“It just goes to show you that someone with some real talent is not just a one note kind of guy. Anyone that versatile is always going to succeed.”
– Matt Fleckenstein
When I first called in to talk to Matt Fleckenstein, someone answered the phone Drake & Josh. I got very excited because for some reason even though I’m 30 years old I am obsessed with that show. I think that both Drake Bell and Josh are enormously talented plus it’s created by Dan Schneider, the heavy set dude from Head of the Class!
When I got Matt Fleckenstein on the phone I quizzed him about working on Drake & Josh and Dan Schneider. But then we settled into what he hopes will be a regular gig, working on Family Guy. Currently Fleckenstein only has a few writing credits to his name when it comes to the Family Guy TV series but hopefully that will change. Right now he has the prime gig of writing the upcoming Family Guy comic book.
“This movie has heart which is important for a comedy because ultimately you have to laugh and walk out of this movie feeling good about yourself.”
– Aaron Eckhart
Aaron Eckhart scared a generation of filmgoers with his misogynistic character in the seminal independent film In the Company of Men. Since then hes played such roles as the sympathetic biker in Erin Brockovich to a fast talking shyster in Paycheck. Now he’s playing the be all end all of shysters; a tobacco lobbyist in Thank You For Smoking.
Nick Naylor is the chief spokesman for Big Tobacco. Confronted by health zealots out to ban tobacco and an opportunistic senator who wants to put poison labels on cigarette packs, Nick goes on a PR offensive, spinning away the dangers of cigarettes on TV talk shows and enlisting a Hollywood super-agent to promote smoking in movies.
“This is one of Jim Henson’s earlier works”
– Ramon Perez
Ramon Perez may not be familiar to many comics fans, but his collaborators on his new graphic novel are quite well-known. Perez is writing and drawing Tale of Sand, a graphic novel just released by Archaia Press which is based on an unfilmed screenplay by Jim Henson and Jerry Juhl.
An experimental project that Henson began working on in the late sixties, Perez has transformed the script into a beautifully illustrated graphic novel. The book defies easy summary, something we discussed in the interview, because it’s a story that’s much open to interpretation. It’s strikingly different from the work that most Henson fans know and should hopefully help to start a new conversation about the kind of talent that Henson was.
The book also marks the arrival of Perez as a top tier comics talent. An artist of uncommon skills as a designer and illustrator, he also possesses an adept sense of color and layout. It says a lot about the Henson Company that they let an artist have such free reign in adapting the script, and Perez rose to the task, crafting one of the best comics of the year.
“I hate anything to do with nostalgia and retro.” – Gary Numan
Gary Numan is best known to American audiences as the creator of the classic song “Cars” back in the 1980s. But Numan has never stopped making his unique brand of electronic music. Powerful, deep, hot and cold at the same time, Numan revolutionizes music with every new album. His latest is Jagged which is produced by one of the best hard techno producers out there, Ade Fenton.
The first teaser poster for The Amazing Spider-Man has also been released. The film will be released on July 3, 2012, and the poster more than hints that it will tell ‘the untold story.’ With Gwen Stacy cast in the film, I really hope that this film sets up for the famous “Death of the Stacy’s” storyline.
Upping the movie posters ante, the producers of Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance released several posters to promote their film which will hit screens in February 2012. Designs vary from the artistic to the simplistic, with one notable one being based on the classic cult movie poster.
At the rate Hollywood is producing superhero movies, it’s very likely there could be a Black Widow movie on the way. Especially in light of the fact that Scarlett Johansson has come out saying she would be interested in signing on for a movie primarily featuring the heroine. There is nothing in the works at the moment, but Johansson has made it clear she’s up for a return to the roll.
“I love playing the Widow. I think she’s got a very interesting past, a lot of storylines to explore, and certainly Kevin [Feige, Marvel Studios’ president] loves that character … I think that Marvel has a very personal relationship with their fans, and I think if the fans want it, and the audience wants it, nothing’s impossible. I would love to explore that option as well. Like I said, I love the character and it would be nice to see something nice and gritty.”
Plans to move forward with Thor 2 are progressing swiftly. The Hollywood Reporter has released the names of two potential directors looking to fill the void left by Patty Jenkins. Alan Taylor and Daniel Minahan are both being considered for the position. Marvel has also shortened the list of potential script writers; the new list includes Robert Rodat and Roger Avary.
If you thought the Transformers series was over, you thought wrong. For better or worse, Michael Bay is back at it and in final negotiations to direct a fourth film in the series. Bay has been assembling a cast for the project and it looks like formal details will be announced shortly.
Following the Men in Black 3 teaser poster which was released last week, a trailer has also hit the YouTubes. Seems, in order to fight the alien menace this time, Agent J is going to have to go to back to the past and enlist K’s help.
Despite all of the talk about Khan appearing in Star Trek 2, Simon Pegg has gone on record as saying he has heard no talk of Khan in the film. As far as Scotty is concerned, there is no Khan in the movie, and he even thinks it might be a little tacky for them to do Khan as he has been done in previous films.
Spike TV held the 2011 Video Game Awards (VGA) this last week. Amongst a flurry of trailers for upcoming games and comic award presenters, twenty-five awards were given for to the best games of 2011. Batman: Arkham City took four of the awards including Best Xbox 360 Game and Character of the Year for the Joker. The big winner of Game of the Year was The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. Their studio, Bethesda Games, also took Studio of the Year. Blizzard also used the VGAs to premiere the opening cinematic for the much anticipated Diablo 3.
Finally, George Takei, better known as Sulu, has a message for everyone re. the current Star Trek vs. Star Wars war. To recap, the recent battle was started by William Shatner, who proclaimed that Star Trek was superior to Star Wars in a video that did the rounds on YouTube. Carry Fisher then posted a few rebuttals in response. Now Takei is calling for an alliance. Instead of focusing our frustrations at our other ‘star-brothers,’ he asks that we work together to defeat the evil that is Twilight.
“They’re pushing their bodies beyond endurance to extreme ends for the entertainment of others.”
– Christa Faust
Christa Faust’s new novel Choke Hold is a sexy and violent thriller, and though it’s a sequel to her earlier novel Money Shot, it’s a very different book.
Faust has spent her career writing a series of decidedly different novels, from the Porn Valley set noir of Money Shot to the Lucha Libre detective tale Hoodtown to an investigation into New York’s S&M subculture in Control Freak to a strange erotic tale of the Peking Opera, Hollywood and homophobia in Triads (which she co-wrote with her friend Poppy Z. Brite). In between these heavily researched projects she writes tie-in books for Supernatural and other television shows and novelizations of films like Friday the Thirteenth and Snakes on a Plane. Faust, who has worked as a professional dominatrix, is also known as the writer-director of the bondage serial adventure Dita in Distress. She recently announced her next project, Butch Fatale: Dyke Dick in Double-D Double Cross, which will be released as an ebook in February (a NSFW excerpt is previewed on her website).
A longtime resident of Los Angeles, she spoke with SG on the phone.
“The only thing thats hard to hear is techno unless I’m drunk, then it works.”
– Wyclef Jean
It seems that it is hard to be an extremely popular musician but still be a revolutionary at the same time. Certainly Wyclef Jean disproves that. After The Fugees became a monstrous music phenomenon they stopped making music and they all went on to solo projects with Wyclef being the most successful. Now he’s breaking into movies as the drug dealer in the cop film Dirty and reuniting with The Fugees in Dave Chappelle’s Block Party.
