SATURDAY: Free Comic Book Day!

If you don't already have plans for this coming Saturday morning, make your way over to your local comic book store!!! It's the industry's fantastic annual holiday, Free Comic Book Day! On May 3rd, you'll be able to walk away with all sorts of free swag, browse the latest figures and collectibles and best of all, rub elbows with your fellow enthusiasts! It's always a terrific time and very family friendly. Here in Portland, Things From Another World hosts quite the shindig - Greg Rucka will be there! Costumed characters are bound to be on hand as well. I wouldn't miss it, as it's a really great little tradition - and fun to think it's going on all over the country at once! I know I'll be taking my little superhero with me, because you're never too young to thrill to a cool story and the exploits of heroes. 

OFFICIAL: Star Wars Cast Revealed!!!

That was fast...here's the cast of Star Wars: Episode VII: John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson and Max von Sydow!!!

Says J.J. Abrams: "We are so excited to finally share the cast of Star Wars: Episode VII. It is both thrilling and surreal to watch the beloved original cast and these brilliant new performers come together to bring this world to life, once again. We start shooting in a couple of weeks, and everyone is doing their best to make the fans proud."

Ridley has been in Silent Witness and Mr Selfridge and is rumored to play the daughter of Han Solo and Princess Leia. Driver is still believed to be playing a Vader-esque villain, Isaac's character will have a Han Solo vibe and Boyega appears as a Jedi.

Exciting to see Max von Sydow in the mix, though we don't know who his character is at this juncture. Veterans Peter Mayhew, Anthony Daniels and Kenny Baker are also confirmed to return.

Prepare Yourselves For a Major Tremor in the Force!

The news could break at any time, so fasten your seat-belts - any moment now, we’ll be meeting the new cast of Star Wars.

Director J.J. Abrams is staging a big table reading of the script in London today, supposedly with the full cast – so some kind of official Disney press announcement should break between now and “Star Wars Day,” Sunday, May 4^th (May the Fourth be with You…).

The rumors have been stacking up like planes over LaGuardia, most recently that Inside Llewyn Davis star Oscar Isaac is up for a major role. Adam Driver from Girls has previously been mentioned, Attack the Block’s John Boyega, as well as Maisie Richardson-Sellers, an young actress from Oxford whose name remains prominent.

These new cast members will join original trilogy veterans Carrie Fisher, Mark Hammill and Harrison Ford. Some of the most recent buzz to leak out has it that Ford has a substantial role in the first film of this new trilogy, which unfolds thirty years after the events of Return of the Jedi. 

The big question on everyone's mind, will Disney announce the actual title, or will J.J. continue to keep us in suspense? We should know more very, very soon...

Stark Departures: Thrones Season Four Veers Off the Map!

So if you didn’t catch Game of Thrones last night, STOP READING. Here there be Spoilers… So my advice would be, books or no books, if you haven’t seen the episode, CLOSE YOUR BROWSER. 

I try to stay clear of reveals for the most part, but recent events are simply too fascinating not to consider…

In a season that has already had more than its fair share of seismic moments, last night will go down in the annals of the show as an extremely pivotal, milestone episode, in that never before in the entire history of Game of Thrones has the plot for the series veered so wildly off on its own course and taken such a major series of departures from the book:

Burn Gorman and Bran – the addition of Pacific Rim actor Burn Gorman as Karl, leader of the mutineers at Craster’s Keep, escaped my notice last season. Gorman is a terrific presence (he was also in Dark Knight Rises), and it turns out his character was in a previous episode in season 3, but I clearly didn’t recognize him at the time. Now we don’t just have the “mutineers” holed up at Craster’s, but Karl has been elevated to Richard III awfulness, drinking out of Mormont’s empty skull, overseeing the all-too graphic abuse of Craster’s remaining daughters. So that’s one thing – but now we have Bran, Hodor and the Reeds captured by Karl and his cronies – in the books thus far, Bran and company were still just wondering about. As for their encounter with spectral horseman Coldhands, we haven’t even seen him yet. He joins the ranks of GOT characters such as Lady Stoneheart who have yet to make an appearance on the series. Who knows if they even will? Fan favorite book characters have been omitted from the series before, as was the case with Strong Belwas and Vargo Hoat.

Locke – and thpeaking of Hoat, the villain who cut off Jaime’s hand has infiltrated the Night’s Watch at the behest of the Boltons, and is on his way with Jon Snow to Craster’s, to deal with the mutineers! This raises a fascinating question, and one of the potentially biggest departures from the books – is Bran going to be reunited with his half-brother Jon?!? Will Jon rescue his little brother? Admittedly, Bran’s lengthy meanderings with the Reeds have always been some of the slower, less engaging parts of the books. So I really find the idea of putting Bran, Hodor et al in some actually jeopardy and more woven into the actual plot, a satisfying choice – but Karl and the mutineers are turning into mustache-twirling cartoons at this point. Enough with the raping, already… Let’s not forget that similarly (though more compressed than it feels in the books) we now have both Sansa and Arya heading for the Eyrie – could this be another Stark sibling reunion, potentially occurring before we read about it in the next book?

The Night’s King – whatever he’s called, we saw a crowned White Walker transform a human baby into one of their own! This is major. Not one of the Wight/zombies, but an Other. We’ve never seen anything like this in the books yet – is it a leap-ahead that the showrunners have gleaned from Martin? This was a really fascinating reveal and opens up the entire mythology more than we’ve seen from any source thus far. In fact, HBO may have let the cat out of the bag a little early. Briefly after the episode aired, the HBO synopsis identified this being as the Night’s King: “A White Walker claims the baby and rides to a city of ice. The child is presented at an alter, where the Night’s King greets the infant and lays a finger on its cheek. The baby’s eyes turn White Walker blue.” Evidently realizing the inadvertent slip, HBO quickly changed the synopsis from Night’s King to “Walker.” 

For all these elements, this has to be considered a major episode, given how it was practically an outright declaration on the part of the show that they’re willing to play fast-and-loose, serving notice to readers that just like winter, surprises and differences are coming.

Sorcerer on Blu - A Friedkin Action Masterpiece

"No one is just anything."  Like the film's desperate protagonists, William Friedkin's Sorcerer has spent a long time in exile from polite civilization. It's been hard to find, subject to a ton of abuse and been misunderstood. The wait is finally over. I've written previously about Sorcerer's long road to respectability. Friedkin fought like the devil to get this film made and then decades later fought a series of legal battles in order to properly put the film back together again.

The result is a masterpiece - one of the most astonishing depictions of dire straits I've ever seen. Imagine an existential fusion of Bogart's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Apocalypse Now - that's how I felt when the final image of Sorcerer faded to black.

The film begins with four substantial character introductions, potent shorts in their own right. Four men in locales ranging from New Jersey to Paris are all going to have to run for their lives. Where they end up is a spot in the Nicaraguan jungle that's nothing short of the end of the line. Friedkin captures the rancid squalor of the place with incredible detail. The cinematography by Dick Bush and John M. Stephens feels like it must have been shot by Ernest Hemingway. Sorcerer was written by Walon Green (The Wild Bunch) and creates an incredibly atmosphere of escalating tension that feels utterly believable yet wildly surreal at the same time. When these guys went on location they went on location - the environments in Sorcerer feel so remote, it's easy to imagine Friedkin and company feeling complete freedom to just go for it - it's hard to picture much studio interference this far off the map.

The center role is played by Roy Scheider, right after his success of Jaws. He's phenomenal here. Low key, haunted, his last bits of dignity slipping away like a handful of sand. I saw Sorcerer when it first came out, but I was way too young to get it. Plus, like the rest of the universe, I'd just seen Star Wars, which utterly eclipsed Sorcerer. It'd be like releasing Taxi Driver the week after Close Encounters - or The Things right on the heels of E.T. - oh yeah, that actually happened. Sorcerer is absolutely a creature of the seventies - it belongs right next to Serpico, All the President's Men, Deliverance and of course, The French Connection. After The Exorcist and French Connection, Friedkin still had some tricks up his sleeve he was hungry to show - and a lot left to prove - it's too bad the world was too agog over lightsabers to really notice at the time.

If you like gritty, suspenseful action pictures with a touch of existential dread - if you loved Friedkin's other classic thrillers, you owe it to yourself to find Sorcerer immediately. It's been nicely delivered in blu-ray book packaging and the transfer is pretty obviously a labor of love. There's still plenty of appropriate grain - the film looks like it should. But the colors are just insane - the restoration work here is simply amazing. It's a super print and the audio is flawless. The sounds of those trucks, the rain - that swaying bridge - plunge you right into the middle of the jungle. The electronic score by Tangerine Dream just adds to the surreal, moody other worldliness. It sounds like a John Carpenter score at times.

The one disappointment with this historic release is the complete lack of extras - no commentary, no making-of docs, not even a retrospective. This film demands some kind of "look back" retrospective on its long journey to rediscovery - we want to hear Friedkin tell us what it was like back then. But as beautiful as the packaging is, the extras are lean. Don't let that deter you. Sorcerer is a classic on a par with Touch of Evil and Apocalypse Now. We're lucky to have this action masterpiece available for new generations to discover and thrill to.

Sons-a-poppin'! Exclusive Clay!

Yep, Entertainment Earth has yet another exclusive Sons of Anarchy figure - you hear that, Kyle?!? This one seems destined to be referred to as "Dew-Rag Clay," depicting Ron Perlmam sporting a sweet bandana. Let's hope he comes with a Cortisone syringe, to boot. With this many exclusives, we can't help but wonder about Comic Con...? Gemma, Mezco...?! GEMMA?!!

A Sons Exclusive Variant

Mezco is definitely preparing for October's final season of Sons of Anarchy in a big way. We've already seen several figures since the first of the year. Now our pals over at Entertainment Earth have landed an exclusive variant Jax Teller, this one sporting a Reaper Crew cap and dark shades. It's up for pre-order and looks pretty solid! Get 'em while they're hot!