ThaOGDreamWeaver

I think that deserves a thread on its own. Sometimes, it's someone wanting to have another try, a different or bigger take on a tale, or a new chapter that fills in the gaps. As long as it tells a new story, I'm good with that. But a lot of the time, yes. Yes it is. Taking chances is risky: and even with the improved maths of your own streaming platform, a dud will cost you more than money. I think Andor qualifies for the first one, since they're all new characters bar three (Cassian, Mon and Saw), in a situation and a time we know very little about... and a style of story we've not really seen before in SW (gritty spy thriller). Almost wholly new tale within a universe we know, which saves on a lot of worldbuilding - goddess knows, sci-fi directors don't always know when to get on with it - and gets you right into the meat of a story. I dig. The Haunted Mansion reboot is probably also fair enough because the first try wasn't very good, so that story deserves to be done better. But the grim, relentless determination Disney has to live-action every. single. toon. they've. ever. made... does bother me. A lot. Even the stellar cast they put into Dumbo didn't make that one fly. I'm not gonna be seeing Little Mermaid again, though Halle is going to nail it. Guillermo del Toro is not tempting me to Pinocchio. Sorry, G. And at this rate they'll need to dig up Song Of The South.

By Grabthar's Hammer and the Sons of Warvan, yes. Ours is the old Latin version: Noli Sinere Spurios Te Opprimere*, which later appeared on... British Coins. Neat. Speaking of which, I've been thinking about this more and added another one. The mighty wizard Terry of Pratchett said: Find the story, Granny Weatherwax always said. The world was full of story shapes. If you let them, they controlled you. But if you studied them, found out about them... you could use them, and change them. Understanding that everyone is the hero of their own story in their heads (or, rarely, the villain) is a very handy way of looking at how you relate to people, what you can say and do to help them and/or change your minds in your favour: by using story beats, tropes and cues they recognise. Not overtly most of the time. It can even work on yourself. A little headology goes a long way... *Don't let the b****rds grind you down.

I enjoyed it as a fun popcorn flick...

No major annos on day 3 unless you're into the parks and cruise lines, which will have much more new stuff including new Avengers, Frozen, Moana and Princess & The Frog stuff. But there is this little curiosity... ..and here's the EPK. There's at least one very familiar voice in there... and one hell of a theme tune.

Sammy Burdson - News Background

Herbie Hancock - Heartbeat

Bullitt (Main Titles) - Lalo Schifrin

Final Andor trailer dropped at D23: Not much new here, other than introducing three new characters: Denise Gough's character gets her first lines and a name: Dedra Meero, of Imperial Security (Gestap-ish, I'd guess.) According to interviews, sort of agrees with Andor that her colleagues are fat, lazy, corrupt and "very mediocre". But... she's A Believer. She is going to be a problem. Same goes for Adria Arjona's Bix Calleen - guessing love interest, likely an early 'fridge candidate. Lazy writing if they go for that. Finally, Faye Marsay (ooh, nice Old Hollywood name there) as Vel Sartha - who seems to be the link character between Andor & Rael's down and dirty Rebellion A-Plot and the political intrigue B-Plot with Jen O'Reilly's Mon Mothma.

More small(ish) stuff from yesterday: DD-Born Again guest appearance from Charlie & Vinnie. Filming isn't starting till later this year. Also guest shot from the Echo crew - again, pre-production at this point. As well as Secret Invasion, Don Cheadle/Rhodey is back in Armour Wars. No filming details or release date. D23-only preview footage from The Marvels, with all 3 key cast members on stage. Minor update on Thunderbolts, with David Harbour's Red Guardian rounding out the crew. (Oddly disappointed, as I've always wanted a Thunderbolts movie, but taking it from the beginning as the fake-superteam - think Marvel's Usual Suspects. Not a counterpoint to The Suicide Squad: the copycat stuff is not something Marvel need to do.) Fun facts on the Werewolf By Night special: directorial debut of stellar composer and David Arnold's longtime nemesis Michael Giacchino. Runtime is about an hour and is a deliberate experiment in making a Friday night movie on a ludicrously tiny budget the best it can be. Expect mostly practical effects - some of them deliberately terrible - and some pretty genuine scares. More on the Haunted Mansion reboot, and clearly they're giving it all the beans this time. Lead is Rosario Dawson, who picks up a suspiciously cheap mansion in N'Awlins. Unwilling to be banished from her new abode by ghosts - including likely lead bad guy Jared Leto - she puts together a crew of a professor (Danny DeVito), a priest (Owen Wilson), a psychic medium (but given it's Tiffany Haddish, a psychic small), and a local tour guide (LaKeith Stanfield) to try and get it back. JLC is maybe on her side as Madame Leota: and a whole schmear of cameos including Winona Ryder, Dan Levy and a bunch more. If you're wondering why I'm frothing about that a bit, the HM reboot was kicked off by one Guillermo del Toro. I don't know much would have survived from that script (or who would have survived from that script...) but the focus on the Hat-Box Ghost and their backstory seems to have come from him. Yet another One That Got Away? Zootopia+ series sneak peek, which should go down well with the Tumblr crowd. Not that they're all lascivious furries over there who'll be furiously yiffing over every moment, you understand. Just most of them. Disney Juniors Young Jedi Adventures about a host of cute younglings, who go on a special adventure with Master Anaki... oh. (Too soon?) Final Andor trailer drop. Ho hooo nooo... first attempt at career rehab for Tim Allen with The Santa Clauses D+ series. Weakest teaser offering by a polar mile, guest starring Peyton Manning. Percy Jackson D+ series: cast reveal and interview with Rick Riordan. Toy reveals a-go-go, including official first appearance of the GOTG Holiday Special Lego Advent Calendar. Because of course there's one. Best unscripted moment of the day: Key Huy Quan (aka Short Round) asking if he's in the wrong panel room (for Loki S2) when he should be with Indy. And lo and behold: ...I don't think I've seen Harrison look that happy in years. And yes, I have been scouring the interwebs for leaked footage, but clearly the Rodent Stormtroopers are doing a better job at rooting out Bothan spies this year. Sunday is unlikely to bring any new major annos (the fans are usually fairly hungover by that point, and it's not a good day for the old-school press), but has a major AHS panel (20C and FX are Disney too now, remember?), a TRON retrospective and a few other bits. And there's always that chance of "oh... and one more thing..."

Day 2 brings new stuff - but no Scarlet Witch solo movie anno, which may upset the stans more than a little. So far, we have the official Secret Invasion teaser: ...and a really funky intro for surprise drop Werewolf By Night - right down to the retro Friday-night-movie Special Presentation intro: ...aaand Mando Series 3: ...which looks very much like a second Mandalorian Civil War brewing. Plus: Fantastic 4 take 3 (you do the math) with no confirmed casting details, though rumours that Cavill will code switch are possible. INDY MY FRIEND! Ford confirms this is his last go in the hat ("I'm NOT falling down for you again...") More big love for Phoebe WB... From the production details and concept art, rumours that this one involves... time travel? (I hate time travel. Gives me IBS). Ford thinks this one "will kick your ass" and has a real story and heart behind it. Ahsoka: much praise for Dave's transition to live action... and there will be action. Live action Ezra confirmed as Eman Esfandi. Ahsoka also front and center in the Tales Of The Jedi shorts. And that one little surprise package, which looks very much like an antidote to the straight-laced fantasy that Amazon paid a billion bucks for.

Dear legion of the great Tribe of Nerd. Friends. Comrades. Geeks of all shades, species and fetish. This isn't necessarily for A Thing, though it might wind up being one. What lessons have you learned from your fandoms that you've then applied in life? Just started thinking about this because life has been rough lately, both generally for all of us and specifically in mine, but you don't need to hear that. But I have been practicing clearing my head and staying calm will all around is chaos. And have discovered that of all the help tapes, podcasts, books, spells or whatever, the one that works the best... is the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear. It's a short, simple mantra, and the idea is to essentially "voice roll" yourself: slow your heartbeat, calm your mind, take focus away from the emotional response to a logical one (which usually leads to better outcomes.) Here's an example from Bethany Black. You don't have to do it quite this performatively, but try matching the rhythm. Then again, slower. Then again. Slower. So: what have you taken from the things you've read / seen that you went on to apply realtime?

So, new stuff at Disney's D23 fan expo: DISENCHANTED: being a part time practitioner of Magick myself, I would always tell you... HOCUS POCUS 2: almost an annual tradition, slightly mould-breaking in its day (wait, you hired that Sophie Tucker lady for a Disney flick?), the Sandersons return... Other stuff: Probably for next Halloween: with the Eddie Murphy version dead on arrival, D takes another crack at a Haunted Mansion movie - and with Jamie Lee Curtis on board, maybe they think scaring the living s#!z out of kids is what Uncle Walt would have wanted. Because he damn well did. Mufasa: Lion King prequel movie set for 2024. No details available outside the room beyond the title - possibly another Favreau joint if he's not working on Mando. Snow White: the live action adaps continue, this time with Rachel Zegler in the title role and Gal Gadot typecast as Evil Queen. (Wait, did I say that out loud?) Little Mermaid: Halle Bailey takes the lead. Tiny Twitter teaser available and she's got the pipes for it.. Peter Pan and Wendy: not much to see beyond the poster at this point. Pixar's next trick: Elemental, about two bickering co-workers who... well, that would be tricky, as one's a fire elemental and the other a water sprite. It'd certainly get steamy... briefly. Also coming up: as if you've not had enough emotional trauma off Pixar, how about traumatising your emotions? Inside Out 2 announced, though I'm really not seeing where they could go with that - and pulling off the same material twice is going to be tricky. Elio sounds like the flipside of Close Encounters or ET, in which a small boy is selected as an ambassador for humanity. Win Or Lose... every damn director, telly, film, even podcasts these days, wants to do a Rashomon. It's like an itch from the minute they leave film school. But it does sound interesting - the adventures of a school softball team in the week leading up to the championship, told from multiple different perspectives. Gaming annos so far: Slightly disconnected from D23, but a WW2-era Cap+Black Panther teamup looks fun. The retro Wonderful World Of Mickey Mouse styled platformer Illusion Island may not play like Cuphead's bullet hell, but shares a little of its style and sense of humour, and is designed around up to 4 co-op players on Switch. EDIT: Marvel stuff drops today (Sat 10th) from 10am Pacific / 6pm UK time. Star Wars and Indy 5 reveals expected across the weekend. While you're waiting for Indy 5 news, the legend that is John Williams already spoilered something: the theme for Phoebe Waller-Bridge's character Helena. He seems to like her a lot. That's old-school Hollywood glam-n-satin music right there, with a few little darker hints of sadness and mystery, with tantalising echoes of Indy's own leitmotifs and themes.

So, episode 4:

Queen - God Save The Queen

Noted Bond girl, who pulled off one of the greatest crossover sketch pranks in film-to-live event history. Didn't even tell her family - and that's commitment to the gag. https://olympics.com/en/video/the-queen-drops-into-london-2012-with-james-bond

Sharon Jones & The DapKings - Your Thing Is A Drag

Franciene Thomas - I'll Be There

Four Tops - Remember When

That appears to be happening, per Vanity Fair and others. They haven't specified what's going on, though I quite cynically suspect that will form part of the PR tour. (If it does inspire other people to seek help, then at least some good has come out of that whole deal. I'm a hell of a lot happier and more together than I've ever been once I did the work, and - being maybe a little over honest - I probably wouldn't have been around here to say that if I hadn't. Things got... grim for a while back there.) Anyhow. I guess WB hired some kind of dogged, Tommy Lee Jones ex-US Marshal type to run him down and corner him before the FBI did, then dragged him into therapy, and surrounded him with a steel ring of lawyers and PR. (EDIT: and thinking about it... I'd quite like to see that movie as much as The Flash.)

Just rezzing this thread to say: if you thought doing a press junket with drunk Hugh Grant was bad... ...it could be worse.

Advertising The Invisible - Stalker

Deodato - Area Code 808

Just reactivating this because of a new bit of information I wasn't aware of before. But this involves some deep film nerd history, so strap in... You may have heard of a bloke called Howard Hughes. Bit of a nutter. Decent engineer, especially when it came to planes (and bras). Quite a cunning businessman in his day. And one of the jewels in his business crown was RKO Pictures - one of the original Big Five studios. One of the reasons studios used to print money was that they didn't just make pictures. They owned the production rights, the distro networks, even the theatres (known as vertical integration.) Not only that, as such they could bully other chains into taking whole slates of flicks, good or bad (block booking) or fiddle with scheduling of other movies (clearance). This was great for the studios, but not great for cinema owners. So Paramount got hit with a test anti-trust case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc The surrender agreement sheared the studios of all their cinemas, prodded them into breaking out their distro arms more cleanly, and forced them to revise a lot of how they do business. It also became a major bedrock of antitrust laws, and incidentally spurred the rise of indie filmmaking and foreign imports. Oh, and it also killed RKO outright. Hughes saw what was coming, but jumped too early and took a bath on the cinemas. There were also a number of panic decisions, finishing up with flogging his prize asset to a bunch from Chicago who really, really didn't know what to do with a studio. So the only place you'll have seen an RKO Radio Tower since 1959's on a rerun (or The Rocky Horror Picture Show's big dance sequence). So why is all this legal guff important now? Weeelllll... [sucks on glasses in a wise yet provocative manner] If you happen to read to the end of that article, the DOJ in 2019 decided to look at any Supreme Court cases that didn't come with automatic end or renewal date. For reasons best known to them, they picked this one. They disliked it, partly because it seemed outdated, but mainly because it didn't fit that admin's policy goals. So the DOJ sent it to the Supreme Court in Nov 2019, and they gave it a "sunset" date. That expired... August 7th, 2022. So, studios now have pretty much free rein to own what they want, sell to who they want, ignore who they want, etc. Fair enough, the game has changed a lot since the 1950s, with streaming and a wealth of independent talent and whatnot. With this new information on board, and looking back at what WB-D are up to business structure wise - with a lot of the major properties being hived off into holding companies and neat divisions, anything odd or contro getting burned without mercy, and turning tax tricks a-go-go (with multiple film casualties along the way) to clear existing debts... To a very, very cynical eye, it might look like WB-D's being sliced like sashimi into neatly portioned assets ready for sale. What do you guys think?

Heh. I'm not sure it's supposed to look right, but it went from "unsettling uncanny valley" to "cartoon". Which seems odd, when they nailed a genuine gaaaaarrrggahaahhaaharrgghghh moment out of me with the Corinthian reveal, even though I knew it was coming.