arm, then drained of blood and left under a dumpster.

When Jody awakens the following night, she discovers she has the strength to toss the dumpster off her and that the hand that has been left in the sunlight is badly burned.  It doesn’t take too long for her to discover that she has joined the ranks of the undead.  She has a thirst for blood and she will remain exactly as she is for eternity.  She will never be able to lose that last five pounds she was intending to diet away.

More Here

10 Steps To Making Science Fiction Romance A Contender

www.thegalaxyexpress.net:While the turbulent forces of publishing industry storms have been brewing, I’ve been wondering how science fiction romance readers, authors, and small press/digital publishers could take advantage of the changing times.

As I reflected on how to make science fiction romance a contender, ten points came to mind….

10) A new belief system is in order: The reader, not the bookseller, is the customer.

9) Customers are demanding affordable books, especially digital ones. (It bears repeating that paperbacks outsell hardcovers, and this article outlines “the shocking few [hardcovers] sold at that price [$20 plus dollars].” (Thanks to Jane from Dear Author for the link.)

More here

Read for pleasure, leisure, love and knowledge

www.timeslive.co.za: It’s true that new books arrive every week, but there is also the deep frustration of knowing I will read only a fraction of them.

My sense of hopeless-ness is compounded when I consider that the concept of “new” books is a relative one. As Samuel Butler observed: “The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.”

But read I must, not only for pleasure, but also to increase my general book knowledge as a bookseller, and to find inspiration for writing this column. The only way to do this properly is to have a system so, at the beginning of the year, I decided that each month I need to ensure I read titles from each of the following lists: fiction, non-fiction, local, international, the classics, my own book-shelves, my book club, newly published titles, proof titles of books still to be published, and something that I stumble across and can’t resist (even if it’s schlock). I have also made a commitment to not finish books that are clearly not going to enrich, enchant, entertain or enlighten me.

More here

The Supergirls: Fashion, Feminism, Fantasy, and the History of Comic Book Heroines

link-exchange-link.com: “The Supergirls is a long overdue tribute to the fabulous fighting females whose beauty and bravery brighten the pages of your favorite comics.”—Stan Lee

A much-needed alternative history of American comic book superheroines—from Wonder Woman to Supergirl and beyond—where they fit in popular culture and why, and what these crime-fighting females say about the role of women in American society from their creation to now, and into the future. The Supergirls is an entertaining and informative look at these modern-day icons, exploring how superheroines fare in American comics, and what it means for the culture when they do everything the superhero does, but in thongs and high heels.

Has Wonder Woman hit the comic book glass ceiling? Is that the one opposition that even her Amazonian strength can’t defeat?

More here

Love is everywhere and we can find it in any book that we read. How many Vampire novels have you read lately? What do you think of Sci-fi Romance?

Have you read Christopher Moore’s Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story? Join us in the forum for more discussions!

 Michael Sragow from baltimoresun.com has an interesting opinion on comic books and the role they play in Hollywood!

Let us now praise Comic-Con. On the occasion of the 10th annual Baltimore Comic-Con, it’s time to celebrate comic-book fans and what they’ve wrought. By providing an audience for comic books that shared the concerns and upheld the standards of literary yarn-spinners as different as J.R.R. Tolkien and Jim Thompson, it expanded critical and popular recognition across the board for the richness and pertinence of escapism.

In particular, this audience helped revitalize the fantasy heritage of moviemaking, compelling filmmakers such as Peter Jackson to renew the expansionist and inventive impulses of early masters from Fritz Lang to Ray Harryhausen.

If anything, the comic-book fan base has encouraged moviemakers to grow ever more serious in their action-packed reveries, embracing films as relentlessly grim as Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies and as aggressively chaotic as “District 9.” I think those films, and others like them, sink under the weight of their ambitions. But comic-book movies now contain a diversity of pleasures, as endearing and silly as the first “Fantastic Four” and as haunting as the best parts of the “Hellboy” series. I love the way Sam Raimi turned ” Spider-Man 2″ into a romantic opera and Bryan Singer turned “X-2: X-Men United” into a comic-book gloss on overreaction to terrorism as well as a new testament of teen angst.

Read more HERE

I totally agree with this writer! So many great blockbuster movies have come from comics! Hollywood definitely owes a bid debt to people like Frank Miller, Neil Gaiman, and the great Stan Lee! Oh and of course the die-hard comic book fans

Do you agree with this theory? Have you read some of these comics. or do you just pefer to watch them on the big screen?