Friday 4 October 2024

Star Wars Reads this October



The annual Star Wars Reads event, to encourage fans around the world to read from their favourite Star Wars comics, novels and activity books whilst promoting literacy, is running throughout October.

"Books, comics, and magazines are a treasured and timeless way for readers all over the world to immerse themselves in the excitement of a galaxy far, far away. By collaborating on Star Wars Reads with organizations like First Book, Blue Star Families and New York Edge, we can share the joy of reading with fans of all ages," said Michael Siglain, creative director, Lucasfilm Publishing.

Are you organising a Star Wars Reads event? Let me know in the comments below.

Wednesday 2 October 2024

Music By John Williams on Disney+



John Williams needs no introduction. The Oscar-winning Star Wars composer's stellar career is explored in a new documentary on Disney+.



"It’s no exaggeration to say that John Williams is the greatest film composer of all time," Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy says. "His music has transcended cinema and become a part of our global culture, touching the hearts of billions, both young and old. John’s music has done as much to keep classical music alive as it has to shape the world of film."

Williams' soundtracks are synonymous with the movies of George Lucas (Star Wars) and Steven Spielberg (Jaws). His scores have been the beating heart from Jaws to E.T. and Jurassic Park to The Fabelmans. Then, there are sensational soundtracks for the Star Wars saga, Superman, Harry Potter, and many more.

Williams had a profound impact on my childhood in the wake of a life-changing trauma in 1977. His music, played in isolation, inspired in times of tribulation - years of rehabilitation were my Jedi trials.

Music By John Williams is streaming on 1st November on Disney+.

Are you looking forward to Music By John Williams on Disney+? Do you have a favourite movie or television soundtrack? Let me know in the comments below.

Tuesday 1 October 2024

Peanuts holiday specials free on Apple TV+



The holidays are coming and fans of classic Peanuts specials can watch them for free on Apple TV+.

To catch your favourite Charlie Brown holiday special at no cost, mark these dates on your calendar:

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown: Saturday, 19th October and Sunday, 20th October
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving: Saturday, 23rd November and Sunday, 24th November
A Charlie Brown Christmas: Saturday, 14th December and Sunday, 15th December

Reruns of the beloved holiday specials, on the BBC, were a childhood staple in the run-up to Christmas. A cousin gifted me a Snoopy soft toy when I was in a children's hospital and it remains a cherished gift.

Are Peanuts specials part of your holiday traditions? Let me know in the comments below.

Thursday 26 September 2024

The Last of Us Day



It's The Last of Us Day and HBO has released the first official teaser trailer for The Last of Us season two. This is expected to adapt The Last of Us Part II video game from 2020.



Read the official synopsis:

“After five years of peace following the events of the first season, Joel and Ellie’s collective past catches up to them, drawing them into conflict with each other and a world even more dangerous and unpredictable than the one they left behind.”

Bella Ramsey, Pedro Pascal and Gabriel Luna are back and we also see Kaitlyn Dever as Abby, Isabela Merced as Dina, Young Mazino as Jesse, Ariela Barer as Mel, Tati Gabrielle as Nora, Spencer Lord as Owen, Danny Ramirez as Manny, and Jeffrey Wright as Isaac. Catherine O’Hara also guest stars.

Season one of The Last of Us is an intense, character-driven story, and there’s a haunting beauty to its rustic depiction of America in the wake of an incurable pandemic. Heightened by a real-life pandemic we’re emerging from. Our shared trauma is explored in HBO’s live-action adaptation of Naughty Dog's award-winning PlayStation 3 (PS3) video game from 2013.

The Last of Us returns in 2025 on HBO and Sky Atlantic.

Are you looking forward to the second season of The Last of Us? What did you think of the first teaser trailer? How are you celebrating The Last of Us Day? Let me know in the comments below.

Wednesday 25 September 2024

Buffy free on Tubi in time for Halloween



It’s the spooky season and according to Comicbook Buffy the Vampire Slayer starts streaming for free on Tubi from Friday.

All seven seasons of the beloved supernatural series created by Joss Whedon (Firefly) and starring Sarah Michelle Gellar (Star Wars Rebels) as the titular vampire slayer are available on Disney+. Buffy alumni Emma Caulfield stars in the WandaVision spin-off Agatha All Along. Award-winning composer Christophe Beck (Frozen) composed music for Buffy, WandaVision and Agatha All Along.

Along with The X-Files, I adored the adventures of Buffy (Heat magazine printed my letter) and have cherished memories of watching the series with my late mum. Since she died in 2007, I haven't been able to watch The Body, which was in memory of Whedon's mother.

Tubi, a free ad-supported streaming service owned by the Fox Corporation, relaunched in the UK in the summer and hosts Halloween scares.

Are you looking forward to watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Tubi? Let me know in the comments below.

Tuesday 17 September 2024

LEGO Star Wars Jabba’s Sail Barge



Today, the LEGO Group reveals the launch of the LEGO Star Wars Jabba’s Sail Barge display set. This iconic Ultimate Collector Series (UCS) model is perfect for any Star Wars fan, packed with intricate details and LEGO Minifigures.

Aboard the barge, LEGO senior designer César Carvalhosa Soares notes that fans will notice some artistic license that adds elements beyond the vessel’s interior as seen in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. “The entire top deck has several features like hatches and stairs, cannons, and blasters and, of course, the huge textile sails that give the barge its iconic silhouette,” Carvalhosa Soares tells the official Star Wars website.

Throughout 2024, the LEGO Star Wars team plans to celebrate the 25th anniversary with fans front and centre of it all.

Discover LEGO Star Wars on LEGO AU, CA, UK and US (affiliate links).

Will you be adding the LEGO Star Wars Jabba’s Sail Barge to your collection? Let me know in the comments below.

Saturday 14 September 2024

Alien: Romulus



Prey successfully rebooted the Predator franchise on Hulu and Star on Disney+ in 2022. Can Alien: Romulus do the same for the Alien franchise on the big screen in 2024?

Nick Smith, our resident US-based xenomorph expert, discovers a derelict space station harbouring a deadly cargo. Will it be enough to scare the TikTok generation?

Guest post by Nick Smith

“How many different ways do you want me to tell the same story?”

This is the question Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) posed to a roomful of heartless corporate execs in the 1986 movie, Aliens. The answer is a lot, as long as it makes them money.

After a steady trickle of special editions, sequels and rip-offs, a glossy new $80 million Alien movie (originally intended to go straight-to-streaming on Hulu and Star on Disney+) is filling Fox’s coffers. Although it’s directed by hot shot horror director Fede Álvarez (Don’t Breathe, 2013’s Evil Dead), Alien: Romulus fails to tell that same old story freshly.

Álvarez knows how to tell a suspenseful story – Don’t Breathe was an exquisite update of the ‘old dark house’ movies of yore, and Evil Dead’s female-centric cast and grave tone made it a worthy remake. Álvarez ratchets up the fear factor in Alien: Romulus, and there are some great set pieces, including a scene where protagonists are trapped in a lab with facehuggers, another with an alien in an elevator shaft, and a twist where the Weyland-Yutani Corporation places profit over human lives.

If these scenes sound familiar, it’s because you’ve seen them before in previous Alien instalments. Which is all fine and dandy if those story elements build on what has gone before to show something new.

James Cameron had the right idea with Aliens, raising the stakes and using Ridley Scott’s original as a foundation, not a photocopy. In the first movie, Ripley puts herself in danger to save a cat; in the sequel, she saves a young girl (it would be a shame if anything bad happened to her). In Alien, Ripley dons a protective spacesuit; in Aliens, she climbs into a load lifter. You get the idea. The moments are similar but different, reminding audience members of what has gone before while simultaneously satisfying them with an extra layer of imagery and theme.

Alien: Romulus does not take that extra step where it really matters. It’s the movie equivalent of a remix, taking sequences and dialogue from its predecessors and reusing them to tell a not-so-new story.

The law of diminishing returns has never been so diminishing.

Alien: Romulus is really aimed at 18 to 25-year-old moviegoers who haven’t seen those creaky old Alien movies – Scott’s initial instalment celebrates its 45th birthday this year – and want to take a ghost train trip to the future. The mumbly young characters are endearing (it’s Gen Z versus Gen Xenomorph), and the off-planet setting is wonderfully dingy, in keeping with Alien’s lived-in look.

Weyland-Yutani is ruthless from the outset. Life is tough and unfair for these feckless heroes in a way we can all relate to; they feel powerless in the face of capitalist greed. Any worker who’s been sponsored by a company or hired under unscrupulous pretences will sympathize with the dispossessed kids, especially the heroine, little orphan Rain (Cailee Spaeny), who desperately wants to escape her grim, repetitive lifestyle, dreaming of a better world. Spaeny and her castmates give believable performances, with David Jonsson a standout as Rain’s non-biological brother, Andy.

The film also brings an original cast member back, ignoring the nuances of a great British actor, smoothing over his subtleties with de-ageing CGI. Another nod to the first film denigrates Ripley’s victory, telling us that she did not slay her dragon after all.

There are problems of logic – aliens can survive a shuttle rocket blast, but not a gunshot – and pacing, where a tight 90-minute rollercoaster ride has an extra half hour of rickety track bolted on.

Nevertheless, if sheer visceral thrills are what you came for, you’ll get your movie ticket’s worth. Álvarez is great at evoking feelings in the audience, keeping them on the edge of their seat, grossing them out, and encouraging them to care about the characters. He taps into primal fears regarding pregnancy, genetic research, tight spaces, high spaces and losing a loved one, to name just a clawful. All underscored by composer Benjamin Wallfisch's (Blade Runner 2049) lush orchestrations filled with creepy callbacks to previous Alien movies.

There’s enough sick body horror and sexual symbolism to make even the notoriously gloomy H.R. Giger smile from beyond the grave.

As French film director Robert Bresson once said, “I’d rather people feel a film before understanding it. I’d rather feelings arise before intellect.” Turn off your phone, mind and memory, soak up the scares, and you’ll be on tenterhooks like I was.

Ultimately, franchises like Alien are damned if they try something different (as with David Fincher’s Alien 3 and the bleak ending of Scott’s Alien: Covenant), and damned if they don’t, keeping in mind that Alien wasn’t original in the first place, inspired by 1958’s It! The Terror from Beyond Space.

Episodic series offer a possible solution, with enough running time to tell a similar story with new ideas added. Netflix’s anime Terminator Zero is the perfect example of a show that refers to its source material, using it to tell a story of its own (the Battlestar Galactica reboot is another great example of this, so say we all). Hopefully, Alien: Earth, from Noah Hawley (Fargo), will perform a similar feat when it bursts onto Hulu on Disney+ in 2025.

While we wait, we have the derivative Alien: Romulus to watch as it drifts by like a sleek cryotube, a time capsule of older, better movies with a shiny new shell. Without the copied bits, this movie could have been a true sci-fi horror classic; instead, it feels like the company has interfered too much, insisting on a greatest hits package to maximise its profit. Judging by the box office returns, the company is right and audiences are eating this up with a bigger appetite than John Hurt at the breakfast table.

Despite the gripes, it’s great to see xenomorphs alive and killing, frightening a new generation of fans while acknowledging what has come before. As Bill Paxton’s character Hudson says in Aliens, “Hey, if you like that, you're gonna love this ...”

Have you seen Alien: Romulus? Let me know in the comments below.

Nick Smith's new audiobook, Undead on Arrival, is available from Amazon (affiliate link).

Thursday 12 September 2024

Tomb Raider this October on Netflix



More than 25 years after her debut, Lara Croft will once again don her fingerless gloves to reclaim ancient relics in the new animated series Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft, hitting Netflix on 10th October.



Following the events of the Survivor series, Lara Croft has abandoned her friends to embark on increasingly more perilous solo adventures. But she must return home when a dangerous and powerful Chinese artefact is stolen from Croft Manor by a thief with an uncanny personal connection. Her daring pursuit will take her on an adventure around the world and to the depths of forgotten tombs, where she will be forced to confront her true self and decide just what kind of hero she wants to become.

In addition to Atwell in the title role, the voice cast will also include Allen Maldonado as Zip, and Earl Baylon reprising his role as Jonah Maiava from the video game.

Are you looking forward to Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft on Netflix? Let me know in the comments below.

Wednesday 11 September 2024

Hasbro Pulse Con 2024



Hasbro Pulse Con returns on Friday. Those tuning in can expect product reveals, fan trivia, Q&As, interactive polls, and more from fan-favourite brands including TRANSFORMERS, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, MAGIC: THE GATHERING and G.I. JOE, as well as products based on premier collaboration brands, Star Wars and Marvel from Disney Consumer Products, reaching fans across the globe.

Our friends at Hasbro have sent over details regarding the upcoming online event.

Hasbro Pulse Premium Members can enter an exclusive pre-show experience starting at 9 a.m. PT / 12 p.m. ET where they can expect brand sneak peeks and teasers for the main event. They’ll be treated to a Hasbro Pulse Con Exclusive Product Showcase as well, along with special products and a live Q&A session hosted by members of the Hasbro team.

This year’s virtual pop culture and fandom experience will be hosted by Jordan Hembrough and will feature special guests: Actress Emily Swallow (The Mandalorian) and popular YouTube Creator Dan Larson of Secret Galaxy.

During the 2-hour event, fans will get a first look at the new TRANSFORMERS ONE Studio Series action figures, hear about new G.I. JOE Classified Series product reveals, get a sneak peek of a new Marvel Legends wave, view the latest Hasbro Star Wars products, and take part in the ongoing celebration of the 50th Anniversary of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, among other activities.

Over 35 products will be showcased, including four Hasbro Pulse Con 2024 exclusives:

G.I. Joe Classified Series #136 Edward "Starduster" Skylar Figure
Star Wars: The Black Series STAP and Battle Droid Figure
Marvel Legends Series Kang the Conqueror Figure
Transformers Legacy United Dinobot Dinoking Multipack Figures

Are you looking forward to Hasbro Pulse Con 2024? Which exclusives are you looking forward to? Let me know in the comments below.

Tuesday 10 September 2024

James Earl Jones, voice of Darth Vader, dies



“If you only knew the power of the dark side…” James Earl Jones, the iconic voice of Darth Vader in Star Wars and so much more, has passed away aged 93.

“James was an incredible actor, a most unique voice both in art and spirit,” says George Lucas, creator of Star Wars. “For nearly half a century he was Darth Vader, but the secret to it all is he was a beautiful human being. He gave depth, sincerity and meaning to all his roles, amongst the most important being a devoted husband to the late Ceci and dad to Flynn. James will be missed by so many of us...friends and fans alike.”

It's impossible to imagine anyone else as the voice of Darth Vader - the biggest bad of them all. However, Jones was always humble about the role that immortalised him in popular culture.

“The rumor is that he thought of Orson Welles,” recalled Jones. “And then probably thought that Orson might be too recognizable, so what he ends up picking is a voice that was born in Mississippi, raised in Michigan, and was a stutterer. And, that happened to be my voice.”

Upon Star Wars' original release in 1977, David Prowse was credited as Darth Vader and Jones' involvement was uncredited to preserve the mystique surrounding the evil Lord of the Sith. This was changed in time for Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. The combination of Prowse's physicality and Jones' baritone was Force lightning in a bottle.

Personally, listening to Jones' velvet tones helped with speech therapy during rehabilitation following a life-changing head injury in primary school in 1977. Along with the late Richard Burton (Where Eagles Dare), he would be instrumental in inspiring a lifelong love of oration. Culminating in an English GSCE Oral Grade 1 in school.

Like many Star Wars fans, I will be forever thankful for Jones' contribution to my life.

What are your memories of James Earl Jones? Let me know in the comments below.