Stars, hide your fires - Macbeth!!!

"Stars, hide your fires: Let not light see my black and deep desires."

Count this as some truly exciting news - Michael Fassbender will play the titular Scot in a new film version of Macbeth, to be directed by Justin Kurzel, whose true-crime drama Snowtown won acclaim at Cannes in 2011. As if that weren't the be-all and end-all-here, now comes word that Natalie Portman has committed to starring as Lady Macbeth. Kurzel's script has a lot of  buzz about it and producing See Saw Films' involvement in Shame and The King's Speech makes this one of 2014's most anticipated releases.

More Hobbit figures coming in October

It looks like fans of Bridge Direct's line of 3 & 3/4" action figures from The Hobbit will have a little longer to wait to add to their collections. Wave 2 is set to arrive in October, as part of the buildup to the second Hobbit film, The Desolation of Smaug. Looks like we'll be getting the remaining 8 darves, so we'll have all 13. There's another version of Thorin, an invisible Bilbo, bird-pooped wizard Radagast and finally, Azog the Defiler!!! Wave 2 also mentions Beorn and Elf King Thranduil, though no images appear to have emerged for them yet - most likely they'll emerge in San Diego at Comic Con this summer. Here's hoping these figures sell a bit more robustly than wave one and that excitement builds with the second film!

"Forsooth, a great disturbance in The Force hath I just felt."

This one should be a lot of fun - Star Wars reimagined as a Shakespearean saga with Elizabethan-style stage directions and iambic pentameter! R2-D2 will launch into dramatic soliloquies whenever other characters leave the stage. William Shakespeare's Star Wars - Verily, A New Hope  (Ian Doescher, Nicolas Delort) arrives in  comic shops and bookstores this July at the reasonable price of $14.95 and will feature Elizabethan "woodcut" illustrations of the characters. "Blow, Alderaan, and crack your cheeks!"

"Dost thou take me for a mountebank?!? Cocky not becomest thee..."

Khaleesi rocks the Casbah!!!

If there was even the slightest doubt that HBO's Game of Thrones is the hottest thing on TV right now, the show declared itself with epic resolve last night, nailing one of the most pivotal sequences from the books and elevating itself to a rarified plateau that only unicorns and phenoms achieve. Those last five minutes are the best viewing out there - period. Emilia Clarke is ready to grab destiny by the throat...

Nolan gearing up to warp with Interstellar

Science Fiction may never have been quite so alive and well as it is now, and one of the most intriguing of the next crop of Hollywood pictures comes from Dark Knight powerhouse Christopher Nolan. His next film will be a far flung science fiction picture called Interstellar, about a group of space explorers travelling through a wormhole, inspired by the research of Caltech physicist Kip Thorne. Few plot details are known, but the logline implies a pretty vast canvas: “A heroic interstellar voyage to the farthest borders of our scientific understanding.” Evidently the picture is so big that it’s going to take two studios to release it. Paramount and Warner Bros. will co-produce and distribute. The last really huge co-studio venture was for Jim Cameron’s Titanic. Interstellar already has a November 7^th, 2014 release date and casting is in full swing. Matthew McConaughey will star (a character name of Cooper has emerged), and Anne Hathaway is reportedly now boarding the project. The feeling is that Nolan is going to attempt something even more ambitious than Avatar, and the idea of him behind a gigantic, visionary deep space picture has me salivating with glee.

Springtime for Hannibal...

UPDATED: In a really cool move, NBC has actually posted the script for the Hannibal pilot, packed with stills, production notes and gruesome illustrations - do check it out!

NBC's Hannibal is off to a decent - and very weird - start. The brainchild of Pushing Daisies creator Bryan Fuller, Hannibal takes a stab at giving us a Dr. Lecter prequel, going back to the pre-infamy days before Manhunter and Red Dragon, but featuring the same protagonist from those films, profiler Will Graham, played by Hugh Dancy. Dancy is great and carries a heavy load, an empathic hunter of serial killers who is nearly as disfunctional as they are. Dancy is like a hybrid of James Franco and a young Willem Dafoe and he's a real live-wire here. In some very unusual casting Casino Royale heavy Mads Mikkelson is Dr. Lecter - who's got plenty of odd to go around - but who may very well be miscast. Mads is great at the detached, unblinking creep-out, but so far he's conjured up very little of the charm that we think of when it comes to Lecter. He's also got such a strong accent he's downright unintelligible at times. That is definitely going to have to be addressed for this show to continue - as weird as it may sound, Mads is going to have to warm up and become more likable.

Fascinating casting, with Laurence Fishburne as Jack Crawford. Unseen in the pilot but soon to appear is Gillian Anderson as Lecter's own psychiatrist, perhaps giving us a little In Treatment dynamic.

It's going to be interesting to see where all this goes. Hannibal is astonishingly violent for network TV. There were several amazingly graphic moments that seem more HBO than NBC, undoubtedly the intent. It feels like Fuller has a plan here and if they can keep the writing sharp and finesse Mads a bit, Hannibal is certainly intriguing enough to come back for a second helping...

The balcony is closed

Roger Ebert always led with his enthusiasm, with his love for film and what it could inspire. Bravely, when cancer began to drill away at him, he was determined not to hide - to keep his face a positive, smiling face - and continue to passionately engage with fans and the world of film - to express what it was about that firmament of dreams that speaks to us and inspires us. Roger, I hope wherever you are, that the seat is comfy, the popcorn is fresh, and the movies are ones that will let your smile live on. Thank you for everything. We'll never forget you.

"It is known!" Thrones returns!

Sorry for the unspeakably long absence, it's been a crazy couple of months around here. We still have to keep the forces of darkness at bay and that means working on the railroad, swinging a hammer.

Best part of Easter Sunday? Other than the kid's birthday party? That would be the return of HBO's Game of Thrones. Based on this first hour - featuring a canvass of characters so vast that the first hour only reintroduces half of them - we are in for a spectacular feast.

Season 3 tackles the jaw-dropping third volume of Martin's Ice and Fire opus - A Storm of Swords. Rightly referred to as The Empire Strikes Back of the books, this part of the saga is truly an astonishing series of twists and turns that we can only hope the sixth and seventh books somehow manage to equal. How hefty is Swords? HBO is wisely dividing it up into two seasons - the show has already been renewed for a fourth season following Sunday's best-ever ratings.

I take my Night's Watch vow, and promise to be spoiler free, but know that Tyrion Lannister is still not getting the respect he deserves from patriarch Tywin - a scene between the two of them was a real standout on Sunday.

 

We now find Daenerys in the far country of Astapor, looking for an army, far from having escaped her former enemies.

Jon Snow continues his mission as the spy who went into the cold, seeking to infiltrate the Wilding army beyond the wall and find their leader, Mance Rayder. He's only just reached their camp and has already seen eye-popping new wonders.

That's really just a taste. Joffrey is busy with a new betrothed and there are enough exciting differences from the books to keep us on our toes and itching for more. There are several characters I would have thought we'd have met by now who we haven't, but I'm staying optimistic. Strong Belwas? Vargo Hoat? There are bound to be plenty of unexpected happenings along the way - the books aren't the Torah, gang - we have to allow for that.

As the story progresses we are gradually encountering more fantastic and potentially supernatural beings - and the Thrones visual effects crew is more than up for the task. Distant castles and battlements look tangible and painterly, not computer-generated. There were at least two creatures (not to mention the dragons) seen Sunday night that are among the best effects I've ever seen on television. If this is the level of commitment and scope of story the Thrones crew is preparing to unleash, we'd best bar the door, grab an axe and an ale... and ask the Seven to save us! Season three made it clear that they're taking no prisoners.