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Diary of a Wimpy Kid Coming to Disney+

Diary of a Wimpy Kid Coming to Disney+

New York, NY (May 27, 2021)—Amulet Books, an imprint of Abrams Children’s Books, revealed today the title and cover of the eagerly anticipated sixteenth installment in the global bestselling series by Jeff Kinney. Releasing in hardcover and eBook editions, Big Shot (Diary of a Wimpy Kid Book 16) will be simultaneously published in 28 countries across the world on October 26, 2021. In addition, the story that started it all comes to life in the all-new animated adventure, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, streaming this holiday season on Disney+.

In Big Shot, Greg Heffley and sports just don’t mix. After a disastrous field day competition at school, Greg decides that when it comes to his athletic career, he’s officially retired. But after his mom urges him to give sports one more chance, he reluctantly agrees to sign up for basketball. Tryouts are a mess, and Greg is sure he won’t make the cut. But he unexpectedly lands a spot on the worst team. As Greg and his new teammates start the season, their chances of winning even a single game look slim. But in sports, anything can happen. When everything is on the line and the ball is in Greg’s hands, will he rise to the occasion? Or will he blow his big shot? Charles Kochman, ABRAMS editorial director and Kinney’s longtime editor, will edit the new book.

Big Shot will be supported by a major marketing and publicity campaign, including an innovative drive-thru-style book tour that Kinney conceived and produced with ABRAMS for his three previous books published during the pandemic, most recently his global bestseller Rowley Jefferson’s Awesome Friendly Spooky Stories, the third book in the Wimpy Kid spin-off Awesome Friendly Kid series. The Big Shot campaign will also include partnerships with social media influencers, national advertising, dynamic digital content, and promotions targeting teachers and librarians.

Jeff Kinney is one of the world’s bestselling authors; Diary of a Wimpy Kid books are published in 79 editions in 65 languages and have sold more than 250 million copies globally in just 14 years. Published in 2007, the first Diary of a Wimpy Kid book was an instant bestseller and has remained on the New York Times bestseller list since its publication and through the release of the fifteenth book and three-book spin-off Awesome Friendly Kid series , for more than 775 weeks total. The series is also a fixture on the USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, and IndieBound bestseller lists and is one of the top five bestselling book series—adult and kids—of all time.

Not the usual suspects in new images from Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One

Not the usual suspects in new images from Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One

Among the many suspects with motive and opportunity to be the Holiday Killer is Alberto Falcone, the calculating son of mob boss Carmine “The Roman” Falcone. Jack Quaid (The Boys, The Hunger Games, upcoming My Adventures With Superman) provides the voice of Alberto.

The suspects nearly outnumber the victims of the Holiday Killer – and it’s up to Batman, Police Captain James Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent to decipher the clues and find the true criminal mastermind in Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One

Warner Animation recently released four new images of the various potential murderers from Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One.

Produced by Warner Bros. Animation and DC, the feature-length animated Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One will be distributed by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment on Digital and Blu-ray on June 22, 2021. 

The crimefighters are forced to enlist the help of a criminal – Calendar Man – to help understand the clues and discover the identity of the Holiday Killer in Batman: The Long Halloween , Part One. David Dastmalchian (The Suicide Squad, Dune, Ant-Man, The Flash) provides the voice of Calendar Man.
A mob war roars in the background of the Holiday Killer’s murder spree, and it’s Carmine “The Roman” Falcone at the center of the crime syndicate’s activities. Falcone was an ally of Thomas Wayne in the establishment of Gotham City, but Wayne’s son Bruce isn’t as accepting of Falcone’s methods. Titus Welliver (Bosch, Deadwood) voices Falcone.
Would a Batman story be complete without an appearance by the Joker? The Clown Prince of Crime is up to his usual diabolical escapades in Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One, terrorizing the public while taunting the Dark Knight. Troy Baker (The Last of Us, Batman: Arkham Knight) voices the Dark Knight’s greatest foe in the all-new film.

Born a Doofus by Adam Huber

Gag-a-day cartoons are a wonderful and mysterious art, a triumph of style and viewpoint, precise phrasing and engaging drawing, with a clear point of view and a world that can be encapsulated in four panels but expands with four new panels every day for as long as the cartoonist is inspired.

Well, good gag-a-day cartoons are like that. We also have Blondie and Garfield.

Bug Martini , though, is a good gag-a-day cartoon. It’s been running for about a dozen years, and its creator, Adam Huber, finally put together a physical-book collection of the strip this past year, gathering the first year of strips under the title Born a Doofus.

So this book starts with the first strip (October 19, 2009 ) and runs through the strip for October 18, 2010 . It also includes, in the back, about a dozen sketchbook pages about the pre-history of his “bug” main character, but the real draw is the comics themselves, which were funny and smart right from the beginning. (Huber’s art has evolved a bit – his bugs were chunkier, with smaller eyes, at the very beginning – but his writing was basically fully-formed from strip one. He may have gotten slightly denser with jokes as he went on, but that’s about it: this was really funny from launch.) I was chuckling all the way through Born a Doofus, and only avoided trying to read out a dozen or so random strips to The Wife out of my finely-honed sense that reading the words from a comic are not the preferred experience…especially to a woman trying to make dinner for her family.

But, Andy, you say. You’re linking to those strips, which are still available online. Why would I buy a book when I can just read straight through the archives, and hit another ten years of strips after that?

Aha! There is a fatal flaw in your plan: you can’t buy this book. It’s not available to you. It was funded by a Kickstarter, and you are too late. So it’s not a case of “should I get this book,” but instead a case of “you missed out on this awesome book, so sad for you.”

So I am not recommending this book to you. I am gloating that I just read it, that it is wonderful, and that you cannot have it. Oh, maybe Huber will deign to open sales of Born a Doofus in the future – check out his webstore , and live in hope – but, for right now, I have it and you do not.

(Or maybe I’m joking, and I do hope you can buy this someday, and Bug Martini will become an empire to rival Paws, Inc. Maybe.)

So that is Born a Doofus. It is funny, and I hope the stress of making it didn’t turn Huber off making further books, since he could do at least half-a-dozen more out of his archives. And maybe, just maybe, if you’re really good and the world is better than it usually is, you will be able to get a copy yourself someday. But, for now: you missed it.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Attitude 3: The New Subversive Online Cartoonists edited by Ted Rall

Any book with “new” in the title will age really badly: it’s just inherent. If what it’s trying to do is present something fresh and immediate, that will just be less compelling fifteen years later. No one can do anything about that effect.

So it’s a pretty quixotic thing to read Attitude 3: The New Subversive Online Cartoonists  in 2021, since it’s a book from 2006 about a world that was fast-moving at that point and has only sped up since then. Attitude 3 was the last of the series — the first Attitude profiled new political cartoonists and the second one new “alternative” cartoonists” (primarily those of the weekly newspapers that flourished in the ’90s, I think), and all of them were edited by Ted Rall, at a moment in his career when he seemed to be working more as a connector than he looks to be doing now.

(Parenthetically, Rall – as the sourest, most uncompromising and most ideologically leftist cartoonist in the US – now looks like an odd person to do something this broad and inclusive, but, again, fifteen years can change people and worlds and industries. Early-Aughts Rall is not the same person he is today; none of us are.)

So Attitude 3 interviews and profiles twenty-one relatively prominent webcartoonists of the time, mostly focusing on political/personal cartoons – things closer to the editorial end of the world, or gag-a-day in some cases, rather than the kind of webcomics that are basically long serialized stories formatted as comic-book pages presented in electronic form. Some of them will be familiar , some of them will be lost to the mists of time. (Well, they were for me; you might be intimately familiar with every single one of these and know exactly what they’ve all done in the fifteen years since. If so, you are creepy and I am unobtrusively moving away from you.)

Cartoonists I recognize/follow/enjoy include Richard Stevens of Diesel Sweeties, Matt Bors (more recently of The Nib), Dorothy Gambrell of Cat and Girl, Nicholas Gurewitch of Perry Bible Fellowship, and Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics. A couple of others – Mark Fiore in particular – are names I’ve seen since then. But the majority of the book was made up of cartoons and creators I’d never seen before and hadn’t heard of: my guess is that some of them are still going, in their own corners of the Internet, and some have moved on to other art-adjacent things, and most have moved on to work that’s nothing like making pictures on the WWW.

Each cartoonist has five or six pages, including a decent selection of cartoons in black-and-white – this is an issue for some, since most were in color on the ‘net, for obvious reasons – and the interview with Rall. It’s all professional and well-done and informative, but it does feel like a moment frozen in amber this many years later.

I think we’re at the wrong time to look at a book like this again. One the one hand, it’s too long for most of these people to still be doing the same work, though a few are. On the other, they were all very young then (mostly mid-twenties) and so now are mostly in the middle of their careers – so it’s too early for this to be useful as parallax to evaluate anything like their whole oeuvre.

Still, it’s a moderately heroic book, trying to gather a vast, massively-distributed world and get it between two covers for posterity. It is a serious accomplishment, and it will be there for that re-evaluation in another thirty years or so, if any of us are there to look at it again.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

REVIEW: Minari

REVIEW: Minari

The America we know today is a country founded by generation after generation of immigrants, coming from pockets around the world. By the late 19th century, enough people had heard that this new country was a land of opportunity so countless families uprooted themselves and found their way here to start afresh.

In that way, the Yi family is no different than any other, making their story in Minari a universal one. The much-lauded film, out on disc and streaming from Lionsgate Home Entertainment, is both broad in scope and incredibly personal. The Yis came over from South Korea, first settling in California, but as we meet them, are relocating to Arkansas. Jacob Yi (Steven Yeun) sees his future in the fifty acres of farmland he has purchased, not in the manufactured home on wheels that houses his wife Monica (Han Ye-ri), Anne (Noel Kate Cho), and ailing David (Alan Kim).

They are isolated with no neighbors and live far from the handful of other Koreans in the area, all of whom seem to work for a chicken company. The adult Yis sort chicks by gender, saving the females to become McNuggets while the bored children try to stay busy. As tensions and debt mount, Jacob agrees to bring Monica’s mother Soon-ja (Youn Yuh-jung) to America to watch the children. She’s a character, playing cards, cursing, and incapable of cooking or baking, earning her the criticism from David that she’s not a “real” grandmother.

Jacob is trying to grow Korean vegetables recognizing there is a growing market as 30,000 countryman immigrate to America every year. But, like Job, the odds remain forever stacked against him. He is so desperate to succeed in America that he treats his marriage and his family as secondary matters.

The one who seems to suffer the most is Anne, on the cusp of adolescence, she is the one relied on to keep an eye on everyone else. She lacks friends and the ability to be a kid, doing her best, and only occasionally showing her frustration.

Writer/Director Lee Isaac Chung is fascinated by the experience and initially wanted to adapt Willa Cather’s My Antonia but relented when the estate protected the authpr’s desires not to have her work used in other media. He turned inward, using his personal experiences to craft this original tale. It is filled with small touches that only someone who’s been there would know, the stress, the isolation, the lack of connection.

He is commended for not painting the white folk in the story with one brush. Instead, the community seems welcoming. Jacob bonds with Will Patton’s devout Christian Paul, who helps him get the farm up and running. On the Sabbath , he is seen carrying a large wooden cross, which he says is his church, and speaks in tongues, but is not insulted for his beliefs.

This was a small film, easily overlooked any other year. Thankfully, it shone brightly with little competition. As a result, it won the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award at Sundance. It went on to earn six Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Score, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actor (Yeun), and Best Supporting Actress (Youn), with Youn winning for her performance. The film also won Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globes and another half-dozen BAFTA nominations.

The Blu-ray release has a fine 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. The film’s soft cinematography, with hazy Arkansas summer air, is well captured. The film has English subtitles for the colloquial Korean moments and the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 is perfectly adequate for home viewing.

The single disc features Audio Commentary with Chung and Youn which is worth a listen for additional insights. There is also the basic background piece Sowing Seeds: Making Minari (13:25) and some Deleted Scenes (3:18). There is also a Digital HD code included.

The Law Is A Ass #450: One Can Only Marvel At All The Ms. Takes

The Law Is A Ass #450: One Can Only Marvel At All The Ms. Takes

Ms. Marvel Vol 4 #20

I don’t care what you say, 2020 could have been worse. Want proof? Marvel’s Civil War II didn’t come out in 2020, now did it?

Ah, Civil War II, the gift that kept on giving, even after we had taken it to the return window. It continued to haunt us in Ms. Marvel Vol 4 #20, after we thought we had put it out of our misery. Bear with me, to explain how, requires more back story than the Illustrated Man’s dorsal region.

Kamala Khan wasn’t always Ms. Marvel. Her latent Inhuman gene activated after she was exposed to the Terrigen Mist during Terrigenesis. That’s when she got powers and became protector of Jersey City. I realize that if you’re not up on Marvel continuity, the preceding sentences make no sense. I am up on Marvel continuity, after a fashion, and they don’t make complete sense to me. But explaining it further would make this column longer than Stephen King’s The Stand; abridged and unabridged versions. Combined. So, like a Lee fake fingernail, we press on.

Some months later, Kamala’s brother, Aamir Khan, was exposed to something. It wasn’t Terrigen, but it still gave Aamir powers. How it gave Aamir powers isn’t important, not unless we want to add Stephen King’s Under the Dome to this column’s word count. What is important is that Aamir got his powers when he was an adult.

During the events of Civil War II, Aamir openly displayed his super powers. Then, after Charles Worthy, a front man for Hydra, became Mayor of Jersey City, he started a policy of taking the city back from the “activist super heroes” who have disrupted Jersey City. To accomplish this, Worthy issued an executive order requiring all super heroes in Jersey City to register.

Aamir didn’t register. He was arrested pursuant to the executive order and held in a detention center, where a police officer reminded Aamir that he was an emigree who became a naturalized citizen when he was eight. The officer advised Aamir that “Under the new law, failing to disclose super-powers could potentially count as immigration fraud. If you obtained your citizenship under false pretenses, this could be grounds for revocation.” Meaning, Jersey City would revoke Aamir’s citizenship and deport him.

Jersey City may believe it’s like some little train engine going up a big hill, but it isn’t. Not only do I not think it can do this; I know it can’t.

Let’s deal with the ridiculous assumption, that if Aamir didn’t disclose powers he didn’t have at the time he became a naturalized citizen, he obtained his citizenship under false pretenses. Aamir didn’t have his powers when he was naturalized, he got them years later. To say he concealed something he didn’t have is like saying I – all 5 feet 7 inches of me – concealed my two-handed, behind-the-back slam dunk. Go ahead, try to conceal something you don’t have. That’s a trick that would fool Penn & Teller.

Aamir obtained nothing under false pretenses. The only false thing in the story is Mayor Worthy’s knowledge of the law. Especially if Worthy thought he could unconstitutionally apply an executive order which he issued after Aamir was naturalized to revoke Aamir’s citizenship. Don’t believe me? Look up the Ex Post Facto clause. Tell you what, I’ll save you a little research. You’ll find it in Article I §§ 9 and 10 of the United States Constitution. Next I’ll save you some time and tell you ex post facto is not a discontinued breakfast cereal but Latin for after the fact.

The Ex Post Facto clause says that neither the federal government (§ 9) nor a state (§ 10) can pass a law that punishes behavior that occurred before the law was passed. So Jersey City can’t revoke someone’s citizenship for not following an executive order that didn’t exist at the time that person became a citizen.

I know the Constitution doesn’t mention executive orders in the Ex Post Facto clause. But in ex post facto analysis there’s no real difference between an executive order and a law, so I don’t think that even the strictest textualist would deny relief on that pretext.

But let’s say that Jersey City could get past the arguments that Mayor Worthy’s executive order violated the Ex Post Facto clause– it can’t, but I have a few more words to go before I hit my word count quota, so I’ll use them up with another hypothetical – it still couldn’t use the executive order to argue that Aamir obtained his citizenship through fraud.

Remember how we proved Aamir didn’t conceal his super powers when he became a citizen, because he didn’t have any super powers when he became a citizen? (Yes, you do. Time may seem to pass more slowly during a pandemic lock down, but five paragraphs wasn’t that long ago.) That argument also negatives Jersey City’s fraud claim.

Fraud requires a specific intent to deceive to gain a benefit. That’s the culpable mental state of the crime. When Aamir was naturalized, he lacked an intent to deceive by concealing his super powers, because he lacked super powers.

Finally, does Mayor Worthy think he’s going to be able to use that fraud argument to expatriate Aamir and then deport him? If so, he’s dumber than a bag of door knobs. And not the good kind, we’re talking the kind that come out in your hand so you can’t open the door.

I refer you back to the Constitution. Specifically Article 1 , § 8, clause 4 which gives the United States Congress the power to establish the rules of naturalization. Congress. You know, five hundred thirty-five men and women in Washington D.C. Not one mayor in central New Jersey. Give the mayor of Jersey City immigration authority? Hell, Congress wouldn’t even do that for Snooki.

So what does this mean? It means Jersey City wronged Mr. Khan bigly. We’re talking serious constitutional violations here, not Aamir inconvenience.

First Look at Batman: The Long Halloween Part 2

First Look at Batman: The Long Halloween Part 2

BURBANK, CA (May 20, 2021) – The Dark Knight must combat a unified front of classic DC Super-Villains, diffuse an escalating mob war and solve the mystery of the Holiday Killer in Batman: The Long Halloween, Part Two, the thrilling conclusion to the two-part entry in the popular series of DC Universe Movies. Produced by Warner Bros. Animation, DC and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, the feature-length animated film – which will be accompanied by the latest DC Showcase animated short, Blue Beetle –arrives July 27, 2021 on Digital and August 10, 2021 on Blu-ray. Batman: The Long Halloween, Part Two is rated R for some violence and bloody images.

Batman: The Long Halloween, Part Two will be available on Blu-ray (USA $34.98 SRP; Canada $39.99 SRP) as well as on Digital. The Blu-ray features a Blu-ray disc with the film in hi-definition and a digital version of the movie. In 2022, Batman: The Long Halloween, Part Two will be available on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Combo Pack as a combined film presentation with Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One.

Inspired by the iconic mid-1990s DC story from Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, Batman: The Long Halloween, Part Two continues as the Holiday Killer is still at large and , with Bruce Wayne under the spell of the venomous Poison Ivy, Batman is nowhere to be found. Liberated by an unlikely ally, Bruce quickly uncovers the real culprit: Poison Ivy’s employer Carmine Falcone. The Roman, his ranks decimated by Holiday and his business spinning out of control, has been forced to bring on less desirable partners – Gotham City’s rogues’ gallery. In the meantime, Harvey Dent is confronting battles on two fronts: attempting to end the mob war while also dealing with a strained marriage. And, after an attack that leaves Harvey hideously disfigured, the District Attorney unleashes the duality of his psyche that he’s strived his entire life to suppress. Now, as Two-Face, Dent decides to take the law into his own hands and deliver judgment to those who’ve wronged him, his family and all of Gotham. Ultimately, the Dark Knight must put together the tragic pieces that converged to create Two-Face, the Holiday Killer, Batman and Gotham City itself.

Jensen Ackles (Supernatural, Batman: Under the Red Hood) leads an all-star cast as the voice of Batman/Bruce Wayne alongside the late Naya Rivera (Glee) as Catwoman/Selina Kyle, Josh Duhamel (Transformers, Las Vegas) as Harvey Dent/Two-Face, Billy Burke (Twilight, Revolution, Zoo) as Commissioner James Gordon, Katee Sackhoff (The Mandalorian, Battlestar Galactica, Batman: Year One) as Poison Ivy, Titus Welliver (Bosch, Deadwood) as Carmine Falcone, Julie Nathanson (Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Suicide Squad: Hell To Pay) as Gilda Dent, David Dastmalchian (The Suicide Squad, Dune, Ant-Man,) as Calendar Man & The Penguin, Troy Baker (The Last of Us, Batman: Arkham Knight) as The Joker, Amy Landecker (Your Honor, Transparent) as Barbara Gordon & Carla Vitti, Fred Tatasciore (American Dad!, Family Guy) as Solomon Grundy, Alyssa Diaz (The Rookie, Ray Donovan) as Renee Montoya, and Alastair Duncan (The Batman, Batman Unlimited franchise) as Alfred. In addition, Robin Atkin Downes (The Strain, Constantine: City of Demons) voices both Scarecrow & Thomas Wayne, John DiMaggio (Futurama, Disenchantment) is the Mad Hatter, Laila Berzins (Genshin Impact) is Sofia Falcone, Jim Pirri (World of Warcraft franchise) is Sal Maroni, and Zach Callison (The Goldbergs, Steven Universe) is Young Bruce Wayne. Additional voice work was provided by Gary Leroi Gray and Rick Wasserman.

The entire filmmaking team returns for Batman: The Long Halloween, Part Two as led by supervising producer Butch Lukic (Justice Society: World War II, Superman: Man of Tomorrow), director Chris Palmer (Superman: Man of Tomorrow), and screenwriter Tim Sheridan (Reign of the Supermen, Superman: Man of Tomorrow). Producers are Jim Krieg (Batman: Gotham by Gaslight) and Kimberly S. Moreau (Batman vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). Executive Producer is Michael Uslan. Sam Register is Executive Producer.

Batman: The Long Halloween, Part Two – Special Features

Blu-ray and Digital

●      DC Showcase – Blue Beetle (New Animated Short) – Sufferin’ Scarabs! Silver Age Blue Beetle is back! And, had he ever starred in a 1960s Saturday-morning limited-animation cartoon with its own jazzy earworm of a theme song, it would have been just like this! Welcome to the adventures of Ted Kord, alias the Blue Beetle, as he teams up with fellow super heroes Captain Atom, The Question and Nightshade to battle that nefarious finagler of feelings, Doctor Spectro.

●      A Sneak Peek at the next DC Animated Movie – An advanced look at Injustice.

●      DC Universe Movies Flashback

  • Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 2
  • Batman: Hush

●      From the DC Vault

  • Batman: The Animated Series – “Two-Face, Part 1”
  • Batman: The Animated Series – “Two-Face, Part 2”

Want to check out more animated DC Super Hero entertainment before seeing Batman: The Long Halloween, Part Two? HBO Max has a wide array of DC Universe Movies available for viewing. And you can catch up on all of the comic book source material by visiting DC UNIVERSE INFINITE (US-only).

Batman: The Long Halloween, Part Two will also be available on Movies Anywhere. Using the free Movies Anywhere app and website, consumers can access all their eligible movies by connecting their Movies Anywhere account with their participating digital retailer accounts.

BASICS

Blu-ray, $34.98 USA, $39.99 Canada

Blu-ray Languages: English, Spanish, French, German

Blu-ray Subtitles: English, Spanish, French, German, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian

Running Time: 87 minutes

Rated R for some violence and bloody images

Mark Millar confirms Emerald Fennell as “Nemesis” screenwriter for WB

Mark Millar confirms Emerald Fennell as “Nemesis” screenwriter for WB

Mark Millar – creator of Kick-Ass, Jupiter’s Legacy, The Secret Service & Kingsman – has confirmed to retailer Forbidden Planet that Emerald Fennell – winner of the 2021 Oscar for Original Screenplay (Promising Young Woman) – will pen the script for Millar’s hotly-anticipated Warner Bros adaptation of his critically acclaimed comic book, Nemesis.

Speaking exclusively to Forbidden Planet TV, Millar said: “Emerald Fennell, who just won an Oscar for best screenplay for Promising Young Woman, has just delivered the latest draft of the Nemesis screenplay, which is extremely cool, especially after the initial development of the movie by the late Tony Scott, who established some amazing visual ideas for the movie!”

Nemesis is a tale of one man with a plan for vengeance! Who is Nemesis? He is a son of privilege, an inheritor of billions from his deceased parents. He owns a fleet of the finest cars and a hangar full of planes, and has countless technological gadgets at his command. He’s the ultimate super-villain fighting relentlessly for a nihilsitic cause in which he believes.

Forbidden Planet TV host Andrew Sumner said: “This interview with Mark Millar is another example of the pop culture status that enables Forbidden Planet to attract high-profile creatives from the comic book and entertainment industry, whether it’s for an interview for our newly-launched online TV show, a store signing or an exclusive edition. Fans won’t want to miss out on this special interview, as Millar introduces his new Netflix show Jupiter’s Legacy, chats about a new Netflix spy show he’s developing, previews the latest Kingsman movie and reveals an all-new anime adaption of his comic book Supercrooks.”

The new Forbidden Planet TV channel is available to watch on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/c/Forbiddenplanetdotcom/videos – over 150 episodes are already available to view and four new episodes are posted every week featuring influential & creative guests from all spheres of the global entertainment industry.

The full interview with Mark Millar will be available on Forbidden Planet TV from May 19th, 2021. For more information about Forbidden Planet, visit https://forbiddenplanet.com/

4 New Images from Batman: The Long Halloween Animated Adaptation

Central to the story of Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One are its primary protagonists: Batman/Bruce Wayne (voiced by Jensen Ackles), Police Captain James Gordon (Billy Burke) and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Josh Duhamel).

The centerpiece of Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One revolves around the triumvirate of crimefighters – Batman/Bruce Wayne, Police Captain James Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent – as they try to solve the mystery of the Holiday Killer.

Produced by Warner Bros. Animation and DC, the feature-length animated Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One will be distributed by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment on Digital and Blu-ray on June 22, 2021.

Inspired by the iconic mid-1990s DC story from Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One begins as a brutal murder on Halloween prompts Gotham’s young vigilante, the Batman, to form a pact with the city’s only two uncorrupt lawmen – Police Captain James Gordan and District Attorney Harvey Dent – in order to take down The Roman, head of the notorious and powerful Falcone Crime Family. But when more deaths occur on Thanksgiving and Christmas, it becomes clear that instead of ordinary gang violence, they’re also dealing with a serial killer – the identity of whom, with each conflicting clue, grows harder to discern. Few cases have ever tested the wits of the World’s Greatest Detective like the mystery behind the Holiday Killer.

BURBANK, CA – Atrocious serial killings on holidays in Gotham send The World’s Greatest Detective into action – confronting both organized crime and a mysterious murderer – in Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One, the next entry in the popular series of the DC Universe Movies. Produced by Warner Bros. Animation, DC and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, the feature-length animated film – which will be accompanied by the latest DC Showcase animated short, The Losers – is set for release on Digital and Blu-ray on June 22, 2021.

Complicated relationships are a recurring theme in Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One, particularly where Batman/Bruce Wayne (voiced by Jensen Ackles) and Catwoman/Selina Kyle (Naya Rivera) are involved.

Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One will be available on Blu-ray (USA $29.98 SRP; Canada $39.99 SRP) as well as on Digital. The Blu-ray features a Blu-ray disc with the film in hi-definition and a digital version of the movie. Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One will be available on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Combo Pack at a later date in 2022 as a combined presentation of the film with Batman: The Long Halloween, Part Two.

Inspired by the iconic mid-1990s DC story from Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One begins as a brutal murder on Halloween prompts Gotham’s young vigilante, the Batman, to form a pact with the city’s only two uncorrupt lawmen (Police Captain James Gordan and District Attorney Harvey Dent) in order to take down The Roman, head of the notorious and powerful Falcone Crime Family. But when more deaths occur on Thanksgiving and Christmas, it becomes clear that, instead of ordinary gang violence, they’re also dealing with a serial killer – the identity of whom, with each conflicting clue, grows harder to discern. Few cases have ever tested the wits of the World’s Greatest Detective like the mystery behind the Holiday Killer.

Lauded for his performance as Red Hood/Jason Todd in 2010’s Batman Under the Red Hood, Jensen Ackles (Supernatural, Smallville) returns to the DC Universe Movies as the title character of Batman/Bruce Wayne. The late Naya Rivera (Glee), who passed away in 2020, gives one of her final performances as Catwoman/Selina Kyle. The all-star cast includes Josh Duhamel (Transformers, Las Vegas) as Harvey Dent, Billy Burke (Twilight, Revolution, Zoo) as James Gordon, Titus Welliver (Bosch, Deadwood, The Town) as Carmine Falcone, David Dastmalchian (The Suicide Squad, Ant-Man, Dune, The Dark Knight) as Calendar Man, Troy Baker (The Last of Us, Batman: Arkham Knight) as Joker, Amy Landecker (Your Honor , Transparent) as Barbara Gordon, Julie Nathanson (Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Suicide Squad: Hell To Pay) as Gilda Dent, Jack Quaid (The Boys, The Hunger Games) as Alberto, Fred Tatasciore (American Dad!, Family Guy) as Solomon Grundy, Jim Pirri (World of Warcraft franchise) as Sal Maroni, and Alastair Duncan (The Batman, Batman Unlimited franchise) as Alfred. Additional voices provided by Frances Callier, Greg Chun and Gary Leroi Gray.

Police Captain James Gordon (voiced by Billy Burke) leads a team of trusted detectives, including Renee Montoya (voiced by Alyssa Diaz) in Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One.

Chris Palmer (Superman: Man of Tomorrow) directs Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One from a screenplay by Tim Sheridan (Reign of the Supermen, Superman: Man of Tomorrow). Producers are Jim Krieg (Batman: Gotham by Gaslight) and Kimberly S. Moreau (Batman vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). Butch Lukic (Justice Society: World War II, Superman: Man of Tomorrow) is Supervising Producer. Executive Producer is Michael Uslan. Sam Register is Executive Producer.

Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One – Special Features

Blu-ray and Digital

DC Showcase – The Losers (New Animated Short) – The legendary rag-tag team of World War II outcasts – Captain Storm, Johnny Cloud, “Mile-a Minute” Jones, rookie Gunner and Sarge – find themselves marooned on an uncharted island in the South Pacific that is completely overrun with dinosaurs! Their would-be ally on this deadly mission, the mysterious and beautiful Fan Long of the Chinese Security Agency, tells them their job is to rescue the scientists that have been sent to study the time/space anomaly. Perhaps… but what is her mission?

A Sneak Peek at the next DC Universe Movie – An advance look at the next animated film in the popular DC Universe Movies collection, Batman: The Long Halloween, Part Two.

From the DC Vault – Batman: The Animated Series – “Christmas With The Joker”

From the DC Vault – Batman: The Animated Series – “It’s Never Too Late”

One of the more complicated relationships in Batman: The Long Halloween, Part Oneinvolves District Attorney Harvey Dent (voiced by Josh Duhamel) and his wife Gilda (Julie Nathanson).

Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One will also be available on Movies Anywhere. Using the free Movies Anywhere app and website, consumers can access all their eligible movies by connecting their Movies Anywhere account with their participating digital retailer accounts.

BASICS

Blu-ray, $29.98 USA, $39.99 Canada

Blu-ray Languages: English, Spanish, French, German

Blu-ray Subtitles: English, Spanish, French, German, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian

Running Time: 85 minutes

Rated PG-13 for violence, bloody images, language and some smoking

Snake Eyes gets new One Sheet

Paramount Pictures has released a new one-sheet for their G.I. Joe spinoff, Snake Eyes, featuring arguably the most popular character from the 1980s revival of the popular Hasbro toy line.

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS

Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins stars Henry Golding as Snake Eyes, a tenacious loner who is welcomed into an ancient Japanese clan called the Arashikage after saving the life of their heir apparent. Upon arrival in Japan, the Arashikage teach Snake Eyes the ways of the ninja warrior while also providing something he’s been longing for: a home. But, when secrets from his past are revealed, Snake Eyes’ honor and allegiance will be tested – even if that means losing the trust of those closest to him. Based on the iconic G.I. Joe character , Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins also stars Andrew Koji as Storm Shadow, Úrsula Corberó as The Baroness, Samara Weaving as Scarlett, Haruka Abe as Akiko, Tahehiro Hira as Kenta and Iko Uwais as Hard Master.

DIRECTED BY

Robert Schwentke

BASED ON

Hasbro’s G.I. JOE® Characters

STORY BY

Evan Spiliotopoulos

SCREENPLAY BY

Evan Spiliotopoulos and Anna Waterhouse & Joe Shrapnel

STARRING

Henry Golding, Andrew Koji, Úrsula Corberó, Samara Weaving, Haruka Abe, Takehiro Hira with Iko Uwais

EXECUTIVE PRODUCED BY

David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger, Jeff G. Waxman, Greg Mooradian

PRODUCED BY

Brian Goldner, Erik Howsam, p.g.a., Lorenzo di Bonaventura, p.g.a.