Cool New Items

Here are some cool new items being released soon. Find them all at www.forbiddenplanet.co.uk

Star Wars Mighty Muggs: Darth Vader Ver.2, Han Solo Hoth Gear, Plo Kloon & Moff Tarkin (£9.99 each)

G.I. Joe Mighty Muggs: Duke, Cobra Commander, Snake Eyes & Storm Shadow (£9.99 each)

Indiana Jones Mighty Muggs Wave 3 - Toht, Irina Spalko, Indy in white tuxedo (£9.99 each)



Marvel Mighty Muggs Wave 4 - Human Torch, Silver Surfer, Galactus and Wolverine (not pictured) (£9.99 each)

Star Wars: Clone Wars 9" Yoda Plush (£10.99)

Star Wars: Clone Wars In Your Pocket (£8.99)

Captain America Shield 1960's Version Prop Replica (£239.99)

Thor Helmet: Modern Prop Replica (£269.99)

Star Wars - Ultimate 1/4 Scale Han Solo in Hoth Gear & Obi Wan Kenobi (£54.99 each)

Watchmen Movie - Rorschach Mask & Gun Prop Replicas (£169.99)
Nite Owl Ship Replica (£199.99)
Nite Owl Bust (£35.99)
Silk Spectre II Bust (£35.99)

Sideshow 12" Darth Vader Lords of the Sith Ep IV Figure (£69.99)



Lots of cool stuff to waste your hard earned money on!

G.I. Joe Movie picks up speed

G.I Joe seems to be picking up more and more excited fans all over the place as new pics and updates emerge on the web. I'm really hoping this Stephen Sommers movie is more like The Mummy and less like Van Helsing as it deserves to be a classic. I can't help but feel it'll turn out like Van Damme's Streetfighter: The Movie! The pics below at least show a little more action than the posed character pics released recently with Snake Eyes on top of a Humvee.

Family Guy spin-off planned

Fans of Family Guy will be pleased to hear that Peter's squeeky voiced friend Cleveland Brown is set to have his own TV show in 2009. Below is the Wiki description:

"The Cleveland Show is the working title of an upcoming American animated series by Seth MacFarlane, a spin-off from Family Guy. The Cleveland Show will be an animated series focusing on the character of Cleveland Brown and his family as Cleveland moves from Rhode Island to Virginia. His newly introduced family includes his new wife, Donna, (to be voiced by Sanaa Lathan her 16-year-old daughter, Roberta, (to be voiced by Nia Long) and her 5-year-old son, Rilo. Cleveland Jr. is also in the family but is now much fatter than he appeared on Family Guy. Cleveland's neighbours also include a family of talking anthropomorphic bears, a redneck couple (with the husband Lester to be voiced by Kevin Richardson) and an English family,with the husband to be voiced by Seth MacFarlane.
Cleveland will officially leave Family Guy. The show is scheduled to be released in 2009".

More movie news

Is it just me or did no one else know about Transporter 3? I was pleasantly surprised to find out recently that a third installment of the adrenaline fuelled franchise was already finished and heading for the cinema in December 08. I'm a huge fan of Jason Statham and the Transporter films and I'm seriously looking forward to this one. The story is based in Paris now with Stathams character waking up to find an explosive device on his wrist... Trailer below.

Terminator: Salvation (Terminator 4) looks to be reversing some initial reactions from critics. Originally fans of the franchise were worried that cooky director McG would be a poor choice for the 4th film and that Terminator 3 would actually look good next to this outing. However now that images and a teaser trailer have arisen (see below) it would seem everyone is now excited and hopeful of a Batman Begins type revamp. The news so far is that Christian Bale plays leader of the resistance; John Connor, Anton Yelchin is his comrade and future father Kyle Reese, Sam Worthintgton is Marcus Wright, a decommissioned Terminator fighting for the good guys and Bryce Dallas Howard is Kate Connor (taking over from Claire Danes in T3). The film is said to have the look of City of Men and the velocity of Transformers with action scenes aplenty and T600's ripping up the post apocalyptic wasteland. Looking forward to this one!

Artwork for T4


Bale as John Connor

Watchmen has made a huge impact on almost every media over the past couple of months with magazine appearances, websites and cons packed with pictures posters and interviews for the 2009 release. I have to admit that although I read and disliked the graphic novel myself I am looking forward to this movie based purely on the trailer (below). It has a certain something that gets the old geek juices flowing. SDCC 08 was awash with everything Watchmen from action figures to autograph signings and if they were anything to go by this movie could be HUGE! (Oh and Malin Akerman looks so damn hot in the Silk Spectre II outfit it makes my eyes water...)

Malin Akerman as Silk Spectre II

One of the most awaited sequels ever is Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. This movie has such a buzz and a huge fan base now that its doubled budget ($300 million!) and increase of up to 64 new Transformers, so the grapevine says, means we could be seeing a seriously cool movie very soon. Not only have Soundwave and Jetfire now been 100% confirmed but so has Arcee, the pink female motorbike, who didn't make the cut in the first film due to the problem of having to explain her gender. Sources linked to the movie have sidestepped Arcee's appearance once or twice but a recent leak of a call sheet shows "Arcee Rider 1 & 2" as extras in the script confirming her addition. If 64 new Transformers is true I can only presume we'll be seeing a return to Cybertron in some way or form this time round. I can't see that many Autobots and Decepticons coming to Earth in the sequel. It has been confirmed however that the next movie is based Worldwide, such as also in China not just America, which lends credence to more than a handful of the little blighters turning up.
At first, after hearing the title, I thought this movie was about one of the Transformers who "fell" in the first movie (as I'd read that a major player from the first one comes back to settle a score, Megatron? Jazz?) but I've since heard that in the limited run of TF comics there was actually a character named "The Fallen" so this could be the focus of the script. Either way Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox both make a welcome return as well as most of the original primary cast with the new addition of young hottie Isabel Lucas. Keep watching this space for updates.

A fans rendering of Arcee



The Fallen



Isabel Lucas (Sam's college friend. Love triangle anyone?)

Video game based movies have never done that well, especially ones directed by Uwe Boll, one of the most hated directors in Hollywood who hasn't had a single film produce a profit...

However we're still seeing more and more adaptations hitting our cinemas. A few coming soon are:
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time - Starring Jake Gyllenhaal and new Bond girl Gemma Atherton (May 2010)
Max Payne - Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis (Oct 2008)
Farcry - Uwe Boll Dir - Til Schweiger in main role (TBC)
Gears of war - Len Weisman (Underworld) Dir (TBC)
Lost Planet - (2010)

Lets see if these can break that unbreakable mould of failure...



Guess what? If you hadn't heard Fraggle Rock is coming to cinemas in 2009! That's right, a movie featuring our favourite Henson-made Fraggles will be released very soon as a musical feature directed by Cory Edwards, who directed the animated "Hoodwinked!". Details are scarce at this time but it's been mentioned by sources that the Fraggles will be relocated to somewhere else other than their previous "caves under a lighthouse home" (maybe somewhere in the US) and that the Gorgs and Doozers would definitely feature... The Missus and I can't wait for this one, soon we'll all be going "down to Fraggle Rock, boom boom, down to Fraggle Rock!" Here's a link to the intro for the old series that I'll always know and love! ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSDeoO-j3G0

Signing off for now...

Harry Potter gets darker...

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is coming to a theatre near you this November and the franchise seems to get darker with every outing. Watch the goosebump-inducing trailer below to see just how dark it is!

Batman: Dark Knight - Sequel News

It's currently rumored that due to Heath Ledger's untimely death after the filming of Dark Knight and the open ended fate of The Joker at the films end we could be seeing one of 3 new bad-guys (or maybe just the one) in the next film. It's been mentioned by Gary Oldman in a recent interview that The Riddler is the proposed main villain for Christopher Nolan's third installment. This also seems to be the word on the web but the word also includes some other news too. Not only may Johnny Depp be playing The Riddler (I can't see that being a bad thing) but Angelina Jolie is being touted as Catwoman and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Penguin... Interesting...

The latter two characters have been played down by people linked to the movie franchise but all 3 are characters that would seem to fit into Nolan's "real world" version of Batman and wouldn't be too hard to imagine. Just the thought of Ms Jolie in leathers or PVC purring and being kitty-like is enough for me to think that no one else could possibly fit that role in my mind ever again. Hoffman? Not a biggie to replace, but that's pretty good casting in my eyes.

Again we'll have to wait quite a while to see what happens.

Leave Brooke Hogan alone!!!

While I was in the US I watched a bit of TV in the evenings. It came to me that some of the hosts are a bitchy bunch and they're more direct about what they think about people than even we are and that surprised me. Two objects of their contention seemed to be Sarah Jessica Parker (her face and vanishing mole in particular it seemed) and Brooke Hogan...

Now while I'm not a fan of SJP I didn't think the comments of a group of presenters on some entertainment show were at all necessary and were verging on deffamatory and another show seemed to almost entirely be about how butch and masculine Brooke Hogan is. Guys, have you not seen who her father is? I mean for Gods sake look at her gene pool and give the girl a break! While I personally don't think Brooke is supermodel quality gorgeous she is a good looking girl and can only deal the cards she's been given by nature. I've added a couple of natural pics below for you to make your own decisions but I wasn't a happy viewer when I was hearing these venomous verbal attacks on their own celebrities. And don't get me started on the whole Christian Bale assault arrest fiasco... The Yanks needs to learn some broadcasting skills before being allowed back on the air!

Hot Mamas - A tribute

After such a time away it's only fair that I group some Hot Mamas together for a tribute. This is a part of my blog that, although it has no informational neccesity, is a part that I like to include nontheless. And why not... It's my blog isn' it? And NO I'm not into pregnant women at all, I just have to admit to liking how these women look after nature takes its course... The term MILF also comes to mind but then American Pie never was very PC was it?

So aaaaaaaanyway here are a few "Hot Mamas" who I think look great. Some pics are before and after, others are simply them. All hail the Mothers!:

ASHLEE SIMPSON

GILLIAN ANDERSON

ANGELINA JOLIE

SALMA HYEK

REBECCA ROMIJN

JENNIFER GARNER

CHRISTINA AGUILERA

JENNA JAMESON

JAIME PRESLEY

MONICA BELLUCI

X-Men Origins - Wolverine

Apart from the entire SDCC 09 event being almost entirely devoted to Watchmen and Star Wars: Clone Wars one of the biggest things that happened (that I missed) seems to have been Hugh Jackman making an impromptu appearance during the FOX talk and presenting a never-before-seen trailer for the new highly anticipated X-Men Origins - Wolverine movie for 2009. As you might hear from the "increasingly rare" cam footage below the fans went nuts for it, especially when they they saw Gambit and Deadpool to name but a few characters from the film. I'll hold my judgement on this one for now as it could potentially all go wrong with some of the casting decisions (Liev Schreiber as Sabertooth?) and action sequences (exploding, crashing humvee throws Wolverine 40 feet onto an airborne helicopter?) but then again this could all go very right and we could all finally forget Brett Ratner's appauling X-men 3: Last Stand ruining the whole franchise. We'll see. Below is the cast and the two parts of the cam footage from SDCC 08. (Oh and by the way, Cyclops, or at least a young Scott Summers appears in this movie somewhere... I found that strange...)

Click on the image for a larger version

San Diego Comic Con 2008

I was lucky enough to attend the fantastic San Diego Comic Con again this year, second year in a row, and what an event it was! On the 21st of July (two days before the Con started) I flew out on a very long 11 and a half hour straight flight into San Diego airport. After settling into my questionable hotel and having some dinner my colleague Becky and I went to see Dark Knight (a few days before the UK had their opening night). A stunning but extremely long film it was (I have to take into account how tired we were from the flight of course) but well worth the wait. The reviewers were right for a change and it was an epic achievement, made all the better by Heath Ledger's gripping performance (the same as everyone else has said but it's true).
The second day saw a bit of sunbathing, a trip to San Diego Zoo and some retail therapy in Downtown SD in the labyrinthine Horton Plaza shopping centre followed by Hellboy II in the cinema (which was a bit of a letdown for me and far too "jokey" compared to the first film). Wednesday was some more retail therapy and Wall-E at the cinema followed by Comic Con preview night. I tell you this now; it was sold out and pure chaos in it's purest incarnation. Thousands of uber-geeks screaming round the unfathomably huge Conference Centre like rabid dogs hunting the freebies and Con Exclusives littered around the hundreds of stands. I managed to fight my way through and spend a small fortune that night, and knew (down to my military planning I'm so famous for) where I was going and what I was looking for. I swear my arms are two inches longer from carrying home almost my own body weight is products that night...
Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday were a mix of short work meetings, long queues for guest talks, unlimited browsing, limited buying and fast-food eating. It was a long old week and so busy I could have seriously gone postal and killed a few rude overweight Americans (there were more than I expected and that's being VERY kind). I'd walked almost continually from 8:30am to 7pm every day and I was shattered every evening. I'm still suffering exhaustion even now!
Below are some pictures I put together to show you all what I bought and who I met in SD. It's not a complete list and especially when it comes to the famous people as it was difficult to snap some of the "passers by" when your jaw hits the ground and you mumble like a drunk caveman in awe. You may not recognise half the people in the second lot of images so I've given a list underneath to highlight who they are and how I saw/ met them. I actually took over 850 pictures during the time I was there so this is just a tiny amount of what I've got! Let it be known that I hate myself in pictures and some of these are cringe-worthy. One day I will learn to shave off my attempt at a goatee and suck in my gut...

Click on the pics for a larger version.

THE ITEMS I BOUGHT:


SOME OF THE PEOPLE I SAW AND MET:

Row by row from top left:

JOHN BARROWMAN (TORCHWOOD/ DR.WHO) AUTOGRAPH SIGNING
CHYNA (WWE) AUTOGRAPH SIGNING
RANDY COUTURE (UFC) AUTOGRAPH SIGNING
SAM J JONES (FLASH GORDON HIMSELF!) AUTOGRAPH SIGNING
GIRLS DRESSED AS TEELA AND EVIL LYNN (HE-MAN) ON MATTEL BOOTH
RICHARD HATCH (BATTLESTAR GALACTICA OLD AND NEW) AUTOGRAPH SIGNING
THOMAS JANE (THE MIST/ THE PUNISHER) INTERVIEW NEAR STALL
NICOLE DE BOER (STAR TREK DS9) AUTOGRAPH SIGNING
ERIN GRAY (BUCK ROGERS) AUTOGRAPH SIGNING
SAMUEL L JACKSON (YOU KNOW THE MAN!) AFRO SAMURAI 2 TALK
AVERY BROOKS & CIRROC LOFTON (STAR TREK DS9) AUTOGRAPH SIGNING
HOT GIRL DRESSED AS WONDER WOMAN!
COREY FELDMAN (GOONIES/ LOST BOYS) AUTOGRAPH SIGNING
WHOLE CAST OF STARGATE SG-1 FOR CONTINUUM TALK
GIGI EDGELY (FARSCAPE) AUTOGRAPH SIGNING
JULIET AUBREY & KARL THEOBOLD (PRIMEVAL) AUTOGRAPH SIGNING
JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN, CARLA GUGINO & JACKIE EARL HALEY (WATCHMEN)-AUTOGRAPH SIGNING
EDGAR WRIGHT, SIMON PEGG & JESSICA HYNES (SPACED) AUTOGRAPH SIGNING
RICHARD DREYFUSS (JAWS/ CLOSE ENCOUNTERS) AUTOGRAPH SIGNING
CLIFF SIMON (STARGATE SG-1) AUTOGRAPH SIGNING
KEIFER SUTHERLAND (LOST BOYS/ 24) AUTOGRAPH SIGNING
JONATHAN FRAKES & ROBERT PICARDO (STAR TREK) AUTOGRAPH SIGNING
TRIUMPH THE HAND PUPPET DOG AND ROBERT SMIGEL (GOD KNOWS!)
SETH GREEN (AUSTIN POWERS/ ROBOT CHICKEN) BROWSING MATTEL
MATT GROENING (SIMPSONS/ FUTURAMA CREATOR) AUTOGRAPH SIGNING
MIKE MIGNOLA (HELLBOY CREATOR) AUTOGRAPH SIGNING
BRUCE TIMM (ANIMATED BATMAN/ JUSTICE LEAGUE CREATOR) AUTOGRAPH SIGNING
TIFFANY TAYLOR (PLAYBOY MODEL) AUTOGRAPH SIGNING
ME (JUST PLAIN OLD ME) AS A CYBERMAN ON OUR BBC AMERICA STAND
TIFFANY TAYLOR AGAIN
HOT GIRL DRESSED AS POWERGIRL!
LOU FERRIGNO (INCREDIBLE HULK-OLD SERIES) AUTOGRAPH SIGNING
HOT GIRL IN MILITARY OUTFIT!
GIRL DRESSED AS LEIA IN HER GOLD BIKINI WITH JABBA STATUE


People that I saw or met that aren't pictured:

ROB VAN DAM (WWE) STANDING AROUND AT THE CON
LUKE GOSS (BROS/ BLADE II/ HELLBOY II) WALKED PAST ME
CARMEN ELECTRA (MODEL/ ACTRESS) WALKING BY
GARETH DAVID-LLOYD (TORCHWOOD) AUTOGRAPH SIGNING
NAOKI MORI (TORCHWOOD) AUTOGRAPH SIGNING
LEVAR BURTON (STAR TREK TNG) AUTOGRAPH SIGNING
SETH MCFARLANE (CREATOR OF FAMILY GUY) AUTOGRAPH SIGNING

And loads more!

Ultra mini movie reviews...

During my absence I've seen a few movies both in the cinema and on DVD. 3 of the most major in San Diego recently. As there's quite a few to review I've decided to go with the lazy method and give each a one word review and an "out of ten" score. This won't do any of the films justice and one word really isn't enough for most of the films but it'll do for now.

OK here goes;

Hancock (Cinema)

PASSABLE
6/10

The Incredible Hulk (Cinema)

IMPROVEMENT
6/10

Kung Fu Panda (Cinema)

INDULGENT
7/10
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Cinema)

DISAPPOINTING
7/10

Batman: Dark Knight (Cinema San Diego)

EPIC
10/10

Hellboy II (Cinema San Diego)

LAUGHABLE
7/10

Wall - E (Cinema San Diego)

UNBELIEVABLE
10/10


Rambo IV (DVD)

GUTSY
8/10

Cloverfield (DVD)

SURPRISING
9/10

The Spiderwick Chronicles (DVD)

ENJOYABLE
8/10

The Forbidden Kingdom (DVD)

ADEQUATE
7/10

Harold And Kumar 2: Escape from Guantanamo Bay (DVD)

OVERDONE
5/10

Scorpion King 2 (DVD)

LAME
3/10


The Mist (DVD)

SHOCKING
8/10

Like I said it's impossible to get a review out of a single word and I'd love to expand on a few that I have opinions on but until I have more time this overview gives a rough idea of what I've been watching and my rating. I hope you enjoy them all in your own way too.

I'm back!

OK, so after almost 3 months of delays due to moving out, waiting for AOL to sort themselves out (and getting half the bandwidth I had before in the process), waiting for my broken phone lines to be fixed and being ultra busy at work I'm finally back to update my blog... oh and I went to the San Diego Comic Con last month too...

I'll be backtracking a few things I've missed and adding new stuff whenever I can so just keep checking back to see if anything has been updated. ;)