News Around the Net

Let’s kick things off with this gloriously weird trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of Frankenstein:

Del Toro and Frankenstein feels like a perfect match.  Oscar Isaac is terrific in the trailer.  I cannot wait to get a look at del Toro’s interpretation of the monster (which the trailer wisely hides from us).

Aziz Ansari, Seth Rogen, and Keanu Reeves are in a movie together?  Ok, I’ll go see that:

Here’s a short teaser trailer for Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery:

I really enjoyed Knives Out and the sequel Glass Onion, so I’m very much looking forward to this third installment!

Here’s our first look at Wicked: For Good:

To my surprise, I quite enjoyed the first Wicked film, and I’m looking forward to part two!

I’m also looking forward to The Life of Chuck:

Mike Flanagan has my trust (I‘m a huge fan of his underrated adaptation of Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep, especially the extended version), and this cast looks great.

We FINALLY have a look at season five of Stranger Things, and an announcement of the release plan for the final episodes:

Here’s a trailer of season three of Foundation:

The Foundation novels by Isaac Asimov are some of my favorite books of all times.  The show, on the other hand, has been a tremendous disappointment to me.  I’m uncertain whether I’ll watch season three.

This short video of Severance’s Mister Milchick (Tramell Tillman) congratulating the Scripps National Spelling Bee competitors is amazing and a must-watch.

For more Severance fun, click here for Variety’s recent interview with Ben Stiller and Adam Strong, reflecting back on season two of the show.

Holy cow, Forgetting Sarah Marshall came out twenty years ago??  I loved that movie.  (Though I haven’t seen it in years — maybe I need to find time soon for a rewatch!)  Click here for a fun conversation between Kristen Bell and Jason Segel, looking back on the film.

The Sandman show-runner Alan Heinberg is again saying in the press that the decision to end the show after the second season has nothing to do with the accusations against Neil Gaiman, but are instead because there was only one more season’s worth of Morpheus’ story in the original comics.  I tend to want to take people at their word, but I have a very hard time believing this.  The first season of the show was a fairly faithful adaptation of the first two volumes (about twelve issues) of the original comic book series.  But The Sandman has a total of TEN volumes (75 issues), plus an assortment of spin-offs.  I know some of those later stories diverged from the main character of Morpheus, but it seems to me like there was plenty of material for several more seasons of the show.  I just can’t imagine that the original plan was to adapt 12 issues of the comic book in season one and the remaining 63 issues in season two…

I’m excited for the in-the-works Vision Disney+ MCU series, overseen by Star Trek Picard season three‘s talented show-runner Terry Matalas. I’m excited that the character of Jocasta (a fun but obscure character from the Avengers comic books of my youth) will be a part of the show!

I’m also excited to get a small update, from Hannah Waddingham, on Ted Lasso season four!!  I can’t wait!!  I hope it’s good!!

I saw the Broadway production of Art, back in 1998, starring Alan Alda, Victor Garber and Alfred Molina.  It was amazing!!  So I’m thrilled to learn that a revival is underway, to star Bobby Cannavale, James Corden and Neil Patrick Harris.  I hope I’m able to see this!

I’m bummed to read that Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars have both been pushed back, by about half a year.  That means that after this summer’s Fantastic Four, we’re going to go almost a year and a half before the next MCU film.  That feels like poor planning on Marvel’s part.

I haven’t had a chance to watch any of Amazon’s Wheel of Time series, so I guess I’m part of the problem that led to the series’ cancellation after three seasons.  I do hope to watch the show someday, so I’m sad they weren’t able to tell the full story.  That’s a shame.

Great news from the comic book world: Brian Michael Bendis & Michael Avon Oeming are bringing back their series Powers!  This funny, dark, and gloriously profane series chronicles homicide detectives in a world in which superheroes exits.  I’ve been a fan since the first issue, twenty-five years ago.  I’m excited for more.

I’m happy that David Fincher’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood sequel project, using a script by Quentin Tarantino, looks like it’s actually moving forward and is going to shoot this summer!  I can’t wait for this!

I was sad to read of the death of Alf Clausen, the long-time composer for The Simpsons.  Mr. Clausen composed the scores and all the wonderful songs for the show for the show for almost 30 years, from 1990 until 2017 (when he was let go from the show in what to me, as an outsider, felt like an ugly turn of events.)  (Mr. Clausen’s wonderful music for the show has been collected in three different albums over the years.  The first one, 1997’s Songs in the Key of Springfield — whose title, nerd alert, was a jokey play on the 1996 collection of music from The X-Files called Songs in the Key of X, which was itself a play on Stevie Wonder’s 1976 album Songs in the Key of Life — was and still stands as one of my all-time favorite collections of TV music.  There are 39 tracks on that album and every one of them is hilarious and amazing.)

I was extremely saddened to read of the passing of the author Peter David at only 68.  Mr. David had been facing serious health challenges for many years.  (I’d donated twice to his family’s fundraisers to help cover his medical bills.  That this writer who created so much material for Marvel and DC, not to mention other huge franchises such as Star Trek, spent his final years struggling to pay his medical bills, is a disgrace.)  Mr. David might just be my all-time favorite author.  He’s written a number of amazing Star Trek novels, including Imzadi (which explored the Riker-Troi romance that was too often ignored on TNG), Vendetta (a kick-ass Borg story that is a better follow-up to “The Best of Both Worlds” than anything that official on-screen Star Trek ever gave us in the decades since that iconic two-part episode of TNG), The Captain’s Daughter (a wonderful story expanding upon the character of Demora Sulu, who was introduced in Star Trek: Generations), and the amazing New Frontier saga, a series of about twenty books telling an original, continuing story set within Star Trek continuity and featuring a mix of new and classic Trek characters.  (I am broken-hearted that, with Mr. David’s death, there will be no more New Frontier stories.)  Mr. David was also an incredible comic book author, known for his never-to-be-matched twelve year run on The Incredible Hulk.  (Mr. David’s long run defined the Hulk in a similar way to how Chris Claremont’s long run defined the X-Men.  Sadly both men were eventually pushed off their books by Marvel brass.)  Mr. David also wrote the classic “The Death of Jean DeWolf” storyline for Spider-Man, and spent many years writing a funny and compelling run on X-Factor.  (My favorite years of Mr. David’s writing on X-Factor are collected in this omnibus.)  But my very favorite Peter David comic book run is where I first discovered him: writing DC Comics’ Star Trek comic book series.  Mr. David’s run on those comics from the eighties are some of my all-time favorite Star Trek stories ever told.  I love them so much.  (My very favorite is this incredible Scotty short story.)  Mr. David has also written a lot of non-fiction.  He had a fantastic blog that I read for years, and he wrote a terrific memoir, called Mr. Sulu Grabbed My Ass, and Other Highlights from a Life in Comics, Novels, Television, Films and Video Games.  (It’s available on Amazon right now!)  This is an awful loss.  I know I will continue to enjoy Mr. David’s writing for the rest of my days, and I lament how much more great writing I wish he’d been able to do.  If you’re not familiar with the novels and comic books I’ve mentioned here, do yourself a favor (and also help support this website) by clicking through one of those Amazon links and giving one of Mr. David’s great stories a try!

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