If six pages of a not-naked Heidi Pratt were not enough reasons to go out and grab the September issue of Playboy, here’s another incentive: Elsewhere in the lad mag, ‘Family Guy‘ mastermind Seth MacFarlane settles one of his show’s worst/best kept secrets: Stewie Griffin is gay.
MacFarlane told Playboy (via Daily News) all about an episode they brought all the way to the script phase where the 1-year-old homicidal baby comes out.
“It had to do with the harassment he took from other kids at school. He ends up going back in time to prevent a passage in Leviticus from being written: ‘Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind. It is an abomination.’”
In the end, the show’s writers decided to “keep it vague” because of the tot’s age.
“Ultimately, Stewie will be gay or a very unhappy repressed heterosexual. It also explains why he’s so hellbent on killing [his mother, Lois] and taking over the world: He has a lot of aggression, which comes from confusion and uncertainty about his orientation.”
Also explained in the upcoming season: we’ll finally find out why Protestant Lois seems to have a Jewish accent.
MacFarlane was more coy about Stewie’s sexual preference in a February 2008 interview in Advocate, the gay lifestyle mag.
“We all feel that Stewie is almost certainly gay, and he’s in the process of figuring it out for himself. We haven’t ever really locked into it because we get a lot of good jokes from both sides, but we treat him oftentimes as if we were writing a gay character.”
An infant that knows he’s gay — totally believable.
L.A. Times’ “Hero Complex” got the confirmation but mentions that Warner Bros. have been considering changing the name of the property to avoid the inevitably negative comparisons to Warner Bros.’ flop Speed Racer, another live action movie based on a popular cartoon.
There’s no word on who might be directing although previous rumors have pegged the team of Andy Fickman and Dwayne Johnson possibly reuniting for the third time after the recent Race to Witch Mountain.
This week, Fox News columnist Roger Friedman provided lecture fodder for journalistic ethics professors everywhere. When news of a pirated copy of 20th-Century Fox’s forthcoming ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ recently surfaced (the movie’s set to hit the big screen May 1st), comic fans and interested moviegoers began scouring the Web for an early viewing.
Mr. Friedman not only found and watched the advance copy, he decided it would be a good idea to review it, saying, “It took really less than seconds to start playing it all right onto my computer.’” He was pretty brazen about it, saying also that he found all of the “current top 10 [movies in theaters], plus TV shows, commercials, videos, everything, all streaming away.” He went on to say, “I could have downloaded all of it but really, who has the time or the room?”
Rupert Murdoch, the Charles Xavier of Fox (or Magneto depending upon your view) and Chairman and CEO of News Corporation, which is part of the Fox conglomerate, vehemently condemned Friedman’s tactics, citing a “zero-tolerance” policy for pirated movies. According to the DeadlineDailyHollywood blog, the News Corporation asked Fox News to take down the “reprehensible” column, which it did, and then, after advising Fox News on how to properly handle the situation, promptly dismissed Friedman.
Perhaps in the future, Friedman will review illegally released movies through a blog, rather than on a Web site owned by the company releasing the film. But then again, maybe he thought it would be alright. We are talking about Rupert Murdoch, after all, who doesn’t exactly let accuracy and integrity get in the way of a good story.
Yahoo has debuted a brand new trailer for the upcoming video game adaptation Max Payne this afternoon, but first, some news you can use.
In an interview with MTV, Payne star Mark Wahlberg jokingly issued a challenge to the man at the center of the second highest grossing film of all-time, The Dark Knight. This from the interview:
“Take off the suit and if you want to go one-on-one, two-on-one, and put a couple of you guys together – they all like to put the comic book characters together – come at me,” Mark Wahlberg laughed, issuing a challenge to the Dark Knight to put his fighting skills where his mouth is and face off against his character, Max Payne.
“I’m not talking about financial box office, I’m talking about one-on-one with these (puts up fists).”
Of course, while his jovial tone and obvious sarcasm may have some brushing off Wahlberg’s comments, we believe it to be important that we take all threats against our favorite superheros seriously. That said, we think Batman, or more specifically Christian Bale, would kick the shit out of Wahlberg’s Payne.
We would present some sort of scientific proof, but that won’t be necessary — Batman is just that much of a badass. As for Max Payne though, he seems to be doing alright for himself… and it was one of my favorite PC games.
Hot Toys is releasing a 1/6th scale figure of Heath Ledger as ‘The Joker’ in “Bank Robber” mode.
The figure stands 12-inches tall, features 32-points of articulation, and comes with a choice of two removable heads, one with a huge grin, the other with the slicked back hair.
Accessories include a removable clown mask, handgun, a bigger gun, duffle bag, smoke and fragmentation grenades, playing cards, gotham city money and more.
They even have little mini hand grenades — this toy is made for adults.
A “hurt and angry” Britney Spears is reportedly writing coloring a tell-all book about her exes, Kevin Federline and Justin Timberlake. You know this is going to be good.
A source says Justin, in particular, “will be pissed” when he hears about the yet to be published autobiography.
“Britney blames most of her problems with drugs and alcohol on the heartache she experienced years before, during her time with Justin – she couldn’t trust him … She also felt he became mean toward the end of their relationship, she said he called her fat and told her she’d need to lose weight before he would have sex with her.”
“Stage mum” Lynne won’t get off lightly either.
“She’ll say Lynne’s money hungry and that she was just along for the free ride. Britney thinks of her as a meddling, smothering person and blames her for her messy marriages.”
It will probably end up as a Pop-up book, reeking of Cheetos and Axe Body Spray. That’s funny!
There are few things Stephen King hasn’t tried when it comes to his work. He’s already the master of horror fiction, a tour guide through disturbing and fantastical worlds, a writing coach, a nonfiction author, a screen writer and even a director.
Now… he claims comic books.
He can now claim a new genre with the recent Marvel Entertainment comics publication “The Dark Tower,” based on his books of the same name.
“I’m a big fan of the medium,” King said of comic books. “A different way to tell stories is always exciting. It’s like being a kid with a chemistry set.”
It’s not that he’s a comic book buff. In fact, he hasn’t really kept tabs on the medium since his “Sandman” days as a child. But when the idea came up to make his seven-book “Dark Tower” series into a comic serial, he jumped at the chance.
The time is right for the collaboration, as both the genre and the author are being showered with critical and academic success like never before. These days, comic books aren’t just for gangly teenage boys or geeky adults, and King isn’t just a grocery store paperback writer.
“It asks something more of the reader than an old ‘Donald Duck’ or an ‘Archie’ or ‘Veronica,”‘ King says of the new comic. “You have to learn how to read it, and find out you’re going to be challenged.”
The “Dark Tower” is part Western, part fantasy and part adventure, centering on the story of Roland Deschain, a man who lives in a futuristic kind of world, and his quest to find the “Man in Black” and later on, the dark tower.
King calls it his life’s work – it took him nearly 20 years to complete the series, the final book was published in 2004. But unlike myriad other King stories, it’s never been made into a film or TV show.
Assassinated, in fact, as he walks into a federal courthouse in New York, under arrest and in handcuffs, headed to his arraignment for refusing to sign the government’s Superhero Registration Act and forcibly revealing his true identity.
It all happens in the latest edition of Marvel Comics, which hit newsstands on Wednesday.
A sniper, firing a high-powered rifle from a rooftop, hits the famed red, white and blue leader of the Avengers with three bullets and escapes the scene, leaving the weapon behind Oswald-style, as police and Captain America’s military escort cope with chaos in the streets.
What does this mean? Can the pulverizing patriot really be dead, shot down on the courthouse steps after 66 years of battling villains from Adolf Hitler to the Red Skull? Will the killer or killers be captured?
The only way to find out, says Dan Buckley, president and publisher of Marvel Entertainment, is to “read the book” as the story line unfolds. Buckley will not divulge details of what he describes as “really cool plot twists,” but does not rule out the possibility that Captain America is not really dead or is somehow resurrected. “When you live in a world of make-believe, a lot of things are possible,” he said in a telephone interview.
In any case, readers should not necessarily despair. After all, this is not the first time Captain America was presumed dead. In the last days of World War II, his alter-ego, the former arts student Steve Rogers, was believed killed by a bomb aboard an experimental pilot-less plane, only to have been found later, frozen in a cake of ice, by Sub-Mariner (remember him?).
[...]
Captain America was an early member of the pantheon of comic book heroes that began with Superman in the 1930s. He landed on newsstands in March 1941, nine months before Pearl Harbor — delivering a a punch to Hitler on the cover of his first issue, a sock-in-the-jaw reminder that there was a war on and the United States was not involved. Since then, Marvel Entertainment Inc., has sold more than 200 million copies of Captain America magazine in 75 countries.
In the most recent story line, he became involved in a superhero “civil war,” taking up sides against former buddy Iron Man in the registration controversy, climaxed by his arrest and assassination.
Killing off comic book heroes, only to bring them back again, is a time-honored gimmick in the business. Unless sales have sunk so low as to make the book no longer profitable, I’m sure Cap will be Back.
“This is the end of Steve Rogers, the meat and potatoes guy from 1941,” Dan Buckley, president and publisher of publishing, Marvel Entertainment, told Reuters. “But Captain America is a costume, and there are other people who could take it over. He is iconic, and we’re continuing the comic books,” he added. But he declined to speculate who could step into the hero’s 66-year-old boots.
He said the continuing comic series would initially be focused on the reaction of other characters to Captain America’s death.
This was similar to the death of Superman in 1993, when the leading superhero of Marvel rival D.C. Comics was killed off after about 55 years — only to be brought back months later.
Captain America has appeared in about 210 million comics in 75 countries, but currently his title sells up to 80,000 copies a month in the United States, down from about 150,000 in their heyday.
Unlike other comic heroes such as Spider-Man, Superman, Batman and the Fantastic Four, the Captain has yet to win Hollywood fame, though Buckley said there are plans for a Captain America movie. “He is still popular, but he has not been getting the same attention as Spider-Man and others,” said Buckley. “We hope this will make him more popular in the short-term at least.”
Andy Khouri has an excellent roundup of mainstream media reaction at the Comic Book Resource.
News broke this morning of the death of Marvel Comics superhero Captain America in issue #25 of the character’s monthly series, which shipped today to comic stores everywhere. Interestingly, the story has been covered by numerous mainstream media outlets including CBS News and CNN, operations not known for their coverage of comic book storylines.
“Captain America Killed Outside Courthouse” read the headline on CBSNews.com’s Entertainment section.
“Captain America Killed!” screamed the headline on page 3 of the New York Daily News.
“Comic Book Superhero Captain America Dies on the Page,” said the AP, whose story was run in too many places to count, such as ABC News.
Banner headline on page 3 of today’s edition of The New York Daily News
Few of these articles are particularly substantive, with most giving little to no context at all as to the fictional circumstances of Captain America’s death, reporting only that he’s died. Nevertheless, that so many such articles exist at all is quite remarkable for the small comics industry, and will certainly remind long-time comic fans of the media attention generated by DC Comics’ “Death of Superman” event in 1992. “Superman” #75, while similarly controversial amongst longtime readers, sold a great many comic books and gave new and returning fans a place to begin reading stories of the DC Universe. Written by Ed Brubaker and illustrated by Steve Epting, “Captain America” #25 is clearly designed to be accessible by everyone and achieve the same goal for Marvel Comics.
“There is a lot to be read in there. But I’m not one who is going to tell people, this is what you should read into it, because I could look into it and read several different types of messages,” Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada said in a taped interview with CNN, who, unlike other mainstream news sources, actually began their article with a spoiler warning and included a recap of the events of “Civil War.”
These are apparently the two alternate covers of (vol. 5) issue #25:
An Air Force staff sergeant who posed nude for Playboy magazine has been relieved of her duties while the military investigates, officials said Thursday.
In February’s issue, hitting newsstands this week, Michelle Manhart is photographed in uniform yelling and holding weapons under the headline “Tough Love.” The following pages show her partially clothed, wearing her dog tags while working out, as well as completely nude.
“This staff sergeant’s alleged action does not meet the high standards we expect of our airmen, nor does it comply with the Air Force’s core values of integrity, service before self, and excellence in all we do,” Oscar Balladares, spokesman for Lackland Air Force Base, said in a statement.
Manhart told Playboy that she considers herself as standing up for her rights. “Of what I did, nothing is wrong, so I didn’t anticipate anything, of course,” Manhart, 30, told The Associated Press. “I didn’t do anything wrong, so I didn’t think it would be a major issue.”
Manhart, who is married with two children, joined the Air Force in 1994, spending time in Kuwait in 2002. She trains airmen at Lackland.
It’s rather difficult to be taken seriously as a military leader after appearing naked in a porno mag. That someone who has been in the Air Force thirteen years can’t figure this out is incredible. And the only reason a 30-year-old mother of two is in Playboy to begin with is because of the novelty of her being in (and out) of uniform.
She has a MySpace page with numerous photos. She has her clothes on in all of them.
Okay, so maybe her Air Force affiliation isn’t the only reason Playboy was interested. Still, what was she thinking?
UPDATE:Steven Taylor wonders whether “investigating, and likely castigating, someone over nude photos is a good use of time and resources” given the military’s recruiting issues.
The Silver Surfer will make his live action debut in the second installment of the Fantastic Four movie franchise, USA Today’s Arienne Thompson reports.
In June, the Silver Surfer jumps from page to screen in The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.
With computer-generated imagery techniques similar to those used to create Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, the slippery Surfer, voiced by Doug Jones, “will look somewhere between gun metal and fluid metallics so you can see the body motion, the breathing, the muscle tone, the mood,” says Marvel Studios CEO Avi Arad.
The Surfer’s mood is key to the story. After striking a deal with the evil Galactus to save his planet, the once-human Surfer wreaks havoc throughout the cosmos. “He is a highly emotional being, trapped inside fluid metal,” Arad says.
Audiences will get a first look at the Silver Surfer this weekend in trailers before Night at the Museum.
Cool. The Surfer was long one of the more interesting Marvel supporting characters, although not one able to carry a book (or movie) on his own.
The next Star Trek movie is under development, reports Robert Hyde from ComicCon.
As more and more revelations come out of this years Comic-Con here’s some news that we all wanted to know was true as the rumours have been flying around for ages, Star Trek XI will be with us in 2008 and here’s the poster to prove it.
JJ Abrams who has had a hit this year with the Tom Cruise vehicle Mission:Impossible III is on board as producer and writer, although it’s not been revealed yet if he will direct or allow someone else that honour. Recent internet rumblings have suggested that he will write a story that goes back to Kirk and Spocks academy days, but these have been denied in the past.
Whatever happens is good to see that Paramount have handed the series over to some capable hands, and that they are not going to rush release a film to the market next year, a 2008 release date means that a lot of thought can go into the production and hopefully bring the flagging series back to a place where it sat in the 80’s and 90’s.
Warner is releasing a boxed set of the Christopher Reeve Superman movies in November that will feature a radically different version of “Superman II” and a 2001 “Director’s Cut” of the first film.
On the heels of “Superman Returns” storming the box office, the four original “Superman” movies starring Christopher Reeve are set to get the special DVD treatment.
The highlight of the November 28 DVD rollout: “Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut,” a revised version of the controversial 1980 sequel as it originally was conceived and intended to be filmed by director Richard Donner, who also shot the 1978 original. Donner was fired midway through the shoot and replaced by Richard Lester, who gave the film more of a comic bent. The version of the film being prepared for the DVD features Donner’s original footage, shot but never used, including a never-before-seen beginning, a different ending and 15 minutes of Marlon Brando as Jor-El in key scenes that probe deeper into Superman lore and further the relationship between father and son.
Donner shot most of the “Superman II” footage while he was filming “Superman: The Movie.” But as production on the sequel continued, friction between the director and the film’s producers led to his dismissal. Lester was hired to finish the shoot but wound up making substantial changes.
[...]
The four-disc “Superman: The Movie” includes two versions of the movie: The 1978 theatrical original and the 2001 director’s cut.
A very interesting concept. I’d be interested in seeing the Donner version but it’s rather odd to have two totally different versions of the same movie. Indeed, I’m generally skeptical of the “Director’s Cut” and other special versions of the movie that make it to DVD, since part of the idea of owning a movie is recapturing the theatrical experience.
This, of course, also brings to mind the “Free Hat” episode of “South Park” which spoofed changes to classic films made by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Here’s a few excerpts on video via YouTube:
A source says Justin, in particular, “will be pissed” when he hears about the yet to be published autobiography.
