Next Gen on Blu in 2012... and sooner?!

Lots of cool news makes its way out of Comic-Con each year, but this is really exciting. According to a very reliable report, the long-awaited Star Trek: The Next Generation in Hi-Def project is coming our way in 2012 - and a taste even sooner than that!

The challenges in upgrading Next Gen were formidable - while the show was shot on film, all the effects and post production was done on SD analog video. So  to convert the series to HD  all the original camera negatives would have to be scanned in HD resolution, then all of the special effects and post production would have to be completely redone in HD using a similar CG upgrade process akin to the remastered Star Trek: The Original Series. They'd essentially have to rebuild each episode for HiDef. Because if they just upconvert from 480i to 1080p, they are going to find a lot of angry Blu-ray fans. But rebuilding the show in HD is obviously a time-consuming and expensive process.


As reported by Bill Hunt at the phenomenal Blu-ray website, The Digital Bits, his sources at Comic-Con confirmed that the wait may finally be over:
"Multiple sources I spoke with at Comic-Con have also confirmed our report from earlier this year that CBS is hard at work on Star Trek: The Next Generation – Remastered for Blu-ray release starting sometime in 2012. The latest word is that 4 test episodes are currently being worked on for release as a sampler/demo BD disc of the project, and that sampler disc will somehow be available to fans by the end of this year."
2012 is Next Gen's  25th anniversary.The remastered project for Original Series Trek was released in 2006, just in time for the 40th anniversary. Can't wait to find out which 4 episodes are coming our way!

Dead Man Walking: Fond farewell, Frank...

There's nothing worse than having something awesome, then going and screwing it all up. For some completely unfathomable reason, the great Frank Darabont is stepping down as showrunner from AMC's uber-hit The Walking Dead.

Either that or he was pushed.

Frank was just at Comic Con, too, enthusiastically promoting the series' second season.

Darabont invested 5 years trying to get Robert Kirkman's zombie saga on television, ultimately writing and directing the pilot for AMC, giving the network their highest ratings of all time. Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, The Mist) is from the feature world, and he may have had difficulty adjusting to the daily grind of series television, having expressed some frustration with TV-sized budgets. But he'd also spoken of the new environment in positive terms: "In TV, you have to get ideas across in a more economical way," he said. "But the process is fundamentally the same, just accelerated. There’s no time for second-guessing. The wheels are in constant motion. I love that about television. If I’d known how much fun it was, I’d have done it years ago."


Glen Mazzara, his number two, will step in as showrunner in his place. Mazzara has worked previously on The Shield (good news), but was also quickly replaced as showrunner on Showtime's first season adaptation of Crash (bad news).

Here's hoping Frank stays on in some capacity as consultant, because if Mazzara and company lose the tone and vibe that's been established, The Walking Dead will start staggering fast. This development really bums me out.

School's out - forever...

After a decade of delighting fans worldwide, the incredible saga of The Boy Who Lived takes a bow in spectacularly satisfying fashion.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 does magnificent epic justice to all that’s come before, easily one of the best films in the franchise.

After all the buildup and positioning of Hallows: Part 1, all hell breaks loose and polyjuice potion be damned. This is one of the least talky of the recent films, darker in tone, handsomely staged and continually involving.

Things get cracking right away with a rip-roaring break-in of Gringott’s Goblin bank, and a spectacularly rendered dragon. The beast is a terrific achievement, making you completely forget that there’s any CG involved. It looks fantastic.

Before you know it, Voldemort and his minions are massing outside of Hogwarts and launching an attack to annihilate the school. There are some tremendous performances in Hallows: Part 2, but it’s Ralph Fiennes who dominates. He’s never embodied Voldemort as fully or as fearfully as he does here. Going beyond mere malevolence, when Harry & company succeed in destroying one of the horcuxes containing a piece of his soul, Fiennes gives us a glimpse of shocked vulnerability as the dark lord realizes he’s lost a valuable piece of himself.

When He-Who finally breaches the grounds of Hogwarts and leads his forces into the ruins, fasten your seatbelts. It’s a phenomenal series of sequences, and Fiennes has never been better as he taunts the school’s survivors, mad with ambition and hate.

Nearly everyone in the cast has a moment to shine and it truly feels as if awareness of this being the final outing has inspired everyone - on both sides of the camera - to deliver their very best. Like Return of the King, things wrap up with a real mix of the grandeur of battle and the emotions that come with saying goodbye.

FIRST IMAGE: Ridley Scott's Prometheus!!!

Howdy, Alien fans -- Comic Con brings us the first official image from Ridley's return to the Gigerverse. No context here, but just the notion of astronauts and a ship - and Ridley - has me drooling. What say ye?

Dark Tower crumbling...

"It's too expensive. It makes us nervous!" What gives, Universal? The folks at Uni stopped feeling the love for Ron Howard's ambitious cross-platform adaptation of Stephen King's The Dark Tower saga.
Howard and Akiva Goldsman planned a series of epic films as well as a concurrent television series. The seven-book saga has been in development for a while. But when Universal's first-right-of-refusal was about to expire, they closed up shop, worried that the expenses and risks would be too great. Talk about a lack of vision!

The good news is that Howard's Imagine Entertainment retains the rights and is now free to shop the project elsewhere. Here's hoping a studio like Warner Brothers, whose had some small success marketing franchises with Harry Potter and The Dark Knight will swoop in and see the colossal potential here. But they'd better move fast, before Howard shifts gears and takes on Rush, his project about Formula 1 racing in the seventies.

Trek in the Park: Portland's summer tradition is back!

If it's July in Portland, it must be time for another thrilling installment of Trek in the Park, Portland's amazing live theatrical stagings of original series Star Trek episodes by Adam Rosko and the amazing crew at Atomic Arts.

This is their third year of boldly recreating old school Trek, with Mirror, Mirror, the fabulous alternative universe episode, featuring bearded evil Spock. The Agonizer, the Captain's Woman, scarred Sulu -- they've got it all, and perform in the great outdoors (for free) to wildly enthusiastic audiences. Here's a taste...

"You take a lot of chances, Lieutenant..."

As you can see, it's fun for all ages, especially The Next Generation...!

Plus, if you're lucky, you can beam back with one of these awesome t-shirts! Trek in the Park runs on weekends through July at 5:00 in Portland's Woodlawn Park. Come early. Come really early.

Trailerpalooza -- an avalanche of things to come

It must be the precursor to Comic Con, but Hollywood dumped quite a load on us over the last couple of days. Feast your eyes on some eye-popping new previews of some highly anticipated movies.

First, Andrew Stantons's live action take on Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars, perversely abreviated to just John Carter...



Then at long last, the prequel to The Thing, which looks a lot like its inspiration but should still be a lot of fun. This one's a sacred cow for me, but I'm going to have a hard time staying away...



...and then from "Aarrrr"dman animation we have The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists, a return to Chicken Run form from our beloved Wallace and Gromit pals in the UK...



There's a lot more out there, including Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Contagion, Hugo and very soon The Dark Knight Rises, but that will have to hold you for today.