Disney wars

Since buying Lucasfilm, Disney’s plans for a series of cross-franchised Star Wars movies are in development, with Peter Pan and Mary Poppins training to be Jedi knights, Bambi meeting Yoda, and dark side villains including Darth Dumbo and Flubber the Hut.

Movies announced this week:

The Phantom Mouse 3D

Tron Strikes Back

Return To Witch Mountains of the Death Star

Bedknobs, Broomsticks & Lightsabres

Honey, I Blew Up The Ewoks

Mickey and Herbie Go Pod Racing

Buzz Lightyear’s Millennium Falcon  

Shaggy Dog Stories of Absent-Minded Chewbacca

3PO and R2 have plans to guest star on reality-TV series We’re Not The Celebrity Droids Your Looking For, Get Us Out Of Here for the Jawa channel. 

Ant-Boy

Cinema small Talk

by Christopher Geary and Stephen Lee

Made on a tiny budget by Toothpick Media and Pocket Money Productions, Ultimate Marvels cast little Tommy Cruise for a reduced fee in superhero flick Ant-Boy! We interview the Cruiser while he’s immersed in his new role.

What’s it like being under a movie director’s magnifying glass, again?

“It’s great. Awesome! I look up and wave. The director looks down at me and squints a lot. I beg him, like, not to shout at me.”

How do you get on with the film crew?

“I have to be careful when they’re busy. I don’t wanna get trampled on if they fail to see me. The sound guy keeps telling me to speak up while techies adjust matchstick–boom microphones - and when I say micro… I mean a really miniature audio pickup. It’s the littlest one they have. The cameras are actually microscopes, of course.”

Is your character half-ant, half-man, like the ‘Mant’ of Joe Dante’s movie Matinee?

“No! Nothing of that sort... I’m playing the smallest action hero, not a comedy cliché.”

Will you be doing all of your own stunts, as usual..?

“Oh, sure - I grew up on an ant-farm!” explains Tommy. “I’ve been riding them six-legged steeds and bronco bugs since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.”
     Since you were..?
“Well, you know - maybe I’ll be a growing boy, someday.”

As a big… oops, sorry! As a Hollywood star, do you have a trailer?

“No, I have a shoebox. It’s very roomy for me, though.”

So, your mini-superhero will be fighting the Human Centipede?

“Not the 'full sequence', no. Just the first version…”

Your costumes for the movie are made by Elves & Sons, right?

“They make all my outfits, actually. It’s hard to find a human tailor with perfect eyesight for threading nano-needles.”

Does Ant-Boy really have a secret base made of Junior Lego?

“Oh yeah, absolutely! All the models… I mean the sets, are customised for my height by the studio’s artists, you know.”

Matchbox’s bid to provide the cars fell short of your needs. What happened there, Tommy?

“Well the Mini coupes they made were simply too damn big for us so we shrunk the script and wrote those scenes out.”

Are there other villains or adversaries, and will there be any marketing areas to exploit?

“Bad boys, yes… I go up against the 'Ant Hill Mob', but the boys toys designed to cash-in on the movie were banned in case infants swallowed them. Scale is a difficult subject. I find it challenging after other movies where I am at altitude, and this little flick brings me down to earth.

DVD Derm

You know about nicotine patches for smokers & bio-energy diet patches for weight-watchers...

Here's a brand new product:

The DVD patch

It’s the best way to help addicts from overspending on shiny new DVDs!

Unique AV InfusionSoft technology (patent pending). 3D available on demand.

For movies you would like to see but can’t find any spare time for.

Infuse one movie while you watch another, to get double value entertainment!

No prescription required.

Watchmen Prequels Internet Test, claims DC

In a spectacular climb-down, DC Comics has claimed that it never intended to publish prequels to Alan Moore's and Dave Gibbons' seminal graphic novel, and that the whole thing was a ruse designed to test the reliability of the internet.

"Just to be clear, there will be no prequels," said DC's Dan Didio in a statement today. "We knew fans would be angry at this decision, but the whole thing was just a test of the internet, honestly."

In what appeared to be a hastily worded press release, Didio stated that DC had been contacted by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) who had been concerned about the internet's ability to survive the phenomenon known as “nerd rage”.

"The IETF has known that nerd rage is a problem for a while," said Didio. "When George Lucas re-cut Star Wars to show Greedo shooting at Han Solo in the cantina scene, a whole lot of nodes serving California threatened to blow. The entire internet could have caught fire!"

Representatives from the IETF were not available for comment. Didio, however, was prepared to expand on the topic at length.

Didio referred to studies that show the increasing threat that concentrations of nerd rage pose to the internet. "The number of important announcements held back for San Diego Comicon has meant that ensuring the internet can survive sudden surges of nerd rage is vital."

Didio further pointed out the importance of nerd rage for DC's marketing strategy:

"Nerd rage is one of our key marketing strategies. If it hadn't been for nerd rage, no one would have read any of our New 52 re-leaunch books. So we have a real interest in making sure that the internet is able to cope with the most extreme shit storms."

He added, "We've got some big announcements coming up that our fans are going to find intolerably stupid – honestly, Before Watchmen will look like a storm in a tea cup when you see what we've got in mind for our headline characters. We wanted to make sure the internet was ready to cope with the collective howl of outrage that's going to greet our increasingly idiotic and morally bankrupt creative decisions."